Pitching OSR/ODD to new edition players
Jul 21, 2017 8:53:16 GMT -6
Finarvyn, tetramorph, and 4 more like this
Post by Gene M. on Jul 21, 2017 8:53:16 GMT -6
That's the cat guy! I know because a friend of mine DMs 5e. Since my friend loves cats, I opted to play a tabaxi. I don't really like 5e or the Forgotten Realms setting, but I had decent fun at my friend's table.
You are absolutely right about very few humans. I don't think we had a single human PC in my friend's game. Part of it is the novelty of fantasy adventuring for inexperienced players, but I think all the mechanical incentives to play demihumans tend to steer people away from humans. In my OD&D campaign, humans are more numerous than other races, so I encourage my players to play humans.
As to the thread topic, I haven't had any trouble introducing people to OD&D. The higher lethality can be a bit of a turnoff to modern players, but it tends to encourage smarter play. Moreover, my players like having a chance to play a new character if a PC bites the dust, and those of my players who aren't into combat appreciate the built-in disincentive to fight. Most of my players are not seasoned tabletop players, so the simplicity of OD&D is an asset in getting them to play compared to something like Pathfinder.
With 5e, it starts somewhat simple, but gets more and more complicated and harder to track as PCs level up, and there are too many spells. Players have to read and reread the rules to keep track of what they can do. With a lot of players, that's a guarantee that play will get bogged down in looking things up and discussing rules. With OD&D, there's none of that, so they can just play without having to memorize a long list of class features.
I have seen a little resistance to OD&D because of a lack of those features, but for people who have experienced how complicated modern D&D can get, the absence helps. If you're reading the 5e PHB, all that stuff can seem very cool. But it's hard to get it working fluidly in play without doing a lot of homework away from the table, and few people have the time. What I emphasize is that you can take the three core (four if I'm allowing the thief) and just roleplay or equip them differently. You can run a witch that, by the book, is a straight magic-user, but make the fluff different. Maybe throw in a bit of potion-brewing and a familiar. In my campaign I discourage the drive to differentiate mechanically. In the character creation handbook I made for my players (they have access to Men & Magic too) I give an example of how choosing different equipment can differentiate fighting-men from each other. Consider someone in heavy armor with a shield, spear, and sword (a hoplite more or less) versus someone in leather who concentrates on speed, archery, and stealth. Both are fighting-men by the books, but have two different approaches. I use the Judges Guild Weapon Priority for settling most questions of initiative, so the equipment choice is already some mechanical differentiation, but no additional class is necessary to distinguish the two characters.
I run a sandbox campaign without much use of modules. When I do dip into published material, I adapt it, so it's not all that recognizable. I use them mostly for a dungeon level here or there if I haven't had enough prep time. I run my campaign open table for a pool of about ten players, probably going up to around fifteen soon. My players appreciate the freedom of the campaign compared to the railroady stuff in other games. My campaign setting for the most part is just a city atop a megadungeon. There's a wilderness but they haven't shown much interest in leaving the city & its dungeon. So players who want to delve go down, and those who want more social interaction just do some city adventures (investigating a crime, planning a heist, whatever). I had a session a couple weeks ago where there were only maybe three instances of dice rolling on the players' part. They mostly explored the city, interacted with NPCs, and investigated a mystery. The next session, with a slightly different group of players, was a dungeon crawl, which we'll be picking up again tonight.
From what I've read of modern systems and their proponents, there seems to be a lot of distrust of the DM out there. So there's an emphasis on rules (& on published adventures). If you have a rule-bound potential player, the Free Kriegsspiel philosophy of older D&D might be a hurdle. I find that attitude baffling, but it's out there. Me, I just wouldn't play with a referee who was too obviously arbitrary or capricious. Seems like an easier solution than trying to fix bad refereeing through having an extensive rulebook. Players will always go off the story rails, and they will always precipitate a situation without a rule to cover it. Isn't that why we play this instead of a computer game? One of the ways I get people into my campaign is by emphasizing the freedom aspect because they get to help create the world that they explore.
Apologies for the length of my post.
