|
|
Post by simrion on Mar 12, 2008 16:08:33 GMT -6
|
|
|
|
Post by James Maliszewski on Mar 12, 2008 16:38:42 GMT -6
If I ever read the word "mans" again, I'll need to sic Conan the Grammarian on the punk who says it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Wothbora on Mar 16, 2008 11:50:35 GMT -6
Excellent find... I really enjoyed the narrative of their group's discovery of OD&D.
|
|
|
|
Post by lordtwang on May 1, 2008 13:43:51 GMT -6
I very much enjoyed reading that post. Very well written, other than the odd "mans" thing, of course. I think the nail was struck upon the head here:
"The rules themselves were barely there. You had to make it all up. This put so much responsibility on the GM. He had to be entertaining, imaginative, fair, rational. In many ways the steady march away from original D&D has been a sustained effort to remove the effects of a bad GM on the game. The more game elements are objectively determined, written down in books, the less you have to rely on the GM. The less you need a really good GM to run the game. And yes, the more of a science it becomes, and less of an art. Running this game was an art form and only a few people could do it really well. There’s something magical about that. Newer versions become more systematized and therefore more people can play. Mediocre GMs can run good games. But, if I’m being honest with myself, something of the magic is lost. That feeling that most of this game lived in your mind. Because of that, I think, it was more real. As more and more of the game lived in the rules and on character sheets, it became a game instead of a world in your head."
I so fully agree with that.
The older I get the farther back in D&D I go, and now there's nowhere to go but proto-D&D.
|
|
Thorulfr
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 264
|
Post by Thorulfr on May 1, 2008 14:03:30 GMT -6
The older I get the farther back in D&D I go, and now there's nowhere to go but proto-D&D. How proto do you want to go? At the deepest root of this, there are a small group of people gathered around a campfire, listening to the member of the tribe with the best memory. A million years after that, the one telling the story would be holding a harp - a thousand years later, and s/he holds a set of dice. The only real difference is we let the listeners in on the story... "It is said of the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill that if a day goes by without his name being mentioned, the world will come to an end...so it is probably just as well that I chose to tell this story tonight." |
|
