benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Feb 24, 2013 13:25:27 GMT -6
I'm an OD&D and AD&D player when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons. In AD&D's case, I will use the AD&D books and OSRIC interchangeably, often at the same time, in much the same fashion as Chainsaw described above, and for pretty much the same reason. In OD&D's case, however, I will prefer the originals to S&W White Box. The exception would be S&W Complete, if I had in my mind to use OD&D plus selected elements from all the gamuts of supplements over the years, since I find it does a great job at building the experience I'd most likely want out of such a game framework, including the options and the like (thinking initiative for instance, there).
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Feb 20, 2013 15:59:17 GMT -6
It was a very cool talk so far. I enjoyed the content and ideas thoroughly. Food for thought, as usual, Rob.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Jan 17, 2013 21:26:52 GMT -6
@ Lord Ghul Well, if you sent me a game I could read and hop into the discussion... Culture certainly informs moral compasses in my own world as well. It must be refreshing being rid of the Christian-imbued ethos of D&D, heh Ghul? I killed it back in 1974 when creating WoK and never looked back. I very much like the Christian-imbued ethos of D&D as you put it, and if anything, I would actually amp up the concept with Saints and the like (such as Saint Cuthbert) as deities in my own setting to make sense of it all. I really like this part of the game. BUT. In the context of Hyperborea, where you have a deity like Xathoqqua as ubiquitous as it is, it's hard to sell the same paradigm, unless you get into some specifics like some monks from the Dark Ages have been thrown through time and space into Hyperborea and the like. I like the way good and evil have been downplayed while still leaving room for the Paladin though. I can certainly understand how some would want to get rid of the good v. evil axis in an Hyperborean campaign, however. Maybe redefining the Paladin as a "Champion" instead? Ideas, always more ideas...
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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G+
Dec 25, 2012 15:50:45 GMT -6
Post by benoist on Dec 25, 2012 15:50:45 GMT -6
Ghul's not playing fair, though. He shaves everything so it doesn't give a hint!
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Music
Dec 23, 2012 12:15:16 GMT -6
Post by benoist on Dec 23, 2012 12:15:16 GMT -6
The Eric Clapton of the 70s was the best. You can just hear the difference with his later stuff. I remember a meddley of Driftin' Blues/Rambling on my Mind/Have you ever loved a woman that was just UN-believable to me. I still love to listen to it. And Pink Floyd well... Pink Floyd is just awesome. This is me flying my fan flag here.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 18, 2012 20:32:53 GMT -6
It's awesome to see how far this idea has gone, and how it's inspired new stuff for the game. I'm very proud to have played a part in this class's inception. Thank you Ghul for picking up the ball and going for the touchedown with it! Me and my players are grateful!
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 18, 2012 20:25:41 GMT -6
Once you start to look at D&D as primarily a "character build" game - which was heavily promoted in the 3.x years because it sells supplements - then character levels with no built-in bonuses take away from the fun, since they add nothing to your character build. If you look at it as a dungeon/wilderness exploration game, none of this matters. A smoother progression is something that a referee can do, or not, without really changing much. Very astute. It's been building progressively over decades (AD&D Unearthed Arcana adding weapon specializations and the like, the Complete... series of AD&D 2nd edition, the Skills & Powers books, being other examples that led to 3rd edition). Also, (1) the fact that D&D spawned computer RPGs and that then computer RPGs really picked up with personal computing, advances in technology, graphics, platforms etc to create a feeback loop where D&D's designers picked up components of game play from these games, and the general gaming population and evolution of expectations regarding games in the gaming culture(s), and (2) that the publisher of 3rd edition created an extremely successful building game in the form of Magic the Gathering prior to the revision of the game in 2000, both need mention.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 16, 2012 14:21:46 GMT -6
Benoist has done some astounding work outlining his approach to the megadungeon. I'm awed by it! And others - philotomy, grodog, melan, etc, have done fascinating writing on the subject. (...) Today, there seem to be a lot of different opinions on the megadungeon. When I started writing the posts of the advice to build the mega-dungeon and the campaign around it, I was super-careful to say from the start that it shouldn't be construed as a "one true way" thing, but more as "a way I would do it that could be useful for you to find your own". If there's a point to the whole series, it is this: to inspire some people who might like the idea of the mega-dungeon to actually use the material and do it their own way, to teach them how to fish, in a way, rather than just throwing fish at them to eat. There was also a context to the whole thing, which is the RPG Site, where some people have been pretty vocal about how "dungeons suck, are lame and repetitive", you know the type, the same kind of idea that says that D&D is kind of a proto-RPG, that doing dungeons is "nice nice" when you are a kid but at some point you should "mature" and become "a real role player" or some shirt like that. So with this context in mind, part of my approach on that thread was to show how the dungeon was a structure you could take into all sorts of interesting directions, including the very complex environments with NPCs and factions and full on ecologies and the like. You can take it as far as you want in any number of ways. Which in my mind doesn't invalidate Greyhawk's take AT ALL, by the way, and I sure would love to play in such a campaign with a slide to China, talking Balrogs adventuring with the party and all. Variety is the spice of life. The dungeon is a structure that helps you organize the medium of play and bring the wonder to your game table. If that means a really gritty "fantasy f**king Vietnam" game for your table, go for it. If it means some gonzo fun a la Abnomalous Subsurface Environment, by all means, have at it! If it means giant bowling alleys and monster arenas, you totally explore that potential too. It's about the wonder in the end, no matter what that means to you. The structure itself is there to help. It isn't meant to "be the fish". It's meant to "teach you how to fish." That's my POV on this.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 10, 2012 12:08:34 GMT -6
Yes. Using an hydro/cryomancer homemade variant in my Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea game, and I retrofitted the 3rd ed D&D sorcerer into the same campaign, on player demand.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 10, 2012 11:45:43 GMT -6
Yes.
At the same time, I try to be accomodating to the players' fantasies, in the sense that I feel the game is more rewarding when you actually care about your character (within reason, of course). So when a player asked me "well, I would like to play something like the sorcerer of 3rd ed but that isn't in the game" I just went with "you know what? I always wondered how that'd work in a First ed type paradigm. Let's try it." Later a player had this idea of building a bola out of flasks of oil, kind of an explosive bola weapon. I was like "sure, you can craft this thing." Who knows what kind of moments that's going to lead to? I want to find out! And so on.
Ultimately it makes the game more valuable to the players, and there are therefore more things in the balance for them to lose, which makes them play better to keep them. They basically feel like the game rewards ingenuity and welcomes their parts (characters) into the campaign, but at the same time there's no guarantee they'll keep that stuff going forever if they make senseless, reckless decisions playing it.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 10, 2012 11:00:52 GMT -6
*grins* That's very cool. I laughed. Hehe.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 10, 2012 10:47:05 GMT -6
Hear, hear! Thanks Fin! Thanks everyone posting!
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 10, 2012 10:43:32 GMT -6
I made it crystal clear to the players as we started our current AS&SH game: "This is a game. It is predicated on the notion you will encounter challenges and have to make it through them somehow by making choices for yourselves. This means that there is a penalty for failure, and that penalty may be death. I will not change dice results. I will not rewind actions in the game. But I can promise you I will be fair, and role play the opposition to the best of their AND my abilities. The game will reward your role playing and your brains. Use them. It's not going to be a piece of cake, but if you actually make it, you'll know you didn't make it because I 'allowed' you to. Does that sound like fun? Do you want to play that game?"
Everyone said "yes." First fight, first man down. The player felt the pain at -4 HP. He didn't die (per the rules) and was saved in time by the other players, but that was a rude awakening. They get it now, I think. They tend to be a little bit paranoid, but that's good. They know that if they screw up, that may be their last characters' moves. Makes the game a LOT more exciting for them now.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 18:34:19 GMT -6
"Maybe D&D's victim of its own success in that regard."You win the Magic Cookie as awarded by the Great God Rickles! The enchantment became mass marketed, homogenized, done for you rather than by oneself ("game as consumer" rather than "game as creator"). This has perforce (as I indicated in my interview at Hill Cantons about a year ago) essentially built receivers/disposers of premade content and pushed the creation side from at first (1974) 100% to an inverted (late 80's onward) of less than 10% I am sure. This type of mind shift of what an RPG concept is (as opposed to the templates laid atop them) has now reached a generational level of departure and its consequences have been showing for many years previous to this. I have more on this in a book I'm writing, "Form and Formula in RPGs" Is it possible to close Pandora's box, though, at this point? I seems to me that the D&D "brand", since now that's what it is for the guys behind it, is screwed. It's something that whoever owns it will want to shield against infringement and milk for the dollars it represents. It's almost like kryptonite, as far as actual creativity's concerned. In that sense the hobbyists are really the guys that matter and will continue to really matter for the game, I think. Maybe that's what we're seeing with the clones and this place and all that: the schism between the brand, and the creative outlet finally consumed. So ... there would be no way back for D&D(tm). It's done. You always push the boundaries, Ben, which I find refreshing; I've read some of your stuff on the RPGSite (and have also read some not too nice things there, too, not from you, just to clarify). Thanks Rob. You know I feel the same about you. Ahhh now, The RPG Site. The hive of scum and villainy of the gaming internet. ;D I have to say I really like the place. Perhaps for the very reason so many seem to have a problem with it. It's like being in the Cantina, you know. You are drinking at the bar some ale from some obscure star system, and you never know when the old bearded weirdo is going to show up with a kid and pull a lightsaber from under his robes. It's great to be back to creating full time and to exchanging creative commentary. My health was very nip-n-tuck over 1 1/2 years but has finally squared. Rob I am really glad to read it! I'm bursting with ideas too, lately. Too... much... going on! But it's good. Makes me feel alive. We will need to catch up and chat a bit you and I at some point.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 18:20:43 GMT -6
Woww that is awesome! Totally on topic with what I'm running right now! Cool!
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 17:49:59 GMT -6
I know that would require an epic amount of work, but the Call of Cthulhu campaign The Masks of Nyarlathotep with all the locations included shifted to Hyperborean cities and sites all over the continent would totally ROCK. I might actually do this at some point. I know. I'm crazy. It'd be really, really awesome, though. This is a great idea. Masks is on its way to me in the mail. Now I even more excited about its arrival! Morgan This is one of the absolute best RPG campaigns ever published. I am not kidding. You will be blown away.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 17:44:28 GMT -6
I apologize if I'm causing the thread to stray off topic, so I'll try and clarify within the theme of the question. I want to add CoC's insanity dynamic to my PC's AS&SH character sheets. Perhaps also blending in Jack Shear's terror/horror tables. You might adapt SAN as is and calculate it with WISx5. Or come up with a new stat like Balance or Aplomb, and substract 1 point to the stat per shock. Use saving throws to determine temporary madness, with the new stat's modifier applying to the roll. Permanent madness occurs when the stat reaches 0. You'd have to come up with alternate ways to regain SAN or points in the alternate stat since there are no sanatoriums, no psychiatrists etc in Hyperborea. Magic, uses of lotus to erase memory, retreats in secluded temples under the protection of clerics, restoration spells might do it. I'd like to hear more about Masks of Nyarlothep and your ideas to fold it into Hyperborea. Substitute New York for Khromarium. Jackson Elias is instead one of the contacts the PCs met before to get some adventure gigs. Someone they trust and know. The clues would have to be readapted. The search would begin in Khromarium's most vile areas. Then it would be a matter of repurposing the entire Carlyle expedition and its NPCs. Carlyle is a noble Hyperborea. Penhew a mysterious sorcerer who dabbled in ancient Ixian magic and rituals. The detective friend of Carlyle becomes a fighter or Cataphract, a war veteran who followed his friend to keep him alive. And so on. The adventuring expedition went forth to search for secrets in the dark places of Hyperborea. Substitute London, Hong Kong, Cairo etc for different locations in Hyperborea, being mindful of the actual travel route used by the adventuring expedition and how everything played out from there. Then retool each particular chapter to the new location. Be sure to retool pyramids, lost ruins and so on into actual workable dungeons for your AS&SH crew. Might include Gary Gygax's Necropolis in there too, somewhere. That would be one epic campaign, I tell you. Really makes me want to give it a shot, actually. I look to CAS stories like "The Testament of Athammaus", "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" and "The Theft of the Thirty Nine Girdles" as a way to get a pulse for Hyperborean urban life. Then I think of an HPL story like "The Shadow over Innsmouth" that would make a great PC/adventure/investigation setting and re-imagine the architecture and means of travel as Hyperborean. Is there a CoC module for that? Escape from Innsmouth is what you are looking for.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 13:52:17 GMT -6
My pleasure Rob. I'm glad to see you post here these days. Very cool. When I read this thread I can't help but think about how D&D's gotten formulaic with the years. I mean. At the beginning, and it's visible to me via your input, Michael's and so on, there was this enthusiasm for the cheer possibilities the game offered and anything, any possibility to just get something cool out of the game was on the table. Whether that was Alice in Wonderland, or pulling some plastic toy and going "here's the rust monster!", I feel like there was an embrace of just how open the possibilities were with the game. I like that, and like to conceive my games and levels and what-have-you with that in mind. All the time. I guess many people would think of it as "thinking outside the box", outside of convention or tradition, but isn't that actually playing very much within the original box, and what it was intended to accomplish for people that grabbed its contents and just ran with them? Maybe D&D's victim of its own success in that regard. Like it's become a "genre" of its own and there's all sorts of implications of "canon" or what "feels like D&D" and what doesn't. I'm myself very much like this when it comes to some aspects of the game, as I look at the recent efforts to publish yet-another-iteration-of-the-game and don't find there much I'd like to call "D&D". I always liked the TSR phrase of the "worlds of our imaginations" because that's what the game represents to me. A framework or structure that helps enthusiasts use their imagination and come up with something that's coherent to them and feels like other times and places and worlds really. Ah. Maybe I'm way off topic here. But I always liked this passage you just quoted in your OP. It seems to encapsulate perfectly that spirit of "going where no man has gone before" that makes the prospect of playing the game so endearing to me.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 13:28:11 GMT -6
How would one go about blending Call of Cthulu and ASSH (or any retro D&D)? I'm not sure I understand your question, e.g. whether you are talking about adapting scenarios, about the tone and feels of the games, the mythology, cosmology, creatures and the like. Did you have any particular issue in mind?
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 13:13:40 GMT -6
I'm afraid of revealing too much on these boards because I know some of my players are watching, Rob, but I do very much like that aspect of the underworld exploration: teleporting into different dimensions, times and places, other universes, stars and planets. It's all on the table for me and I like the opportunities that presents to keep things fresh in the game.
Not to go too much on spoiler tags, I always wanted to have the opportunity to fight the good old Indiana Jones nazi scum of pulp fiction as fantasy characters. So one of the multi-world spanning conspiracies of my multiverse, the Enrill, is a cabal of mages who basically came into contact with things (entities or anti-gods) that were not meant to be, and basically want to make them pierce into the realms of existence, and amongst them you'll find some of those nazi scum of the Ahnenerbe, the Society of the Vril, the Thule Gesellschaft and all these nasty guys...
In fact, all my campaigns take place in the multiverse of the Enrill. The players might not know it, but whether we are playing D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, Mythus, what-have-you... we're basically playing in the same multiverse inspired by a variety of sources, like Monte Cook's Praemal, the alternate Earths of EGG and the like. Now the players might never know, but there are some motifs and connections between all my campaigns and settings. Some NPC might be a reincarnation of another NPC from another game and setting. Or there might be gates between the worlds. Or some specific item or character that made it through from one world to the next. It's something that helps me imagine the multiverse and make sense of all it is that we play. But that's not something that's come to the forefront of any of my different games yet. Maybe soon.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 12:49:56 GMT -6
I know that would require an epic amount of work, but the Call of Cthulhu campaign The Masks of Nyarlathotep with all the locations included shifted to Hyperborean cities and sites all over the continent would totally ROCK. I might actually do this at some point.
I know. I'm crazy. It'd be really, really awesome, though.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 12:45:15 GMT -6
Awesome post, Benoist; thanks for your thorough reply. I have already read much of your advice on megadungeon building. That is an impressive piece of work! Thanks mate. I really appreciate the compliment. There's still a lot of work to do, and I plan on packaging all that into a neat document when I'm all done so that it can hopefully be printed, looked at, taken apart by those who find it inspiring in some way, shape or form. It's the point really, and seeing how people like you and others like it and get inspired by it is really its own reward. I thank you very much. It makes me wonder if the dungeon in your "fairly standard structure" is a "true megadungeon" or more of a small scale dungeon that is available as an option for players among many other options (not that you can't do this with a megadungeon, but a mega D is a lot of work if you don't want the dungeon to be the main focus of the game). It is a lot of work true, but it doesn't feel that much as work when the dungeon grows organically with the campaign, which is really the approach advised by U&WA to begin with. It's all supposed to be fun. If it feels like a chore to come up with yet-another-dungeon-level, then yeah, absolutely, do something else. Trying to think outside the box and come up with variety is a way to keep the fire going, for me. In any case, usually my campaign structure will involve one (or several) main dungeon, which is construed as an underworld, or mega-dungeon, where the PCs can potentially go over and over and discover more about the world around them through their adventures in its depths. But the local wilderness will also include some smaller dungeons or lairs of different factions or groups or creatures or individuals living nearby. Some of them will be connected with the mega-dungeon (that is, with explicit links to it, like for instance a lair of hobgoblins, some of them in contact with the hobgoblins of the mega-dungeon, with the potential to find some traces of the connection and/or interrogate prisoners, or with teleporters leading directly into the mega-dungeon, or some NPC that is encountered there and has a piece of information about the mega-dungeon, like a map or gossip or whatnot, etc.), while some of them will stand alone. It's about populating the wilderness/hex map and making it interesting, with a multiplicity of choices and possible actions on the PCs' parts, and also about providing a sense of coherence of the world around them, so that thte whole makes sense bit by bit and reveal more of the tapestry of mysteries and conspiracies and whatever else is going on in the background as the PCs explore it. Some folks here in this thread remark on the fact that a very open sandbox game leaves their players kind of lost - do you experience that or do your players revel in the open-endedness? Well the ultimate sandbox would be a white field with no features whatsoever and no hook to anything to do and nothing going on in it, really. And that sandbox is going to fail in play, hard. It's all about the excluded middle in fact: if you provide too many choices, the players won't know what to care about. They'll be confused, will look around and just feel overloaded with information, and in the end they might just give up or start doing something stupid just to get it over with and actually "do" something you know. If you don't provide enough choices, then the same basic thing happens: the players don't know what to do, there's nothing to really care about, and no opportunities for their PCs to get involved into anything. The world is static, dead, boring. So they quit, or they start kicking doors and doing stupid stuff just you know... to make things happen. The "true" sandbox in my mind is somewhere in the middle between those two extremes: there's a region around the PCs. There are things going on in it. When they go to the inn they will hear about attacks on the roads around town. If they listen to the town crier outside they'll hear about the visit of a foreign baron to these lands and how there's a tourney organized for the occasion. If they talk to the guard asking for work he'll tell them about the troubles down in the sewers that scared the living hell out of his men. Then they get involved with whatever strikes their fancy. Provide choices, hooks, events and situations, let the NPCs talk. Then the PCs get involved into something, and that starts a chain reaction of action-reaction that basically makes the world come alive. Are your games particularly lethal? They are. I don't fudge dice, I referee with fairness, and if that means that the party is flanked and taken apart by an unforgiving enemy, I will do just that. I am not running the Tomb of Horrors as a campaign standard, of course, but I do not pull my punches. I role play the opposition, whatever it is, fairly. Ogres will be dumb but tough, hobgoblins will be cunning and organized. And so on. Just don't think I'm going to change a die roll or go all illusionist on you changing stuff at the last moment because you made a mistake. Not going to happen. The first combat in my current AS&SH game a character went down like this. The others provided help and he came back from his near death experience, but the players realized I wasn't kidding. Which is good. It makes the game more exciting because there's an actual penalty for failure. Do you do xp by the book or more freeform as some others here do? I try to follow the guidelines of the game. I might and will give various awards in various situations that might not be covered by the books, but the basic things like monster XP values, 1 XP for 1 GP, these kinds of things I don't modify. Training is different. I did use the training rules of AD&D books, I see the logic behind it and have nothing against that process per se, but at the same time I don't find it particularly appealing. For the AS&SH game I am more lenient, and just level up the PCs as they go, in part because of the practicality of the time frame and the events in the game, in part because of a problem of continuity which is already challenged in the context of an open table policy where players can show up and not show up for game sessions and you play anyway, and in part because most of the players are not used to concepts like the stables of characters, or simply hiring henchmen and hirelings as potential alternate PCs, and are *just* starting to really get it. Enforcing strict training rules would make it a lot harder for them, so I ignore those as a "rule as written" but treat them more as an opportunity to role play occasionally some change in the characters as they get more experienced and find mentors, old magics and the like. Some people talk about prepping situations rather than plots. It sounds like that is what you are doing. Do you drop hooks or are your players more self directed to find things out, while you respond to them? Both. I don't treat hooks as "hooks" per se. In the world you live in you'll just hear about regional events, you'll stumble on gossip in taverns, etc. It's just stuff happening around the PCs. And then they choose what they want to care about, including "nothing" to rather do what they have in mind instead. Just as if the world would be "real", in motion, a living world where stuff happens and people are free to choose what they want to do when they get up in the morning. Thanks again for your comment. My pleasure.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 10:35:56 GMT -6
I discovered the game when I was eleven years old. I was playing AD&D First Edition solo with my much older cousin, and I was exploring the wilderness around Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil. It was tough, my cousin didn't pull any punches to be sure. I must have gone through a good half dozen characters before one made it to level 2, but what victory it was that day for me! I loved playing AD&D. I would start running games later, first with L'Oeil Noir, Das Schwarze Auge, and then later using the basic D&D set of Frank Mentzer. I remember TPKing the party during my first session with a few ghouls. That was something for just a fledging DM who didn't know much what to do - I wondered if I was doing something wrong at the time. Turns out I ran the thing fairly and the players just got caught off guard. In any case, I drifted later and played other RPGs, first with BRP variants like Stormbringer, Hawkmoon, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, then with French games like In Nomine Satanis Magna Veritas, Bitume, Mega and others, then with White Wolf games, including Vampire the Masquerade, which remains my favorite of the bunch to this day. I came back to D&D with 3rd edition. I bought the books when I was not playing very much RPGs. I was going through a lot of changes in my life at the time, and I thought I had seen and played everything tabletop RPGs could offer - like you can visit all the worlds of your imagination in just a few years! Ah, I was naive. I did play D&D later on, however, after my move from France to Canada or around that time, IIRC, and found out that I had missed the game all this time. So I played it, ran it, and was very much into the OGL and third party products of folks like Necromancer Games, Malhavoc Press and so on. Progressively, however, something would start to tickle me in the back of my mind. I wasn't satisfied in the way the discussions surrounding 3rd ed would always devolve into pissing matches about game balance, or game mechanics in general, how the rules became the game if you will, and the game the rules. I would think of running Castles & Crusades. Lejendary Adventures. The clentcher I think was in part due to the changes in the game and community itself, around 2007, with the announcement of a 4th edition and all that. Also, most of the people who were playing with me at the time left the island where I lived, so I was pretty much thrown into a Sabbatical without really wanting it, which made me think about what we did, how we played the game, and how I would do things differently given the chance. I actually was so disappointed by the online communities that I would unplug for a few months. And that's when the idea of running the original game came to me. I would acquire a World of Greyhawk boxed set and retool the thing to make it mine. I would go back to what I liked about these first games with my cousin, and the worlds of my imagination. It was a revelation to me. Kind of an epiphany really, an epiphany to which many friends on and off line contributed by the way, like Rob here in no small part. I drifted back to AD&D ultimately, but would look at it in a completely different way than I did when I was a child. Things that did not make sense to me suddenly did (including level limits, Rob! ), and I found that I "got it", I mean the dialog of one DM to another, the role of the referee in the picture, the suggestions and thoughts thrown at me to challenge me to be the best DM I could be. That's pretty much where I am now. I don't see that trajectory, that is, my love affair with the original game, the advanced game, and some of its variants (Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, I am looking at you) end any time soon. More ideas are coming to my mind every day. I'm playing regularly with a French crew over Skype right now and will probably launch games with an English-speaking crew as well at some point. Gaming's good, and that's awesome. Crap. I realize I haven't answered the OP. How do I play D&D? I start with a fairly standard structure of a small regional or local setting, a wilderness area, a dungeon nearby, and a town in the area as well where the PCs can meet people and trade and the like. Then we create characters and launch the game. And then it goes literally wherever. I don't "plot" the game. I don't think of it as a "storyline". It just "is". Players do whatever they want, go wherever they want, and they find adventure along the way. Like players role play their own characters, I basically role play the world. I just respond to their input, and the world spins into motion. Amazing things happen, most of which I never would have thought of on my own, and I love it that way. In practice, it generally turns into a mix of wilderness, dungeon adventuring, with investigations in between of the people in the area, the forces in presence, what their (sometimes nefarious) activities are, and then the PCs just get involved with all this in some fashion, and the focus of the world gets larger as the PCs explore it and rise in levels, up to the point connections are made to other worlds, the big picture becomes known, and becomes important to them, and so on. I'm not sure I'm describing all this very well. In any case, if you want a good idea of my personal take on things you can check out my advice to build a mega-dungeon and the campaign around it linked in my sig - it's not over by any means but hopefully there's something there that'll be helpful for you. And there's the thread recounting the events of the AS&SH game I am playing with the French crew I talked about earlier as well. The link is in my sig as well. I guess these might help explain how I play the game and what I enjoy about it.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 3, 2012 11:19:19 GMT -6
Outdoor Survival is useful if you want to use the default wilderness map implied by the rules books, particularly if you use the random rules for trips in the wilderness. It's not necessary in the sense that you could substitute any other hex maps with various balanced terrain features and get the same results, but the board of OS is reeeally cool and gorgeous. So ... yeah. I like it, personally.
As for Chainmail, it's like the LBBs really: you don't need prints stricto sensu, if you have the PDFs and can just print them out. That said, having the actual print for me is just something I wouldn't do without - because these are meant to be read that way, because there's feel that comes of holding the actual booklets in your hand, because I prefer to read and own physical things instead of busting my eyes reading electronic files, because I usually prep for games with multiple volumes open all at the same time in front of me, etc etc. Your mileage may vary, though.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 3, 2012 6:57:03 GMT -6
So yeah really, the hard part is to just get a shot at the OD&D LBBs. All the peripheral stuff, Chainmail, Outdoor Survival, reference sheets etc. can be gathered fairly cheaply. Just takes time to gather the set of tools is all.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 2, 2012 19:25:30 GMT -6
Also, it really helps to have a copy of the Chainmail rules along with the OD&D LBBs. Probably would not hurt to throw in a copy of OS as well. If you're using the random wilderness travel rules yes, totally. Fortunately, Outdoor Survival is SUPER cheap to find on eBay et al.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 2, 2012 18:43:41 GMT -6
Hmmm that does look really cool... PM sent your way, Scott!
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 2, 2012 18:14:10 GMT -6
I don't even care about the box -- I just want the LBBs. Must be much more reasonable to purchase just the books without the box, eh? Yes. The LBBs alone are generally cheaper. Count $75 at the very least if they are in a decent state, though.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 2, 2012 18:13:12 GMT -6
I just, wherever they are, they're getting a good laugh out of it! Hehe probably.
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 2, 2012 18:10:37 GMT -6
Also, it really helps to have a copy of the Chainmail rules along with the OD&D LBBs.
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