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Post by rsdean on Mar 30, 2022 6:15:06 GMT -6
My high school had a wargames club (which is where I sourced my original players), but we didn’t ever play D&D at lunch. With a whole lot of noise in the cafeteria and about 30 minutes, we stuck to things like Melee.
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Post by dicebro on Mar 30, 2022 6:41:51 GMT -6
I really think that something like the open table / “always on” is only feasible when you’re playing OD&D or a very rules-lite game. The time it takes to create a character using the 3 LBB is what.. 10 minutes? That includes buying equipment and developing a personality based on the stats. The time it takes to create a 5e character? 45 minutes - 2 hours depending on how deep you want to go. I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of an Always On campaign, and that’s what drew me to the original rules in the first place. 5e is a technically better game if you want a more narrative approach, but if you want an open world fantasy simulator, then OD&D is the way to go. I’ve been looking to start exactly this for years now, but never can find enough players to even get it started. 5 minutes or less if you develop the personality during play instead of trying to tie personality to the ability scores.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Mar 31, 2022 12:19:38 GMT -6
I think there is a crossover from character creation to "playing the game" once equipment starts to be purchased. The latter is not so much personality-based but situational. "What are we planning to do?"
The rest of generating a PC is mostly dice rolling. Choose a Class "What is my core focus?" And a race. Do you choose Human, the playing piece the game is balanced around? Or a variant thereof demi-human? Which is harder and not as balanced to the challenges.
Then Starting Alignment, maybe some starting spells, thieves skills, or subclass choices. I think that's it. A lot of generation is random dice rolling and recording scores off tables.
You could even skip over the name and notable characteristics until it becomes necessary. I like feeling out who a character is based upon the situation. And that means they can grow similarly throughout a campaign. And change whenever it feels right.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2022 15:04:50 GMT -6
Yes. It seems to me that, just like the "alternate" combat rules became the standard D&D model, the "alternate" campaign style also endured. Many of the assumptions about the audience for D&D and how they would use it in the initial release missed the mark, but it's not surprising. They had an entire new hobby on their hands with no precedent. Instead of "Many of the assumptions about the audience for D&D and how they would use it in the initial release missed the mark...," I'd say, "The game, having struck its intended mark, had a greater impact than they possibly fathomed." Yeah, that's more accurate, you're right. I think it's also accurate to say that within four or five years of release, D&D's audience became much broader and much less rooted in wargaming than anticipated. It hit its initial mark but this fascinating and undreamed of ripple effect made it something different in the long run. I think the overall sentiment of the point I'm making here isn't so much that the initial target was "wrong" but that the Renaissance players who are trying to go back all the way to the root and explore what the initial target was might end up realizing why the majority of play groups didn't adopt it. It's like when music hipsters learn a bit of trivia about their favorite band having recorded their first album in a garage, and decide that recording albums in garages is what makes great music, rather than realizing that wasn't by design but by necessity. I guess it's also like the joke among historians about how the majority of archaeological artifacts come from garbage dumps, so that people looking back on our culture might ascribe great value to shampoo bottles or some such as important objects in our culture because they've left so much physical evidence behind.
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Post by plethon on Apr 1, 2022 15:47:13 GMT -6
If you look at BTPBD, the combat system is already more akin to what would be called the "alternate" system in D&D than anything resembling chainmail combat. I thought that the reason Gygax called it an 'alternate' system was to sell the game to Chainmail players, and perhaps also to sell some more Chainmail rules. Perhaps you could speculate that he felt the need to justify this new kind of game by situating it with chainmail and wargaming, but he would have already known, at the time of creating D&D, that the actual game had moved beyond this. So it's hard to figure out completely. He also seems to think in writing the lbb that a lot of people will play without minis, but then minis became hugely popular from what I have read about the earliest games. So there are various threads going in different directions past each other sometimes.
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Post by Finarvyn on Apr 2, 2022 5:18:43 GMT -6
If you look at BTPBD, the combat system is already more akin to what would be called the "alternate" system in D&D than anything resembling chainmail combat. I thought that the reason Gygax called it an 'alternate' system was to sell the game to Chainmail players, and perhaps also to sell some more Chainmail rules. Perhaps you could speculate that he felt the need to justify this new kind of game by situating it with chainmail and wargaming, but he would have already known, at the time of creating D&D, that the actual game had moved beyond this. So it's hard to figure out completely. He also seems to think in writing the lbb that a lot of people will play without minis, but then minis became hugely popular from what I have read about the earliest games. So there are various threads going in different directions past each other sometimes. I think that you are spot on, here. We know now that Dave had moved on from Chainmail well before the publication of OD&D, and I've seen nothing to show that Gary used the "regular" combat from Chainmail in his games, either. Gary was quite the self-promoter and I'm sure that putting in references to Chainmail was designed to sell more copies of that game. I'm not sure this is deception in any way, however, as Gary's version of OD&D probably was put together as a Chainmail expansion since so many elements of Chainmail (AC, levels, spell lists and so on) resembled Gary's OD&D. Basically as I understand it, everyone in Gary's campaign used the "alternate" combat pretty much from the get-go, and everyone in Dave's campaign used percentile mechanics that looked nothing like either combat system in the LBB. Dave used minis a lot, Gary not so much. Part of the problem is the assumption that Dave's OD&D and Gary's OD&D were the same, so when one sees one comment or another about the early days they appear to contradict. In reality, I think that comments about Dave's campaign say one thing, those about Gary's say another. The confusion is multiplied by the fact that some players had the fortune to play in both campaigns, so there isn't 100% separation in the comments. It helps when you realize the chronology -- that Dave did his first, Gary did his second, Dave's ideas guided parts of Gary's writing but a lot of the stuff Gary wrote was all his own -- so the game that was "co authored" seems to have genesis in one mind but the published version from another mind. Of course Gary would have borrowed from and expanded on his own stuff when he was expanding upon Dave's ideas, since that's what he knew best.
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 2, 2022 10:33:13 GMT -6
It just didn't work for most groups and so became a relic of the past...My point is that these generally aren't lost gems, they are abandoned paths. Yep. My group and I started playing in 1980. While we owned and used other products, the hard core of what we used was the following five books: 1. Basic D&D rulebook edited by Holmes (final version) 2. B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (first printing) 3. AD&D Monster Manual (final version with little wizard logo) 4. AD&D Players Handbook (final version with little wizard logo) 5. AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (final version with little wizard logo) We played AD&D through the lens of Holmes, unconcernedly ignoring vast swaths of AD&D's fiddly rules in such a way that would scandalize countless of my fellow old-schoolers. We essentially played Holmes with AD&D's extra monsters, races, classes, spells, and magic items (plus reveling in Gary's rich authorial voice). And the Caves of Chaos was what we thought a typical dungeon was like (ignoring the ideas of vast, mostly uninhabited complexes consisting of dozens of levels). And I wouldn't have it any other way.
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Post by Mordorandor on Apr 2, 2022 10:46:47 GMT -6
It just didn't work for most groups and so became a relic of the past...My point is that these generally aren't lost gems, they are abandoned paths. Yep. .... We played AD&D through the lens of Holmes, unconcernedly ignoring vast swaths of AD&D's fiddly rules in such a way that would scandalize countless of my fellow old-schoolers. We essentially played Holmes with AD&D's extra monsters, races, classes, spells, and magic items (plus reveling in Gary's rich authorial voice). And the Caves of Chaos was what we thought a typical dungeon was like (ignoring the ideas of vast, mostly uninhabited complexes consisting of dozens of levels). And I wouldn't have it any other way. HEATHEN! HERETIC!
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Post by Finarvyn on Apr 2, 2022 13:33:56 GMT -6
My group and I started playing in 1980. While we owned and used other products, the hard core of what we used was the following five books: 1. Basic D&D rulebook edited by Holmes (final version) 2. B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (first printing) 3. AD&D Monster Manual (final version with little wizard logo) 4. AD&D Players Handbook (final version with little wizard logo) 5. AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (final version with little wizard logo) We played AD&D through the lens of Holmes, unconcernedly ignoring vast swaths of AD&D's fiddly rules in such a way that would scandalize countless of my fellow old-schoolers. We essentially played Holmes with AD&D's extra monsters, races, classes, spells, and magic items (plus reveling in Gary's rich authorial voice). And the Caves of Chaos was what we thought a typical dungeon was like (ignoring the ideas of vast, mostly uninhabited complexes consisting of dozens of levels). And I wouldn't have it any other way. You make some outstanding points here! My group started a couple years before yours, and we had OD&D as our lens instead of Holmes, but otherwise I think our experiences sound quite similar. We played the way we liked and probably violated all sorts of rules, particularly when AD&D came out and codified everything. The AD&D Monster Manual became part of our game before the PH or DMG just because the others weren't out yet. I don't think that I'm getting senile, but I'm often finding rules or interpretations of rules that don't match my memory. All in good fun!
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 2, 2022 15:52:17 GMT -6
And since discovering the magic of OD&D, I've added several things from it to AD&D: The note that wishes can change the past. The note that purple worms lurk everywhere. Multiple wish rings and luck blades have OD&D's higher number of wishes. NPCs of the same class and level hang-out together (6 myrmidons, 5 sorcerers, 3 evil high priests, etc.) rather than parties of mixed classes and races. Etc. AD&D OD&D-style!
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Post by tkdco2 on May 7, 2022 15:40:34 GMT -6
Here's another video by a different YouTuber talking about exploring the sample dungeon in the OD&D books. www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2MqX1il3noEdit: This is the video I intended to post. Sorry about my mistake.
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Post by captainjapan on May 7, 2022 18:20:00 GMT -6
This is not the video you meant to post - Dana Howl's speedpaints reactivation. That being said, wow, miniature figures at the largest scales have amazing detail! What a pleasure they must be, to paint.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2022 18:27:48 GMT -6
Looks like tkdco2 made a happy accident, because we don't make mistakes - only happy accidents!
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Post by tkdco2 on May 7, 2022 18:41:59 GMT -6
Sorry, I changed the link to show the correct video.
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Post by doublejig2 on May 7, 2022 19:33:06 GMT -6
Sorry, I changed the link to show the correct video. I enjoyed both those videos!
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Post by tkdco2 on May 8, 2022 4:17:48 GMT -6
I'm glad you enjoyed them. I thought they were pretty good as well.
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Post by aldarron on May 9, 2022 18:43:21 GMT -6
Right. Arneson and Gygax were leading members of local gaming clubs and so had various players participating in various games at various times and various places. If you are in a local gaming club you know what that can be like, but the way most people came to play the game and still do today is with a private group that meets on a regular schedule in a regular place with always the same players. Yes. It seems to me that, just like the "alternate" combat rules became the standard D&D model, the "alternate" campaign style also endured. Many of the assumptions about the audience for D&D and how they would use it in the initial release missed the mark, but it's not surprising. They had an entire new hobby on their hands with no precedent. With apologies, I think this is actually wrong. Let me explain: I don't think there is an assumption that everyone would or should have the sort of massive multiplayer games that Arneson & Gygax had, only that they could. My question to the point is, are there "Many.. assumptions about the audience for D&D and how they would use it..." in the 3lbb's? I can think of only two: 1) all referees (instead of only some) would want to create their own material and not use published settings/dungeons 2) players would all (instead of only some) want to strive toward political power and build strongholds/towers/temples Overall the 3lbbs are presented as a toolkit for anyone to use in the manner they see fit, and I think they hit the mark pretty well.
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Post by plethon on May 14, 2022 11:46:53 GMT -6
I was thinking about this thread again in the context of how the original campaigns took place in a fantasy version of the Midwest and if these ideas were connected. I don't know if this was ever part of the vision explicitly, but it's interesting to consider that as the game spread, new groups would detail their own geographical areas, eventually creating a 1:1 fantasy America running in real time. The DMs of each city could then form a kind of 'council of equals' which would maintain the meta-campaign on the national level by periodically convening to collate world information, or to adjudicate inter-regional matters.
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Post by captainjapan on May 14, 2022 14:17:40 GMT -6
I was thinking about this thread again in the context of how the original campaigns took place in a fantasy version of the Midwest and if these ideas were connected. I don't know if this was ever part of the vision explicitly, but it's interesting to consider that as the game spread, new groups would detail their own geographical areas, eventually creating a 1:1 fantasy America running in real time. The DMs of each city could then form a kind of 'council of equals' which would maintain the meta-campaign on the national level by periodically convening to collate world information, or to adjudicate inter-regional matters. Sounds like what the SCA does.
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