Greyhawk and OD&D

[makofan]

How essential is Greyhawk? I just picked up the three original PDF's and I was wondering if I could run a good campaign without purchasing Greyhawk?

[Finarvyn]

Certainly! OD&D is a great game if you only have the original three booklets.

What Greyhawk does is add some extra depth to the game, and some really like the changes while others do not. Greyhawk is one step closer to evolving into AD&D.

1. The introduction of the Thief class. Some like it, others don't. The Thief moves the campaign in a new direction because now a specialist is needed to detect traps and so on.

2. Lots more funky dice. The little brown books are almost exclusively d6 based, but with Greyhawk hit dice become different for each class. That tends to shift the balance of power a bit so that the fighter is better at fighting while the magic-user is less of a fighter.

3. More spells, treasures, monsters, and so on. None of this stuff is needed, but many players like it. The boxed set didn't have any magic weapons better than +3, but Greyhawk shifts that up to +5. Spells now include spell levels up to 7 for clerics and 9 for magic-users.

Again, some like the additions but others do not. My suggestion is to run a campaign for a while with just the three books and later on, if you feel that you need to explore new things, maybe expand into Greyhawk. Enjoy your game with just the original books, because once you add extras it's really hard to go back.

[crimhthanthegreat]

Greyhawk also introduces the Paladin as a subclass of the Fighting-Man. As noted Greyhawk is not necessary to play OD&D, but if you do use it you can use just what you like without taking it all. You can add just the Paladin for instance without taking any of the other changes or whatever you decide to do.

[makofan]

Hmm

From what Finarvyn says, I think I'll just stick to the 3 books for now. Who needs paladins and thieves and high power goodies?

[crimhthanthegreat]

That is an excellent choice, you can always add something later if you want to, but there is no rush. The three base character classes are all you really need and the only reason to add more is if you just really want to. We are currently not using thieves IMC and while we are currently using paladins and rangers there have been periods were we did not. I have the advantage that I can delete something that we have been using for a long time even without an problem, since my players just want to have fun and are not hung up on anything in particular. I could go in and say that for the next few weeks we are using only clerics and they would just say "Let's start!"

[coffee]

Hey, guys, I'm glad to hear you all say what you did.

I'm planning an OD&D game and I had already decided to just use the three core books. I do have Greyhawk, and I might use a monster or some such from there, but I want the players to just have Men and Magic (and some house rules).

The players I'm hoping to get are die-hard 3.x players, so they eat and drink supplements. It might be hard to get them to try the game, but I feel it will be worth it. And anyway, I can always break it out at conventions if nothing else.

Keep up the good work; all of you guys are inspirational!

[dwayanu]

One thing that occurs to me is that one can now get (legally, at a price) PDFs of the LBBs. Calling everything beyond the original set "house rules" might be economically as well as spiritually helpful in spreading the "gospel" much as it was first spread.

[ffilz]

Another big thing Greyhawk adds as non-d6 weapon damage.

Frank

[foster1941]

If we can think of AD&D as "Gary Gygax's D&D House Rules" (which, apparently, isn't actually true and the AD&D rules-as-published are closer to being Lawrence Schick's D&D House Rules, but nevertheless Gygax provided the guiding vision and was the final authority on AD&D) then Greyhawk is the first draft of those rules. Greyhawk adds to D&D many of the elements which were distinctive about AD&D both ruleswise (percentile exceptional strength for fighters, the "chance to know" table for magic-users, the weapon vs AC adjustment chart, etc.) and flavor-wise (most of the "unique" Gygax-created D&D monsters -- beholders, carrion crawlers, rust monsters, umber hulks, blink dogs, owl bears, etc. -- and a lot of the more colorful and distinctive magic items -- the Deck of Many Things, the various magical books and tomes (Manual of Gainful Exercise, Book of Vile Darkness, etc.), and tons of other miscellaneous magic items (including lots of cursed items like the Bag of Devouring, Ring of Contrariness, Scarab of Death, Bowl of Watery Death, Eyes of Petrification, etc.) -- were introduced in this supplement). D&D provides a broad and generic baseline drawn mostly from mythology and Tolkien, which each individual DM can add to and customize to suit his individual tastes. Supplement I is an example of how Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz went about doing that.

There's lots of good stuff in Greyhawk, and it's a great example of what can be done with the game, and a great source of new ideas to pilfer from, but if you use all of its material in your game then you will have gone a long way towards making your D&D game feel like Gygax's D&D game, and like AD&D, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but isn't necessarily where OD&D shines brightest (i.e. if you're going to play a game that feels like AD&D, you're probably just as well off playining actual AD&D and ignoring all the fiddly rule-bits; one of the biggest advantages of OD&D is that it facilitates playing games that don't feel like AD&D).

[tgamemaster1975]

dwayanu said:

One thing that occurs to me is that one can now get (legally, at a price) PDFs of the LBBs. Calling everything beyond the original set "house rules" might be economically as well as spiritually helpful in spreading the "gospel" much as it was first spread.

that is easy since everything beyond the original 3 LBB's are house rules.

[tgamemaster1975]

foster1941 said:

snip but isn't necessarily where OD&D shines brightest snip; one of the biggest advantages of OD&D is that it facilitates playing games that don't feel like AD&D).

That deserves an Exalt.

[korgoth]

tgamemaster1975 said:

foster1941 said:

snip but isn't necessarily where OD&D shines brightest snip; one of the biggest advantages of OD&D is that it facilitates playing games that don't feel like AD&D).

That deserves an Exalt.

Likewise. I found that to be an eye-opening post.

This forum rocks.

[Deleted]

Indeed, foster1941. That's also why I still prefer "Race as Class" for D & D. Have another EXALT!