Someone did it? 4E old school?

[cooper]

oldschoolhack.net

It looks pretty neat. Kind of like what 4e would look like if the guy from playing d&d with P**nstars wrote it.

[Finarvyn]

Just to let everyone know, I moved the part of the thread about George's L&L to its own thread.

I can split threads now! I feel like an all-powerful Admin and am ready for forum domination!

[tombowings]

Having ran a session of Old School Hack, I have to say that it's a very fun game, at least for a one shot (of which I have ran two for two different groups of players).

One of the things that surprised me is that players tended to talents (a mixture between 3E feats and 4E powers) that they thought would be the most fun rather than the most powerful. For instance, in both of the games I ran the dwarf took the talent Impressive Partying rather than any of the more combat oriented feats, such as Shield Bash.

Now, here's what Impressive Partying does compared to Shield Bash:

Impressive Partying: Frankly, when it comes to celebrating and carousing, no-one else holds up. You automatically beat any non-dwarf at any sort of drinking or cursing contest. Matches against other Impressive Partiers involve a standard contested Commitment or Daring roll.

Shield Bash: If you are wielding either a Shield or a Hammer, you can do a special attack that does no damage but stuns an opponent for the rest of the round.

In my opinion, this is one of the marks of a good game. The dwarf players had a bawl trying to use their Impressive Partying talent for the darnedest things (such as one trying to mix two potion together in his stomach). It was a blast.

There are some very interesting mechanics that I've considered using for my OD&D game as well, such as the order of actions (explained on page 15 of the PDF) and areas (page 11).

As much fun as the games were, I have a hard time imagining them as particularly "old school". There are a few too many meta-game concepts (per day talents, awesome points) for my taste and the rate of advancement is much too fast. For a one-shot, though, I can't imagine playing anything else anymore.

[kesher]

(such as one trying to mix two potion together in his stomach).

That is truly inspired... I can only hope it succeeded with (I can't resist) mixed results.

[tombowings]

Jan 8, 2011 23:24:03 GMT -6 kesher said:

That is truly inspired... I can only hope it succeeded with (I can't resist) mixed results.

I gave it the best result of three rolls on the relevant table in the AD&D DMG.