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Post by cadriel on Jun 19, 2023 12:53:46 GMT -6
Would FLAILSNAILS work as a Discord server where everyone hosted pop-up games with the expectation that PCs could go to any referee's game? I'd like such a thing as I'd enjoy running periodic online games without necessarily having it be a solid group / time.
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Post by cadriel on Jun 1, 2023 11:23:50 GMT -6
I think the amount packed into the Ready Ref Sheets was pretty serious. My favorite page and a half is "Ravaged Ruins" - you could create a whole campaign using nothing but that table and a hex map if you were so inclined. But pages 2-3 (the "City Encounter" table and its immediate expansion) would be up there for urban adventuring. Mind you, this is very raw and doesn't even rise to the level of prose, but it's very useful if you're looking to roll a quick encounter or trying to do prep quickly. Honorable mentions to my favorites, the "Precious Pearls" and "Startling Statues."
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Post by cadriel on May 8, 2023 12:32:49 GMT -6
Agreed - I'm a great lover of Ready Ref Sheets (and I suspect that Ben Milton is as well, he's far from a stranger to old school products). I want as many of these toolkits as possible, I get a lot out of having fresh and different tables to pull from. They do great for finding new inspiration. Also, Maze Rats in particular is just such a good set of tables that I'm really excited about having it in print.
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Post by cadriel on May 8, 2023 8:09:27 GMT -6
(Also I'm thinking that this would use the LBBs only, so no Greyhawk classes or variable weapon damage. I want a world where sorcerers are dangerous enemies, not a glass cannon that the fighters have to protect.)
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Post by cadriel on May 8, 2023 8:07:34 GMT -6
I agree with his possibility. I have thought of this too...never tried it out and will it mean that as long as you don't fight more than 3 men? you are invincible? I have a beautiful image of swathes of goblins being hacked apart 3 at a time lol The way I translate it for D&D-land is: heroes automatically recover up to three normal hits in the post combat rest (the portion of a 10-minute exploration turn remaining post-combat as the game shifts from combat-time back to exploration-time). Extending this to fighters (only) of all levels is something like: fighters recover up to one normal hit for each experience level in the post combat rest. The net result is that fighters can continue to fight another day without the needing clerics or loads of potions. Moreover, clerical healing is then reserved for non-trivial cuts and grazes (i.e., fantastic rather than normal hits). A hero isn't invincible against three normal types, but they would have to collectively deliver 4 (or more) hits to slay him within a combat encounter. Assuming he survived the encounter, three or fewer hits would amount to only insignificant cuts and grazes. This has me thinking there are two ways to do this. One is to use a more abstract "hit" system which this seems to imply. That seems to have been one of the things jettisoned early in D&D's history, when Arneson moved on from Chainmail, in favor of a more fixed hp system. The other is to use hit points but allow recovery between fights - unless a character has a wound from a major enemy. I'd be tempted to do something like allowing a character up to their hit dice in hit points restored per day. So a second level fighter could rest up to two turns, recovering 1d6 hit points per turn, in a game day. It still keeps attrition in the game but it makes longer dungeon delves possible without turning the game into a healing potion fest.
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Post by cadriel on May 5, 2023 9:10:57 GMT -6
So. Let's say one were to run a campaign with the LBBs that used the simple rule: just Fighting-Men. People can have different races, different backgrounds (I'm a fan of these: zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2014/08/20-backgrounds-for-od.html), different ability scores; but they're all Fighting-Men. What needs to be adjusted to keep the game enjoyable in a campaign? Does healing at higher levels become a problem? Do you need to add any additional options aside from things like background to the game to prevent it from feeling like all the characters are the same? Has anyone here run a game with just Fighting-Men, either intentionally or as a coincidence, and what do you think is good and bad about it?
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Post by cadriel on May 5, 2023 8:09:12 GMT -6
I suppose one reason I’m reticent it because I prefer class-based games, and when I want ‘skills’ I want such super lite. I mean, insanely lite. Like…RISUS or Fighting Fantasy kinda lite. But Knave seems to oddly focus so much more on equipment as per abilities. So, it weirds me out and throws me for a loop. Maybe I’m missing something or not appreciating something fully. I’m uncertain. I think the emphasis on equipment is something that came out of simplified, slot-based encumbrance systems that became popular in OSR hacks. Knave leaned into that and used these slots as a way to turn resource management into a central part of the game, building a lot of its advancement around it. I'm also not wild about it but it apparently works decently in practice.
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Post by cadriel on May 5, 2023 6:03:39 GMT -6
I'm getting it, but mostly because I cannot resist old school books full of useful charts. I particularly like Maze Rats for its tables so I'm happy to pick it up. The Knave game itself is almost an afterthought.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 22, 2023 5:32:11 GMT -6
I'd say two. OD&D, Holmes, AD&D 1e, B/X, BECMI, and AD&D 2e share the same basic mechanical core. Combat is roll high on an armor class-based calculation that gets easier as you level up, saving throws are rolled against static targets that get lower as you level up, you roll a d6 for surprise, secret doors, wandering monsters, etc. Obviously there are changes; AD&D PCs are a bit more robust and you have to take that into account when moving material between editions. But the same basic structure is there between games. WotC D&D 3e, 4e, and 5e are basically similar. All of them are built around a core mechanic of d20+stat+skill/save/to hit bonus vs DC, all of which get higher as you level up. 4e and 5e both took the 3e core and put it in a very different character building paradigm but the core activity is the same. All of them have target numbers that stay relatively same-ish as you go up in level. You could separate them because of significant differences - 3e and 4e are more built on a treadmill of steadily increasing bonuses while 5e tries to restrain this with bounded accuracy, while each handles saves differently, but I feel like these are cars built with the same engine, trying to do different things with it each time. If you wanted to be more differentiated you could argue for OD&D/Holmes/BX/BECMI as "Classic", 1e and 2e as "AD&D", 3e and 3.5e as "3e", 4e as "4e" and 5e as "5e" for 5 total editions. But I tend to think they're 2 with a few subcategories in each. I kind of like that. Only 2 editions of D&D have ever been made. With only minor variations within those editions. But really, don't you think you could run the The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan with 5e and do any conversions on the fly with only little effort? I do think 5e (more than 3e or 4e) is able to run earlier edition modules without much effort, partly by design; after all, the material that was used to balance 5e during its public playtest included B2 Keep on the Borderlands. But you could take B2 and run it with the same statistics in 2e AD&D or OD&D without a hitch, whereas for 5e you do need to convert all of the monsters. (I also wonder how well you could do Curse of Strahd with AD&D 2e.) That's why I think of the functional difference as the switch from multiple mechanics to a single d20 mechanic. In a very loose sense the d20 mechanic was present in OD&D, in that Dexterity gave you a bonus for ranged attacks, so you had a stat-based bonus to a d20 roll versus a target number (based on class, level, and AC of the target). But I think the core idea that "everything is resolved with a d20 roll" is a different core engine to the way that pre-2000 D&D did things. To me, saving throws are possibly the most important change. They went from a system of absolute improvement (your saves get easier as you level up) to one of relative improvement (your save bonus goes up but it's usually against a higher difficulty). This makes spellcasters simply better in 3e and 5e, since realistically you need a similar number to save versus a spell at first and tenth levels, whereas in the older D&D the tenth level character simply has an easier time with rolling saves.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 21, 2023 18:38:07 GMT -6
I'd say two.
OD&D, Holmes, AD&D 1e, B/X, BECMI, and AD&D 2e share the same basic mechanical core. Combat is roll high on an armor class-based calculation that gets easier as you level up, saving throws are rolled against static targets that get lower as you level up, you roll a d6 for surprise, secret doors, wandering monsters, etc. Obviously there are changes; AD&D PCs are a bit more robust and you have to take that into account when moving material between editions. But the same basic structure is there between games.
WotC D&D 3e, 4e, and 5e are basically similar. All of them are built around a core mechanic of d20+stat+skill/save/to hit bonus vs DC, all of which get higher as you level up. 4e and 5e both took the 3e core and put it in a very different character building paradigm but the core activity is the same. All of them have target numbers that stay relatively same-ish as you go up in level. You could separate them because of significant differences - 3e and 4e are more built on a treadmill of steadily increasing bonuses while 5e tries to restrain this with bounded accuracy, while each handles saves differently, but I feel like these are cars built with the same engine, trying to do different things with it each time.
If you wanted to be more differentiated you could argue for OD&D/Holmes/BX/BECMI as "Classic", 1e and 2e as "AD&D", 3e and 3.5e as "3e", 4e as "4e" and 5e as "5e" for 5 total editions. But I tend to think they're 2 with a few subcategories in each.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 17, 2023 9:30:18 GMT -6
I'd be interested. Especially if you managed to find nice paper for the cover and have the Delving Deeper logo printed in a separate color like on the OD&D booklets.
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Post by cadriel on Apr 10, 2023 7:03:43 GMT -6
We saw Honor Among Thieves on Saturday night. Overall I liked it. Seeing Neverwinter on the big screen was actually a "wow" moment for me. I've run games in the city and played the old Neverwinter Nights game so it was really cool to see it realized well. The Sword Coast is covered in extreme detail by now but the movie really worked to make it good. There were even a couple of moments that worked according to game rules: An obvious one was the attunement sequence, but I liked a subtler moment when Doric uses her sling to shoot what looked like a bulb of garlic at Sofina in the final fight to break concentration on her spell. I like heist stories and I think that it was a pretty natural way to do a D&D film. My wife and daughter really enjoyed Themberchaud - it was a really fun way to work a particular dragon into the movie without having it be a repeat of Smaug from the Hobbit. In a sense I think it was the first big fantasy film that used some of the visual language from Peter Jackson's movies in fresh and interesting ways. It was a good way to make a movie that works as a movie but feels like it could've been adapted from a D&D adventure.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 30, 2023 12:17:47 GMT -6
If I wanted to play a video game I'd buy a video game. What they previewed was a video game, and it doesn't even look like a good one.
When Rob Kuntz wrote his book on Dave Arneson, I thought to some degree that his point about open versus closed systems was overstating the case. And I do think he was applying an inappropriate binary, and exaggerating the degree to which TSR's AD&D was pre-programmed; I think there is more of a spectrum from open to closed systems. But this does really look like a totally closed system, where the DM will be hedged more and more into official content. And I just find that draining and uninteresting. Good RPGs should aspire to be open as that's the strength of the form, to allow for improvisation and creation by the players. This is all about gawking at 3-D renders of monsters and spell effects that are still not as good as a person's imagination.
And then of course there's the world of microtransactions and all that.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 29, 2023 6:52:49 GMT -6
I am a big fan of Otus's blue cover for the Swords & Wizardry Complete hardcover. It's got a really neat creature and the figurative work is classic Otus. I also like Mullen's green cover for the original (which you can still get on the updated Core Rules on Lulu) and his Swords & Wizardry White Box cover, though I don't think the green Mullen cover belongs on S&W Complete as it's always been the cover of S&W Core. I'm not as wild about Otus's print on demand preview artwork for this new release.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 28, 2023 12:26:10 GMT -6
I like S&W Complete - I keep the Otus cover version on my shelf. I'm getting the offset print book and the modules. It's a shame to me that the new Otus cover is PoD only. Print on demand hardcover is not to the point where I like it for durable game books. I still prefer S&W over the main line competition.
It would be a trip to see Mythmere Games re-release Swords & Wizardry Whitebox but reflecting the various rules updates that have been made since (particularly the "Essential Adventuring Rules" that White Box FMAG added in), and give it new art and a nice offset printing. But that's another kettle of fish.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 22, 2023 8:59:06 GMT -6
I'll catch the official D&D movie when it's available in streaming, I haven't been too into going to the theater in general lately.
I do think that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would be great, though I kind of think that a TV series adapting the short stories would be better than trying to make a big movie out of it. Leiber created a lot of good ideas that would be fun to explore for about 45-60 minutes.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 16, 2023 14:02:52 GMT -6
I also backed this. I've been saying I'd like a more OSR-ized and streamlined take on the 5e core engine so this seems like putting my money where my mouth is. Very interested to see the final result.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 9, 2023 7:41:36 GMT -6
I would really love it if Call of Cthulhu was done this way. The Keepers rule book is great and all but it is a beast to use. And heavy. Chaosium recently reissued the 2nd edition in a boxed set that I'd really prefer to use, although in my experience modern players seem to prefer some of the innovations of 7th edition (degrees of success, advantage/disadvantage, how opposed rolls work, different flow of combat, pushed rolls, spending luck). Fortunately there are some good online tools for CoC, I've played on Discord servers with bots that do a lot of the work for things like dice rolls. In person I'd rather just use the older version though.
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Post by cadriel on Mar 2, 2023 14:47:13 GMT -6
The first one that comes to mind is Greg Stafford's Pendragon. Book 1 is on creating your knights, book 2 is game mechanics and chivalry, book 3 is the lands and quest creation. The resulting game has a lot less text but does the basics of Pendragon (passions and traits, the Glory system, the annual turns). In an alternate universe I think something like this could've easily been the first RPG.
Another game from the BRP family tree that would fit is Call of Cthulhu. The breakdown would be similar to OD&D, though the Investigator book would have basic rules and skills instead of spells, which would be in book 2 with the Mythos beasties and tomes. Book 3 would be on the 1920s and adventure creation, as well as having the Sanity and other rules.
One that I wish we had from the 70s is a proper Barsoom RPG designed from first principles. Similar to Warriors of the Red Planet but without the dependence on D&D. Not that it's not a good system but I'd want it to feel more pulp-ish and less D&D in tone (for instance, I wouldn't want a D&D-like armor class system in Barsoom). First book would be characters and powers; second book would be creatures and treasures; third book would be focused on rules and creating Barsoom-ish places.
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Post by cadriel on Feb 15, 2023 10:08:49 GMT -6
A number of years back (when Google+ was still a thing) I ran a bracket challenge on my blog. You can see the whole thing here: initiativeone.blogspot.com/p/appendix-n-madness.htmlThe Elite Eight were: Lovecraft Burroughs Howard Tolkien Brackett Anderson Vance Moorcock Of those, Lovecraft, Howard, Anderson, and Vance went to the Final Four, and Howard defeated Vance in the final. It's an interesting result to me. Of your list, Merritt (knocked out by Manly Wade Wellman on day 9) and Leiber (vanquished by Tolkien in the second round) didn't make it to the final 8, but I think overall it was a good result. You could quibble about Brackett and Anderson as "core" authors but I think it's a solid bunch.
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Post by cadriel on Feb 14, 2023 15:35:40 GMT -6
I saw it. I'm not particularly impressed. Someone basically put it that it's sort of parallel to what WotC has been doing with OneD&D which isn't really super impressive. It's also not at all clear what the goals of the game are other than backward compatibility, which isn't too clear from what's provided.
I can't help but feel like there's room for a more streamlined game, about the chunkiness of the Rules Cyclopedia, that uses a core like 5e but without so much bloat. You could probably pare back the Creative Commons 5e SRD with some OSR principles - similar to the existing Basic Rules - and make some needed tweaks.
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Post by cadriel on Feb 14, 2023 9:59:05 GMT -6
Today I learned that my 1st print Holmes book has the Bell lizardman and my 3rd print has the "impostor" Sutherland logo. That's fascinating. (Meanwhile my older Monster Manual is a 1978 third Alpha print with a wizard even though it doesn't have the yellow band.) Ultimately I think putting the lizardman on an opaque background wouldn't have worked. It's cool because it's printed right there on the art - you can look at a 1st print Holmes booklet for evidence.
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Post by cadriel on Feb 6, 2023 12:17:25 GMT -6
I voted for the Ready Ref Sheets. There's nothing that's been more useful in actual OD&D play for me. If I were running a game today, and I had the 3 LBBs, it's the fourth book I'd want.
Philotomy's Musings is very nice for general ideas and inspiration but not a table-ready supplement, and I'd guess the same is true of the OD&D Annotated document. I don't run mass combat so the Book of War isn't really useful. Gods, Demigods, & Heroes is not particularly useful for me. Best of the Dragon has a few good articles but nowhere near the density of usable tables and rules of the Ready Ref Sheets.
Honestly a supplement I think is underrated is Geoffrey's Carcosa (I still have the original printing). I wish there were more books like it that took the LBBs on a hard turn away from generic Tolkien fantasy while matching them closely in style and layout. I like its monsters and items even for non-Carcosan games.
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Post by cadriel on Feb 2, 2023 7:42:06 GMT -6
If I owned D&D....
1. There would be an OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, and 4e SRD, all released under CC-BY. 2. I'd create licenses and fan hubs for each of the settings to allow new fan creations to be created and sold on an online marketplace, with a very modest built-in royalty (like 10% of the product price). There would be some very minimal standards (nothing really nasty or inappropriate) but generally open. Royalties would only be for proprietary settings. Similar to how DM's Guild works now but without the extortionate royalties and provisions. This would include affordable print on demand (some of the 5e POD hardbacks, like the Monster Manual Expanded, are hugely expensive). 3. The new version of D&D would sort of resemble a stripped-down 5e, but without all the subclass features and with the power levels and complexity stripped back closer to older editions. The core rulebook would have everything but the monsters in it, despite being shorter than the 5e PHB. The DM Guide would literally be a book of tools and adventure creation methods. 4. I'd put a lot of resources into having a starter set that has a self-teaching solo game that teaches the would-be DM how to play, and has a sandbox adventure module to explore beyond that. 5. Big releases would definitely follow the model of building big new adventures around classic adventure modules, though they would really be rethought in terms of usability and adventure quality. Taking notes from things like Necrotic Gnome's releases. 6. There would be a movie set in the Greyhawk megadungeon.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 20, 2022 7:38:41 GMT -6
Why do I like Holmes? It's a good question, because I hadn't seen a copy until 1999 when I bought a Gen Con boxed set that included a Holmes reprint. I thought it was a mild curiosity at the time. I only came to appreciate it later, when I had already run OD&D. I like Holmes because it organized OD&D to some extent without expanding it too much (like AD&D) or starting down the road of rationalizing it (like B/X). I like it because it's idiosyncratic and things aren't rounded off into neat bonuses and penalties. Nothing's standardized and simple. I think the scroll rule and the thrown oil rule did a lot to make magic-users viable after casting their first spell, though the weapon speed rules need to be fixed. I especially like my first print of Holmes where there are Hobbits rather than Halflings and monsters don't get a d8 hit die, which gives PCs a much better chance with their d6 damage dice. And zombies are poisoned by salt. I like Holmes in part because it sits in the middle of old school D&D and lets you expand it wherever you want to go. You can match Holmes with the Cook/Marsh Expert book any which way, or fill it out with the rules from OD&D. It's simple and easy to do mashups however you like. @zenopus made some really great charts ( Holmes Ref) that expand on Holmes without bogging anything down. You can set new players down with the character creation worksheet and 15 minutes later they've got a character (I know, I've done it). I think the Zenopus Archives, and the amount of loving detail put into this 48 page booklet, is a tremendous testament to its depth. I like Holmes aesthetically. Like, I love the cover art. I think the sample cross section for a dungeon is awesome, and I still want to run a game with a domed city under a great stone skull. I like the sample dungeon, with its empty rooms and its giant crab and its pirates (I published a second level to the dungeon, FWIW, in Dungeon Crawl #3). I mean, I literally published a magazine issue themed around Holmes D&D. I also love that it's a 48 page book and you can play D&D for months before you need anything else. I guess I like it most because it's a distillation of what's good in D&D, and it set the standard for what the core of the game would be.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 17, 2022 16:56:00 GMT -6
I'd like to reopen this discussion. I've seen OSE at game stores and thus far have been able to resist the purchase. My thought is that I don't really need another edition and my group isn't into non-5E stuff at the moment anyway. However, my local game store (which I really like to support) got an OSE boxed set in the other day, plus a DM screen, and now I'm really fixated on the thing. Sight unseen. So I would like to hear more about the thing. I'll probably end up buying it, but I'd like to know beforehand what others think about the rules. The rules of OSE are almost exactly the B/X rules. In terms of what the rules actually are there is an almost negligible difference between using OSE and using reference copies of the Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert rules. The big thing that OSE has going for it is that it is written and laid out in a way that prioritizes clarity and in-game utility of the same rules. This means that, for instance, big paragraphs are broken down into bullet points, key terms are highlighted, and so on. It's not a fun-to-read game text, but people who use it like its emphasis on functionality, down to the end papers.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 17, 2022 16:46:28 GMT -6
The numbers don't really surprise me, but I am a bit sad that Holmes and B/X aren't flip flopped. °ᴖ° I suspect that there are two factors in this. One is, B/X is a "lingua franca" among modern day old school players, as an edition in itself. The other is, I imagine that a number of people (myself included) who enjoy Holmes over Moldvay are also aficionados of another iteration of the game like OD&D or 1e AD&D and voted accordingly.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 14, 2022 12:33:06 GMT -6
So I'm not really a fan of OSE, and I've been trying to articulate exactly why. It's clearly well done for what it's trying to accomplish: a complete, unambiguous restatement of the B/X D&D rules, well organized and easy to access in game. But what I'm not sure is that this is the greatest thing for an old school game.
There was a general trend toward spelling more things out in detail as D&D went from the OD&D booklets, to Holmes, to Moldvay. And OSE represents that trend. Spells, for instance, are considerably more detailed. And for some people that's good, and for others it's not. I like the more concise descriptions in Swords & Wizardry, for instance, over the detailed rules and edge cases in Old School Essentials. It strikes me that the shorter versions of the rules are better for the referee who wants to decide how their own game works, and the longer versions are for the person who wants more done for them in advance.
For someone coming from 5e, of course, OSE is relatively light in many of its rules. It doesn't have page upon page of class abilities and so on. But I think B/X does have a lot more rulings made in advance for the referee, and that OSE winds up codifying them and making it an "official" way to do everything. Like with the aesthetic of the book, I think this is partly just psychological; having that 296 page book detailing all of these things makes it a lot more "official" seeming than in the little brown books or in the minimalist text of Swords & Wizardry.
But there are clearly a lot of people who dig it, so that's a question of taste. I still find that S&W is my preferred clone even though I'll acknowledge that OSE Is very thoroughly thought through in its presentation and layout and writing.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 6, 2022 9:14:46 GMT -6
I'll admit I do not have the black book, it is one of the few sets I don't have. And looking at photos of it (never seen one in person) it doesn't interest me, even as a sort of 'completist' collector. What makes the black book different? I started with the "Black Book." It's sort of unique among basic sets, in that it goes up to level 5. But it's just a cut-down basic version of BECMI, basically what's in the Rules Cyclopedia but with a limited subset of levels, spells, monsters, and magic items. (The art is the same as Terry Dykstra's art found in the RC.) The early printings of the Black Box came with a set of "Dragon Cards" that are basically a solo game to teach a DM how to run the game at a basic level, and a sample dungeon, along with a 64 page (I think) rulebook. In later editions the "Dragon Cards" and the sample dungeon were integrated into the main book, bringing it up to 128 pages. It was a pretty good tutorial, in my opinion - it taught me the game whereas the 2e PHB left me nonplussed. I liked the way that the products of that era used stand-up counters and poster maps, and supported solo play, including some modules that could be played solo. There's really no reason to use this version of the game, although I admit I am nostalgic for it. I don't really consider it separate from BECMI / RC.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 5, 2022 11:57:31 GMT -6
3e and 3.5e ... I just don't get into it. People have gone on to Pathfinder because Paizo has found the niche who really liked this and they make a good game for that niche. I'm not in the niche and I'm okay with that. Niche niche ni - they are the knights who say niche, and they play for shrubberies! Yeah, it's a thing that happens when I write. If I'm putting together a blog post or something I have to look out for the dreaded repeat words, I usually fix on one that expresses whatever idea I'm thinking of. It's probably the same reason Gygax was so heavy on thesaurus usage.
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