No Internet!

Our router died on us recently, but luckily a good friend gave us a spare; so that's why I haven't posted anything. I know I go through manic rushes of posts, then periods of nothing. Anyway I haven't a bunch of stuff I want to talk about soon, and now I have internet on my PC again. Before I just had my wife's media PC, and that's not great for writing on.

I'll mostly be posting about idea's I have for OD&D, and expanding upon some solid advice I've heard for running games. I even got to test a lot of them out last night, and they worked really well. In fact I got to play for the first time in a while, and it was a blast. Another good friend of mine (and a total real life bad ass and druid), is moving away for a nice job, so we had a bit of send off sessions for one of his long time characters.

I won't bother with a session recap, I'm not very good at those, and they are always very long. Suffice it to say I got to test out some ideas, I really like. One thing that really struck a chord with me, was what our other friend said. He'd had this idea for a sort of "half-elemental" character, that would channel an electric attack through a sort of "spike and cable" weapon. No problem. I let him cast shocking-grasp at-will, once per round with one of his two attacks. There was a couple other abilities he had, small things, that the player wanted, that weren't a problem (enhanced perception, stealth, etc...). They were tenth level characters, and our friend who was leaving wanted the game to be a bit over the top.

What's important though, is what our friend said after the game. He had been trying for years, using various different games, to play this character concept he had. It was only with me refereeing, using something rules light like OD&D that he had finally gotten to play the character he always wanted. Yes, I know, it's possible in other games, and I'm sure there's something out there (like Mutants and Masterminds) that would have let him do this using the rules. However, in the years he had this character in mind, he was never able to do it.

In the past few months, I've played Pathfinder and D&D NEXT a lot, since that's what most of my new friends like to play. I've sat in on a session of World of Darkness. I don't know what the real reason, and maybe it's just coincidence (or arrogance), but nothing was as fun as last night. Everyone left terribly excited, the game was so full of energy, and there was no complaints or arguing all night. It could have just been the group of players (it was all players who don't get to play often). According to a different player, it could be the Referee (I won't flatter myself though). Or maybe, just maybe, the rules can get in the way, and despite the feel good saying everyone likes to toss around nowadays, maybe the rules do matter. In all likeliness it's a combination of all three (and probably more factors), as it is with anything in life.

Something I did notice though, that is making me like "gamey" D&D (Pathfinder, NEXT) less and less, is we didn't miss the rules. We didn't miss the pages and pages of character abilities (in fact the party Cleric, hated having such a large spell list). We didn't miss specific rules, or battle-grids, or miniatures. I know this isn't anything new, and it's the whole point of the OSR, but so many people have been slipping in more and more rules. I can't remember who pointed it out, but it's "supposedly" the natural progression; to go from "Basic" to "Advanced" D&D. However the more I spend time playing new games, and even using rules like AD&D, the more I get annoyed by the game, and the less creative the players are.

I think there is clearly room for AD&D, "Gygaxian" D&D. It's fun, in it's own right, and there's a reason it's still played. It's fun to have Rangers, Bards, Paladins, etc. It's fun to have class abilities, but after a while I think it gets boring "power attacking" each turn, or tracking "daily, at-will, and encounter" abilities. I'm sure I'm crossing into not-D&D territory here, but what I'm getting at is that I don't think classes are all that important to the adventuring and fun of D&D.

I'm sure I'm getting into a second blog post here, but if you look at the original three classes: Magic-User, Cleric, and Fighting-Man, I think they were only there because of Vancian magic. I know you "need" Vancian magic to have that proper D&D feel, but like I said, Gygaxian D&D has it's place, but after a while I think everyone wants to make it there own. Anyway, that's for another post.