Dungeon Crawl Revised; Playtest

I'm actually in the middle of writing another blog post (my fist Monster Comparison), but I figured I should post something positive for the first time in a while. I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because I am employed once again, which is nice. A lovely perk of my job (kind of working with computers), is I've met some other nerd friends, who also happen to play RPGs. One friend in particular is very fond of Old School D&D, the other (and his brother who joins us) play a lot of Paladium RPGs. Last weekend we got together, and they agreed to help me playtest my "Dungeon Crawl" rules.

I didn't have any ink for my printer, so I kind of ran it all off the top of my head. It went great. All three of them had played Pathfinder a few times, so they had a decent point of reference. My old school friend said he actually enjoyed playing the Dungeon Crawl rules more than OD&D, and the other two said they enjoyed it much more than Pathfinder, particularly character creation.

I did end up switching back to using 3.5 D&D as the basis of the game. I've decided it's going to be easier to use 3.5, because there are guidelines for converting everything to 3.5, but not the other way around. For characters I've pretty much stripped out anything non-combat related. I've also trimmed the skill list down to just 8 skills. It's very much like Microlite20 in many ways as well; we've been using the one sentence spell summaries instead of the full descriptions; and monsters consist purely of Hit Points, Armor Class, and Attacks.

The way I've decided to handle experience is the 2nd Edition way for monsters, using the Level Advancement table from 3.5 D&D. It's actually working rather well, as there are a list of "monster level adjustments". I'm also using Swords & Wizardry's system for distributing treasure (2-3 times monster experience in treasure), as well as allowing gold to be spent on training for experience. It's all working out rather well.

There's still a large part of me that prefers OD&D, and the old school way of doing things, particularly when it comes to unique character abilities, skills, and racial abilities. The skill system is very limiting. I think this definitely works best as a "generic fantasy" role playing game, than it does a D&D style game (which I think are two different themes really). Hopefully with my monster comparison series of articles I can gain more insight into the difference between editions, and determine the best plan of attack. There is always the option of maintaining Monsters, Spells, and Magic Items from 3.5, while making characters function in a more old school fashion; though I don't like the dissonance that would involve.