I saw my post this morning had 5 views. Does that mean someone's still subscribed? That'd be pretty nifty. I had a couple cool guys comment when I used to post regularly, and it'd be cool to know if anyone is still out there.
If you are, what do you wanna read about? Anything you'd like me to post? I might start posting cool stuff I find in RIFTS, Arduin, Chaosium, and Talislanta products. Let me know if anyone is interested. I could do play reports too, but I've never really been one to read those myself, so I never thought to write them.
Oh and if anyone does read this, why not go snoop around the ODD74 boards. It's a friendly place, stop in and say hi. I might have to do that myself.
Cheers guys.
Sunday, May 13, 2018
OD&D is King
I haven't blogged in a while. There's a number of reasons, chiefly though is the following. I realized, especially after hanging out at the ODD74 boards for so long, and getting to play a lot of D&D, that OD&D really is the best way to play ANYTHING. It's so stupidly easy to use material from any other game, especially because of the lack of rules. There's really not much to say. Games like Microlite20 and RISUS really drive the point home.
Don't expect much on here anymore. Who knows I might start writing again, but there's really not much to say once you realize it's all just a game. More rules is never going to make that fun. Recent experiences with Starfinder have shown me that. I was super excited to play, and I figured being Sci Fi, all the rules wouldn't seem out of place. After all, Sci Fi is often about complexity, technicalities, and minutiae. Honestly it all seemed so useless though. It could have been the group: I spent 4-6 hours making a character to play 2 combats, and spend another session just talking in character. Though that seems to be the trend for new games. The really dissapointing part though, was I have this awesome "Solarian" character that's able to use star power, or black hole energy to conjure weapons and perform cool stunts. Most of them are bland, like the "Solar Rush" which is just a charge while your on fire. I really don't 3 paragraphs of text to say "your character is on fire, and charges".
That's the beauty of games like OD&D, and RISUS: they get to the point. What's actually important about a Solar warrior? On fire. Star-powered weapon. Black hole gravity tricks. Bam. Done. Anyone who's DM'd old school D&D long enough would just add a +1 damage, or make a once per day 1d8 damage ability. That's how most of the old school stuff worked. Paladin: 2 points per level of healing per day. Ranger: 50% surprise. Stupid easy.
I'm not in a very eloquent mood right now, and part of that is what I've been working on lately, that's actually useful. I'm still trying to get down the most effecient way of doing it, but I'm trying to pull all of the "important stuff", or as RISUS would put it "cliches" out of all the RPGs I like. Look up RISUS, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
There's a lot more to say about RPGs, like how after actually going through most of the books and PDFs I've owned, I realized most Monsters and Magic (the main content of RPGs) is just kind of bland reskins and rehashes. I don't want to be to negative though. I'll say this: there are a lot of cool old school resources out there you should check out if you never have:
Don't expect much on here anymore. Who knows I might start writing again, but there's really not much to say once you realize it's all just a game. More rules is never going to make that fun. Recent experiences with Starfinder have shown me that. I was super excited to play, and I figured being Sci Fi, all the rules wouldn't seem out of place. After all, Sci Fi is often about complexity, technicalities, and minutiae. Honestly it all seemed so useless though. It could have been the group: I spent 4-6 hours making a character to play 2 combats, and spend another session just talking in character. Though that seems to be the trend for new games. The really dissapointing part though, was I have this awesome "Solarian" character that's able to use star power, or black hole energy to conjure weapons and perform cool stunts. Most of them are bland, like the "Solar Rush" which is just a charge while your on fire. I really don't 3 paragraphs of text to say "your character is on fire, and charges".
That's the beauty of games like OD&D, and RISUS: they get to the point. What's actually important about a Solar warrior? On fire. Star-powered weapon. Black hole gravity tricks. Bam. Done. Anyone who's DM'd old school D&D long enough would just add a +1 damage, or make a once per day 1d8 damage ability. That's how most of the old school stuff worked. Paladin: 2 points per level of healing per day. Ranger: 50% surprise. Stupid easy.
I'm not in a very eloquent mood right now, and part of that is what I've been working on lately, that's actually useful. I'm still trying to get down the most effecient way of doing it, but I'm trying to pull all of the "important stuff", or as RISUS would put it "cliches" out of all the RPGs I like. Look up RISUS, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
There's a lot more to say about RPGs, like how after actually going through most of the books and PDFs I've owned, I realized most Monsters and Magic (the main content of RPGs) is just kind of bland reskins and rehashes. I don't want to be to negative though. I'll say this: there are a lot of cool old school resources out there you should check out if you never have:
- Chaosium's All the World's Monsters
- Palladium RIFTS & Palladium Fantasy RPG*
- Arduin Grimoire Series
After everything I've gone through, those seem to have the most genuinely interesting stuff. I don't need four types of bird men with funny names, and I certainly don't need another type of dragon. What I do want are more flying sharks and squids. More tattoo magic, even if the effects are the same, the description is cool.
*RIFTS is one of the most controversial RPGs because the rule books is supposedly poorly organized. Honestly I think the only complicated part is the attribute abbreviates, since they all start with a P or S. In either case, it's basically heavily house ruled 1E D&D. It's extremely easy to just take the concepts and stat/use them for OD&D. After all, it's just Hit Dice, AC, Damage, and Special Abilities. Furthermore RIFTS is one of the few games with lots of genuinely different stuff.
My latest foray, that I'm on my way for another session of, is using OD&D with RIFTS. It's going quite well. There's not much to say on it, other than it's been a blast, and I have good friends who just want to have fun and do cool stuff, so no one really cares about the rules.
That's all for now, I might update some ideas I have, or figure out something useful to contribute.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Finally Figured it Out - How I'm play Arcane Adventures
Certain Referees are able to just run games off the fly. In fact, most participants (players and referees) are able to come up with plenty of fun interactions on the spot. Most old school games work this way. There is less preparation for the character, and what they are normally able to do, and just improvisation. What will try in this scenario, given the circumstances?
Furthermore, I've never really used prepared gaming material as it was intended. I rarely use the monsters stat block, especially because I'm using so many different systems for material (D&D, Runequest, Rolemaster, Pathfinder, Palladium/Rifts, TV Shows, etc.). Thinking about all of this, I've realized I only need ideas. I don't eve need full ideas, or descriptions, usually a name is plenty enough to spark inspiration.
I could go on at length about players not needing much either. Often they just want to play a concept, and that really just amounts to calling their characters that concept. Old school players, or completely new players, are either indifferent to mechanical differences, or just don't know about them. In fact I'm sure I've blogged before about how the real fun of RPG's are just the descriptions.
In old school play, in particular, the description can be the mechanic. In OD&D there is no rules difference between an axe, sword, or spear: they all do 1-6 damage. There is a big difference between those weapons however: some can only be used for slashing, others can thrust, and still some can shatter or break. When you're trying to fend off a monster on the other side of a gate, which weapon can you attack with? The spear can easily slide through the bars, so can the sword; your axe however is almost useless. On the other hand, if you're trying to escape a room, and break down a door, the axe is the ideal tool.
This extends to everything in the game. Do we really need rules to tell us that a fire breathing dragon is immune to a fireball attack? This is where I'm at in my gaming, and it's been great. We've played quite a bit like this, and it always goes really well. Granted, it requires a cooperative play group, usually good friends. All we do is use logic, and discussion to determine what can work, what doesn't, and really what just makes sense.
With all of that said, my latest project, and all I'm doing now is just collecting lists of ideas from any source. Most are just consisting of names, though some creatures like an aboleth do require some description. A Hawk-Man, or Giant Ant is pretty self explanatory. I'm doing this for race and class as well. If you are an Elf Wizard, or a Human Cyber-Knight, you are just that. I'm only using the Fighting-Man and Magic-User from OD&D for rules, the the rest is just description for the player's sake.
Much like Arneson's games, the idea is that you are supposed to play like your character. What would a Beastman do? How would a Dwarf Druid act?
As for rules, I've come up with a simple mash up of OD&D, Microlite20, and some modern RPGs. The rules are not hard and fast, but provide a meaningful outline for gameplay progression, and task resolution - where it is necessary. I'll post the rules in my next post.
Furthermore, I've never really used prepared gaming material as it was intended. I rarely use the monsters stat block, especially because I'm using so many different systems for material (D&D, Runequest, Rolemaster, Pathfinder, Palladium/Rifts, TV Shows, etc.). Thinking about all of this, I've realized I only need ideas. I don't eve need full ideas, or descriptions, usually a name is plenty enough to spark inspiration.
I could go on at length about players not needing much either. Often they just want to play a concept, and that really just amounts to calling their characters that concept. Old school players, or completely new players, are either indifferent to mechanical differences, or just don't know about them. In fact I'm sure I've blogged before about how the real fun of RPG's are just the descriptions.
In old school play, in particular, the description can be the mechanic. In OD&D there is no rules difference between an axe, sword, or spear: they all do 1-6 damage. There is a big difference between those weapons however: some can only be used for slashing, others can thrust, and still some can shatter or break. When you're trying to fend off a monster on the other side of a gate, which weapon can you attack with? The spear can easily slide through the bars, so can the sword; your axe however is almost useless. On the other hand, if you're trying to escape a room, and break down a door, the axe is the ideal tool.
This extends to everything in the game. Do we really need rules to tell us that a fire breathing dragon is immune to a fireball attack? This is where I'm at in my gaming, and it's been great. We've played quite a bit like this, and it always goes really well. Granted, it requires a cooperative play group, usually good friends. All we do is use logic, and discussion to determine what can work, what doesn't, and really what just makes sense.
With all of that said, my latest project, and all I'm doing now is just collecting lists of ideas from any source. Most are just consisting of names, though some creatures like an aboleth do require some description. A Hawk-Man, or Giant Ant is pretty self explanatory. I'm doing this for race and class as well. If you are an Elf Wizard, or a Human Cyber-Knight, you are just that. I'm only using the Fighting-Man and Magic-User from OD&D for rules, the the rest is just description for the player's sake.
Much like Arneson's games, the idea is that you are supposed to play like your character. What would a Beastman do? How would a Dwarf Druid act?
As for rules, I've come up with a simple mash up of OD&D, Microlite20, and some modern RPGs. The rules are not hard and fast, but provide a meaningful outline for gameplay progression, and task resolution - where it is necessary. I'll post the rules in my next post.
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