what's old is new...again.

so...4E was unanimously behind us and we moved "forward" to 1E. all of us still had our old rulebooks. man, it was nice coming to the table with only three or four books as opposed to the backbreaking amount of hardcover garbage we had been lugging around with us to play 4E.

(NOTE: i feel like i should mention the GARAGE SALE OF DOOM.  in the summer of 2009, chris' (now ex) wife informed us that someone she knew was having a garage sale.  the person's father (or grandfather...i can't remember now) was "into all the same crap we were", so down to the garage sale we went.  well...she was right. i walked out of that garage sale with the following items in absolute pristine condition: the original PHB and DMG, the MOLDVAY EXPERT BOX (which i had never owned), which was filled with these gems when i opened it: the HOLMES BASIC BOOK, B2, B3, B4, and X1!  the dice were still sealed in the bag with the crayon.  i also grabbed all the JOHN CARTER paperbacks from the 60's/70's, all the DOC SAVAGE paperbacks from the 60's, and a bunch of other old paperback awesomeness like A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, DAYBREAK 2250 AD, DUNE, etc.  chris walked out with a ton of FU MANCHU and ELRIC stuff. for all that swag i paid the princely sum of $10.  i mention this only because this happened right as i was at the breaking point with 4E - and now here i was, with all this old school stuff sitting in my apartment, begging to be read and played...)

ok, so we sat down to make characters for 1E.  we decided to do it 3d6 in order, no fudging or whatever else and then we'd see what classes/races we'd qualify for.  rich was allowing us to use UNEARTHED ARCANA for classes only...no other wonky rules.  i wound up rolling pretty well and decided to make a half elf cavalier.  i rolled pretty poorly on the social standing chart so i was relegated to being a 0 level squire.  i decided to make this character the son of one of my old 1E characters from the mid 80's - a paladin named Geoffrey Vannon.  that made sense, since good old Geoffrey had rescued a good aligned drow priestess in one of his last adventures...so we decided that they had gotten married and that he was in the area, still being all paladin-y. the local townsfolk had been horrified at first that he had married a dark elf, but as they got to know her (and later, her son) they saw that she was a good soul as well as a cleric of corellon larethian and stopped worrying.  enter: TEMPLETON VANNON, squire!

chris rolled up a scumbaggy elven thief named malthon briarwood. i liked this character so much that i decided to play his brother when this party was TPKed and we began B2...but i'll save that story for later.  donnie rolled up a dwarf fighter named GUMBA and we were off. rich had discovered a site called DRAGONSFOOT  and had downloaded some adventures to run us through, so we began to play one called "the disappearance of harold the hedgemage".

and. it. was. awesome. everyone was into their characters...we were engaging the NPC's...everyone was into the storyline - and when there was combat...IT WAS FAST.  AND DEADLY. granted, we were playing 1E as we did when we were kids: no weapon speed factors, no spell components or segments during initiative, etc. still - it was great and we finished the whole adventure in one session.  BANG. we all wanted more! we had found our game...

...or had we?

we played a few more sessions with these characters and we were all really into the game. then rich decided to run us through his favorite adventure of all time: THE DESERT OF DESOLATION.  well, it didn't go so well for us. right after we set some enormous ghost-pharaoh free in the desert, we were wiped out by an evil cleric and his cultist cronies.  hold person is a hell of thing - templeton was HELD at the very beginning of the fight and could only watch as the rest of the party was cut down...the last thing he saw was the cleric knocking him unconscious. fade to black...the end. our hirelings probably realized that we weren't coming back after a while.  i hope that they took our cart of treasure and lived happy until the end of their lives! that was a brutal reminder as to how deadly 1E could be.   still, we had a blast! we STILL talk about all that stuff at the table...and we all shudder when rich holds up the module and says he wants to continue it since my character never actually died...

the slaughter was nothing, though, compared to the next adventure chris would run: B2 - THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS.

i had actually never played through this module as a kid so i was excited to play it.  i rolled up 2 new characters - a monk named SCREAMING DEMON and an elf assassin named JASSITER BRIARWOOD.  donnie rolled up a paladin named KURGAN and a dwarven cleric named CLAUSS. there was so much awesome in that module, both with our interaction with the people in the keep and our frequent excursions to the CAVES OF CHAOS that i'll probably write it up in a separate blog entry...suffice to say that it also ended in a near TPK.  screaming demon got his head caved in by an ogre during the first session, kurgan lost his leg at one point and his arm later on, finally getting impaled by a minotaur and flung across the room. clauss also lost a leg...it got to the point where we were so indebted to the church in the keep (for 3 regenerate spells and a resurrection for kurgan, not to mention the copious amounts of healing potions) that it actually became a side adventure. we convinced an NPC bugbear prisoner named BARATTA to join our group...donnie's wife cathy heard us having such a good time that she even came out of rpg retirement and rolled up a dwarven thief named BUSTY STONEHAMMER.  we also had a rotating cast of people who were around for some sessions but not all - rich, anthony, and two new guys who had joined our group: jon and dan.

anyways - B2 came to a grizzly end: busty, talladine (my elf magic user who took screaming demon's place), kurgan, and baratta were petrified by a medusa.  clauss went down trying to engage it in hand to hand with his eyes closed.  while the medusa was busy with clauss, jassiter escaped with kurgan's squire WEMBLEY (who he had been slowly turning into a cold-blooded killer, much to kurgan's dismay) and our 16 year old torchbearer, tricia.  jass gave tricia 1,000 gold and told her to start a new life somewhere else. he then snuck into the keep, retrieved what he could from his quarters, and took off with wembley...hoping the church never came calling regarding the fortune that we owed them...

now - right around this time i played in an OD&D game run by frank metzer at a local con out here on the island.  this pushed me to thoroughly investigate all the older rulebooks - OD&D, the holmes basic, the B/X books, and BECMI.  i fell in love with the B/X books - everything you needed to play D&D was right there in 128 pages.  there was a lot of rules and stuff in the PHB, DMG, and UA that we weren't using and that we had actually NEVER used, even as kids. so why bother playing AD&D if we're not even using half the rules? i wanted to play straight up B/X, but i knew that everyone would resist the whole "race as class" thing that B/X featured...but the books were so good i had to try and convince them.

the B/X or Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks from 1981

it was then that i discovered LABYRINTH LORD. chris had won a copy of the rulebook at the same con where we played with mentzer - so, intrigued, i ventured over to the goblinoid games website. it turns out that LABYRINTH LORD was a clone of the B/X books that i loved...and they had an ADVANCED EDITION book that made the AD&D rules compatible with the B/X ruleset...?  AWESOME. i ordered both books and devoured them when they arrived in the mail.  i explained LL to the group the next session and they were sold...and we've been playing that ever since.

of course, we play other games as well.  we gave MUTANT FUTURE a spin around the block, as well as the 4E GAMMA WORLD. they were fun but no one is clamoring to play them again. i've run a few sessions of X-PLORERS and everyone wants to play that again - we're just going to finish up the BARROWMAZE campaign that chris is running and then we'll dive back into that game. we've also played a good deal of 3:16 CARNAGE AMONGST THE STARS lately...and i just picked  up LACUNA and INSPECTRES and i'm itching to play those as well.

from here on out, i'll be making shorter posts - mostly about the games we're playing, some house rules stuff, and whatever else.  it's been fun reliving my entire gaming life...hope i didn't bore you!

discovering the OSR

so, 4E came out and we were all pretty excited. the excitement wouldn't last, though.  before i launch into (yet another) negative diatribe about 4E, i'd like to mention 3 things that i liked about it.

1.  upon first glancing through the books, i liked the idea that the characters could DO all kinds of cool things that had previously been either impossible or the province of high level characters.  you could teleport at 1st level? awesome.  you could fire magic rays from your hands whenever you wanted? yes!!!  you could flip over people? run along the walls? THIS WAS AMAZING!!

2.  i liked that players could choose from all kinds of different races like minotaurs, devas, and whatever else.  i had always hated that you were limited to just a few races in A/D&D...and in 3E playing a different race made you eat an insane ECL which made the character too powerful at first (or not...aasimar, anyone?) and super-lame later on. i loved that a minotaur could walk into a town and the residents were (for the most part) cool with it.  so that was nice.

3.  i really liked the "points of light" setting.  i've always HATED the pseudo-medieval default setting of most pre 4E D&D games. why the hell would there be CASTLES when the enemy could FLY?!?! why would armies of 0 level nobodies take the field when a few fireballs (or an earthquake spell) would wreck them?  why would armies need to forage or stay near water when all they really needed were a few clerics to make all the food and water they needed? and since clerics could literally summon food out of nowhere, why weren't they in charge of everything?!?!  "hey, you guys could farm your whole life...or you could help me spread the word of my faith and i'll literally feed the whole town".  i never liked campaign worlds with empires doing battle, kingdoms, duchies, or whatever the hell else. i always wanted things kept simple - a small town, a city, and a wide open world around it...B2 style.  ah well. this is a different blog post.

those were the 3 things that had me stoked on 4E.  the preview books they had released (and the anti 3E marketing campaign they'd launched) had me thinking that 4E was going to be AWESOME!!!

not really. playing 4E was torture.  very soon, all those cool little things that we read in the rules lost all sense when actually running through a game.  it didn't matter that you could visualize your eladrin rogue teleporting across the room, knocking his foe down and then backflipping out of the way, because in game-time 1 round took like a half an hour to resolve.  hell, a typical TURN was something like this:

me: ok, my turn.  i'm going to move here and use CLOUD OF DAGGERS.
DM: oh wait, i forgot that when the kobold king was bloodied all his allies shift one square.  so you can't move there because there's a kobold in the way.
me: ok...hmm (consults a multitude of power cards) i'm going to use BRING THE THUNDER on that kobold in my way... *rolls*...ok, so that's a 14 plus my STR plus half my level...so that's a 23 versus FORT and not AC.
DM: ok, it's a hit, but the kobold king uses his immediate interrupt power SLAY THE UNBELIEVER that allows him smite someone who's just injured his ally. he can do this because he's bloodied.  i rolled a 26...does that hit your REFLEX AC?
me: yes...
CHRIS:ok, then when he hits mike's guy i can use this power called BOWLING FOR GOBLINOIDS that allows me FRIGHTEN everyone in a blast 6 and knock them prone for one round if they all fail their save versus WILL.
DM: what does FRIGHTEN do? look that up...*begins rolling saving throws for all 12 kobolds*
rich: hey, wait a minute...i have the kobold king MARKED...can he attack mike's guy?
donnie: don't forget that all enemies adjacent to me have a -2 on all saves due to my GLOWING HALO ongoing effect.
me: so, do i get to hit that kobold in front of me or what?
DM: hold on, i'm looking up frightened...when you DO hit that guy all the kobolds will have the option of shifting 1 square since they have the SHIFTY ability that allows them to shift when someone within 5 squares is injured...
rich: BUT HE'S MARKED.
*everyone starts looking up various different things in the books and the turn begins to lag...meanwhile, i haven't yet rolled damage, used my move action or my minor action* 

4E was like the world's most complicated tactical miniatures wargame ever made.  everyone's turn in combat took around 10 minutes (as we had to look up a million things like conditions, immediate interrupts, effects from being bloodied, conditions that occur when someone gets hit, someone moving adjacent then triggered something else, etc). you constantly had to try and remember who was marked, who had what effect active that enabled various bonuses and whatever else, feats, racial abilities, and whatever else.  the monsters all had abilities that recharged, or went into effect when certain things happened...oooooof. if you forgot to use them the monsters were at a disadvantage.  the DM had treasure parcels to dole out (with no tables to roll on).  even the f*#$ing magic items had daily and encounter powers?!?  throw in the usual amount of rules lawyering and you had a big disaster on your hands.  the game was a nightmare for BOTH players and DMs.

the other thing was that it was almost IMPOSSIBLE for characters to die.  i say almost simply because one of my characters died in the first session when we weren't sure what we were doing. later on i tried to "suicide" a character that i didn't particularly like just to see if it could be done...and it BARELY worked (he expired a round before the other PC's got to him).  and this was me INTENTIONALLY TRYING TO KILL HIM.

my next character was a mute - this was my (silent) protest of 4E. since all role-playing stopped the instant combat broke out, i made a character who just stabbed stuff when the other party members told him to and did nothing else.  no one noticed.   

i'd love to detail some of the adventure stuff we did with 4E, but i don't really remember any of the details or plot points of most of the adventures.  basically, there would be some adventure hook...eventually a fight would break out and that would literally take the entire session to resolve. one fight. the whole session.  after a while no one wanted to DM the game because it was laborious and boring, so donnie stepped up and said that he'd run some module series.  we played all of them...AND I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT THEY WERE CALLED OR WHAT THEY WERE ABOUT.  i think there was a pyramid.  and i totally remember some random rolling magical boulder that messed us up.  that's it.  from june of 2008 until december of 2009 - all i have to tell you about is a magical f*&%ing boulder and a pyramid.  i can tell you all kinds of cool details about the STAR FRONTIERS adventure i ran, or the SAVAGE WORLDS adventure that chris ran, and rich's ALTERNITY sessions...i can tell you all about adventures i played in 1980 - 1990...but 4E was literally giving us nothing noteworthy to discuss. it wasn't even fun - it was like a job.    

one night i asked everyone if they'd be into continuing STAR FRONTIERS. "YES!!!" was the enthusiastic response...we'd pick that up as soon as this last 4E module was done.  that night, as i waited for my turn to come in 4E i ran a search on my phone for STAR FRONTIERS...and i came across an entry on a blog called GROGNARDIA.

when i got home that night i explored the heck out of that blog. it seemed that a lot people were still playing all the pre-3E D&D games.  they were using the old rulebooks and these new ones with titles like OSRIC, LABYRINTH LORD, and SWORDS & WIZARDRY.  my mind was blown.  it was so simple!  just...play the games you like.  huh.

the next day i sent out an email.  instead of playing STAR FRONTIERS or 4E, i asked...why don't we just play the D&D that we like the most?  everyone agreed - and everyone thought it would be fun to play ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS again (i'm talking about 1E here).  rich even agreed to run it.

to be concluded.

this thing of ours...

over the last year or so i've given a lot of thought to how i got involved in this hobby of ours. i've also given a lot of thought as to why myself and my gaming group prefers one "type" of game to all the others that are out there. as stated in my last post, we now prefer LABYRINTH LORD/ BASIC-EXPERT DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS to most other rpgs. now, i don't want to get into an edition war - but it's interesting to see how i came all the way back to the beginning after playing all the current versions of the game.

ok...so: my gaming history (this is long as i'm old).

the first time i ever played D&D was also the first time i'd ever heard of it - october 1980 (i was 6 and in 1st grade). i met a kid named jimmy in my 1st grade class and we became friends. he only lived a few blocks away from me so we started hanging out on the weekends and the whatnot. one rainy saturday i was at his house and his older brother (who was in 7th or 8th grade at the time) was in charge of babysitting us. i guess he decided that it would be easier to watch us if he ran us through a D&D session. when he mentioned playing it, jimmy seemed totally psyched. apparently, his older brother only ran games for him once in a while - most of his game time was spent with his friends. they both explained the game as being like a movie where you controlled the characters.

they gave me a piece of paper, a pencil and some weird looking dice and after walking me through the process -  i had created a paladin named geoffrey. my friend jimmy had a character named ARES (and thinking back on it, he may have been playing ares right out of DEITIES & DEMIGODS. check that - he so was). anyway, we played for a few hours - and i loved it! we had to rescue a princess who had been kidnapped by a dragon...and i remember we (somehow) injured the dragon and (of course) drove him off to save the day! 

D&D then became something we did on rainy/cold/snowy days at jimmy's place. we had all kinds of crazy adventures (that were loosely based on fairy tales) - giants, dragons, titans, gods and goddesses. at one point geoffrey had a pet pseudo-dragon who could mind-blast people.

a few times we actually played with his brother's friends and the game had a different tone - more serious and realistic (we also had to use different characters than the ones we used when it was just the three of us...).

a year or so later (when i was in 2nd grade) i was at my friend chris' house...and i noticed a pile of familiar looking hardcover books in his basement (along with some new softcover/three holepunched books that i had never seen before). it turns out that he had been playing for about a year also...except that he was running his older brother and his brother's friends through adventures and modules. i told him that i had been playing with jimmy - and then we started playing at his house as well. chris' games were like the games jimmy's brother ran with his friends...it seemed more mature, was way more deadly and was somehow more satisfying.

keep in mind that at this point i didn't own any of the books or anything. my elementary school library changed all that. in 2nd grade i discovered that the library had all these books called CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. in 3rd grade they started putting all these other books on the same shelf called ENDLESS QUEST...and they had the D&D logo on them! i grabbed a few (there were four different ones) and devoured them. my favorite one was MOUNTAIN OF MIRRORS by rose estes...and in short order i had a new elf character named landon (i was 8 - cut me some slack). i was also now the proud owner of all four of those books. (the library would order more of them...don't worry).

as 4th grade began we discovered that there was a saturday morning cartoon on tv based off D&D! man, i hated that cartoon.  i sill do.  but - that show prompted my parents into getting me the 1st 2 mentzer sets for christmas (which were confusingly different than the ones chris and jimmy had). chris had gotten a new game called STAR FRONTIERS that we began to play regularly. by the time 5th grade rolled around, chris had a subscription to DRAGON and we were playing D&D, STAR FRONTIERS and also MARVEL SUPER HEROES pretty regularly. as it turned out - MANY, MANY kids in my school were also gamers...and games started turning up at our lunch table pretty much every day.  that's how things would stay until about 7th grade.

our lunch table games in 5th & 6th grade wound up producing the five of us who would stay with the game until...well, you'll see.  when 7th grade started, it was obvious that most of  the kids who had been gaming were now done with it. they were into hair bands, going to the mall, and whatever else.  not the five of us, though. we didn't forsake D&D just to be cool! we kept playing. now we had a tad more freedom since we were in junior high school - and our games got longer as we could play all weekend if we wanted - and during vacations and the whatnot we pulled some marathons. we also began to explore games outside of TSR's catalog. we played chaosium's ELFQUEST (since we loved the comic), FASA's STAR TREK (which chris and i hated), and west end's brand new STAR WARS rpg (which is a whole other blog post).  we were also heavily into computer games at this point also - ULTIMA IV, POOL OF RADIANCE, WASTELAND, LEGACY OF THE ANCIENTS...stuff like that. 

it was around this time (1987-1990) that we stopped cheating. we rolled characters fair and square, leveled up the right way and pretty much played the game as written...sort of. we played a mash-up of AD&D and the BASIC D&D game. we mostly used the PHB/DMG/MM - but we ignored MANY of the rules and sort of used the clearer rules from the basic books...and we assumed that max level was 36th.

2nd EDITION came out when we were in 9th grade and we loved it (except for the loose-leaf format of the MONSTROUS COMPENDIUM). we felt that it cleared up many questions we had about the old rules - and we liked that we could just keep using things from 1E in 2E (like the 1E ranger, assassin, etc). we spent a good solid 2 years with 2E and had some of our best adventures...and then chris (our default DM) moved away at the end of 10th grade.

granted, he only moved a few towns away - but when you're in 10th/11th grade and can't drive...well, what can you do? when he moved away the rest of us stopped playing cold turkey. BOOM. it was just...over. that was in 1990...and i would not play D&D again for eight years.

NEXT ENTRY: chris is an RPG magnet; i come back to 2E in 1998; our experience with 3E/4E; and how we wound up back at the beginning.