Never Trust your Friends

Back in my formative years in the RPG hobby, my group was compose of old-timers (who had started with those weird little brown booklets...) and kids. The kids were called munchkins (or, more commonly, munchies) and were given no respect until they had earned it. They did so by playing their character well and not ticking off the old-timers at the table.

I was 20 or 21 or so when I joined the group, and still had my crew cut from when I'd tried to join the National Guard (but they wouldn't take me; too nearsighted). So I didn't look like a kid. In the world of D&D, remember, I was a babe in the woods. But they gave me the benefit of the doubt, so I was accepted as an adult. (It helped that I could sit still, pay attention, and not interrupt...)

Now, these old-timers knew way much more about everything to do with roleplaying than I did; although I owned a few games* I had never actually played any of them. So I took what they said as gospel.

They didn't use the Arduin Grimoire; that was some way-out stuff. So I didn't even bother looking at it.

And they wouldn't play Tunnels & Trolls; it was "just a cheap knockoff of D&D". So I didn't even look at that.

Well, recently I've gotten volumes II and III of Arduin, and there's some interesting stuff. I can see why they wouldn't use it: There was a belief that if something was out there, you had to use it. If you allowed even one class from Arduin in your game, you would have to accept everybody else, with whatever outrageous twit character** they came up with. (I don't know why this was, mind you; nor was it ever explicitly stated. But the rules lawyers were all over the place...)

So I missed out on the gonzo whackiness of Arduin, and also the simplicity and ease of Tunnels & Trolls.

So I'm kinda retroactively pissed.

I got the Tunnels & Trolls boxed set of 5th edition (actually, 5.5). And I love it.

Sure, it isn't as complex as AD&D, or even D&D. But to me, that's a good thing. Throughout the book, designer Ken St. Andre keeps reminding you that you are the GM, and that you get to come up with whatever you want. Oh, and to have fun!

This was not the attitude I noticed in the D&D books. (I mean, we did have fun; it's just that we weren't specifically reminded to do so.) It's handy to have that in there for when you're digging through the rules late at night, wondering why on earth you're putting yourself through all this stuff.

Because it's fun. And because, through your efforts, others (your players) can have fun also.

[People have accused me of not growing up. Well, if growing up means not having fun anymore, than I don't wanna.]

Anyway, I'm going through a real retro renaissance here. OD&D is just the tip of the iceberg for me. I've also recently gotten Metamorphosis Alpha 1e (pdf, alas), Gamma World 1e, Champions 1e (I started on 2e...) and the original three Traveller books (I had the revised ones.)

And I'm loving it.

I want to create scenarios for each of these games, and just travel around to game stores and conventions with my big bad bag of old school goodness, ready to run a game at the drop of a hat. I'm not sure if that's feasible, but I can dream, can't I?

Anyway, to get back to the subject of this post: Never trust your friends. That is, when you can check it out for yourself. (Though there are some things you can trust your friends on; I wish I'd listened to them when a certain female came along...)

_ _ _ _ _ _
* Specifically: The Fantasy Trip, Top Secret, Traveller, and the Basic and Expert D&D Rulebooks (Moldvay/Cook editions)

** That group's particular terminology for a game breaker, something that shouldn't be allowed or was too overpowered. A 15th level Wizard in a 3rd level game, for instance. Or any Wizard that was proficient with and carried a vorpal sword. That sort of thing.

Some of my cantankerous old-fart views on RPGing

This may be a bit rambly, since I'm trying to organize my thoughts here (and trying to get it done on my lunch break...), so bear with me.

D&D 4th edition is about to be released.

The fact that this has people up in arms puzzles me a bit.

Sure, there are things I don't like about 3.x; there are always things I don't like. There will undoubtedly be things I don't like about 4.0, too. You wanna know a secret? There are things I don't like about AD&D, also.

I don't run AD&D.

I have the boxed set of Castles & Crusades (the "collector's edition" -- a typo-ridden mess that harks back to OD&D, but not in a good way), and it looks entirely playable. I may run that some day.

But I won't run the full C&C.

Nor will I run 4.0.

All of this is for the same reason: I don't wanna get bogged down in extra stuff.

I'm clairvoyant, you see; I can see the future. Here's how it would go:

I sit down and write up an AD&D (or C&C) adventure for 4-6 players, expecting the four basic classes to be well represented.

I sit down to run said adventure, and find myself looking at two Illusionists, a Ranger, and Assassin, and a Druid.

And, probably, a Monk.


And I don't want that. I don't want any of that.

* Illusionists, in my opinion, are the bad guys. They mess with Conan's head, until he kills them (or precipitates someone else killing them).

* The Ranger is a loner/archer sort, we've all seen them. Refuses to get into melee whatsoever, and prefers to go off on his own. Will not speak to the others in the party.

* Assassin: Again, the bad guy. And not to speak ill of the dead, but Gygax gives two completely different readings of the Assassination Table in the DMG. One, my preferred reading, is this: If you don't want to role-play sending an NPC assassin off on a job, you can use this table to see if he'd successful or not. The other, which all the PC Assassins lean toward, is "Hey, I can use this table instead of the whole combat system and get automatic kills in the dungeon!" Either way, I don't want it.

* The Druid would probably be okay, but Druids these days are a lot like militant Vegans (not all Vegans, mind you; I'm specifically referring to the militant ones...). Go ahead and kill a fellow human, or elf, or goblin or whatever; that's fine. But if you needlessly step on a blade of grass and crush it, I'll roast you over a slow and entirely magical fire (because fallen logs should be just left to rot and not burned at all in any way...) Sorry, Druids, but I don't buy that.

* The Monk gets a pass in OD&D, but not in AD&D. Gygax was specific that these were different games, and it shows. AD&D has a specifically quasi-Medieval Europe tone to it. Monks don't belong in this environment (except the cloistered version that breeds peas and copies manuscripts). In OD&D, particularly Blackmoor, Monks were some of the least of the oddities involved, and the game was better because of it.


So, I looked at running 3.x. Then I looked at running AD&D. (I skipped over 2E entirely). I went so far as to decide to only run S. John Ross's wonderful rpg-lite Risus. But there's something about D&D that keeps me coming back.

I picked up copies of Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert rules in my friendly local used book store (and for less than I paid for the originals, back in 1981). But even that had things I didn't like.

Bottom line, America: The more I pared away, the closer I came to OD&D. And that's part of why I'm an old-school-game gamer. I like a bunch of really old games, like OD&D, Top Secret, Traveller, Tunnels & Trolls, and the early editions of Champions. Partly because of their simplicity (as ranted about above), but also because of their attitude.

"Take me," they say, "you and I can have lots of fun together!"

Whereas a lot of the new games these days are different:

"Study me!" they bellow. "I'm friggin' homework!" (Remind me sometime to tell you how and why a setting like the original folio of Greyhawk was perfect but how today's settings are evil...)

I'm also an Old School gamer. I believe the game belongs to the GM, and the players had better realize it. He who quotes and/or argues rules at me had better learn to duck. Dave Arneson had the right of it: "If I change a rule that makes it official." I'm not here to pander to their basest tastes, to their predilection for weird subclasses.

I'm here to test them in the fires of the dungeon, and see what comes out: True forged steel, or mere wisps of smoke.


And no matter what rule set you're using, that's the old school way.