Friday, September 07, 2007

5 links, all OD&D

Museum of Role Playing Games OD&D Page - great starting point if this stuff is new to you

Delta's D&D Hotspot

Original D&D Discussion

Philotomy's OD&D Musings

The Grognard's Tavern OD&D Cloister

4 comments:

  1. Cool stuff. I notice there's a thread at the Grognard's tavern discussing one of my favorite things about OD&D - the lack of variable weapon damage (although the thread-poster doesn't seem to realize some form of that rule was present even up through Mentzer Basic ... I don't recall if they kept it for the Cyclopedia). The last time I ran D&D (about a year and a half ago, now) we played that way. It was one of my favorite things about original WFRP, too.

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  2. Yeah, everything doing d6 seems quick and easy. I have heard of at least one DM on Dragonsfoot who uses class-based damage. All MU and thief attacks do d4, all cleric attacks do d6 and all fighter attacks do d8, regardless of weapon employed.

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  3. Oh man, that would lead to some serious craziness with the kind of people I run with. Unless you don't consider something like a book, wooden spoon, or dead pigeon to be a weapon. What I do like about that is that it might encourage players to pick weapons they think are cool, rather than whichever does the most damage or has the best crit.

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  4. Yeah, everything doing d6 seems quick and easy.

    And it emphasizes character choice over hardware choice, which is something that makes me smile.

    The class-based approach you mention is pretty groovy; I like that. May try it out sometime.

    What I do like about that is that it might encourage players to pick weapons they think are cool, rather than whichever does the most damage or has the best crit.

    Exactly so. I often phrase the same thing upside-down: It doesn't punish players for choosing the weapon that's right for their character, instead of the weapon the designer thinks most highly of.

    I don't advocate it universally; there are plenty of campaigns where I prefer variable damage. But there are also quite a few where I don't ...

    I was mightily amused when someone commented that Fly From Evil's approach (which also partly shuns variable weapon damage) seemed very "modern" for an old-school designer like me. I politely directed them to two of my earlier designs (Pokethulhu and Risus) which have similar focus, and then reminded them that it goes all the way back to original Dungeons & Dragons, so it's hardly "new school" :)

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