musings on the rules for my BX campaign.
Ive been working my way backwards with the way Ive been playing and reading games, delving deeper into the whole old school scene. And quite frankly it has been liberating experience. I started with 3.0 then 3.5 and for the longest time Pathfinder along with some other games on the side like D20 Modern, True20 and others. Looking back at my pedigree of gaming I can understand where and how I got certain lessons.
First lesson is that 3.0 up to PF made me afraid of balance, everything was sterile and systematic in its approach there was this perceived notion of order and balancing, and it stuck with me until I encountered OSR which abhors such notions if one is allowed to be dramatic about it.
Second lesson is this, turns out I dont like D&D because of the whole D&D part in it oddly enough. Every class is loaded with bunch of stuff that implies how world works. There are bunch of stuff in the rules that implies how the world works. Turns out I hate that. That might be why I think of all the Wotc stuff D20M is my favourite because of its less then implied and generic nature and why I dislike 5e for its implied nature and specific setting. If Id have to do run in it the way I want Id have to build down, get rid of the stuff I dont like and go from there. And this is the bit all this was leading up to. I like BX and whole of OSR for its build up nature. You are given absolute minimum of rules that at some times dont even make sense or clash and are expected to make it your own.
Now with 2 successful BX games under the belt its time to think about what I think works, what doesn't and look at the feedback that Ive gotten from my players so far. Overall its been a very positive experience as you can read here part I and part II of my Ultan`s campaign. Even then while I wanted to run it as straight as possible for now to get acquainted with the rules I did add few extra rules right out of the gate. Ive detailed any current rules active and some possible ideas for future here. While the whole experience was very satisfying it has not been without some small issues in the background. A list of things that my players has brought up so far in to particular order.
- Outside first elf in the game rolling sleep spell( and not even getting to use it) limits of spell casting are kinda meh, 1 spell per day is kinda harsh.
- Turns out people are surprised clerics dont get spells ar 1 level.
- Magic makes magic unmagical, but that has been true for most of the games with spell lists.
- "Can I play a halfling rogue?" Not really you can play either halfling or thief but not both. Its probably surprise to no one that people are still confused about race as class. While the player did get around to liking her halfling, this is still something I might look into later. Without some extras people are accustomed to in later editions, some classes can feel a bit samey.
- Thief skills. There is the whole issue about 2 different sets of traps turns out I did not realise at first. Chances for success is abysmal in early levels. Percentile chance stands out compared to rest of mechanics.
- Minor one and easy to fix, but probably still worth mentioning, an old beast the encumbrance. Keeping track of items by value is weird and constantly have to look up prices. Also im not sure about revealing treasure value before stuff gets sold off, If players know the prices, part about figuring what is worth taking and what is not gets lost.
Surprisingly enough that is not a big list but it contains a lot of holy cows like skills and magic.
So lets talk about skills first.On multiple occasions I used roll under ability to determine success for certain actions. Right now I have two options, one stick with roll under abilities with maybe +X/-X for traits character has which would help differentiate characters somewhat, which has an added bonus for magic I will get back in a bit. Or second where I unifying all/most/some skills in a single mechanic. I remember discussion about this sort of thing by Mark Craddock on G+ and in post on his blog here. If I remember correctly ACKS did something similar with thief skills. I kinda like this approach because of already existing mechanics in place and there intuitive nature. There are of course other neat ideas out there. Lotfp and Dungeon World are things that come to mind.
Now on to the magic part. One of my favourite magic systems as of late might be Nightmares Underneath - neatly sorted into domains, classless, levelless, but with increased risk for more advanced stuff. Which you still can cast right out of the gate. And best of all anyone has access to magic if they are willing to take risks. And this is where we get back to ability rolls. NU uses roll under stat or half stat for skills, saves and casting. If Im using ability rolls its easier to integrate this magic into my games. But I kinda like skill throws a bit more if it werent for compatibility for magic.
Decisions, decisions.
And here in lies the beauty of OSR, I can make a Frankenstein, unholy abomination unto the rules and it still works.
So lets talk about skills first.On multiple occasions I used roll under ability to determine success for certain actions. Right now I have two options, one stick with roll under abilities with maybe +X/-X for traits character has which would help differentiate characters somewhat, which has an added bonus for magic I will get back in a bit. Or second where I unifying all/most/some skills in a single mechanic. I remember discussion about this sort of thing by Mark Craddock on G+ and in post on his blog here. If I remember correctly ACKS did something similar with thief skills. I kinda like this approach because of already existing mechanics in place and there intuitive nature. There are of course other neat ideas out there. Lotfp and Dungeon World are things that come to mind.
Now on to the magic part. One of my favourite magic systems as of late might be Nightmares Underneath - neatly sorted into domains, classless, levelless, but with increased risk for more advanced stuff. Which you still can cast right out of the gate. And best of all anyone has access to magic if they are willing to take risks. And this is where we get back to ability rolls. NU uses roll under stat or half stat for skills, saves and casting. If Im using ability rolls its easier to integrate this magic into my games. But I kinda like skill throws a bit more if it werent for compatibility for magic.
Decisions, decisions.
And here in lies the beauty of OSR, I can make a Frankenstein, unholy abomination unto the rules and it still works.
