Me and Roleplaying: 2014 and Beyond...

Hail and well met, fellow adventurers! Here we are, on the threshold of a new year of crisis and opportunity! May we all rise to the blessed challenges that the universe lays before us, for challenges are blessings, and they help make us more than we were before!

I love the RPG blogosphere, the whole cacophonous lot of you! Every single one of your blogs are a light that keeps the flame of roleplaying alive! Whether you have a regular game (be it face-to-face or virtual), or are dreaming of gaming days past or future, you are keeping the spirit alive. And I salute you for your efforts, however humble or grand. Thanks to all of you for your continuing inspiration. For that's what you have been, are, and will be for me.

No, this isn't a farewell post from me. I'm just changing my focus for my free time in 2014. I'm working on a dream, folks. Wish me all the best you can spare. I'm bound and determined to change the career aspect of my life. I'm going to focus all the will, energy, determination, and ambition I have in this body into the effort.

So my available time for the hobby will be limited, but it will burn no less brighter for it. Indeed, I expect the inner fire for roleplaying will only burn hotter. I'm looking forward to my return to roleplaying when the time is right, just as it was right about three years ago. I always have believed that hope springs eternal. It is this faith that has driven me most of my life. Without it, I'm not sure where I'd be today.

At any rate, this is an RPG blog, eh? So, what do I foresee for me in the way of gaming in the new year?

Well, there will be no doubt some evenings where I will actually find myself at the game table once more. I've laid the foundations for several good groups of gamers that have promised to have chairs open for me. Most likely I will be a player, as I probably won't have the time to prep to be a GM.

I see the coming year as a time of much-needed reflection on my roleplaying career. This reflection will include some much-needed delvings into the old rule sets that have been calling out to me. I'm feeling like I have a lot of assumptions when it comes to my gaming past. Assumptions scare me. To me, they reek of hubris. You assume you know all there is to know about something, and that's when bad things happen.

Yes, I need to do some long-overdue exploration of my roleplaying past. Since I jumped head-first back into roleplaying in 2010, I've pretty much never looked back. But that neglect of my RPG past has most likely given birth to this burning desire to read and use some of the old books.

One of the big assumptions I've harbored is that I know all I need to know about the older versions of D&D and AD&D. But I'm really feeling drawn to, of all things, 2nd Edition AD&D at the moment. At the very least, I think I need to do a good read of this version of the game over the next year. If only to exorcise the demanding, nagging feeling that I need to explore it again. But actually, I expect to see that old game with my older man's eyes, and see what I get out of it this time around. That's a reunion I've foolishly avoided. I think it's going to be a good thing, for me to revisit the version of the game that took up much of my early roleplaying life.

Heck, if I have time, I might just go back and revisit St. Gygax's masterwork, 1st Edition AD&D...the version that I played the most back in the day. I expect to be rewarded by that journey as well.

As I do my re-exploration of the above, I hope to have time for posting some musings here.

As I've said before on this blog, I love Castles & Crusades, and it really is my preferred version of AD&D, but nostalgia DEMANDS that I go back and take a look at the real deal again. Whether this becomes good nostalgia or bad, limiting nostalgia is really up to me, and what I do with the feeling.

 

I also hope to do some reviews of new games and such as I read them, and perhaps contribute some gaming material here and there. We'll see. 

 

The X factor of 2014 is the 40th anniversary of D&D and the release of the next iteration. From what I've seen of D&D Next via the playtest materials, I'm not really interested in using those rules. But what a milestone! I'm excited to see what comes...er, next!

So, this is not goodbye. I will be reading all of your words, contributing when I can, and enjoying every minute of it! I wish you all a wonderful new year of roleplaying goodness! Please have much happy gaming, as well as general happiness and prosperity (both of the wallet and the soul!) Until we meet again on the road to adventure, I wish you all the best!

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 2: Favorite Playable Race

Tanis, sans beard.

You have to remember, when going into these blog memes, there are those that think they're not worthwhile. And you know what? They might just be right! But I've never been the most prudent fellow, and have been know to do some corny-ass stuff, so...onward with the post for Day 2! *

* I know I'm still a day behind. Working on my Day 3 post for later today, in order to catch up.

I love the half-elf. This affection might have started with Tanis Half-Elven, tormented co-protagonist of Dragonlance fame. I suppose, like any socially awkward youth, I related to the character's internal struggles.

In the image above, the ears are way too pointy for my tastes. They scream "full elf" to me. I like my half-elf ears to be a lot more subtle.

Anyway, the half-elf also appeals because in 1E AD&D, as well as 2E and my beloved Castles & Crusades, they have some elf abilities but not the weaknesses. OK, I'm generalizing quite a bit with that statement. I'm not an "RPG scholar" and I don't have the books in front of me (and for the purposes of this post, I don't feel an urge to study too hard), but here's what I'm going on based on memory (which could very well be pretty sketchy):

• In 1E, the half-elf is a bit less restricted in class choice compared to the elf.
• 2E introduced the concept of elves getting +1 to Dex and -1 to Con. Half-elves did not suffer this, but instead the whole "child of two races, accepted by neither" was reinforced. Cry me a river. I'll take a "roleplaying incentive" over a mechanical penalty any day. 
• Castles & Crusades did a sort of Middle-Earth thing with half-elves. Meaning, they can choose to take after the elven or human side, and doing so gives different benefits (see Elrond and his, uh, dead brother who chose to lean toward the human side). Translation = made half-elves even cooler.

Again, for any of the above, I welcome corrections/expansions of what I've written.

 

Now, over the years, I haven't played much D&D, but rather mostly served as GM. But those few times I've played, I've mostly gone with half-elves. There was one half-elf ranger in there, of course, as cliched as that is (did I mention I'm a Dragonlance fan?). Most recently, I played a half-elf paladin (named Drance, of course) in a Castles & Crusades-based City-State of the Invincible Overlord campaign.

 

Anyway, that's me and half-elves. Onward to the next challenge post!

Battle of the Bards: AD&D vs. C&C

Ok, maybe I should wait until I have the AD&D and C&C books in front of me before I get into this. Nah. I'm impatient and lazy, so I'm just going to riff on this one. Here goes:

So I'm playing a bard in a campaign using the awesome C&C rules. Anyone who's read this blog for any amount of time knows I love C&C. But now that I'm playing again, and playing a class that I've never played before in any version of D&D, I'm having some issues with some of the rule choices.

So yeah, I'm playing a bard for the first time ever in my gaming career. I thought it would be good to try something new. Anyway, there's this bard ability called "Exalt" that basically boils down to my bard chanting or singing or playing an instrument or something, and inspiring my companions. All well and good.

But this class power only seems to help companions with bonuses to saving throws and attribute checks, not combat bonuses. Somehow, that doesn't make sense to me. I mean, the description of the power mentions "battle cry" or something like that as one method of performing Exalt. So, you loose a battle cry but your companions only benefit via better saving throws? That just seems rather limited to me.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the AD&D bard (1E and/or 2E) have some similar ability that provided bonuses to combat for companions?

Overall, I'm finding the C&C bard sort of, well, bare. Meaning, there doesn't seem to be much that the bard can offer. Sure, Legend Lore is awesome. It allows a bard the potential to know vital tidbits of information during the course of a session. But that and Exalt are the only class powers that a bard has at low levels (I think...again, I don't have the C&C PHB in front of me at the moment).

This issue might seem minor, but there are other C&C class abilities that I'm having issues with here and there. This is sort of making me pine all the more for some Classic D&D. Less character class "powers" to deal with during a game, you know? Meaning, more room for player creativity, right?!

Anyway, any insight you wonderful folks out there can provide, that would be awesome, as per usual! What would I do with out our virtual collective consciousness/hive mind?

Did 2E AD&D Introduce the Natural 20?

One of the big reasons I created this blog was to be able to pose questions to the RPG blogosphere, and get some feedback from the collective mind we have going on here. I am in no way a scholar of D&D Edition Comparitive Studies, although I would like to be such an expert. I just don't have the free time these days to devote myself to memorizing the similarities and differences between the editions. I'm hoping that someone out there has the edition knowledge to answer my question. 

 

So anyway, I've been flipping through my recently acquired (or rather "re-aquired" after my old copies went missing ages ago) 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook, and came across pages 90-91 where it says (under the header "Impossible To-Hit Numbers"):

"...a roll of 20 is always considered a hit and a roll of 1 is always a miss, unless the DM rules otherwise. Under most circumstances, a natural 20 hits and a natural 1 misses, regardless of any modifiers applied to the die roll."

 

Here's my question (again, because I don't really have the time at the moment to dig through all the D&D editions before 2E to figure this out): Is this the first mention of "natural 20" (and natural 1) in Dungeons & Dragons (Basic and Advanced)?

It pains me that I don't know this bit of information. I am sorta ashamed I have to ask it! But I am really curious to get the skinny on this subject. I look forward to your input, folks!

Thanksgiving Holiday RPG Musings

As I’m sure most of us do, I’m thinking deeply about my life during the Thanksgiving holiday. In particular, I’m thinking about my relationship with RPGs. Perhaps my mind is dwelling on this subject because for several weeks now I have not been able to meet with my usual RPG group. So it may be that I’m suffering from withdrawal, and this is making me pine for all things roleplaying. So, here’s what’s on my mind:

 

I believe that I am prone to fits of RPG assumptions. I think since I returned to table-top RPGs in July 2010, I’ve been focusing on retroclones and other modern recreations of out-of-print versions of Dungeons & Dragons, rather than a re-exploration of the actual Dungeons & Dragons games.

I’ve been assuming that retroclones are the direction I MUST go with regard to my return to gaming. I’ve also been assuming, perhaps in a mostly unconscious way, that retroclones are “superior” to the original D&D versions. This applies in particular to Castles & Crusades, which I’ve allowed myself to believe is “better” than Advanced D&D.

 

I think I’m moving away from this superiority belief and moving toward deeper and deeper desire to engage in an in-depth study of the Basic/Advanced D&D editions. I’ve been assuming that I know those systems already. I’ve overestimated my understanding of those original rules. I may know the general concepts pretty well, but my knowledge of the finer aspects of D&D is sorely lacking.

I now think my focus on retroclones has been purely a matter of expediency. They are what’s in print and readily available, and they are often more streamlined that the original versions. This, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, is no doubt due to my current life as a busy adult. When it comes to C&C, there’s also the fact that it makes some changes I like to the Advanced D&D classes, as well as a unified modern mechanic.

 

Of late, I’ve had a growing urge to study, of all things, Second Edition D&D. In the epilogue to my gamer testimonial, I professed a disdain for that edition. I have to say that this supposed disdain is probably based on a tendency to turn away from a pastime after inundating myself with said pastime. This is especially true when it comes to me and RPGs. I think I just immerse myself so deeply in an activity that I burn myself out.

But this rejection of 2^nd Edition AD&D also comes from my weakness for novelty and perhaps a bit of attention deficit disorder. I’m not just talking about Gamer ADD, but just generalized ADD. I think my retroclone focus was based on a tendency I’ve always had to cling to a “newer is better” mentality/habit. I go through phases in life where I cannot focus well on things. But I also labored long under a tendency to assume that prior versions of D&D, or indeed D&D itself, is somehow “childish.” From reading other blogs, I don’t think I’m alone in this. There was a time when I left D&D behind and moved on to RPGs that I thought were more “adult,” such as Amber Diceless RPG and the White Wolf Storyteller games.

 

I know I’ve been rambling here, but this post is probably more for me to talk things out to myself rather than be a coherent read for others. However I would love to hear feedback from readers. To sum up: I’m going to stop assuming I have a deep understanding of the Basic and Advanced versions of D&D, and actually read up on them. I know I have limited time to do so, but I’m going to make the commitment. I’m also going to rethink my prejudice toward 2^nd Edition AD&D and give that system another chance. It is, after all, the version of D&D I played the most besides 1^st Edition AD&D.

Wish me luck as I delve into the depths of my RPG motivations!

Facing Down the Beast

So, instead of bitching about gamer ADD like I've been prone to do in the past, I decided to man-up and do what I should have done before: take all the RPGs that have been plaguing my mind and literally spreading them all out in front of me. Like a lineup of the usual suspects. And I gave them a good hard look, and some thought, and I was determined to come to some conclusions. And I think I've finally regained mastery of my gaming domain.

First there's Castles & Crusades, my number one game. The Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. The Little John to my Robin Hood. The Riker to my Picard. I started out my gaming career with AD&D 1E/2E, and C&C to me is a near-perfect reimagining of those editions of the game. I like what Troll Lord Games has done with the system by incorporating the SIEGE Engine mechanic, bringing some 3E into the mix. I don't have to do much in the way of house ruling to get it to where I need it to be at my table. I will never need to go back to AD&D, because C&C has become the ideal version of those editions, to me.

Now, as I've said before, until recently I never actually played any version of basic/original/non-Advanced D&D. I bought the Rules Cyclopedia when it came out in the early 90's, and also bought the "Black Box" version of D&D, but never actually played them. I missed out on the whole boxed set thing entirely when I was a kid. The LBBs and all that Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, etc. jive was something I would have appreciated back then, I think...but I missed it all. I was just never exposed to it.

But looking back now, and having dabbled in OD&D (especially via Swords & Wizardry and Lamentations of the Flame Princess), I have become more and more enamored of OD&D and its clones. But looking through Moldvay, Mentzer, the Rules Cyclopedia, clones like Labyrinth Lord and S&W and LotFP and all the rest, I think that I feel strongly about actually using the original Mentzer books rather than a clone. I just like the look of the game, the layout of the books, the style, the art (as a confessed Elmore nut). There's just something about it that calls to me.

So, when I get the chance to run some OD&D, I'm going to use Mentzer, with some house rules I'm mulling over to add a bit of spice to things. I'm taking inspiration for my house rules from many sources on the web and blogosphere, as well as from other games. This includes the beta version of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

Now, there are some other various games that have also been tempting me with their shininess. Games such as Barbarians of Lemuria, Dragon Age, and even that game based in Middle Earth called The One Ring that I just learned about YESTERDAY! Yes, gamer ADD has no mercy. Heck, I just really discovered a lot to like about Dragon Age less than a week ago, on Free RPG Day. All of these various other games I have lumped together as potential candidates, but I have used a bit of reality to temper my expectations. These miscellaneous games are nice and all, but I either don't own them, they haven't been published yet, or they would take time to learn that I just don't seem to have these days.

Above all, I'm totally dedicated to the Dragonlance game I am currently running, and have no intention of sacrificing it in order to jump into OD&D right now. And especially not for some new shiny game that would require a whole new cycle of reading rules, learning rules, teaching rules to others, etc. I've been waiting a looooong time to do a Dragonlance campaign,  and I have met a great group of gamers who make running the game a pleasure.

Wow, it feels good to get that all out! All it took was standing up to the beast!

What I (Re)discovered When Looking at 1E and 2E AD&D

Just a quick note about my lack of recall regarding 1E and 2E AD&D and how I was shocked to relearn something about those two editions: I was flipping through PDFs of the 1E and 2E Player's Handbooks last night. I was looking at character classes and races. And I was shocked that I had forgotten that 1E is pretty restrictive when it comes to what classes the demihuman races can take. It's not much different from what was in OD&D, as far as I am concerned. Then I looked at the 2E PHB and saw it was much less restrictive.

During my return to gaming over the last couple years, I was under the impression that 1E and 2E were very similar when it came to allowed race/class combinations. My memory was obviously flawed! Despite my disdain for 2E (which is probably due mostly to the unsavory characters I was gaming with during my 2E era), I think I would much rather play that edition that 1E due to the difference in race/class restrictions. In its own way, 2E is closer to my current game of choice, Castles & Crusades, than 1E.

I feel pretty sheepish at the moment. Ah, what a journey of rediscovery I am on!

I, Gamer: Epilogue

In re-reading my testimonial, it is really glaring how, when I was a kid, I didn’t get any real exposure to the original versions of D&D (i.e. Classic D&D, the versions behind much of the old-school renaissance) before I picked up with 1st Edition AD&D.

Many of the blogs I read are written by guys who started gaming in the 70’s or early 80’s, so they started with OD&D/Classic (aka Basic) D&D. I started in the late 80’s, so my first exposure was to AD&D. I had just a vague impression that something had come before the game I was playing, but no real interest in “going backwards.”

However, I did eventually pick up the Rules Cyclopedia, but that was more out of curiosity and a desire to add the book to my collection (it was advertised/talked up big time in Dragon magazine of course, and I guess the hype worked on me). I never really had any intention of playing it, however.

And for good or ill, my personal Dungeons & Dragons “fate” was to begin my gaming career not long before the appearance of 2nd Edition. I tend to associate 2nd Edition with the decline of my first era of D&D gaming during my teenage years. It may just be my least favorite version of D&D...or maybe not. No, come to think of it, my least favorite version would have to be 4th Edition. More power to those who like 4E, but it's not for me. Like many, I was intrigued with the arrival of 2nd Edition’s numerous (perhaps TOO numerous) settings like Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the rest. But I never really found these settings interesting enough to actually use them.

Yeah, 2nd Edition never really felt right. I never truly got comfortable with it, due to what I considered its unnecessary complexity, the move from the Monster Manual to the Monstrous Compendium, and what I considered to be some of the “lower-quality” artwork (I never was a fan of artist Tom Baxa, or at least the art he produced for 2E AD&D and especially the Dragon magazine of that era).

Anyway, this is all just more navel-gazing on my part, so I’ll stop rambling for now. Some of the stuff in this post will be fodder for other posts, for sure. Until then, game on!

I, Gamer: A Testimonial in Three Parts (2)

PART THE SECOND: Long Game’s Journey into Night (Ages 19 to 25)

So, you’re back! I guess the prospect of reading some guy’s sob story didn’t scare you off? Good! Sorry it’s taken me a few days to post this second part. I know all my readers were waiting with bated breath ;-). Let’s proceed, shall we?

To briefly recap my first post in the series, ages 13 through 19 were the years of my original foray into Dungeons and Dragons. A scant two years (13-15) were entirely dedicated to 1st edition AD&D, and I loved every minute of it. From 15 to 19 I began to play other RPGs (and moved on to 2nd edition D&D), and slowly became disillusioned with Dungeons and Dragons. We return to the story during my 19th year:

So, I began my college career in 1994, and for a short while roleplaying of any kind was on the back burner. I did indeed enjoy myself in college, academically and socially. It was a great time all around. I won’t bore you with the non-gaming details.

I was still in my first year of college when the roleplaying itch returned. How did I scratch that itch, you ask? Well, over the course of the next four years there were two primary ways:

Amber Diceless Roleplaying: If you haven’t read Roger Zelazny’s Amber books, you are doing yourself a great disservice. I heartily recommend that you check them out! For my own part, I had never heard of them until a strange little game called Amber Diceless Roleplaying (ADRPG) came along. A roleplaying game that was DICELESS?! Who could fathom such a thing? It took a man named Erick Wujcik (who had also done work for Palladium Books) to come up with the idea, and he became to me a new Gary Gygax. Both men created games that I came to love and associate with good times in my life.

The Wujcik diceless concept seemed to me the epitome of elegance, something that could strip away all the heavy mechanics many other games sported, and only pure cooperative storytelling would be left behind! It would take a skilled GM and players to handle the “high art” of the Amber game. It was me and two other old friends who primarily explored Amber, and we did so with relish. I felt like some of the magic of my original gaming experiences had returned, from a source totally separate from D&D.

So, yes, I became something of a roleplaying snob. Amber became to me the “grown-up” version of roleplaying. D&D was for kids! I pretty much vowed that I would never play anything else but the ADRPG. Silly man…

Looking back, it was just important that we were having fun. And we did a good job of striking the delicate balance between GM/player connection/trust that is so necessary to ADRPG. If you haven’t played the game, it’s hard to describe…at least for me (I may not be smart enough anymore to explain it properly!). Suffice to say that it’s sort of rules-light and yet somehow “heavy” at the same time, if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that it’s rules-light but cooperation-heavy. I’ve always felt that Amber would be nigh-impossible to play with anyone but close friends. But I’ve been known to be wrong more than once. It would be interesting to hear what other people who have played Amber think (hopefully someone will read this blog and respond! ;-)

Live Action Roleplaying (LARPing): Another type of what I—at the time—considered “roleplaying for grown-ups” was LARPing, which was a relatively new phenomenon back then. Yes, some of you are shuddering. But my decision to LARP was really born out of my surge of social interaction. And part of it was the novelty of getting up from the table and still roleplaying. I was involved in acting on stage during high school and on into college, so LARPing seemed a natural extension of that. I got into a good group of people who were LARPing Vampire: The Masquerade (I’m pretty sure White Wolf almost single-handedly created LARPing…or I may be wrong. Maybe someone can clarify the history for me. Maybe the people who do war reenactments were the first to LARP in a primitive way, and I am sure the people at the Society for Creative Anachronism and Markland have something to say about their role in all of this). All in all, I had some good times LARPing, but after a while it seemed to all become more about who was dating who and other real-world social intrigues rather than the gaming aspect. So I eventually moved away from that scene.

Actually, when I come to think of it, there was a pseudo-third way in which I got a roleplaying fix: board and card games. From my late teens until just a few years ago, myself and a handful of friends played a lot of these types of games, such as Risk (and later A Game of Thrones and Munchkin, but I wouldn’t get into these until years after college) and other (sometimes more obscure) games. Personally, I liked to interject some histrionics and at least a skeleton of a storyline when playing those types of games. But that can only take you so far.

And to some extent reading fantasy novels was another indirect outlet for the gaming itch (and still is to this day). As I read, I would think about how great a novel’s setting would be as a game world, or what a character’s stats would be, or how one would resolve an intricately described combat.

Some of you might be asking: What about computer-based RPGs? Well, when I was a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s it all came down to economics. We were able to afford Nintendo, so I did play a lot of Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior, and Shadowgate was a personal favorite. However, I missed out on all those great Ultima, D&D “gold box” games from SSI, and other such computer games because my family couldn’t afford a computer. The only exposure I got to these types of games was through the father of a friend, who played such games fanatically. This guy eventually built himself a replica of a medieval fantasy tavern as a gaming room, which he stocked with those replica swords and miniature suits of armor you can buy from catalogs. And the heart of this really cool room was his precious computer and a huge bookshelf of games. I would watch him play for hours sometimes, amazed at the graphics, but of course there wasn’t much opportunity for me to actually play. It wasn’t until after my mid-20s that I consistently had a computer of my own with which to game. I’ll talk more about me and computer RPGs in the final post in this series.

During my college years, there were times now and then that I did indeed think about table-top Dungeons and Dragons, remembering with fondness the golden years. By then D&D was already becoming inextricably bound with my memories of my youth, and I couldn’t separate one from the other. Indeed, these table-top thoughts and the accompanying nostalgia have never truly left me. They persist to this day.

By the time of my graduation from college, I had long before gotten out of LARPing, and my Amber table-top games were few and far between. Most gaming endeavors were drowned in my transition from college to “productive” member of society’s labor force. It was the late 90's, and the (then) dreaded millennium creeping up fast. I was filled with great expectations for the new century. I read scores of fantasy novels, and kept on dreaming…

But dreams can be so easily dashed by reality. I was 25 when September 11th happened, and my hopes for the new millennium were darkened by the billowing clouds of smoke rising from American soil. Suffice to say, RPGing wasn’t just on the back burner anymore. It seemed to be banished forever, a relic of my lost youth and innocence, never to be seen again. It seemed that there would be no more innocence anywhere ever again. For a while I looked on all my pastimes as frivolous, wondering if (especially after the terrorist attacks) I should assume some stereotypical form of adulthood and give up daydreaming about gaming.

I entered a personal gaming Dark Age for a time, where only fantasy novels sustained me. I was certain that nothing would ever be the same again. It turns out I was both correct and incorrect…

To Be Concluded in Part Three!