Journey to the Old School
As everyone knows, humor is better when you explain it. So just to make sure everyone’s in on the gag, here’s your link to the cover art for Journey to the Rock. I’m afraid I can’t shed much light on the module’s content, mostly on account of being 0.5 years old in the year of its publication. Happily, a couple of nerds from the long-forgotten epoch of 2010 played it for us. Feel free to share in their journey.
Despite the glib advice of today’s comic, I find that journeying to yesteryear is easier said that done. At this point in my gaming career, I’ve written products for a number of modern systems. I’ve played everything from Fate to Blades in the Dark to Mutants and Masterminds. But despite learning the ropes at the feet of grognards, I’ve never had the chance to game with boxes white, red, or magenta. I’ve quite literally had more encounters with those systems in museums than in real life.
This mess has bothered me for some time. I remember reading about the 5e design team playing through every previous iteration of the game, seeking to pick and choose and learn from each. As a self-described game designer, that sounded like a great idea.
“Wow,” said I. “We should do that too!” But as I looked towards my grognard pals, I found the hallowed halls of geekdom echoing with silence.
Turning to my contemporaries, I sought for like-minded folk. “Fellow students of gaming history!” said I. “Anybody feel like trying out some OSR titles?”
They eyed me warily. “Are you going to learn ’em and run ’em for us?”
And there’s the trouble. I’d rather pick up the style from experienced gamers than try to parse ye olde rulebooks. Yet within my circle of acquaintance, there’s a general consensus that newer titles are simpler to run, better balanced, and more intuitive. Why go back to what’s old and busted? (Or so the thinking goes.)
There’s a very real chance that I’m a lazy millennial who should simply bite the bullet and put in some hours to RTFM. I have to wonder if it’s worth the effort though? So here’s my question to all you denizens of Handbook-World. What has your experience been like with old school gaming? What parts do you miss, which bits are better off going the way of Thaumaturge, and what’s the best way to pick up hands-on experience with the style? So if you feel like indulging one gamer’s curiosity, climb into the Wayback Machine, fuel up your DeLorean, and meet me down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Thrice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
Oops, there’s a typo in the alt text! “may know” instead of “may not”
Fixed! TY for the heads up. 🙂
Technically speaking, I have some experience with 2nd edition AD&D through computer games like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, though I’ve never played an actual tabletop campaign. I did enjoy the dual-class/multiclass system: Multiclass characters actually feel like a balanced mix of both classes rather than just taking one class and throwing on some perks from the other, and the experience requirements being tied to class level rather than character level compensates for missing out on the really good features you get at high levels. On the other hand, the class-race restrictions can go straight to the garbage can; I love Pugilist-type characters who go against expectations, and I hate it when a system punishes or bans such characters rather than encouraging them. I’m also not fond of the high lethality since I prefer character-driven narratives and it’s hard to tell stories about heroes who all died three sessions in.
> I love Pugilist-type characters who go against expectations, and I hate it when a system punishes or bans such characters rather than encouraging them.
When you put it like that, it begins to sound like yet another case of designer intent vs. player creativity.
“In my setting, halflings can’t take the Linebreaker Behemoth prestige class. It’s for large creatures only, and in my setting it’s deeply tied to the lore of the goliath race.”
“Well I don’t care about your lore. It’s my character, and I get to decide what she does. I’m gonna train under a disgraced member of that order, and be the first small-sized behemoth!”
It makes me wonder if there’s an implicit restriction in place? As in “must meet X prerequisite” really means “you’ll be an exception to the rule if you take this option, so consult your DM.”
I mean, it’s one thing if it’s a rare, elite class tied to a specific culture, but it’s quite another to lock off base classes, like saying halflings flat-out can never become rangers or every gnome wizard has to be an illusionist – the former feels like a cool new option, while the latter feels more like dictating what your character has to be. In any case, I prioritise having fun over strict adherence to lore, and unusual characters done well can actually add to the setting by exploring its races and classes from a new angle.
This is why most experienced DM’s in 1e and 2e threw those restrictions out. We took the “rules are guidelines” very seriously and if something didn’t work for our group, out it went.
My homebrew system is the outgrowth of that. I have literally stolen bits from almost every game system I ran across. Base is the old SPI Dragon Quest, huge amounts of AD&D, lots of ICE’s Rolemaster charts and everything else that I got my grubby hands on. Most important though was player feedback and ideas. If they wanted something reasonable and I could fit it in to my world space, then I’d find a way to justify it.
Fortunately our group includes players who played in the old days (I “only” go as far back as AD&D, but we do have people with red box experience). We have found, while there is little appetite these days to delve back into the older versions (amoungst players oddly – we have DM’s happy to run them, but the players would rather do new versions / systems), are players are happy to jump into a first ed Hackmaster campaign with no complaint. I believe Hackmasters tongue-in-cheek nature helps soften the hard edges of the old style of gaming, and makes it a bit more palatable to new audiences.
> the hard edges of the old style of gaming
What are these? High lethality? Wonky math?
Not the original poster, but YES to both. Along with fiddly tables for so many things, and joys like # encountered (roll 4d100 for the # of orcs they find!), a surprisingly large amounts of instant death effects (part of the whole lethality aspect), classes being for humans as other races are basically specialized class-combos, etc… There are some really good and interesting bits to the old systems, but well, time has moved on and things changed for a reason.
From my previous group, none of us had delt with anything older than 3rd edition… exept Cyberpunk 2020 and few other old games, but for DnD 3 & 3.5 had been our first forays into rpgs.
In the current one, me and my brother represent old beards, and his expirience is limited to DnD 3.5 and WFRP 2nd editions, leavibg me as the most expirienced and thus on GM duty unless we play my brothers campaing. While back they wanted to try DnD, I proceeded to suggest a great many alternatives other D20 games like game of thrones and starship troopers or just plain something else, plenty of them being scifi. Well now in order to get at least some gaming almost every week I get to guide bunch of newbies in 5th edition DnD, and even the expirienced guys need to be tought the new rules as neither has played 5th before.
So here I am, a relatively greybearded leading bunch of newbies and teaching the rules while reminding the other greybeard that “no, you don’t get feats every other level, no you don’t get both atribute score increase and feat” All I wanted was maybe some JudgeDredd/Rogue Trooper, Cyberpunk, Paranoia or anything else but high goddamn fantasy.
Well I mean… Could you simply say, “This is the game I’m gonna run?” Would the others literally refuse to play unless it was “high goddamn fantasy?”
Honestly, just dive in. A lot of the older stuff is pretty light compared to more contemporary RPGs, and it’s not too hard to pick up a book and quickly learn how to run a game for your friends.
Running and playing some older games really reignited my passion for tabletop gaming in an era where I didn’t like any of the modern options. And whether you’re looking for a reprieve, or just to see what things were like back then, I’d say it’s worth it.
> Honestly, just dive in.
Do you have a preferred starting point? Which system, and where does one find the introductory rules these days?
If anyone happens to live in Toronto, Canada, the Lillian H Smith library’s Merril collection is a great source of old game books, allowing you to look before you buy. You can also just see if you can use PDFs of the rules of whatever edition you’re interested in. Which that will be will vary by person.
Basic D&D’s Rules Cyclopedia is pretty easily accessible (you can find a PDF easily by searching), and quite light compared to a lot of other editions, so it can make for an easy starting point.
There are several different options I’d recommend, depending on what you want from it.
Labyrinth Lord is free, and recompiles the original 0e rules(with certain serial numbers filed off) into a somewhat modern presentation, without any attempt to modernise the idiosyncrasies. I believe it does, however, give a ruling on certain inconsistencies between different versions of the rules that were floating around at the time. It’s probably the “purest” version around. There’s also an “advanced” addon which covers some of the stuff from, well, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, like race and class being separated.
Swords and Wizardry tidies up several odd elements of the original rules, to make them more friendly to a modern player. For example, it strips out the weird saving throw categories that old school editions had, and presents an option to get rid of the attack tables/THAC0 and descending AC in favour of the sensible attack bonus mechanic used by later editions. (This latter change doesn’t alter the maths; Gygax just chose a really awkward way of presenting a simple calculation!)
ACKS (Adventurer, Conqueror, King System) is less faithful to the original rules. However, it introduces a whole bunch of well-made systems for campaign level gameplay: stuff like building a castle, doing magic research, that kind of thing. Helpful if you want to run an old-school style campaign rather than just a series of old-school modules.
Oh, and if you happen to want to run a game with only one player, I know of no better ruleset than Scarlet Heroes, which also uses old school mechanics and presents them rather nicely. It basically buffs the single PC to be equivalent to an entire party, so you can just run through modules without having to rescale things massively. Not much use if you’re playing with a full party, though. Its spell list is also specific to its setting, so I would use the spell list, bestiary, etc from Labyrinth Lord if you aren’t playing in that setting.
With the exception of ACKS, none of the rulebooks I listed is actually particularly long. If you cut out the spells, bestiary and magic items list, the basic LL rulebook is under 40 pages long, for example.
I should also emphasise that these systems are all basically compatible with one another and with any modules for the original 0e. There are some minor mathematical differences (in particular, you’ll have to get used to subtracting printed ACs from 20 if you use S&W’s attack bonus). But only minor ones. You could, for example, start out playing LL, and then introduce mechanics from ACKS as and when you need them.
Oh, and if you haven’t already, read the Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming. (Google it.) It doesn’t cover any of the rules, but it explains the mindset, which is by far the more important aspect. My own game uses a house ruled fifth edition, but still comfortably fits in the “old-school” category.
I very much miss the focus on domain play and fortress-building, relatively mundane political and economic challenges that filled so many pages of old Dragon magazines and Rules Cyclopedias. I’m not a huge osr fan myself, but I do wish the present day game had ways of doing this stuff that weren’t either massively abstracted and simplified or “just convert this from 2e if you even know it ever existed.”
Any thoughts on “Strongholds and Followers?” It was all the rage a few years ago:
https://www.skullsplitterdice.com/blogs/dnd/strongholds-and-followers-review
Yeah, it’s actually emblematic of the over-abstraction I’m talking about. For something claiming to want to recapture that classic base-building feel, it seems strange to me that the first thing Colville says is essentially “here’s a small table for you to handwave all construction and upkeep.” I normally really like MCDM designs, but in S&F he frames almost everything – class-specific strongholds, servants, income sources – through the lens of things that will give you cool powers to adventure with but not incentivise you to stop adventuring. That’s fine, but it’s a very 5e way of looking at it. What I really like about old strongholds is that they fundamentally changed the dynamics of play as they appeared, so that the arc of a campaign could be (though of course was not always) “work your way up from humble mercenaries to the powerful rulers of a domain and shape world politics” rather than the rather same-y “work your way up from killing a small sack of hit points to killing a large sack of hit points that does more damage, has 1-4 special powers and wants to destroy the world.” From watching his videos, Colville seems to agree with me and try to replicate that more complex arc, but I don’t think S&F is much help for a new DM trying to do the same. Hope that all makes sense!
Did oldschool games have mechanics to support that political style of play? I remember hearing that fighters used to get armies and whatnot….
Yeah, my gaming experience only goes back as far as D&D 3.5e, about 20 years ago now. I’ve read the older editions and a variety of OSR games, but didn’t grow up with them the way some of my group did…
> didn’t grow up with them the way some of my group did…
It’s enough to make a nerd wonder whether you really can experience these games if you didn’t grow up with them? The cultural baggage of years worth of modern games get into the mindset. That’s why I’m intrigued to find grognards willing to run.
I think there’s an element of that, yeah — it’s reading about history vs living through it. The experience of someone who played those early games decades ago when they were new is inevitably different from that of someone like me, reading or playing them with the perspective of someone who’s played a wide variety of newer games.
My gaming experience largely consists of 3.5 to 5e, so I can’t say I know much on ye olde days, but I’ll toss in my two cents when it comes to saving throws. One thing I didn’t like about 3.5 was that save-or-die spells necessitated that at the higher levels, monster save bonuses needed to have gone up faster than player save DCs, which made it frustrating casting non save or die spells, and already knowing that, for instance, the maximised lightning bolt was only going to deal half damage, or that disintegrate was only going to deal 5d6.
One things I do miss, though, is base saving throw bonuses. Monster save DCs go up at roughly the same pace as a player’s “main save” (the save that they’re proficient in and is their main ability score), but the saves that the PC isn’t proficient in simply don’t go up, aside from the odd magic item or ASI. Which lead to problems at the higher levels inverse to what you had in 3.5, where instead of monsters succeeding every save, players have to deal with save DCs of 22 when they have a +1 bonus. That’s probably my only gripe with 5e compared to 3.5 though, overall I do prefer the new system.
> save-or-die spells necessitated that at the higher levels, monster save bonuses needed to have gone up faster than player save DCs
What’s the logic here? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard an explanation for monster save DCs skyrocketing compared to save DCs. Is there developer commentary on the subject? Some old blog post from Monte Cook?
I’m pretty solidly in the camp of your gaming group. I recently looked over a system designed by someone who wanted to evoke the feeling of older systems, and after the third use of ‘this part of the system is extremely unforgiving and meant to be difficult’ on the second page of character creation I closed the pdf and put my vote in for a different system.
That obviously appeals to some people (someone liked it enough to write an entire system, after all) but I’m not the type of gamer who looks for inherent adversity in my systems.
The other similar thing is my only experience with Traveler. After losing a character during creation, I gave a real hard look at the GM and asked him why we were playing something so needlessly antagonistic. I did roll up a second character, but the game never got off the ground.
> ‘this part of the system is extremely unforgiving and meant to be difficult’
I suppose I’m more interested in the idea of a short-form campaign in these systems. The years-long thing could be awfully tough if your character dies ever few sessions.
But on the other hand, I’ve hard whispers from the greybeards about treasured characters who survived against the odds, becoming legendary by virtue of longevity. Such characters may not have the best backstories and most compelling character arcs, but they actually made it against the odds rather than “failing forward” into the late game.
Yeah… there’s definitely a part of the OSR movement who seem to enthusiastically associate “old school” with sado-masochism. That attitude doesn’t actually seem to be present in most of the genuinely old games I’ve read, and I suspect a lot of it is gatekeeping by self-appointed “real gamers”.
For comparison — I’ve got the OD&D rules in front of me right now, and while it’s not the easiest to follow, it’s not excessively complex either — the core book is just 35 pages, character creation is basically “roll stats, pick class, buy equipment”. The combat system is the only part which gave me any trouble, and I think that’s because it assumes some familiarity with the miniatures games D&D grew out of… adding one or two more worked examples would solve that easily enough.
I am old. I have been playing PnPTTRpG games (yes, I said it >:D ) for a great number of my years on this planet. I started right at the tail end of 1st edition D&D as 2nd Edition was beginning to release those faux leather bound tomes for each of the classes to expand on their rules greatly. I had the Rulepedia that collected all the 1st edition knowledge in one single book (a book no thicker than the modern day Monster “Manuel”).
As 2nd Edition (Advanced D&D as it was then known) was brought lo by the new and (at the time) improved rules of 3rd (and then 3.5) I transitioned, and along the way I tried other systems, other settings, and other rules within the setting I loved (anyone remember the Saga rule system for Dragonlance the 4th age? I do… and I legit loved it then and love it now).
Shadowrun, Kevin Siembieda games (Rifts being the most famous, but all his games have a similar ruleset), GURPs, Cyberpunk, and a host of other rules and game systems that never made it past a single print of their main rule book, despite having some interesting ideas each.
Having made my way all the way to 5th edition D&D (and skipped 4th as a result of being unhappy at how fast they went from 3rd to 3.5, to 4, and having heard tales both ancillary from other gamer friends and direct from the source years later when the company that made the game admitted to it’s direct design influence), that it was nothing more than an attempt to turn the game into an MMO, because that was the big thing that the devs thought was killing their experience… I can say that while nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and some might not have ever had the original experience of playing the games when they were fresh and new… DON’T LOOK BACK!
You may turn to salt if you seek to see things of the past. Either by virtue of finding yourself alone in the old dark as none of your current compatriots will seek to join you in that ancient place or because the past you seek is not the place you thought it would be and you may end up disappointed in what you find.
If it is the feel of nostalgia and the sillyness of rules made more complex than they needed to be, then seek a bit of Hackmaster or something similar. Modern rules made to be “like” the old, but not actually so badly made that they fall apart if you dig deeper than a few inches into their dusty pages.
Progress is looked at by some as a destruction of tradition, but tradition unimpeded by progress is just a bunch of old people shaking their fists at the young saying “In my day!” and then yelling at them to get off their lawn. People that say things were better when they were young, have not looked at the advances in technology that are making things literally better. Things did not “last longer” and were not “built better”, they were just easier to fix (remember all the errata back in the day… yikes).
Stick with the current and when it does make another inevitable change, dip a toe and see what’s new. If it is another 4th edition fiasco, sure, stick with the previous gen (or swap to Pathfinder like a lot of people did), but if things have gotten better as they usually do, just step fully in, swim around in the new, and let the past exist in the past. Sometimes old, is just… old.
That’s just one old person’s opinonion 😉
Where does one go to pick up Hackmaster in this day and age? I’ve heard rumors of tables upon sub-tables upon sub-sub-tables, but I cannot say whether the legends are true.
I’ve thought about trying to watch some old-school actual play, but that seems less likely to teach rules.
https://kenzerco.com/hackmaster/
it started as a joke on their comic (Knights of the Dinner Table) as the “non-brand specific) game of choice, but then they actually released rules on year, and it became so popular, it is it’s own thing now!
I don’t know if the current edition of the rules are still as jokey as the original was (there were tables for hit location that went from skin, to muscle, to bones, and even veins XD), but for those seeking nostalgia with a twist of fun, this would be my goto game of choice.
My first experience with d&d was with ‘The Classic Dungeons and Dragons Game’ boxed set; which translates to, according to RPGGeek, the 5th and final edition of D&D Basic. I was in elementary school at the time, and the rules were simple enough for my siblings and I to mostly get right. It also has my favorite art of any d&d publication I’ve read, to this day.
It might be a more refined version of the rules to try out; though unless you’re content with the intro module you’ll need to find a monster manual for it somewhere.
For myself, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I port old basic or ad&d modules to 5th edition and run my players through that.
Are we talking about this art?
https://cf.geekdo-images.com/46hvx5gVbMrMtUtb4sarCQ__opengraph/img/q4mjFc0p1_yvYlEnxo53a2DK3Yo=/fit-in/1200×630/filters:strip_icc()/pic504099.jpg
> I port old basic or ad&d modules to 5th edition and run my players through that.
Is there some quality to old-school adventures that you can’t get with modern stuff?
Nope! This art:
https://cf.geekdo-images.com/N2Jr12g-IHBczG4AxvWD7A__imagepage/img/rq0Jf3zKqQUFeIUGKxB1xxFm9EU=/fit-in/900×600/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic762089.jpg
The interior art was also quite good, by Terry Dykstra.
>Is there some quality to old-school adventures that you can’t get with modern stuff?
Honestly, just nostalgia, haha.
Well, not sure why that link didn’t work; let’s try this:
https://rpggeek.com/image/762089/classic-dungeons-dragons-game
Just gotta say, love the wizard’s outfit here.
Somewhere, tied up and half-naked in a back alley, Raistlin Majere seethes in fury.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Raist_spell.jpg
😛
I guess I’m one of the grognard’s. First experience with the game was back in 1978 at my first base. 1st ed. Players Handbook had just come out if I remember correctly. My sorta boyfriend at the time introduced me to his gaming group and that’s all it took.
I still prefer 1e and 2e over any of the newer editions. Of course I’ve been DMing for 40+ years, so I’ve got almost as many “house” rules are there are actual rules.
Both hubby and I gave 5e a chance. Played for almost a year with a couple different DMs. To me it feels like someone handed me a weak tea and ships biscuit compared to the full Sunday Dinner of the other editions.
I just can’t understand how people think that system that pretty much railroads you through 20 levels over a years time is better than systems that allowed any action the DM approved and every level felt that you had earned it. In all the years I’ve played, I’ve only had characters 20+ level in high level campaigns where we rolled them up at that level.
I’m all for people playing what they enjoy, whether I understand it or not. And, obviously, 5e is doing something right with how popular D&D is now. I just really miss the times where a player would pop up with an idea that saved the whole party, totally off the cuff.
> systems that allowed any action the DM approved and every level felt that you had earned it.
Can you give me an example? Was it the “high lethality” and “player skill” in those earlier systems that made your levels feel earned? What qualities in 5e feel like systemic railroading? Do we tend to look at the character sheet and lists of abilities rather than our own creativity?
Railroading specifically refers to the module heavy system that is 5e. The whole system is set up to take characters from 1st to 20th level in a years time. That leaves very little leeway for the DM to allow for party creativity.
Actually, 1e and 2e didn’t have “high lethality”, it wasn’t that hard to keep your characters alive if the DM wasn’t actively trying to take the party out (and yes there were plenty of DMs who did). “Earned” is more about the experiences your character went through, not just battles but the interaction with the DMs world. As you played, your character learned more about the world, learned new skills sets and, given a good DM, grew as a “person”.
If you were with a good DM, your character at level 10, should look quite a bit different than your first level character. Not just in equipment and skills, but also in a more mature outlook. I’ve played with some really fantastic DMs and with some really crappy ones (as in leaving after the second session bad). A good DM makes you want to dive in and experience everything their world has to offer. A good DM can even take the experience of running through a set of modules and make it uniquely there own.
Everything I’ve seen of 5e really discourages that kind of play, but again we only had access to a couple of DMs during the year we played. I know a LOT of people love it, but it really bored the living hell out of me.
there own = their own “doh”
I am a ‘red box’ owner and literal greybeard. I got the set when I turned 10 if that says anything. And I still have it, contents and all. It is not in pristine condition but I still have it tucked away and I still occasionally use the dice that came with it. They’ve seen a lot of tabletops over the years.
That said, the newer systems are generally better than what came before. Designers have learned over the years and iterated on what worked best. My DnD career has spanned every edition from the ‘red box’ to 5e, excepting 4e because it was kind of a turd and my group wanted to stick with 3.5 at the time. While I have plenty of nostalgia for those old days, I have no real desire to dust off the old rules and play by them again.
> I am a ‘red box’ owner and literal greybeard. I got the set when I turned 10 if that says anything.
I’ll have you know that I had to do math. How dare you.
> Designers have learned over the years and iterated on what worked best.
Gimme an example! What did they jettison and what did they keep?
I’ll also note that I was playing the game before that. A slightly older kid across the street introduced me to the game. My mother was one of those odd folks who took those ‘age X and up’ labels on games and toys seriously. While she oddly had no apparent objection to me playing the game, I couldn’t own it until I turned 10 because that was the age on the box.
Well a really old example of rules gone away would be the fact that IIRC, in the red box rules, ‘Elf’ is a class and a race. You gain XP and level up as an ‘Elf’, not as an Elven Wizard or Fighter or other class. And frankly, the world is better off without the THACO system as well.
I think that much of what has stayed the same or been built upon is the base concepts and stats of the game. The skeleton hasn’t really changed too much. The articulation has gotten better though.
And while I have no idea how easy it would be to get a copy now, there is a game I backed on Kickstarter years ago that had a pretty interesting mechanic I think. The game is called Better Angels. It is a game of supervillainy. Comic book style super heroes and villains exist but they don’t derive their powers from mutations and super serums and such. That’s just what the public believes. The truth is that every hero and villain is possessed by a demon or angel who grants the host powers for doing evil or good deeds, as appropriate. You are such a villain. You’ve got a demon riding shotgun in your head and it will give you amazing powers if you do bad things. But if you do too much evil, the demon can get a chance to slam dunk you into Hell. This is why super villains monologue and come up with big impractical plans for world domination. It is to keep the demon entertained and give the heroes a chance to thwart them before they go too far. But the gimmick I refer to is how the demon is handled. You play the human/supervillain part of the character but your demon is played by the player next to you at the table. The person to your left (sinister) is the demon you have to appease in order to do cool things. You in turn are the demon for the poor soul to your right and they have to appease you. It is definitely a game that relies on some good RP skills, but when it works, it is wild.
Bah, I’m with the old-timer’s club (I actually have a white beard) and started with the Basic set back in the day.
I have a lot of fond memories of 1e AD&D, and I think that the more modern publications have lost the vocabulary and poetry of some of the older rule books. That said, (IMHO) 3 saving throws (looking at you, 3.5) are a lot better than 5 or 6 (you have failed us, 5e). It took a lot of kit-bashing between 2e, Red Steel, & Spelljammer to cobble together enough kits to create swashbuckling paladins or duelist mages, but it was doable. My initial complaint about 3.0 was that it was “too easy” to multiclass and create bespoke characters. (I have since met 5e and retracted my earlier comments.)
I gotta say that for one brief, shining moment, 3.X and the D20 license came close to truly realizing the promise of the old Generic Universal Role-Playing System (GURPS) by creating an intuitive (low=bad, high=good) and fairly simple rules set that virtually any setting or genre (or unholy mix thereof) could be plugged into and run almost flawlessly.
When I look back (and forward) to all these products, I realize that my own habits have answered your question for me. I mainly write new 3.5 material for my players or adapt the old stuff (or 5th edition) to 3.5, rather than try to drum up any support to run a game in an older system. I’m still in the midst of adapting the TMNT RPG into D20 Future.
> lost the vocabulary and poetry of some of the older rule books.
I have fond memories of “glossaries of terms” from older rulebooks, including obscure words like “portcullis” and “viscount.” Now glossaries include rules terms like “AC” and “combat maneuver.” It’s as if modern games were written by gamers rather than fantasists.
> I realize that my own habits have answered your question for me. I mainly write new 3.5 material
I conceive of 3.X as a good “poetry language,” like English. It’s complex at points, has some unintuitive moments, but its peculiar stew of components and influences allows for highly expressive characters and rules. 5e is an excellent common tongue, like Esperanto. It’s easy to pick up, but it allows for less creative expression.
YMMV of course. 🙂
My experience with old school gaming is playing 2E as a wee lad, and not going back because I gel with modern game design more. I just have no patience for “Ooops you’re dead” design. RIP Gabe the Human Magic User.
How do you feel about the sense, expressed elsewhere in this comments section, that you really earned your levels back then?
You didn’t succeed so much as the DM and dice chose not to kill you. You “Earn” levels the way billionaires “earned” their wealth.
Actual quote from a campaign I was in, when two PCs met for the first time:
PC 1: “What ho?”
PC 2: “Excuse me?”
…Gamers do not always have the most ‘refined’ sense of humor.
Played a bit of 2e D&D with a friend, specifically one of the Elemental Evil modules (I believe it was a dungeon near Hommlet). It was a rather short experiment, but not entirely bad – it was interesting playing an old-timey style paladin (who had odd rules like having to spend a chunk of their loot on charity, and having very specific character generation requirements).
I sometimes miss the deadliness of it. Or low-HP is perhaps a better way of putting it. Of course this is partly because of me playing a lot of Call of Cthulhu early in my RPG career (Which has greatly inured me to the concept of character death), but also because I grew up having a lot of dungeon crawls in my game.
One of my issues DM´ing in 5e, is that I generally don´t find dungeon crawling fun in it. Among other reasons is that a simple combat encounter can easily take somewhere from 30 minutes to an hour, which can make it kinda a slog. Compared to this, in the games I played as a child, battle often went very quickly as it often took less damage for the parties to kill each other, which meant we could quickly move on to the exploration or the roleplaying. And the deadliness meant that the combat was still exciting.
Of course there is also the other side of this, which is that it can be kinda hard to get into your character, when they keep dying on you.
Not exactly old D&D, but when I started playing RPGs the only system we played was a swedish roleplaying game called Eon, more specifically the 3rd edition. About a year ago some of us got the urge to go back and play it again, and beat an old adventure that had been attempted multiple times but never finished.
It was fun… but most of that was probably due to nostalgia and the fact that we kind of knew what we were doing. And even then at the end of it all, all I could think was that I remembered why we stopped playing Eon 3 and went on to better designed games. It’s like that old saying; “a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there”. Even if it was spectacular and hilarious when one of the other player characters managed to fumble so hard on an attack that they cut open their own throat and then proceeded to bleed to death.
… yeah, Eon 3 can be really weird sometimes.
DID SOMEONE SAY OSR
ahem
My introduction to D&D was the Baldur’s Gate games when I was but a child (before even, my mom played them before and after I was born) and thus was born a love for the hobby. Of course, I prefer things to have the old vibes with less obtuse rules (thac0 can go die along with race-class restrictions and humans arbitrarily having a different multiclass system). Nowadays, my go-to system(s) is the GLOG, or rather the many hacks and bits and bobs based on the original mess of a system from the Goblin Punch blog. The whole vibe is customizability, compatibility, and simplicity, and I love all the weird classes people come up with. Examples include Many Goblins, Sacred Alchemist, Ripped Wizard… and even within the classes people make a LOT of wizard schools. A lot of hacks are pretty simple, so I’d recommend checking some of it out.
Link to an explanation of GLOG for someone better at explaining than me:
https://madqueenscourt.blogspot.com/2020/07/glog-for-gretchlings-or-notes-towards.html
I’m a literal greybeard… but my experiences are likely opposite of those other grognards still clutching their original three volume D&D (1974) editions and refusing to update…
“I have to wonder if it’s worth the effort though?”
Depends on what you want out of it. Know this youngling, not even those hoary oldsters play as they did back then, for change has come upon all. At best you’re getting a game “as they remember it”, with many years of nostalgia warping the weft of the “way it was”.
For my money? No, it’s not worth it. But, if you really want to, I’d say grab either the BECM series and be prepared to find out Wizard is now an Elf and not a Wizard! (Shock! Alarm!) Or grab the 2nd ed D&D so you can experience the “olden days” play with a might bit more flexibility (but tread not into the Complete splatbooks, for there is unbalanced play galore – unless you’re into that).
“What has your experience been like with old school gaming?”
I grew up playing it? It was fun, but I always yearned to make characters from literature that you just couldn’t using the system. Like Conan, Barbarian-Thief-Fighter(?), that’s too complicated; or Grey Mouser, apprentice Wizard turned Swashbuckling Thief. Or the Heart-Bow wielder*, who had powers that were more than just “conferred by an artifact”… but how do you do that using the Player’s Guide?
GURPS does all of them and more. And yes, 4e stepped even closer, but still refused to unclench from classes and levels…
.* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082027/
“What parts do you miss…”
Being a kid.
“… which bits are better off going the way of Thaumaturge…”
All of it.
“… and what’s the best way to pick up hands-on experience with the style?”
Find one of those cantankerous old whitehairs still clutching their ancient tomes and convince them to run a pick-up game for you and your crew. No old GM worth their salt could refuse. Just beware, their games are fraught with “the way it was” which is somehow always better than than the way it is.
And come prepared to endure many a tale that starts with “In my day…” 😉
Urgh, The Heart Bow. I almost made a mistake of letting a player bring that in before seeing the movie. Didn’t sound that overpowered the way he originally described it. It lasted until he handed me to write up he had done. Told him if I wanted a nuclear weapon posing as a bow, I’d run them through Space Farce.
For those not familiar.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082027/
Ooh, I can answer this one! I’m really into OSR, and general RPG design.
First of all, I’d like to make a distinction between the OSR playstyle, and actual old-school rules. Because back in the day people would play D&D in so many different styles, including similarly to how people play 5e nowadays (usually called the “trad” style, and it got really popular thanks to Dragonlance). It’s no surprise that a lot of people who played these old systems enjoy modern ones better; modern systems are more designed around this popular playstyle.
The way most people play OSR is really a very modern playstyle, one that actually worked a lot better with old-school rules than modern ones like 5e. But honestly, it’s really different than how most people actually played these systems back when they were current. It’s a modernized playstyle inspired by the old days.
But anyway, that doesn’t answer your question. What are the draws of the old-school rulesets? Generally the rules were more simple (especially in the current OSR darling, B/X). They were also a lot more modular, it was really easy to keep rules you liked and leave out what you didn’t like. Combat wasn’t a draw of the game, it was something dangerous to be avoided if possible. And player skill and cleverness was more important.
As for actually playing, if your players are hesitant to try an actual old-school ruleset, maybe they would be interested in more modern OSR material? I strongly suggest reading Principia Apocrypha ( https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html ). Follow the GMing advice there. Look at the system and starter module recommendations, they’re all great. (My personal recommendation is to use Knave, and run Winter’s Daughter).
If you’re interested in playing actual old-school editions, I think nowadays a lot of communities tend to cluster in Discord servers. So for example, if you want to play B/X D&D, go on the Old-School Essentials official discord (the most popular retroclone of B/X), and see if there are any groups recruiting. That’s where I’d start.
I’m just a young buck so I don’t know how welcome I am in the distinguished hallowed halls of the greybeards and grognards but one of my friends fathers collected OD&D and a bunch of the old dragon magazines.
I didn’t actually start playing with those old resources because the rules were a bit arcane, I got my start with 5e but after a chat with the old man, Wally ran us a game in the spirit of the old Baldurs gate games, I don’t recall it lasting terribly long because he was and is a very busy man but damn if it didn’t feel like harkening back to a bygone age.
Playing a magic user and dying of yellow mold will always be one of my favorite and treasured memories of roleplaying, that and the beautiful old illustrations which still to my mind stand unmatched and immortal in those crusty old magazines and books.
Enter WizardMcBBEG, Pathfinder 1st edition Level 19 wizard (Party level: 16) The GM (me) spends 6+ hours picking his spell list, preparing plans for various tactics the party might use, etc.
WizardMcBBEG dies on round 2. Only two pcs (of 5) participated in dealing damage to the boss. The party’s initial plans didn’t matter because a 4x crit weapon chunked the boss from half hp to dead.
Enter RogueMcMiniboss, Pathfinder 2e creature level 9. (Party level: 7) I spend 2 hours creating flavorful passives, actives, and picking enchantments for her weapons.
The combat lasts long enough that she actually ran out of arrows, and all of the pcs participated in the fight in some way. Abilities were interesting and kept the combat moving in a way that provoked the party to change plans on the fly.
As much as I do enjoy pathfinder 1st edition, gods above and below, it is *so much easier* to make satisfying boss encounters in 2e.
While there are some older systems certainly worth revisiting (Like I don’t think we’re likely to see a new edition of Teenagers from Outer Space anytime soon), I think as far as D&D itself goes… there’s probably not a ton to learn from the older editions that you didn’t pick up from 3.5, 4th, & 5th.
That said, the farthest back I’ve gone is 2nd edition and that was only because 3.0 wasn’t out yet. I honestly can’t recommend the experience over it’s newer editions (even as busted as I think 3.0 & 3.5 are).
If you want to revisit old modules for the sake of classic tones… well there’s no need to actually *play* them to do that is there?
And I think it might be that way for a lot of systems with newer editions. Typically the goal is to learn from your mistakes/other people’s improvements to the gaming scene as a whole. But of course sometimes interesting things are lost in the transition.
Like I know some people really liked a lot of the Old WoD lore more than New WoD stuff. (I haven’t followed what they’ve done since, so I can’t really comment on that.)
In the end you can have fun playing anything, but I think a lot of people have moved on from Dark Souls “the difficultly is part of the fun” style onto other ways of enjoying ourselves. But not all of us because there’s still always some new attempt to rekindle past styles in new ways. So… *shrug* All I can say is that I personally probably wouldn’t have been terribly interested and would be more likely to be open to the large breadth of new things, most of which I’ve probably not even heard of or played something largely similar to.
There’s definitely RPGs where later editions are just direct upgrades to older editions. But I don’t think D&D really counts in that aspect because the different editions are almost entirely different games. The settings may be the same, but the goals of each edition and the feel they result in are very different. And the TSR editions are very different from the WotC ones in particular.
So continuing the video game metaphors, I’d compare D&D more to the Final Fantasy series, especially with how the gameplay changes between titles.
This is only tangential, but in light of Pathfinder bringing in a new sexy thaumaturge class, any chance the Patrons might get the chance to fold a new bearer of that name into the fold?
*vote
Well, that is one of the beauties of KAP (King Arthur Pendragon RPG). it was so advanced for it’s time that the basic mechanics, the premise and adventures have not changed in more then 30 years. It was, and still is, a game about knights, who, within the framework of the Arthurian Cycle, try to carve out a small manor, and raise (and then play) sons and other siblings, from the dark times just before Uther, until the ginormous battle at the end, in which Mordred and Arthur kill each other. And then history reasserts itself…. So no, I have next to no longing, or revulsion, for the good/bad old days, as I basically still play that exact same game. Some parts of the mechanics, and the whole narrative, of the Arthurian cycle have been expanded, and fine-tuned, and some accents of setting and mechanics have been changed, but any adventure from the 1st edition can be played with the current edition 5.2. However, there is a new 6th (apparently definitive) edition on the horizon, so I might be in a position to compare old-school and newer playing sometime next year….
New does not always mean better. Remember, there was a time not so long ago when 4e was the newest edition.
I miss how easy death was in the early years of tabletop gaming. In my opinion, characters *SHOULD* slog through a dangerous profession to become powerful. The whole nature of the game is that you’re in a high-risk field hoping, nay, clawing for high-reward.
And it’s kinda universal; every game I’ve seen release in the last decade has been going the way of “it’s really hard to kill characters”, and that disappoints me. As a GM, it turns me into a dick when I try to make stories lethal.
So… I’m slightly older than you my dear author, and I will tell you about my experiences with 2e, which is to say I have none due to having been willfully excluded by the people that I knew who played it. Nevermind that THAC0 is counter intuitive backwards math, or that Elf is a race *and* a class, or whatever other exceptionally anachronistic nonsense is in 2e (and likely 1e)-the grognards were, and to some extent, still are *the defining memory of the system.*
As I’m sure you’re aware, gamers and gatekeeping is bandied about a lot by foggy academics-largely gaming is a very accepting hobby-computer, table top, or otherwise. However, it is true that at one point it was less so.
3e remains my favorite edition not because it was my first exposure to DnD but because it was the first edition I was *allowed* to play, where I was invited to sit down with a group of my friends and learn this Dungeons and Dragons thing. 2e will ever remain the game of “You can’t play with us” to me. And sincerely, from everything I have ever read about it, I am perfectly fine with that to be the case.
Just want to point out that old systems are eeeeasy conpared to new stuff, which is part of the appeal. The rules for a class in AD&D-like games take up one page each. Some OSR nuts run a different system every few games.
Old School Essentials (advanced player’s tome / ref tome) are the way to go if you want the rules well-presented and easy to parse. On the other hand, Basic Fantasy is free.
Also… people overstate the whole “deadly game of deadliness” thing. Sure at level 1 you’re a paper bag but that’s only slightly less true in 5e. Sure magic-user hit dice keep you relatively squishy but at the same time… you get SO string as you get more spells. Use common sense and you won’t die. Act exceedingly stupid and you might.
Another thing:
ACTUAL DUNGEON-CRAWLING RULES.
Ever noticed how time in D&D is all in 10 minute chunks? There’s a reason for that., it’s the same reason why dungeons were grid-based long before combat was.
Time matters Where you choose to look matters because you’re spending time. Whether you try picking that lock over and over matters because you’re spending time. Other creatures are in there with you and weird stuff is always happening. Do you really want to stay there longer than necessary?