So I thought I'd write about a couple
of other things that have been on my mind for the last few weeks
while I have been doing all this Norse research work, which really
wasn't all that hard for me because I am pretty into Norse stuff
anyway. Next year though, if there is an A-Z challenge in April, I
will think to pick a subject that has more letter options.
But I am digressing from my original
point here, which was to NOT write about the Norse A-Z topic I picked
this year and instead write about the other things that have been
creeping into my brain during that time. First there's the whole Star
Trek and Klingon Assault Group thing, both Star Trek gaming, mostly
through Star Fleet Battles, but also a little through the FASA RPG
have been a big deal for me and my game time in the past. The Klingon
Assault Group, while it coincides slightly with the gaming, is
another beast altogether. I want to recruit people to KAG, because
dressing like a Klingon and acting like a Klingon is awesome fun; but
I guess only if you are part of a particularly brave subset of
Trekkie.
I have also been slowly working on my
own realization of the 1985 TSR AD&D 1st edition Oriental
Adventures book. I wrestle with some of the core ideas presented in
that book, and I go back and forth over whether or not the book was
too ambitiously focused on presenting an entire fantasy east Asia,
while still being concentrated on Japan, or if they weren't ambitious
enough and should have gone further in their attempt to include
everything Asian with the same "kitchen-sink" approach they
gave the western world with "regular" AD&D. As it
stands, the book is a mostly Japanese game that could not decide on
it's focus; was it going to be about court and intrigue? Those skills
(sorry, proficiencies) were presented for the first time in any D&D
product in the OA book. Was the game about serving a Lord or Clan or
a Temple even? That's kind of implied in several class descriptions,
but no real advice was given to the DM about how to make a well
balanced party work together if it included, for instance, a Samurai,
a Ninja and a Sohei. The "normal" adventuring paradigm of
AD&D was broken in OA, and no fixed replacement was offered.
Add on top of that the fact that the
game had a real issue deciding whether it wanted to emulate a
Chanbara film or Ninja film or a Kung-Fu film and we have a problem.
Many of the classes don't work well together, and, even if you are
not a Monk, you can easily become a martial artist deadly enough to
out class the party Samurai, as I saw in my last OA campaign when the
Yakuza character took Tae Kwon Do instead of weapons proficiencies. The Wu Jen
spell list is inadequate, and while I intend to reverse engineer that
list from the 3e compatible magic books I snagged off Ebay that were
designed for Rokugan and the Legend of the Five Rings Setting, I can
only come to the inescapable conclusion, despite my love of 1st
edition AD&D and my nostalgia for Oriental Adventures and the fun
campaigns that I have played using those rules, that AEG and L5R were
better conceived and better designed than the rush job that I suspect
that 1st edition OA was. The best thing I can say about 1st edition's
AD&D Oriental Adventures is that it is far superior to the
abortion that was 3e OA.
There are gems in the 1st edition OA
books, I have seen mentioned on other blogs recently the
Yearly,Monthly,Daily events tables. The court game might have worked
if they had separated out weapon proficiencies from the "peaceful"
ones. The Samurai class might have been less the super class that it
was if it hadn't gotten a requirement to specialize in two weapons,
something BANNED to every other class. The Kensai, which should be
spelled Kensei, needs a total reworking, it is a valid class idea,
but screwing him over by never letting him wear any armor OR have a
magic weapon of his "chosen" type blows. The two "Cleric"
classes of OA both suck though, the Sohei is just a second class
Fighter until finally receiving some spells at 6th level? The
Shukenja (which should be spelled Shugenja) can't fight anything BUT
spirits? Ninja as a "Split-Class" = dumb idea, easy enough
to create a Shinobi class, I did it once and I can do it again.
Currently I am reading a lot of
Japanese history, watching Samurai movies about the Sengoku Jidai era
and reading books about the Samurai and Bushido written during the
Tokugawa era, while I am not reading and studying up on Norse history
and lore. Obviously, I think the focus of Oriental Adventures should
be on Japan and Japanese history and mythology, more focus is better.
This is why OA1: Swords of the Daimyo was such a good sandbox to play
in, it ignored all of the other nations of Kara-Tur, except for brief
mentions. I think every single copy of Oriental Adventures should
have come packaged with that module, although the adventures
presented are weak.
The other thing that has me feeling
nostalgic is my old Steppe Warriors guild, I recently spruced up our
Facebook tribute page a bit, and I tried to get in touch with some of
the old guys that I lost contact with over the years. AOL's
Neverwinter Nights did go offline in July of 1997, we tried a few
other online games, even text based ones, but none had the awesome
community of AOL's NWN. We weren't there for long, and the core of us
were local to the Oswego county area, which is why it was easy for us
to have our reunions, at least in the beginning. But I miss all those
guys, even the ones I have fought with over the years; and it kind of
makes me sad that I never did get around to playing that Steppe
Warrior campaign that I always wanted to. I even have a good idea for
it now, but we've scattered to the four winds, and the ones left in
the area mostly don't talk to each other anymore. Upstate New York's
greatest export has always been it's people.
Now, lastly, I have a Dawn Patrol play
report that's more than a week over due. We had decided the last time
we played that we were sick and tired of random encounters with
Fighters versus Two-Seaters and the whole "I fly straight for
six squares to complete my mission, now try and shoot me down before
I get home" BS. So we just decided on a Fighter engagement, and
randomly chose French or British to engage the Germans; then rolled a
die to advance the war a number of days. Since I got thee time wrong,
and was running late to start with, all of this was taken care of
before myself and John even made it to Big Darryl's house.
The date was February 10, 1917. Two
Fighter patrols ran into each other deep inside German held
territory. My son John and I played the French, we were flying Spad
VIIs and the two Darryls were playing the Germans who were both
flying Albatross DIIIs. Darryl Jr. was playing his pilot
Vizefeldwebel Oskar Schaeffer, who was flying his second mission.
Darryl Sr. was playing his pilot Oberleutnant Erich Von Reinstadt,
who was flying his 10th mission. John was flying his pilot Lieutenant
Guy Bernet and I was flying my pilot, the Serbian volunteer,
Lieutenant Vaclev Petrovic; Lieutenant Bernet had two missions and
was deemed the flight leader.
Now is the part where I wish I had
written this out while it was clearer in my memory, I took a few
notes, but I didn't bring the mission logs home with me, maybe I
should do that in the future.
The mission started out well enough for
us Frenchmen, we were all at high altitude and the Spads outperform
the Albatrosses at pretty much every altitude anyway, their only
advantage is their dual Spandau guns, which are deadly. We closed to
dogfighting range and ended up in a line firing at each other's
tails, poor Darryl Jr. in the lead with no target, everyone took a
little bit of damage, except me, because I was in the back. It got a
little chaotic then, it broke into two dogfights that kept running
back into each other, we ban overt table talk during the game, but we
can give some pointers about rules and tactics to newer players like
John or Dalton (who didn't make this game). Sadly, seven turns into
the game Schaeffer scored a critical engine hit on Bernet's plane and
it exploded.
Now, completely out of character, it
was the luckiest of hits possible, and I felt kind of bad because I
shot down John the last time he played (while he was playing MY pilot
I might add), so the poor kid has played twice now, and gotten shot
down twice. He's a quick learner and he didn't do anything wrong
here, except be unlucky; yes, if he stuck around he might have gotten
shot down anyway, he was the least experienced player in the game,
but I really hope it doesn't sour him on Dawn Patrol.
At that point, outnumbered two to one,
you might think I'd just cut and run for my lines, right? Nope. I
stuck it out for another ten turns. I'd like to say it was purely for
vengeance for my downed comrade, but part of it was also because I
was, up until that point, the only one in the group with a legitimate
kill scored on another player, so I was trying to shoot Darryl Jr.'s
pilot Schaeffer down to keep my record intact. I almost had him a
couple of times, I missed at 50' range twice, my guns jammed once,
and I had to do all this while evading the other Albatross DIII, not
always successfully. Not all the bad luck went in the favor of the
Germans, there were a couple of occasions where I almost certainly
should have been shot down, both of my wings had sustained a lot of
damage and my engine was two hits away from gone, I was just
incredibly lucky on critical hit rolls.
In the end, I shot Schaeffer's plane up
pretty bad, and Von Reinhardt had some minor damage too, but I was in
a position where, if I stuck it out any longer, I was most likely
going to give the Hun another aerial victory. I managed to maneuver
so that I was pointed towards home and they were either too far
behind me or pointed in the wrong direction, and broke for home. My
plane had sustained an incredible amount of damage in the fighting,
but luckily only one, relatively minor critical hit, to the wing. My
Spad was still faster and more maneuverable, so they gave up the
chase and the game was over. Lt.Petrovic added a mission to his
resume, Vizefeldwebel Schaeffer added both a mission and a kill, and
Lt. Von Rienhardt added another mission to his pretty impressive
score.
So, if you live in central NY and you
have an interest in playing Dawn Patrol, or helping to fix the bugs
of 1st edition AD&D's Oriental Adventures through campaign play,
or want to play in a B/X Norse campaign, or are interested in
alpha-testing a B/X D&D World War II game, or are an old Steppe
Warrior from AOL's NWN or one of the other Ordus like Nyrthellan's
Woods or The Realm or Everquest or one of the eight million Facebook
games we played as a group, or are interested in Star Trek,
especially Klingons, but not limited to them, leave me a comment and
I'll get back to you.
I live in CNY and am interested in some of those things, but I don't expect you meant me...
ReplyDeleteWell, since I already play Dawn Patrol with you and your dad, you are a founding member, and first Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors, some of my best memories of playing 1st edition AD&D Oriental Adventures are with you, we talked briefly about both play-testing my WW II game and playing some Star Fleet Battles at the last Dawn Patrol game and you have played in my Norse themed campaigns before too. We have schedule meshing issues, along with a few other minor things, that keep us from gaming together more.
Delete