Some thoughts on my 500th post

I tend to write down (or type out these days) partially thought out ideas and revisit them from time to time to see whether or not they still have merit, or if they need more polishing. Mostly this is just campaign notes and no one else ever sees them, sometimes they are rules ideas for my various unfinished works using the D&D rule set as base-line, universal gaming system covering a multitude of genres (thanks go out to Kevin Crawford, James Spahn, (and TSR) at least, off the top of my head, for proof of concept), but sometimes they become blog posts. My last blog post was number 499, and I thought I should have something special for number 500.

My first thought was some sort of retrospective, after all, it's taken me a long, long time to make it to 500 posts. I have considered just killing the blog in it's entirety in the past, but I've posted a lot of good stuff in there with the personal stuff and the filler-esque mail call type posts. I've weighed in on some of the issues of the day in the OSR, put up some really interesting ideas and felt a sense of community via my blog, and others out there that made me feel like I was part of something special, if only to a select few people. Plus, it's always disappointing when an OSR blog goes away. So I kept it up, even though I've had very few posts over the last few years.

Then I thought maybe I'd run a contest. I started doing that right before my sister died, and tried to keep some momentum up, but I faltered there and eventually failed. So I figured if I announced a contest now, I'd be fighting against my own reputation and it seems a little contrived at this point.

So I thought maybe some new gaming content? But my purely content posts have never been frequent, and were, if not poorly received, received little in the way of fanfare or comment.

Ultimately I decided to just post some of my thoughts that I'd been saving up, looking back at and trying to figure out what to do with, so here they are.

Retroclones-

OD&D-

Swords & Wizardry Whitebox

Swords & Wizardry Core

Swords & Wizardry Complete

Full Metal Platemail

Delving Deeper

Iron Falcon

Holmes Basic-

Prentice Blueholme Rules

B/X-

Basic Fantasy

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Labyrinth Lord

-Realms of Crawling Chaos

-Red Tide

-An Echo Resounding

Scarlet Heroes

Silent Legions

Starships & Spacemen

1^st Edition AD&D-

OSRIC

I buy a lot of retroclones in print, I prefer to read books as opposed to pdfs on a screen. I usually buy them, look through them when I first get them, then give them an in depth read through only later, sometimes months or even years later. My wife says I have a retroclone addiction, maybe she's right. Some I get because I don't have the original game, like Swords & Wizardry (especially WhiteBox) and Delving Deeper for OD&D. I also keep buying games that emulate games that I own and play (or played at some time in the past), like OSRIC and Prentice Blueholme; and I have bought games that emulate games that I really didn't own or play back in the day, despite my owning the original, like Labyrinth Lord for B/X D&D. I also keep buying retroclones that have excellent production values like pretty much everything from Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

I have a lot of stuff for LotFP, over half or their catalogue in fact, including both Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown, just because I like where they are taking the game and they are so well made. I have a bunch of Labyrinth Lord compatible stuff too, for many of the same reasons. Kevin Crawford's work is inspired, and I like what he's done to and for B/X.

I have played S&W a couple of time is all though, and LL just once. Why? Some of them I've never played, hell, most of them- although I did use DD in conjunction with S&W for a game once. Scarlet Heroes I keep meaning to try out with my wife, because we both have the time now, but stuff just keeps happening, and I guess both of us are less than fully motivated.

My Campaign and Gaming Aesthetic or “One DM's Manifesto”-

I want to run a D&D or AD&D or clone of either for a group of people. Over the years my circle of friends that game has shrunk to really small levels. My wife, my kids (really just Ember, and John when he's home from college), a couple of adult friends and one younger guy that started gaming with my oldest daughter. I keep trying to recruit more, but I live in a pretty rural area and the weather sucks for roughly ½ the year. Keeping regular gaming going has been, and remains, a serious challenge. Scheduling alone is a serious game killer. I don't want to be too nostalgic for the good old days, but both making friends and finding potential gamers was so much easier back when I was young and the worst scheduling conflict, school, was shared by 90% of the group. There were times when I could not fit everyone around a single pretty large table, now I have trouble filling the seats at a card table on a regular basis. Anyway, a larger, more regular group would be nice, I really prefer campaign play to one-shots.

My primary influences for DMing are Robert E.Howard's Conan stories and their lesser derivatives, including Marvel Comics, and Glenn Cook's Black Company series. Secondary, but still important and in no particular order, are Katherine Kerr's Deverry series, Beowulf, Arthurian tales from a variety of authors (and I really loved the film Excalibur), the original Star Wars trilogy, Norse Mythology, Greco-Roman Mythology, Star Trek and History. Then we have a much larger body of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I like themes of good versus evil, and I like good, heroic characters in my games.

I prefer to use humans as the real monsters, and I like unique monsters when I do use them. Hordes of humanoids are so Tolkien and so 1980s. That, and a few other things make me a fan of LotFP.

I like actual role playing, people who speak in character and use their character's stated motivations for committing to a course of action. I like for their to be interaction between players and between players and the world. I don't like it when players complain about the “constraints” of the alignment system or try to rationalize or retcon their actions to not be an alignment breach. Alignment is a simple short hand for a character's world view and a role-playing tool.

Conversely, I like the mortality rate of early editions, it keeps players on their toes. I like people that use hirelings and retainers as God and Gary intended. I like players that use their brains to solve issues within the game.

The use of good tactics, clever spell use, and good resource management are good things that make me happy. There is a certain level of meta-gaming that I expect and maybe require from my players. D&D is the direct descendant of wargaming, and I feel we should both respect and embrace those roots. That said, gaming the system, finding the cheats and loop-holes annoys me.

I like the gold for XP mechanic, it keeps the game from devolving into a slug-fest. Not every encounter needs to be a combat encounter, managing to get the reward without wasting resources (Hit Points, Spells, Magic Items, etc) should be encouraged, not that a good combat isn't fun too.

The campaign should, ultimately, have an arc that leads to an end game. Strongholds, Domains, what-have-you are the end of the game. A PC should be able to become a political/military force in the world. You should be playing to win, even though “winning” is a long way off and is (usually) a cooperative thing.

I have never been a huge fan of Magic, I think it should be rare and wonderful, or the realm of the irredeemably corrupt. Pacts with evil forces, elder gods and the like are where most magic comes from in my mind. Good magic is the work of a very few uncorrupted wizards or that of the good people of the church. I like my Clerics to be Templar/Van Helsing hybrids rather than heal-bots and my Paladins (in games that have them) to be the chosen champions of the forces of good and light.

I don't like, and usually ban, evil characters. Rarely are they played well, and even when they are, that's not the kind of game I want to play. One time I saw a Lawful Evil ½ Orc Fighter/Assassin that wasn't a complete and total waste of time/campaign killer. The odds are against anyone that wants to be a bad guy in my campaigns even making it through the door.

I dislike when players complain about the game system being used, it's not about the rules, it's about the game. I use D&D in it's various forms, because I am extremely comfortable with it. I am the GM, I need to know the rules. You, as a player, need only be familiar with them to the point where you can play, at least at first, rules mastery is unnecessary in a player.

Vancian magic, it's a thing; argue about it's “realism” all you want, I don't have an issue with it. I think players that complain about having to choose their spells in advance are just not terribly good at playing spell-casters at best, and whiners at worst. I hate a whiner. Spell-casters are not my first choice when I am a player, but I have played them quite successfully in the past, sometimes just to show it could be done.

Demi-humans, semi-humans and humanoids. I am not a fan of them, I get that it's just not D&D to some people without them. I have, rarely, banned them and run a solely human campaign in the past, usually in a historical setting where they would have been inappropriate. I would happily play in a more “Swords & Sorcery” setting without any non-human PCs too. Dwarves, Elves, Halflings and Humans adventuring together is too Tolkien for my tastes these days.

I like a coherent setting. My Garnia campaign setting has been cooking for over 30 years now, not every element is suited to my current gaming tastes, but it is coherent as all get out, and I know it like the back of my hand- including apocryphal and alternate timelines.

I like randomness. I like it in character generation, 3d6 in order, play the character you roll. I'll tolerate 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange as desired, but I'd prefer that players play the PC they rolled, rather than the PC they dreamed up and then had to settle for (stat wise); coming to the table without preconceptions about what character you'll play is a plus there.

I like randomness for encounters too. I am not a fan of tailoring the world to the “challenge level” of the PCs, I think that players need to recognize that there are some things that you should run from. If you are a 3^rd level party, even if you have a reasonable number of NPCs along in support roles, you should probably not expect to survive the onslaught of the hordes of Orcus en masse.

Situational modifiers- if I give you a number to aim for, the odds are good that I have already figured them in. I know the rules, I have over 30 years in the DM's seat, there is probably not a lot of advice I am going to need and you are just slowing down the action.

Also, not a fan of rules-lawyers. If you want a bunch of nit-picky BS play 3.x or Pathfinder; my D&D, and it's house rules and rulings, has the weight of experience and tradition behind it.

I like wilderness or overland adventures, hex-crawls even, but they are not static. I believe in a living campaign world. I usually have some primary movers and shakers in the world that will keep on doing their thing too, regardless of PC actions, unless those actions interact with the PCs or one of the other forces in the setting. This isn't to say that I am against dungeons, just that they are less common in my games than elsewhere, and they might be just ruined castles or abandoned mines. I like short, succinct location based adventures more than mega-dungeons.

Site based adventures are cool too. A site based adventure in my campaign might be a commando style raid on a castle, or infiltrating a thieves guild, or it could be an entrance to the hollow world or a trek to a lost city in a swamp or jungle somewhere.

My adventures often have a political bent to them. Politics and court intrigue happen, if not often, at least regularly. When I start a campaign I generally have an idea, and sometimes I completely map out, the major and minor factions in play, what their various agenda are, how they compete with each other and what the odds are of any given plot coming to fruition. Then the PCs are added to the equation.

When I figure out what a faction is, I figure out it's leader, it's goals, it's resources and it's allies. Is the faction overt or covert? Some factions have sub-factions, a good example being different orders within the same religion. My current project has the Duke (Political, Military Power, Wealthy, Overt), The Thieves Guild (Subversive, Wealthy, Covert) and the Dwarves (Racial, Wealthy, Seemingly Harmless) vying for power over a wealthy trading center. The Thieves Guild and the Dwarves are somewhat allied, with the Dwarves having completely infiltrated the Thieves Guild and subverted it subtly towards their own goals. The Duke's faction is unaware that the Dwarves are working as a group towards their own goals, or that they have infiltrated the Thieves Guild so thoroughly, and they consider the Thieves Guild to be less powerful than it really is. The Thieves Guild is more or less happy with the status quo in the city and enjoys having brought the Dwarven community so completely under their control. Clearly, the obvious power in town is the Dukes, digging around some will reveal the influence of the Thieves Guild, but you'd have to be pretty deep to even notice the Dwarves doing anything nefarious.

Minor factions, like the various church orders or the smuggling ring, support or are used by the bigger, more powerful factions. Some are involved with more than one faction, like the merchants, who support the Duke primarily, but have to deal with the Thieves Guild. Some factions are concentrated, usually the powerful ones, some are diffuse, like the merchants, who are a collection of like minded individuals more than an organized group. Maybe one day they'll organize and then they'll wield real power.

Factions might be powerful in one area and weak in another. The Duke is powerful throughout the duchy, the Thieves Guild primarily in the city. Factions might believe they are more powerful than they actually are, like the Duke in a barony contemplating rebellion.

Which version of D&D do I like better? How about you?

     

 

I have consistently second guessed myself while I run (A)D&D games for my group about which version (or retroclone) I like better for play. I range between the simplicity and adaptability of S&W Whitebox and the complexity and completeness of 1^st edition AD&D (sometimes including “Unearthed Arcana”, but rarely anything later). Sometimes I decide a particular retroclone looks like it'll be good for what I want to play- I just started playing S&W Complete for instance, or I'd really like to play “Lamentations of the Flame Princess” (and so would a couple of my players) sometime soon.

I guess what it comes down to is that I like the adaptability of the early edition stuff based on OD&D and it's semi-gonzo SF additions to our standard fantasy fare. I like the simplicity and lower power level of OD&D, B/X and their clones. I have written a few rules sets now using S&W and B/X as a template. However, something in my head keeps dragging me back to 1^st edition AD&D (or Labyrinth Lord+ Advanced Edition Companion- more on this later). I suppose it's because that's my old default. When I was just starting to play AD&D was just arriving on the scene and B/X wasn't quite here yet (I actually started with Holmes Basic).

Now, the power creep/edition (larger HD, more powerful magic items, more special abilities) is what pulls me away from AD&D towards OD&D or B/X. The absolute familiarity with (and perhaps even mastery of) the rules set is what drags me back. My D&D formative years ran from 1980-85ish, AD&D OA makes it under the wire, and UA slips a bit in sometimes, but my core system has always been PH, DMG and MM.

I guess the power creep is something I never noticed before the 3e era, probably because my default system was 1^st edition and I never really looked at it objectively compared to the Holmes Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert sets. 2^Nd edition was largely the same as 1^st, only with a lot of inconsistent or unused (I am looking at you weapon vs. AC) rules being either tossed or overhauled. With this in mind, perhaps I should be playing either LL-AEC or straight 2^nd edition AD&D, but I can't fully commit to either of those systems because I know 1^st edition, with all it's warts & weirdnesses, it's Gygaxian purple-prose (a feature, not a bug- it immeasurably increased the vocabulary of pretty much everyone I knew), I have it practically memorized, even after all these years and anything I don't have memorized I can find in seconds in the book- no lengthy searches or game stoppage, and I know how to house rule it without breaking it in any way. Plus, I own multiple copies of all the books (including the premium reprints I got cheap on Ebay). I have given away complete core sets to my players that don't have them (another feature of Ebay- when I feel I am running low on extras for my table, I can usually find them really cheap there), and each of my kids has gotten a complete core set+ OA. My wife came with her own set.

But then I think about sub-classes, particularly Fighter sub-classes, which irritate me; why should a Fighter not be the best at fighting? Every other sub-class loses something, or at least fundamentally changes something, from the core class to make up for gaining their new abilities, not Rangers or Paladins though, so what's up with that? It's not that I hate the idea of Rangers and Paladins, and I get that it's harder to get the stats to be one of them and that they level slightly slower, but they still make better fighters than Fighters do, and that's what irks me. I don't take issue with creating a new subclass for the purposes of playing exactly the character class that you want to play even, I've made them in the past and I probably will again in the future. I am pretty sure that was the impetus behind the design of every AD&D sub-class. Think of them as customized class options for your role-playing needs.

Now, Labyrinth Lord +Advanced Edition Companion is a game that plays functionally identical to my experience with 1^st edition AD&D, my only real problems with using it as a go-to system are that I already own multiple copies of AD&D and it's B/X based, which means that I need 2 rulebooks and have to ignore a bunch of stuff from the first.

I guess what was trying doing here was get all of these stray thoughts down where I can see them and mull over my options, what it has, apparently, done was talk myself into running 1^st edition AD&D again, with the option of using retroclone ideas as house rule options. Thanks for reading, I am still open to suggestions and differing opinions, because I will, most likely, go back and forth on this for the next day or so before I run something for my oldest daughter Ashli and her boyfriend Rae who are coming to visit this weekend.

Now some other stuff that's been on my mind- if you were going to run a single adventure for three to five players and had access to pretty much every adventure published by TSR for Holmes Basic, B/X, BECMI and 1^st edition AD&D what would you run? I am missing a few from the end of the era, but I have most of them. I was thinking something tournament style, that'll give the group focus and a sense of urgency, plus they won't have to worry about losing a beloved character because these types of modules usually have a bunch of pregens included. I was also thinking something a little higher level, because we never get there in campaign play and I think that they might enjoy playing characters at level 9+ for a change. Not The Tomb of Horrors though, that's a straight out meat-grinder and I've seen parties with all experienced players die in the entryway.

Also, I was thinking about other game systems recently, especially the ones like GURPS that pretty much mandate during character creation how you are going to role-play your character and that's one of those things I've never actually seen the need to have enshrined in rules. Some people think that alignment is unrealistic and too much of a straight-jacket to your role-playing, in my experience these are the same people that want to see at least part of your character creation include at least some options for deciding how you must role-play your character. GURPS has a bunch of these, off the top of my head I can recall codes and berserkerism and addiction as role-playing options that grant you some tangible character creation bonus with a few rules on how you must then play your character as a trade off. I am not a huge fan of point-buy systems in general anyway, I kind of like some randomness in character generation and I don't think all PCs should be created equal (but with the option for a master min-maxxer to really work the rules to make a Frankenstein's monster of a PC).

I am also not a big fan of skill systems, I never saw the point. The way I see it, if you want to do something, you ask your DM if it's possible and he figures out whether or not it's at all possible and then determines how it should work. I guess it helps if you have some sort of background, like the secondary skills in the DMG; although those work best for humans, those are some tables that could use a redesign based on a PC's race, the region they come from (or where the campaign starts) and maybe the general tech level. I guess they'd be best tailor made for every DM's campaign world. Not that I don't use skill systems where appropriate, just not a fan. This is likely because of 2^nd edition AD&D's poorly thought out and ill-named Non-Weapon Proficiency system, which, while optional, was both over used and miss-used in my experience, all the while being extremely unnecessary. Yes, I realize that the 2^nd edition system is a direct descendant of the 1^st edition system which premiered in my beloved Oriental Adventures book, it's just that I am that contrary. Also, I hate that system and have eliminated it in my upcoming retroclone Samurai!, wherein I replace them with a set of backgrounds that grant you the ability to do certain things. But generally speaking, if you can give me a halfway decent reason why you should be able to do something, I usually let you. I base this on the fact that I can speak, read and write English, and to a lesser extent, French and Spanish. I can swim pretty well, do math (even some higher math) and all the other stuff I learned in public schools and just living in rural upstate NY. Usually, no matter how well I min-max a character, there is no way I can come close to what I could do even when I was a teen-ager, much less as an adult, and on top of all that, I am a pretty decent fighter, both armed and unarmed, and an ordained clergyman. That's right folks, I am dual-classed...

What about Henchmen, Hirelings, and other Retainers? I swore by them in the early days of playing D&D, not so much for the extra swords in the fight, but for handling the mundane stuff like carrying the light sources or acting as bearers for the loot we found, but we usually had a couple of “special” guys too, usually a Thief hired on to open locks and search for traps- oddly enough, even when we had Thieves in the party. You can't be too careful in the dungeon. Later, as the games started having more overland and wilderness type adventures, we started having people just for helping out with the horses (and staying with them while we went into dungeons) and some extra muscle to help out with guarding our camp. Now it seems like even the people I played with back in the day avoid them like the plague. I can understand (although not agree with) the notion that Henchmen are experience point and treasure leeches, but what about the ones that only get paid a pittance and don't get a ½ share of experience points? Plus it makes Charisma less of a dump stat if they are included in the game.

What's the deal with people not liking (A)D&D for more pure role-playing type game sessions? There's nothing stopping you from going all thespian with a D&D character, as a DM I actually will give an XP award or some other type of bonus as a reward for good role-playing, it's within my purview as DM. But some players insist that there is something inherent about D&D in particular that stunts role-playing. I don't get it. Sure D&D evolved from wargaming, and there was a certain wargame mentality to the role-playing by association. I don't hate that to be truthful, but I think that it is making less of the game than it can be. That said, there are some things that I can't stand to role-play like, say, buying equipment or any other mundane, somewhat boring task. Who wants to role-play mucking out stables or brushing down their horse? I don't, not as a player and not as DM; some stuff can be glossed over pretty easily and we don't lose anything by doing so. You probably want some real interaction the first time you meet the duke though, and maybe a bit when you are invited back for dinner. These role-playing vignettes are a great opportunity for mini-information dumps as a DM and I think that players and DMs alike should grasp the opportunity to try their hand at being more of a thespian. The exchange between DM and players there can lead to some really cool ideas for your campaign heading down the road.

My Gamer ADD...

...and why it should drive my players crazy.

I have a tendency to create entirely new campaigns when we have too long a hiatus between gaming sessions and sometimes just because I got a good idea and wanted to run with it. My players have the patience of Job; week to week they don't know what setting they'll be playing in or if there'll be character generation involved.

They just roll with it. Work and school kept us away from the Norse game for too long? I needed to play some adventures I got for a contest so I could accurately judge them? I am running my Roman themed contest and decided it would be cool to start a new adventure to set the mood for all the new adventures I am sure will start pouring in any day now? It's December and we always play OA in December? I need to play-test my WW II B/X game? They are cool with it all.

I actually said to them last month that part of the reason I keep all the character sheets here is so I can restart old campaigns where we left off if that's what strikes my fancy that week and they were cool with never knowing what campaign or even RPG they are going to be playing from week to week. I have long running campaigns, but they run like British television, you might have three to five episodes then have to wait a year before the next series.

My daughter Ashli has a Halfling Thief character that is probably her favorite character of all time, Ruby Cloverleaf. She's had that character since she was maybe fifteen years old, she's twenty now, Ruby gets played maybe half a dozen times per year. The thing is, I guess, as a DM I'd rather DM something I am super enthusiastic about than just go through the motions if I am losing interest in a game for a little while. Sometimes I need to have a little time to recharge, to think about what's going on in a specific campaign and so taking a break will be my idea; more often than not though, a change of campaign is usually brought on by a lack of gaming for at least a couple of weeks, during which time I will have had a cool idea.

That's not how it used to be. I used to run a campaign practically forever. Being a grown-up and having life get in the way of gaming has kind of put a damper on that. I haven't gamed with the Darryls for months now. I haven't gamed with Lance in the better part of a year, although he says he wants to do some board gaming this week. Lee's new job in the ER has kept her away from our game table for most of the last six months, so it's a nice surprise when she can make it.

I have got maybe the best group of players on Earth, they put up with not knowing what we'll be doing from week to week, just to suit my desire to DM whatever I feel like DMing because I can be fickle. What they don't know is that whatever the genre, where ever it takes place, whatever RPG system is used it's all part of the grand design anyway; it's all one unified campaign setting; everything that happens in one “setting” (or sub-setting) has subtle effects on the others.

I just wish I had the ability to dump my brain onto paper and have it all make sense. When people ask me questions, usually the members of my design team, I always know the answer, pretty much regardless of how esoteric the question might be. The setting exists fully formed in my head, the rest of the team are there to help me bring it out, and to do illustrations. I am no good at art. Poetry might be nice too, setting-wise. Flavor stuff, I know the flavors, I just need some help with getting them to the masses.

World Building, D&D and Me

I guess this is really what my last post was all about. So, rather than reply to all the comments on that post I decided to write this post.

What got me thinking about the whole thing was the fact that I am knee deep in a new world building project right now; my working title is "Yassa- Legacy of the Khans". It's more or less based on the idea that, in a world much like our own, there arose a Genghis Khan type figure that united his people and that he and his descendants conquered the entire known world in their 13th century. The campaign is set in the dawn of their 15th century as the empire has fragmented into rival khanates and their subject peoples are starting to rebel and reassert themselves. Many of the local Khans have "gone native" and adopted the culture and religions of their subjects, causing tensions, and outright wars, between the various parts of the once unified empire. I am not as far along on this project as I'd like to be at this point, but these things happen; it's a pretty ambitious project.

I also am reminded of the various other world building projects I have done.

I had a Greco-Roman themed world where all of the Dwarves were male, born to Human families and considered to be the sons of the God Vulcan. There were no other Demi-Human races. All of the Humans and Dwarves were native to a single large island archipelago and they had just developed the maritime technology to begin their age of exploration. The rest of the world was populated by bestial Humanoids that were the descendants of mankind that had been cursed by the gods for lapsing into Evil ways, Pig-Faced Orcs, Dog-Faced Kobolds, Jackal-Headed Gnolls, etc.

This one lasted one session, and I didn't even get to DM it. Darryl and I were co-DMing this as a project, he DMed the first session. Everyone had a good time. A person who showed up late and didn't play spent 4 hours explaining why this setting was lame and "regular" D&D would be better, but if he had to play here, he'd be OK with playing a Half-Ogre.

One semester of college I developed an Anglo-Saxon themed world where humanity clung to a fringe of coastline west of a huge forest, beyond which was a vast steppe land dominated by a Sauron type dark lord and his Humanoid minions. The Elves, the only Demi-Human race that had appeared in the campaign before the end, had fled across the western sea and only a small band returned on a quest for a magic sword buried in a mound.

Mona and I played this one as a solo campaign for most of the semester and petered out around finals. I resurrected the setting a couple of years later for a larger group, but it didn't last more than a few sessions. Nobody was really thrilled with having Anglo-Saxon names, they wanted a more "regular" D&D game.

Then there is the grand-daddy of all of my world building projects: Garnia. 30+ years in the making, it's finally getting a serious reworking for eventual public consumption. That's 30+ years of notes and revisions and retcons and stuff that's only stuck in my head. I have a whole other blog devoted to it. Garnia is (mostly, at it's core) a Celtic world where Gauls and Britons were literally brought to a different world via magical means. Once they got there, they conquered an Elven empire and then had to take over their mantle of defending pretty much everything from the marauding armies of Humanoids. They aren't the only ones that made the trip, and other creatures made the trip from other worlds too. Garnia is the closest to a "standard" D&D world as I have ever created, which makes sense, I started it when I was a kid and wanted to include all the stuff from my brand new AD&D Monster Manual.

Garnia has actually absorbed two other entire world building projects that were based on a similar theme, one with Romans and one with Vikings. I just placed them on different, far away, parts of the world.

Garnia has been my default campaign world for over 30 years, some campaigns have flourished there, some have died after one session; it's tough to say why. I've run every edition of D&D, except 4th, and Hackmaster there, plus a Homebrew system and we're working on another homebrew system now. Hell, I've even run GURPS there. Once.

I guess the world building is important to me because it lets me understand more fully how the NPCs are going to react to any given situation. A cultural/political/religious/whatever context is important to me as a DM for figuring out the motives and justifications for actions that these NPCs or Monsters are going to use. I guess that's worth more to me to get into character than it is for the minor difficulties of players having trouble pronouncing exotic names or being expected to read a couple of emails or a cultural background sheet before we start.

The comments on my last post were largely supportive of my deep world building for every campaign I run, except for one that said I was trying to tell my story instead of letting the players tell theirs. I guess that might be true to a certain extent, D&D is interactive group story telling to each other, but the DM is responsible for the setting, the plot and all of the non-main characters. You can't really play the game without the DM's input, because there would be no story to tell.

Just out of curiosity, which of these worlds sounds the most compelling to you from the brief synopsis?

Old School D&D with my wife and kids

And a few other women and children. Now, to be fair, my kids and most of the kids I am talking about are at least in their teens. My oldest daughter turned twenty this month, so I am not talking about little kids, just the next generation, with a couple of exceptions. My kids and their friends have made up the majority of my D&D groups for the last decade. I introduced them to old school gaming both B/X D&D and 1st & 2nd edition AD&D. My oldest daughter Ashli led the gaming charge at about 14, so most of the gamers that came to the table were her friends and her younger siblings. Mom came along for the ride as a den mother for the pack of newbie adventurers and helped to keep them on task, a leadership role she never really liked or really felt comfortable with, but performed admirably.

Aside from my wife and kids and Ashli's friends, the other main player in the group for the past few years has been Lee Ann. Lee started out as an SCA fighting buddy of mine* and, since she lives close to where I live, and she was training my daughter Ashli to fight, we started gaming together too. She's fun to play with, but we've all learned the lesson about letting her DM when you are sick or tired- DON'T DO IT. She knows this, we know this, it's all good now. Her characters tend to be an incarnate force of chaos in the party, but it keeps the game interesting and moving along. She's funny too, and that brings my youngest back to the game- if Lee doesn't play, neither does Em.

So, I don't know where I am really headed with this ramble, but I just feel that there is some observable difference in play style between the kids I introduced to Old School D&D, the grown women that are my own age-ish that play the game with me and the guys that I played the game with back in the day, that I still play with every now and again; and it drives Lance a little nuts. Worse, he brings his new-to-D&D girlfriend Audra with him and she is slightly confused because his other gaming group is "all business" and ours is way more social. I get this, my other gaming group plays a lot more "old school", "all business" style. That group is almost all male, it was all male until Big Darryl convinced his wife to play Legend of the Five Rings with us, then Lady Blackbird. We'll be playing D&D next probably, I don't know if she'll stick.

Now, I don't know if gaming with women and gaming with kids should have been different topics; it's hard for me to separate the two. Two of my kids are young women after all. Maybe if I could play a game with just the young men and see how that goes? That'd be like my late 1990's crew I'd imagine, but Mona ran with them too, again as a den mother/older sister, and there were more of the old men like me still around to teach the younger guys how we played. That, and we were all playing the then current edition of D&D, so it hadn't evolved away from it's roots so much. No real competition from MMOs either.

My son's other D&D group just went on an "indefinite hiatus", the DM canceled the game for the foreseeable future. I told him I'd be happy to step up and DM for the group, he's still weighing the pros and cons, to figure out whether or not the group would be willing to play some Old School D&D or not before he even asks them. Angsty. That group played 4th edition D&D and Pathfinder, I'd love to start them out on B/X D&D so they could experience the less-is-more, Zen purity that D&D can be; when players are freed from the bondage of all the excess rules they can experience the game anyway they want- it can be an interactive, storytelling experience or it can be a tactical room-clearing exercise or anything in between, or something else altogether; the choice is yours.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent there, but it's my blog and you were warned by the title of the blog that it'd be ramblings, some days it's worse than others. My original point, if there was one that could be gleaned here, was that the women and kids tend to be a lot less mission focused and goal oriented in their gaming than the adult male dominated groups I have DMed for and instead they tend to be more social with each other, we enjoy a lot of comforts at my house when we play D&D. There are always copious amounts of snacks, usually cheese, crackers and summer sausage, and usually a meal break; sometimes the meal is themed to the adventure- we've done Viking foods twice now for our Norse campaign, we regularly had Japanese or Korean food for our Oriental Adventures games, etcetera. Mona takes time from playing to prepare stuff and we all appreciate it greatly.

At the guys games, we have chips and pretzels and beer and soda and when we take our meal break we eat quick, talk about the game and have whatever we could either not have to fuss over too much to cook there, or was easy to make elsewhere and reheat at the game site. Don't get me wrong, we all love food, so the food is good, but it's secondary to the game; at my house it's about as important as the game, so is the conversation, which isn't limited to the game at hand or even gaming in general.

I have been DMing for my wife and kids for so long now that the "social" style of play doesn't bother me, I kind of expect it. I lapse into it when I am DMing for the "guys group" without thinking sometimes. I don't care if people aren't exactly on time, or if we finish an adventure in one sitting, or if the game stalls for a bit to talk about current events. Most people are OK with this to a limited extent, some people hate one thing about it more than others. Lance was made crazy by Lee knitting a scarf during a D&D game.

Another weird quirk- the group with my wife and kids will pretty much only play old school D&D, 1st Edition AD&D is their preference, but they'll play B/X D&D or 2nd Edition AD&D. The young men in the group are always game to try something new, that's how I managed to push them into a brief foray into L5R, but D&D is their thing. The other group is always looking for a non-D&D game to play. They leapt into 43 AD, L5R and Lady Blackbird, but only reluctantly agree to play D&D because of it's "problems". One member thinks D&D is too rules heavy, although, to be fair, his last D&D experience was with 3.x; another thinks that D&D is too rules lite- but he is cool with 43 AD, L5R and Lady Blackbird? L5R specifically had armor make you harder to hit, rather than reduce damage, which is his biggest complaint about D&D.

Anyone else playing with a mostly female group? A group heavy on teenagers? How about men aged 40+, what are your experiences? Are your experiences similar to mine or different? How social is your gaming group? Is your group all business at the game table? Do you hang out with them outside of gaming? How long have you known them? Are you related to them? Anything else noteworthy?

Next-

I know this entire post is off topic for my Mongol Month theme, but at least I am writing again, that's something, right? I still need submissions for my Mongol Themed Adventure Contest see here and here for details and here and here for prizes so far. We're running out of October people, and I hate to be a downer, but if I don't get at least three submissions I am going to either have to extend the deadline or cancel the contest. I don't want to cancel the contest. On a happier note, I might have another announcement about the contest soon, stayed tuned!

*There are some gender politics still in SCA heavy fighting, I don't play that game. There is no gender on the field to me, everyone out there deserves my best performance, to give them less because they are a woman would dishonor us both. Besides, nearly everyone is smaller and weaker than me- I don't cut short men any particular slack, if I did I'd just be a moving pell on the field.  

Some Productivity Today

My wife and I, OK, mostly her, have been more or less renovating our kitchen, that weeks long activity is nearing completion. Out of that I got a new set of shelves in my office area, which is pretty cool because I always need more shelf space. My wife may have other plans for these shelves, but I am claiming them in the name of the empire!

I also hashed out, with my chief co-conspirator Darryl, a bunch of little things that have been bugging me about my Garnia campaign world this morning; so there's a sense of achievement for you right there! The whole thing ends up changing from a more generically Celtic flavored medieval fantasy world to a really Iron Age/ Dark Ages Celts with Magic added kind of a thing; meaning that a lot of the work that I thought was finished has to be rewritten, but I think it makes for a more flavorful world.

Oh, and it's not just Celts, there are other Human cultures represented there too. Spread across one mega-continent, one small continent/very large island, and several island chains we have various ethnic groups that have been brought here to the Realm of the Sidhe for whatever reasons whichever court of Sidhe saw fit to bring their particular group over. I talk about it more on my other blog, and there's another multi-planar war aspect to the whole back story, but you get the gist of it from this.

I also got these miniatures in the mail today. I was surprised because the seller said he was going to be out of town and not shipping anything until the 7th. I must have made it in just under the wire before he left.

I had bid on these before I got the first Celtos miniature that I won. I might consider more monster types like the Fomorian, but the Humans are a wee bit too fantasy for my tastes. Which I guess begs the question, where do you go for Wizard and Priest types when you are using mostly historical ranges of miniatures? Monsters I can grab from anywhere, although I have my preferred companies. But if I have a player that wants to be a Female Cleric in the setting, pretty much any part of the setting? Finding any females in armor is difficult, but not impossible. Finding one with the limited Cleric weapon set, much tougher*. Female Wizards? They're pretty tough to find too, assuming I want the females in the party to match the males in how "fantasy" they look.

*Although I tend not to be a stickler for enforcement, I'd rather do damage by class than by weapon type. For the sake of argument, assume I am strictly enforcing D&D weapon bans.

Character Questionnaires

This blog post over at Adventuring Archives got me to thinking about the whole idea of character back stories and how they fit in with the game world and all.

You see, I am of two minds about the subject, especially now that I am hardcore Old School; on the one hand I like the immersion that it brings a new character into the game world, on the other a single dagger blow might wipe that same character out wasting all the time and energy put into a decent, campaign immersive back story.

There were periods in my DMing over the years where I would give bonuses to people for coming up with a good back story for their character, anything from 100-250 XP to start out with, or an "Heirloom" of some sort that would be helpful, but not campaign breaking for a low level character to have that their class could use. Now, there were downsides to this too, I had to give DM approval to any back story. Some were so poorly written that they were just dreadful to read, others were written with power-gaming in mind, a lot of them seemed to skip over the part where I gave them extensive notes about the campaign world and were entirely inappropriate from that angle, and then some players just didn't care enough to try and either turned in crap or nothing, because the reward wasn't worth the effort.

Now, if you really want to go old school on this, just use the "Secondary Skills" table from the DMG and assume that's either what your father did or what he apprenticed you to do at a young age. Unearthed Arcana adds some tables to cover family and social status. Oriental Adventures is where random family generation and family history really shine, but rolling up an OA character can take a while, so you're adding time to character creation to draw the character into the setting, and that character still may not survive the first encounter.

Taking an old school approach, but of newer vintage, both versions of Hackmaster do the job pretty well. The parody version 4th edition Hackmaster, can be played straight, I have done it, but you have to rely less on randomness and more on point buys for Quirks and Flaws, otherwise it can go south fast. Hackmaster Basic is a lot more realistic in it's Quirk/Flaw random assignment. Both versions also build a family for you, so you can rip that section directly to your Old School D&D game if you want, hack D&D with Hackmaster. Now I'll put in a good word for Hackmaster, both 4th edition, which saved me from 3e D&D and Hackmaster Basic, which I have a lot of things I like about it, but it is a little too rules heavy for my current tastes. Seriously, if it wasn't for Hackmaster, I would have quit gaming probably.

So I guess I'd like everyone to come equipped with a basic idea of who their character is and how he or she fits into the world, the Character Questionnaire is a nice idea, it asks not just for a pysical description of your character, but also about your hometown, your place there, your friends and family; all stuff I can use as a DM to make a more immersive experience for my players, but I guess I can see this questionnaire being abused too. Making your acquaintances all Arch-Mages and yourself a Prince and stuff like that.   

Keeping Your Dungeon "Real"

How do you do it? Tim Shorts over at Gothridge Manor started a discussion earlier about it and I was curious if anybody else had any ideas for keeping their dungeon environments dynamic and real. Also, I am sick and figured I could just pretty much steal his post for the day. I did comment on it.

Here's some stuff I got in the mail too-



I actually already had a copy of this, but I figured a second copy would come in handy at the table when we start to play. The seller has kind of irritated me with this auction by not mentioning that some of the pages (73-90, a glossy section) have separated from the binding, which was obvious as soon as I opened it and clearly not damage from shipping. I most likely would have bought the book anyway at the price I paid if they had disclosed the damage, I just don't like the dishonesty there.



Another L5R Clan splatbook, number 1 actually. I think that's a little odd because they aren't the Rokugani great clan I would have been keenest on getting more information about first, but apparently AEG or the L5R fans of the time did not agree with my sentiments. Personally I would have gone with the Crab, Lion or Crane.