Old School Gaming

When D&D 3^rd Edition came out a lot of people complained it would NEVER take the place of AD&D 2^nd Ed. Of course soon after we had companies (Necromancer Games, Sword and Sorcery Studios) that tried to capitalize on using the new rules but emulating the feel of older (read 1^st Edition) games. They were in my opinion fairly successful at this. One of the reasons they could do this was the Open Gaming License. The OGL allowed other companies/people to create and publish works based on the core of the new D&D 3^rd Edition game to make their own games. The OGL and the d20 license was a revolution really in gaming.

Now fast forward 9 years. We have 4e (4^th Edtion D&D) out now and it's GSL is a bit different (and I think in some good ways), but the main thing it has seemed to do is re-vitalize the "retro gaming" market. People take the SRD (the core of the older 3/3.5 rules) and use them to emulate an older game. The first one I was aware of was OSRIC, or Old School Reference & Index Compilation. OSRIC was clever in that it used the newer rules and made some assumptions to make something that seems more like the 1^st Edition rules. It has met with some success in that you can find OSRIC compatible products in stores, Lulu and DriveThruRPG. I was left wondering why anyone would want to play an older game, but I have since seen the appeal. One of the biggest one was Castles & Crusades that was still closer to 3e, but felt like 1^st ed. Troll Lords publishes it and up till recently even published material from the Grand Master DM himself Gary Gygax. One I suppose could also count HackMaster, but that was developed under a different license. While it's genesis is different it's popularity I think is part of the same phenomena.

 

The Retro-Clone Movement / "Old School Renaissance"

When is something a fad and when is it a movement?

Well in this case I am going with movement. I know a lot of players that looked at D&D 4e and said No Way! (to be fair I knew people that said that about 3e and 2e too when they came out). But not only are there a lot people saying this, there are a lot of products. OSRIC and C&C I mentioned (though OSRIC in reality is not a "game" per se, but a guide for making products that are "compatible with" another game, at least originally). Another one that make me really happy to own is Labyrinth Lord, a clone of the old Basic/Expert sets of the early 80's. The Erol Otis covers, not the "newer ones". ;) Labyrinth Lord is just fun to read and I could totally see anyone using it to teach the basics of D&D to a child. Sure there some things that many modern players might consider odd (Elves are a CLASS? And only can go to 10^th level?) but it was what I learned on so to me it feels like finding a long lost friend. Basic Fantasy also goes after this realm but I am not as familiar with it as I am with LL. It looks really cool though, it seems more "updated" than does LL, but I'd have to read it in detail.

Another REALLY great one is Spellcraft & Swordplay. This one is less of a retro clone and more of an attempt to rebuild the classic game from the same materials. Sorta like putting all the amino acids in a jar and hitting them with electrical charges to create life. In this case life was remade and it looks the same…almost. Or in the words of the creator Jason Vey, "Does for OD&D and Chainmail what Castles & Crusades does for AD&D." I think that works well. S&S is a great game and is really fun. LL does what it does and I like it, but I have done it before. S&S does something different and in a really neat way. Like C&C, S&S attempts to do something old, with something new and old, but ends up new. Makes sense? Maybe not. Also in the field of OD&D inspired games is Swords & Wizardry. Though like some of the others it less of a true retro-clone and more of a modern retelling of one.

Of course I NEED one of these: http://elflairgames.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=announcements&thread=49&page=1

Now comparing these games to each other is rather unfair. Each draws upon the same source material, each is re-made in the eyes of their respective authors and developers as the way they like to do things, and each one in the end does what it sets out to do. Though it is fair to compare them to the D&D they were modeled from or took their inspiration from.

There is even an association, TARGA, the Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Game Association, Blogs, and pages on Facebook^[1].

The question that remains is, why would someone play an "old" game when a newer game is available or better yet why play a clone when the original game can be had?

Well a lot goes with personal taste. I felt OD&D was nigh unplayable, but Spellcraft & Swordplay is a totally playable game. AD&D is great, but OSRIC and C&C allow me to use all the 3.x books I have too. And don't dismiss the nostalgia factor. I still have my Basic and Expert books and my copy of the Rules Compendium, but picking up LL is just fun. It's something "old" where I still get that feel of discovery. One day I will run a "Basic" D&D game using all my Basic and Expert rules, RC, LL and Basic Fantasy and I'll take my sons to the Keep on the Borderlands where it all started for me. "Sons, 30 years ago your father and a group of dedicated 8^th graders cleaned out these caves and made the land peaceful. But I hear the caves are active again and orcs have been seen in Borderlands killing all who pass. It's time I gave you my sword…"

 

Here are some links

Spellcraft & Swordplay, Classic (0e) D&D rules, http://stores.lulu.com/elflairgames/, forums: http://elflairgames.proboards107.com/

OSRIC, rules for emulating 1^st Ed AD&D, http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/

Labyrinth Lord, a B/X retro clone, http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.htm

Basic Fantasy, a BECMI emulation, http://www.basicfantasy.org/

Swords & Wizardry, OD&D inspired, http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/

Grognardia Blog, http://grognardia.blogspot.com/

TARGA, the Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Game Association, http://traditionalgaming.wordpress.com/

Matthew J. Finch's (Mythmere) A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, http://www.lulu.com/content/3019374

New post on RPG Net that appeared while I was typing this, http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=445538

Charmed the Roleplaying Game

A new fun thing I did.



and an alternate cover on my DeviantArt page.


Charmed Roleplaying Game by ~WebWarlock on deviantART

Not much to say today. Still working on projects and will say what I can when I can.

Tim

Generation HEX: Design Blog #2.5

So Generation HEX. Nice title huh? I like it.

I had this idea, and stop me if you have heard this one before, a school for children to learn magic. Sure, it has been done, a lot. Not just in games, but books (I seem to recall some books like this), TV shows (Charmed dealt with this for a bit) and other media. So why should I do it.

Simple. I wanted too.

I like the idea of a group of kids getting together and saving the world from destruction while dealing with the normal issues of growing up, school, social lives (or lack thereof) and interaction. To me it seems like a genre rich in potential and rich in storytelling. Part of my education was to go beyond the aforementioned books and even avoid really cool products like Green Ronin's "Hero High" which would cover some of the same ground. For this I went back to source. If you want to read the Bible and really get a feel for it, you read it in Latin or Greek. Freud or Jung, go back to the original German. For magical high schools, you got back to Magna and Anime. Yup, I took a crash course in Sailor Moon! I watched anime, in particular Shôjo anime, for ideas. I was surprised to see how close it all was to the kind of game I wanted to do.

I originally set it all up in a document was going to do an 80k word draft and talk to Guardians of Order about it. They (He really) seemed interested and then GoO disappeared. That tale is best told elsewhere by others. But Now I have all these ideas and all of these things I have written that need a new home and a new system. I also thought about using Unisystem (same as Buffy and Ghosts of Albion) and it would fit great, maybe too great. I can kinda do this game with Ghosts now and not really alter much and be too tempted not to alter the rest where it would be needed. Plus Unisystem is licensed and I don't have that sort of cash to do this on my own. I have been looking long and hard at True20 and really like what I see.

Why High School?

Simple, unlike college, or getting married, or having kids, High School is the last true universal everyone has and everyone shares. Getting on Facebook and seeing some old high school friends has got me thinking about these things again. It's odd really. I have contacted and been contacted by more High School friends than I have college friends. The time line is not that different. If you add Junior High to one and Grad School to the other, the span of time is about the same, and generally speaking I liked college life much more. But why is it that the High School friendship endure and more importantly whatever that thing is how do I capture it and emulate properly in my magical high school game?

I have some High School friends here. What do you all say?

Design Blog, #2

Eldritch Witchery Updates

Well I was originally going to include a bunch of demons and devils in this book, sort of a "everything that everyone thought D&D was about but really isn't" would be here. I survived the "Satanic Panic!" of the 80's, have been accused of being a Satanists on more than one occasion and of course it isn't true (a perverse slave is still a slave). But I wanted to have my fun too. Well reality often gets in the way and the reality is that EW is going to be a bit larger than I thought so something has to go.

At the moment I have the Witch and Warlock classes, a section on Traditions, some information on covens, and of course plenty of new spells and magic items. There will be some monsters of course. I want to include Hags and of course I need to have my Druthers in it.

Normally here I suppose one would post their notes on design, but most of mine are from previous versions of this class, so my notes are really more on how I plan to implement them. Right now I am looking for any documentaries or movies about witchcraft that were filmed in the 70s. That is feel I want, something very “Rosemarie’s Baby” like or even better, the original “The Initiation of Sarah”. Not so much for the story, but more for the feel of the times. Or maybe some of the funky old books that my old hometown library used to have. Or some Hammer Horror, like “To the Devil a Daughter”. In any case this project is going to force me (allow me) to watch some really crappy 70s horror. That is almost worth it in and of itself!
In the meantime, I have been re-watching a lot of Charmed. I’d still love to do a Charmed RPG, just don’t see it taking off now after the show went off the air. Though I understand the books sell well enough.

Design Blog, #1

Ok,

Going to attempt to create a design blog here for all my projects.
Until I get the ok I am going to have to use code names, sorry. But I’ll describe them here.

Secret Project #1
This project is a modern “Action Horror” using the True20 system. I am not the primary author on this one. I was pulled in because I expressed an interest in the subject matter and I really wanted the chance to write for True20. Now I know that True20 has some detractors. My own group’s regular GM has described it as a watercress sandwich. Which is kind of funny. I was at lunch with the IP owner and the primary author yesterday and they used more or less the same words to describe True20, but only they meant it as a positive thing. That is True20 provides the bread and the watercress, it is up to us to provide the meat for this sandwich. If that is the case I am certainly in charge of bringing the cheese on this project. Not cheese as in cheesy, but cheese as in that thing I really, really love on my own sandwiches.
My current task with this one is to build some background on the setting, build the Sanity rules and then work out the morality system we want to use. I was happy to see agreement with all of us, that heroes in a game need to be heroes. That is they don’t kill people and take their stuff, they protect the helpless and the innocent.

Secret Project #2
Ok this one has a name! “Eldritch Witchery” for the “Spellcraft & Swordplay” Classic-style Fantasy Roleplaying game from Elf-Lair Games. EW will bring the witch character class into the fold of the classics game with the likes of the Fighting Men, Clerics and Wizards. Why an “Old Skool” game? Why not. The time seems to be right for these things. Nostalgia is high and OGL allows for such creations.
Why witches? Well, you are reading my blog right and have to ask? Witches have long been part of the periphery of the FRPG scene and for D&D in particular.
“Spellcraft & Swordplay” is something of a retro-clone, but also it is a new game designed to emulate an old game, namely Original Dungeons & Dragons, also called the “White Box” or “Brown Box” rules. My friend Jason Vey is the head of the company and author of the ruleset. It is a very nice game if you want something for a rainy Sunday afternoon and want to recall a time when dungeons were dark, the quest was all important and you knew you were done when you had killed the monster at the end of the tunnel.
To get myself motivated to write this new book I am taking a different approach. With Ghosts and SP1 I dove head first into the source material. I don’t need to do that with witches. I have written and rewritten this class for almost every version of the D&D game there is or was (oddly enough never for Original D&D). No for this I am going back to the source. The Source really. I am going back to read the Lord of the Rings and Elric. I want to get a good feel for what was in the mind of the original creators of the games of the time. I want a real 70’s occult revival for this witch, but also something that could have been on the Fellowship of the Ring. Imagine the Fellowships’ only female member. What would she have been like? Her history, her reason for being on the Fellowship. She would have been some sort of witch, with powers different than Gandalf’s. THAT is who I want to create with this book. She was not Arwen (who was not that prominent in the book anyway) not Galadriel or even Eowyn. I am also pulling heavy from fairy tales, but I want a witch that works well in a group of adventurers.

Working on my outline for Eldritch Witchery now.

More soon...

The Dragon and the Phoenix: No Other Troy

Here is the cover for the series of adventures I did for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. This is the season finale, Episode 12: No Other Troy. It was a lot of fun and I am posting this here as a big test.


Episode 12 No Other Troy by ~WebWarlock on deviantART

Updates

Well I am going to update this some more.

In particualr I think I might start a design log (DLOG?) for some of my upcoming projects. Secret Project 1 - Modern Horror / Comicbook action. I am not the main author, but got pulled in. I am enjoying the hell out of it.

Secret Project 2 - This is the one that Jason Vey has announced. Old Skool Fantasy RPing and yeah I am doing witches.