The following started as a post on the M20 site: M20 can be old school. Check out Editions of Dungeons & Dragons and Robert Fisher’s overview if the following is too confusing.
Editions of Dungeons & Dragons
I’ve been reading Grognardia which is all about old school gaming. He mentions OD&D a lot. It occurs to me that we can just replace OD&D with M20 and skip all the nostalgia (because I certainly didn’t play D&D in the seventies).
It’s a philosophy of game design and game play that emphasizes loose rules, the sovereign authority of the referee, and player skill over notions of “balance,” “story,” or “fun.”
Once we accept that, then the following essay is probably of interest: Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matthew Finch talks about the difference between running a very old edition of D&D and more recent editions. I think the essay is just as interesting for M20 players.
Quick Primer for Old School Gaming
It seems to me that the step from M20 to even older rules doesn’t really add any benefits:
I also found a thread in The Grognard’s Tavern about electronic copies of OD&D. The replies linked to a compilation of the Original D&D rules by Bruce Mohler.
a compilation of the Original D&D rules by Bruce Mohler
Mohler writes in the introduction:
This web page is only concerned with the Original D&D Rules as contained in the 3 volume set, Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, plus the Greyhawk supplement. At the present time, it does not include material from the Blackmoor book or later supplements. It also eliminates references (and dependencies where possible) to the prior work, Chainmail.
Little material from the 3rd book (”The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures”) was included because so much of the emphasis was on random dungeons and the emphasis in my campaigns is more on story-telling.
The thread also had a link to something called The Gray Book edited by Steven J. Ege.
Ege writes in the introduction:
I started out by trying to compile all the rules presented in the Dungeons & Dragons® rules and supplements into one cohesive whole. Based on Bruce Mohler’s prior work, I aimed to present this book as if it were the book that Eric Holmes had written all along, before severe editing pared down the rules to the 48 pages that exist today. The largest difference between Bruce’s work, this work, and the original rules is the absence of both the rather poor Greg Bell art, and references/dependencies to Chainmail®. A major goal was to complete what Bruce had started, but as work progressed, the book was steadily becoming less a “Dungeons & Dragons compilation” and more of an “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Light”.
The original material has been edited for readability and reorganized into a cohesive whole. However, this work is more of a cosmopolitan whole than the original rules, in that things from virtually every edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules make an appearance here. The presence of this very book hearkens back to the recent past, when people used the words written in the books as guidelines, and not hard and fast rules.
Interesting. I guess that projects like OSRIC (an OGL product based on AD&D 1st edition) and Labyrinth Lord (an OGL product based on the Mentzer version of the D&D rules) remain the rules to use if you want some retro gaming. Some time ago I used the Labyrinth Lord rules for 2008-04-20 Palace of the Silver Princess.
2008-04-20 Palace of the Silver Princess
But if I want to play something along the lines of Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matthew Finch I think I’ll stick to M20. Simple, rational rules – I don’t need weird lookup tables and crazy details for old school gaming.
Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matthew Finch
Microlite 74 (M74) tries to “recreate the style and feel of that very first (’0e’) fantasy roleplaying game published back in 1974”. If I were to use it, however, I’d scrap the part about light weapons and two-handed fighting.
#RPG #thoughts #Old School
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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I found the thread where the M74 author announced its release. He writes: “It’s been a long time since I published anything RPG-wise and I can’t wait to hear feedback. So far, I’ve heard very little – but it’s generally positive. If i do a second edition, I may need to include an equipment list – or at least some of the old school items like 10 foot poles that seem to have been dropped from later editions.” ��
When I tried to post some feedback, I got a database error. That’s why I’m posting my text here so that it doesn’t get lost. 😄
I wrote:
Yeah, a little equipment list would be nice.
I have several PDFs of retro clones or summaries at home, but I don’t really know how D&D played in 74. For example: Should clerics be allowed to wear heavy armor? Conversely, does the limitation on not using edged weapons make sense at all? (Perhaps it only makes sense with respect to a tradition of having powerful magical swords and no such maces.) If we keep the name magic-users, should we also keep the name fighting-men? Shouldn’t creatures and player characters die at 0 hp instead of -STR? Should old school mechanics use no stat bonus for melee attacks? Perhaps get rid of them for ranged and magic attacks as well. You need magic attack bonus for ranged and melee touch attacks. Do the old rules have that? Just use saving throws always. Do we need two weapon fighting and light weapons in the rules? Maybe add a note that clerics don’t get any new spells at level 12.
Nitpicks: I’m not sure whether one capitalizes the word after a semicolon; I think one usually doesn’t. (Noticed that in the list of special abilities for races.) Because I’m anal about such things, I’d fix the capitalization of MIND vs. Mind in the text and change all instances of “Mind bonus” to “MIND bonus”.
I love your designer’s notes!
I like the new racial abilities.
I like the lack of extra attacks.
I love the rule on getting XP for money spent in “frivolous ways”!
– Alex Schroeder 2008-07-31 23:25 UTC