2010-07-21 Canon Puncture Game Advocate for ＯＤ＆Ｄ

Once again I was listening to Canon Puncture – a podcast mostly about indie games – and they had Tavis Allison from The Mule Abides talking about OD&D – the version from 1974 where all weapons do 1d6 damage and where the rules are so confusing that they barely make sense at all. Tavis’ take is that this is the result of the tension between Arneson, who wanted his players to not know the rules at all and just use their imagination, and Gygax, who wanted to make the game accessible to other people. The result is, as he says, a D&D flavor “that is only vaguely reflected by the published text.” 😄

Canon Puncture

The Mule Abides

I really liked the interview! He talks about the necessity of everybody reinventing the game: What does a wand of magic missile do? Apparently it’s not in the rules. The game encourages you not only to decide for yourself, but it also teaches you (by example) how to write random tables to use instead in order to surprise everybody at the table, DM included.

Arnold comments on the episode: “That is a strange and attractive take on the game.” ¹ I agree! And yet – so liberating! I started to write a comment, but then decided to write a longer blog post instead.

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I had a very similar reaction when I started reading about the older material. What a strange and attractive take on the game indeed! I had resumed gaming at the end of 2006 with D&D 3.5 and my first campaign was reaching levels twelve, thirteen, and more. I was getting sick of high-level play in my D&D 3.5 games. Pathfinder promised to be more of the same. They were going to fix some of the problems, but not the general problem: The game was getting too complicated for my taste! D&D 4th ed. was different but not in the way I wanted it to be. It was just a different tactical game. I stumbled upon the blogs of the Old School Renaissance (OSR). A few weeks back I collected some memorable quotes that defined the experience for me.

I collected some memorable quotes

These old school blogs promised stuff I didn’t know I was looking for, but once I had read about them, there was no forgetting them:

• As a DM I want to be surprised at the table. I don’t want to spend hours preparing my games. Recently I have started running my remaining D&D 3.5 games that way: I don’t want to spend more than one hour of preparation for every session. It works. It’s just not something that you’re being taught by the published books, modules, and adventure paths I’ve read. I learned it from the Old School Renaissance blogs.
• If there’s a problem the characters face and the first thing players do is check their character sheet, then I don’t like it. Others get a kick out of the efficient use of their abilities to kick some ass, but somehow that leaves me cold. Too much chess for my wanna-be fevered brain!
• If there’s too much character creation front-loaded (before the game starts), then I don’t like it. I like to discover who my character is in play. And since I didn’t front-load a lot of investment, I don’t mind loosing the character and starting a new one. The journey is the reward, no preparation needed.
• I like to make shit up as we go. If there are a lot of rules, then suddenly things are more complicated. The classic example is the introduction of the Ride skill: Suddenly characters start falling off their horses because they’re failing their skill checks, where as in the old days, if you imagined your character to ride, he did. If you wanted a pet, and other people have the Handle Animal skill but you don’t, then you can’t have a pet. Yes, there are ways around it, but these ended up being small stumbling blocks that stymied my imagination.
• I like the element of having to adapt with what I’m dealt with by Lady Luck. If the dice say I suck, I need to adapt. Such constraints set my imagination on fire. If I get to choose whether I suck or excel in a particular area (point-buy character creation), then nothing happens. I don’t get excited.

I felt that Tavis Allison captured all these elements quite eloquently in this interview. Recommended – unless you’ve already been reading the blogs of the Old School Renaissance in the last one or two years. If you haven’t and you’re looking for some inspiration, I have collected a large number of old school blogs on the Old School RPG Planet.

Old School RPG Planet

​#RPG ​#Old School ​#Podcast