The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

there is no way i would game with christ, dude is too much of a powergamer

"uh, i shoot a flaming sword out of my mouth and instantly destroy all evil forever"
"sigh. roll for initiative."
"i don't have to roll for initiative, the flaming sword is a free action"
"jesus, is this on your character sheet?"
"yeah, check it out here"
"this says 'and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of jesse'. what does that have to do with flaming swords?"
"uh, it's a PARABLE, duh! i'm 'jesse', the stem is my mouth, and the 'rod' is a flaming sword that destroys all evil forever."

lmao

That is very good.

amazing stuff

started playing a variant of basic D&D w a few friends on roll20, it is fun, really good quarantine activity. highly recommended.

Is there a video component to it (i.e. can you see each other)?

Hey guys. My daughter (and I) got invited to join a D&D group that her friend's dad is conducting, for their 4th grade social circle. Do you guys know of any decent race/class explainers that just get it REAL basic? I was mostly put off of RPGs when I was a teen because of the levels of knowledge seemingly required at entry. For example, I started a Roll20 account and while they have basic descriptions, it would still put my daughter to sleep trying to get through them.

https://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Weapons-Adventurers-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/1984856421/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=kids+dungeons+and+dragons&qid=1600468949&s=books&sr=1-6

??

idk where your fourth grader is at reading wise but at least it's real visual + boo the hamster

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91ajDjkOqCL.jpg

Looks pretty good! I was thinking more along the line of something on youtube or elsewhere on the internet, but this would be just right in terms of reading-level. I will check with my local game shop and see if they have it.

I'm in the middle of watching this at the moment, which is also in the right ballpark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RxuEVxHbSk

(I have also asked this question to the DM, btw. I just wanted to see if you all had any other solid ideas)

I came up with a magical weapon called the Random Axe of Kindness (roll percentile for results all over the board, helpful to harmful) a few years ago, and this morning I had the idea for a flesh-burrowing creature called a Squealy Worm because somewhere a DM is just dying to say "X just shit a Squealy Worm."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPm3GKmUkNU

I'll watch this later, but Chaotic-Good is the best.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7asxci/oc_ygathok_the_ceaseless_hunger_final_boss_of_our/

Pretty great.

good thread (via ned)

Writing a d100 table to roll on for D&D entitled “A weird guy you meet while standing in line for the tavern’s outhouse”

— metaltxt (@metaltxt) July 15, 2021

You come to a waterfall

https://www.theatermania.com/off-broadway/news/dungeons-and-dragons-musical-here-there-be-dragons_93357.html

A vorpal sword, is very, very very fine sword . . . .

Can I say in this thread that I think all recent editions of D&D (3.0 and onward) make the characters too powerful and the game too complicated? Since playing our B/X game for a couple years I really love the flexibility and simplicity of it all. But I did pick up the Advanced OSE books on black friday and while they look fun, I'm concerned that the additional class abilities will up the power curve too much for my personal taste.

Zero HP = Dead

I'm looking forward to reading this novel that comes out in the U.S. tomorrow:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Sorcerer-of-Pyongyang/Marcel-Theroux/9781668002667

(not because of the subject matter, which could be cloying in the wrong hands, but I've really enjoyed his other books)

xp ideally this is offset by more powerful monsters, steeper xp curve (b/x cleric attains 2nd at 1.5k and 14th at 700k, while adv. druid attains 2nd at 2k and 14th at 1.5M) and in the case of ad&d 1e the gm being ultra-strict about things like the cost of spell components, class restrictions (no shield or warhammer for your druid) and responsibilities (when you get to 11th level the archdruids starting tracking you down to fight you, highlander style)

i think some of the spell components and stuff like that are left out of advanced fantasy, since unlike b/x it's not actually a direct port of ad&d?

exalted funeral has a bundle with the b/x tomes + hole in the oak for $50. an insane deal which maybe i should follow up on. i spent too much already this weekend at goodman games, though!

sorry i mean left out of the ose adv. fantasy books vs. the ose basic fantasy books (which are direct copies of b/x, with heavy editing)

also it's CLASSIC fantasy not basic gah. i've avoided those books mostly because i'm happy to just play 1e with all of its idiosyncracy and stupidity. that's what i grew up with, so i'm comfortable with it. the adventures seem real good, though, so maybe i should grab them. plus i've been picking up the original adventures reincarnated books, and while the dnd ones (lost city, isle of dread, into the unknown / keep on the borderlands) ones have 5e conversions they don't have 1e conversions! so might be easier to run with ose than 1e?

Yeah, I ordered mine from exalted funeral.
It’s def less complicated than AD&D, but also, I feel weird whenever subclasses make the vanilla class obsolete. I think if our current game ends, I’ll offer the players sone of the advanced classes but maybe not all. I hate elves, for example, i dislike because of the elvish stereotype rather than anything mechanical. Also dislike bards and paladins. Otoh I like illusionists and assassins.

Maybe I should just stick to B/x.

yeah i personally like race-as-class. also the classic critique of unearthed arcana (then and now) is that the new class abilities and subclasses (particularly barbarian and cavalier) are unbalancingly powerful. not sure if the other 1e subclasses got the same reaction

ian let's stick to B/x plz, lol

OK.
Sadly the list of games I have and want to play is LONG so someday your teleportation crystals might just put you in Cyberpunk 2020 or Harn.

haha fair

B/X are the red and blue box sets from '83, correct? I don't think I ever played those.

First D&D memories were AD&D 1st edition. When my parents expressed concerns that D&D = Satan, my mind instantly flashed to the cover of that Player's Handbook.

Jordan, that book is actually very good; not cloying at all

PBKR, yes. When I started playing (mid nineties?) both Ad&d second edition and basic d&d were still in print and we sort of mixed and matched them without thinking shot consistency or consequences. I like the B/X edition because the rules are very light and flexible. None of the AD&D shit like weapon speed, weapon type vs armor modifiers, the aforementioned spell components. Elves, dwarves and halflings were classes. Somr differences in character progression, but say less bookkeeping and with the lack of hard rules meant there was minimal rules-lawyering. “Rulings not rules.”

The race-as-class kind of blows my mind. I only have the vaguest of memories of "AD&D shit like weapon speed, weapon type vs armor modifiers, the aforementioned spell components." But I was super-young, like 8? when I started because a friend had an older brother and I think he handled a lot of that.

"Rulings not rules."

Ha, that whole OSR movement is really interesting. I'm on an rpg Discord server that has been discussing that topic a bit and I learned just recently that there is a "conservative" faction in the OSR movement that views early D&D with an almost fascistic nostalgia. It just so happens that period had fewer POC/LGTBQ+ people in rpgs. But the efforts to determine how those early 1974-75 games were played are fascinating.

Have you ever seen World of Dungeons?

There are some really shitty OSR scene dudes. But I’m thankful for people who clarified and reIssued the original rules because as written, Ad&d especially, is so disorganized.

I hope everyone itt has read this incredible book that fills in all the pre-70's pieces of the picture:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15784870-playing-at-the-world

(as well as the 70s of course)

Yes. I didn't need him to go back as far as chess, but great book.

World of Dungeons:

http://www.onesevendesign.com/dw/world_of_dungeons_1979_bw.pdf

It's a three page rpg that uses a super-light version of the core mechanic from Apocalypse World (probably the most influential non-D&D rpg from the last 20 years) to evoke a 1976 D&D experience. sleeve, I think you are old enough for the font on that character sheet to give you shivers.

oh yes. is there a name for that font now?

my 1976 experience was actually Tunnels & Trolls, another "stripped down" simpler version. one of the earliest if not the earliest imitators.

pretty sure I have told this story before, but the guy (my age) who introduced me to it went on to invent Age Of Empires

he was also a big Yes fan

He's gotta be doing well.

I was introduced to D&D by M3liss@ M@cC@rthy's husband.

Font = Quentin EF, apparently

Sleeve, I loved Playing At The World; his other books are good too.

the first 'monster' i encountered, 40 years ago whilst playing ad&d, was a nixie

which was not accepted by the current spelling bee, so fuck them

ian, did you read The Elusive Shift? I want to read that one.

I'm on some OSR/NSR discords and the devotion to B/X and OD&D is so weird to me.

I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites with descending armor class and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties

my 1976 experience was actually Tunnels & Trolls, another "stripped down" simpler version. one of the earliest if not the earliest imitators.

I loved the company's DIY aesthetic and especially its wealth of solo adventures. However, the game mechanics, especially for combat, left a lot to be desired. You ended up rolling a ton of dice and once someone started bleeding the outcome was pretty much preordained.

I liked The Fantasy Trip, which was Steve Jackson's first, pre-GURPS foray into role-playing.

I run a B/X D&D game and I like it because there are fewer rule for players to learn and for DMs to remember. I also prefer a lower power level than the modern D&D situation where you start as already pretty damn powerful. I like the roll under ability score for resolving skill checks; i like the reaction table; i like the limited class selection. Are you a brooklyn hipster PBKR?

that said I'd happily PLAY AD&D or 2nd edition, and I have played 5e, but I'm not really interested in running them.
I'm not married to B/X but I'm more inclined to play a different game altogether than a different variant of D&D; I don't wanna have to learn all that that shit. I could be talked into trying to run AD&D but only if I restricted class and race options probably.

I also want to try GURPS but it’s too much to learn and would require my players buying books etc to do properly. But I love some of the sourcebooks for general ideas and historical stuff.

yeah idgi either

i mean, you’re a poster on a message board called “i love music” where saying something like “og 70s post punk has a certain vibe which modern groups struggle to capture” would be completely uncontroversial

1e d&d and ad&d books have a certain charm plus they’re what i grew up playing. if you don’t like idiosyncracy and insist on consistency OSE cleans up thise rules, but i just want to play with my old toys, who cares?
i’m not against new games, have had lots of fun lately running mutant crawl classics, dungeon crawl classics, vaults of vaarn, mork borg, into the odd, troika etc, and we’re gearing up to run island of ixx soon

but if i’m going to run a game i want some basic ass rules that don’t get in anyone’s way, not some narrativist meta-game obscenity* like blades in the dark or “balanced” “built-for-gamers” trash like 5e

* that said i did buy the new licensed robotech game from harmony gold … very new school narrativist with interesting teamwork mechanics. i’m intrigued by the idea that a minmei type, a fleet technician and a veritech pilot can contribute equally during a combat. plus macross rules