| old skool D&D Anyone who knows me well enough, has heard me mention my fondness for the original D&D boxed set. For me original means the red-ish box with the blue book inside, the one that came with "chits" instead of dice. This is how I learned (incorrectly) to play D&D as a kid and what established the template in my mind as to what fun could be. There is still a very strong emotional connection to simple concepts such as right-angle hallways and orcs in rooms guarding chests and the Keep on the Borderlands. My original book saw so much wear & tear that I got Gary Gygax to sign the second one I found at a garage sale. I still have memories of great joy from a handwritten character sheet that has everything you need to know about a character on the first side as well as a history in notes in margins and along the bottom. It is very difficult to describe but it is akin to those american ideals in movies & novels where a kid describes his first baseball game with his dad and the feel of the benches, the smell of the hotdogs and the joy of the whole experience. I have not been able to capture that in current D&D. While I am fond of the whole D&D3.x setup, really fond of the a high is better and a higher AC is always better than a low one, I find a loss in the overall experience. Maybe it is too much, too many details required to make a first level character. Hell, the character sheet just bugs the shit out of me with all the stats you have to keep track of. Going up a level becomes an adventure in erasing and updating. And it's not like the massive amount of stats recorded stops the DM from hunting tables for further information. I find a definate lack of joy in character creation. Something is intangibly missing. I have been thinking of going back Old Skool D&D. There is definately a similar fondness for it if you browse through some links on my deli but OD&D also lacks. I cannot just go back and have the fun I did then. Now I crave something a little more. So, I understand why people would create Labyrinth Lord, to give an OD&D feel back to people who cannot just run out and buy the Old Skool Feel, or go looking in boxes to find their childhood. But I more like that some has written one with the feel of OD&D but uses a modified d20 rule set -- Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game. But can that re-create the fun. I wonder, I wonder. (both links via Jeff's Gameblog, my favourite of the whole lot of them) August 27 07 |
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Comments
Sometimes I'm tempted to get back into it just to create the worlds, the adventures. That alone, with no gameplay, would get me most of the way there.
Posted by: Ed at August 28, 2007 12:15 PM
that is what i am currently doing as we haven't had any real gameplay in years.... even if i do count the solo games between marmy and me.
Posted by: tbit at August 28, 2007 03:00 PM
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