As a new DM intending to run 5e, but with an old school D&D feel, which would be a good first AD&D adventure module to adapt? I'm thinking The Keep on the Borderlands.
As a new DM intending to run 5e, but with an old school D&D feel, which would be a good first AD&D adventure module to adapt?
Unironically do not try it in 5e, just grab an OSR PDF. The changes in penalty handling and downtime recovery take a ludicrous amount of effort to wrangle back to the feel of TSR-era D&D, and 5e simply does not have the intricacy for 3.X game feel.
but Goodman Games has a finished conversion
In the sense that they changed the stat blocks for the npcs and monsters, yes. But it doesn't do anything to bridge the gap between the play assumptions of B2 and the play assumptions of 5e, it's literally just a b/x module with 5e stat blocks already copied over.
As an experienced DM, I can easily say you do not want the old school D&D feel. It's shite.
Do not listen to the "grognards" who exalt old adventures, because they're just afraid of evolution while wearing rose-tinted glasses. Worse still are the weird guys who worship Gygax, who selectively interpret his endless stream of contradictory advice to try and justify any and every terrible design decision. Gygax never wrote a single good adventure, and even the other early designers are just a group of hobbyists who were slapping ideas together.
To compare them to aviationists, old school D&D was basically all the attempts before we got a working plane: the guys with wings strapped to their arms or who made gliders that snapped in half when pushed off a hill. Good for them for helping advance things in their time, but Jesus Christ don't follow in their exact footsteps.
I figure you're right, I just wanted to see this shit explode in my face before my eyes so I can write it off concretely.
Stripping all procedure out of the game isn't progress it's regress.
>muh procedures
Only procedures you need are players declare what their characters do, DM tells them the outcomes and whether they need to roll dice. The game doesn't need Gary's ghost in the back seat telling everyone they need a break after 10 minutes.
it's after 60 minutes of dungeoncrawling but if you knew the ADnD rules and not a strawman version of them you might actually value you them.
Enjoy your improv sessions.
Funny how you try to criticize him for making up a strawman, before you immediately rush to make your own strawman.
Didn’t happen though samegay.
Of course, Gary thought of all this on day one and, being better at it than all modern “designers”, made better decisions, creating classics that lived for all eternity, whereas nobody making “games” today will be remembered next year.
>To compare them to aviationists, old school D&D was basically all the attempts before we got a working plane: the guys with wings strapped to their arms or who made gliders that snapped in half when pushed off a hill.
The main trouble with your analogy is that it's rubbish. You write "before we got a working plane" which breaks your comparison because even while I don't hold in much esteem the very early stuff Basic and AD&D worked and still work. You might not like early D&D editions but to say they don't work is so incredibly facile a claim that it beggars belief you'd waste time making it.
PS: Aviators.
>the flaw with your argument is that you're wrong
I'm just messing. I agree with you. I play modified 5e but there's nothing inherently wrong with older editions.
>If there's something they should see, just let them fricking see it instead of rolling DC10 perception for something you're going to reveal anyways.
GMs of every system and every edition need to learn this. Never gate progression behind a coin flip.
Yeah I feel like a lot of this gen's DMs feel like they're failing if the players aren't rolling dice, or use it as a crutch when they don't think they're doing things right.
That sounds true to me from my experiences. A big part of the problem is that dnd got so much more popular so quickly that a huge percentage of DMs aren't just new to DMing but to roleplaying in general, which breaks the chain of onboarding that trained DMs in the past.
Not that DMs NEED a huge amount of experience, but at least some is incredibly helpful in at least presenting basic game procedures.
>Responding to day-old bait
But also, it's absurd to claim that things never progress when your own "old school" was a huge new revolution at one point. That's just blatantly illogical thinking.
NTAYRT but Adventures in Middle-Earth is a 5e supplement that adapts The One Ring RPG. It has a very intentional gameplay loop, a thing which 5e lacks, and it's partially fuelled by custom resting rules.
Old skool is evolution, and you got left behind. Life is about trying new things, and guess what, most of the time those new things don’t work and simply turn out to be inferior. Like 5th ed turned out to be. Evolution is moving on to old school D&D. It’s the future.
More generally, you do know that only low-IQ dipshits believe in the fantasy that things “progress”, right? Everything that you saw happen is likely to unhappen, and everything you think is in the past is actually your future.
As an experienced DM, I can easily say you do not want the new system D&D5e feel. It's shite.
Do not listen to the "new blood" who exalt the younger system, because they're just afraid of tradition while wearing rose-tinted glasses. Worse still are the weird guys who worship Crawford, who selectively interpret his endless stream of contradictory advice to try and justify any and every terrible design decision. Crawford never wrote a single good adventure, and even the other Hasbro designers are just a group of working stiffs who were slapping ideas together.
To compare them to aviationists, new D&D was basically all the attempts after we got a working plane: the guys with cone propellers strapped to their see-through frames or who made Boeings that snapped in half when pushed through ordinary commercial air travel. Good on them for helping advance things in their time, but Satan my Lord don't follow in their exact footsteps.
If you can find it, WOTC released a free conversion of KOTB when 5e was brand new. My players did not care for the dungeon and abandoned it pretty quickly, so I don't know if it's any good.
Do you want OSR feel or Classic feel?
OSR means ignoring the rules as much as possible and only bringing them up when necessary. The best way to do that for 5e is to take your player's character sheets and not let them look at them. You have to do all the rolling, and they will be trained not to only do the things spelled out on their character sheets. You may have to give them index cards with spells/powers on them, but try not to describe much on the cards.
Classic, the original way the game was really played, is all about following procedures and really leaning into the rules. Unfortunately, 5e has no meaningful crunchy or interesting rules for exploration and dungeon crawling. You'll need to port them from other games or make them up. I like AngryGM's tension dice system for time management.
I will say while I am a big fan of the OG modules, though partially for nostalgic reasons- whether or not you have a good time playing them is going to depend on how well you gel with the system you are using. For OP I would recommend taking a moment to look over options to 5e if being old school is what's desired. Just playing 2e can be a lot of fun, and if that doesn't appeal going OSR is worth a shot. It's not impossible to run KotBL in 5e, but if you want to go digging in the past then why not change system appropriately too? It can be a lot of fun.
I already bought 5e, and I just want a crash course through an old module.
Alright, makes sense. As a general rule all you need to convert is the monsters, and remember to use the module as a guideline not as absolute truth. Keep it loose and you'll have a good time.
I'm looking forward to trying out my 5e materials. If we end up really liking the old school feeling, we might experiment with switching to Basic Fantasy.
I think the whole point of that anon's warning is that you won't (can't) get an 'old school feeling' from D&D 5E.
Keep has the advantage of introducing the eponymous keep as a base of operations you can use for further adventures. The different caves come with their own factions and are interconnected, so you can play out their relations with each other. It's a good canvas to draw on, to add your personal shit and excise the stuff you don't need.
>If you can find it, WOTC released a free conversion of KOTB when 5e was brand new.
It was during playtest when 5e was still codenamed D&D Next. PDF attached.
I tricked most of my 13th age players into thinking we are playing 5e and then had them make their characters blind, without knowing what the skills do. Had at least one anon stick around for five years.
Really don't think they'll mesh all too well together
>oooOOoooOOohh, you touch the statue and are afflicted with a terrible curRRRrrrrse! You.... gain disadvantage on all your attack rolls!!! OOOoooOOoooOOoohhh!!
>Disadvantage, huh. Just like the poison is giving me, just like having my arm cut off by the pendulum trap is giving me. But I have this one source of advantage so I will continue to just roll normally.
, you touch the statue and are afflicted with a terrible curRRRrrrrse! You.... die....
>uh, OK, give me 5 seconds and I'll roll up Sir Robert the 2nd
>5e, but with an old school D&D feel
Ouch, you can try but you have to AT MINIMUM enable the following options (dome from the DMg):
1. Gritty realism rules + safe haven requirement for long rests (from the "Adventures in Middle-Earth" hack);
2. No feats and no multiclassing allowed;
3. Available classes: fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric. Available races: human, elf, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, dwarf;
4. Gold for XP from ad&d (1gp safely taken back in your base = 1xp);
5. Level-up requirements: other than the xp quota you need a safe haven with resources (hirelings, stores, etc...), a timeskip of 1 week per each level the pc has (round up) and an expense of 1000gp.
6. Track time: have turns for dungeons (20 minutes each) and wilderness exploration (1 day each). Consume resources adequately (torches, rations, etc...);
7. Use the "stronghold & followers" splat from fat colville for dominion phase rules
...or you can just use BFRPG and be done with (it's free).
>per each level the pc has
*per each 2 levels
Ah, i almost forgot:
8. Use spell slots for cantrips (you can use the same amount as for 1st level spells);
9. Enforce spell memorisation per slot (as for vancian casting in 3e and backwards);
>1. Gritty realism rules + safe haven requirement for long rests (from the "Adventures in Middle-Earth" hack
The what now
>Playing with a group that loves improv, emergent gameplay, and dungeon crawling
>5e with gritty resting and adapted old school dungeon crawling and exploration rules
>Game is tense, balanced, and engaging
Life is good
I mean if you want a genuine old-school feel, you should roll up a random dungeon according to the rules and tables in the back of the 5e DMG.
For authentic old school you can do it by hand, or for the sake of being done some time before Christmas there are sites that will do it for you, like donjon:
https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/
You make it sound like dungeons take long time to make, lol
"Running 5e with an old school D&D feel" is an oxymoron at worst and a veneer at best.
It's like saying "I want to play football using 2020s rules, but with a 1930s feel."
see how that doesn't make sense? what does it even mean? it doesn't mean using the 1930s rules. it doesn't even mean using "old-school" equipment. so what would it be, just larping as old-school football players?
Just run one of the Dungeon Crawl Classics campaigns, where the rules themselves are meant to emulate old school RPGs.
or just run an AD&D module WITH AD&D rules
>It's like saying "I want to play football using 2020s rules, but with a 1930s feel."
see how that doesn't make sense? what does it even mean?
"I want to play football without any blacks in it"
>see how that doesn't make sense?
I assume it means using equipment and uniforms dating to the 1930s. Makes sense to me.
And also failing to do any training while playing with a lit cigarette in your mouth
don't go 5e
it's a cancer where PC can't die and DMs don't matter
save yourself
If you want to play B2, run it in B/X. You'll find it's quite simpler that way.
> Resolve as much of the game through talking and verisimilitude of the game world. If there's something they should see, just let them fricking see it instead of rolling DC10 perception for something you're going to reveal anyways.
> Make encounters interesting and make sense for the world, not based off of perfectly curated and balanced CR levels.
> Reaction / Morale rolls, monsters negotiating for their life or seeking payment to leave or any other reason to not just punch each other in the face for 1.5 hour combats, multiple outcomes / goals in a fight so that every combat isn't just pressing Attack until monsters are dead.
> Gold as XP
>As a new DM intending to run 5e, but with an old school D&D feel
Telling you right now, this is not going to work.
There's several anons in this thread right now that have attested to the contrary.
There are several more anons seconding that it's a bad idea.
>A: I don't think this would work
>B: actually I've done it and it works
The logical takeaway, in my mind, is not "A seems more trustworthy," but "I wonder what B did that made it work."
I've run several. IMO the best was Night of the Walking Dead.