My friends have expressed interest in playing D&D. Thing is, while as a player I'm pretty flexible with playing whatever, as GM I suffer from perfectionist autism where a game MUST suit my tastes at least 95% else I don't want to run it (I "can" run them but the resulting adventures don't have the "oomph" of passion and end up mediocre.) Unfortunately no edition of D&D is perfect for me. I figure the old-school ones would be easiest to hack.
What things should I consider?
Firstly, I would like to mention that this would not be an "OSR" game. This game would embrace the Thief class in all its skill-monkey glory. And actually try to not make it suck.
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The other thing is personalizing the classes, and not in the sense of feats, but more in the sense of "what kind of experience would picking this class bring me". For example, an idea I had was to make the separation of class-exclusive items more explicit in presentation to the players. Every class has rare and unique items they've heard of and seek. For the Fighter, fine-quality and magical armor and weapons, which they could "Egoize" through use, making them sentient. For the Thief (or Rogue as I would prefer), various non-magical inventions and gadgets that are hard to obtain in the setting, from crossbows to Greek fire bombs to grappling guns, delicate and hard not to screw up for the other classes but very useful in the Thief's arsenal. For the Cleric holy relics such as the ashes of saints, holy water, miraculous staffs of light, etc. Basically, inherent roleplay motivation for each class beyond "get rich or die trying", while simultaneously making each class have a different vibe in terms of their place in the world and the way they shape it by obtaining these items (some of which are one-of-a-kind).
The third thing is making combat dynamic without much crunch. Say, a combatant that loses a round is forced to retreat one space, a combatant that takes X amount of damage in one round is stunned, weapons can break or be dropped, large combatants can "push" smaller combatants just by moving, and so on. I already have a ruleset I can steal from for this aspect.
One issue I'm unsure of is advancement. I do want loot-for-xp, but since I am in part modifying the classes (most notably the Thief), I'm unsure about XP requirements. If I were to make every class advance at the same rate, what would be the ideal XP requirements, if I wanted to use old-school modules and DMG treasure generation?
>I already have a ruleset I can steal from for this aspect.
Care to share?
The Fantasy Trip: Melee. PDF is free.
https://warehouse23.com/products/the-fantasy-trip-melee-pdf
Thanks
Tell me what you think, anon.
I will. I just need some advice to make it clean and not too off-the-wall.
Check out Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The modules and themeing is hammer horror but you can largely skip that. The specialist aka thief and skills in general are a good functional compromise. Fighters are distinct in they are the only ones who get much better at fighting.
Port it onto some sort of megadungeon setting where the various special items are present, look at the treasure tables in the ad&d dmg and modify them to suit or just make sure you adjust the found treasure.
Combat gamification isn't a thing I want or one that suits osr very well but ymmv you're on your own for that one.
Generally, its a good idea to try and run/play something as is before fricking with it too much. If you've got the time, running at least a oneshot as is would help. The differences between classes, tactical combat through descriptive terrain and opponents with goals and advancement are largely already present and you may find it already does what you want but not in a way you thought it would.
>Combat gamification
I wasn't thinking like "here's a million different variations of 'attack'", but more like "there's a Magic-User in the back protected by polearm wielders, you'll have to break their formation to get to the Magic-User before he pops off" in a rules-supported way. Fighters engage the polearm wielders, force them to move, opening a gap for the rest of the party. It's tactical in an emergent way, not tactical in an "I activate my feat that lets me move a foe" way or whatever.
>Generally, its a good idea to try and run/play something as is before fricking with it too much
I have actually been a player in some short-lived OSR campaigns using retroclones mostly (one used AD&D I think but the GM was the kind that hid rules from the players) and have read lots of OSR rulebooks, forums, blogs over the years, so it's not like I have zero experience. My issue with running any kind of D&D as is, is the arbitrary feel of worlds thanks to the predisposition for kitchen sink and lack of metaphysics, and the lack of serious treatment of adventurers as a profession with all the implications. For example I can't rationalize why a Druid would ever go adventuring, in any kind of context that's not a threat to their home. Why would an Assassin go adventuring? His job is killing people for hire, not fighting dragons. Etc.
>megadungeon setting
I was planning on a setting with informal adventurer organizations bankrolled by wealthy merchants. The introduction for basically every expedition will be "the adventurer's association has sent out a notice, that in this place [insert rumors], you are among the first adventurers to arrive but soon more will surely pour in..." which is also an excellent way to put the PCs on a clock, if they stall (the "5 minute dungeon" phenomenon) rival adventurers will grab the loot. I think ACKS has a mechanic for sending henchmen on adventures and then making a few rolls for the results, I can steal that for rival adventurers.
That's already rules supported. You don't need to make more rules for that just describe combat conditions and keep track of time.
Really. Just run it consistently and think it out. There's a decent osr primer called Muster if you want to get into combat as war rather than sport. Longer read but interesting.
>adventuring as a profession
>settings
Okay. Make your own setting? Not really sure what the problem is here. You don't have to include classes you don't want to, you're the DM. Although if you can't think of a reason a druid would go out into the world you might have creativity problems.
>setting stuff and something about stalling
>STRICT TIME RECORDS MUST BE KEPT.
Pretty much most osr and classic material has other adventurers as potential random encounters in dungeons and just using random encounters in general mixed with risk/reward of xp for loot means 5 minute dungeons don't really work for the players.
Might want to look at ACKS for more granular stuff, seems your inclination based on the 95% stuff. Faction turns from Worlds Without Number are more abstract but could be useful.
IME overly stratifying the world and making it too prescriptive will necessarily cramp your ability to deal with emergent play that is osr's strong suit though.
>Just run it consistently and think it out
The purpose of rules is to make things consistent. Arbitrary decisions in life-or-death situations are a guaranteed way to piss off my friends.
>Make your own setting
That's kind of the problem. All D&D material assumes kitchen sink. The way magic works mechanically is very specific. And so on. I've sort-of arrived at a satisfactory compromise, under the condition of some hacking.
>a druid
Is basically a pagan priest. A priest has a specific social function. Adventuring is effectively abandoning that social function. A "druid" that chooses the life of an adventurer is no longer one.
>5 minute dungeons don't really work for the players
If they flee and civilization isn't far, they do work. The very fact that this phenomenon has a name is evidence in of itself.
>overly stratifying the world and making it too prescriptive will necessarily cramp your ability to deal with emergent play that is osr's strong suit though
Ironically you say this, but every version of D&D ties down the GM. One look at the rules for languages tells you everything. Players MUST choose X number of languages that their character knows at chargen. What if you as the GM haven't actually determined what are all the possible intelligent creatures that could appear? I, for one, will rectify this by simply letting players keep language "slots" open, after an initial offering of a few languages. They can fill in those slots as I expand the world, and offer "new" languages their characters can retroactively know when it becomes relevant for the next adventure locale.
Sounds like you have autism and skill issues that aren't going to work out with osr play. It requires both adherence to procedures and rules as best suit but also the capacity to interpret and make rulings as necessarily unexpected circumstances emerge.
You've got a weird bunch of assumptions about a broad play style and ruleset that I think are going to prevent you from being able to unlearn whatever you're on and use a different form effectively. You're best bet is using Runequest and making it work for you.
glhf
>osr play
Good thing we won't be playing "OSR", as mentioned. Runequest isn't D&D.
>more like "there's a Magic-User in the back protected by polearm wielders, you'll have to break their formation to get to the Magic-User before he pops off" in a rules-supported way.
You probably want to homebrew 3.x or 4e rather than an old school rules Old school rules are quite simplistic on the combat sections and treat it quite abstractly because the meat of the game is in the procedures for dungeon crawling - tracking exploration turns, random encounters, reaction rolls for encounters, etc. - the more strategic (or operational) layer of dungeon crawling is more important. Tactical combat decision-making in this context is more "fight or flee" rather than any fancy round-by-round maneuvering or special moves; there's not as much of a "combat minigame" compared to later editions.
This also reflects the wargaming assumptions - the assumed progression isn't that players gain more fancy moves or maneuvers to break the formation; rather, they hire a warband to back them up. The wargame solution to "Magic User in the back" is "bring archers".
I am literally stealing ideas from a skirmish game (wargame). I don't know what 3.x or 4e have to do with that. Not trying to be rude, I just don't get the logic. Dynamic combat and "we hire archers" can't exist side-by-side?
>domain play
Not trying to do that at this moment. In fact to remove any ambiguity I am removing the "you can build a stronghold at level 9 and attract followers" thing. The logistics of loot and excess gold will be covered by a setting thing. Basically, adventurers rely on brokers to cash in on their loot. Brokers charge a very high commission fee, with the fee increasing with level (assumption being that higher level characters are bringing in more loot from higher level expeditions, which is more work for the broker to transport and sell, though it could also be done by estimating the weight of the loot if one wanted more granularity). Since brokers do not have infinite liquidity, part of the cash in will be payed out in coins, for the rest adventurers write their names in a ledger and are given a cheque, guaranteeing the money in retirement funds at any credit union (owned in part or wholly by the wealthy merchants bankrolling the previously mentioned adventurer associations). Any stronghold building will likely be a post-retirement fluff thing (ie. after retiring my character used his retirement funds to build a wizard tower, where he lived happily ever after). Might cap levels to 10 but we'll see, I don't expect us to ever reach any level cap anyhow knowing the attention span of my friends, I'll be lucky if we can go through two modules.
Just use Chainmail with domain play. Go fricking old old OLD school. This is what you want. This is how it was played back in the olden days before D&D. The players even played the patrons during downtimes and created adventure hooks with paying for their domain and army the main drive for them. They also had a stable of PCs and would use the appropriate ones for the adventure type while the unused ones would have downtime adventures to advance their training (spending that sweet gold to get a teacher)/change their location throw non-play travel.
Give examples of games that have met your 95% requirement.
Pretty much almost all Japanese games. Honor and Intrigue/Barbarians of Lemuria. Warbirds (dieselpunk celebrity plane pilots). BRP/Runequest. Delta Green. Ars Magica. Off the top of my head.
Oh, and I guess Traveller is interesting, but I'm not really a space person so ideas are slim.
Forgot Maelstrom Domesday. That's a really good game for a grounded medieval adventure or two.
Use BRP. Turn % into d20 rolls. Rename stats to D&D stats. Cut down on the skills by turning some into saves or other D&D terms. Lie and say it's D&D.
Well, I think you should just improvise the rules as you go based on what you know about all the editions of D&D.
I've run """D&D"""" once in my life and I made exactly that, and it was fun. For example, I've made all the rolls player-facing from the start, used room-difficulty, and 5e advantage/disadvantage. It was indistinguishable from the D&D session from the glance, but comfortable to play unlike the original.
thief does not suck. just needs tool proficiency for alchemist tools and the healer feat. get caltrops and manacles (and write up non-flimsy rules for them. we make them halve speed if attached to the legs, disadvantage on attack rolls and skill checks that use arms. does not matter if arms/legs, swim speed and climbings speed are halved)
with thieves tools you can make traps, with fast hands you can plant them as a bonus action.
sometimes you just steady aim and attack, but you can pull some insane shit with thief as it is. its the most fun i had with any subclass ever.
these gimmicks are obviously a lot stronger on low levels, but on high levels you can start using spellscrolls without a good spellDC/spellattack but there are a lot of spells that do not have those.
The old-school Thief sucks, which is what the OP is asking about.
>Modern DnD is bad
>I know, let's use older DnD!
>It's going to be great!
You should consider a nice cup of bleach, first and foremost.
DnD is bad pick regardless of edition. There is no bigger cope than "back in the day, it was good". It wasn't. But they were spending 90% of their profits to market those games and then a corporate coke-head took over, establishing the brand by peddling crazy amount of shit and marketing that too. That's the big "secret".
You are now allowed to play other games, rather than trying to find some "hidden gem"
We're still playing D&D, because that's what my friends want.
>Friends want to play d&d
>In order to facilitate this, I must homebrew it to the point that it's no longer d&d
It seems like someone is going to be disappointed in this equation, bud
>to the point that it's no longer d&d
The six attributes
AC
Rolling d20
To-hit
HP
Levels and XP
The OG four classes, Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief
It's not D&D because...
>I figure the old-school ones would be easiest to hack.
They aren't, because old-school D&D is a dissociated mess of separately designed subsystems that aren't easily replaced. It you really think you need to make your own shitbrew, you'd have an easier time starting from 5e's free Basic Rules or SRD.
>They aren't
Then why does almost every OSR game start with "I'm gonna hack old-school D&D" and not "I'm gonna hack 5e"? The exceptions being the games that are literally just stripped down 5e
Because the use case for OSR is "Can I run Keep on the Borderlands out of the box?"
>separately designed subsystems that aren't easily replaced
That's exactly why TSR D&D is easy to hack. You don't have the same cross-cutting concerns as the D20 system or 5e.
Because OSR is first and foremost about mechanical compatibility with TSR-era adventures. Obviously, there is wiggle room for house rules and subsystems in your B/X shitbrew, but the further you stray and the more systematic your changes, the less OSR it becomes.
designed subsystems that aren't easily replaced
>That's exactly why TSR D&D is easy to hack.
Erm, no. You're stuck with old-school saving throw and attack progressions etc., which are innately tied to classes and levels. Any changes you'd make to existing subsystems are going to spiral out into every aspect of the game. You can tack on other stuff, like ACKS does, but not really hack anything.
>You're stuck with old-school saving throw and attack progressions etc., which are innately tied to classes and levels
Yes, and? TSR D&D does in fact have a mechanical core that's hard to throw out. OSR was not trying to be anything to anyone until the mid-2010s.
>Yes, and? TSR D&D does in fact have a mechanical core that's hard to throw out.
So it's not easy to hack.
Take that up with OP and
.
I'm just going to call you a nogames, and that you should look at 2e, Rules Cyclopedia, ACKS, and Swords and Wizardry to realize that the design space TSR D&D is actually quite large.
Don't like bend bars/lift gates, use something else without blowing open some skill system closely tied to attributes. Don't like AD&D's wilderness traversal rules, use Outdoor Survival or any number of blog post alternatives. There are several encumbrance reworks. Basically everyone rewrites AD&D initiative.
>Spend countless hours figuring out initiative for every encounter because our rogue insists that weapon speed be factored or he's totally useless and he's not wrong so have to check every enemy every encounter every time to figure out what their speed should be
>Basically everyone rewrites AD&D initiative.
You're not wrong but you're also 30 years late.
>but not really hack anything.
Calling homebrewing or houserules
>hacking
is some forge shit so nerds could pretend they were doing something difficult or cool. No one is hacking anything.
In the context of D&D
Houserules - minor rule variations
Homebrew - significant rule variations
Hack - (re)inventing the wheel
is how I understand the terms
So for example, wizards being able to learn spells at level up without investment is a houserule. Wizards starting play with a cat and owl is homebrew. Wizards not using actual Vancian magic at all is hacking.
Perhaps what I (OP) am doing is somewhere in-between homebrew and hack. Changing how combat works is definitely a hack. Making the Thief better is more of a homebrew.
>old-school D&D is a dissociated mess of separately designed subsystems that aren't easily replaced
No, that's not really true. There are countless optional rule add-ons. But the base rules are all right there in attributes, THAC0, Hit Dice and Saving throws (for AD&D either 1e or 2e and no "ablublublu 1e didn't have THAC0" because to-hit tables were just "look at the table" instead of "use this formulae" and were the exact same thing since 1976). Everything else was attribute checks. Tons of optional rule add-ons. None were ever part of the dissociated mess you're talking about, unless you wanted to associate them. Don't have a rule for it? Save or attribute check.
>It's not a dissociated mess
>goes on to describe what a dissociated mess it is
Compare that to the simplicity of d20 + attribute modifier + proficiency bonus, roll high as a core mechanic. Everyone using the same interval of modifiers for the things they're good or bad at.
If you dislike bounded accuracy as-is and don't care about full compatibility, you can dial the influence of attributes and proficiency on the die roll; you could even remove classes and levels entirely.
Forget making any such changes when starting from TSR D&D.
>If I just put it in green text, the other person said that thing!
That's not how that works, my guy.
>>It's not a dissociated mess
The disassociated mess, or more charitably "modular design" is why it's easy to homebrew and experiment with.
Use 2e and not proficiencies, and no rules that don't go on a character sheet. Attribute checks w/ whatever +/- you feel like. All problems solved and the game now handles anything you want to do.
GURPS is explicitly designed to reduce hacking to homebrewing, and homebrewing to house ruling. There are so many purely optional official rules to everything that there's always a workable reference to modify into whatever you need it to do.
And, if your Players give it a fair shot, they'll realize that they can make their Characters so much more bespoke and specific to their core concepts.