Cutting down to the basics

I have been tying to get to the core idea of the D&D system. Despite all the add-on rules of the later versions, one thing is clear. D&D is a combat system. Characters have hit points and attack rolls because they were trained in combat. The origin of roleplaying is wargaming. Before it was characters in a adventure it was models in a scenario. The rules focus on fighting and the DM handles everything else. I have begun changing the way my world works to fit this idea. There are no non-combatant stat lines. NPC's who don't fight don't have stats. They don't have levels. They don't have hit points. I as the DM can decide what happens to them if hit by weapons or magic. I can define character classes by their role in combat terms. The Fighter is of course obvious. What about Magic-Users? They are fighting mages, trained for magical combat. Cleric? Holy warriors, fighting for a cause. But not Thieves. I don't consider the thief a viable class because fighting is secondary to them. I am tossing out any class that doesn't fight as its principal role. By concentrating on only using the rules for combat I can have greater control and streamline the mechanics of each game session. I can let the story move the game along. And give players more control over non-combat actions. Experience is now only for defeating enemies. Non-combat success is measured by bonus points, story points or hero points. I haven't decided if this will work as redeemable points in game or a running total similar to EXP. The running total idea will work this; the more points a character has the higher importance in the world. The more things the will happen for the benefit of the character but also the larger challenges they will face. They can accomplish much with just swordplay but greater rewards lie within the story.

Weather or not, the play is the thing

Now that the weather is turning cooler my thoughts drift to nostalgia. Particularly my early days of gaming. I'm sure I did more roleplaying in summer. But there is something about the fall that makes me think more of games past. Maybe its because my early days of roleplaying were inexorably linked to school. School provided the means to find fellow players. I did game with friends but I also made friends with gamers. There were a number of classmates of whom I would have never have gotten to know if not for gaming. Every fall offered new beginnings. New campaigns, new players and new games. The cooler temperatures is motivation to spend more time indoors (the natural environment of the gamer). Its been a long time since the change in the weather meant back to school and back to more gaming. But the changing leaves still make me think about gaming.

Old School Renaissance; it ain't like it used to be

Fellow blogger Lizard at Lizardgames makes a very good point about the old school movement. Namely that the brevity of the rule books were not a goal but a necessity of economics. The small fledgling RPG companies had little money to publish large volumes. Notice in the first years of D&D there were constant expansions to the rules. Magazine articles, adventure modules with extra rules and the supplements all added to the complexity of the first set of rules. They published as often as they could afford. Then the money did come. What did TSR do when they did have increased resources ? They published a lot more books. And bigger books with more pages and better artwork. And of course more rules. I don't think they did it because of the money. They did it because it was what we wanted. Back in the early days if a company produced a game and stopped with only the barest of rules framework. And then said "fill in the rest of the stuff by yourself thats it theres no more". They would have gone out of business quickly. My early days of roleplaying were usually dominated by a quest for more realism. I wanted more detailed rules to make gameplay more lifelike. I look back on those days fondly but I laugh at my attempts at real life simulation. I just wanted things in the game to make sense to me. But I wasn't dong anything different from what my friends where doing. No one forced the books on us. We happily bought as many as we could afford. They added new ideas to our games. The devil may be in the details but we willingly danced to his tune.

There have been questions about what old school is. Thanks to that essay I can now give my version.

Old school is a new term for an attitude about the style of a play inspired the earliest editions of D&D and other RPGs.

A new expletive

Ok I might not have spelled it correctly. However you spell it I have a new expression for all RPGers everywhere.

GREAT GRUMBLING GYGAX!

An incredulous exasperation for the masses.
I will have to ponder some time on one for Arneson.

using the numbers

Beyond qualifying for bonuses or allowing you to play certain classes, stats in D&D just sit there on the character sheet. They don't do anything besides helping to visualize your character. But I have an idea to get more use out of them and to make players think twice about dump stats. Say your character is in a bar fight and some burly oaf wants to knock you over. Your strength score is his target number to succeed. He rolls a D20 adding any bonus from his Strength. Just like rolling to hit an Armour Class. Another example; a tricky merchant tries to sell your character some shoddy goods. He rolls versus your Wisdom. If he fails you don't buy it. Or he wins and you come back to the party bragging about your shiny new useless piece of crap. Any situation can be covered. A slippery passage in a dungeon; the DM rolls against each characters Dexterity with any modifiers the DM thinks are applicable. Every stat point comes into play, not just low medium or high. Characters can interact with the environment in new unique ways. And players have new things to think about during play. Like steering the naive Elf away from the shops or watching out for the clumsy Magic-User in the dungeon.

more on-setting stuff

One of the reasons why I like simpler rules in RPGs is how a players choices are dictated by setting rather than by mechanics. I once watched a player scan the weapon list and compared price, weight and the weapon type vs armour chart to pick out a weapon for his character. It was min/maxing. No thought was given as to why his character was using this weapon. This wasn't character creation, it was character engineering. This is not to say that its wrong to do that. Its just I don't like it. It can spoil the setting if it doesn't fit the background. Like a taking a M16 to WWII battle.
Weapons, armour and equipment limits can help establish setting. But so can amenities or lack there of. When the party reaches the Inn and goes to their room they will notice there are no beds in them. Beds were rare in the medieval period. Or perhaps there is only a common room to sleep in. Taverns don't have menus, there isn't any cutlery or napkins. People don't have last names, there are no police and street signs don't exist. A fantasy world can be a very different place rather than just like modern day but with magic.

Its all about the setting, son

For me the draw of roleplaying was the settings. Fantastic worlds to be in and explore. When I was younger my friends and I would recreate things seen on TV or in the movies. Or make up our own stuff. Being the 70's, WWII was still recent enough to be one of our favourite settings. I would become a grizzled pot bellied American Sargent chomping on a stale cigar and toting a Thomson sub-machine gun. This was roleplaying at its original best. We didn't quibble over details. As long as it fit the background it was in. My Sargent carried the Thomson because thats what they used. It wasn't about bonuses or penalties. Or range modifiers. It was about fitting in not standing out.
Nowadays the tabletop substitutes for the playground for me. But the same rule applies. If it fits the background then its worthy. The setting is important for me when I play an RPG. I would never allow a character named Bob. I've met a few players whose response was "Whats it matter" or "Who cares" about the name thing. They are usually only interested in what their characters have not who they are. I proposed once for a game that I the DM would name their characters. After all did you chose your own name? That didn't go over to well. I realized that the players are part of the creation process for the world you are developing. The players are creators also and that should be respected. I will try to compromise with allowing players to choose from a list of names appropriate to the background. For a game I'm planning a somewhat medieval background and I will use the Treasury of Archaic Names from RPG Realms. Names are just one aspect of the environment that can be used to create a rich fantasy. And Bodil the Barbarian sounds better than Bob.