We use:
*Simplified Initiative
Death/dying
*Unconsciousness at 0, death at -10 (or -your hit points, whichever comes first)
*Knocked below 0 requires 1 full day of rest to recuperate from each negative hit point suffered. (even with magic below "heal" level)
*Knocked below zero requires a constitution % roll for system shock or bleed damage will continue
Why? I would rather impose a time penalty on injured characters to force a semi-realistic 'recovery' time than just murderize character all the time. However it retains some of the brutality of the system. It gives the newbie players a cushion to err and not completely fail.
I also tend to make most rolls publicly. For me the dice are arbiters of decisions, not things for me to steer the game. However being public and honest with rolls rather than using a screen also make a brutal encounter all the more brutal - even with the added -10 hp death cushion. And my players sometimes make foolish decisions to do things like walk into ambushes. As a kind and merciful DM I kindly oblige them with a smackdown.
I waver between writing my own dungeons and running pre-written adventures. I take more liberties in tweaking my own dungeons than I do in tweaking pre-written modules.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The Great Experiment
The great experiment.
Can one seasoned DM take four raw recruits and teach them the glory of old school gaming?
A bit of background:
I'm a 34 year old female gamer. Started gaming in 1997 with 2nd ed, ADnD and I loved it from the start. In college I got caught up with old school WW systems: Vampire: the Masquerade, Changeling: the Dreaming, Werewolf: the Apocalypse ect. When Exalted came out I got into that, too. It was fun in an 'over the top, non-realistic' sense.
After college I bounced from game to game. 3rd edition was out by then and I played it for a bit. But after my original college gaming group broke up, I could only find groups playing a rules-lawyer tactical battle mat version of 3e. 3.5 only made this issue worse. While I felt that 3e could be used to promote roleplaying (heck, I remembered doing it when it first came out!) all the groups I could find were focused on min maxing, tactics and rules-lawyering. White Wolf was no better, I disliked the new world of darkness and couldn;t find a gaming group that played the old style. Sigh.
So I turned to online chat games for year. Finally I burnt out of that drama and wanted to start tabletop gaming again. I found a group playing Pathfinder. Again, not a bad game, but the group was more focused on tactics and wargaming.
So I waffled. How do you start a campaign that fits your roleplaying wants and needs?
You make your own.
So I gathered a small group of players and started to teach them the game.
We have the WoW player
We have the 3.5er/Pathfinder player
We have the Vampire: the Masquerade player
and we have the Total Newbie.
And we're all together playing ADnD. Why? Because that's the system I chose. Partially because I know it best. Partially because it's a brutal system with consequences and I wanted to break my WoW player from seeing the game like a series of WoW raids or dungeons.
We have actually been playing for about 9 months now. But I'm choosing to write about this now because after some game misunderstandings (ok, I TPK'd the party. Twice. In a row. The gods can only come save you so many times...) I started to do some heavy research into the way we used to play old school games, vs the way we play games now. What are the fundamental differences that put old school playing apart from new school playing? I found that a lot of them defined exactly why I was so unhappy playing new school games. So, this is in many ways my record of the journey of a group to learn how to roleplay better.
Tuesday we introduce two new characters (yes, I finally yanked sheets and said 'roll up a new one') and we'll start on a new chapter in our quest. Along the way I'm making notes and keeping track of what does and doesn't work in this game, trying to refine my DM style as well as my player's ability to interact with the game world for a better game for everyone.
Can one seasoned DM take four raw recruits and teach them the glory of old school gaming?
A bit of background:
I'm a 34 year old female gamer. Started gaming in 1997 with 2nd ed, ADnD and I loved it from the start. In college I got caught up with old school WW systems: Vampire: the Masquerade, Changeling: the Dreaming, Werewolf: the Apocalypse ect. When Exalted came out I got into that, too. It was fun in an 'over the top, non-realistic' sense.
After college I bounced from game to game. 3rd edition was out by then and I played it for a bit. But after my original college gaming group broke up, I could only find groups playing a rules-lawyer tactical battle mat version of 3e. 3.5 only made this issue worse. While I felt that 3e could be used to promote roleplaying (heck, I remembered doing it when it first came out!) all the groups I could find were focused on min maxing, tactics and rules-lawyering. White Wolf was no better, I disliked the new world of darkness and couldn;t find a gaming group that played the old style. Sigh.
So I turned to online chat games for year. Finally I burnt out of that drama and wanted to start tabletop gaming again. I found a group playing Pathfinder. Again, not a bad game, but the group was more focused on tactics and wargaming.
So I waffled. How do you start a campaign that fits your roleplaying wants and needs?
You make your own.
So I gathered a small group of players and started to teach them the game.
We have the WoW player
We have the 3.5er/Pathfinder player
We have the Vampire: the Masquerade player
and we have the Total Newbie.
And we're all together playing ADnD. Why? Because that's the system I chose. Partially because I know it best. Partially because it's a brutal system with consequences and I wanted to break my WoW player from seeing the game like a series of WoW raids or dungeons.
We have actually been playing for about 9 months now. But I'm choosing to write about this now because after some game misunderstandings (ok, I TPK'd the party. Twice. In a row. The gods can only come save you so many times...) I started to do some heavy research into the way we used to play old school games, vs the way we play games now. What are the fundamental differences that put old school playing apart from new school playing? I found that a lot of them defined exactly why I was so unhappy playing new school games. So, this is in many ways my record of the journey of a group to learn how to roleplay better.
Tuesday we introduce two new characters (yes, I finally yanked sheets and said 'roll up a new one') and we'll start on a new chapter in our quest. Along the way I'm making notes and keeping track of what does and doesn't work in this game, trying to refine my DM style as well as my player's ability to interact with the game world for a better game for everyone.
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