Renaissance
In our Swords & Wizardry White Box game, we’re using Ascending Armor Class [AAC] on a trial basis. I’ve declared that a minimum of ten sessions with AAC will be played before I listen to any feedback, and that after the tenth session I will decide how many more sessions will be played before a final decision about whether to continue using it is made.
Before I go any further, I must make a confession: When deciding between Swords & Wizardry (Core) and Labyrinth Lord, the requirement for AAC in S&W was a large part of the reason that I chose LL. I simply wanted nothing to do with AAC, as I considered the standard AC system to work perfectly well.
However, as I prepared for S&W White Box, after about a dozen sessions of LL, I decided that perhaps completely eliminating the combat tables would help me, as the game master, keep things flowing along a bit better. So I’m giving it a try.
Something else that’s swayed my opinion a bit is the reaction that pro-AAC players get from old-schoolers on the various message boards. So many old-schoolers almost sound like broken records with “you can do anything you want in old-school D&D“, “you can do anything you want in old-school D&D“, and “you can do anything you want in old-school D&D” over and over again whenever someone asks about rules or how to handle a particular situation.
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Tags: renaissance, rules, Swords & Wizardry
Meant to point this out a while back:
Welcome to Dungeonslayers, the role-playing game, in which the characters are slaying monsters and looting dungeons in an archaic and old-fashioned way.
The rules of Dungeonslayers were designed to be very basic and simple on purpose, to bring the charming flair of old-school gaming back to life.
Dungeonslayers is not about having elaborate, realistic rule mechanics nor about playing out pseudointellectual drama filled with egomaniac monologues. Instead it’s about straight-forward plots in your traditional fantasy world, where evil is still evil, where monsters have to be killed mercilessly, where devious traps strike and where phat loot awaits, while pencil and graph paper work their own special magic around the gaming table.
Despite the rules’ lack of details or possibly because of this, player characters tend to evolve into highly individual personalities.
So, let’s put on the chainmail once again, draw your blade or dig up the spell book, the next dungeon and its monstrous hordes await your return.
Published under Creative Commons licensing, this game doesn’t appear to really be up Kilgore’s alley mechanics-wise, but it sure seems to take a good chunk of old school simpleness to heart. It’s free to download, and I actually kinda like the overall “look” of the rules. Appears to take about three minutes to learn.
There sure seems to be a lot of interest in old school gaming from non-old school parties.
Tags: renaissance
In the comments on my attempt to make a thief palatable to old school tastes:
Incidentally, it reminds me of the “acrobatic mystic” option from the Rules Cyclopedia; in case you aren’t familiar with it, a character of the mystic class can choose (at character creation only) to have some special acrobatic skills. To balance this out, the mystic must take something like a -20% experience penalty.
I’m not, in fact, familiar with the “acrobatic mystic” from the RC. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever opened up an RC.
My first thought when I decided to eschew 2e (or later editions) and return to the old school, before I learned there was an Old School Renaissance going on, I wondered if going the Rules Cyclopedia route might not be the way to go for a simpler approach to the game. Seeing the prices on eBay and recalling the storybook style of the 1983 Basic set, I quickly abandoned this idea and soon thereafter discovered Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord.
Regardless of whether the “sub-class as an add-on” method has been done before or not, I think it’s a natural fit for thieves. Especially when trying to mimic the pulp fantasy style of swords and sorcery. If you haven’t checked out my take on the White Box Thief, go do so and let me know what you think.
It’s currently listed as a “2nd Draft” because I’m hoping to collect some more feedback, play the thing in a game or two, and ruminate a bit more before deciding on a final design. Also, the next issue of Knockspell magazine will contain a number of articles and proposals for S&W thieves, so I’d like to check them out before finalizing.
Tags: renaissance, thief
