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Thursday, February 27, 2020

B/X Is Bad, Mmmkay? Part I

In a comment on a blog link post, Norman J. Harman, Jr. expressed his opinion about Gygax’s writing and quality of rules. Which is fine, everyone can have opinions. But the comment ends with “B/X is a better game than AD&D.” And that had me do a double-take, because I think of both as being about equally bad, and certainly B/X had a couple distinct rules differences I’d consider worse than AD&D. And I’m not talking about minor quibbling differences that people always seem to focus on. I’m talking about the differences everyone seems to ignore that are basically the deal-breakers for me.

One difference is race as class. I’m not completely opposed to the idea, but I do think it’s a terrible design choice. People generally want to add fantasy races so that they can have more variety… so making all elves the same, all dwarves the same, and so on seems counterproductive. OD&D started with fighter-dwarf, fighter-halfling, and elves that could be either fighter, magic-user, or both, then expanded the options for those three races with thieves… and then B/X came along and got rid of the options. AD&D expands the options, and though I don’t think it did so in the correct way, at least it’s not B/X.

Continuing that line of reasoning: minimum ability scores is also a bad idea. B/X shares this with AD&D, though, and at least B/X doesn’t have minimum scores for the core classes, just the races, so that’s one thing in its favor. But having minimum scores at all, for anything other than rare classes like paladins, is a bad decision, again because it limits variety. You can’t play the weak but brave dwarf in B/X (or the weak but brave fighter or cleric or thief, in AD&D,) because hey, why have more variety in your game? Plus, it has the added effect of making ability scores more important and dominating the game, but that’s a whole other line of argument.

You may have noticed, in the Liber Zero class pamphlets, that none of the variant classes like Beast Master, Witch, or Apothecary have minimum scores. I decided to shift the opposite direction, away from B/X and AD&D, towards more freedom and variety instead of less.

Because dammit, even if I agreed B/X is a better game than AD&D, it’s not better than OD&D.

9 comments:

  1. I appreciate why people don't like Race-as-Class (because I used to be one of those folks); however, in practice I have grown to be very fond of it. The "sameness" of all Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings serves two very important functions (as I see it). Primarily, it solves the whole question of "Why play a human?" and the notion that elves etc. are just different flavors of humans with pointy ears or long beards. If you want a character with a little flair, play a human. This leads to the second main reason I like Race-as-Class. Demi-humans feel more alien. They know more about the Demonic Wilderness, they speak the languages of its denizens and they don't function mechanically like humans do. In the end, this makes world-building with Race-as-Class a bit more organic and grounded.

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    1. I'm probably going to have to do a whole post -- or more! -- on my theory of/feelings about fantasy races, at some point. Especially since I have yet to do LZ pamphlets on any of the fantasy races.

      For now, I'll just say that you're talking about needs and desires that are the complete opposite of what I want.

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    2. Which is why I sympathize. Had I never decided to play B/X "by the book" I probably never would have come to the conclusion that Race-as-Class is pretty neat. Almost everything I like about it has emerged from play. Given a good campaign world that allowed interesting stuff about various races to emerge from play, I readily accept the non-B/X rules as well; however, I have always managed to have more fun with Race-as-Class.

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  2. I’ll admit it – I’m also in the Race as Class camp. But when it comes to monster races I basically treat them all like fighters in those rare occasions where players befriend orcs, froglings, goblins, and the like. So perhaps I’m already half there, haha.
    I will say though that I feel like dropping minimum ability scores from my house rules, too.

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    1. I guess I’m in the camp “who needs anything other than fighters and magic users”. I successfully removed clerics from my game but my players rebelled when I said I was going to remove thieves, too.

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  3. With you on all points. Race as class really only works long term for a few of the monsters as a character class, like Balrog, for instance.

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  4. I have to quibble a bit with the B/X's "minimum ability scores" for class entry. An INT of 9 for elves, or a CON of 9 for halfling and dwarves isn't a huge detriment...and still allows for the possibility of a weak dwarf, clumsy hobbit, etc.

    Considering that the game was originally imagined to be human-centric, I don't think it unreasonable to place a small barrier to entry for demihumans, simply to cut down on the amount of adventuring non-humans at the table (and in practice, I've found it to be no barrier at all).

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    1. If it's not a huge detriment and doesn't really cut down on the amount of non-humans (the only reason the rule exists in the first place,) why have it?

      It's just an extra rule that adds nothing to the game, other than making players think about ability scores more, something I work against at every opportunity.

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    2. It adds a limitation to the game, as all rules do, restricting freeform "play" and making for a more challenging activity.

      While I completely empathize with the desire to de-emphasize ability scores (one of the excesses of modern editions that irritate me greatly), in this instance I find this to be a fairly minor nit-pick, especially given the human-centric theme of the game.

      Hmmm...I suppose I'm just repeating my original comment without adding much new. Sorry about that.

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