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Saturday, October 5, 2013

Post-LBB D&D as House Rules Documents

There were two reasons why I posted about Holmes Basic yesterday. One is because yesterday's post was #1978, and I thought it would be fun to post something related to the year 1978. Technically, Holmes came out in 1977, but I accidentally made the rant Post #1977.

The other reason is that the stuff about Holmes I don't remember is very specific details about durations of mundane effects, rules for handling special situations, costs for unusual items, and the like. The same is true for AD&D, although I remember more of that. And it's probably true of B/X and BECMI, although I haven't read those. It's definitely true of Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and Delving Deeper. It's more pronounced in LL, OSRIC, and other retroclones designed for later TSR editions, because you have things like variable weapon damage or a variety of different duration ranges for spells and potions.

What this feels like to me is one person's answer to how to run D&D, instead of a framework to build my own campaign on. A house rules document, in other words. The options chosen aren't very memorable to anyone other than the writer. And perhaps that's all that any retroclone writer can hope for. What saddens me is that this is what D&D players clamored for back on the day: not new ideas to adapt to their own games, but lots of little details like how long iron rations last compared to standard rations.

4 comments:

  1. That's basically how I view the small differences between Holmes and OD&D. A few things changed, others details specified where the original doesn't. In addition, by limiting the framework to levels 1-3, Holmes opens up a whole new area to build your own campaign on.

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  2. "What saddens me is that this is what D&D players clamored for back on the day: not new ideas to adapt to their own games, but lots of little details like how long iron rations last compared to standard rations. "

    Pretty much. We made our own rules, but usually, we'd eagerly await Dragon magazine for new rules, buy new rulebooks and see if that had more details, and so on. I know this bursts a bubble about DIY old schoolers, but yeah, when I was playing D&D in the 80s it was a lot more looking for more detail than less detail on the stuff we cared about. Not rations, though, although I recall a Dragon article on it at some point.

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  3. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with players wanting that sort of product. When you're new to the game, it can help a great deal to see how a more experienced referee might handle rulings. Even when you've played for awhile, you might want to see how others do things to inform your own play. And how many in the OSR investigate the designers' original intentions to better make sense of the game? I love having those "aha!" moments

    The problem is when this information is taken as canon rather than advice, and the key to avoiding it is language. I love how the LBB's frequently employ words like "perhaps" or "might", emphasizing that what they're suggesting is just that: a suggestion; not a rule. Were I to rewrite 3E, I'd remove any circumstance modifiers equal to +/- 2, as these fall under a general guideline, and only list larger modifiers while making it clear that they're not "official" (I'd also gut those pesky Knowledge skills, but that's neither here nor there)

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    Replies
    1. It's not so much the desire for superficial details I find disturbing. It's the attitude of"there needs to be official rules for that, because we can't just make it up!"

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