January 27th will be 50 years of D&D.
What are everyone's plans to celebrate the day?
cheers,
~lkh
On Fri, 12 Jan 2024 11:14:33 -0000 (UTC), lkh <lkh@sdf-eu.org> wrote:
January 27th will be 50 years of D&D.
What are everyone's plans to celebrate the day?
Looking sadly at my pile of rulebooks, probably.
Sadly, since Covid, my two groups sort of went their separete ways and
we haven't been playing, and I'm not really interested in playing
online (if you can't throw peanuts at the DM after a bad ruling,
what's even the point of playing the game? ;-).
I could find a new group, but given my preference for the older
systems (and low-magic style of campaigns) I've little chance of
finding one... especially in this area, where roleplaying groups seem
a rarity.
On 1/12/2024 12:14 PM, lkh wrote:
January 27th will be 50 years of D&D > Did it actually come out so early in the year?
And wouldn't it make sense to count from the start of the First Fantasy Campaign instead? I know 1974 is when it was published, but by that
point people already were roleplaying for a few years.
Dave Arneson's "Corner of the Table" Zine had the following announcement:
'There will be a medieval "Braunstein" April 17, 1971 at the
home of David Arneson from 1300 hrs to 2400 hrs with refreshments being
available on the usual basis... It will feature mythical creatures and a
Poker game under the Troll’s bridge between sunup and sundown.
[COTT:71:v3n4]'
which of course gets us to the interesting chicken and egg problem of:
how do we delineate Braunstein from DnD in this case. After all he
doesn't say they are playing Chainmail even, he speaks about Braunstein. Which also wasn't a codified ruleset as far as I know.
(was there ever a published version of how those Braunstein rules looked like? I know there was that Barons of Braunstein game on drivethrurpg at
one point, but that one seems to be a bit of ludological fiction)
On 1/16/2024 11:18 PM, lkh wrote:
I believe there wasn't. But I think Dave Wesley still runs Braunstein games >> now and then. Ben Robins shares some hands on experience and hand outs:
https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/106/braunstein-memories/
Hmm... that game was 16 years ago.
I checked on Wikipedia and he seems to be still alive at least. Which is
nice to know.
I also saw that there is an interview with Arneson about it in Pegasus Magazine #1, I should see if I still have that somewhere.
January 27th will be 50 years of D&D.
What are everyone's plans to celebrate the day?
On 1/20/2024 3:42 PM, Timmy Mac wrote:
On Fri, 12 Jan 2024 11:14:33 -0000 (UTC), lkh wrote:
January 27th will be 50 years of D&D.
What are everyone's plans to celebrate the day?
I've still got my Moldvay Basic book and B2 - Keep on the Borderlands. I'm >> thinking I can talk a few friends into an afternoon session.
-
TM
do it. sounds like a good idea.
kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/20/2024 3:42 PM, Timmy Mac wrote:
On Fri, 12 Jan 2024 11:14:33 -0000 (UTC), lkh wrote:
January 27th will be 50 years of D&D.
What are everyone's plans to celebrate the day?
I've still got my Moldvay Basic book and B2 - Keep on the Borderlands. I'm >>> thinking I can talk a few friends into an afternoon session.
-
TM
do it. sounds like a good idea.
We'll have an in person game. OD&D three little black books
strictly, no thieves, no variable weapon damage, everything d6
based. Just plain vanilla OD&D.
For a scenario I have picked Will Doyle's *Quintessential
Dungeon*[1]. Seems like a fun dungeon romp. And it actually
*has* a Dragon. So I think that should work out just fine. Then
again, we'll have two participants, who've never player before.
Now do I *want* them to break in their role player shoes in a
dank old dungeon? Hm, not so sure about that. Maybe I should
just present them with a very open ended scene and let them
decide, what they think is interesting about the game? You've
only one chance to do something *for the first time* after all,
and it's always so much fun to observe new players how they
discover what the game can be. I'll have to think some more
about that ;-)
Cheers!
[1]: https://beholderpie.blogspot.com/2016/05/one-page-dungeon-2016-quintessential.html
One beginner dungeon I really like is Skerples' Tomb of the Serpent
Kings, which does try to be a teaching dungeon and does some really nice things with very basic tropes.
https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/06/osr-tomb-of-serpent-kings-megapost.html
Another one which I want to try for beginners but which might be a bit
too long for a one-shot is The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford. This one also
has some really nice fairy tale vibes going on (a dwarf who was so
greedy he turned into a dragon, goblins who are actually fairies, etc.).
And there is a small sandbox setting with multiple dungeons. Which, as I said, might make it too long a scenario for a one-shot.
[1]: https://beholderpie.blogspot.com/2016/05/one-page-dungeon-2016-quintessential.html
One problem with running a small group of newbies only with any old
school dungeon (and starting at level 1) is that the original game is balanced for very large parties (one call sheet from the 70's I saw had
50 characters!) and a good amount of death is expected. This hasn't
gone over well in the past when I've tried it. I've even gone so far as
to go with the funnel concept and give everyone up to 4 characters, but that's more effort than any but wargamers are willing to put in, and
still the number of deaths turned everyone off (even those who weren't newbies and said that's the way it should be played.)
You can of course tweak the adventures to be friendlier to small
parties, add NPCs, buff up the character though leveling or rules
additions and changes etc. You can also go with what I strongly suspect
Gary did which was fudge a lot (which I don't like doing.)
I have a list of semi-official house rules such as Gygax purportedly
used last time I ran 0e which helped a little bit you might consider:
Gygax:
* HP, at 1st level bump up to a minimum of half your die size rounded up.
* Intelligence 15+ +1 1st level M-U spell slot
* Clerics don't need or use spell-books
I had a rather large list of other tweaks, but they were mostly more
flavor and minor changes. I was also running Delving Deeper which is
fairly close to 0e, just easier for newbies to understand.
The rest of my house rules were here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zHmsDJE19GeLLK-R7anjuyNScpmwSyQPhUYDarKcmRM/edit
Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> wrote:
[1]: https://beholderpie.blogspot.com/2016/05/one-page-dungeon-2016-quintessential.html
One problem with running a small group of newbies only with any old
school dungeon (and starting at level 1) is that the original game is
balanced for very large parties (one call sheet from the 70's I saw had
50 characters!) and a good amount of death is expected. This hasn't
gone over well in the past when I've tried it. I've even gone so far as
to go with the funnel concept and give everyone up to 4 characters, but
that's more effort than any but wargamers are willing to put in, and
still the number of deaths turned everyone off (even those who weren't
newbies and said that's the way it should be played.)
Yep, know what you're talking about. I'm running a lot of OD&D
and there'll be some accompanying NPCs for sure. In
Quintessential Dungeon however I see a bunch of hints at
non-combat solutions for the various encounters. Also, there's
the feasting table where hitpoints may be regained. Even the
dragon has the explicit option of sparing the characters lives
provided they can tell a good story :D
I'm confidently looking forward to this, and might have the one
or other magic item up my sleeve ;-)
https://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/03/gary-gygaxs-whitebox-od-house-rules.html
kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
One beginner dungeon I really like is Skerples' Tomb of the Serpent
Kings, which does try to be a teaching dungeon and does some really nice
things with very basic tropes.
https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/06/osr-tomb-of-serpent-kings-megapost.html
I was thinking about that one, too. It's a good teaching dungeon
at any rate. For the 27th I wanted to pick something a bit more
spectacular - hope it'll work out alright (-:
PCs hit by the hammer automatically die (or take serious damage, like 2d6+4)
January 27th will be 50 years of D&D.
What are everyone's plans to celebrate the day?
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