I REALLY, REALLY Love Old School D&D But...
In light of yesterday’s post concerning my intentions for my campaign setting, I just wanted to clarify that I really like the way D&D and the clones handle many things such as combat, stats, etc. What stifles me a bit are the classes. I actually find them to be somewhat restrictive and don’t allow for a lot of customization. Old School rule sets are like an old Volkswagon. They are infinitely customizable, hold up pretty well, can be somewhat clunky at times, have some sort of strange allure to them, etc. I do not want to throw out the entire D&D system. I’m also not trying to say that Gygax and Arneson got it wrong. I simply want to chop the system down to the core, and reassemble the parts to be able to create more flexible character types. That is what is so cool about the Old School systems, the rules are more like a kit and I can chop away a bit here, jack up the back end, add a blower and a spoiler, paint flames on the sides and put suicide doors on. Still is a Volkswagon underneath, but now it's my customized wagon. And there are still a heck of a lot of folks selling parts and kits that I can add on or repair my buggy.
Now, back to my system: for instance, in my discipline system, everyone would start out with a base amount of XP to reflect the time they spent training at their various adventuring disciplines. At character creation, the player would spend this XP to create their character by buying disciplines. It could be that a character just wants to play a straight up class out of the regular D&D system, in which case, all of their starting XP would go to buy a class package. Otherwise, they could buy ala carte the disciplines they wanted. As they leveled up, they could just use XP to progress into a straight class, or once again purchase disciplines ala carte. In effect, you could create a fighter that is agile and can summon supernatural aid. Or you can create an adventurer that is primarily a fighter, but has the ability to hide in shadows and seek favor of the dark powers and place curses on his foes.
Of course the trick is going to be to take the core classes and then divide the abilities up and assign an XP value to each. I also want to include things like summoning magic, ritual magic, pact magic, etc. I don’t want to get bogged down with too much minutia like 3.x on did. I still want to stay within the design concepts of the old school games and be able to have a character designed under my proposed system still be able to go on an adventure like White Plume Mountain and not need to do any strange conversion for class abilities, skill systems, and the like. More to follow…
Now, back to my system: for instance, in my discipline system, everyone would start out with a base amount of XP to reflect the time they spent training at their various adventuring disciplines. At character creation, the player would spend this XP to create their character by buying disciplines. It could be that a character just wants to play a straight up class out of the regular D&D system, in which case, all of their starting XP would go to buy a class package. Otherwise, they could buy ala carte the disciplines they wanted. As they leveled up, they could just use XP to progress into a straight class, or once again purchase disciplines ala carte. In effect, you could create a fighter that is agile and can summon supernatural aid. Or you can create an adventurer that is primarily a fighter, but has the ability to hide in shadows and seek favor of the dark powers and place curses on his foes.
Of course the trick is going to be to take the core classes and then divide the abilities up and assign an XP value to each. I also want to include things like summoning magic, ritual magic, pact magic, etc. I don’t want to get bogged down with too much minutia like 3.x on did. I still want to stay within the design concepts of the old school games and be able to have a character designed under my proposed system still be able to go on an adventure like White Plume Mountain and not need to do any strange conversion for class abilities, skill systems, and the like. More to follow…
I go back and forth with the same temptation. I find myself wanting to make it so that in player character creation one can, as you say, mix and match abilities and thus build the PC you want, but the more you select the slower said character will advance.
ReplyDeleteThen I consider how much work that would be and the lazy man in me sighs and throws up his hands. Besides, part of the charm of the older versions of D&D is that the characters are (really) kind of cardboard cut-outs which makes player choice more important than whatever cool abilities your character might have.
I agree that the fun of the class based system is kind of like picking a piece in a board game that fufills a certain role and it is a cardboard cutout. I don't think that is a bad thing. I just want to try something a bit different and see where it goes. Of course I might lost in the sauce and just end up spinning my wheels, but I think tinkering (I mistyped it thinkering - that actually might be more appropriate) is part of the fun.
ReplyDeleteMy tinkering is usually limited to a few odd house rules. I like running modules in my fantasy games and thus, B/X for me, or rather LL/AEC as it happens. If I wanted to go away from the archetypes of a class system for a fantasy game to lend much more customization, I'd roll out Savage Worlds, Fantasy Hero, Burning Wheel, Runequest/Stormbringer, WHFRPG or (gasp) Pathfinder. When D&D feels limiting, I try some other fantasy RPG for a bit, but I always come back.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting process. The more generic you go with things, you can try things out, but remain portable to another system or the prevailing conventions of whatever base system you decide to build off of. The more setting-specific you go with things, the less portable things end up, but the more satisfying they can be within that new system. That's a balancing act that can certainly influence your efforts.
ReplyDelete@scadgrad has some excellent suggestions to consider--Savage Worlds is very flexible and eminently customizable; we're trying it out for a limited play-test currently and it has definite possibilities.
One thing that we've attempted with some success is to give each Class 1-4 options. Each character gets one or more possible options based on the character's Prime Requisiste ability scores and there is a chance to improve at every level as well. You get customization within the classes, and mix-and-matching across classes can be handled by various schemes, so it remains flexible as you prefer it to be. It's quick, clean and relatively painless and we like using one such option for the spell-casters to choose the system(s) they have access to...allowing us to utilize any form of spell-casting that is desired.
But that's just one such approach (in a nutshell, so to speak), and by no means the best. Just remember that reinventing the wheel finally got us from stone disks to rubber tires...
Ever heard of the German "Das schwarze Auge" (The dark eye)? they're doing exactly this in Version 4 of the rules. You have a profesison to pick, which gives you certain bonuses ot your initial skill values, but any further ranks have to be bought with XP. And special abilities, like combat maneuvers or other advantages are bought with XP, too. the only drawback concerning old school is: It's really complicated and not much about "rulings instead of rules". And many of the buyable adventures suck. If complicated enough that it's virtually impossible to create a character without a software supporting this. And that's not necessarily a thing of the system but of the idea of using XP to increase your abilities, because it always involves much maths. But maybe you can find some inspiration there. But I can't tell you where to find their rules in English. Maybe there's something on the web.
ReplyDelete@Netherworks - class options, definitely food for thought there. I shall have to ponder that some.
ReplyDelete@metaljan - I have heard of the system, but I have VERY limited German skills. I LOVED the artwork for the earlier version I saw and was fascinated by what I read about the system. I thought that they were going to do an English translation at some point. I'll have to see if any of my German speaking friends know more because it definitely sounds like something I want to pick up.
Maybe there is somewhere some parts of it translated on the web? but I don't know of any source, because I don't play the system.
ReplyDelete