Retro-Roleplaying: The Blog

RPGpundit has an interesting post on his blog talking about how the dungeonpunk art style in WOTC D&D products misses the boat. While many "old school" gamers don't like this style, this is often put aside as generational differences. RPGpundit points out that it is also ignoring where the main interest in fantasy is in the film and book market today:

Is it not the height of retarded that, given the massive success of traditional fantasy in recent years (LoTR, the upcoming hobbit movie, narnia, all the blockbuster fantasy movies, not ONE of which has featured dungeonpunk or WoW-esque styles), the people at Wizards would be doing everything they possibly can to try to make D&D as un-mainstream-fantasy as possible?

No matter which side of the WOTC art debate you are on, RPGpundit's post is interesting reading.

Posted by Randall at 10:38 AM | 2 comments    

Labels: rpg style

I was just over checking Greywulf's Microlite20 Fundraiser page. I see the fund raising has been successful (with over $90 raised in just a couple of days), so a new and more stable web site for Microlite20 should be on the way.

To that I can only say "Yeah!" as Microlite20 really needs a stable site so people can easily get the rules and for a community to grow up around.

Posted by Randall at 2:05 PM | 0 comments    

Labels: Microlite20

I discovered (thanks to a post on Dragonsfoot) a Tunnels & Trolls dungeon generator. I've tried it once and am initially very impressed.

http://www.apolitical.info/webgame/dungeon/

Posted by Randall at 9:55 PM | 0 comments    

Labels: Tunnels and Trolls

I had to remove a comment on this blog this morning. I don't think it was up long and with Google's on and off again server problems today, I doubt many people saw it. Thankfully. It was a diatribe against people like me who do not support current editions of D&D. Normally, I would have left such a comment up and replied to it, but the comment was made to my post on Gary's death, almost 10% of the words in the post were profanity, and there were insults to Gary in the comment.

However, I'd like to toss out a couple of the arguments made in the comment -- stripped of their childish profanity and rude tone -- for discussion. The poster's argument was basically that those of us who refuse to "get with the program" and abandon older editions for the latest edition from the current publisher are harming the D&D hobby by:

• not buying current books which hurts the profits of WOTC and Hasbro making it less likely that they will continue to publish D&D materials.
• fragmenting the hobby. When everyone plays the same edition and plays it by all the books, it makes it easier for players to find games. The more people refuse to upgrade to the latest version every few years, the more fragmented the hobby becomes and the harder it is to find players.

The poster had a few other arguments, but they were incomprehensible to me as written (e.g. "the [profanity omitted] Coolness factor you [profanity omitted]") or were really just attacks on Gary for not strongly supporting newer editions.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel any obligation to keep WOTC or Hasbro in the black and I feel that the second argument makes as little sense as saying that American Football fans should stop watching their favorite sport and support Soccer (Football to the rest of the world) because Soccer is the more popular game.

What do you think? Are we fans of older versions of D&D hurting the hobby by our refusal to fall in love with, buy, and play the current edition of D&D?

• Discuss on our Message Board: Read or join in our discussion

Posted by Randall at 5:14 PM |    

Labels: forum discussion, musings, retroroleplaying site

Greywulf has decided that he's had enough of the server currently hosting Microlite20 -- which is embarrassingly down more that it is up. He wants to move to a new host/server with a good uptime record and greatly expand the site with features like a Microlite20 message board. He needs at least $90 in donations to pay the server costs for two years. (He's just over 50% of the way there as I write this post.)

Donors will even get a few extra benefits, according to Greywulf,

Donaters will get first-tier access to the site, meaning they can host blogs, write story hours, and post House Rules and Variants directly onto the site. While the exact details aren’t yet set in stone, Donaters will get a level of content control over and above that of regular registered (and unregistered) users.

IMHO, Microlite20 is one of the best things to come out of the OGL and the D20 gamesystem. It's not a retrogame rules-wise, but it is a retro in its style and in the ease in which it can be played and modified. Please donate a few bucks to Greywulf via Paypal so he can get this site off the ground ASAP.

You can find more information on the Microlite20 Fundraiser page of Greywulf's blog.

Posted by Randall at 11:42 AM | 0 comments    

Labels: Microlite20

When reading forums devoted to D&D, I often hear players and gamemasters complaining about experience points. Sometimes it's that they are a pain to calculate (especially in later editions of D&D). Other times it is that they seem very biased toward combat as the only way to earn "enough" experience points. I replaced the standard experience point system in many of my D&D/AD&D games in the 1980s with a very simple, activity neutral "adventure point" system. Adventure points are given out in much smaller numbers than experience points and are given out to characters for mainly for participating actively and contributing to the session in accordance with their abilities.

The first thing you need to do to use adventure points is to decide how many game sessions, on average, you want it to take for characters to advance a level. Let's say you want it to take 5 sessions and you usually play for about 4 hours a session. 5 times 4 is 20, so you have a base of 20 adventure points to go up a level. For each hour or part thereof a character participates in play to the extent the situation allows, the character earns one adventure point. When he has 20, he can spend them to advance a level.

Of course, you can make things a bit more interesting with special AP award categories. For each such award category you want, you add an extra hour to session length for the purpose of determine the number of adventure points needed to advance a level. For example, you might want to have two special AP award categories: one for playing in character (or within one's class/niche) and another working well with other characters. This would add 2 to the number of hours in an average session for the purpose of determining the number of number of adventure points needed to advance. Continuing with the example above, 5 times 6 is 30 so with two special AP award categories, 30 adventure points would be needed to advance to the next level.

Awarding points in special award categories is easy. If the character did average in the category, she gets one adventure point for the award category for the session. If the character did well below average, he gets no adventure points for the award category for the session. A character who does well above average for the seesion earns two adventure points for the award category for the session. The default is average, give the character a point.

You can also give an overall bonus point or two to everyone if the session was more fun that usual, accomplished some major campaign goal, or the like.

Some versions of D&D have experience point advancement requirements that vary by class. You can simulate this with adventure points by have a different amount of adventure points required to advance a level for each class. An easy way to do this is to come up with an adventure point total based on the above system. Then use 110% (round up) of it for classes that require more experience points than average to advance and 90% (round down) of it for classes that require fewer experience points than average to advance.

The main advantage of the adventure point system is that it is a heck of a lot less effort for both players and gamemasters. There are also a couple of important secondary benefits:

1) Successful adventuring is no longer mainly defined as defeating monsters in combat. You can get just as much advancement effect from avoiding the monsters, bargaining with them, intimidating them, fighting them just enough to make them run away, etc. Also time spend in non-combat activities is just as helpful to character advancement as time spent in combat.

2) It is much easier to have mixed level parties as the opposition can be targeted to the party without have to worry about giving the higher level characters less experience points than they need due to less challenging opposition.

This adventure point system is simple, but it can easily be made more complex if you want a bit more rule crunch.

Posted by Randall at 1:06 PM | 3 comments    

Labels: DnD, DnD3e

Posted by Randall at 2:58 PM | 2 comments    

Labels: classic modules, DnD