The Best D&D Book Ever Written

What do you know about Dungeons & Dragons? About where it came from and, specifically, what inspired it? Not the rules, but the fictional content of the game? If you follow the "OSR" movement or are simply an AD&D player since the first edition of the game, you might have a pretty good idea... The original Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) featured a slew of appendices from the verbose Gary Gygax, but one in particular—Appendix N—has consistently received the most attention.

Basically, said appendix is a list of fiction literature that inspired the game's content originally. (To quote Gygax, "From such sources, as well as any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns") It's a useful list to reference when you're trying to convince someone that D&D is not purely some hardcore Tolkien-deification, as is common perception. There are a ton of authors presented there, and some of the biggest fictional characters from that list include Conan (created by Robert E. Howard), Elric (by Michael Moorcock), and Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser (by Fritz Leiber). A whole bunch of "sword and sorcery" novels populate the list, as well as some science fiction authors such as Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton.

I would argue that none of them capture the spirit of what D&D can and should be better than The Dying Earth by Jack Vance.

This is the copy I have

Now, you may be somewhat familiar with Vance if you've even played D&D at all. The paradigm of memorizing a set number of spells which will be forgotten upon their casting? That is a concept taken directly from this book. Furthermore, one can easily see the parallels between naming conventions: "Felojun's Second Hypnotic Spell" (Vance) versus "Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound" (Gygax), for example. The ties are so strong that this"fire and forget" spell system is known as "Vancian" in discussions on various magic systems for RPGs.

Perhaps you are even aware of one of the greatest villains of D&D lore, Vecna. A legendary lich, his disembodied eye and hand are legendary artifacts of the D&D world. In case you haven't worked it out yet, his name was simply a rearranged form of "Vance."

The point is, this author had some serious influence on the foundation of D&D. And yet, I see so little of this book manifest in modern-day D&D games. Unlike the mighty Conan, the tormented Elric, or the plucky Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, I dare say Vance's work has been cast aside from the consciousness of most modern gamers.

Originally published in 1950, The Dying Earth is a series of loosely connected short stories depicting a fantasy world that is in fact Earth in its final years. The sun is red and bloated; magic is prevalent, as is ancient technology. There are six short stories, each named after its primary character. Perhaps the most directly related to D&D is "Mazirian the Magician," which firmly establishes the Vancian magic convention as the title character prepares a short list of spells, all that his brain can contain.

But if all you get that is game-worthy from The Dying Earth is the mechanics of magic, then you are not easily inspired. Take, for example, Chun the Unavoidable, a being who lives in ruins and snatches the eyes of anyone who steals from him, and then wears the eyes on a cloak. Or Ampridatvir, the city full of two sects of people who can't see each other because they're wearing two different colors of clothing. The universe which houses all these stories employs a fanciful sense of logic, which flies in the face of the ho-hum vanilla settings that you're used to in mainstream D&D.

The prose is a workout, to be sure, with quite poetic and fanciful language. It's not a style that suits those who don't like to take a hot, soaking bath in the nuance of the English language. Furthermore, the rest of the Dying Earth series focuses on Cugel, a largely unlikeable antihero whose character made me put down the second book (Eyes of the Overworld) after just a few chapters. But I would highly recommend reading through the first book as an inspirational collection of shorter picaresques.

If you're interested in Jack Vance, Patrick Stuart did a thorough review of the Lyonesse trilogy (spoiler warning) here. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my shelf so I have no excuse. I can recommend the novella The Dragon Masters, although it's science fiction rather than fantasy.

Once you have read The Dying Earth, I would strongly recommend The Pastel City by M. John Harrison, the introduction to the Viriconium saga.

Game Mechanics: Dice, Doors, and Decimal Points

So I have a skill system hack I am working on and I want to share it with you.

Start with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the rules set I am using for my Megadungeon Madness game. It's basically B/X but with some tweaks (ascending values of armor class, a silver piece standard, and no codified bestiary, for starters).  One of the nice things about it is that skills are based on d6 rolls. Virtually everything is a 1-in-6 chance, and specialists (read: thieves, but a less pigeonholed concept) get to invest points into expanding these skills. E.g., put two points in Sleight of Hand and your chance to execute such a task goes from 1-in-6 to 3-in-6.

I am hacking that d6 system a bit. Mostly because I love dice pools, but there is also a logic behind it.

First off, rather than expanding the range of success, I expand the number of dice you roll, while keeping 6 the target number. Note that statistically this is more difficult. For example, it is harder to roll three dice and get a 6 than to get a 4, 5, or 6 on a single die (the 3-in-6 case):

(A) Dice pool: 3-dice probablility = 1-(5/6)^3 = 42.13%
(B) One-die probability = (3/6) = 50%

A solution to the increased difficulty is that the GM should be more generous with the bonus dice. We already add dice based on invested Specialist skill points, but let's also add Ability Score bonuses. A +1 to Strength is easily added to your pool if you want to Open Doors, for example. Have a crowbar? Add another die. And so on. This borrows heavily (if it isn't identical) from the "negotiated skill system" that I heard used on the Dwimmermars game of +Adam Muszkiewicz (of such notable endeavors as Drink Spin Run, Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad, and whose name I can apparently spell without having to Google it now).

Another nice feature is that the bonuses can easily go to six or higher. Whereas a 6-in-6 chance of the basic one-die system is a guaranteed success, a pool of 6 dice is only going to yield a 6 at a rate of 66.51%. So don't be afraid to be liberal with your bonuses.

The problem that we have already come across thus far in my Megadungon game is that opening doors is still fairly likely to result in failure. Even with crowbars, people helping, and strength bonuses, you are pretty likely to not open the door.

This is where I got the idea to go straight into story game territory and offer the players a narrative choice. In the first option, the players could choose to let the door be. The door is swollen shut, just like St. Gary said it probably would be. The other option is to note your margin of failure. (E.g., was your highest result a 4? Then your margin of failure is 6-4 = 2.)  I'll let your character(s) persist at opening the door until they succeed, but I get to roll the margin of failure in Wandering Monster checks. (A dice pool of 2 in this example.) Again, each of these is a simple 1-in-6 chance.  The logical basis is that the worse your initial check result, the more noisy your success is going to be and the more likely you are to attract attention to yourself.

I think this is a pretty elegant mechanic for doors if you're going to go Full Dungeon Crawl. I'd like to think that my game ups the tension by emphasizing slow, careful mapping, and keeping track of resources, etc. Wandering monsters (or more accurately, random encounters) are another high-stakes element, and it's nice to put the devil's bargain in the players' court.  The alternative would be to have the players reroll the check while I check for the random encounter with each failure. This has the potential to be tediously drawn out, especially if the player has a small dice pool.

I've already used this mechanical tweak in one full game session, and the resulting random encounter was deadly. But more importantly, the decision of whether to push forward at the door had a lot of gravitas behind it. In all, it's an idea I'm quite proud of, given that I'm only starting to break out of the habit of sticking to rules as written. I'd probably have broken out of that habit ages ago, but it really requires sitting down to run some real games.

Gameable Ideas 1

So I'm trying to think of what to do with this blog, and I'm not coming up with ideas. So I decided to try coming up with ideas for gameable content and I'm going to use this post as a dumping ground. Note: Please give me feedback. Do these ideas suck? Is this concept interesting? Is anybody listening? Etc.

Narcoworms

From exotic lands, a species of worm that feeds on plant matter and excretes a mildly toxic waste through its skin. The toxin is also an hallucinogenic narcotic. Over time emerged the practice of guiding a worm up one's nostril to expedite the toxin's delivery to the blood-brain barrier. Nothing short of pure ecstacy as you fall down on the floor and writhe for a while.

Worm farms have developed in the seedy underworld. Fat druglords keep spaghetti-like piles of them in jars with fragrant mulch, so that snuffing a worm will not be such a turnoff. Plush couches and pillows are provided so your body can writhe in the height of comfort

Game possibilities:

• Worm farms are a new threat to established pleasure merchants (opium dens, bordellos, etc.). PCs get to deal with consequences of the changing economy.
• A new side effect is taking hold thanks to a worm mutation. Some hardcore wormheads are getting turned into illithids.

Thieves Guild (Variant)

So every decent city has a Thieves guild. it's like having a Buffalo Wild Wings. For an interesting take on one, have the Guild be (tied to) a religious order. You see, being a thief is not about gaining something material, it's about depriving someone else of something they value. And some people value their material possessions more than they value their relationship with Insert-Deity-Here. The wealth that the Guild accumulates is redistributed to the congregation and faithful.

This approach can also add an extra dimension to NPCs within the guild beyond the usual thieving stuff. How closely do they follow the principle of giving back to the faithful? Are they more likely to target worshipers of a rival god? What about holy days; is it forbidden to steal on those days? Or maybe the deity forbids the use of poisons/blades/etc.

Fungolepsy

There exists a fungus creature that emits spores thrice per day, or whenever subjected to a slashing wound. there is a 20% chance that those in the immediate vicinity of the spores will contract fungolepsy.

The spores spread to various areas inside the body and do not interfere with normal body functions. However, they feed on melatonin in the bloodstream. For every day that a character has contracted fungolepsy, they lose an additional 1d6 minutes of sleep as the fungus spreads. They may not notice until a few days or even weeks have gone by. If your game does not have rules for sleep loss, roll a number of d6's equal to the number of hours of lost sleep. For each 5 or 6 rolled, you get a -1 penalty to all rolls, and you lose 1 hp from the total that you would have healed due to rest.

Once the daily sleep loss has accumulated to more than 4 hours (240 minutes), the character will begin to hallucinate periodically.  Once there is total (8 hours) sleep loss, the character will die in CON/2 days. To be cured of fungolepsy, a character needs to find a specific fungicide which is safe to drink.

Due to the varying nature of campaign worlds, the GM shall decide the effects of a character trying to use magical sleep in order to counteract the effects of fungolepsy.

First Post of 2017

Lo, it has been a long time since I've reached out with any news. Last time I was here I was comparing RuneQuest 2 and RuneQuest 6. Well, I've been away for personal reasons—namely, work has been exceptionally busy, we bought a home, and we had our first child. Weekends are completely dead to me due to parenting responsibilities, but I have been able to find a magnificent group to play RuneQuest 2 with. The main reason is that we only game for two hours, and it's on a weekday, which means I have a narrow window when I'm the only one awake. I might make future use of this window to try running my own game on a different weeknight, which leads me to my topic.

My RPG Goals for 2017:

Yes, here will be the space where I outline my goals for the coming year, and where I can turn my eyes in December to evoke substantial disappointment.

1. Run an actual campaign via G+.

I think that I need to decide what to run, then build up a group based on both my schedule availability and who might be interested in what it is I'm running. I feel like DCC might be the most doable, but I am actually considering a number of different systems.

• Dungeon Crawl Classics - For the slightly more off-the-wall play style, as well as the tremendous community that's been built up around the game. The only downside is I'd probably be running nothing but modules from Goodman Games. (Because I've purchased quite a few and I want to actually experience them).
• Swords & Wizardry - For the very flexible nature of the game, as was revealed to me by playing under both +Bill Webb and +Stacy Dellorfano at UCon 2016. Also has the benefit of having a lot of new material to work with, since I backed the Kickstarter at a substantial level. 
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess - For what is commonly considered the most streamlined, efficient incarnation of Moldvay's B/X Edition of D&D. Has some of the best adventure products available, in my opinion. Looking forward to reading and incorporating +Jeff Rients' Broodmother Skyfortress content, as well. I ran Tower of the Stargazer at UCon, although I feel like I didn't quite do it justice.
• RuneQuest - Has the advantage of being a completely different system while still counting as OSR. The downside is that everyone who knows anything about Glorantha knows more than I do. I would probably take the system and make a completely unique setting. Downside is that I still have to compare RQ2 to RQ6 in order to get a feel for which edition I'd want to run.
• Empire of the Petal Throne - Thanks to +Brett Slocum, I experienced my first ever Tèkumel game at UCon, and the setting intrigues me. Sort of like an Everything-But-Europe post-apocalypse, almost reminiscent of Legend of the Five Rings' Rokugan. +James Maliszewski is not helping things by posting about his very awesome-sounding EPT game. Sub-goal of 2017, now that I think of it, is to get to know +Victor Raymond.

Now that I see everything laid out in a list, maybe DCC isn't such a clear front-runner anymore. But whatever the case, I want to actually follow through once I decide on something, rather than constantly waffling about what would make the perfect game.

2. Run something in at a table that isn't a con game.

Since moving to a permanent residence last year, I've finally set up some long-term roots, and I really should get a regular table group together. I've started making some connections, but of course things are slow for a number of reasons. First, obviously, is our baby. However, she is also the reason that the "office" (and likely eventual gaming room) is still a complete mess. Then there is the lack of gaming spaces in town. I feel like if I were closer to Ann Arbor, I could weasel my way into a public space for a "D&D" game every couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I have been making a few local contacts via social media, so maybe I will use that as a starting point, along with a flyer at the local comic shop.

3. Produce something to contribute to the DIY/OSR community

Unlike last year's GaryCon, which was highlighted by frustrated attempts at joining games run by people I really admire, this year I will instead be focused on running games. Half of my scheduled events are for an adventure idea I have, which I am calling The Temple of Laserface and the Kung-Fu Masters of the Fourth Dimension. It will either be a really fun time, or I will be so unprepared that I will fall flat on my face and the con will be a disaster. Assuming the former, I have wild dreams of further developing it into an honest-to-god published adventure, which would be my first real contribution to the community. (It should be noted that one of the Laserface games is going to be run in DCC and the other in S&W. I'd have to look at legal consequences of deciding to tie a published adventure to a particular rules system.)

4. Blog more often

Let's face it: this blog has not seen a lot of action. Maybe if I pare back my expectations on my writing output, I can make posting things here a bit more consistent. If I can think up a good amount of gameable content, maybe I can even blend this goal with #3. Let's face it, there are a lot of great blogs out there that regularly post things you can take directly for your game. In fact, here's a link to a page that's collected some of the best content that's freely available for a modern take on a Dungeon Master's Guide:

Scrapbook DMG

The New Kid at the Old School - Part 2

This is the second half of my first post on my perspective on the "Old School Renaissance," or OSR. Part 1 can be read here.

Arguably the most famous Magic: the Gathering card is the Black Lotus. It's essentially an easy way to get a huge advantage over your opponent if you play it very early in the game, when both players are scrambling to build their resource pool. It was also one of the first cards ever to get banned because it was so ridiculously overpowered. It is usually cited as the most expensive collector card in the game.

I bring up the Black Lotus because it's an example of Wizards of the Coast (the company that has produced Magic: the Gathering since its humble beginnings in 1993) enforcing a sense of fairness and balance into its games. I doubt anyone reading would debate that such a player-vs-player game shouldn't be fair to a large degree.

In 1973, a mere twenty years before Magic: the Gathering changed the face of gaming, Gary Gygax founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (later simply TSR). The original edition of Dungeons and Dragons was published soon afterwards in 1974. But on April 10, 1997, TSR was sold to Wizards of the Coast, which had become a major success overnight by developing M:tG's collectible card game model only four years prior.

Whereas TSR settings like Dragonlance and Dark Sun might have contributed to the rise of the "railroad" in published adventures, The change in company ownership seemingly led to the rise of the modern versions of the rules. TSR did publish an insane amount of supplemental material for the 2nd edition of AD&D, but it wasn't until the 3rd Edition rule set, the first published by WotC, that the game felt, well, different.

Ironically, 3rd Edition was the first not to have two different versions of the rules, "Basic" and "Advanced." There was just the one rule set, and so it was simply called "Dungeons and Dragons," despite ramping up the complexity of the rules. It's not that the additional rules were any more complicated, but rather they were much more inescapable. In my opinion, these new rules were incorporated to introduce the concepts of fairness and balance to the game. The 3rd Edition rules expected that encounters with monsters would be something that would pose just enough difficulty to challenge the PC's, but would more often than not result in their survival. After all, just like a streamlined M:tG deck, there's an inherent investment put into your custom character that would go to waste upon his or her death.

A lot of existing RPG players didn't like this new approach, and many simply stuck with playing whatever edition they were most comfortable with. As time progressed, many new RPG players could only learn with the new, well-balanced system, and some experienced frustration at the sheer amount of structure and rules rigidity that was in place.

Anyway, I'm starting to seriously deviate from my original intent with this post. An interesting by-product of the 3rd Edition rules was WotC issuing the Open Gaming License, acknowledging that a game's mechanics could not be copyrighted, only the game's product identity. Essentially, anyone could call for the procedure of calling for dice rolls and applying modifiers just like D&D in a game they wanted to publish independently, but the flavor that makes it D&D Proper could not be copied.

At the beginning of the OGL era, everything from the original days of D&D onward was not only copyrighted, but also long out of print. For this reason, many so-called "Retro clones"--carbon copies of previous D&D games that changed just enough in detail to avoid infringing on copyright--became popular. For example, if you wanted to play the Moldvay/Cook Basic Set, the Original D&D White Box, or the 1991 Rules Cyclopedia, you could use Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry, or Dark Dungeons, respectively.

Very recently, earlier editions of the game were reissued and made available for download by Wizards of the Coast. It's for this reason that I'm now able to have my own new hardcover version of the 1991 D&D Rules Cyclopedia (see below.)

My one-off printing of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia

One would think that this would spell the end of the OSR era. After all, why seek out cheap imitations of D&D when at long last it's possible to get copies of the exact D&D edition you wanted to play in the first place? Well, the easiest answer is that many clone games have free downloads, but that's also not the primary reason that OSR games exist. The answer comes in the OGL itself: Because you can't explicitly copy D&D, you have to have some originality.

Sometimes these are relatively simple improvements, which could be as minor as improving presentation (I've heard that Delving Deeper is an improvement compared to the relatively poorly-presented Original D&D White Box). In other cases, the changes that are inherent in an OSR game are significant enough to alter the entire feel of the game. For example, compare the Basic/Expert version of D&D to one of the games that is closely based on it, Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The latter is dedicated exclusively for weird fiction. Although a lot of that comes from the published LotFP adventures, the mechanics themselves lend to a grittier game. (For example, encumbrance is greatly simplified and adds an extra dimension to resource management.)

As of now, the biggest players in the RPG market are still Pathfinder (which started thanks to the OGL) and the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which is still owned by Wizards of the Coast (which itself is owned by Hasbro these days.) This new D&D Edition has earned a lot of praise primarily for giving a nod to earlier editions of D&D, namely in that the sheer bulk of the rules machinery has been stripped away, especially compared to 4th Edition, the most rules-heavy machine of them all.

While 5th Edition continues to try its best in merging modern and classic play, it is now easier than ever for players (like me) who started gaming after the 3rd Edition paradigm shift to discover the charm of the earlier games of the roleplaying game hobby. Once that discovery is made, there's a wide world of new material that is available, with many new innovations coming every day.

It really does feel like a Renaissance in some ways.

The New Kid at the Old School - Part 1

As I sit and look at my bookshelf of RPG books, I'd say it's fairly well-balanced. There's a lot of GURPS hardbacks, as well as Legend of the Five Rings books and the Mongoose Publishing edition of the Traveller Core Rulebook. Then there's a divider in the bookshelf—it's an IKEA bookshelf that also houses my vinyl records.

On the other side of that divide is Swords and Wizardry Complete, the AD&D 1E PHB, the AD&D 2E trio (PHB/DMG/MM), then the 5th Edition trio of the same three books. Then sits the massive tome that is the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, a few published modules, then the smaller-format stuff: A Red and Pleasant Land, Lamentations of the Flame Princess - Rules and Magic, Fiasco and the Fiasco Companion, Savage Worlds Explorers Edition, Fate Core System, Reign Enchiridon, and Dogs in the Vineyard.

I have to move some of the smaller books because I just received my custom-printed copy of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, which I had made once I purchased the PDF document online from Wizards of the Coast. Soon to be added to the collection are a boatload more things published from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. (They'd be there already except that they're coming from Finland.)

Many of the games I've mentioned, and those which I'm most excited about—particularly Swords and Wizardry, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia—fall into a category known as "OSR." This stands for "Old-School Renaissance." Or maybe "Old-School Revolution," or "Old-School Revival." There's never been 100% consensus on what the "R" stands for, and perhaps that's appropriate.

The first RPGs I got to play used Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, followed by a very brief foray into 4th Edition, and eventually Pathfinder. I remember how Pathfinder seemed like a breath of fresh air at the time from the nearly-a-computer-simulation feel of 4th Edition. However, looking back on it now, I was still stuck in a system that consisted of massive amount of rules and numbers. Our Pathfinder group was fairly large—6 players—and every time we had a combat occur, I had to pull out my laptop to help keep my special abilities straight and tally up my modifiers correctly. I was playing a paladin, so I had a lot of bonuses bestowed upon me.

Also, despite the heavy focus on combat, it never felt as though we were ever in danger of having our characters die, either. Maybe the system is geared towards PC preservation, or maybe it was just unconscionable that we'd have to throw away a character we spent a few hours building. I can trace all the problems I had with the game being tedious to the fact that so much effort goes into building a character and optimizing statistics.

In short, the rules of the game were a more powerful entity than the game itself.

Many postmodern game systems* address the issues of Pathfinder and 3+ Edition D&D in different ways. Fate Core and the Fate Accelerated Edition are both very popular these days. In them, the narrative—including all its details—is built actively by everyone in real time at the table. You can spend the game mechanic's currency to declare a detail about a scene, or actively try to create advantages that you can use for the benefit of your character. Apocalypse World and its derivatives, in particular the popular spin-off Dungeon World, are built to systematically create a highly fluid but intriguing narrative. (In DW at least, the GM is forbidden from pre-planning a story, and has a finite list of actions s/he can take, although these can be broad, such as "reveal an unwelcome truth.") These postmodern games can vary wildly in their approach, but they all affect the narrative in different ways.

*—I've also called them "story games," which I've learned is a term that carries negative associations with a specific website with some bad apples, or "hippie games," which sounds rather pejorative. In contrast, "postmodern games" makes me sound like I might know what I'm talking about, so I'm going to stick with it.

The OSR philosophy of game design, speaking very broadly, is to revisit the era of gaming before there were rules governing virtually all of the possibilities that arise in gameplay. Earlier games had an array of ability scores, but not necessarily skills. Feats didn't exist. With a lack of rules governing every specific possibility, a lot more flexibility and freedom was in the hands of the game's GM. If you come across something there were no rules for, you made the ruling yourself. In these cases, the rules of the game are inherently pared down so that they do not overshadow the game itself.

My first time actually encountering "OSR" was the recent UCon 2015 convention, where I played, amongst other things, Swords and Wizardry. The game felt "old school" to be sure, because there wasn't a lot to the mechanics. Other than a few references to an unfamiliar character sheet to figure out attack bonuses and armor classes, I ended up playing my character, rather than my character sheet.

Furthermore, UCon featured an entire OSR track, meaning that every table in the room featured a game that would be considered "OSR." It was clear from watching the tables that everyone was totally immersed in the game before them. Contrast that with a few organized play tables (such as Adventurer's League or Pathfinder Society, for example) I saw later in the convention, when everyone seemed to be playing very distractedly, looking in their books or e-readers for rules or other details.

A common perception of the OSR community is that it consists of people who either regressed to earlier gaming editions after not liking new things, or simply never moved on from them out of nostalgia. I would argue that this is not true. Both the OSR movement and the postmodern RPG movement are reactions to the mechanics-supremacy and numbers-dominance of systems like D&D 4th Edition and Pathfinder. The postmodern RPGs tend to attack the problem from a standpoint of asking some of the most basic questions about what is needed to make an RPG. The OSR tends to correct the problem by shifting focus away from mechanics, taking out what is unnecessary and leaving the GM with a more adaptable rules framework than a complex and intricate rules machine.

Am I arguing, then, that the OSR method is a better approach? NO! In the end, my argument is that both the OSR and postmodern games are two sides of the same coin, which came about as a reaction to the rules-heavy trend that RPGs were taking. There are many gamers who can find RPGs in both genres that are fun solutions to the pitfalls of modern mainstream gaming.

Here's Matt Finch's Quick Primer on OSR Gaming (Free PDF), if you're looking for a more thorough introduction to some key OSR concepts.

I'm planning on a follow-up blog post in a few days where I discuss some of the different examples of OSR games, because there is actually a lot of variety.

A Level 0 Blogger Appears

Here we go, another blog. At least this time, I've chosen a subject that's not only got my attention, but seems to be holding it for quite some time—tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs). I've written about other stuff that hasn't held my interest as much (baseball), as well as my other passions like photography and chess. However, photography is a giant investment of both time and money, so my involvement occasionally wanes. I am on a long dry spell at the moment, especially since I want to focus on large-format portraiture, which only amplifies the amount of time and money involved. As for chess, I'm just not good enough at it to write with any authority.

The subject of RPGs, however, seems to be a topic that's well-suited to me. I'm naturally a creative person, and I've been involved with them in some manner since the mid-1990's, when I had a copy of the black-border AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Master Guide (TSR 2160).

Now, when I say I had a copy of the DMG, I mean just that. I didn't have a copy of the Player's Handbook or the Monstrous Manual because I didn't know I needed anything else to play. In fact, I didn't have any friends to play with either, so it was mostly me sitting at the kitchen table many evenings eating a bowl of cereal and flipping through the book, admiring the artwork and concocting adventures in my head.

Actually, my childhood was not entirely devoid of gaming. I also had the 1991 Black Box set, and I ran my grandma through Zanzer's Dungeon. Or at least the first few rooms of it. She was confused, but a good sport from what I can recall.

Anyway, I didn't get into a real gaming group until college, and that was over AOL Instant Messenger. (Yeah, remember when all that was happening?) With only two exceptions (plus a convention), all my gaming has been online. It's great to have a game, but nothing beats that at-the-table experience.  On a side note, please get in touch if the list of games below interests you and you live in or around Ann Arbor, Michigan.

My hope for this blog is to explore topics related to tabletop RPGs, as well as share my thoughts. I've done print publications (zines) for my photography work, and I'd like to explore a more traditional-style zine with my zeal for RPGs. What's encouraging is that the OSR (old-school renaissance) community seems to be quite active in this area. I'm hoping to get a lot of support, if I can think up enough content for such an endeavor. If that sort of thing goes well, I would eventually like to self-publish an adventure or even a series of them. If I sell them online, I could make tens of dollars if enough people like them!

Alright, this has gone on long enough. I wanted to conclude with a list of my RPG pedigree, so to speak, because it will give you an idea of what sorts of games I am likely to talk about on this blog, or at least what I'm fond of at its outset.

Games I've run:

• Fate Core/GURPS: Easily my most successful campaign, and the only one I've run in person. PCs are members of a travelling carnival freak show in a Steampunk pseudo-Europe. Lasted about 10 sessions before I had to move to start my career. We started in Fate Core, but switched to GURPS after I formed the opinion that Fate was too intrusive on the gameplay.
• Traveller: Online, and only two sessions deep (not counting character generation). Originally intended to be a gritty sandbox, but I learned that sandboxes aren't the easiest things to get off the ground. Needs work before resuming if I ever want to revisit it. (Which may or may not happen because I don't like sci-fi as an RPG genre, I've discovered.)
• Dogs in the Vineyard: Evening-slot con game at UCon 2015. Pretty well-received, it seemed. Never seen such intense roleplaying and player-on-player conflict.
• Legend of the Five Rings: Con game one-shot (Legacy of Disaster) at UCon 2015. Also well-received, albeit with a much different flavor than the DitV game.

Games I want to run (campaigns):

• Lamentations of the Flame Princess - gritty system based on B/X, with a heavy focus on weird fiction and horror. I am thinking of making an adventure or campaign set in 1500s Germany during the Protestant Reformation. 
• Legend of the Five Rings - One of the players of the aforementioned Legacy of Disaster one-shot expressed interest in a campaign. The L5R system is one that I've wanted to run for a long time, but haven't explored aggressively.
• Dungeon Crawl Classics - A fun game that highlights the more off-the-wall elements of the OSR genre. Huge online community makes this a very interesting and fun game. Not sure a campaign would be the best fit, but it's a system that's got my attention.
• D&D B/X or RC - I am waiting on a custom printing of the Rules Cyclopedia to arrive. I will digest it at leisure and may eventually want to run a loose game based on its rules.

Games I've played in:

• D&D 5E (ongoing campaign) - Fun game that's much better than Pathfinder/3.5. Still not sure if it's far enough removed from said system for me to want to run it, though. Our GM is awesome and that fact may be hiding potential system flaws.
• Palladium Fantasy 1E (ongoing campaign) - My first Hex Crawl sandbox game. Very old-school feel, although I'm not sure whether or not I like the skill system yet. The game itself really grabs me though.
• Dungeon Crawl Classics - A handful of adventures at a bookstore in Lansing, with a really fun group. Cementing my affection for anything you could call OSR.
• Dungeon World - Very well-run one-shot game that features a very transparent rules system. Has me interested in PbtA games.
• GURPS Horror - First game with my weekly online gaming crew. Although I joined halfway through, it was great because it wrapped up a nice little story arc.
• Pathfinder - interesting campaign with interesting ideas fell apart because it's Pathfinder. We also had a group that was bordering on the too-large (7 people)
• Swords and Wizardry - Con game one-shot. OSR system, but not enough info to determine whether I would like it, especially since I think there were a few house rulings going on.
• Call of Cthulhu - Two con game one-shots. Futility and despair in a crunchy candy shell. Not sure I like it. Feels too much like a haunted funhouse ride because what are you going to do, punch Yog-Sothoth?
• 13th Age - One-shot con game with a D&D-turned-free-form feel. What Pathfinder could have been.
• Star Wars FFG - Various one-shots at conventions. Neat die mechanic, but far too crunchy a system for me. I'm done with feats or anything that looks like them.

See you for the first real post later on.

-D.