Eh, I've written enough huge rants lately. Herewith some shorter musings:
There's a longtime forums poster who's gone by the names of "Old Geezer" and "Gronan of Simmerya." As it happens, as a teenager he was one of Gary Gygax's earliest players, active in D&D before its publication, and furthermore he was one of M.A.R. Barker's early players, active in Empire of the Petal Throne before its publication. He's been an invaluable fellow in discussions of gaming history and How It All Began.
In one thread, Old Geezer opined that his biggest regret about OD&D was the lack of morale rules. This led me to contemplate what my biggest regret was, and what -- had I been standing over Gary Gygax's shoulder and murmuring, "Dude, you really need to write this in" -- I'd have wanted to see in those rules.
Caveat: we're talking first gen RPG, 1974; we're leaving Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, GD&H etc out. The same publishing constraints apply, so I might be able to talk them into bumping the first or third books up a single sheet of paper (= 4 pages), and that's it. Also, no massive rules rewrite; I'd love to have said "skill system," and that could've fit, but that'd mean having to redo most of the first book. So ... for what might I have asked EGG? And this is what I responded:
* * * * * * * * *
For my own part, while I would've wanted a complete overhaul in tone, the fact is that whatever we made of the game, it was written as a wargame for wargamers. It's not that Gygax screwed up: it's that neither he nor anyone else knew any different then. Yet. I could think of a lot better use for a number of those pages than exacting rules for building and manning castles, but in 1973, they hadn't.
As I said, I'd have loved for there to have been a skill system rather than class/level, but that would've been a completely different set of rules. So given my caveats, my choices would boil down to:
1) Forget alignment. Completely. Absolutely. If there was one rule that had a poisonous, pernicious, lasting and idiotic sway over the hobby, this was it. Alignment could without a drop of angst have been left out of D&D from the start, and at any time thereafter. (The enduring irony of the protagonist of the books contributing most to the 70s Law/Chaos zeitgeist being a worshiper of Chaos invariably working for Law, something a lot of DMs would never permit, hasn't escaped me.) That sucks up a whole page: we can use it writing a Rogue class.
2) The bigger single rule change, though, would be surprisingly simple: fixed hit points. Something easy, say, HP = CON + 2 or 3/level? IMHO, the most serious bar to roleplaying (vs wargaming) is that low-level OD&D characters had the survivability of chum in the water. Make them likely to last past the first session, and there's incentive to invest in them. Likewise, ditch random chargen. Use some manner of fixed system.
3) We can do SOMEthing about the tone, though. "Warriors," not "fighting-men." "Wizards" or "sorcerers," not "magic-users." Take the language out of the paradigm that presumes all adventurers are male, and the only women out there are "witches" or seductresses set in opposition to the pure Galahads. (See p. 27, pfft.) Ditch the notion of a "Caller" in the example of play and use real character names, with different people having turns.
[2022 edit: At the time of my original post, I hadn't seen the set of OSR rules called Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It had a "Specialist" class (what they called thief/rogue, basically), listing nine skills -- Architecture, Bushcraft, Climb, Languages, Search, Sleight of Hand, Sneak Attack, Stealth and Tinker -- and conferring 4 points at startup and +2/level to allocate among them as the player saw fit. The result was that (say) as a 1st level Specialist, you could choose to have 2 pts in Stealth and 2 pts in Search, and you'd succeed on a roll of 1-2 on a d6 in either. Rotten percentage chance, but it's a terribly clean and workable mechanic. That would've worked just as well in OD&D. Call this (4).]
No comments:
Post a Comment