Red Box, Nostalgia and the OSR

My D&D Basic books or more precisely my Basic, Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal booklets are some of my most cherished gaming materials in my collection. To my best estimate I began playing D&D after school, in the library when I was twelve years old. For Christmas that year, my Mother bought the Basic (Red Box) for my sister and me. By the time we returned to school from Winter break, I had already run the materials in the book and begun writing my own adventures, crafting maps and planning epic quests to save the worlds. By that Summer I discovered Star Frontiers and between the two games, my life was changed forever.

The release of the 4th edition Red Box brought about a flood of emotions and memories. I guess that's how nostalgia marketing works. Wizards invoked these feelings by reminding us of how much fun we had when we gamed with the original Red Box. They hoped to rekindle those old feelings and get you to buy the new package and get interested in the new game. It worked, I bought it, but not for nostalgia, per se. I still play and I teach new players too. I think its best to teach the most easily accesible version of the game to ease the transition from "noob" to community member.

The OSR (Old School Reformation) is a gamer movement that's growing across the blogo-verse. You see, a lot of what we accept as cliche in our games today was actually new back when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were kicking around the ideas of Heroes taking missions separate from their wargaming armies. All seems pretty simple nearly 40 years later. But, back then, it was quite a paradigm shift. The movement is pushing for gamers to do more of the DIY (Do It Yourself) type projects that we did when the rules were less codified.

Look at it this way. Before there were rules for skills, it was assumed that a PC could do whatever the Player and DM agreed he could. Now that we have a skill system, if you don't buy the skill, you don't have it or you don't have it at any effective level. Likewise, the tactical combat systems of the modern versions of the game take quite a bit away from the old school, all-in-the-mind's-eye combat resolution. Once upon a time, players would look around the battlefield asking questions of what their characters could see. Often these details were made up on the fly. The combat that unfolded was a wild melee, remembered through glimpses of awsome deeds. Today we move tokens and take effects, but seldom do my players describe what their characters are doing. Most likely they just tell me where they are moving, what their minor action is and what power they are using. It used to be more fun, before the system defined so much of what happens at the table.

My solution? Take what you want from the game. You bought it. It's yours. If your gaming becomes painful, bothersome or un-fun, then leave the table, find something else to do with your time and money. Really. It's a game! It should be entertaining. It doesnt matter how you play, nor what game you play. Play it to have fun, play it for the social engagement factor. Do it because you wnat to.

Game on my friends. May all your hits be crits!!!

Vampire: The Masquerade / D&D 4e Mash-Up

Since the first time Gary and Dave (the sacred Saints of our beloved hobby and industry) first dreamt that the actions of the battlefront hero were somehow as equally important as the actions of the squad, platoon, company battalion, etc - we have lived in interesting times.

I left High School in 1990, so the games of the late 80's and early 90's left the greatest impact on me. Of course, D&D is my first love. We met at the local library when I was in elementary school. She was this adorable Choose Your Own Adventure (or maybe Pick A Path) book. I was young, impressionable and possessed of a great imagination. She had me at hello. But I digress.

Though this post is about D&D (yes, you Honey :), it is also about another game, a darker game, that turned our assumptions about the villain 90 degrees out of phase (can you Grok it?). She was Vampire: The Masquerade, and her family was White Wolf and they were amazing.

Recently my weekly gamers were snooping about underground, far beneath the town of Dyvers on the Nyr Dyv. You see, dragons had attacked the town, hundreds of dragons. The humanoids of the place decided that that survival and running below ground, were better than fighting and dying. My heroes fought some neat werewolves (actually were-wolf/human hybrids Werewolf: the Apocalypse I'm looking at you Sweetie!). Then it occurred to me that a run in with World of Darkness vampires could result in a cool night of gaming.

Back in the long ago days of my youth, when I could literally spend entire days doing nothing but gaming and game prep, I developed a love for system conversions. Today I think the crazy kids call it a mash-up. But I used to convert all kinds of stuff. E.G. - My laser pistol wielding D&D fighters in Star Frontiers, the Epic Car Wars race around the Isle of Dread and even the night my RECON squad cleared the monsters out of the castle in that classic AD&D adventure The Gauntlet. All this to say that bringing the V:tM vampires to D&D would not be challenging, it would be fun.

I started by reviewing the various clans and the most common powers of each from the V:tM core book (from about 1990). Then I read through the descriptions of the various powers and how they "looked" during game play.

So, I chose a level based on the PC level at the time, I think they were 6th. Reading about the Nosferatu Clan, it seemed they weren't really combat monsters like the Gangrel or the Brujah. But the "ugly" tag developed into so ugly that enemies within a square of the Nos, would take a -2 on attack rolls. Now that pretty darned ugly. Looking at the cool things the Animalism power confers at various levels, I created the Call of the Wild power. Basically this power, a rechargeable because of its punishing 3d10+5 damage at range 10 and burst 3. An at-will at that power load-out would have been

unbalanced. Vampires have been known for their mighty strength for a long time. I couldn't let the Nos punk-out in melee, so I gave him a powerful At-Will melee basic - Strength of Ten Men. The Vanish power was based on the V:tM Obfuscate; the way it reads in the original material is that the Vampire just disappears while it's enemies are stunned and look about in confusion. The skills, were the finishing touch, again based upon reading through the original V:tM core rule book, coupled with my DM-Mind of how a Vampire should be equipped for tangling with my PC's.

The coolness of V:tM vampires was only augmented by the mystical qualities of their blood. Including the Blood Bond and the ability to create Ghouls. So my subterranean Vampires of Moloko Fortress had a small army of ghouls. Enjoy!