Intro – 0:00:00.000
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Sage Advice – 27:16.037
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Email 1 From Ivan
Hello, I hope this finds you all doing well. I not long ago decided to get back into D&D. I played a few times back in high school, early 90’s, maybe 2-3 sessions. It was 1st Edition I believe. At any rate, for whatever reason I stopped playing.
I later, with my cousins, came up with what we called “The Game.” It was a bastardized pencil and paper game that I came up with, borrowing from my very limited exposure to actual AD&D, as well as all the computer games of the time like Darklands and Baldur’s Gate.
It was a great game that I remember very fondly. We would play through the night and end up still playing while the sun was coming up. Big epic adventures.
I recently wanted to recapture that and I wanted to see if I could get my wife involved. I talked to a local gaming store that had a open gaming area in the back and they said there was a Pathfinder game on Tuesday nights. So I briefly checked it out one evening for an hour or so and inquired about playing. The DM said there was a campaign starting that Sunday that I and my wife could join. So the first evening we got a babysitter for our boys and went down.
That night basically we made our characters, myself a thief/rogue and her a druid. The DM had most of us end up at this seedy tavern where everyone was kind of standing around. Through my antics I managed to in game get my wife into the group, as they were about to leave her on the docks. (no one wants to be left out, especially as it is their first taste of it)
Over the next two sessions we got progressively more and more bored… It was a whole lot of playing lets go talk to people and find out what they know about this crime. And the worse part is that 1. the DM was trying to play the characters and 2. having been a police officer and done this, it doesn’t work when he wants us to read his facial expressions (which he isn’t doing a good job of).
Ultimately if we didn’t ask the right questions we got nothing. So not only did it feel as though the storyline railroaded, but it made it go incredibly slow.
I at one point threatened to murder a npc if she didn’t give us the information we were looking for. Everyone just looked at me like I was crazy (keep in mind this is after 8 hours of nothing happening).
So after 12 hours and about $100 in babysitter money we bowed out… I was frustrated, mainly because my wife’s first experience with a RPG sucked.
I came home after our last evening of disappointment and climbed up into the attic. I dug up a big folder of all my old stuff from “The Game.” It had big long detailed spell lists that I made up, for mages, psionics, and druids. Character sheets, weapon charts and loads of hand drawn maps complete with lists of monsters to be found there, their hp, ac, inventory…
But, ironically I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I knew it worked on some sort of d6 system, because that is all we had but I can’t for the life of me remember how it worked, hahaha.
So, that started me on the quest of looking for a new game. In doing so I stumbled upon both OSRIC and your podcast, a potent combo. I have been greatly enjoying it. I have been burning through the episodes, up to 23 in the last week.
It is a life saver at work, since work is boring. So while I am at work for the next month or so, I work overseas, I am trying to familiarize myself with OSRIC and how it works. Namely the combat, both magic and melee and segments. I have found your show to be great in filling in some of the gaps for me that I don’t pick up straight away from the reading.
In one of your episodes you had mentioned having people send in their own custom magic items. It was an early episode so I haven’t yet gotten to the part where you probably tell everyone to stop sending them because you have gotten way to many, so… …here is my contribution: The Hammer of Fracturing!
The Hammer of Fracturing is a medium sized war hammer. It’s handle is simple, made of polished oak. The head of the hammer is an unadorned piece of deep black onyx with a high mirror finish. The round face of the hammer head has an ever so small crack on the otherwise perfectly shaped hammer. When swung in combat it acts as a +2 war hammer. Upon striking it’s victim though, a d100 is rolled. (on a 100 the victim’s bones and all his possessions to include armor and weapons shatter to pieces, leaving him in a crumpled heap with 1hp. A roll of 99-90 the victim’s weapon, shield [if equipped] and armor shatter. A roll of 89-80 the victim’s weapon and armor shatter. On a roll of 79-70 the victim’s weapon shatters. A roll of 69-50 the victim’s armor shatters. 49-02 the hammer has no additional effect. But on a roll of 1, the hammer itself shatters also causing the armor of both it’s wielder and victim to shatter. In addition the razor sharp fragments of onyx explode into a 20 foot radius causing all creatures in the area 2d12 damage.)
When I finally get back into playing and DMing I plan on working this into a campaign. Listening to your show makes me appreciate the idea of a uncertain game world. Here is a weapon that can be used with devastating effect in combat, but also holds that chance to become a disaster for it’s wielder. Plus, who doesn’t like rolling dice to find out if you win big or lose big?
This definitely ended up longer than I had anticipated, sorry about that. But in closing, I just wanted to thank you all for a great podcast. I very much enjoy it.
email 2 From Richard J.
One of the more salient issues I take with AD&D, now that I have the reprints is that they actually have ability score caps on female PCs. I consider that kind of offensive and I believe women in my group would find that alienating. Would you consider this to be problematic from a social justice perspective or is there value in being more realistic.
On a semi-related issue, I notice non-human PCs have level caps, what can non-human PCs do when they hit that level cap that will help them continue to contribute to the success of the group once the human PCs have surpassed it? What is the function of the level caps and if I play without them, could it break the game?
Lastly, do you think the game assumes that you have been reading dragon magazine or played OD&D. I don’t see ability checks explicitly described anywhere in the core trinity of books though they are alluded to.
Table Manners – Running The Ghost Tower of Inverness – 58:14.655
www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4alum/20110218
Game Mechanics – Visual Handouts 1:20:19.014
The Dragon’s Hoard – The Soul Gem 1:33:40.692
Creature Feature Theater – Firebat 1:44:48.036
Outro – 1:55:15.779
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