As I pick away at Galaxies in Shadow and Incandescent (which looks to be done first)  I sat down and re-wrote D&D again.  I blame the whole James Wallis thread.

Buffoon indeed!  That's Mr. Buffoon to you sir!

Anyhow, like I said here's another crack at a D&D I like, actually this time I think it even wound up resembling D&D.  Just about wrote itself.  I stole the introduction and alignments sections from my last attempt Advanced Men & Magic because I liked them well enough.

So here it is http://www3.telus.net/public/uncouths/Obscure.pdf

At present it's mainly a skeleton or discussion piece and needs more monsters and spells to be properly done.  Maybe some discussion of what the skills are though I think they're self evident to anyone who's played D&D and probably even those who haven't.

I haven't had the nerve to post it on rpgnet's D&D padded room though...

Looks like a fairly solid, playable system - no great departures from D&D so dependable but not mega exciting. I did like the alignment traits system, and the idea of Small creatures having smaller Hit Dice. The overall design looks pretty tight - hard to pick out specifics but all the way through there's lots of fairly well-designed stuff like the notes everyone can act at once via delaying, or the Turning System, unaware combatants etc. - all look like good systems. For my tastes some of the classes/races were a little bland in terms of actual exciting class/race features, but then I'm largely a 3E player (read: munchkin).

The option of adding xp to buy a couple of extra skills for your class is interesting, though I'm not sure how 'fair' this is - with xp costs doubling level-to-level I think it may be encouraging characters to pick up lots of extra abilities and be at most a level behind.

The ability 'dead zone' is also interesting - I could see you were trying to avoid having monsters get attribute modifiers, which I largely approve of for speed of play, though I'm not sure I'd apply the idea as thoroughly (e.g. I'd expect a giant to be really strong, or a dog really dim, and give them more than a +5/-4). I'm not sure that the 'dead zone' isn't too wide with a 3d6 stat system, since its hard to roll 15+/5- that way.

I thought the idea that under no stress default roll= attribute was interesting [similar to take-10 in 3.5] though it has the quirk that, since attribute bonus to rolls is less than 1:1, having to roll becomes a progressively worse penalty the higher your stats are. Its quick and dirty, though.

Thanks, the dead zone is really from Gamma World 1e.  When you look at the stat mods at AD&D 1e it looks like they started out there and then started wandering trying to give a little something to fighters and thieves.

The xp for skills system is a class building system.  The concept came from AD&D 2e's Dungeon Master's guide.  I'm not sure it would be good to allow the flat out purchasing of extra skills. Picking up a new class later on is a bit tricky if you don't but I'd need to integrate some training time thing.  In any case picking up a new skill at fifth level only gives you a first level skill.

The doubling progression is also a classic D&D mechanism, however the idea is that experience awards mostly double too.  This gets rid of any need to divide the monster's xp value by some level factor.

Avoiding long lists of class and race features is one of my core goals.  I feel they utterly destroy the system hence my loathing of 3.5 and 4.0.

I'd like to point out that the short introductory chapter at the beginning of a book or other written work is called a

FOREWORD

and not a "forward". "Forward" is what you do to an e-mail when you send it to someone who wasn't addressed originally.

I thought so but my spell checker underlined it in red so I relented.  Could it be one of those American spelling things?  DOH! Wait, it keeps the 'e'. HEAD DESK!

Quote from: David Johansen;418778Thanks, the dead zone is really from Gamma World 1e.  When you look at the stat mods at AD&D 1e it looks like they started out there and then started wandering trying to give a little something to fighters and thieves.

The xp for skills system is a class building system.  The concept came from AD&D 2e's Dungeon Master's guide.  I'm not sure it would be good to allow the flat out purchasing of extra skills. Picking up a new class later on is a bit tricky if you don't but I'd need to integrate some training time thing.  In any case picking up a new skill at fifth level only gives you a first level skill.

The doubling progression is also a classic D&D mechanism, however the idea is that experience awards mostly double too.  This gets rid of any need to divide the monster's xp value by some level factor.

I'll have to have a look at Gamma World 1e sometime. The only version I ever played was 4th edition (the AD&D2 compatible one), where I think they basically used the basic 13-15=+1, 16-17=+2, 18=+3 model.
The picking up skills later on at starting levels is interesting...makes sense, anyway (Palladium works similarly, though the implementation here looks better). I had seen the 2e class building system, used it for at least one character (our GM allowed it as recommended in The Complete Thief, for building "Lone Wolf" thieves).

On xp, fixed xp is a good thing admittedly I guess the question is...if xp cost doubles, do the monsters also double in difficulty ? I'm guessing that's true at low levels, not so much at higher level.

QuoteAvoiding long lists of class and race features is one of my core goals.  I feel they utterly destroy the system hence my loathing of 3.5 and 4.0.

Hokay...well, for my own edification, might I ask why in more detail? I'll admit that after ages playing 3.5 I occasionally get jacked off when I want to do something heroic or dramatic and discover that it needs a feat or class feature I don't have (and/or six additional dice rolls plus taking 4 Attacks of opportunity, after having to cross-check pages 131, 245 and 37) --but I'm still addicted to having Stuff.

When I'm designing, I try to have abilities that anyone can do (some with a bonus, though), or simple abilities that have lots of broad uses emergent in play - for example, a Called Shot boosting ability that might give a character some penalty mitigation whether they're a warrior trying to cut a head off a hydra, an archer trying to disable a fleeing enemy's legs, or trying to disarm the staff from the evil sorceror. (D&D 4E designers discovered exactly one such ability, "push guy back 1 square" and have been spamming it repeatedly).

Quote from: Premier;418785I'd like to point out that the short introductory chapter at the beginning of a book or other written work is called a

FOREWORD    

Alternatively, put an exclamation mark on the end like its a chapter title...

I'm now wondering what a "Foreward - to adventure!" RPG would be like. Maybe an RPG where you roleplay training as an adventurer, and the session ends just as you hit the dungeon.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;418889I occasionally get jacked off when I want to do something heroic or dramatic and discover that it needs a feat or class feature I don't have (and/or six additional dice rolls plus taking 4 Attacks of opportunity, after having to cross-check pages 131, 245 and 37)

This and that the core features of D&D combat, armor as a to hit penalty and hit dice, only make sense in the context of expedience to speed play.

This is a game where a party of thirty assorted adventurers can reasonably fight two hundred orcs in less than an hour of play.  Why do you think the # appearing numbers are so high in AD&D 1e's Monster Manual?

Anything that clogs up that expedience is really a diservice to the original design.  I actually favor a return to d6s for all hit dice and damage rolls and the integration of the weapon verses armor table with the attack table as an alternative.

However, this is an attempt to design a game that still looks like D&D to people...

Cheers...OK, I get where you're coming from...

Really, I think the greatest fumble in gaming history is D&D's failure to dominate the miniatures battle game field.  They were always 99% of the way there rules wise.  The reason is that the people in charge (Lorraine Williams in particular) never got the appeal of miniatures and never really put in the investment required to do it right.  When Warhammer got plastics D&D should have at least matched them blow for blow instead of sticking with the rigidly posed and dull second edition Ral Partha stuff.  I love Ral Partha but those figures were awfully dull.

Miniatures also need to look better than the toy soldiers you buy by the bag at the dollar store.  They need to be recognizable and sharp.  If they don't look good unpainted a good paint job can cover it up a bit but the current pre-painted collectable stuff is in a plastic that doesn't hold small, sharp details well, that's one reason they've gone quite a bit bigger.  Prepaints are also expensive to produce and hard to maintain a fixed product line because the moulds wear out.

Yeah, why did they never release prepainted randomized minis! All the IP! It would sell like hotcakes! These morons.

Prepainted miniatures are crap plain and simple.

A bit more of a nuanced reply would be that when I said "D&D" history and Lorraine Williams and match Warhammer as it came out I was obviously talking about TSR in the eighties.  It's true I hate prepainted figures with a passion.  But let's face it, some people can't paint or can't be bothered and they generally don't mind if their prepaints look like crap, it's just a marker.  Not welcome at my table mind you but good enough for the peasants

Incidentally some of the big monsters look okay.  Not great, but passable.  This is because the details are bigger.  Also, the older Hero Clix stuff was bigger and looked better for it.  I hate scale creep but the plastic used for prepaints just doesn't hold fine, sharp detail well.  And the quick and sloppy paint jobs don't help.  I suspect that there would be real logistical problems with doing truly massive runs of prepaints but at least you might be able to step up to better plastics and moulds.

Why they didn't do the D&D figures in the scale of the Hero Clix stuff is beyond me.  The margin of error on the paint jobs wouldn't look so bad, the details would be deeper, and I'm pretty sure the quadrupling the amount of plastic and doubling the amount of paint wouldn't affect the price much because most of the costs are in labor and tooling.

Still not welcome at my table but at least as presentable as Hero Clix.

Quote from: David Johansen;419136Prepainted miniatures are crap plain and simple.

Not if you paint your own they aren't! They save you a lot of time by allowing you to actually paint miniatures that matter to the game in one fashion or another (PCs, bag guys and lieutenants, NPCs relevant to the adventure etc) while still having color for all the secondary roles and mooks and so on. A bit like you focus with a camera in a movie: you see all the details of the main characters, but see the people moving in the background like a blur.

Spray, block, & dip then.  You'll still get better results.

Anyhow, one change I've made is to set the base cost for level one.  By setting a fixed starting XP level this solves some of the multiclassing and skill purchasing issues that might arise.

So for example:

0    0 - 2000
1   2001 - 4000
2   4001 - 8000

I've also added a couple monsters and spells but nothing major.

So the retro clone movement has given us:

Swords & Wizardry - OD&D
OSRIC - AD&D 1e
The Illegal Compiled AD&D -1.5e?
Myth And Magic - 2.5e
Castles & Crusades - AD&D 2.5e?
Labyrinth Lord - BXCMI
Pathfinder - 3.75e

And in the once removed category we've got:
Hackmaster 5e
Free 20
True 20
Mutants and Masterminds
Dungeon Craw Classics
Mazes and Minotaurs

And probably more that I'm not thinking of at the momement.

I'd probably throw my Obscure Kernal into the Blue Book Holmes Basic retro clone category but possibly the AD&D 1e category.  I'm not sure how far I'm going with it.  Really the Illegal Compiled AD&D probably comes close though I would bet the link's gone by now.

I find myself wondering if there's much point in carrying this any farther beyond personal exploration of the rules concepts for future discussion use.