What's one thing that didn't actually exist in Old School D&D, that came up sometime after 1988 or so, that you do add or could see yourself adding to your old school play?
And just because I think otherwise it'd be the most common answer, "ascending AC" doesn't count.
RPGPundit
Drama points, usuable for a bonus to a roll or limited player driven dramatic editing. They were around before 1988, but I like the idea that drama itself can have power in an RPG.
Dragonborn.
Honestly? I can't think of a single damn thing.
Quote from: RPGPundit;580590What's one thing that didn't actually exist in Old School D&D, that came up sometime after 1988 or so, that you do add or could see yourself adding to your old school play?
And just because I think otherwise it'd be the most common answer, "ascending AC" doesn't count.
RPGPundit
2nd edition's rules for unarmed hand-to-hand fighting weren't elaborate, but I liked them alot. That little chart that determined whether a character landed a haymaker, uppercut, etc. added a surprising amount of flavour. I don't know exactly how that compared to 1E rules, or if that was something unique to 2E, but I'd definitely use that.
I liked th optional "weapons groups" specialization rules from the (IIRC) Fighter's Handbook as well.
I've yet to come across any edition of D&D that's done Bards to my satisfaction, but 2e's were better than most.
Oh, and THAC0. I couldn't imagine playing D&D without THAC0.
As for later editions, well, I'd probably use the Saving Rolls from 3rd edition. I can't think of anything else.
All races can be all classes. Adjust humanity so that they have a bonus of some kind similar to any other race (so they don't become a defunct option on a world of bonus-enabled demihumans). I think a +1 to two non-Prime scores is a good bonus personally while not being strictly overpowering.
Also, the 'athletic' description of halflings instead of the 'fat hobbit' description. But I've already done that.
I really like the HP/Vitality point mechanic featured in both Star Wars and Spycraft, and believe it could be very useful to enhance playing a cinematic style of old school games.
Plastic prepainted miniatures, though I wouldn't use them solely, and do not, as a matter of fact.
I like the 4e cosmology. Just substitute the stupid names for proper mythic stuff (e.g. Feywild for Arcadia, Shadowfell for Sheol, etc.) and, for a little science fantasy flavor, maybe even reskin them as different planets rather than different layers of reality (Arcadia the once-idyllic homeland of the elf-folk, from which they were expelled by the fomorians; Sheol just a cold, dark planet ruled by the cruel Empire of Shadar Kai, who are to humans as drow are to elves and duergar to dwarves).
I also wish I could sit down and make up TSR-era D&D versions of the swordmage (not just a fighter/mage a la the old Elf racial class), warlock (maybe using the sha'ir class from Al-Qadim, only using demons instead of genies) and warlord (the Castles & Crusades Knight is sort of halfway there).
The basic d20 rules framework. Already done.
I added Panache points to my Flashing Blades campaign - you earn them for doing swashbucklery stuff and spend them to improve your chance at skill checks, including combat rolls.
That's about as new school as I get.
The concept of passive perception. Active isn't an issue. If a players says he is paying attention to something then he can generally see/hear it. A fair determination of what a character picks up on in a peripheral sense is a nice addition to the game.
I'm thinking of adding perception to my OD&D game. It will be INT+WIS/2.
My plan is to keep the scores hidden behind the screen. The DM will make all the perception checks and the players won't even know that they HAVE a perception score. This will avoid the whole party going into hyper-vigilant mode whenever a perception check is called for.
From 2e:
Schools of Magic for mages and clerics (especially as revised in PO: Spells & Magic).
Thieves getting to choose their thief skill allocations.
The Class Design rules in the DMG.
Cantrips/Orisons.
From 3e:
Ascending AC.
The Fortitude/Reflex/Will saves.
From 4e:
Mages having magic missile "lite" as a free spell, so they don't have to run around with crossbows.
"Unnnamed Characters" (or "minions" as they call them in DnD4) for big-ass battles.
Pre-painted miniatures. I supose I was always using them, in that I would often use toys, rubber giant bugs, dollar-store dinoasaurs, etc.
I already toss out poker chips as a kind of "Hero points" (Blue chip lets you roll a d24, Red chip lets you roll a d30).
Quote from: Melan;580621The basic d20 rules framework. Already done.
I second this. Particularly for Ascending AC, handling customized class features (Feats), and multi-class. But like Melan said greatly simplified.
Quote from: Exploderwizard;580672I'm thinking of adding perception to my OD&D game. It will be INT+WIS/2.
Ahh, secondary attributes - one of my favorite features of
Top Secret.
Skills.
(Yeah they had proficiencies and thief skills before 88, but they were an uneven mess).
4e rituals retrofitted into the OS D&D paradigm. Several new OS games and supplements do that, if memory serves - estar's Majestic Wilderlands come to mind.
I might use Themes from 5e; they're very Warhammer FRP-y and that's a good thing.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;580726I might use Themes from 5e; they're very Warhammer FRP-y and that's a good thing.
I'm adding something similar to my OD&D game. Athlete, Healer, Ranger,Scholar, Thief, Soldier are all available to any of the three classes.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;580726I might use Themes from 5e; they're very Warhammer FRP-y and that's a good thing.
What are they/how do they work?
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;580793What are they/how do they work?
Just little descriptions and small bonuses - like, you might take "Pub-crawler", which would give you a +1 to any rolls to pick up gossip in a bar, or win at games of chance. Or "Investigator" which might lend a + to researching forbidden/forgotten lore, that sort of thing.
They're not the superpowers of 4e or the messes of Game Mastery Mechanical Bullshit of 3e/3.5/Pathfinder, nor the completely incongruous mess of 2e's NWPs. Really it's a tiny bit of front-loading, not unlike "elves get +1 with bow and sword" or "dwarves can tell sliding hallways 50% of the time (1-3 on 1d6)" stuff in AD&D.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;580803Just little descriptions and small bonuses - like, you might take "Pub-crawler", which would give you a +1 to any rolls to pick up gossip in a bar, or win at games of chance. Or "Investigator" which might lend a + to researching forbidden/forgotten lore, that sort of thing.
That's pretty much how I handle 'specialties' for
Boot Hill.
You want to be a bare-knuckler brawler? Knock 10 off your Gun Accuracy and add + 2 to your brawling rolls.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;580806That's pretty much how I handle 'specialties' for Boot Hill.
You want to be a bare-knuckler brawler? Knock 10 off your Gun Accuracy and add + 2 to your brawling rolls.
Yeah; these are even less fiddly than that. I like them. For the player who might want a background but not have an immediate idea where "Gullybuster the Dwarf" comes from, they're kind of nice. None of the various boni are game-breaking either.
I'm warming up to the idea of rituals as they are in 5e. I.e., you can cast a spell you haven't got memorized, it just takes you 20 minutes to do so.
I've allowed ritual-style magic that takes a long time (and usually extra material components, participants, et cetera) in various D&D campaigns, over the years. I didn't swipe it from 5e, though. I think I swiped it from one of the Rolemaster companions.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;580803Just little descriptions and small bonuses - like, you might take "Pub-crawler", which would give you a +1 to any rolls to pick up gossip in a bar, or win at games of chance. Or "Investigator" which might lend a + to researching forbidden/forgotten lore, that sort of thing.
Ok; yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with that. It's not far removed from what I do with background/secondary skills in D&D. Character background details that might be applied in any number of ways during play, depending on the situation (maybe an auto-success or "yeah, you know how to do that," or a small bonus here or there, et cetera).
Quote from: Benoist;580613Plastic prepainted miniatures
Quote from: Melan;580621The basic d20 rules framework. Already done.
Quote from: danbuter;580677Ascending AC.
The Fortitude/Reflex/Will saves.
Quote from: estar;580684I second this. Particularly for Ascending AC, handling customized class features (Feats), and multi-class. But like Melan said greatly simplified.
Quote from: Caesar Slaad;580696Skills.
(Yeah they had proficiencies and thief skills before 88, but they were an uneven mess).
There is a lot of Good Stuff in post-1988 New School D&D for Players and DMs to use in game. I think that there is a lot of anti-New School sentiment generated by the excesses of a few online wankers.
Quote from: danbuter;580677From 2e:
Thieves getting to choose their thief skill allocations.
Agreed. Spellcasters get to pick (generally) what they want to learn/improve and can thus be diverse. Why should all thieves start out as great wall climbers but suck at everything else?
1) All of the above.
2) Point-buy for characteristics.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;580821Ok; yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with that. It's not far removed from what I do with background/secondary skills in D&D. Character background details that might be applied in any number of ways during play, depending on the situation (maybe an auto-success or "yeah, you know how to do that," or a small bonus here or there, et cetera).
The various bonii are more baked in than I'd thought (looked over my playtest docs) but nothing a good AD&D'er can't take the paring knife to to trim the fat a bit.
FATE points and aspects.
http://platonicsolid.blogspot.com/2009/07/castles-and-crusades-double-edge-system.html
At my blog I say that it's for Castles & Crusades but it's perfectly portable to other D&Ds.
Quote from: RPGPundit;580590What's one thing that didn't actually exist in Old School D&D, that came up sometime after 1988 or so, that you do add or could see yourself adding to your old school play?
And just because I think otherwise it'd be the most common answer, "ascending AC" doesn't count.
RPGPundit
I always add protection/dc in, as I find it an easy way to make armor matter more and to have lower HP. Not that it is really new, since T&T used it back in the 70s.
Prestige classes or a version thereof, which might look less like a 3.x PrC and more like the Secret Crafts of Glantri.
I'm intrigued by Stats-as-Saves.
Quote from: VectorSigma;580884I'm intrigued by Stats-as-Saves.
Called it: (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=499543&postcount=64)
Quote from: Rum Cove last year;499543Upon further reflection, I think that (based on the Legend & Lore columns in 2011 (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20111227) and a crazy hunch) they will keep AC, but might remove Reflex/Fortitude/Will.
Instead, the character's ability scores will become targets (eg. Charm Person vs. the opponent's Wisdom).
I give Fighters Cleave (Gives em an edge and helps make up for my removing Weapon Specialization from my AD&D games.)
My version of the Paladin draws a little from later editions, though no ones played it and I might just go back to the AD&D Paladin.
MU's can choose a spell at 5th and every five levels thereafter, which they can then memorize/recall without having to utilize their spellbook ( I think that's from some d20 feat.)
My List of Sample Combat Maneuvers contains stuff like Shield Bash, Disarm, etc., which I'm sure were all Feats at one time or another, though I don't use d20 mechanics for that sort of thing.
Passive Perception and Individual Init, though I've been doing that since the 80's.
Otherwise, there's various things that come under the heading of "try anything you want," Power Attack, for instance, that might emulate later edition rules, simply because it occurs to players to attempt something of the sort.
Quote from: Caesar Slaad;580696Skills.
(Yeah they had proficiencies and thief skills before 88, but they were an uneven mess).
This is my answer, too, for D&D.
Quote from: danbuter;580677From 2e:
Schools of Magic for mages and clerics (especially as revised in PO: Spells & Magic).
Thieves getting to choose their thief skill allocations.
The Class Design rules in the DMG.
Cantrips/Orisons.
From 3e:
Ascending AC.
The Fortitude/Reflex/Will saves.
From 4e:
Mages having magic missile "lite" as a free spell, so they don't have to run around with crossbows.
Myth & Magic the 2e Neo-Clone pretty much does all that (not 100% confirmed as the printer pdf is not quite out yet).
New school ideas to add, I like some of the ideas in Trailblazer (adapted from 4e) of getting hp back after a fight depending on the following rest. Certain types of spells can be rememorized as well. Putative rituals are kinda nifty. PJ and Treebore championed the idea several years ago.
For me, I guess I'd go with a more streamlined saving throw system, I like ritual magic (like it was done in Majestic Wilderlands), and I do like some kind of skill system, though not something as complex as you see in D20.
RPGPundit
Quote from: thedungeondelver;580803J nor the completely incongruous mess of 1e's NWPs.
Corrected
(you know it is true :P)
Action dice just like Fantasy Craft. For both the GM and players. Also making the game scene based like White Wolf and Fantasy Craft. Backgrounds and Themes, reputation and downtime rules from FC. At-will cantrips and signature spells used without spellbooks....overcasting ala Mage the Awakening and/or D20 Wheel of Time. I could go on but you get the gist.
@Rum Cove, I am thinking it may between Baltimore and Denver for a Superbowl hookup with San Francisco or maybe Dallas. Not sure about the NFC though because it's brutally deep this year so it's a pick'em situation in my opinion. :p
Quote from: Marleycat;581845@Rum Cove, I am thinking it may between Baltimore and Denver for a Superbowl hookup with San Francisco or maybe Dallas. Not sure about the NFC though because it's brutally deep this year so it's a pick'em situation in my opinion. :p
A HarBowl would be insane!
Quote from: Rum Cove;581910A HarBowl would be insane!
A lot of people were hoping for that last year. Both teams look even better this year.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;581912A lot of people were hoping for that last year.
I was one of those people.
Marleycat, stop spamming the board with irrelevant crap please.
(Im not a D&D player, so Im taking in consideration other "Old School" games here, like Runequest, BRP, Rolemaster, Gurps, etc)
QuoteWhat's the one New-School thing you'd add to your Old School game?
Streamlining.
Thats the one thing newish games nailed it right in the head for me, using simpler (and innovative) resolution procedures to achieve the same intended effects but in much faster ways. Games like Over the Edge, Heroquest, Risus, Unknown Armies, Savage Worlds, Agon, 3:16, Barbarians of Lemuria, Freemarket, Apocalypse World, etc.
By the way, one great example of this is Unknown Armies: it has the same basic premise of lethality as, say, Gurps, but while the later ends up kind of convoluted and complicated for trying to depict lethality through its
procedures, Unknown Armies ends up faster and simpler by depicting lethality through its
effects, thus becoming much faster as a result.
Quote from: One Horse Town;581917Marleycat, stop spamming the board with irrelevant crap please.
Talking sports isn't spam and no more disruptive than a lot of tangents around here.
Quote from: Rum Cove;581925Talking sports isn't spam
I'm saying it is.
This isn't the ESPN forum.
Take it to PM.
Quote from: JRR;580597Honestly? I can't think of a single damn thing.
You know, I was thinking the same thing. But I looked through the thread, anyways, just to see if there might be something I'd agree with. But the few things I can think of that I might add (or have added) to D&D are pretty much pre-'88. I've got a backgrounds system that some people might consider "new school", but it's really related to the secondary skills from the 1e DMG. If I were going to add an outright skill system, I'd do something like talents in TFT. Is using a formula instead of a combat table "new school"? I don't feel like it is, but if Target 20 is new school, then that's something I added.
I'd add cantrips, but the ones I propose are more like streamlined UA 1e cantrips than the modern ones. And that's 1985.
Quote from: silva;581921Streamlining.
Thats the one thing newish games nailed it right in the head for me, using simpler (and innovative) resolution procedures to achieve the same intended effects but in much faster ways. Games like Over the Edge, Heroquest, Risus, Unknown Armies, Savage Worlds, Agon, 3:16, Barbarians of Lemuria, Freemarket, Apocalypse World, etc.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, you
really should have played our Castles & Crusades game.
Hey Butch, Ive always heard great things about Castles and Crusaders, ACKS, LotFP, etc. They are kind of "OD&D-lite", right ? If so, they could be a great way for introducing me to OD&D.
Quote from: silva;581949Hey Butch, Ive always heard great things about Castles and Crusaders, ACKS, LotFP, etc. They are kind of "OD&D-lite", right ? If so, they could be a great way for introducing me to OD&D.
Excellent question. Technically, "OD&D" usually refers to the 1974 wooden box game, and its Supplements. None of the games you've quoted is an OD&D simulacrum; the go-to OD&D emulator is Swords & Wizardry (White Box for core, Complete for core plus supplements). S&W Complete in particular does make a fair bit of assumptions beyond the admittedly vague text of 1974 D&D, and you could say it's a considerable streamlining or stylization nof the original engine; still, it's nothing next to C&C.
C&C is an AD&D 1e emulator built on a super-simplified OGL/3.x. engine. Which is to say, you have the trappings of AD&D 1e (classes, races, monsters, spells, etc.), but the mechanics are a 3.x minus Feats and Skills. Everything's a roll-high 1d20 + ability bonus + level versus a base DC of 12 or 18 (depending on which attributes you've desgnied "Primes") + a floating Challenge Level. You can't get much more "streamlined" than this.
LotFP is Holmes B/X and/or Moldvay/Mentzer BECMI D&D (the old "red box" and its sucessors) with some unique touches, such as a spell list that does away with some of the flashier stuff (e.g. no
fireball or
lightning bolt), and most daring of all, only Fighters get better at hitting people; all other classes fight as 1st-level characters,
forever. That's not "lite" or "streamlined", that's just fucked-up and hardcore and I'm quite sure that this is what Jimbo intended all along. There's also no bestiary, encouraging GMs to make up their own unique critters.
ACKS is BECMI (or BEC, to be precise) D&D, with a massive revision to the Companion-level rules (which deal with building, mantaining and running castles and the fiefs around them), and several entertaining additions to high-level play (ranging from Traveller-like mercantile ventures, to cross-breeding monsters). It's entirely built on the idea that adventuring is fine and dandy, but that there's got to be something more than killing bigger monsters and looting richer treasure for PCs to do at high levels. It's "streamlined" all right, but I wouldn't call it "lite" (at least not at the upper levels; at lower levels it seems to play exactly like BECMI/RC D&D). It also happens to be my favorite version of D&D right now.
One of these days I promiss I'll drag you to the game table and we'll run you some proper TSR-era D&D ("old school" is a loaded word nowadays). But I'm derailing the thread.
Nothing at all against sports, but let's keep the thread on topic.
RPGPundit
I'd maybe add point buy to Golden Heroes, because I have players whose dice are genuinely cursed and the game uses random character generation.
For DC Heroes, ditching the bidding with hero points process and instead buying extra dice to roll, then discarding all but two and using them to determine the result. Speeds things up and reduces the chance of a hero point laden character smacking the hell out of a far more powerful character.