I wasn’t completely sure what my schedule this past weekend would be like: I knew I was quite busy. When I discovered OSRCon was a thing happening in Toronto I bought tickets anyway. Even if I couldn’t go it felt like a worthwhile event to support. I was hoping I’d be able to participate a little bit, at the very least. As it turns out I managed to do much more than I thought I would over the two days the event ran.

I arrived a bit late on the first day hoping to watch Ken St. Andre running a game of Tunnels and Trolls. I wasn’t signed up for any games, and I knew Ken’s game was full, so I didn’t feel like waking up early on my day off. I arrived a half hour after his game was set to start, but managed to avoid missing any of the action. As I settled into a chair away from the gaming table I realized Ken was still discussing the finer points of Tunnels and Trolls. He spoke at length about his game. He’s clearly very passionate about T&T, and happy to proselytize about it when given the chance. Brendan from Untimately had a similar idea as myself, showing up shortly after me planning to watch the game. Ken saw both of us just sitting there and offered to let us join in. Brendan took him up on his offer and picked a troll to play. When he had to duck out for lunch–which was more or less when the game got going–I took over the character. The adventure was interesting, even though we didn’t get too far into the “Dungeon of the Bear”. Our party had a series of misadventures trying to venture down into the dungeon itself. Failing is often as much fun as succeeding with role playing games. Ken is definitely an old-school DM, out to kill his players. (Or as he put it, out to create situations where the players kill themselves.) He is a certainly character, and I’m glad I got to meet him. It was an experience.¹

In the afternoon I played a game of Labyrinth Lord run by a Carter Soles of The Lands of Ara, who had made the trip to Toronto from Rochester. I had to duck out early (the reason I hadn’t signed up for anything in the afternoon), but I did get to do a fair amount of adventuring before my departure. Our party was off to investigate a presumably haunted keep, and investigate we did. The thief I rolled up had 2 hit points, so he was a little bit of a coward. Sometimes 3d6 in order works in your favour and sometimes it doesn’t. This character was all kinds of meek. You have to love basic D&D characters: they are the true everyman. I suppose that is part of the charm of playing basic D&D. Our first encounter was against some undead rats. When rats are a scary threat you know you’re playing old-school D&D.

My second day at OSRCon began with the only game I had actually signed up to play. James Maliszewski of Grognardia fame was running an Original D&D game, taking players through his megadungeon Dwimmermount. We actually managed to get through a fair amount of dungeon in a small amount of time. There was a lot of exploring and the occasional fight. I plan on doing a play report shortly. Suffice it to say I had a lot of fun.²

There was a panel discussion in the afternoon, featuring Ed Greenwood of Forgotten Realms fame, Ken St-Andre, Lawrence Whitaker from Runequest, and James from Grognardia. It was interesting hearing how these guys all ended up where they are today and their thoughts on writing and gaming. Ed Greenwood is particularly engaging. He explained that his professional writing career began by writing letters to Penthouse for $25 a pop. Apparently Dragon magazine paid $20 a pop for monsters and was more prompt in paying him. The rest is history. The talk probably would have worked better with a moderator leading the discussion and keeping people on point. The talk went a half hour or so longer than it was supposed to, and it felt like no one really knew when it was supposed to stop. Ed Greenwood and Ken St-Andre sitting next to each other discussing the game was definitely quite the scene, so I suppose we shouldn’t complain too much.

The day concluded with another round of games. Like the day before I had to leave early, so I elected to watch Ed Greenwood run a Forgotten Realms game. That guy is amazing. He puts the role in role-playing. I don’t think I’ve seen a DM quite so animated. He would literally act out the part of every NPC the players encountered–even the monsters that can’t actually talk. It was great to watch. I’m not sure how well i’d handle having to actually play in a game like that. He clearly approaches the game as shared story telling. Often I find I just want to kick in doors and kill goblins.

These last two days were the first time I had played basic D&D in a very long time, at least 15 odd years. I was surprised at just how much of the rules I had forgotten. Say what you will about 3rd and 4th edition, but they did a great job at rationalizing the game system. One success of those games is that you can more or less guess the mechanic needed to resolve any action. With basic D&D some situations call for a d6 roll, others 2d6, others a d20; sometimes you need to roll high, other times low. The game is simpler, but at the same time maybe not as simple as it could be. Of course, old-school D&D is simple in ways that that 3rd and 4th Edition don’t come close to competing in. I rolled up characters a few minutes before both the games I played in. If my characters died and I had to start again, I feel like I could have rolled up a character in a few minutes tops. These early games feel light and easy to get in to. 4th Edition feels needlessly complex with all its classes and options.

OSRCon was a lot of fun. I got to meet a bunch of fellow table top gaming enthusiasts and play a bunch of games. I don’t get to play that much D&D, so it was a nice change of pace.

Update: You can read about final version of this class in my follow-up post: Rune Knights for Baroviania.

My favourite character from the game Final Fantasy 6 was Celes. The character was a warrior crossed with a magic user. Her special ability was called Runic: when used as an action it would negate the effect of the next spell cast in combat; Celes would gain hit points equal to the magic points the spell cost to cast. I could write pages and pages about how FF6 is the greatest game ever, and even more about the fact Celes is the best character in that game, but I won’t. You’ll just have to trust me.

I wanted to make a Rune Knight class for Reynaldo’s D&D campaign world Baroviania so I could play some variation of Celes in his game. I was originally thinking a Rune Knight would be some sort of cleric, but Reynaldo suggested I look at the elf from D&D. I always forget about the demi-humans in D&D. Elves are actually a pretty good fit for the class: a plate wearing magic user does sound like Celes.

Rune Knight

Rune knights are genetically enhanced warriors from the Dark Capital. They are artificially infused with magic. This grants them the ability to cast spells like a wizard. Their ties to the dark forces of the world leads others to regard them with suspicion and mistrust. Rune knights are often introverts and loners.

The prime requisites for a rune knight are Strength and Intelligence. They receive a 5% bonus to earned experience points if they have a 13 or more in both skills. They receive a 10% bonus to earned experience points if they have at least a 13 Strength and an Intelligence score of at least 16.

Rune knights progress in levels at the same rate as Elves. (In other words, slowly.)

RESTRICTIONS: Rune knights gain 1D6 hit points per level. Rune knights gain all the advantages of both fighters and magic-users. They may use shields, can wear any type of armour, and may fight with any kind of weapon. They can also cast spells like a magic-user, and use the same spell list. A character must have an intelligence score of at least 9 to be a rune knight.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: Rune Knights can dispel any magic cast in their vicinity using the Runic ability.

Runic

As mentioned above, in FF6 Celes’ Runic ability dispels the next spell cast after it has been activated, regardless of its strength. An anti-magic ability like this in D&D seems quite powerful, though this is in some ways balanced out by the fact the ability must be used before a spell is cast (it’s preventative) and that most low-level D&D monsters don’t actually cast a lot of magic.

Option 1: One take on the Runic ability is to use the exact same mechanics from FF6, more or less. On a character’s turn they may declare they are using their Runic ability. Any magical spell or ability that is used before the characters next turn is immediately dispelled and has no effect whatsoever. The character gains 1 hit point for each level of the spell. The ability may only nullify one spell per round. The character may activate the ability again on their next turn.

Option 2: An alternative take would be to make the ability more useful in combat by making it reactive, at the cost of making it less reliable. After a magical spell or ability is used the player may declare they are using their Runic ability. They may only do so if they have not yet acted in the round. The Runic ability will replace the action the character had declared they would make. (So the character may only nullify one spell per round.) The character makes a Save vs. Magic: on success the spell or magical ability has no effect whatsoever, and the character gains 1 hit point for each level of the spell; on a fail the spell or ability proceeds as usual.

Another idea would be to make the player and the monster do some sort of opposed roll, rather than a save. You could also add critical success and failure results: on a critical fail (a roll of 1) the character takes 1 damage for each level of the spell, on a critical hit (a roll of 20) the spell is reflected back at the caster.

One thing I was thinking of doing was requiring a rune knights have charisma scores lower than 9, so they always have a negative reaction roll. That seems inline with how Celes is treated in FF6. I don’t think I’ve seen classes with maximum requirements on their ability scores, though. I also need to figure out how the character would fit in the actual game world.

If you have any thoughts about the class, let me know.

There are so many old D&D modules out there that sound a little bit interesting. I decided to write out exactly what older D&D modules and books I want. The goal here was to stop myself from spending money like an idiot on anything and everything I might stumble upon, but also have enough books to buy that I can spend money like an idiot. I don’t consider myself a collector of D&D books, but there is certainly some aspect of collecting at play in my behaviour. I also have a (bad) habit of buying more books than I could possibly hope to read in a reasonable amount of time. I wanted to pick a small set of old books and then forget any others exist.

In the end I decided to look for the following books:

• D&D Basic Edition
• D&D Expert Edition
• B1 - In Search of the Unknown
• B2 - Keep on the Borderlands
• B4 - The Lost City
• T1 - Village of Hommlet
• I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City
• D1,2 - Descent into the Depths of the Earth
• D3 - Vault of the Drow
• X1 - Isle of Dread
• X2 - Castle Amber

I’ve picked up a few of these books already, finding them used on eBay and Amazon. I have a question for you: have I missed any obviously amazing D&D or AD&D 1e books?¹

I picked up copies of the new Premium AD&D 1st Edition reprints earlier this week at Hairy Tarantula here in Toronto. I was on the fence about getting them as I don’t have much interest in actually playing AD&D 1e. I decided to buy them because I heard they were great books on role-playing games in general, and an important part of the history of the game. I’m also a big fan of the art from that era–back when no one working for TSR really knew how to draw. The reprints are really well done¹ and I’m quite happy with my purchase.²

The Dungeon Master Guide is the biggest of the three books that comprise the core AD&D 1e rules, and it is fascinating. I plan to post little snippets from the book as I make my way through it.

A word of warning. Many products might purport to be satisfactory for use with ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, but only those noted as OFFICIAL or Authorized AD&D items should be accepted. Do not settle for substitutes or second-rate material in your campaign; ask for approved AD&D products only!

I can only imagine what was happening in the table top gaming community back in the 70s, but clearly Gygax was unimpressed with the work being done by 3rd party publishers. I wonder what his thoughts about the OSR community would be. Gygax’s writing is full of exuberance and passion, but the start of the Dungeon Master Guide is full of talk of official rules and playing the game properly. It seems to run counter to ethos of old school gaming, as I understand it.

Of course, we then get to a table about contracting parasites while adventuring so why are you griping about Gary Gygax? Please!

I’ve added a new page to this site, listing the D&D books I currently own.¹ I like seeing what books (and PDFs) other people own, as it’s a good source for finding new books that might be worth reading. That page will also be a good place to link back to reviews i’ve written about the books I’ve bought. For someone who doesn’t actually play that much D&D, I own a lot of books on the subject. I suppose this page also exists to shame myself into not buying more D&D books.

I woke up the morning following the death of Osrik, my dwarf paladin, realizing the character had a power that would let him re-roll a missed hit when bloody. I’m not sure this would have turned the fight that cost the character his life, but it certainly would have helped. This got me thinking about 4th Edition and its pantheon of classes and powers a little bit more.

Playing–and killing–a few characters in 4th Edition will teach you that the combat mechanics of the game are important to grasp.¹ With the Encounters game I participate in I had been playing characters whose abilities the official character builder picked for me. I found I spent the down time between my turns in a battle scanning my list of abilities, trying to pick the one that seemed most appropriate for the situation at hand. This is a sure fire recipe for death and destruction. It can also be kind of boring.

Looking around the table I could see that I was not the only one suffering from this problem. D&D is ostensibly a game where you can do anything you can imagine. That’s what makes it so much greater than a video game: the possibilities are endless. The way 4th Edition has been designed really discourages that sort of play. This is probably the biggest weakness with 4th Edition. When playing my Warlock in my regular 4th Edition game, I spend most of my turns in combat doing some permutation of: moving at least three squares to gain concealment; cursing my nearest enemy; casting an eldritch blast. No matter what the situation may be this is almost always my best choice of action.

The flip side to this is that the enumeration of all these classes and powers is 4th Edition’s biggest strength. You can quantify the challenge of a battle in a way you really can’t with any accuracy in earlier editions of the game. If you’re interested in tactical combat 4th Edition is really unrivalled when it comes to simulating a battle. I don’t think you could do something like Forth Core Death Matches with any of the older versions of D&D. I’m not getting the most enjoyment out of 4th Edition because I haven’t invested the time in learning what options my character has, and how they best work with those of my fellow adventurers. The question for any 4th Edition gamer is whether this is something they even want to do.²

People often compare 4th Edition D&D to a video game. Certainly Wizards of the Coast used a lot of modern video game language when describing character classes and the mechanics of the game, but I suspect that’s because that language is going to be most familiar to new D&D players. I think 4th Edition has more in common with Magic: The Gathering.³ You and your fellow adventures are working together to produce a winning mix of classes and powers–this seems analogous to deck building in Magic. The focus on game balance is a natural extension of this. Magic is a successful collectable card game because there is no one deck to rule them all. Wizards of the Coast seem to have taken what they learned making Magic and tried to apply that to D&D, with mixed results.

I’m curious to see if Wizards of the Coast, or the wider D&D community, do interesting things with 4th Edition once the 5th Edition of D&D has been released. I feel like there is a lot to 4th Edition, if you can get past the fact it’s not exactly the same as every version of D&D that proceeded it.