3:07 "Is there a way to OSR with kids? I find that in OSR kids are very attached to their characters and like to be heroic, so I abandoned the concept entirely since I couldn't find a fit." 9:08 "Where do I see the OSR heading in the future?" Talk on changes in D&D editions. 29:08 "What do you look for or enjoy in a GM when you are a player in an RPG? Does what you look for as a player differ from your GM style at all?" 41:11 "When does an adventure become retro?" 48:36 "...What are your favourite traps?..." 53:36 "...What do you look for in particular when an adventure really stands out to you?..."
My first AD&D (1st Edition) Half-Elf Cleric died in 15 minutes, (Real Time) but I played in my first successful set of adventures when I was 11, as a Gnome Illusionist/Thief. We ran through the Caves of Chaos, and I lured the Ogre outside the cave into the gorge and we dropped a large boulder on him. It was only the three PCs, so there was a lot of tension in whether or not we could deal enough damage to it while it struggled to get out from under the boulder.
About movement in "squares"... I'm from New Zealand and I have played DnD since 1985, as well as hundreds of other games (MERP, Rolemaster, GURPS, Runequest, Warhammer, Star Wars, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, etc... you name it) and sorry to say that I still have no clue how far measurements in feet are. I'm sure there are quire a few europeans or others who feel the same - we just have no memory or reference in our heads for how far 25 feet, or 75 feet, or 110 feet actually is, because nothing in our real life is ever measured in feet. If a game uses squares or meters, it's a huge thank you from me to the designers there. Still hated 4th edition though, hehe :-p
OK - this is how my grandad taught me: "A metre measures three foot three. It's longer than a yard you see." "Two and a quarter pounds of jam, weights about a kilogramme" "A litre of water is a pint and three quarter" I was told these when I was about five and have remembered them like that since.
And a foot is about 30 centimeters, and a mile is a little less than 2 kilometers. I had to convert the other direction when playing 1E Gamma World from TSR :)
TLDR: For the vast majority of early D&D products: 1 map square = 10' = 3 m The simplest way to look at it is that 10 feet is 3 meters -- its not exact, but is very close, plenty close enough for a game (3.048 m would be exact to the scale of mm). The rare exceptions tend to be multiples of that for large areas, or very, very rarely halved to 5 feet. Miles are trickier, 1 mile is about 1.6 km, but saying its 1 1/2 is probably good enough, thus the fairly standard 24 mile and 6 mile hexes would be 36 km and 9 km respectively.
I live in the UK and we use both. I think about most distances, height and weight in imperial measurements as they make most sense as they come from a grounding in real life. I use metric for precise measurements and if the maths would be simpler.
Just to doubledown with Questing Beast in re: traps. I had to make something up on an off night when some folks wanted to play, so I ran an old series from Dungeon called "Challenge of Champions" which was essentially a series of elaborate traps with a paper thin plot about why the players were involved, but essentially, take away all the players gear, take away all of their abilities, and don't let them use any powers, the characters are as smart as the players. They loved this and y'know, they didn't do bad at all. I had been having problems assimilating to 5e because I haven't played since 2e (truly!) and this all AD&D one shot made me realise the kids are alright. Part of the "nostalgia" for OSR games by kids who aren't old enough to have been there in the first place...I'm thinking its just an elitism creeping in..like Punks not Dead! arrrrrrgh! Or something.
18:05 I thought Wizards already owned D&D Beyond, too. When I first heard that they were buying D&D Beyond, I just imagined Hasbro as a gargantuan blue worm swallowing it's own ass. Ah well, I guess that's the only fun Hasbro has left at this point ...
I started plying D&D age 6, one on one with my dad, I controlled 2 characters and he controlled 2. Of course we played classics like Hommlett and Keep on the borderlands. The way we played was a basic version of basic D&D lol….needless to say I loved it and These early experiences have always stuck with me. Character death never deterred me. As for My wife, she had an easier time learning AD&D versus 5th Ed, she prefers the old school as well (fortunately for me!).
@@Wiseblood2012 Playing or surviving? As far as playing, my parents played D&D and introduced me to the game. For surviving, I stayed at range, used magic missile, and threw a lot of knives. I think the other players were doing their best to keep me alive (usually a fighter and a ranger), so it's not like I was some kind of tactical genius as a child.
Captcarajus and Bud you two are are THE BEST. Bud ... in particular your review of impossible landscapes was THE BEST. I've listened to it so many times ... ita like I'm obsessed with the king in yellow wait.... oh boy.....
On the 4-52 HP thing that Ben said that's on one of the 1st Edition D&D books... I've thought like that too, that I'd have to reverse-engineer which dice to roll, but y'know what? You can just pick a number in that interval, keeping in mind how powerful your PCs are. And I'd add that, if they don't know how many HPs the creature has and you want to stretch that combat a little bit, you add some extra HP, if you want the opposite you remove some HP so that the battle ends sooner. The thing is flexible, is what I'm trying to say. You can adjust it to suit the encounter and the moment of the adventure.
The talk around 15:30 or so about how people never forget their first love to me is interesting. My first RPG was Vampire: the Masquerade revised edition. I hold no particular nostalgia for those rules. If I wanted to run a vampire intrigue game today I would never even for one second entertain the idea of running it using those old books. In retrospect, V:tM rev was deeply mechanically unsound and fairly cumbersome. My first edition of D&D was 3.0. It's maybe my least favorite version of D&D. I made some really cool games using old WoD books and 3rd edition, but I would be lying if I said I didn't run those games in spite of the rules they were housed in and not inspired by them especially. Ditto for anything 3rd edition. What cumbersome spreadsheet of a game 3rd edition D&D was! I do think he's right, there does seem to be a general trend toward people getting hung up on the rules that adorned the time when they first learned and loved the hobby. It's just a very alien concept to me. Perhaps I am the one that is strange...maybe for one reason or another I am simply not romantic when it comes to these things. I don't think I like OSR games because they remind me of a more romantic age of RPGs. I like them because they work and they do it cleanly and efficiently.
Yeah my first rpg was some version of star wars when I was like 9 and then played more seriously as an adult with 5e and I don't particularly care for either of them.
I don't think you're the weird one. I started with 1E and then was very excited to try new editions each time. I was always trying to find something to replicate the fun but work faster and more realistically. 3rd and 4th editions didn't do it for me, but I got books for quite a few other games and played a lot of 5E (and praised it a lot) before realizing there was something missing. It's really only now, with a better understanding of game design, GMing, warfare, and martial arts that I can see just how good Gygax, Arneson, and Moldvay's games really were. There is something very special about these old games and OSR design philosophy as a whole.
Great conversation. The point about there being "no rules for jumping" in the old school game reminded me of how the original modules often had mini-games that were specific for a single room. Like White Plume Mountain and the platforms over the geysers. There was a Strength based percentile chance, and it was affected by how far you were from the geyser that erupted. It was an ability-based rule for hanging on to something, complete with modifiers, and was unique to that room. I learned how to design dungeons from those modules and enjoyed coming up with these mini-games to handle something.
39:30 Thank you! Someone said it, this style is so much easier to run. Designing a good location to adventure is difficult, and even reading a good module takes some effort, but once you're at the table it's so much easier and more fun to run because you aren't doing the work, the players are!
Thanks Ben, Dave, and Bud! I define retro/classic as anything before Jeff Easley, Jim Halloway, and Larry Elmore’s trade dress, and when I play a magic user I don’t pick spells, I role a d12.
I agree with Bud's take on 4th. If you have not seen the MCDM series called DUSK, I highly recommend. 5th was like a gateway for me to get back into Basic and AD&D and what made the game great. The only innovation was virtual tabletops ... I hope that folks just discovering D&D have the capacity to reach back to the origins of D&D. Because the initial DNA set the stage for future editions. Your spell has a range and an area of effect? This information dictates a grid and a tactical system of dealing with combat or anything that interfaces with PC Stats. You can do this in "Theater of The Mind". But that approach lacks verisimilitude. It HAS to be "dudes on a map" .. otherwise you are telling stories next to a campfire.
I think of "Easy for the DM" to run comes down to formatting, layout, and is the information that a DM needs easy to access? (Like extra charts and tables on the first/last page or front and back cover)
This video made me subscribe. I veer sandbox and “old school” (I guess) but GURPS or skill based systems are more my jam than level/class. The variety of perspectives really brought me some great things to consider.
Also, character death (whether in OSR or modern games) is far easier to handle when the GM actually allows you to keep playing, rather than making you spend an hour justifying how some new person encounters the party, only to be denied and sit and watch the rest of the session. Most people just want to keep playing. Personally, I don't even care if it's just from the GM's stack of pre-made characters (though I'd like to at least name it). I just want to keep playing the game and exploring :)
I’ve been researching for a while how to create a “sandbox” campaign. I still have trouble because I want good random tables for all situations. I have some, but when the downtime activities were mentioned while the MU was making scrolls and the Barbarian went to the bar, I was immediately paralyzed as to what I would do. There is so much potential, and I would want to have some rumors or leads ready for other purchased or to still be created adventures; but I first thought I would need to create an encounter on the fly and thought about which book had the appropriate random table and couldn’t think of one. It can be very intimidating to go that route over published adventure/ campaign. Sometimes players want to pursue the adventure arc rather than get distracted and off the rails.
You have to make the random tables yourself. The point of a sandbox is that you make an entire world that you throw the players into allowing them to make their own goals. The way I would reccommend doing this is making a d10 table of random encounters for each region/biome depending on how you organize the hex map, then for each hex add 2 encounters specific to it and roll a d12 for the overland travel encounters however often you wish. The encounters should be fleshed out. Don't just put 3d100 orcs, write what their motivations are why they're there. For example "a battered warband of 3d100 orcs with 2d10 dire boars leading carts full of dead orc warriors. They're exhausted after a lost battle and are traveling towards a burial site."
Great video and discussion! There are pros and cons(mostly cons due to sheer battle duration as pointed out) to 4e's attempt to be a tactical simulation but I did like the movement abilities, by leadership or otherwise. I think it makes combat feel more authentic. Instead of everyone more or less staying fixed unless they move on their own turn, which doesn't feel as real, participants are constantly shuffling and shifting which if you watch how HEMA and re enactments or a boxing match play out you don't see people standing still very much!
@Bud's RPG review Doesn't analysis paralysis just boil down to individual personality? Some people are just indecisive or extremely concerned with making the most optimal choices. For those kind of personalities, having many choices can be an issue. Others can just make a choice and press on with it, dealing with the fall out as it occurs.
@@briarsandbantams Yes, you're right - however - I've seen the constant movement shift in 4E make people who are normally unaffected by it become incredibly indecisive as your decisions would directly affect the entire table due to the overly tactical nature of the game. As with all things like this, your game and experience may vary.
Hi Ben, great interview, as always. Just in case you were wondering who should you invite as your next guest, what about Jonathan Tweet? He did Talislanta 3e, Everway, D&D 3e, Omega World (a d20 homage to original Gamma World), 13th Age... There don't seem to be any really good interviews with him at RUclips.
Adam Koebel who co-wrote Dungeon World put an emphasis on interaction. The Story generates Itself in the act of PC integration and reaction. It is the duty of the GM to provide the PC's with enough information to make meaningful decisions. From there the game almost plays itself. The hard part is creating an initial scenario that each player can grasp and formulate being a part of. Sesh 0, anyone?
What's interesting to me is that, if you religiously picked up new rulebooks for third edition and incorporated all of them into your campaign, then the move to 4th edition was actually very small. But if you ran more of a core+1 game then the shift was abrupt and huge. To me 4th edition is just 3rd edition, but assuming that you would actually use every single "optional" rule from the get go.
For me retro is about imitation (even if that's just an attempt to reproduce "feel"), but the originals are just original , which can lead to that unrealistic sense of nostalgia where bad stuff is extolled beyond its actual quality. But, as Bud said, everyone has their own retro definition. Enjoyed the discussion. Great fun.
I played maybe two sessions of fourth edition. I really wanted to get into it, but then things happened where I wasn't able to until 5th edition was around and that we came the new default edition. I want to go back to 4th edition and give it a try. I will admit, looking back at what I can look at, I think the game might have done a lot better if it wasn't called dungeons the Dragons, but rather maybe something like fantasy heroes quest or something
It’s really inaccurate to say that AD&D was not used for heroic fantasy. We certainly ran narrative driven games with world ending consequences. Of course at first we ran simple dungeon crawls in the early 80’s. However, after we read the Dragonlance novels our games definitely moved towards the narrative quests and away from simple dungeon crawls. Definitely by 1988 we were using AD&D and second edition to play high fantasy campaigns. In fact most gamers back then considered dungeon crawling the purview of min/maxers. That’s what we called “power-gamers” back then. So, what you call “old school” style actually was more commonly played by “murder-hobo” players with characters optimized. The narrative gamers most often enjoyed playing flawed characters. So, high fantasy story telling didn’t automatically include optimized characters. Low powered characters were seen as part of the narrative and characters developed accordingly. That was part of the fun… taking a simple character and watching them become powerful over the course of saving the world. It was 3.5 that really solidified character optimization along with epic campaigns. Partly because you planned out all your feats and planned to reach a prestige class. The game system encouraged long range planning. Players wanted to make sure the DM planned a campaign that would reach certain level goals, so they could plan accordingly. Honestly, in my experience: 5e brings the game back closer to it’s AD&D roots. I think 5e is much more like 1e and 2e. Because 3.5 was so gamified and 4e was so tactics focused, 5e feels more old school to me than those editions. Therefore, I find it ironic when OSR folks act like 5e is sooooo different than OSR. I really don’t think there’s that big of a gulf between OSR and 5e. That’s a perception created by discussions like this. Mechanically 5e and AD&D aren’t that different. Especially when compared to 3.5 and 4e. It’s really the DM that sets the tone of the game. I don’t think the mechanics drive that gulf... the OSR narrative drives that gulf.
Interesting. My definition of retro is almost opposite. Something that is actually old I call classic (at least, anything good enough or prominent enough to be remembered), while I often use "retro" from something new that resembles classic material in style (more so the more clearly intentional it is).
I am incorporating Flee, Mortals! Goblins into my Fantasy Grounds 5E OSR game just to defy expectations. 5E goblins are BORING cardboard monsters. Tactics are important. I demonstrate "Tactical D&D" to players and they're amazed, just before the tactical monsters hand their asses to them.
WOTC definitely understands that OSR is popular. That's why they shut down sites that file-share TSR products and started monetizing more of those products on DriveThruRPG. They know there is a significant amount of money there, they just don't want to openly admit it to their design teams.
I might be wrong, but I really do not see many people playing 5th edition. Most casuals consider it to be too rules heavy. I can kind of see their point.
I think, for the most part, I love the answers given, but it is disingenuous to say OSR is not deadly when compared to 3.5 and Pathfinder, and 5e. 3.5 on, there is a literal design mechanic that tries to eliminate true death for the party. If OSR is played right, there is a risk of death. Even if the characters play smart. Even Ben in his description of what is OSR includes the trait "high lethality" as one of the normal traits of OSR. Having said that, I think it is also wrong to say kids do not understand risk and reward. Kids can and do learn to push things to the line and understand when they do, death may result for their character. OSR can be used with kids quite easy as long as they are warned ahead of time the risks and rewards they face.
@@MacDhomnuill I picked up the 3d6 system from The Fantasy Trip which has adjusted critical and failure effects. It also would allow for multiple Advantage/disadvantage (add or subtract a d6 each).
Different games for different play styles. It's unfortunate that the "D&D" brand name covers radically different play styles, from the puzzle solving of OD&D and 1e, to the heroic story telling of 5e.
4E is small unit wargaming. I'd rather play D&D. I can appreciate wargaming influences to help figure out combat, but I didn't show up to play 40K. (Or live out the other players favorite teen romance novels, for that matter.) I showed up to play D&D.
21:17 "That doesn't make any sense to me" Why? You can't... think of some narrative justification on the fly? The commander shouts and the goblins reposition. What is so difficult to understand? It's not on the goblins' turn or something? Neither are reactions. Or saving throws. Besides, turns are an abstraction for what is supposed to be, narratively, real-time combat. Also, if you don't want to use that ability, then don't. If all you want to do is run up and bash something like every other edition of D&D, you can still do that. You don't like "squares"? Okay, pretend it says 5 ft. It's the same thing. I never understood this criticism of 4e. It's just maddening.
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Captcorajus' RPG Retro Reviews: bit.ly/Captcorajus
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@@xaxzander4633 not for spells
@@xaxzander4633 creatures not PCs and def not at level 1
This was a lot of fun, thank you for having me on Ben!
My Cap is all over the interwebs now =)
I hope you appear on this show more!
I was quite nervous appearing fully on screen, but it was an interesting chat with guys who know their stuff. Cheers QB!
You were a joy to watch!
Good thing you did it anyway!! youre great
Glad to have met you Bud. Was checking out your channel today, great content! Nice hands! :)
@@captcorajus They say thank you!
You know your stuff too bud
Love that you give airtime to other content creators. I've been a long time fan of Captcorajus, I'll have to check out Bud's channel now
3:07 "Is there a way to OSR with kids? I find that in OSR kids are very attached to their characters and like to be heroic, so I abandoned the concept entirely since I couldn't find a fit."
9:08 "Where do I see the OSR heading in the future?"
Talk on changes in D&D editions.
29:08 "What do you look for or enjoy in a GM when you are a player in an RPG? Does what you look for as a player differ from your GM style at all?"
41:11 "When does an adventure become retro?"
48:36 "...What are your favourite traps?..."
53:36 "...What do you look for in particular when an adventure really stands out to you?..."
My first AD&D (1st Edition) Half-Elf Cleric died in 15 minutes, (Real Time) but I played in my first successful set of adventures when I was 11, as a Gnome Illusionist/Thief. We ran through the Caves of Chaos, and I lured the Ogre outside the cave into the gorge and we dropped a large boulder on him. It was only the three PCs, so there was a lot of tension in whether or not we could deal enough damage to it while it struggled to get out from under the boulder.
We typically use the "LOAD System" used in Alien RPG when playing 5e.
About movement in "squares"... I'm from New Zealand and I have played DnD since 1985, as well as hundreds of other games (MERP, Rolemaster, GURPS, Runequest, Warhammer, Star Wars, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, etc... you name it) and sorry to say that I still have no clue how far measurements in feet are. I'm sure there are quire a few europeans or others who feel the same - we just have no memory or reference in our heads for how far 25 feet, or 75 feet, or 110 feet actually is, because nothing in our real life is ever measured in feet. If a game uses squares or meters, it's a huge thank you from me to the designers there. Still hated 4th edition though, hehe :-p
OK - this is how my grandad taught me:
"A metre measures three foot three. It's longer than a yard you see."
"Two and a quarter pounds of jam, weights about a kilogramme"
"A litre of water is a pint and three quarter"
I was told these when I was about five and have remembered them like that since.
And a foot is about 30 centimeters, and a mile is a little less than 2 kilometers.
I had to convert the other direction when playing 1E Gamma World from TSR :)
TLDR: For the vast majority of early D&D products: 1 map square = 10' = 3 m
The simplest way to look at it is that 10 feet is 3 meters -- its not exact, but is very close, plenty close enough for a game (3.048 m would be exact to the scale of mm). The rare exceptions tend to be multiples of that for large areas, or very, very rarely halved to 5 feet. Miles are trickier, 1 mile is about 1.6 km, but saying its 1 1/2 is probably good enough, thus the fairly standard 24 mile and 6 mile hexes would be 36 km and 9 km respectively.
I live in the UK and we use both. I think about most distances, height and weight in imperial measurements as they make most sense as they come from a grounding in real life. I use metric for precise measurements and if the maths would be simpler.
Three of my favorite channels in one video, nice.
Just to doubledown with Questing Beast in re: traps. I had to make something up on an off night when some folks wanted to play, so I ran an old series from Dungeon called "Challenge of Champions" which was essentially a series of elaborate traps with a paper thin plot about why the players were involved, but essentially, take away all the players gear, take away all of their abilities, and don't let them use any powers, the characters are as smart as the players. They loved this and y'know, they didn't do bad at all. I had been having problems assimilating to 5e because I haven't played since 2e (truly!) and this all AD&D one shot made me realise the kids are alright. Part of the "nostalgia" for OSR games by kids who aren't old enough to have been there in the first place...I'm thinking its just an elitism creeping in..like Punks not Dead! arrrrrrgh! Or something.
18:05 I thought Wizards already owned D&D Beyond, too. When I first heard that they were buying D&D Beyond, I just imagined Hasbro as a gargantuan blue worm swallowing it's own ass. Ah well, I guess that's the only fun Hasbro has left at this point ...
They had one more trick 😔
I started plying D&D age 6, one on one with my dad, I controlled 2 characters and he controlled 2. Of course we played classics like Hommlett and Keep on the borderlands. The way we played was a basic version of basic D&D lol….needless to say I loved it and These early experiences have always stuck with me. Character death never deterred me. As for My wife, she had an easier time learning AD&D versus 5th Ed, she prefers the old school as well (fortunately for me!).
I started playing 1st edition D&D at age 5. I rarely died and I played a wizard most of the time :)
Really? That sounds more like something Carlos Wu would have done.
@@Wiseblood2012 Playing or surviving? As far as playing, my parents played D&D and introduced me to the game. For surviving, I stayed at range, used magic missile, and threw a lot of knives. I think the other players were doing their best to keep me alive (usually a fighter and a ranger), so it's not like I was some kind of tactical genius as a child.
@@Wiseblood2012 As far as Wu is concerned, he was more of a MTG kinda guy ;)
Captcarajus and Bud you two are are THE BEST. Bud ... in particular your review of impossible landscapes was THE BEST. I've listened to it so many times ... ita like I'm obsessed with the king in yellow
wait.... oh boy.....
Tell me, have you seen it?
@@BudsRPGreview 😆
On the 4-52 HP thing that Ben said that's on one of the 1st Edition D&D books... I've thought like that too, that I'd have to reverse-engineer which dice to roll, but y'know what? You can just pick a number in that interval, keeping in mind how powerful your PCs are.
And I'd add that, if they don't know how many HPs the creature has and you want to stretch that combat a little bit, you add some extra HP, if you want the opposite you remove some HP so that the battle ends sooner. The thing is flexible, is what I'm trying to say. You can adjust it to suit the encounter and the moment of the adventure.
So happy to see another episode! I was rewatching all the previous ones, such a great series.
The talk around 15:30 or so about how people never forget their first love to me is interesting. My first RPG was Vampire: the Masquerade revised edition. I hold no particular nostalgia for those rules. If I wanted to run a vampire intrigue game today I would never even for one second entertain the idea of running it using those old books. In retrospect, V:tM rev was deeply mechanically unsound and fairly cumbersome. My first edition of D&D was 3.0. It's maybe my least favorite version of D&D. I made some really cool games using old WoD books and 3rd edition, but I would be lying if I said I didn't run those games in spite of the rules they were housed in and not inspired by them especially. Ditto for anything 3rd edition. What cumbersome spreadsheet of a game 3rd edition D&D was!
I do think he's right, there does seem to be a general trend toward people getting hung up on the rules that adorned the time when they first learned and loved the hobby. It's just a very alien concept to me. Perhaps I am the one that is strange...maybe for one reason or another I am simply not romantic when it comes to these things. I don't think I like OSR games because they remind me of a more romantic age of RPGs. I like them because they work and they do it cleanly and efficiently.
Yeah my first rpg was some version of star wars when I was like 9 and then played more seriously as an adult with 5e and I don't particularly care for either of them.
I don't think you're the weird one. I started with 1E and then was very excited to try new editions each time. I was always trying to find something to replicate the fun but work faster and more realistically. 3rd and 4th editions didn't do it for me, but I got books for quite a few other games and played a lot of 5E (and praised it a lot) before realizing there was something missing. It's really only now, with a better understanding of game design, GMing, warfare, and martial arts that I can see just how good Gygax, Arneson, and Moldvay's games really were. There is something very special about these old games and OSR design philosophy as a whole.
Great conversation. The point about there being "no rules for jumping" in the old school game reminded me of how the original modules often had mini-games that were specific for a single room. Like White Plume Mountain and the platforms over the geysers. There was a Strength based percentile chance, and it was affected by how far you were from the geyser that erupted. It was an ability-based rule for hanging on to something, complete with modifiers, and was unique to that room. I learned how to design dungeons from those modules and enjoyed coming up with these mini-games to handle something.
MY... GOD... Someone attached a body to Bud the Hands! ;p
I wish they had chosen a better one.
@@BudsRPGreview lol subscribed!
Excellent video. Really great questions, and great answers. I like hearing the different perspectives.
3 of my favorite content creators talking about interesting stuff. 👍 great videos y’all.
39:30 Thank you! Someone said it, this style is so much easier to run. Designing a good location to adventure is difficult, and even reading a good module takes some effort, but once you're at the table it's so much easier and more fun to run because you aren't doing the work, the players are!
Love these "Sage advice from veteran GMs" series of videos -- keep 'em coming!
This was a great conversation! Thank you all!
Thanks Ben, Dave, and Bud! I define retro/classic as anything before Jeff Easley, Jim Halloway, and Larry Elmore’s trade dress, and when I play a magic user I don’t pick spells, I role a d12.
I agree with Bud's take on 4th. If you have not seen the MCDM series called DUSK, I highly recommend. 5th was like a gateway for me to get back into Basic and AD&D and what made the game great. The only innovation was virtual tabletops ... I hope that folks just discovering D&D have the capacity to reach back to the origins of D&D. Because the initial DNA set the stage for future editions. Your spell has a range and an area of effect? This information dictates a grid and a tactical system of dealing with combat or anything that interfaces with PC Stats. You can do this in "Theater of The Mind". But that approach lacks verisimilitude. It HAS to be "dudes on a map" .. otherwise you are telling stories next to a campfire.
I have really enjoyed a lot of captcorajus reviews. Great to see him here on Questing Beast 🙂👍
love all the different content. I was waiting for a new episode of round table
Love this. Thank you to all.
I think of "Easy for the DM" to run comes down to formatting, layout, and is the information that a DM needs easy to access? (Like extra charts and tables on the first/last page or front and back cover)
I see the formation of a " Masters of Dungeon Masters" league. You fight your villains. Wizards.....of the coast
Interestingly, Wizards of the Coast were the name of a cabal of wizards in the founders of WotC's AD&D game.
@@BudsRPGreview Tensor and Bigby I assume
@@BudsRPGreview And Pete , the wizard foul
@@humanphillips3091 no. Wrong world. Tenser and Bigby were part of the Circle of Eight on Greyhawk.
@@BudsRPGreview I never played in that setting regrettably
I love this series. I've been a fan of Cap for a while, will have to check out Bud's stuff.
This video made me subscribe. I veer sandbox and “old school” (I guess) but GURPS or skill based systems are more my jam than level/class. The variety of perspectives really brought me some great things to consider.
WOW legendary panel! Thanks gents.
Also, character death (whether in OSR or modern games) is far easier to handle when the GM actually allows you to keep playing, rather than making you spend an hour justifying how some new person encounters the party, only to be denied and sit and watch the rest of the session. Most people just want to keep playing. Personally, I don't even care if it's just from the GM's stack of pre-made characters (though I'd like to at least name it). I just want to keep playing the game and exploring :)
I’ve been researching for a while how to create a “sandbox” campaign. I still have trouble because I want good random tables for all situations. I have some, but when the downtime activities were mentioned while the MU was making scrolls and the Barbarian went to the bar, I was immediately paralyzed as to what I would do.
There is so much potential, and I would want to have some rumors or leads ready for other purchased or to still be created adventures; but I first thought I would need to create an encounter on the fly and thought about which book had the appropriate random table and couldn’t think of one. It can be very intimidating to go that route over published adventure/ campaign. Sometimes players want to pursue the adventure arc rather than get distracted and off the rails.
You have to make the random tables yourself. The point of a sandbox is that you make an entire world that you throw the players into allowing them to make their own goals.
The way I would reccommend doing this is making a d10 table of random encounters for each region/biome depending on how you organize the hex map, then for each hex add 2 encounters specific to it and roll a d12 for the overland travel encounters however often you wish.
The encounters should be fleshed out. Don't just put 3d100 orcs, write what their motivations are why they're there. For example "a battered warband of 3d100 orcs with 2d10 dire boars leading carts full of dead orc warriors. They're exhausted after a lost battle and are traveling towards a burial site."
After a unique encounter is rolled create a new one to replace that result
Great video and discussion!
There are pros and cons(mostly cons due to sheer battle duration as pointed out) to 4e's attempt to be a tactical simulation but I did like the movement abilities, by leadership or otherwise. I think it makes combat feel more authentic. Instead of everyone more or less staying fixed unless they move on their own turn, which doesn't feel as real, participants are constantly shuffling and shifting which if you watch how HEMA and re enactments or a boxing match play out you don't see people standing still very much!
In theory it’s a great idea. I’m practice it was the very definition of analysis paralysis.
@@BudsRPGreview definitely better in thought than in practice!
@Bud's RPG review Doesn't analysis paralysis just boil down to individual personality? Some people are just indecisive or extremely concerned with making the most optimal choices. For those kind of personalities, having many choices can be an issue. Others can just make a choice and press on with it, dealing with the fall out as it occurs.
@@briarsandbantams Yes, you're right - however - I've seen the constant movement shift in 4E make people who are normally unaffected by it become incredibly indecisive as your decisions would directly affect the entire table due to the overly tactical nature of the game. As with all things like this, your game and experience may vary.
@Bud's RPG review I could see that being an issue, depending on real world group dynamics. Thanks for the reply.
That was great! Thank you!
Love both these channels.
Great episode!! Love hearing you three discuss this stuff. 😁
Hi Ben, great interview, as always. Just in case you were wondering who should you invite as your next guest, what about Jonathan Tweet? He did Talislanta 3e, Everway, D&D 3e, Omega World (a d20 homage to original Gamma World), 13th Age... There don't seem to be any really good interviews with him at RUclips.
Re AR and digital gaming, just saw a Kickstart ad for a game board called Teburu that looks intriguing
Colville is a big fan of 4th addition. I personally really liked 4th ed. I've been playing RPG's since 1984
Adam Koebel who co-wrote Dungeon World put an emphasis on interaction. The Story generates Itself in the act of PC integration and reaction. It is the duty of the GM to provide the PC's with enough information to make meaningful decisions. From there the game almost plays itself. The hard part is creating an initial scenario that each player can grasp and formulate being a part of. Sesh 0, anyone?
What's interesting to me is that, if you religiously picked up new rulebooks for third edition and incorporated all of them into your campaign, then the move to 4th edition was actually very small. But if you ran more of a core+1 game then the shift was abrupt and huge. To me 4th edition is just 3rd edition, but assuming that you would actually use every single "optional" rule from the get go.
Lovely bunch
Unusually the Pathfinder 1e GMG has the "under the hood" probability curves section
For me retro is about imitation (even if that's just an attempt to reproduce "feel"), but the originals are just original , which can lead to that unrealistic sense of nostalgia where bad stuff is extolled beyond its actual quality.
But, as Bud said, everyone has their own retro definition.
Enjoyed the discussion. Great fun.
Matt Colville talks a lot about appreciating many of the design ideas of 4th edition.
Would love to see Jim from Web DM and also the newer Bandit's Keep :-)
Great points guys, thank you!
I played maybe two sessions of fourth edition. I really wanted to get into it, but then things happened where I wasn't able to until 5th edition was around and that we came the new default edition. I want to go back to 4th edition and give it a try. I will admit, looking back at what I can look at, I think the game might have done a lot better if it wasn't called dungeons the Dragons, but rather maybe something like fantasy heroes quest or something
Holy shit another chitchat video! I love these
It’s really inaccurate to say that AD&D was not used for heroic fantasy. We certainly ran narrative driven games with world ending consequences. Of course at first we ran simple dungeon crawls in the early 80’s. However, after we read the Dragonlance novels our games definitely moved towards the narrative quests and away from simple dungeon crawls. Definitely by 1988 we were using AD&D and second edition to play high fantasy campaigns.
In fact most gamers back then considered dungeon crawling the purview of min/maxers. That’s what we called “power-gamers” back then. So, what you call “old school” style actually was more commonly played by “murder-hobo” players with characters optimized. The narrative gamers most often enjoyed playing flawed characters. So, high fantasy story telling didn’t automatically include optimized characters. Low powered characters were seen as part of the narrative and characters developed accordingly. That was part of the fun… taking a simple character and watching them become powerful over the course of saving the world.
It was 3.5 that really solidified character optimization along with epic campaigns. Partly because you planned out all your feats and planned to reach a prestige class. The game system encouraged long range planning. Players wanted to make sure the DM planned a campaign that would reach certain level goals, so they could plan accordingly.
Honestly, in my experience: 5e brings the game back closer to it’s AD&D roots. I think 5e is much more like 1e and 2e. Because 3.5 was so gamified and 4e was so tactics focused, 5e feels more old school to me than those editions. Therefore, I find it ironic when OSR folks act like 5e is sooooo different than OSR. I really don’t think there’s that big of a gulf between OSR and 5e. That’s a perception created by discussions like this. Mechanically 5e and AD&D aren’t that different. Especially when compared to 3.5 and 4e. It’s really the DM that sets the tone of the game. I don’t think the mechanics drive that gulf... the OSR narrative drives that gulf.
Interesting. My definition of retro is almost opposite. Something that is actually old I call classic (at least, anything good enough or prominent enough to be remembered), while I often use "retro" from something new that resembles classic material in style (more so the more clearly intentional it is).
As I said - the definition of retro is a personal one.
I am incorporating Flee, Mortals! Goblins into my Fantasy Grounds 5E OSR game just to defy expectations. 5E goblins are BORING cardboard monsters. Tactics are important. I demonstrate "Tactical D&D" to players and they're amazed, just before the tactical monsters hand their asses to them.
Funny to hear these predictions about the future state of DND with OneDnD on the horizon 😮
Love this series
WOTC definitely understands that OSR is popular. That's why they shut down sites that file-share TSR products and started monetizing more of those products on DriveThruRPG. They know there is a significant amount of money there, they just don't want to openly admit it to their design teams.
That's an insta-like from me!
I might be wrong, but I really do not see many people playing 5th edition. Most casuals consider it to be too rules heavy. I can kind of see their point.
OSR is everyday Joe's trying to become heroes instead of being heroes from the start.
The video I never knew I needed
Video games from the 90s and 00s are retro, so tabletop things from those years are also retro.
Okay I love ALL OF THIS
I think, for the most part, I love the answers given, but it is disingenuous to say OSR is not deadly when compared to 3.5 and Pathfinder, and 5e. 3.5 on, there is a literal design mechanic that tries to eliminate true death for the party. If OSR is played right, there is a risk of death. Even if the characters play smart. Even Ben in his description of what is OSR includes the trait "high lethality" as one of the normal traits of OSR.
Having said that, I think it is also wrong to say kids do not understand risk and reward. Kids can and do learn to push things to the line and understand when they do, death may result for their character. OSR can be used with kids quite easy as long as they are warned ahead of time the risks and rewards they face.
I'm looking at using 3d6 vice a d20 in my 5e game to really bound the bounded accuracy. 😁
I am playing around with using 2d10, it gives you a nice distribution.
@@MacDhomnuill I picked up the 3d6 system from The Fantasy Trip which has adjusted critical and failure effects. It also would allow for multiple Advantage/disadvantage (add or subtract a d6 each).
Different games for different play styles. It's unfortunate that the "D&D" brand name covers radically different play styles, from the puzzle solving of OD&D and 1e, to the heroic story telling of 5e.
4E is small unit wargaming. I'd rather play D&D. I can appreciate wargaming influences to help figure out combat, but I didn't show up to play 40K. (Or live out the other players favorite teen romance novels, for that matter.) I showed up to play D&D.
Captcorajus is the best RPG channel on youtube.
Nice
OSR is better for kids because it teaches them that danger.
21:17 "That doesn't make any sense to me" Why? You can't... think of some narrative justification on the fly? The commander shouts and the goblins reposition. What is so difficult to understand? It's not on the goblins' turn or something? Neither are reactions. Or saving throws. Besides, turns are an abstraction for what is supposed to be, narratively, real-time combat. Also, if you don't want to use that ability, then don't. If all you want to do is run up and bash something like every other edition of D&D, you can still do that. You don't like "squares"? Okay, pretend it says 5 ft. It's the same thing. I never understood this criticism of 4e. It's just maddening.
Dude couldn't conceptualize being pushed
100%
Lol nope. 8 Sessions with 13 character deaths. Old-School Essentials "The Hole in the Oak".