2009-03-31

OD&D Recap Redux

Having spent some time with OD&D and thinking about how I'd like to iron out some of the wrinkles (see below), I think I can express my overall philosophy pretty succinctly:

OD&D had a wonderfully strong kernel in the original white box set, but there were some clear oversights and dependencies that fairly cried out for correction and clarification in a work such as Supplement I. Unfortunately, when Gygax actually wrote Supplement I: Greyhawk he suffered in many ways from an overreaction (overly complicated ability modifiers, weapon details, monster damage, thief mechanics, etc.) Somewhere between the original "white box" and Supplement I there's a nearly perfect hypothetical game for my tastes.

Now, some might argue that this is precisely what the Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer Basic D&D project provided, but the fact that it stripped out the key options for multiclassing combinations (human-only thieves, etc.) and high-level endgame (mass tactics, naval combat, castle-running), while keeping many of the awkward mechanics (table-based combat, poor figure scale, percent-based thief skills, etc.) are things that I cannot personally overlook.

1 comment:

  1. I am intrigued. I'm curious to see where you take this, because it sounds rather close to my own feelings.

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