PHASE ONE

Two weeks ago I had a miserable experience trying to make DnD characters with some students of mine who were interested in gaming. Part of the problem with what went on was definitely my fault; I was on a bit of a nostalgia jag (which I'll explain more of below), so we were actually making AD&D characters. Some of it was the game: Whenever I don't try to actually use those rules for awhile, I somehow forget how incoherent and uselessly complex they really are.

There were four students, three of them in 9th grade, one in 10th: One had played AD&D 2ndEd. with his dad quite a few times and owned a few 3E books; one had only really played Shadowrun, though he owned DnD 3.5; the other two had never played an rpg before, though they'd heard of them.

I sat down with them, very excited, because I had spent the last few days hacking together my own homebrewed DnD system based on Vincent Baker's mechanics for Otherkind. I had captured, in rough form, what I liked about FitM conflict resolution and fused it with the very hard to define feeling I get, nostalgic or not, when I think about DnD (as opposed to play it), especially how I seem to think it felt to play way back on my 12th birthday, y'know, 23 years ago, when I first unwrapped that red box and me and Dave Setzkorn stayed up all night trying to figure just what the hell we were supposed to do with it.

My major error here was, of course, that my poor students had no interest in either a) conflict resolution vs. task resolution (my favorite moment was when the kid with the most experience playing looked at me and said, while I was explaining about them potentially narrating the outcomes of their actions, "Why would I want to say what my character does? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?") or b) my assumption that they would somehow feel the same way about older DnD that I did. They looked at me blankly when I explained my "dungeonkind" system and passed over the bag of vintage DnD stuff I had brought along (for inspiration!) to gaze at the glossy pictures in the 3E DM's Guide that the one experienced kid had brought along. Not prepared for this reaction, I tried to play it cool and said, "You know, if you guys aren't interested in this system, that's fine. We could just make "tradtional" characters and play AD&D." They were nice about it, but it was no contest.

As the char gen session progressed, it was like a rerun nightmare of what I remember character-making was like when I was in highschool. The kid who'd played before pontificated to those who hadn't; the Shadowrun guy wanted to make a clone of his Shadowrun character; one of the kids who'd never played before was cheating on his stat rolls, and the other became fixated on the picture of the the Loremaster prestige class in a 3E DM's Guide that was laying around and was (understandably) confused why he couldn't make "that" character. And, of course, everybody ended up with high stats somehow, once it became clear that low stats were boring.

The worst thing was, I found myself totally locking up. I knew I did not want to run an AD&D campaign; just the thought of it made me grind my teeth. On the other hand, I didn't want to disappoint these kids, either, just because of my personal history with the game. So we ended it not quite having finished up the characters, agreeing to meet the next Thursday to finish off.

I got more upset as I went home. I was pissed that I had made such huge errors in judgement and I was all the more frustrated because, at the core, they'd really been enthusiastic. I decided I needed to find another system, something simple and flexible, that I wasn't emotionally invested in, but that still had a DnD "fantasy aura" to it. I dug through my ridiculous collection of games, looking at Fudge (I just can't get past its flavorlessness) and the Fighting Fantasy rpg (lots of Color, but a hopeless broken system) in particular, and then I picked up my little Corgi edition of Tunnels & Trolls; something clicked. The system was better than I remembered, pretty elegant, actually, and very flexible. The Color was there, too. I figured the touch of humor couldn't hurt, either, when playing with 14 and 15 year-olds. I showed it to a couple of them on Monday, and they actually got excited (I think because there were Leprechauns and Fairies) and agreed to switch over to it for Thursday. I made photocopies of the central rules, so they could read them and decide what kind of characters they wanted to make.

PHASE TWO

The next Thursday (last week) I expected pretty much the same amount of kids. However, word had gotten around, and thirteen total showed up (including the originals.) Now they ranged in age from 9th grade to seniors, and we even had (gasp!) a girl. Again, not wanting to turn anyone away, I made extra copies of the character sheets, arranged desks in a circle, and off we went.

After explaining what types of characters could be made, and the basics of combat and saving throws, we started rolling abilites. They all rolled 3d6 six times and placed the scores where they wanted. This time, not a single kid "adjusted" rolls; they all, all thirteen, took the rolls they got without blinking, and we moved on. It's worth noting, for those who know T&T, that there's not a warrior-wizard in the group (you need to roll 12s or higher on all your stats, before being adjusted for race.)

We rolled randomly for everything possible in the book, just starting at my left and moving around the circle: Stats, height, weight, money, languages, etc. We went through racial adjustments in the same way (and we had a lot; with thirteen players, only one made a human!) They were having a blast, cracking jokes at height and weight combinations, checking out each others adds, looking through the spellbook. When it came time to buy equipment, they pored over the copies I had made and passed around the actual rulebook, helping each other pick out cool weapons and armor (the weapons glossary in T&T is, I think, a major part of its Color) and offering advice on gear.

We also made up game details on the fly, as a group, such as:


Elves live to be 1,000

Leprechauns are immortal, and all speak "Oirish"

Fairies all use bows with narcotic "elf darts"

Fairy wizards can spend the gold and use their bow for a Staff Ordinaire

Every dwarf plays a musical instrument (Hobbit-inspired)

Humans get a racial bonus on Luck (x2)




We ended up with a final character roster of:



2 dwarves (both warriors)

3 fairies (two wizards and a rogue)

3 elves (a rogue, a warrior and a wizard)

4 leprechauns (three warriors and a rogue)

and 1 human (a rogue/werebat...)



They were all hyped to play, and I assured them I find a dungeon big enough and simply split them into two or three parties...

...which is what is happening tomorrow (Thursday.) I'll provide an update, but I just want to point out a few things I think were important about Phase Two:

The game was new for everyone, including myself, really. This let everyone get excited and participate equally.

It's weird, but I think the huge amount of players helped. Maybe I've just been reading Polaris too much, but with everyone sitting in a big circle, passing the "Book", it had a strange, joyous, semi-religious feel to it. I mean this in the most non-creepiest of ways. The game and its potential was a Mystery, and we were approaching it full on, with enthusiasm in the Greek sense of being filled with the god, so to speak.

The irony at the end of all of this is that last Thursday took me closer to how I used to feel about gaming then I've been in quite awhile. When I tried to force it two weeks ago, it soured immediately. When I stopped focusing on myself, it showed up unexpectedly. After that raucous session, needless to say, I left with a smile.

YAY!

As an early-reader (1979-ish) and late-player (last year) of T&T, I think you nailed it. The combined contributions of St. Andre, Stackpole, and Danforth (pity you didn't have the edition with her illustrations) took D&D, said, "Oh, do it this way," and "this" way turned out to be one of the many functional subsets of D&D as a concept. And perhaps the only one that ever got codified into a playable rules-set.

It's really a delightful role-playing system. What looks like a bunch of stupid-huge weapons lists and similar stuff turns out to be a remarkable array of tactics, all integrated with the reward systems (living/dying, money, levelling, spells, cooperating/not).

I think your comments about your intentions and contradictions in setting up the initial D&D/AD&D game are very, very important. As I see it, the combination of nostalgia + the desire to "heal" the broken system is poisonous.

I really, really hope you guys observe the rule that rogues must purchase spells from player-character wizards only.

Best,
Ron

I want to ditto Ron's 'yay' about this post, and the fact that you're playing T&T in general.

I had two things to note:

1) Most games don't support big party play any more - T&T is one that can, as can pre-AD&D incarnations of that game. Savage Worlds seems like it might work for this too. Big party play requires a strong GM though, which may require forgetting some important Forge lessons (while remembering others). Splitting up the party is one way to make character interactions a little more meaningful, but you'll have to cut from scene to scene, character to character, and group to group quickly and effectively to avoid boredom. Good large-group GMs are showmen, I think, sort of like the guy in the vaudeville act who comes out every few minutes to bring a new performer on, hook one off, tell you how great it is or was or is going to be, suggest interpretations, and so on. You can give individual players meaningful individual decisions even in large groups, but you can't get hung up on them, and you have to keep driving.

For some reason I remember an old Judges Guild D&D module, Glory Hole Dwarven Mine, which was designed (can't recall how well) to have several NPC parties running through it at the same time as the PCs, and for there to be interactions between them. Maybe something like this could work for you.

Probably it's too many groups, but if you wanted to create a meta-message of racial tolerance you could break the parties down to each racial group (dwarfs and human together), and create situations where both of their strengths together will be necessary to solve a problem.

You may know some or all of this already but I felt like it was worth mentioning.


2) Both of you guys seem upbeat about the weapons table. This is, by far, my least favorite part of T&T. I don't want to derail the more important issues about people and techniques in the thread, but if it's not too much trouble, maybe you could convince me to like it more? Are there any examples interesting tactics arising out of that table, other than finding appropriate strength minima and maxima to optimize the number of dice you bring to a conflict? Any real choices? I mean, it's better executed than the always-pick-two-handed-swords-and-thrown-daggers on the AD&D weapons tables, but it's the same damn thing AFAICT.

Hi Sean,

I think the weapons table becomes more interesting as characters level up. Remember, levelling in T&T means strategizing in terms of which attributes to increase. If, at this level-step, you would only get a weeny little increase in STR, but that increase permits you to increase weapon damage significantly because you're on the cusp of a given weapon's requirement, then it's worth "eating" the relatively low increase (as opposed to, say, adding tons of LK) ... if you can afford the weapon (or negotiate for a buddy to buy it for you). See what I mean about the reward systems all being interlinked?

Now, in the secondary literature of T&T, it's hard to write about this stuff without doing Forge-style actual play discussion ... so instead, they tended to get all goofy about describing the kewlness of weird-ass weapons, very much in a Mortal Kombat "and then the whirling razor attachment slices your eyeballs in half after they've popped out!" way. When I was a kid, this kind of stuff held no interest for me in role-playing, so I had a pretty negative reaction to the weapons list too. Only playing the game let me realize how much I like it now.

Best,
Ron

I'm sorry, I got all excited when I heard about T&T! Glad to hear the game is getting some use.

I hope you don't mind, but I thought this article would be pertinent, given the thread topic:

http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=17143&mode=thread&order=0

Hi Ron -

Cool. I think I see where you're coming from now. This is an 'artifact' of 70's gaming where a series of questionable parts lead to a pretty functional whole, I think. I put 'artifact' in scarequotes because I think St. Andre, Peters, Danforth, Stackpole, etc. knew what they were doing from practice, but I seriously doubt the theory was in place except at an intuitive level.

Here's the key thing: you COMBINE

1) random character generation, in old school style

2) a weird, funky, in places borderline broken but overall loosely pattern-following weapons chart with weird ST/DX minima and maxima that don't parallel neatly to die values the way they would in, say, a late eighties game

3) gaining stats as you level up, and in play.

and then you get a serious synergy. The random values means that the 'right' answer on the weapons chart is going to be different for different characters; the strange chart means you can't just predict it, you have to look, and there are going to be different best values for different characters; the raising stats as you level up thing means that there's a strategic calculation going on which is different for each different character depending on 1. Which creates some 'repeat play value' for the table.

I can live with that, I think. Knowing that that's why the table works better than it seems like it should given my hard-won prejudices, I wonder if it's at an optimum yet, or if it could be made yet crazier and more interesting.

Thanks for the help...and now I'll sign off in eager anticipation of Kesher's next post!

Well, as often happens when you teach, actually, our session didn't go quite as I had planned. Five of the original kids didn't show up, for various reasons, but four new ones did, all fired up to play. Actually, I don't think any of the three new ones had played before, but they had decided that whatever was going on, sounded cool. They made, if I can remember (I don't have my folder with me), a leprechaun warrior, a dwarven warrior, and two human warriors. So now at least homo sapiens are somewhat better represented... Still no warrior-wizards, though! Everyone else was either eagerly helping out the new guys or tweaking their own characters. I had forgotten about the two-weapon rules when we first made chars, so some of them went with that option (an important tactic for any char who can pull it off), plus I had decided, in order to give the fairy spellcasters in the group a chance, to go with a fairly common house-rule (according to some of the websites I was reading): Instead of wizards and rogues using their Strength attribute to power their spells, I introduced a Power attribute found, not by rolling 3d6, but by averaging IQ and CON; for wizards, every three points of POW used costs one STR point, for rogues, every two points costs a STR point. POW can then be raised in two ways: first, by spending XP on it directly; second by raising either IQ or CON.

The bottleneck in this whole process has been time; we only have an hour and a half before I have to leave to go pick up my son from daycare. So, after the new chars were made and we talked over some rules again, we only had about a half an hour left. I gave them two minutes to form and name two "adventuring companies" of six each. Again, I don't have my notes right in front of me, but one company had no humans and, I think, all the current leprechauns, and so called itself The Company of Gaia. The other one had all the humans, though is apparently being led by a fairy wizard (run by the student with probably the most experienc gaming), and so called itself The Azure Wing. Since The Company of Gaia had come up with their name first, we started with them.

Both companies were looking for the Tomb of Frater Perdurabo, Mad Alchymist. In order to save time (and because they include some good "dungeoneering puzzles) I cannibalized the maps for the old DnD module, The Lost City. They found the front entrance tangled in the thick undergrowth of a forgotten valley. The doors of the Tomb were unadorned except for the disturbing rune of the Quicksilver God engraved on the lintel. However, propping open the door was a dead goblin (a nasty, gnarled, hooded, icicle-wielding goblin) with an arrow in him. It was obvious he had sprung a trap. A couple of the leprechauns wink winged in to where the corridor turned. When nothing happened they decided there were no more traps around and, not wanting to waste more POW teleporting, waited for the rest of the party to catch up and opened the door at the end of the corridor. When they opened it they saw three bronze statues, one of a winged lion, one of a three-headed serpent and one of a hermaphrodite with stylized "solar" heads. At this point, we really needed to cut to the other group.

The Azure Wing only had time to hear how, while looking for the Tomb, they had tussled with some orcs. One of the orcs, in order to save his life, showed them to a strange fissure in the hillside he had found with another orc. His companion had gone in and never came out. The fissure was surrounded by a small grove of trees, disturbingly altered. An elf wizard broke off a twig from one of the trees to potentially use as a staff (he hadn't had enough gold to buy one at the beginning.) Then, unfortunately, we had to end for the day.

Ron wrote:
I really, really hope you guys observe the rule that rogues must purchase spells from player-character wizards only.

Sean wrote:
Good large-group GMs are showmen, I think, sort of like the guy in the vaudeville act who comes out every few minutes to bring a new performer on, hook one off, tell you how great it is or was or is going to be, suggest interpretations, and so on. You can give individual players meaningful individual decisions even in large groups, but you can't get hung up on them, and you have to keep driving.

Ron wrote:
...instead, they tended to get all goofy about describing the kewlness of weird-ass weapons, very much in a Mortal Kombat "and then the whirling razor attachment slices your eyeballs in half after they've popped out!" way. When I was a kid, this kind of stuff held no interest for me in role-playing, so I had a pretty negative reaction to the weapons list too. Only playing the game let me realize how much I like it now.

Sean wrote:
1) random character generation, in old school style

2) a weird, funky, in places borderline broken but overall loosely pattern-following weapons chart with weird ST/DX minima and maxima that don't parallel neatly to die values the way they would in, say, a late eighties game

3) gaining stats as you level up, and in play.

and then you get a serious synergy. The random values means that the 'right' answer on the weapons chart is going to be different for different characters; the strange chart means you can't just predict it, you have to look, and there are going to be different best values for different characters; the raising stats as you level up thing means that there's a strategic calculation going on which is different for each different character depending on 1. Which creates some 'repeat play value' for the table.

Ron wrote:
I think your comments about your intentions and contradictions in setting up the initial D&D/AD&D game are very, very important. As I see it, the combination of nostalgia + the desire to "heal" the broken system is poisonous.

Hi. This is my first post. I actually came here to get prep hints for my first Sorcerer game, but was drawn to this thread by the lure of T&T (my first game).

Anyway that said, and I really hate this cos I’m not at all a rules lawyer (something totally not in the spirit of T&T) but…

…2.12 (5th ed) All Leprechauns should be classified as warriors – no rogues and no warriors.

The emphasis on the all is Ken St Andre’s not mine by the way. Still with T&T, it is very much a case of, if you don’t like a rule it’s your game change it.

On a more helpful note I hope you stress to your students the versatility, flexibility and pure fun factor that can be derived from the SR. It really opens up the game and especially adds to combat. It basically allows their characters to attempt anything they as players can imagine. Unfortunately, in a lot of games, it only seems to get used to spot traps and the like, or avoid bad luck situations.

Anyway, I just wanted to add another Yay for T&T. Oh and have you seen this
http://www.fierydragon.com/tunnelsandtrolls/index.htm

Spence.

…2.12 (5th ed) All Leprechauns should be classified as warriors – no rogues and no warriors.

Miskatonic wrote:

…2.12 (5th ed) All Leprechauns should be classified as warriors – no rogues and no warriors.

I'm sure you meant "classified as wizards." I actually saw such in Kesher's copy last night, so he's got text to follow or ignore for that one.

Hey there, Spence. Welcome to the Forge!

Yup, I just ignored that rule; it didn't really make sense to me. After all, there's nothing saying fairies can't be warriors, for chrissakes. Not to mention it placing a tough burden on anyone wanting to play a leprechaun: You can only be a wizard, but you can only get spells by buying them from other player wizards, like a rogue, because of some weird sortabackstory about leprechaun Lords and the Wizard's Guild... Plus, c'mon, look at the Notre Dame logo! Now that's a player character!

Spence wrote:
On a more helpful note I hope you stress to your students the versatility, flexibility and pure fun factor that can be derived from the SR. It really opens up the game and especially adds to combat. It basically allows their characters to attempt anything they as players can imagine. Unfortunately, in a lot of games, it only seems to get used to spot traps and the like, or avoid bad luck situations.

There was this thread recently, on RPG.net other games open, about doom 3. The guy was expressing how frustrating it is that the marine just doesn't tape his flashlight to his gun. Instead you have to look around with the flashlight, then switch to your gun rapidly when you find a baddie.

Then, refreshingly, he also said how he loved what it did in game.

God, imagine trying to design that in with a a pen and paper RPG. What responce you'd get "Nah, I just tape torches to all my guns...that makes sense. In fact I'm stepping on up with such a good idea!"

I'm looking at the leprechaun thing, and the POW house rule. All with the intent of removing burdens from players who are effected by this. Usually with simulationist friendly replacements.

Ron mentioned in a recent post, how anti gamist rules can actually be honey to some gamists (they simply add to the challenge). IMO, In the same light, very gamist rules can actually be honey to simulationists, as they let their explorative reflex kicks in on rules which "Anyone would agree, just don't make sense!". The reward being in that, since it doesn't make sense, they get to dream up how it all really works and implant their dream into the game through these 'spots' that just seem tailor made for this.

But it's like eating chips...once you start, it's hard to stop and pretty soon you've drifted from gamism to sim.


On a side note, it bugs me how SR are described as enabling the player to "do anything". From what I've seen their basically a narration bidding system. Their more the reverse, rather than letting you do anything, they let everyone else (through the GM assigning the DC) have a say about what your trying to add. Not so much 'do anything' rather 'once everyones had their say for this particular instance, then you can do this particular thing'. This opposed to something like a rule that lets you hit someone with an axe. Sure, it only lets you do one thing, but most of the credibility you need has already been invested by the other players in the rule, when they read it and agreed to play a game.

Noon wrote:
On a side note, it bugs me how SR are described as enabling the player to "do anything". From what I've seen their basically a narration bidding system. Their more the reverse, rather than letting you do anything, they let everyone else (through the GM assigning the DC) have a say about what your trying to add. Not so much 'do anything' rather 'once everyones had their say for this particular instance, then you can do this particular thing'. This opposed to something like a rule that lets you hit someone with an axe. Sure, it only lets you do one thing, but most of the credibility you need has already been invested by the other players in the rule, when they read it and agreed to play a game.

Kesher wrote: Not to mention it placing a tough burden on anyone wanting to play a leprechaun: You can only be a wizard, but you can only get spells by buying them from other player wizards, like a rogue, because of some weird sortabackstory about leprechaun Lords and the Wizard's Guild...

Hearthweru wrote: Not "do anything" attempt anything. I might not be getting exactly what you mean by narration bidding, but if I get you right, that's not how we played it. The player states what he wants his character to attempt, the Dm tells him what SR to roll. The player rolls and either fails or succeeds. The other players have no input on the level of SR or attribute it should be based on and neither does the player making the roll.

I meant to get back to this thread sooner...

Callan wrote:
IMO, In the same light, very gamist rules can actually be honey to simulationists, as they let their explorative reflex kicks in on rules which "Anyone would agree, just don't make sense!". The reward being in that, since it doesn't make sense, they get to dream up how it all really works and implant their dream into the game through these 'spots' that just seem tailor made for this.

But it's like eating chips...once you start, it's hard to stop and pretty soon you've drifted from gamism to sim.

Heya,

That being said, I don't think I'll change the decision I made.

The second option is, admittedlly, sloppier, and not supported by any other mechanics except group precedent (which you could maybe consider a Resource!),