I've had an idea for a D&D campaign setting for a while that I think would work very well as a sandbox-style game: AD&D meets Twilight: 2000. For those unfamiliar with T2K, it was an RPG published in the mid-80s by GDW focussing on a hypothetical World War III starting in 1995. The game put players in the role of survivors (mostly military) of the complete breakdown of social order. So the game wasn't Gamma World style post-apocalyptic fare, but rather a struggle to survive (and maybe pursue other goals, like going home) amidst banditry and chaos.

The AD&D version I came up with focuses on that chaos. The background is a massive war over a border province called Andasso; the war shattered all social order and destroyed many towns and villages. So the PCs can wander around the area, fighting to survive, maybe trying to rebuild. There are a lot of things going on, but the PCs can pursue or ignore those things as they choose.d

I've already got some concrete ideas, and I'll probably be posting them in the near future.

As I've said before, I have a lot of sympathy for the old school movement, However, some of the things said by some OSRers seem to me to be in contradiction, One of the key ideas of the OSR is freedom to make the game your own: you could change the game anyway you wanted, and could take or leave the material issued by TSR as you saw fit,

A recent post on the Knights and Knaves forums on the old school renaissance annoyed me. Here is the post I'm talking about. I responded in a way that might get me killed by hardcore old schoolers.

We finished the LL playtest Monday night. My reaction to the game itself was mixed. There are certain things I really like about LL--it is very stripped down and streamlined. So things get done quickly. Particularly when you do combat with a tactical map, combat goes very quickly--which I like. I *hate* when combats drag on, particularly because players spend a long time studying the tac to figure out the optimal move. It's supposed to be breakneck combat, not chess! Removing the tac, I think, and having simple rules greatly reduces this. And there's no need to worry about anything like attacks of opportunity.

On the other hand, some of the things about LL annoy me. The lack of a skill system, for instance, annoys me. Yes, you can use stat rolls--but then anyone with a good Dex is good at all things that require agility and/or balance. I think this problem is particularly acute when dealing with social situations and investigation.

I had fun playtesting the game. The question "Am I an old-school gamer?" remains unanswered. Some of the typically old-school trappings got a little tiresome after a while--e.g. lots of trapped locks and extensive dungeon-style rooms. This certainly isn't a flaw with the adventure Jeff wrote and was running; it's a question of taste. I do want to continue trying some old-school gaming, though.

From Lamentations of the Flame Princess:

Dungeons and Dragons was immaculately designed at its inception.

I know a lot of people love OD&D/AD&D. I myself have a lot of fondness for them, especially AD&D. But to argue that the game was "immaculately designed," is, I think, just wrong. D&D was an ad hoc assembling of systems, not an extensively planned game. In fact, to say that OD&D/AD&D is a great system is already a misstatement: it is rather a collection of systems. These systems used different dice and different probability distributions; there's not even any consistency on whether rolling high is good. For example, to hit you need to roll high on a d20; for a thief to use his skills, roll low on percentile dice; to generate stats, roll high on 3d6; to test an attribute, roll either d20 or 3d6 (depending on which version you use), and roll low. And that's not including esoteric systems like sieges or psionics.

One of Gary Gygax's players remarked once that the reason for the bizarre equipment list in D&D is because the players wanted to but stuff like 10' poles, so Gary had to come up with a price. I think the rules came about in the same way: one of the players said "Hey Gary, I want to do X," and Gary had to come up with some rule on the issue.

This is not to say D&D is a bad game, or that you can't have a hell of a lot of fun playing it. But let's not pretend the game is "immaculately designed."

On Monday evening, I playtested a module for Goblinoid Games' Labyrinth Lord, which is a retroclone of Basic D&D (specifically the Moldvay edition of Basic D&D). As I mentioned earlier, I am interested in the old school renaissance, and this was my first opportunity to play one of the games. Here are my impressions:

• I really enjoy the combat--it's faster and looser than later versions of D&D combat, especially 3.0 and after. We also didn't use a tactical map (which I think made some of the people in my group a bit uncomfortable), which I loved. I liked imagining how things looked.
• Races as character classes annoys the crap out of me. It didn't affect me in this game because I played a thief, but it's in the game. That's definitely the biggest thing I prefer about AD&D to D&D.
• I'm not sure how much I like the lack of a skill system. One thing about old-school games that I'm not crazy about is that they often challenge the player, not the character. Given that our characters are supposed to be capable of doing things we can't, this bugs me. So the lack of a skill system is probably something that will grate on me as time goes by.
• The ad hoc mixture of systems in old school D&D is odd--and I'm not sure if it's odd as in "annoying" or odd as in "cute." Sometimes you want to roll high, sometimes you want to roll low, and the die type you use varies greatly.
• The Holmes basic set was the first RPG I played. One of the weird things about the game--and one of my favorite stupid elements of the game--is that the only thing you used the d12 for was mummy damage. Given that the rules only allowed for levels 1-3, you couldn't really fight mummies--so I never got to roll the 12-sider. And LL still has d12 damage for mummies!

We're going to continuing the playtest next Monday; I may have more thoughts on LL then.

Contact With The Enemy, the worlds best wargaming podcast (and among the best podcasts regardless of topic), is back with episode #7. Martin, Jon, and I discuss a variety of topics centering on GMT Games Day.

I've been reading a lot of the so-called "old-school renaissance" in roleplaying lately--that is, gaming that hearkens back to first edition AD&D (or earlier, to OD&D). Some of the blogs are very good--in particular, James Malizewski's Grognardia. I've been roleplaying since 1979, I think, so I was around for a lot of the "old school gaming" that such people are talking about. I'm not sure how accurate their version of old school gaming is--my memories are quite different from what they describe--but I enjoy reading their blogs.

So what's the point? Well, my curiosity has been piqued, and I have a lot of great memories from 1st edition AD&D gaming. So I'm trying to get an old-school style game going with some friends. I don't know if it'll work out. And I also don't know if I'll actually enjoy playing this style of game any more. But I'm curious to find out.

This is the first post I've made in a while, and I'm thinking about changing gear a bit and writing about roleplaying as well as wargaming. Unlike some games, I'm a generalist of sorts--I like RPGs and wargames, and even some Euros and traditional games. I am not doing anywhere near as much gaming of any kind as I'd like, but I think about it a lot. So I'll be using this spot to talk about such thoughts as they occur to me. Just don't expect brilliance.

I recently won a game of Paths of Glory against a much more experienced--and skillful--player through dumb luck. The war had been going for several years, and it was degenerating into a "who will collapse first" situation. As the Allied powers, in the east I was crushing the Austrians: I captured Budapest, and was laying siege to Vienna. However, the Central Powers were pushing closer and closer to Paris. It looked to me like France would collapse before Austria, and that'd be the game.

However, my opponent did something rather stupid on the western front: He left open routes around either flank of his forces--on the last impulse of a turn. And I happened to have some small units that could swarm around the flanks and cut off virtually his entire army in the west. In Paths of Glory, supply is brutal--units that are cut off cannot activate, and if they're still out of supply at the end of the turn, they die. And they die permanently--they can't be rebuilt. So I managed to isolate and destroy probably a dozen German corps. My opponent shook his head at his own stupidity and conceded.

I realize that this is a ridiculous gamey strategy. But that's how the game works. I'm hardly touting this as a great victory, though. After all, I very likely would've lost if my opponent hadn't done something foolish and I had fast enough units in exactly the right positions to exploit the mistake. But now I can say that I have in fact won Paths of Glory.

My wargaming podcast, Contact With The Enemy, is back after an unintended hiatus. So go check out the best gaming podcast in the universe.

I play a fair number of board wargames via email (using some very cool software, mostly Vassal. Since the baby was born, I haven't really had any time to do my turns. In the last few days, though, I managed to get a few turns done.

I'm currently playing Glory III, Barbarossa to Berlin, Paths of Glory, and A Victory Lost. I'm getting my butt kicked in most of these games, but I'm having fun. I've got a game of Twilight Struggle, but it's been dormant lately.

Here is the current map in my AVL game. I'm playing the Soviets, and haven't pushed the Axis back anywhere near far enough.



In the future, I'm hoping to play Europe Engulfed, Afrika II, Red Star Rising, Fire in the Sky, and In Their Quiet Fields II.

If you look carefully, you can tell he's already plotting how to capture Berlin and Munich in the same turn--and how to get France to help him.

William decided that last night would be a good time to screw with us by not going to sleep. We went to bed around 11:00, I think, and I got up from work around 5:40. I would guess I got 2-3 hours of actual solid sleep during that time. And I think Rachel got even less. Fun.

What does not kill me only makes me stronger, right? Eh, whoever wrote that was an idiot.

My friend Ringo took this picture at the hospital. I like it.

I decided I'd try out this crazy blog thing that the kids are all talking about. My wife and I just had a baby, and this might be a way of keeping everyone up-to-date on what's going on with us. So I'll talk about the baby, along with other stuff about my life.



This is William, taken upside down. I'll post better pictures as I get 'em, but I really like this one.

William was born on Oct. 30; he came home from the hospital on Monday. It's incredibly weird having a baby in the house, even after having 9 months to get mentally ready. My wife's parents are staying with us, which has its ups and downs.

Yesterday we had a bris for William. I only converted to Judaism a few years ago, but it was really meaningful to have the ceremony. And William held up like a champ, although he was helped greatly by some drugs. And his Hebrew name was announced publicly--he is Tzvi Ephron.