So, I finally got a small group together to discuss the potential game to be played. I had decided beforehand that I would not be able to run Dungeon Crawl Classics due to lacking some of the necessary dice, and not being familiar enough with the rules. Though I am proud of my mutated Basic Fantasy rules, they're currently not complete enough to compile, and (being on a wiki) would require the use of my laptop - which is both very slow, and very slowly falling apart. Another game I've considered running - original D&D - can be very closely emulated with White Box, and the supplemental classes ported over from Swords & Wizardry Complete.
This left the group with two choices: White Box (using a new setting), or AD&D 2nd Edition (using my primary fantasy setting). Surprisingly, they chose the latter, and I helped them create their characters. Now that a lot of the participants are either off of school or finished with it, we're going to try to have a session every week.
One of the optional rules that they voted on using was the Nonweapon Proficiencies system. Something that I had suspected, but wasn't completely clear on until now, is that the assassin is indeed a slightly superfluous class in the 2nd Edition rules. If one creates a thief, takes the Disguise NWP, and has either a high Strength (for melee damage) or a high Dexterity (for two-weapon fighting and ranged attacks), the result is basically an assassin who just can't use shields. Not to worry, though; while we will be using NWPs, I'll be operating under the old-school assumption that characters are generally competent.
I had planned on adding both the assassin and the monk at a later point, but the former seems unnecessary now. For the latter, I'll probably just use the version from AD&D 1st Edition, rather than the (massively overpowered) Scarlet Brotherhood iteration. I still consider the monk a priest class for game purposes, though, so they'll use d8s.
About that new setting... I'll save it for a future post. For now, all that I'll say is that DCC was an influence on it in some ways, but not others.
1) Not that I'm advocating for DCC, but you can get any linear distribution you might ever need using naught but a d6 and a d20. All other dice are and always have been optional.
ReplyDelete2) Back in our 2nd edition days, my original group always used the Complete Ninja's Handbook ninja class as our de facto assassin. Yeah, the default version of the class is very similar to the thief (it just has more weapon proficiencies and fewer discretionary thief skill points), so we differentiated it more by always applying the spirit warrior kit to the ninja class by default. This gave the class the same three qi powers built into the 1e ninja, a paladin-style spell progression for illusionist spells above level 9 (not unlike what the 3e assassin prestige class wound up with), and a slower XP table (advancing as a wizard, to be precise).
This gave things a nice sense of symmetry, as far as we were concerned: just as the fighter sub-classes (paladin and ranger) were specialized fighters who got some limited access to magic spells at high levels, so were the assassin and bard treated as specialized, magical variations on the thief. And using the spirit warrior ninja as our default assassin gave that class an appropriately "exotic" feel (if more far eastern than near eastern, but it's not like we cared about that as teenagers).
I thought about using The Complete Thief's Handbook for the assassin, but I don't have a print copy of it (nor a PDF that's high enough quality to print out in black-and-white). I never checked out the splatbook for ninjas, but now I sort of want to.
DeleteSeconding the dice non-requirement for DCC, though like John I don't want to come across as advocacy.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty awesome to get a group to commit to AD&D 2e, especially as it allows you to expand your primary setting. I wish you the best in player commitment and initial campaign momentum!
Getting a group to commit to anything is a major accomplishment for me, especially for anything that isn't 5e. Thanks for the kind wishes!
DeleteI fuckin' feel that... not caving, though.
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