On Thaumaturgy

Just a brief quote from Isaac Bonewits' Authentic Thaumaturgy (which I've sub-quoted here - and boy, have some of my opinions changed since writing that post). It's rare to see an intersection of real-world and fantasy Magic from a standpoint other than alarmism, and this piece of wisdom makes me want to improve my game, at the very least.

“The whole artistic and intellectual joy of magic is in the subtlety of it all, and in the occasional need for instantaneous rational and/or intuitive judgements about life and death situations. All this is missing, and so is the simulation accuracy, when a magical wand becomes just another sort of laser pistol.”

Fixing Fifth Edition

It's looking more and more likely that my options for local RPG play will be severely curtailed unless I can suck it up and get over the worst of my issues with D&D 5th Edition. I've suspected this for a while now, but as everyone gets increasingly busy with schooling and work (except me - I got downsized this past Friday), I may have to take a few hesitant steps into the hypodermic-needle-strewn oceanfront that is public gaming.

I've said before that the ultimate core of 5e isn't one that I have issues with; I cut my teeth on Pathfinder, and after several years of AD&D 2nd Edition I can see why certain design decisions were made. The main problem is the guff that has accumulated from years of poor thinking and bad influences (not all of which can be blamed on 4e), and the way that completely green players have had their assumptions set and their preferences shaped by bad refereeing passing itself off as good. There are a few relatively easy things that I could do to limit this, and make a game more to my taste that can still be played in by those who have already sunk $150 or more into the currently supported product line.

House Rule: Uniform Damage for Monks

Just a quick note about monks (aka mystics). One thing I love about original Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants is the option to have uniform attack damage - 1d6, regardless of the length or type of the weapon. This makes for extreme portability (as players would only need to bring a d20 and a few d6s), especially when coupled with the digest-sized books used by oD&D and many of its clones (White Box immediately springs to mind).

This table isn't in any way a brilliant idea, but it's definitely something I wanted to jot down. Instead of using the funny dice for open hand damage, monks can use only d6s with the following table; to stick to pure, unadjusted d6 rolls, simply ignore the "pluses".

Scattered Thoughts on Pathfinder (and Vampire)

Ah, Pathfinder. I have an odd relationship to this game. Though Dungeon Master 4th Edition For Dummies was my introduction to RPGs in theory (aside from Spoony's old videos), and a couple of Fast Play games cut my teeth on basic refereeing, the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box was my first time running a full-featured RPG - and my first time playing one. Nostalgia is a force more powerful than electromagnetism and more mysterious than animal magnetism, and it has impelled me to revisit the movies and video games of my childhood... but can it compel me to revisit Pathfinder?

House Rule: Health & Stamina

As I work on my own "fantasy heartbreaker" (as JB terms it), I've been thinking about the balance between deadliness and survivability. The following set of rules is a stab at addressing this. These rules have not been play-tested, and the concept of them is not original to me - I think the d20 version of Star Wars used something similar, though I'm not certain. I'm providing my rough draft here both as a safety in case my hard drive and other storage methods fail, and in the hope that someone else will find it useful.

Beowulf was a Monk

An odd thought popped into my head last night or this morning. It came while considering how to have the unique powers and playstyle of the monk class (or "mystic" in BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia parlance) without all of the kung fu and/or wuxia trappings. Consider: which hero of Old English legend...

• ...regularly fought monsters armed with few or no weapons?
• ...performed athletic feats for days on end?
• ...fought completely without armor (on at least one occasion)?

Checking In

Just wanted to check in here to prove that I'm not dead yet. 

As of writing this, it's been almost three months since I last ran my AD&D campaign - all two sessions of it. I was glad to see a group of primarily "new school" players using the "old school" system without difficulty (or at least, with no more difficulty than the Pathfinder on which some of them cut their teeth). However, I've since realized that keeping all of that machinery in my brain was draining for me, so while I will look back at the system with fond memories, I don't see myself running it again in the near future.

In this interval, I have gotten to run a storytelling mini-session: two more Preludes for my Vampire chronicle. The actual second session has proven elusive thus far, but I'm hopeful that it will come - as are most of the players. The setting and the ultra-light rules have proved a good fit with each other.

I've also been putting plans together for a new campaign of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game - the first edition of the D6 version, by West End Games. It's kind of at a midpoint between pure storytelling and pure role-playing, and a recent viewing of the original Star Wars film (the Despecialized Edition, of course) was met with enthusiasm among my millennial peers. Synchronously, just after I acquired The Star Wars Sourcebook and finished some more campaign notes, I spotted the 30th anniversary reprinting of both books at a big chain bookstore - and at a price that would have snagged me instantly if I didn't already own vintage copies. Maybe once I'm able to run more, I'll have more material for blogging.