8:05 p.m.

The talk in gaming circles these days has largely been centered on 4e AD&D. Unfortunately, that generally leaves me out of the conversation.

Even though my gaming days began with the (original) D&D box set back in the late 1970’s, and continued through 1e and 2e, I have to say that I lost interest when 3e was released. To be honest, I was doing more non-AD&D gaming during that time period, sticking largely to Sci-Fi and pseudo-historic games, and simply didn’t have a lot of room in my schedule for this old fantasy warhorse.

Nonetheless, I did buy the core rulebooks for collecting, stacked them on my shelves, and promptly forgot about them for a few years. When I finally did bring the PHB off the shelf, I discovered that Wizards had created a product that I was likely to never use.†

While I’ll be the first to admit that 1e and 2e had their problems, the thing I always enjoyed about the earlier editions was how easy it is to strip away all those gnarly bits that you hated and just play a simple RPG. For example, my fondest memories of AD&D comes from running a 2e game stripped to its core rulebook state; in my opinion, the huge collection of handbooks were only really necessary if you were attempting to create a tabletop warfare game.

If, however, you wanted a streamlined fantasy game, that was roleplaying heavy, you didn’t need all those extra bits. Not surprisingly, as Wizards continued to work with AD&D, they kept pushing that side of the game – the side you don’t need in order to run an exciting roleplaying game.

That’s why I never bothered with 3e. As Wizards was focusing on the roll/wargaming aspect of their RPG, I was searching out those products that gave me what 1e and 2e AD&D core books had given me; a system that might not be 100% elegant, but was simplistic enough to allow me to weave plots without being hindered by so much noise.

For whatever reason, Wizards product line seems determined to bring on the noise.

†For the sake of full disclosure, I do own True20, d20 Thieves World, d20 Modern and d20 Cthulhu.

Not long ago, when Gary Gygax passed away rather unexpectedly (for me at least), I got into an email conversation about a recreation of the Village of Hommlet I found at Dragonsfoot, called The Battle for the Moathouse. It’s a nice diversion in-and-of-itself, but it also wound up spawning an exchange that culminated in this comment from Ian:

And if you’re really interested in dusting off your old DM skills we could start planning now to have a good old fashioned D&D game night the next time you come to Asheville to visit your folks. The rest of us are all here in the same basic area and with enough advance notice I’m sure we can all make sure to have the same night free. Personally I say we make it one of those grand all-nighters, playing until the wee hours fueled by pizza and caffine….do all three of those classic modules in one long orgy of role-playing!

Even though I just posted an entry knocking the turn WoTC had taken with 3e AD&D, I realize that no game company is really going to survive the long run without releasing updated material and refining their product. Obviously, my lack of interest in the 3e + incarnations of the game have nothing to do with Wizards’ business practices and everything to do with finding 1e and 2e perfectly usable.

In the context of the conversation we’d started, I actually quickly fired back that I would be happy to partake of a long night’s gaming gluttony, though I expressed my preference for Castles & Crusades rather than 1e AD&D. I rather like the updates that Troll Lord Games made to the classic game, while managing to keep it essentially the same.

I also commented that I’d rather create my own series of adventures (in my own campaign setting possibly), as some of these guys have seen so much of those early adventures that I can’t imagine they don’t have them nearly memorized. Of course, I also realize that this could mean a great deal of work on my part; but isn’t that half the fun for the GM?

Chris Pramas, of Green Ronin Press, wrote about the new license that will accompany Wizards’ 4e AD&D franchise. While I lost my desire to play the old warhorse of a system when they transitioned to 3rd Edition, I realize that the OGL that went along with the rule set essentially opened the landscape for a myriad of smaller design houses.

Shortly after Chris’ post, Scott Rouse (WoTC’s Brand Manager) posted about the changes on ENWorld, stating:

First and foremost, we are trying to design the license to best support our business, the business of selling 4e products. We want third party publishers to support 4e. We want them to move forward with us. We’ll have two licenses, one that supports fantasy genre gaming and one that acts as a bit of a catch all to support everything else (modern, sci-fi, super-hero etc). In the end this license may not be for everyone but we are designing it to be good enough for most. Regardless of what we do with the license and system, on the spectrum of fully closed to fully open, there will be alternative viewpoints and opinions and they all have a level of validity.

Based on this statement, it does sound like Wizards’ is attempting to leave 3e behind and shackle everyone to 4e. I have to say, I’m not all that surprised.

Assuming that WoTC does simply dump the use of the OGL in favor of a new license, I can only imagine the kind of backlash we’ll see, at least in the short term. As Chris pointed out in his entry, it may well result in a trove of d20 products being dumped for pennies on the dollar.

Recently, while stumbling around looking for a nice, seamless, easy to integrate generic rules set, I decided to plop down a few dollars and pick up the d6 system. Thus far, I’ve picked up d6 Space and d6 Fantasy, and I’ll likely pick up d6 Adventure a little further down the road.

Like a lot of folks, I have a short history with West End Games’ d6 system through their former Star Wars line. I remember enjoying the way the mechanics work but wound up playing it less and less over the years as the Lucas universe lost its appeal over other emerging products. Nonetheless, it was a system that I remembered for its simplicity and ease of use.

Even though I’ve spent some money on True20 over the last six months, I’ve not been particularly satisfied with a number of bits and pieces, and have finally decided that it’s the d20 underpinnings of the system that I truly dislike. In fact, the d20 system, for me, is cumbersome and far from an elegant story telling machine (as demonstrated by my abandoned WoAdWriMo project).

I’ve just started reading d6 Space and that old feeling of reading a modest system with decent depth is once again emerging. I’m sure I’ll be posting a full review when I finish reading it, but for the time being, I thought I’d write a quick post to let everyone know I’m not dead yet.