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Friday, August 7, 2020

Random Thoughts & Links for Friday - 8/7/2020

Some thoughts and links for the week.

- My week is always more quiet after a multi-session delve breaks off mid-session than between regular sessions. PCs can't do anything, so I get a lot less emails about in-town activities to answer.

- House Rules for Swords & Wizardry - I always enjoy reading other people's house rules. These are pretty interesting. In a game like S&W, where stat increases are helpful but not game-breaking, the re-rolls are interesting.

- 2020 GURPS Challenge PDFs: Incense Trail - Matt goes over some pricing for incenses in GURPS. In the comments you can see us discuss gold vs. silver prices. 12.5:1 was the official Roman level, so a slightly less valuable gold in 10:1 would make sense. If I did bigger and more inflated coins in my DF game, $1 silver and $10 gold wouldn't be crazy. Of course, with 50 coins/pound would mean gold is $500/pound or 1/10th of my current, and a 20-pound gold ingot is a mere $10,000. Heh. A lot of stuff becomes worth its weight in gold in such a system. It's a thought!

- Help the Asfolk Viking Martial Arts School If You Can - in Doug's post (read it) is buried something that could be game-useful. Doug says, "It’s a distinct alternative to the traditional Asian martial arts (not throwing shade there: I was a happy practitioner of a Korean style for more than 15 years)".

It's telling that Doug mentions a difference from traditional studies of Asian arts, and then has to cover by saying he's got a background in that. The often-bitter Asian vs. European martial arts conflict is alive and well. How to represent that in game?

For most games, this is a quirk.

Either:
Delusion (Asian arts / WMA are objectively superior)
or
Intolerance (Asian martial arts / WMA)

For a martial arts centric game, this should be -5 points for either. If the delusion causes you to underestimate the abilities of others, it's more like -10 or even -15 most of the time. See GURPS Martial Arts (p. 53-54) for examples.

- The Many Deaths of the OSR. Lich Van Winkle links to many conflicts within the OSR. I link to, and linked to, a lot of self-described OSR blogs. I have played retro-clones. I run a very old-style dungeon exploration game, using a mix of what we never did plus ways I always played games back in the day. I never knowingly described myself as part of the OSR. I've always felt like I was on the sidelines. I play games with a similar bent, and played with self-described OSR people, and I recognize some connection, but I always feel like I'm my own thing here.

- Someone is buying my Ogre minis as a lot. I probably could have gotten more on eBay, but I could also have ended up with extra stuff no one bid on, and had to do the whole thing again.

I will get the auctions up in a few days with some other stuff, though - terrain, movies, and some other non-gaming stuff.

3 comments:

  1. I'm pretty much with you on the OSR thing. I'm a fellow traveler in some ways, but:

    1. I started RPGs in '77 or '78, and I've still got some of those old games in some boxes somewhere. If I want Old School, I'll play Old School.

    2. What I've seen from the OSR about the old style of gaming is not consistent with my recollections of playing those games back in the day. The OSR community's description of the games as written may be accurate, but as played? Whole other animal. We were desperately patching and filling in with house rules to cover ground published rules didn't (and there was a lot of it, and we often misunderstood what they did have), making up adventures rather than buying them because we didn't have any money (we were kids!) or couldn't get to places that sold them (only game store when I started out was a half hour or more away, and we were all years from having drivers' licenses), and performing all kinds of experiments in search of stuff the OSR seems unconcerned with.

    3. Ultimately, I think this is a "the golden age of science fiction is twelve" kind of thing. Old school gaming was was it was back then partly because of the published material, but partly also because of who we were at the time. If I were to dust off AD&D or even the white box for an evening, I couldn't possibly have the experience of playing the original game because the game may be the same, but I'm decades older. We all are, and I don't think we can go back.

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    1. 1. It's telling that as much as I love Swords & Wizardry, admire Basic Fantasy, and went out and got Dungeon Crawl Classics, I run AD&D when we play old school games.

      2. Lich Van Winkle writes about that a lot. I have, as well. The goode olde dayes were different for everyone, and it's rare that I see modern descriptions of what it was like that match my experience.

      3. I think that's the case, too. I figure much of what people are reaching for is not what they did, but the stuff they wanted to and didn't. The things that hold the most attraction to me are games I wanted to get back in the day but couldn't, campaigns I'd heard about but didn't play, finishing adventures I got to start and didn't finish. Nostalgia isn't always for what's been had but lost, but also for what was never had and the opportunity to get is gone. I could just be speaking for myself but it seems like it's very often the case. I sure don't want to go back to just running modules, people showing up with their own guys leveled in dubious ways, and fighting over rules as we all point at different books - I want to go back to the games as they weren't but in my mind could have been.

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    2. "I couldn't possibly have the experience of playing the original game because the game may be the same, but I'm decades older. We all are, and I don't think we can go back."

      Exactly. I got in a few years later then you, with the Moldvay Basic/Mentzer BECM sets (call it 83-84), and the game was at times more houserules and improv rules than from the books. And we just didn't have the same "concern" level that me and my Players have these days about that. Gaming has evolved, there is no way to go backwards to that time period, we can at best 'emulate' it.

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