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I feel like you should have embraced chaos, and tried to make the Bard you were allowed.
D20s were used for scientific uses, usually two at the same time to simulate a d100 and had the faces of 0-9 twice. Players would mark one side to represent the tens place so it would be a true D20.
The animated creature is kinda weirding me out, not gonna lie. I just watched the F.A.T.A.L. character creation series you did without animation and got used to it.
Maybe 10 years ago I was going to run a real old school session with my friends. I had the three OD&D books plus some of the supplements printed up. And after trying to go through a game solo to make sure I knew what I was doing. I was so confused by the OD&D and supplements. I ended up running Swords & Wizardry because it was dumbed down that I could understand it, and more importantly I could explain it to a group of experienced D&D players plus a few brand new players. The struggle is real with the old RPGs. They were hard to figure out from the books. You needed to apprentice under another DM to figure it out.
"A TPK is a bad thing" is not a universal take. Sometimes, failure is fun. For everyone.
Someone else has already mentioned but at 23:10 Thief skills do NOT limit the actions of other classes. ANYONE can hide, but only a thief can hide with nothing but a shadow ANYONE can try to move quiety, but only a thief can move without making any sound ANYONE can (try to) climb, but only thieves can climb sheer surfaces like castle/dungeon walls without equipment ANYONE can try to pick a lock, but only thieves can do it under duress You can see that with their "hear noise" ability, everyone has a 1-6 chance of hearing noises on the other side of a door, but thieves get better at it over time It would be ludicrous to say that "only thieves have hearing"
so how is the "magic flute" a different kind of fetish? 8p
so how is the "magic flute" a different kind of fetish? 8p
This is amazing lol
I'm just going to write this as I go. 1 - I don't like the idea of a literal timer, though I do feel that making sure it is known that if you're dragging your feet, you will be skipped. Also, it is 1 minute to state what you will be doing on your turn, not 1 minute to enact your turn. I am assuming that if you use a complicated spell that requires a bunch of dice rolls, the DM isn't going to cut you off halfway through. Overall, my biggest thing against a literal 1 minute timer is that sometimes stuff happens and maybe the wizard does need a couple minutes to figure out the exact placement of their fireball, especially if your playing with fancy rules on how it spreads out if blocked by a ceiling or wall. If you then let them go over the time on that? Others will keep trying to push it, even if not on purpose. 2 - My DM loved me because I played the healer. That was my preferred role and I optimized it to hell and back. This in turn meant the DM could be a bit looser on how strong a fight was because I could keep the party alive. 3 - The whole "and you won't be riding home with me" is too far. 5 - No. I don't have my sorcerer's 18 charisma. I also have autism and sometimes playing out such things is hyper uncomfortable for me. I am willing to talk about the kind of things my character is trying to do, but I'm not always going to be able to act it out. I should still be allowed to play the game. 6 - I've DMed once or twice and I swear, players would not be able to find a quest even if you make a literal trail of gold pieces to it. However, that's okay, especially for side quests. If there is a main quest and they just head straight towards it? Well, they're heading in a direction. If instead you threw the players into the middle of a town without any clue on where to go or what to do? That isn't very realistic. The characters have a background so starting by either giving them a goal or at least directly telling them a couple possible hooks that they picked up before they got dropped into their characters lives is a good idea. 7 - Agree with you on the good till you take your hand off. And given rule 1? If they did it the stupid way, well, there might be a reason for that. 10 - As long as the divide between in character and out of character is respected, I'm fine with this. If you try to say some guy joking about the tin can with a stick up where the sun don't shine was telling the guard that to their face? We have a problem. 12 - Combined with 6? Well, it sounds like that if the players can't find what they're supposed to do, they're stuck in town until they do. This could suck. Also, a DM can run an open exploration game, it just takes a more fluid approach to world design. If you prepare a dungeon for the group to run and they head in the opposite direction? Well, what do you know! The dungeon is now over there instead. Don't give the players a map like they just climbed a radio tower. Have a couple things ready. Oh, and talk to them. Let them know the limits of exploration. If you haven't even drawn up a second city, tell them they're currently limited to the one they're on right now. 13 - Keep out of game stuff, out of game. If you have a person who is always late, maybe stop inviting them. If occasionally people are late and they have good reasons? Well, life happens sometimes. Hell, if the group orders food as a group, have the person who is late chip in an extra portion towards the bill. 14 - Ditto the above. If they do it a lot, kick them, sure. The problem is more with what my work would call a "no call no show". IE, when they don't call ahead that they won't be showing up. Even just a quick text to one of the people in the group that they'll not be making it will at least let the game go on. 17 - The DM really just does not want to give the players a single clue on what to do 18 - You don't know your perception check failed so the other players won't know they need to roll their own check. 21 - Yeah, when my group was still playing at an LGS and not at one of our homes, we had a guy that would cheat on rolls. I can understand where the DM is coming from, but at the same time the solution is to not play with a person who does that all the time. 23 - Depends on the setting. If you're in Eberron, there are minor magical things all over the place. But yeah, the game is balanced around players having a certain amount of magical loot. There are monsters that require magical items to hurt. 30 - Do they all just speak different languages? Because seriously, so much of this would be resolved by talking to one another. My group switched between a couple of houses over the time I playing and whether we would be ordering food or having something fixed up there was constantly changing and yet we managed to figure it out. 35 - If you can't trust yourself to remember your character sheet, leave it with the DM because if they can't remember to bring their stuff, you aren't playing D&D anyway. 37 - Yeah, I get the vibe they aren't actually friends 38 - Given earlier mentions of death traps, I can see why they might have a problem out of the game. While yeah, bagging on the DM when a goblin manages to kill a character is stupid, but there are limits. If the player's character was magically no-save with no chance of detecting it, teleported into a hole full of goblins ten levels higher than them, they're going to have a problem with you. 39 - So uh, I just always had a generic list of prepared spells I used by default? I only changed it up when I knew the situation was going to change and would make a point of noting it. 44 - Yeah, they aren't friends
15:27 The three page sexual adeptness skill requiring you to solve for Y, truly shows that there is nothing sexier than algebra.
HERO System build, plz?
I actually like the concept of the artifact chart. They just go too far with it. I'm sure you could have made a much smaller chart that does the same thing, even if it might use a bit of looping to do it.
I find it funny that they seem to have gone whole hog on the action table, only to go back to the flow chart for artifact identification. Hell, as you said, they could have had a generic one size fits all flow chart and the differences in difficulty could be the result of rolling on the action table with the column based on artifact complexity and such. You could then have had colored arrows to show the flow which would have at least made the flow chart look pretty.
It's a terrible ttrpg yes, but god that's a peak comedy i swear
Wow! Those psionic attacks really work! My head hurts like hell after going through that!
Wow, gamma world really goes all in on the mutation theme, even using a mutated tree of kabbalah-looking thing for artifact comprehension.
IIRC, descending armor class is just a holdover from the wargaming origins of the original D&D and sort of stuck around for awhile.
19:08 "Fisting is 50$"
I just found this channel. I think it is cool. You should role up a character for Villians and Vigilantes and its new addition, Mighty Protectors.
Yeah, D&D is chained by its history. 4E is the best example of this. They tried to change things and it did not work.
I know this is an old video, but if you want a (way) easier generic system to make characters in, you could consider RISUS, which is free by the way.
Is Neutralese just a dialect of Common that disallows exclamation points
You will unsurprised to hear that in our 1976 game, hit locations from Blackmoor and the extremely grnaular time management rules from Eldritch Wizardry were options we chose not to exercise.
From my understanding, retro clones are both to have the original rules "but better" as well as to have D&D, but with the serial numbers filed off. That way you can say your module is for Swords & Wizardry while having it understood that it also works with D&D (this is why, for instance, S&W has the option to use the old saving throws). Now, in theory you are perfectly fine saying your product is compatible with another product, but no one wants to have to pay to win a lawsuit and given how things have gone with D&D, that is a perfectly understandable stance.
Some clarification on spells: The way learning spells works isn't "You roll to learn that spell." Rather, you roll to know whether or not you *understand* that spell if you try to learn it, but you still need to actually acquire that spell during play. I'm not sure if it was the same in OD&D, but in 1e you learn just one spell per level automatically (pending DM ruling/approval). "Minimum/Maximum spells per level" is confusing wording, but it makes more sense when you understand it not to mean per *character* level, but per *spell* level. The "minimum spells/level" means that if you fail to roll that number of spells to understand them, you may go through the list again until you meet that minimum per spell level. For "Maximum spells/level" once you have learned your maximum number of spells for any given spell level, you can never learn more of that level, even if you find a scroll or spellbook to copy from. For as fascinating and enjoyable as classic D&D is, it really can't be overstated how bad Gygax-era TSR was at clarifying rules and how much 2nd Edition took the system from a confusing wall of jargon written for turbonerds to something at least somewhat more parseable by the average person.
So it's really D&DRFFMWCPWPAPAMF?
The saddest part about 4th edition is that it was a fun game. It just wasn't D&D. This is not a dig at it. The only problem with it not being D&D is that corporate wanted it to be the successor to 3rd (including the infinite splat books to sell). They could have probably marketed it as a side game specifically for miniatures or some such and while it wouldn't have been as immediately profitable, it might still be alive. Because as many people at the LGS I frequented when it came out said, it was like an MMO Miniatures game.
The Secrets of Shadoloo does have the maps in the back. I own the physical book and checked right now to see.
A level 2 Chaotic (essentially evil) Wizard is called a Shaman. I wouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt with "just exaggerating D&D"
Well Shaman was also the title for a third-level anti-cleric in original D&D, so it's possible.
I am one of the weirdos that's excited about Alternity! But I also thought this was fun, so I am not at all upset.
Adjusted for inflation, that is over 60 dollars.
Iirc: Gygax stumbled onto polyhedral dice at a teaching supply store while looking for materials to build terrain with. TSR started selling the dice set because there were no easily-accessible retailers who carried them.
Do those correlate to the modern 3 core books? The first and second sound like Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual
Don't know if it's still going, but last I knew, there was a LRP here in the UK that use these rules with almost no change. It was... a mess... Oh well. The reason WotC don't use art of half naked women in the books now is because of the context of these older games: women were a sexualised commodity in much of the artwork, and they want to keep very morally clear of that.
Given that removing Gold Coins worth of treasure was how you leveled up in early D&D, using them as a unit of measurement is sensible. You're literally measuring the weight of the crap you're carrying in EXP.
It could facilitate the answer to the question, "What can I afford to drop in order to carry more loot?"
@@jarrettperdue3328 ^This, exactly.
16:28 the 2 in 6 chance of opening doors doesn’t suggest they are stuck or locked or anything 😊
You think you pulled a gotcha but the key word is "arbitrarily." The limits aren't arbitrary, they're based on biology.
DnD original was bonkers.
Yeah I don’t think anyone ever played with most of those rules, much less all of the rules. But it was a very comprehensive set of rules with all the supplants and Chainmail, comparable or surpassing in complexity to anything that came later. The only thing quite like the OD&D rules plus supplements in the D&D corpus is BECMI with its multi year rollout of basic rules that got increasingly more complex, but was a bit more integrated as a whole to say the least.
Wait wait, you quit right before we could find out what happens when psionic attacks are used against a character with no psionic strength points left!
I cracked up when he said perfectly valid question, and then just ignored any reponse
1e = A good idea but way to many rough edges and a lot of archaic lingo makes it unsavory to approach for modern audiences that one would only run it purely for the historical factor and I dont get mad at it to much because its what started this whole thing. But I will admit it has a lot of the grit that later D&Ds just don't possess so I can see someone running a system inspired and more polished on its idea for that alone. 2e = A genuine improvement to 1e by a good amount but it still has quite a bit of that archaic lingo from from the first game making it hard for a modern player to dabble into that being said id argue this is when D&D got serious with what it was doing and while I do find 2e to be personally a solid game D&D wise. The modern renditions are far easier to work with and have more content. They also had to trim back the grit and certain things to be more generally accepted market wize, and on top of that a certain group of "individuals" got a little to scared at anything demonic and as such this edition bears some scars in the form of content loss thanks to that time... 3e/3.5e = This one is my favorite it basically modernized everything archaic with 2e to bring it up to the more understandable standards we still use to this day and imo is THE most elaborate version of D&D while that is a downside to people who are new for people as it makes it hard for new fans to jump in but if your in for the long haul you'll find rather surprisingly this game still keeps on giving even in the modern day thanks to its limitless supply of expanded content, and imo is the only edition that actually explains everything it presents in almost every condition and avoids the TTRPG pitfalls of Inferred Knowledge/Wild Goose Page Chases in most situations which cant be said of other renditions of this game and such things around it in the TTRPG space... This version is what the original Pathfinder is based on. Both 5e D&D and Pathfinder 2e carry a lot of inspiration from this edition also highlighting how much of an important part 3e plays in D&D if not TTRPG history and even my family runs this edition to this day because its just that good in are eyes. 4e = Ugh, fall from grace... The problem with 4e is it was made to bring in the modern gamer to the TTRPG crowd at the height of the 7th generation of video gaming and they churned alot to press that as such that's why a lot of the abilities and actions feel very video gamey, and why the game feels a little rough around the edges... Despite some of its cool, and good decisions it lost to much of what made D&D good to its core audience and at this time your either one of the few who ran 4e if your into the video gamey nature of it. Or your like me and you stuck to 3/3.5e during 4e's life cause of its lack of core audience TTRPG appeal that fans of D&D often times preferred. 5e = I have played it a lot and imo of 5e D&D its the best version in terms of well roundedness while I like 3/3.5e more for its verbosity and much heavier elaboration and complexity I also know not everyone is into that so they took the alot of the good ideas from 4e and made a streamlined and polished up version of 3e this is concise, and more to the point as such its a much better game in terms of accessibility and understanding when running which allowed it to get a larger appeal much easier. So to a new player and even returning players can find enjoyment as its a much smoother and less turbulent experience then many of the other editions of D&D because of its refined, and streamlined approach that actually keeps all the core things that made the Past two editions great. But if your coming from 3/3.5e your gonna notice a large chunk of elaboration behind the scenes has been cut out in favor of streamlining to polish accessibility and ease of understanding. So while I understand it, and I do enjoy it, I still personally prefer 3/3.5e more in many aspects for its elaboration's that it gets into with the little things, that other editions just seem to lack. But I do sometimes turn to 5e as its a genuinely solid and fun edition in other aspects.
The story I heard on the origin of the polyhedral dice is that Gary Gygax and company lived nearby an advanced school supply store and the polyhedral dice were math supplies - if that answers where you were supposed to get such dice.
I do agree with you about the need for nudity in D&D art. The whole point of D&D is that you can be heroic AND sexy! WotC should learn from BG3 and return nudity to the game... and make it sex-positive. T&A! Sexy Frazetta girls and bishounen boys! All the good stuff! Can I just say how Man & Magic outright states that you are not limited to the listed race options and, with the DM's approval, play neatly any race or monster type? I love it! The parts about prime requisites in Man & Magic are confusing. While I know that this is about shifting ability scores around, but the wording implies that you add fractions of one or two other ability scores to your main prime requisite ability for calculating one's one XP adjustments. i.e. A Cleric with Strength 12, Intelligence 13, and Wisdom 14 would have a prime requisite score of 24 (Str 1/3, Int 1/2, Wis 1/1). And Grayhawk kinda confirms this while talking about Fighter-Men using "raw" Strength for their adjustments, unaffected by Intelligence. It is funny as Intelligence is an iconic dump-stat for Fighting-Men. Although, most of those rules in the supplements, like most of the rules in the Advanced D&D rulebooks, were meant to be houserules you can choose from but were not vary clear about that.
Mutants and Masterminds! Mutants and Masterminds! Mutants and Masterminds!
How is a Lvl 1 Fighting-Man already a "Veteran" and then progresses to "Warrior" and later "Swordsman". It seems like those 3 terms were accidentally put in the opposite order. (Or Gary Gygax didn't know what a veteran is, which seems unlikely)
The thing about the lack of skills or adjacent skill like abilities, like Thief Skills, is that OD&D assumed character competence for a lot of actions, and player intelligence/skill to think of solutions with what they had and what their surroundings were. At least before the Thief class was introduced. However even with the Thief class, it’s widely interpreted that Thief Skills aren’t meant to mean that only thieves can climb walls or move silently etc, but that only thieves can do so without having to adjust themselves. Like thieves can attempt move silently, without having to take off loud armor, or climb walls without the assistance of climbing gear. The rules for OD&D are just extremely difficult to understand unfortunately, so a lot of people are just not gonna be able to know what they can and can’t do, since it goes into depth about some things, but are fairly vague or light on other things.
The d10 did not exist? Well, that would explain why the fighting man had a d8 hit dice then.
i like "Drawf," either as a reference or typo