Reading: Walkable City Rules by Jeff Speck
Still reading: A Princess of Mars, The City We Became, The Face in the Frost
Listening to: Gnoll’s ode to Joe Dever and Gary Chalk’s Lone Wolf RPG Adventure books
Also listening to: Know Your Enemy podcast
Drinking: French roast coffee
A few years back, I first discovered Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, and then I found my way into the old-school renaissance sub-genre of table-top gaming, and since then, I’ve become obsessed with games like Old School Essentials and Maze Rats, and adventure settings like Dolmenwood.
Unfortunately, I’ve had little opportunity to play any of these old school-inspired games. I’ve got a sporadic DCC RPG campaign going, but we’ve been meeting less and less frequently. And I’ve only ever DMed ONE session of old school D&D (Rules Cyclopedia version).
My gaming group is more interested in 5e, so that’s what we play. There’s nothing wrong with 5e. It’s not a bad system.
It’s just… not my favorite thing. It doesn’t sing to my soul the way the old school stuff does. The simplicity of the old school games (and old school-inspired games) coupled with the grittier, more classic sword and sorcery flavor excites me a lot more than the rules and flavor of 5e.
For many players, the fun of 5e is in character creation. The character-building process is a huge part of what they like about role-playing. They can choose from a host of different character options: different feats, different skills, different race and class combinations, different bonus actions and powers. For many players, the fun isn’t just playing at the table, it’s creating the character and studying the supplemental books, looking for cool stuff to add to that character.
As a mostly-DM, I’m less enamored with this focus on character creation, but even as a player, I’m not particularly interested in it. Making the character is one part of the fun, sure, but it’s not the main part. I would go so far as to say that playing the character (as in, playing “in character,” i.e.: talking like my PC, exploring my PC’s backstory, etc.) is not the main attraction for me.
What I love about RPGs is the exploration. I get to imagine myself inside a fantastical world. My character is my window into that world, but it’s the world that I’m interested in, not the “character build.”
Of course, I enjoy playing a character and growing an attachment to them, but I’m not interested in “playing a part,” like an actor. I’m interested in discovering a new world, of seeing what’s around the corner of a dark dungeon passage, or what’s hidden in the depths of an enchanted wood. The character’s growth happens when they explore the world. They change as they explore, not by leveling up and gaining new feats and skills.
The other thing I love about old-school RPGs is the aesthetic, which, I’ll admit, is my personal preference and nothing more.
And there’s nostalgia too. Old school RPGs take me back to Saturdays at Waldenbooks looking at all those Dragonlance covers on the shelves. They take me back to third grade when I discovered the Endless Quest books, to playing MERP and HeroQuest, to watching movies like Legend and Dragonslayer over and over and over again. The old school gaming stuff–even when it’s really weird and acid-y like Ultraviolet Grasslands–gives me the same vibes I used to get as a kid. I don’t think it’s the rules per se that do it; I think it’s the DIY spirit of the scene and the messy creativity.
But yeah, the rules are great too because they ARE simpler. The rules leave a lot of things open to the imagination of the DM and the players. I like that freedom.
I sometimes think of 5e as one of those adult coloring books with amazingly detailed and gorgeous pictures inside. They are fun to color because at the end of the process, you have this amazing piece of art. But old school games are more like one of those “Child’s First Art Book” things, where on page one there’s an outline of a fishbowl and the directions say to draw a bunch of fish, but what the fish look like, how they’re shaped, what they’re doing, and what else is inside the fishbowl is entirely up to you. And each page is like that: a suggestion of what to draw, but everything else comes from your imagination. That’s what old school gaming feels like. Suggestions and outlines, but you get to draw the world.
So anyway, I wish I knew more people who wanted to play stuff like OSE and DCC RPG. When I’m feeling in the mood, I sometimes roll up a couple of characters and start sketching a simple dungeon and wilderness area, and then sorta run my own adventure in my head. I know it sounds lame, but sometimes it’s all I can do to satisfy my desire to play old-school stuff. Sometimes I read modules and adventure settings and get ideas for games I want to run or even for stories I want to write. Even if I’m just flying solo, the old school stuff ends up feeding my imagination. I might not be able to play a campaign with a full table of people, but at least I can let the old school stuff inspire me.
I’m not the greatest at sticking with a challenge.
I usually have a day where I fail (often several days). Lent is a classic example. In years past, I’ve resolved to say a rosary everyday or read some of my bible everyday, and without fail, at some point during Lent, I screw up and don’t do what I resolved to do. I miss a day. Sometimes two. I don’t flake out on big things or one-at-a-time things, but daily things? I always mess up at least once. A flaw in my character.
Today was no different. I barely read a book all day. I worked a lot, did some writing, took care of the kids, but reading a book fell lower and lower on the priority list. For the past several days, my nights have been spent watching Stranger Things S4 with my husband, but I still managed to get my book reading in. Tonight, however, was different. Tonight, I played my new birthday present, the 2021 update of the classic board game HeroQuest.
It was a present from my husband, and because I hadn’t played HeroQuest since I was a wee lass of eight or nine, when it came in the mail the other day, I’d been itching to open it up and start playing. The responsible thing to do would’ve been to do my reading challenge, but my brother was available (as was my husband), the kids were sleeping over at Gogo and Papa’s house, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by.
Instead of reading tonight, I played HeroQuest.
I don’t feel bad about it. The whole point of trying to read more books was to help keep my imagination stimulated, my creative muse fed. Reading books — fiction and non-fiction — is probably the best activity I can do for my writing besides writing itself. So yes, I need to read as much as I can. Hence this challenge.
But playing HeroQuest tonight was also a way to feed my muse. It took me back to my childhood — which is a good thing, considering I’m in the midst of drafting a novella about a fictionalized version of my childhood. And all the classic sword and sorcery fantasy stuff — the barbarian with his huge long sword, the goblins and orcs and gargoyles, the treasures and traps — all of it was a welcome return to the well-worn but beloved tropes of my youth.
Basically, I had a huge smile on my face the whole time we were playing and I couldn’t stop smiling even after we wrapped up. I’m still smiling now.
So yeah, I flaked out on my reading challenge, but sometimes that kinda spontaneous skiving is needed. Sometimes it’s fun to be doing the thing you shouldn’t. Tonight, it was well worth it. Tomorrow, it’s back to reading.
Lately, I’ve been rolling up zero-level characters for DCC RPG. Not for any reason, really, just for the fun of it. It’s weirdly meditative. Roll 3d6, straight down the line, and see what unbalanced, horrible/incredible stats ensue. Then roll for birth augur, occupation, random equipment, and copper pieces and bingo! Instant player character.
Why is this kind of character creation so satisfying? I think it’s due to the randomness of it. The character that begins to take shape, with her 16 strength and her 7 luck, her beggar bowl and her random candle, all leads to a low-pressure but satisfying imaginative exercise. I have to start making sense of this weird and sometimes contradictory amalgamation of numbers, stats, equipment, and info. Why was her birth augur “conceived on horseback”? What’s the story with that?! Why does she have such high strength and such low luck? Where did she get the candle and what was the last thing that someone dropped in her beggar bowl?
I’m not planning to use the character for anything, but even if I were going to run her through a funnel adventure, the whole thing is still very low-stakes. I can let my imagination drift through this hazy fictive world and spend a few moments dreaming up an entirely new person. There’s no real purpose, it’s just me playing a game. And when I’m done, I feel both satisfied and energized. The combination of rolling dice, checking charts, and drawing the outlines of a fictional character all help me chill out and relax.
And yeah, I need to relax. Often, when I sit down to write or work on my fiction, I’m tense. “It’s getting late, I only have twenty minutes,” or, “I have no idea what to write and it’s gonna suck.” I sit down tense. Pressured.
I hate that.
I know Bradbury’s advice: “Relax. Don’t think. Work.” But I really struggle with the “relax” part. I can’t get past my perfectionism, and I’m always under the illusion that I’m running out of time.
So. I grab my 3d6, some percentage dice, a d24, a d30, and 5d12, a pencil and paper, and suddenly I’m in the midst of CHARACTER CREATION: such a simple process and yet the possibilities feel inexhaustible. It relaxes me, let’s me do something with my hands, let’s me explore a little corner of my imagination without worry or pressure.
Whether I play these characters or not doesn’t matter. They didn’t exist a couple of minutes ago, but now they do. A handful of random rolls and a new character came into being. Where once there was nothing, now there is something. It’s that simple, and it’s awesome. It might not seem very creative since the entire process is so formulaic and random, but I’m gonna go ahead and argue that it IS creative. As the dice fall and the stats gets filled, my brain starts to take over inventing and filling in the blanks. The numbers on the paper don’t really make the character; I do. Through my imagination, the character becomes a character and not just a series of game mechanics. This is what I love about randomization. It isn’t a substitute for creativity and invention: it’s a tool for creativity and invention. It allows the player to synthesize disparate elements, and in that act of synthesis, the player engages in the highest order of thinking and creation. All thanks to a roll of the dice.
Reading: Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman
Also reading: Out of the Silent Planet
Also also reading: The Twilight Realm
Listening to: The Raveonettes
Watching: Cadfael
I really should do a post about The Twilight Realm and that curious fantasy sub-genre of “friends-who-unexpectedly-get-transported-into-a-role-playing-game.” Part of my fascination with this sub-genre is that as a kid, I remember reading one of these books and feeling as if the book was perhaps “too adult” for elementary-school me, and reading it secretly because I figured my parents wouldn’t approve. (Of course, I never realized my parents wouldn’t have known what was in the book, nor would they have ever tried to find out. But somehow, I was convinced this book was verboten, and thus I would sneak around to read it. Gosh, I was a weird kid!)
Anyway, whatever this book was from my childhood, I’ve never forgotten the feeling I had while reading it. Trouble is, I can’t remember anything else about it! I know it involved kids getting sucked into a role-playing game, but that’s it. So now, with the help of the internet, I’ve begun making my way through mid-80s to early-90s books that involve people from our world getting transported into a fantasy role-playing game world. As I make my way through these novels, I’m hoping one of them will stand out as the one that was so scandalous to nine-year-old me. So far, The Twilight Realm is maybe, kinda fitting the bill, but none of it makes me go, “Yes! This is the book!”
I’m not sure what I’m expecting with this project, other than I just really want to KNOW what that book was.
I have been trying for quite some time to articulate my love of old school D&D, but every time I sit down to write about it, I can’t quite get a handle on what makes it special to me. On one hand, it’s 100% nostalgia. . . but not in the way you’d think. See, I was never actually allowed to play D&D when I was a kid. My parents believed in the “satanic panic” stuff, so D&D was forbidden, even though they let me play other role-playing games like Pendragon and MERP. But D&D still influenced me as a young kid, from the Endless Quest books to the Dragonlance novels to board games like HeroQuest. I studied the covers of all the D&D rule books, soaked up the Larry Elmore artwork, dreamed of what it would be like to play the game.
So yeah, nostalgia is part of it.
It’s the nostalgia for a certain aesthetic, for a certain vibe that had attached itself to all fantasy-related stuff at the time. That vibe was one part danger (the somewhat forbidden nature of fantasy that borrowed tropes and shared shelf space with D&D products) and one part belonging (here were works of art and entertainment that seemed made almost especially for me: for the shy, bookish, imaginative kid who loved dragons, knights, and high adventure).
This is where my ability to articulate the feeling breaks down. Because why should an aesthetic matter that much? Why does the cover of an Endless Quest book make my heart skip a beat? (I have not read one of these books in nearly thirty years, and I cannot imagine they’re any good.) Is it just because these were the things of my childhood and therefore they give me the warm fuzzies?
I mean, yeah, that’s what nostalgia is, right? But I suppose I’m interested in why nostalgia itself — particularly nostalgia related to literature and art — is such a strong force, and how my nostalgia for old school D&D is not driven by the game itself (of which I never actually played as a kid), but by all the things surrounding and influenced by the game.
See, here’s the thing: I really like playing old school D&D and the OSR-style games that have been come along in recent years. But it’s not because these rule-systems and games remind me of how I used to play back in the day. I didn’t play D&D back in the day! I barely even played MERP and Pendragon.
Nevertheless, these old school games intrigue me. Maybe I’m excited by the fact that I can finally play D&D without any parental chastisement. Or maybe I’m just responding to the nostalgia for the old-school aesthetic. (Truthfully, this IS a big part of it. I really like that DIY, grungy, punk-rock style artwork that accompanies both the old D&D books and the OSR-related new stuff.) But I think that even if D&D 5e came decked out in an “old-school” art edition, I’d still prefer playing the older games (or retro-clones).
Why???
I do, in fact, prefer rules-lite games in general (less headaches trying to figure things out), but I don’t think it’s JUST a matter of rules-lite. Lasers and Feelings is a fantastic game, and as rules-lite as one can get, but it doesn’t stir my heart the way old school D&D does.
No, I think it goes beyond the rules themselves and taps into something deeper within me.
Here’s the deal: When I was a kid, I loved to play pretend. I ran around the woods near my grandparents’ house and pretended to be a warrior fighting goblins and trolls and dragons. I went on epic quests in the backyard. I read fantasy novels and watched fantasy movies, and all the time I wanted to be Bastion or Lucy Pevensie or Dorothy Gale. I wanted to GO to Middle-Earth, even as I knew that was impossible. When I discovered role-playing games, I discovered that there was a way to travel into these realms of magic, even if it was only with pen, and paper, and twenty-sided dice.
And I think THAT is what keeps attracting me to old school D&D. Back in the day, I wanted to play pretend — I wanted to be a sword-fighter or a half-elf or a chivalrous knight — but I wanted to be me as the sword-fighter or the half-elf or the chivalrous knight. I wasn’t pretending to be an entirely different person; I was just myself, but myself as I wished I could be.
As I experienced it, on the periphery, old school D&D wasn’t just about pretending to be someone else. It wasn’t theater or acting class. It was about going into a magical, uncanny world and exploring it through the eyes of a character. The character was the vehicle through which the player could explore this strange and wondrous world. When the runic doorway to the musty dungeon opens and the stench of long-forgotten curses wafts through the forbidding tunnels, it’s ME standing there smelling it and peering into the darkness. But it’s me AS a warrior, or a wizard, or a crafty rogue. To put it another way, it’s both Me and Not-Me at the same time.
That’s the genius of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, or Endless Quest, or Lone Wolf. It’s the second person pronoun: “You.” You are the one on the adventure, not a character who is totally separate from yourself.
Me: I’m the one standing upon that threshold. The character/PC is just the avatar. I want to see how I’ll handle the dangers of the dungeon, how I’ll face down the orcs and the traps and the lich-king. THAT is what I’m nostalgic for. For that feeling of being able to imagine myself in the fantasy world.
Being the game master or dungeon master or referee is about acting out all these different characters. But being a player is about being myself, of seeing how I would stack up in a world filled with peril and wonders to behold.
© 2024 Jennifer M. Baldwin
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