ODnD and the Quest for the Simple Game
HI! I have been struggling with the theme of this post for a while. Life has been all over the place lately, and, well, coming up with something to write about can be a challenge sometimes when you feel that everything is kind of spiraling. But hey, that's one of the things I like about TTRPGs and about blogging—it's like an island in the sea of chaos that is daily life. So, I have been very open about my love of OSR games and especially FMC in the past, and I stand by it. Yet, I had a friend point something kind of funny to me the other day: "You say you want a simple game, but you keep coming up with extra rules and stuff for the ‘simple game’ that you like." The answer is really simple. Those are my rulings. The things I add or tweak within FMC are all things Me and my players consider fun, useful, or important. Not getting bogged down in a bunch of rules that most of the players won't ever read or get interested in is the appeal of this style of game. An example, for me, is how I will always work on world-building, even when I tell myself that I won't. Then, after doing that, I try to tie my world-building into the gameplay by making classes or subclasses have lore implications built into them.
Recently I found Dungeon Doll’s blog and binged her posts about her own FMC game over the weekend, through those posts i learned about “the Clock”, by Goblin Punch and decided that I wanted that in my game immediately. If you’re dealing with a more rules heavy game (like my beloved Pathfinder 2e, or DnD5e) adding addhawk stuff might break other systems, ones that are core to the experience. I would never tweak with the initiative system for Pathfinder 2e, for example.
Yet the simplicity of this game lends itself to the type of changes I look forward to implementing. Another example that’s seems to be common on the ODnD blogosphere is tweaking the XP system, as 100XP per hit-die of the monster slaying is usually seen as a lot. I haven’t gotten to that point yet though, as my players have, so far, somehow managed to come out of most of their dungeon runs without killing anything (aside from a rather unfortunate pet giant slug)
This post is getting rambly, but my dear editor and main reader keeps telling me that’s not bad (Ed. Note: I concur with this wise person). I guess my point is, you should pick an OSR game you like (Knave, Cairn, White box - it really doesn’t matter), then change all the things you want and keep all the things you like, and when someone tells you that you might be “missing the point”, look them in the eyes and tell them that, “The point is creating something you love.”
Thank you for Reading and happy gaming!