One flips through gaming books and sees all of these numbers and hears complex terms like COMBAT MATRIX, descending armor class, combat modifiers. The deal is that it is harder to talk about math than it is to just solve the problem. None of the math problems that we’ll have to solve during play will involve any tool more advanced than a basic calculator, and everybody can use a calculator! Once you get going with the system it forms an algorithm and players can quickly do the math in their head, as it isn’t anything that you don’t do every day anyway.

THAC0 simple means, “To Hit Armor Class 0” When the second edition included this as core, it revolutionized the game, sort of. It was always kind of there, but what it allowed was for us to write down just one number on our character sheets and this would help us figure out what we needed to roll to hit a target regardless of how challenging the target was to hit.

Inventing a system this easy to use took a lot of testing and tinkering, prior to Dungeons and Dragons, the game’s inventers played wargames, and one always had to come up with a system which randomized if a hit was successful or not in a fast and concise manner. Dice proved a great universal method. Once we figure out a system, then we have to figure out how to describe the system so that others can use it as well, which since math is never changing, math is the best way to figure all of this stuff out.

Prior to the THAC0 system, the game designers created Combat Matrixes, tables that when rolled against, told you if you hit or not, some of these were more complex than others, but they all strove to achieve the same goal, the more universal the better.

We get the term Armor Class from Wargames as well, specifically Naval Combat where different ships had different amounts of armor to protect them, players found that a descending armor class was more functional in the game than ascending Armor Class systems, but in Naval Combat, the ships AC never changed, the same goes for all mass combat systems, so when Gygax wrote the Chainmail Rules, he used a universal Armor Class system shared by all of the troops in a battalion.

When it came to D&D, the terminology was kept, and we have the AC system, but instead of a fixed number, the number for an individual target isn’t constant. A ships ability to hit another ship always stayed the same, but with individuals we wanted to simulate improvement, this required some additional thinking, and more complex combat matrixes.

In the first edition of AD&D, players wanted lots of ways to fight and modify things to make an opponent either easier or harder to hit depending upon choices that each player made. The AD&D system kept this matrix hidden from player view by putting it in the DMG, you rolled the dice and the DM told you if you hit or not. This provided a mystery because you didn’t know how the DM achieved this target number, as the DM wanted to keep all of the stats secret. It didn’t work, players caught on to the formula, either from sneaking a peek at the DMG or just playing enough to realize the DM’s system. This also required even more work on the DMs part, and users were coming up with their own methods of changing it up to make it easier for them to come up with a universal system that could still be modified quickly.

 

Detractors instantly rejected this method, saying that it dumbed down the game, and others claiming that it made combat too difficult to figure out. 2e was still learned, not by yourself and on your own, but by playing the game with others who had been taught by somebody else who already knew how to play the game. If one looks at the THAC0 system by itself, it can be confusing, but all it takes is the player sitting next to you to help you figure out if you hit or not for a couple of sessions before it is permanently implanted in your brain in a way that will never go away . . . ever.

In third edition, they changed descending AC to ascending AC which really threw 2ers for a loop. You play with this system enough it becomes ingrained in you and even something as simple as making AC 1 as bad is enough to throw you off, so I know that going back to a descending AC is the same way for others, just know that us holdouts didn’t refuse to move on to 3e because of ascending AC, when it comes down to it, 3e is too ridged of a system when you get used to the freedom that earlier editions allow.

So what is the formula? Well, it is easy. Look at the THAC0 grid, and find the number you need for your level. This number never changes, it doesn’t float around, and it is always the same. When you have a modifier you don’t apply it to your THAC0, you apply it to your opponents Armor Class. Thus, a sword+3 doesn’t change your THAC0, it changes your opponent’s AC from 4 to 7. Penalties also change your opponents AC, if you have a -2 to your roll, you take it from his AC, which turns an AC of 4 to an AC of 2.

Simple yet elegant, isn’t it! Suddenly all of the complaints that it requires to much math are dismissed. The problem wasn’t the system; the problem was that people kept trying to modify their THAC0 numbers.

Once you get it figured out, and can start playing with more advanced rules, the THAC0 system still functions. Now you can have missile combat and melee combat taking place in a forest at the same time using the same ruleset without having to change anything. The floating AC rule allows combat to flow smoothly and naturally so that both sides can focus on play without having to get all technical.

IS THE THAC0 SYSTEM BROKEN?

Broken, no; subjective, very. If you up and decide to use a different method of deciding how combat is resolved, then you aren’t playing AD&D. Taking it out makes all of the other rules in the AD&D system not work anymore, period. The game encourages you to tinker with the AC system, applying modifiers as you see fit to factor in advantages and disadvantages depending on where exactly each battle is taking place. Can you get carried away with modifiers? You bet! And the AD&D system will let you do this, but the DM can always decide exactly how many or how few of the optional rules and modifiers work best for their particular game.

We had to go here, I hope that I was able to clear up some confusion about how the THAC0 system is supposed to work, because it isn’t this mechanic that weakens the game, but what LOTS of people do with it that does, which we can now explore.

 Nonweapon Proficiencies, while this is technically an optional rule (read supplemental), I have never been at a 2e table, or even heard of one, that doesn’t use this system. Some have even claimed that it is this system which was the reason for the 2^nd Edition of the game (they are wrong, but it is worth pointing out). If we look under the hood, NWPs are a large part of the Core engine, and many say that it is flawed.

 Nonweapon Proficiencies were TSR’s term for skills, which is a horrible thing to call it. Was it because they already defined Skills as Thief’s Skills, or because Dave Cook loved the way that Nonweapon Proficiencies just seems to roll off of the tongue? It probably has more to do with TSR’s other hobby of suing competitors, who had actually defined skills before Dungeons and Dragons did, but whatever it was, we are left with only speculation and a very ugly nonword.

 Prior to this system it was assumed that your character knew what the player knew, which caused a mess of things. A smart player could actually defeat the Dungeon Master without picking up his dice, else sideline an entire gaming session arguing that it was unfair for a DM to not let him build a catapult, and fill a self-made glass sphere of trained rot grubs. This game is made for inventive people and we could seriously undermine any situation if we weren’t reeled in. A few advanced tables had created a list of skills which could be learned, and charts were invented so that inventive players could only choose a few of them.

 Because there are no measures to keep a DM from failing, people who didn’t understand the system could easily abuse it. Incompetent DMs claimed that you needed a NWP to ride a horse, wizards couldn’t read, and lots of other silly stuff that happens when one doesn’t read the rulebooks very well.

 Back when I first started playing, we included them, but I don’t really remember using the actual skills all that much, as I got older I saw the importance of them, and what they did to the game was really pointed out to me while running the RAVENLOFT: Gothic Earth setting, which depends heavily upon NWP for the game to function. Gothic Earth is a great example of how a DM should modify and homebrew his own skills lists to make something really special.

 While the Core Rules say that they are supplemental, they really aren’t. Advanced players of the game have depended upon this system to play the game ever since. For something so important, you would think that there would be more rules to them! Well, dear readers, this is how the game got so messed up.

 Many holdouts consider 3e to be nothing but a money-grab, but this isn’t really the case. Wizard's of the Coast loved D&D and they wanted to “Fix” it. The biggest thing that they felt that they had to include was how DMs attempted to streamline NWPs, what they got for their trouble was a headache and a completely inflexible system.

DMING 2e IS AN ART

We users had often fallen flat on our faces, and we did it often because that is how you learn to play! We have learned through trial and error how to use NWP in a functional way that may or may not be unique to our tables, I would rather interpret rules on a case by case basis then to be confined to a hard set of rules where my only job is to stop players from cheating, but many other gaming tables aren’t that way at all.

It all started with basic questions. The DMG stated that NPCs also have NWP, but it doesn’t specify which ones, which is cool to me! But others wanted more definition, they read in the MM that orcs can construct war machines, so they wanted to officially put that in the rules as NWP, but once you do that then you have to ask yourself what a monster's abilities are and suddenly, gone are the days of the elegant and brief statblocks that we use as cheat sheets in our adventures. This got even worse in 4e, I have no idea how people even DM that thing! I’d go insane, but I digress . . .

ARE NONWEAPON PROFICIENCIES BROKEN?

Many say yes. They look at the chances that a thief has to pick a pocket at first level, and compare it to his chances of jumping at first level and ask how come,if he is such a loser at picking pockets, why isn’t he also a loser at jumping? They also ask why, at higher levels, does he never get any better at jumping? They do have a point! If one compares the Thief/Acrobat from Unearthed Arcana against its 2e kit counterpart in The Complete Thief’s Handbook, you go from a system that factored in growth (which got kind of silly at higher levels), to one that doesn’t.

You also have the fact that a character can pick up a weapon that he isn’t proficient with and still use it, with core rules giving a specific modifier to your attack roll; so what happens if a character attempts to use a NWP he doesn’t have? Well this one isn’t a good argument at all; that depends on what the DM judges. Players who get mad because they can’t do something that they WANT to do, don’t last long in 2e rules. Can a character make his own sword if he has all of the tools and materials? SURE! If he is semi-successful (roled a 1), he’ll have something that he can call it a sword, but it is just a club made out of metal which will probably break the first time he hits somebody with it. What if he has an expert sword maker telling him what to do? Well, this was why the modifiers were never dictated to the DM; they are very subjective.

Why are there level limits on NWP, if we go mountain climbing with an expert, won’t we learn how to go mountain climbing? At least get a basic understanding of it? Again, you probably will, but not enough to claim to be proficient in it, besides, the AD&D rules don’t reflect reality; at the end of the day, they are just game mechanics.

SAY HELLO TO CAPTAIN CRUNCH

I enjoy thinking about this kind of stuff, and talking it out with my players; to me, this is why I play the game, but for others, they saw this as a fundamental weakness; one where an incompetent DM could have too much control over their characters, and they wanted set and fixed modifiers that encompassed every situation. If you turn this stuff into crunchy rules, I get frustrated. One can drive themselves insane if they over focus on the NWP rules! One can say that they can’t even identify monsters unless they have the Monster Identification NWP, or even worse, when they take something silly like Persuasion and turn it into a skill. This isn’t a NWP! Not to me it isn’t, that is called Role-playing. Nonweapon Proficiencies should NEVER replace role-playing.

The original list in the PHB, which is considered to be Core, has done a magnificent job of keeping itself relatively Crunch Free. One has to remember that the book isn’t telling you what setting to use; it is just trying to give you information, and it is your job to determine setting specific choices. If you decide that the ability to read is common in your setting, which it probably is, then players should automatically have it. Or, in contrast, if your setting is prehistoric, then players won’t have access to engineering.  One can also factor in a specific character’s homeland for bonus proficiencies that he might have, or be restricted from having. For instance a fellow who grew up on the docks may have many skills, but desert survival probably isn’t one of them.

If done right, I think that the NWP rules add a lot to how a player role-plays the character. Logic is your best friend when it comes to NWP, as a player I always made sure that I had at least one skill to fall back on, something that I did before deciding to go adventuring and something that I can do to keep earning money if the whole treasure hunting thing doesn’t pan out. Also you want to look at your race, an elf doesn’t min/max, and he’s going to have artistic skills, while a dwarf will chose a different skill set entirely. As DM I do try to discourage Min/Maxing as much as I can. I don’t forbid it, but I do ask questions when somebody submits a new character sheet to me.

But, let me climb down from this soapbox and let’s get back to reexamining the NWP System. It definitely has limitations, which is exactly what caused this mechanic to be in the first place. There are only so many amazingly awesome skills that a player can have! They also help newer players get into the habit of thinking outside of the box and using their skills in unusual ways. But how have people decided to fix them?

ENTER 2.5 SKILLS & POWERS

Players Options: Skills & Powers. In my opinion, this book was a bleeding mess. It is credited with harking in the 3^rd edition, and it was a game breaker. As if the inclusion of NWP didn’t extend the time that it takes to roll up a character before, this thing introduced a point system which allowed all sorts of different mechanics to break the game with, so we will be looking at it during this series time and time again, I have no doubt!

While the Skills and Powers manual is controversial, it did offer a suggestion to DMs who were unable to come up with modifiers on the fly by letting your players know about a system that you probably don’t use. It also introduced a nice and elegant NWP progression chart that made it more difficult or easy to complete a skill check, however it made up a general number for everybody and depending upon the STATs that you had, you got a modifier to this specific number. This actually turned out to be functional if one is really so bothered that a low level character doesn’t suck at something. One doesn’t need to use that silly point-buy system to use it either, so it doesn’t disagree with any other mechanic.

DRAGON MAGAZINE #225

The magazine suggested another system in an article called Back in the Saddle, Again, it is similar to the Skills & Powers method, but again, it doesn’t make the NWP better, it just makes it harder to hit at low levels, but instead of using one’s level so that the check automatically gets easier the longer you have it, this system says that you’ve got to spend additional NWP slots on it to achieve mastery, which considering that some NWP already require more than one slot, this can be expensive!

If you do the math, you only get a limited amount of slots: when you play the game to 21^st level, a rogue will get  8, a fighter 9, and the mage & cleric classes both get 10. That is it!You don't get any more than that.

OTHER HOUSE RULES

Some folks say that you can use Language Slots and put them towards NWP, however this limits the game, as a good setting involves multi-languages, and if the players spend all of these on NWP, then the only language that he should technically have is his regional, or the DM has to implement Common, which kind of sucks. Not that most tables are overly concerned about this happening, but it does happen and a stickler can say that Common gives an unfair advantage to the players, and not be off base.

Many DMs who were unhappy about the system entirely, developed 3e; but let’s face it, that isn’t even an option. An NPC has access to whatever NWP he needs to have; an Orc Farmer is just silly talk, do we really need rules to keep this from happening? Who cares what a troll’s CHA is, he is, that is enough. If I really want him to achieve a specific NWP then he does it or he doesn’t; to waste time on its mechanics is futile.

5^th Edition

I am no expert on 5e, but I did notice a new mechanic that is exciting. The player rolls two twenty-sided dice, and he either has an advantage or a disadvantage. If he has the advantage, he uses the higher number rolled, and if he has a disadvantage, he must use the lower number. I’m not sure how usable this system is, but it is intriguing.

WHAT CAUSES THE SYSTEM TO FALL APART IN THE FIRST PLACE?

This is an easy question, but folks don’t like the answer. You don’t need to fiddle with how the proficiency check is done. The balance of the system is how we generate our Ability Stats. If you throw 3d6 for each ability, in order or even player assigned, you’ll get fair numbers; typically in the 8-13 range. If we do this, then the NWP checks work as written. AD&D is a beautiful game; it doesn’t require you to have super-stats! In fact, that is part of its charm. I have no problem running a PC with low stats; as long as at least one number is a nine or better, I am cool with it! You can’t do that with later editions of the game. If only we could run it this way! Well, you can, but most players insist on rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest, which is what causes the NWP system to fail, their numbers are too high. A player just has to learn for himself how fun it is to play an un-super character, you can’t make them.

You have to correct this bloat, either by using a method above, or by applying modifiers, because when a PC has high numbers straight across the board, there is little chance of failing anything, which is pointless.

Any idea that the players can come up with must never conflict with the NWP rules, they are there as a guide to discourage cheating, during play you will probably discover other NWP that need to be added, in that case, there is a handy dandy guide in the DMG to help you do just that fairly. If an idea can’t be defined at the time as a NWP, then you have to figure out what STAT to roll against is, and how to modify the player's chances of completing the action. A player can complete an action which is defined as a NWP that he doesn’t have, however he will do so at a severe penalty.

The Nonweapon Proficiencies system has provided additional fun and entertainment ever since it was given to us. By encouraging discussion and healthy debate, it doesn’t try to answer all questions. It is one of those things which, again, make the DM needed in order for the game to function properly. In this case, the over correction of the system was an attempt to eliminate his role as much as possible, and give it to a series of books; to me, that creates a lot more problems than it fixes, and while a DM is learning his craft, these rules can appear to be clunky, with a well-seasoned veteran of the game, it is seamless.

Thankfully, the way that it was written allows it to be modified without effecting the rest of the core rules, so you can do as much fiddling and tweaking as you want to and still be playing AD&D; in fact, the system encourages it! That, gentle reader, is a wonderful thing!

 FURTHER READING:

Master List of Nonweapon Proficiencies: Contains all published NWP, but it doesn't give exactly what the NWP does, however it does provide the source so you can look that up yourself if you are so inclined.

In my last post I got some slack because I enjoy the AD&D rules, and strive to adhere to them as close as possible, however this doesn’t imply that I never question the game, after all, that is what DMs are expected to do. I have never played this game with blind faith alone, I never said that I did, I always recommend looking at the rules and questioning why they are there. I do suggest taking AD&D and turning it into your own personal hotrod! Like a mechanic, the DM should know what is under the hood of his rules, and how they all function. I do enjoy tweaking and meddling, if I didn’t, then I’d probably play the 3^rd Edition. I enjoy the leeway that AD&D provides, and it does allow you to do stuff all on your own. What I do want is a properly balanced game; I believe that balance is what keeps AD&D functional for the long term.

There are always two sets of rules in play, the core rules and supplemental rules. One can tinker with supplemental rules and create their own, which keeps the game fresh and interesting, but when it comes to the core rules, you really have to question implications and consequences of altering it.

Supplimental rules have to comply with Core Rules, else the game falls apart, but what if you really don’t like the core rule? I’d like to lift up the hood of AD&D with you and examine what’s in there. Things that annoy lots of people and are usually house ruled, or even dramatically altered in later additions.

We’ll call it, The Mechanic Series.

 ENERGY DRAIN

I dare say that no attack is more terrifying to players than this one, instead of just taking hit points from your beloved character, this attack takes Hit Dice! Some feel that this is the most broken mechanic in the core rules.

This attack is a 9^th level Wizard Spell, but primarily it is the teeth of powerful undead creatures. It has been with the game since the beginning, and it was, at one point easier to deal with, but with the advanced mechanics of AD&D, it becomes more difficult. Players may lose proficiencies, spell levels, or thief abilities, which if you let it, can take away from the excitement of a really good encounter. You don’t want to stop your exciting battle with the Vampire just so that everybody can modify their characters down two levels for every hit; the DM will have to keep track of these changes in his head until the scenario is completed, and then deal with the actual damage done on the Character Sheets.

ENERGY DRAIN ISN’T BALANCED

Players complain that they didn’t get a saving throw; however, they kind of did. This is a touch attack; the creature must make a successful attack against your armor class, so in effect the DM rolls your saving throw.

Players also may gain access to this spell themselves, once a mage can cast 9^th level spells, or if they find magical treasure that casts this spell for them. But, is it really balanced? I think that it is, I’ve heard people claim that it is a fate worse than death! But here is the deal; you will eventually get all of this stuff back. It may take awhile, but you’ll do it. Some DMs have home brew rules which actually make this thing worse! Permanent Stat reduction, or permanent hit point loss is much worse in the long term than just losing a couple of HD. Personally, I find Energy Drain to be quite elegant and clean. It doesn’t require extra book keeping, and if you haven’t dealt with a death at its hands, then you just don’t know what you are missing!

I have also heard that this ability is particularly devastating during Adult games which can only be played once a month if you are lucky. It can take years to recover the XP lost in infrequent games; to this I say, have you got something better to do? This allows players to play their favorite characters longer, as once they hit 20^th level, the game will fall apart and they’ve got to retire the thing anyway. Besides, a well used Energy Drain can keep players in the proverbial sweet spot longer than they normally would be.

If we take out Energy Drain, then we have fundamentally destroyed our undead, you wouldn’t take away a dragon’s breath weapon because the attack is too devastating, that is the point! And Energy Drain is the point behind using powerful undead. Where it becomes a problem is when it is abused by the DM. Any creature that uses this attack requires intent on the part of the DM; it is his job to keep this in balance. If one abuses it, or if the dice-gods are angry, it can make it impossible for the players to complete the scenario that was prepped; this will lead to total party kill, or the DM cheating in favor of the players which undermines the game.

MANAGING POWERFUL UNDEAD

Energy Drain isn’t always a bad thing for our games, but players do get frustrated, so we should give hints that a creature is capable of it. Players will modify their tactics if they know that they are going to have to deal with a vampire, this is good for the game as it is exciting to risk your character in this way, but we don’t want to constantly drop this on their heads for no real reason, powerful undead are special and should be memorable. We’ve got to respect what they bring to the table and keep them rare, and never old-hat.

If you really don’t want to drop an energy drain on your players, you can create a lesser undead who has a different attack which is comparable but not as permanent, however I have seen some strange over compensation which actually turned out worse than just using the attack itself. Permanent HP loss which can never be regenerated is one example I’ve played with; by the time that you are high level you really start to feel it. Permanent Stat Loss is bad too, and has effects which last longer than Energy Drain as well. I’ve even seen people claim that this was temporary, and would only last 2 months, meanwhile it would had only taken a couple of adventures to reclaim the HD through play.

If you are adamant, you can make yourself some options, for instance instead of taking away an entire HD per touch, one touch takes a percentage of XP, or if you like math (and I know you do!) you can calculate something like: A successful attack by the Lesser Wight drains 1d10x10,000xp. That solution isn’t perfect as once a HD is gone, with the current XP attack that isn’t recalculated to new levels, it will end up draining more XP than if you had just used real attack normally.

You can also cause a temporary Stat Loss, which is regained through rest, which works well with high levels were it can take a long time to regain HD, but not so well at lower levels of play.

If a battle went bad and your party was devastated by this thing, and you can’t live with the result or the error was your fault, then there are always supplemental ways of dealing with correcting this faster. I have seen a battle with powerful undead go REALLY bad, like the players losing over half of their hit dice from one combat with angry dice, in that case they are going to have to leave the dungeon, and seek high powered help. If you can justify it, a difficult ritual with divine intervention can help quickly restore most of the levels lost. Of course they will have to repay this high powered spell with service to the God who allowed it. It’ll push the game into a new direction, but it will also allow the party to quickly get back to the business of stopping the powerful undead from doing whatever it is trying to do . . . maybe.

SHOULD ENERGY DRAIN BE REMOVED FROM THE GAME?

No. It brings more to the game than just a rarely used attack. It can make a story more interesting, and take it into unseen directions which may not had been planed for, which in turn, enriches your setting. It also scares the players themselves which is a good thing. While on first inspection, this spell appears to be unbalanced, it really isn’t as bad as you think that it is.  

FURTHER READING

Echoes from the Geekcave: Up or Down Drain Is an excellent and well thought article, not to mention a very inspiring:

There is a saying that comes up at my table from time to time, usually when some mechanic of classic D&D or a retro-clone is brought under scrutiny. "You can't 'fix' D&D." This doesn't mean D&D is a "broken" or hopeless game. It's the idea that for all its rough patches and quirks, it's still the patriarch, the fount from which our hobby springs. While house-rules and so forth are perfectly acceptable expressions of our interest and involvement in the game, to try and "fix" the game's foibles is an often futile attempt to make it into something other than the inspiring mess that it sometimes seems to be.

That, is worthy prose! It should be a tattoo or something. 

What is Old-School? I’ve been asking myself this for some time now, and I think that I’ve an answer. I don’t think that rules are old-school, nor is it a setting, but it is us; the gamers who have been using these products, and making them our own for a long time now.  Those of us who see this as a hobby; we never rest, and we always seek to improve our craft. I don’t think that we can play any other way! You sit us down at a convention, and force us to use the new rules and we are still going to focus on odd things that newer and more hip gamers won’t notice. When we use new products and transfer the data back to our preferred systems, we strip the thing down to its bare bones and rebuild it, like some Frankenstein’s monster into something that is all us. It isn’t on purpose; I never buy anything and say to myself, “I want to spend weeks rewriting this thing!” I don’t! The premise sounds good and I believe that my players and I will enjoy it; it’s just that I can’t turn it off. I am always looking at stuff, and thinking of a better way to get it done.

That is old-school; it is rethinking stories that have been told thousands of times in a fresh and new way. We’ve told Goblin Ambush stories many many times, but I feel that each time that we do it, we do it better and better. I know when I was younger, monsters were always evil, they had no other thoughts, but that isn’t the case anymore.  Why not have our goblins just trying to survive out in the wilderness? There goals and motivations mirroring our own, however, no matter how hard they try, they just will never be civilized.

I like thinking outside of the box. I enjoy role-playing my monsters and NPCs. What would it be like to be a vampire who is immortal? Who can’t even enjoy solid foods and every day just falls further and further from humanity. He experiences no joy, no risk, no nothing. He is empty and he knows it. What is his motivation? What does he cling to every night that gives his empty life meaning? The old me would never ask these questions, because I couldn’t. Just run Dracula, until you want to do it again.

As a table, we grow together. The original players at my table grew with me; they too are old-school. You can’t go back to just racing between combat scenarios, they want more and more and new players who join us quickly catch up. Old-school pushes us further, I can’t help but look at players and want to push them into new directions.  Even they, I can see, constantly rethink things, they know enough not to fall into old traps, but I can trust them never to become complacent either.

We are advanced players of the game, and instead of getting bored with the AD&D rule set and either quitting or moving on to 3e, we instead decided to push the thing further, not by changing the rules, but by changing how we play the game.

That is Old-School!

We found that we got bored of playing our homebrewed AD&D games, the one with crit hits and spell points, and all of the other junk that people like to add, but today we don’t use all of that (well, some of our house rules are still hidden in how we play the game so we are still trying to root them out), and decided to play one game (just one!), as written, and as core as we could possibly get it. We did that about 8 years ago and we’ve been playing that way ever since. We found the restrictions, which we used to find as pointless, actually served the game better. That is old-school. The rules haven’t changed; we just became more excepting of them.

Our games are more involved now. Back in our younger days, we saw nothing wrong with getting railroaded. Whatever got you to the big fight the fastest! Today I seek to root that out of the game too. It isn’t my job to make sure that the players are completing objectives; it is just my job to react to what they are doing. It is my job to tempt them to do the wrong thing, to make bad choices.  I have stopped telling stories as those tend to over-shadow the players, and I don’t get frustrated because they keep going off script, I am a happier DM when I do this, and they are happier players. I am wiser now. I no longer write novels, I just give my NPCs direction and tell my stories though subtleties and by forcing them to find it. This didn’t come from reading books on adventure design, it came from experience. All of that “Anticipate Your PC’s” mumbo jumbo is all wrong. Let them anticipate you, and the game goes a lot better.

It amazes me how backwards I had things back then. I thought that the dumb modules that I was running were written smart, that I was being arrogant to change things, but I completely ignored the core rules and wrote them as I saw fit, ignoring the fact that those things had been play-tested a lot more than the dumb module ever was. Backwards!

I now have faith in the Core Rules: they won’t let me down and they will keep my game manageable. I have had some pretty crazy ideas in the past, and just went with them, ignoring the rules and bending them to suit my cause, but today, while I still do have crazy ideas, I find that the core rules reel me back in, and force me to rethink how I can bring my vision about in a better way, in a fair way. I modify my plans to the weave of AD&D and my players don’t get frustrated because they don’t know what is going on. I have also learned the cold hard fact that when we invent an unbalanced weapon to attack the PCs with, not only is it unfair, but it will probably end up in their hands at the end of the game. That is Old-School! That is wisdom. That is personal experience.

I also learned a deeper understanding of the medium which we use to tell our “Stories”, and how to give out information. My players don’t want everything given to them on a silver platter, they want to earn it. Describing things can be like an onion, I think about what I would notice when first entering a room, and just describe that, if they want more information, then it is up to them to get it. I also lie, because our senses lie to us all the time, especially in moments of stress, such as a door breaking down and behold, five zombies are there. I tell them that there are a bunch of them, the room is flooded with them! If they ask, I’ll tell them at least 8; and I don’t use the word zombie, I just describe what they’d see in that moment. Everything is thought out, nothing is on accident. How long will it take them to realize that there are just five men who fall apart when they are attacked but keep coming anyway? It depends on the situation. My players know instantly how to deal with zombies, but everybody loves a little mystery, why not provide this as much as possible? That is old-school!

I will keep as much information back as I can get away with, that comes with experience. Add some uncertainty to players who have played the game so many times that they know it all, they appreciate that. It makes the game that more exciting! I don’t care if a rule set tells me to identify a wand and how many charges it has; I’m not going to. We are playing with magic, not science. There shouldn’t be a science to magic, unless you cast it, magic should be unpredictable, else it will lose its . . . magic, pardon the pun.

I am a much better DM this year than I was last year, and I have no plans to stop questioning the game and exploring where the rules can take us. I will keep playing classic monsters in unique ways. I will find new ways to add mystery and newness for players who’ve thought that they’ve seen everything, and I hope to inspire you to do the same.