Back in early 2003, I started up a new D&D campaign with all new (to each other) group. I had left my previous game group because of play style differences, and decided to get a new group together. (My separation from the previous group was amiable. I didn’t tell them how badly their style was driving me up the wall — that story is for another post.) I found four players and gave them the ground rules for creating characters for my campaign.

I had in mind an epic campaign to cover levels 1 to 20, and possibly beyond. They were allowed any race and class in the Player’s Handbook. After the first game session, they would be allowed access to any material (feats, classes, items, etc.) from any of the basic expansions. This was the time of D&D “3.0”, so the basic expansions included the five core class books (Sword & Fist, etc.). They could create their characters using the point buy method, with 28 points. I also asked that everyone create a heroic character — no neutral or evil alignments, no anti-heroes, no borderline personalities. Their characters were to be true heroes. (They would be saving the world, essentially, but I hadn’t told them that yet.)

Three of the players took this just fine, and made their characters accordingly, with no fuss. But one player couldn’t be bound by such rules. First he said that 28 points was just too few to make a heroic character. He suggested 40 points. Forty points! I had never even heard such a number for the point buy method. I turned down the suggestion.

Then he wanted to know if he could make a character out of the Psionic’s Handbook. “No. Please stick to the core Player’s Handbook.”

Then he wanted to know if he could work his character toward a particular prestige class he found on the Web. I immediately said no to the class, and redirected him to the core books and the five expansion books. Then, out of curiosity, I went on the Web and looked at that prestige class he asked about. It was based around service to a “dark queen” of the forest. A definite non-hero type character class.

Then he finally settled on the cleric class. Thank goodness, something right out of the core book. He asked if he could be a priest of a specific god not in the core books. I wanted to immediately shout “No!” But I decided to take a look at the god he wanted. It was a thieving, back stabbing god of Chaotic Evil alignment. What part of “heroic character” was he not understanding. I told him no because the god was Chaotic Evil. He said, “Oh, I thought he was Chaotic Neutral.” I responded with, “And that would still be outside the guidelines I gave everyone.” But through more conversation, I did end up letting him have Fharlanghn, a Neutral god, as his character’s patron.

I should have realized this player was just going to be a continuous problem for my game. He felt his creativity and his character was restricted and gimped by my guidelines. I didn’t think my guidelines were restrictive; in fact, I was allowing 5 extra books into the game beyond the core rules. 28 points for point buy was 3 points over the baseline, and was the general rule for RPGA organized play. My only actual restriction was asking for only characters of Good alignment. None of the other players had any problems with my guidelines, so I didn’t think it was me that was causing a problem.

Eventually, we all got together for the first game session. I thought this player had finally come around to understanding and accepting my character creation rules, but I came to learn that my troubles were only starting.

I had decided to start this campaign off in media res. I figured it would help get this new group working together quickly. So I opened the first game session with a small battle. Once we rolled initiative, the cleric player (the troublesome player) announced that he didn’t have his spells ready. I’ve never seen a player with a spell-casting character that didn’t at least have something written down for his spell list; at the very least they had an idea of what they would commonly use.

Well, we waited ten minutes for the player to go through the book and find the spells he wanted to have prepared. The character was only first level, he only had five or six spells to choose, but he took his time. And I gave him time; I didn’t want to antagonize him and possibly make things worse. At last, he had his spell list ready.

We picked up the fight again. The cleric player made his first attack (ironic that he didn’t use a spell we just wasted ten minutes for him to pick out) with a whip-dagger. Whoa! A whip-dagger is not in the Player’s Handbook. It’s in one of the expansion books that I said they could use stuff out of after the game starts. “But the standard whip is weak,” was his explanation. So for this he decided to not bother me with asking for permission before breaking the guidelines. I made him lose the whip-dagger, and he chose to take the standard whip.

So he chose to not make a whip attack. Instead he chose to cast a spell: summon monster I. Oh no. This problem was completely my creation and my fault.

The campaign concept I came up with was:
Several years ago, giant gates to Hell and the Abyss had been opened known evil realms in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting. These gates had manifested a “Hell on earth” environment in the world, and the boundaries were expanding. I was starting the campaign within the boundary of the Abyssal “gatelands”. This had several effects on the world, but the only effects that would affect magic spells was that summon monster spells could only summon fiendish creatures. This was a flavor thing that seemed to flow naturally from the setting arrangement — the influence of the evil planes restricted/cut off the good planes.

I had not told the Players the set up or plot of the campaign beforehand. I wanted to reveal it in the first game session. I had this hope that everyone would go, “Whoa! Very cool plot,” when they learned it. I didn’t think they would need to know the details or minor changes, like summon monster spells, for making their 1st-level characters. I had never, in my 20+ years of D&D, ever seen anyone take summon monster spell at 1st level — the spell only lasts one round at that level. It’s almost useless with such a short duration.

Oh well, I thought the Player could just change that one spell choice to something else and we could continue with the game. But no, it couldn’t be that easy. First, the Player tried to convince me that he should be able to summon a fiendish creature. Of course, by the rules (not to mention common sense) a Good cleric cannot use Evil spells. “But if I’m using the creature for a Good purpose. . .” Eventually, he gave in.

But, it turns out that the Player had created this character as an “animal tamer.” He wanted to summon creatures and use his whip to attack enemies. Of course he never told me any of this until this moment. We’d had two weeks between our introductions and the first game session. He sent me several mails asking about other stuff, but he never mentioned his actual, finalized character idea. So, here, at last, he could point to a problem with his character that was my fault for not telling him about a campaign effect ahead of time.

We eventually got past this problem, but the self-destruct button had been pressed. All that was left till the death of this campaign was the silent countdown. And I was too stupid to recognize it.

At the time we were playing the game, I was writing the game up as a story, exactly as it happened. The campaign lasted two game sessions. You can read the story here:
The Fiendish Oerth – a D&D campaign story

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

One thing that has amazed me from the discussions on various Internet message forums about older Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D1, especially) is how two people can have such totally different experiences with the game even though they both played extensively and with numerous groups.

For instance, no group I ever played with (long enough to gain a level) ever used the training rules in AD&D1 campaigns. I never enforced the training rules, no DM I ever played under enforced the training rules, and no Player in any of my campaigns ever mentioned them.

Also, the concept of declaring actions before rolling initiative, as stated in the DMG, was completely unknown to me until this year — after 27 years of gaming. I played AD&D1 for about 15 years, with a few dozen people, and never, ever, not once, did anyone ever so much as mention that rule. And I’m not just counting groups I played with long enough to gain a level. Even the groups that I played with only one time didn’t mention or use this rule.

But I’ve met people on discussion forums who always used the training rules and declare actions rule, in every group they played with. They never knew anyone who didn’t use them.

There are some people who never saw the xp for gp rule ever used, and there are some people who always saw it used. This is a rule that can seriously alter the game experience in a major way, so someone who never saw the rule used will have a completely different memory of the game than someone who always saw the rule used.

And then there’s the difference of experience with regard to magic item availability, power levels, etc.

Yes, a lot (all?) of this stuff comes from how the individual groups and DMs ruled, house ruled, and styled their games. But how did one person encounter only DMs of a particular style, and another encounter only DMs of a completely opposite style? I know AD&D1 was often heavily house ruled, and there are some book rules that were almost universally house ruled by most groups. But how is it Player A’s experience is that everyone always used the training rules, but Player B’s experience is that no one ever used the training rules (to use just one rule as an example)?

These pervasive, diametrically different experiences just amaze me. How does it happen? Whenever someone talks about “old school gaming” different people often give contradictory descriptions:

“It was about kicking in the door, attacking the monster with wild abandon, and thoroughly looting the premises.”

“It was about approaching every door with caution, using intelligent tactics against monsters (running when the monster was too tough), and knowing what treasure to leave alone.”

Some people say that “in the old days” magic items were rare and wondrous. Others say that “in the old days” magic items were loaded in dungeons by the metric ton.

Some folks say that a DM’s word was inarguable and always accepted by Players back in the day. And others say that there was plenty of bickering, whining, and arguing back in the day.

These can’t both be true, can they?

AD&D1 had many, many styles — just look at the varied official TSR adventure modules. Compare Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh to The Village of Hommlet, or the Dragonlance series to the Elemental Evil series — each a very different style than the other. But how could a player go through 10+ years of AD&D1 only experiencing one style of the game, even after relocating, going to college, etc.?

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Okay, this is just something weird. Was at Dick’s Sporting Goods today. Like many stores, they keep a bunch of carts outside along the front wall. My son noticed something between the carts and the wall: it was a pigeon. I looked closer and saw that its tail feathers were caught under a wheel of a cart.

I pushed the cart just enough for the bird to get free and stepped back to make sure it could move about. We went on into the store and got what we needed. When we came out, the bird was gone.

For some reason, it didn’t seem particularly odd at the time, but now, several hours later, it’s striking me as almost surreal. I mean, there was a pigeon behind some store carts with its tail feathers caught under a wheel. How did that happen? How long had that bird been there?

My son loves animals, and was a little concerned for the bird. I assured him it would be alright; it didn’t seem injured. But. . . its tail feathers were caught under a cart wheel. Can a pigeon get embarrassed? I mean, it did look back and forth a couple times, as if checking to see if any other pigeons saw what happened.

Bullgrit

For the past about eight weeks, I’ve been running a Marvel Super Heroes campaign. It’s been fun. But one of the other players in the group has mentioned he has an idea for a MSH campaign. I’d love to play a character again, so we decided to give his game a go.

We’ll be playing young mutants, new recruits for Professor Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Here’s my character:

Zachery “Zip” Harrison

Montesse, Wyoming. Nothing to do in the High Plains, for Zip, but run, run, run. He has actually somewhat embraced being a mutant — likes his ability, and being out in the middle of nowhere, he hasn’t really experienced much anti-mutant bigotry. He also wants to be a hero, but in ranch-land Wyoming, there’s not much to do in that line of work — find lost calves, run sick dogs to the vet, check fences, run into town for a new part for the truck, etc. Pretty darn pathetic.

Mom and Dad are ranchers, older brother in college, younger sister in grade school. Zip is excited about being invited to Professor Xavier’s school. He’s likely to sneak out after curfew to get into troub. . . er, go on hero patrol (or a fast-food snack). He’s already picked out a hero costume. “No, that’s not an ‘X’, it’s arrows.”

His metabolism is very high — he eats several times as much as a normal 16 year old his size. He loves fast food (of course, pun intended), and most of his money goes towards that. 16 years old — he doesn’t have a driver’s license. ‘Cause, why would he need one? He can outrun the truck on foot.

His civilian clothes always includes a baseball cap — he has a dozen. No, he doesn’t wear a cowboy hat — he has only one, for special dress occasions.

Fighting: basic
Agility: above average; some practice
Strength: regularly works out
Endurance: regularly exercises (loves to run); enhanced stamina due to mutant power
Reason: above average, but doesn’t have patience to actually study
Intuition: normal
Psyche: normal

Powers:
Primary: Super Speed
Secondary: Fast Healing (not regeneration)

He has the normal skills of a rancher: horse riding, cattle herding, rope use, shooting, etc. Generally nothing of use to a city super hero. (I have no intention to use a gun.)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com