Rocking It Old School
May. 6th, 2020 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hjdoomAll being well tonight I should be running a Dungeons & Dragons games for the first time in a lot of years. I used to love roleplaying, it was instrumental in my marriage after all, but it was one of those things that I let slide when we moved to Northampton. Having made zero friends in the years we’ve been here there hasn’t really been the opportunity to naturally create a group and the one time I did join a group my mental health intervened. The lockdown has prompted a few people I know to want to try playing over the internet and I agreed to act as DM.
Usually I would create a loose situation, using a home brew system cobbled together from whatever I think will work best to explore the themes of the campaign. I’d then improvise wildly, often without any notes at all. That was how I first ran games when I was playing at lunchtime with my friends at school. That allows me to tailor the content to the players and gives them a huge amount of agency to create the stories they want to create. This time however I want a little more structure and I want to reduce the mental burden on myself to free up more cognitive space for running a game where the people aren’t actually in the room. I’ve settled on playing an old school Dungeons & Dragons game and, for the first time, I’m going to be running actual modules, or at least using them as a springboard. It’s something I’ve never done before, running material someone else has written and I’m curious to see how I find it. I also want a chance to experience some of those first D&D adventures that are foundational to the hobby as well as some of the settings I remember fondly from my youth.
I’m running using the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules because that’s what I grew up with and old things are better. I’ve also created a tiresomely convoluted meta plot which will allow the players to jump between the various game worlds that are such a defining feature of that period of D&D. This will allow us to enjoy Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, and the rest while still preserving a thread of an ongoing plot which essentially involves an interdimensional game show where people go on fantasy adventures in a kind of very violent version of the Crystal Maze. I’m very much looking forward to it and it’s something that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for lockdown forcing everyone to live the same lifestyle as me.
Usually I would create a loose situation, using a home brew system cobbled together from whatever I think will work best to explore the themes of the campaign. I’d then improvise wildly, often without any notes at all. That was how I first ran games when I was playing at lunchtime with my friends at school. That allows me to tailor the content to the players and gives them a huge amount of agency to create the stories they want to create. This time however I want a little more structure and I want to reduce the mental burden on myself to free up more cognitive space for running a game where the people aren’t actually in the room. I’ve settled on playing an old school Dungeons & Dragons game and, for the first time, I’m going to be running actual modules, or at least using them as a springboard. It’s something I’ve never done before, running material someone else has written and I’m curious to see how I find it. I also want a chance to experience some of those first D&D adventures that are foundational to the hobby as well as some of the settings I remember fondly from my youth.
I’m running using the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules because that’s what I grew up with and old things are better. I’ve also created a tiresomely convoluted meta plot which will allow the players to jump between the various game worlds that are such a defining feature of that period of D&D. This will allow us to enjoy Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, and the rest while still preserving a thread of an ongoing plot which essentially involves an interdimensional game show where people go on fantasy adventures in a kind of very violent version of the Crystal Maze. I’m very much looking forward to it and it’s something that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for lockdown forcing everyone to live the same lifestyle as me.
