The Journey

Up to now I’ve written and played modules in older editions and paid for help in the 5e conversions. No more. We found a local friend (Herman) and we talked about how to proceed. We would take it slow; stop, complain, look things up, and make a real effort to understand this edition. It turns out there was less complaining in play than anticipated but we do still need to look various things up. This slows play a bit, but we are progressing through the game better than expected.

Previously I had read the books and tried it a few times but always with a bit of expectation that the game was still what it once was. Of course, this is a foolish approach because those editions have already been printed. WOTC wouldn’t reprint the same game twice.

My Personal Issues in 5e

I have discovered by playing 5E weekly, rotating playing and GMing, that my issues were less with the game than with the way the information is presented in the books. The game plays differently than it reads when the dice start rolling. Running also seems to have smoothed out a bit with the progression of time as we become more familiar with the rules.

The Latest Adventures

Tonight players finished The Witch’s Trial in the Lands of Lunacy. During my time behind the character sheet, Herman is running us through the Phandelver adventure. The more hours we all spend on both sides of the screen, the more we are learning to like 5E. The power ratchet is real, however, doing 2 HP of damage to a monster with 6 HP is the same as doing 20 HP of damage to one with 60. We are also learning to better write to this edition from the ground up.

The Fun Side

As players, we are discarding the idea and verbiage of “Character Builds”. The Squad didn’t want to try to find the most powerful character stack. We are purposefully choosing the race class combinations we want to play and fitting the numbers and choices into that story. We had fears of overly complex play and abilities, overpowered classes (which is still on the horizon as we rise through levels), and spending hours looking up various abilities and skills.

I feel that we are all pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the game plays once the dice roll and the books are closed. Yes, we still need to look things up, but no more than we did in the 1E and 2E versions. The various character abilities are laid on slowly in lairs so GMs and player grow accustom to the options and abilities. It still feels like a night of D&D at the end of the evening and nothing more complicated than the “Complete Book of” era we went through.

The more we game, the more we all look forward to gaming again. The more we put the rules to practical application, the more we seem to accept the changes. It has taken us some time to adapt to 5E from our 0E to 2E roots, but we are indeed adapting.

We tested a live stream tonight and have discussed plans for future, better, and upgraded stream arrangements for FSG games to come online. Follow us on Facebook to keep up to date with our adventure into 5E and our games.

This acceptance of 5E came just as we were considering dropping production to the system and focusing on BECMI / LL. I’m glad we gave it one more try.

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The twelfth (12) kickstarter from Fail Squad Games has just launched. Brindlemarsh is the continuation of the Brindle series of adventures. Bogey of Brindle (BR-1) is alaso available through the project or on the website. We’ve added some unique magic items, cool collectibles and an exciting adventure for your heroes!
Written by Lloyd Metcalf and Ric Martens, edited by G.Scott Swift, this new adventure will be a great addition to your tavern tales of adventure.

Dwarfhome stones (created from cockatrice eggs) are one of the new magic items in Brnidlemarsh. The basic module adventure is just $10 to support FSG and help us to go print. $5 for PDF!! Get in now many limited levels.
BACK Brindlemarsh NOW

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This piece of cardstock vibrates with the essence of gaming. The artisanal paper is hand-made from Classic AD&D books.

Damaged, well-played, seasoned books and leaves collected from 330 Center Street in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. For those who don’t know, 330 Center Street was the home of Gary Gygax and is the birthplace of Dungeons & Dragons.

The world and gaming were forever changed from this modest little home. The leaves were collected, cleaned, destemmed, then soaked for months to make the fibers pliable enough to be added to paper. These pages and leaves are then hand-pressed to create this one of a kind paper that carries the essence of gaming in every cell.

Lloyd Metcalf, Art director of Gary Con and CEO of Fail Squad Games, and lead goblin at Apple Con, collected the leaves, made the paper, and finally adorned each piece with thoughtful art in archival ink. Each drawing is intended to bring the essence of classic Dungeons & Dragons and RPGs to everyone who holds it.

Since the first piece was created, it has come to be believed that dice resting on this paper are imbued with the luck and adventures of legend. Is it possible that a roll in a game might somehow be altered by the will of all the heroes of center street, and the uncountable nostalgic adventures that were had with the paper that was recycled into this one little square?

You’ll have to try it to find out.

I will have a very limited supply of these,  all artwork is unique and different to each piece.  Whatever I make will be for sale in the online store CLICK HERE to get yours now!

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What is BECMI?

B.E.C.M.I. is the abbreviated term for Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal box sets. “Basic Dungeons and Dragons” was released in the USA in 1983. There were two versions prior to this known commonly as “Holmes edition” and “Moldvay edition”. They were all intended as a gateway into the existing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons systems that intimidated some players with more complex rules and tables. The revision author of the red box was Frank Mentzer with art from Jeff Easley and Larry Elmore.

Who still plays this?

Plenty of people, that’s who. North Texas RPG con is one example of cons focused primarily on the older versions of tabletop RPGs. Many gamers, myself included, came to Dungeons and Dragon through this box set. The original box set is a little difficult to find these days, but the books still exist and have even been re-released by WOTC in PDF. Labyrinth Lord is considered the OSR standard version of the game. Some differences exist, but the feel and primary fun are all in place.

Why use it?

Let’s take the controversy of an author out of this post and look at why it’s good to keep the old red box on your shelf.

BECMI Dungeons and Dragons remains a quality product if we set all other things aside. It’s easy to pick up and play, limitless in possibility, and streamlined. It places story telling in the forefront and maintains a fast battle resolution system and extremely fun game that relies heavily on DM rulings to resolve issues. The red set (Basic) gives you just enough to play and run games up to level 3. It doesn’t concern itself with powers, ability or spells beyond that. The product itself is elegant and hard to put down as a read. If it doesn’t excite the gamer in you, you aren’t alive.

For young gamers, it’s a wonderful introduction. The text and wording are carefully chosen to inspire the imagination and feed adventure. Just flipping through the pages, I find myself inspired to get moving on our next project.

Isn’t it too simple for experienced gamers?

If you came into the hobby during AD&D 2.0 – 5.0 it’s worth the read through and at least a night of trying it out. It isn’t really the same game and has a different flavor. It allows to DM to be loose and free with ideas and rulings. It’s almost like gesture drawing in the gaming world. In as little as 20 – 20 minutes you will have the gist of how to play and DM. The cap is put tightly on power while party collaboration takes over.

Races as classes?

Yes, races as classes. This was done to simplify the process and the game. Labyrinth Lord keeps this, and I believe the Rules Cyclopedia does as well. It’s worth at least a few play-throughs with the rules set as written before you begin house-ruling changes about race – class. 0D&D treated things a little differently.

The red box deserves a play based on its own merits alone before you discard it based on anything else. The game is remarkably fun and exciting, even the solo adventure in the players manual. Once you get your BECMI group into the realm of levels 5-8 things really come into their own and become more exciting than should be allowed with one-page character sheets. The game is simply, fun as hell.

To put a point on it, we are releasing our next adventure module from Fail Squad Games in BECMI and 5E. It’s worth while to keep it alive and keep the old school dice rolling.

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Marathon of Heroes

This adventure was originally written and produced for RPG Crate (July 2017) and it shipped to MANY gamers around the globe. Fail Squad Games, Ric Martens, and Lloyd Metcalf wanted to bring it directly to our supporters as well and we were given the thumbs up to pull the trigger. As is the case with many small indie publishers, laying out the cheddar to get a stack of books printed blindly can be a disastrous risk. Kickstarter addresses that issue and let’s us find the gamers who need the books to plan our print run accordingly.

In Marathon of Heroes the local city is faced with a nightmare of a Dragon. The local lord has tracked the beast to a volcano offshore, but no one knows what awaits. Everyone knows what Red Dragons love above all else though – Treasure.

Strange Friends in Strange Places

It’s not long before the heroes meet a friend from the Lands of Lunacy. The Murine are an anthropomorphic race of rodent folk native to the Lands of Lunacy. They were first introduced in the 1E/OSRIC adventure “Last Call Oliviah” but have been modified and properly introduced as a 5E player character race in Marathon of Heroes.

The heroes new friend knows they aren’t ready to face Vatrastrom the dragon and offers them an opportunity to hone their skills and prepare to face the beast in his volcanic lair.

The Tests

Marathon of Heroes will test the four compass points of tabletop gaming:

• Fighter
• Magicuser
• Cleric
• Thief

All find their tests and challenges and opportunities to shine. The adventure shines a spotlight on how an old-school party was expected to operate for 5E players. A gaming group of interdependent heroes relying on one another for success. This adventure highlights those Halcyon days and attempts to remind players of the party-team strength (or relive its glory)

Adventure Awaits

This 36-38 page adventure covers multiple sessions and a lot of ground. With stretch goals that comes as side quests called “Interludes” there is potential for many sessions in this one adventure.

Back the project NOW on Kickstarter 

(Ends August 3rd 10 AM EST 2017)

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I’ll admit to struggling in my transition to Dungeons & Dragons 5E. For the old school gamers out there, there are some things to really like.

What follows are my 3 favorite things about 5E as an old-school curmudgeon.

1) Ability Scores

One of the first things that hits you about this and most any gaming system is the ability scores. In coming from 1E /2E to 5E one of the first things I enjoyed was the simplified ability scores. All stats, across the board all have the same bonuses and penalties. It can be argued that 1&2E did this too, but 5E really tidied things up here a bit.

That’s it, for all the ability scores. In 1E / 2E we had to muddle through all the stats with numerous adjustments for weight, bending bars, saves, and all sorts of various circumstances that might apply to the ability score.

At first glance, this might seem a little nutty, but it does make sense. The DM tosses a DC (Difficulty Class) onto various tasks at hand, to which the bonus or penalty will apply.

Not only does this clean up the character sheet, but it does simply a number of game mechanics nicely.

2) Difficulty Challenges

Difficulty Challenges (DC) are really a tidy fix to numerous things. Picking locks, jumping a fence, swimming the river, the DM only has to toss on a DC to the task at hand.

DC’s generally range from 10 – 30. This is over-simplifying the concept significantly, but as a DM and a player it feels almost as easy as it sounds.

3) Spell Slots

This is possibly one of my favorite strokes of genius in the 5E rules. We were grasping at a solution like this for years, were coming close, but 5E offered the answer.

In Dungeons and Dragons 5E, a wizard or cleric doesn’t memorize and hold spell in memory to cast them. They gain slots of power that they can tuck spells they know into. Instead of the spell being lost, the slot of power is expended – until the wizard can rest again.

For clerics, this is wonderful. It keeps the cleric from situations like a pile of Cure Light Wound spells, and being stuck with ONLY those spells.

It also makes a better logic in game terms. Memorizing 3 instances of magic missile seems a little silly if you think about it. But knowing the spell, and applying its’ use three times does make sense.

Wizards and clerics know and can pray for spells, they have a limited number of spells per level they can cast, they get to apply any spell to those slots as they see fit. Welcome to being useful casters and not HOPING you are equipping appropriate spells.

Well done 5E. well done.

Old School to new

A number of the ideas presented in 5E can be brought to your 1E or 2E game if desired, without switching systems. Spell slots being quite easy to apply, DC’s being only a slight challenge, and standardizing ability scores more difficult. At some point, you may need to just try 5E in full force. It is a very different game from the old days though. It isn’t “Like 1E”.

This article isn’t to suggest it’s better or worse, just different. The books or at least the FREE SRD are worth the read. These aren’t the only good points of the system for old Grognards to swipe and add to their table.

Have you adapted any 5E rules to your old school game?

The post 3 Things Grognards Can Love About 5E appeared first on Fail Squad Games.

~continued
After reading a bit more into the free PDF from WOTC, where they reference the Player’s Handbook (PHB) pages in the text more frequently, it occurred to me that what I was missing the point that the PHB and Dungeons Master’s guide (DMG) aren’t really intended to be read from front to back so much as danced around when a new term comes into play. This technique of flipping to the Table of Contents to find the explanation of the terms really expedited the learning curve and saved me from getting lost in not understanding the terms or the mechanics behind them at first mention.

So, now I was getting through mechanics and moving along, really getting warmed up to see it in action. I found a short video online with a fella who walks you through the basic character creation process. It really helps to watch this video after you have done some of the reading in the PHB to hear the terms and see a little bit of the mechanics. This has now made about 75% of the game suddenly come into focus. I am confident that I could sit in at a table right now and game with ease, and perhaps even run a game as a GM.

Many of connections are made when you see someone create a character. I.E. Ah, that section after this one, oh THAT’s how I use that skills column etc.

Today some more delving will happen into the PHB and I will be moving on to the DMG before long. My Monster Manual is in the mail from Amazon as I type this, and things will be in full speed to getting to a 5E mod, and possibly even a Kickstarter with Minis!

Things I have come to enjoy:

• Character backgrounds
• Positive number AC (I thought I was going to hate it)
• The whole DC (Difficulty Challenge) thing. The system almost runs on this, and it works.
• Resting – I expected to hate this. Putting too much healing power into the hands of all players – I have come to accept that it actually make CLerics fun again. You don’t just walk around handing out hundreds of ‘Cure Light Wounds’ spells anymore. You become more useful actually.
• Number streamlining. One chart for Experience points! One chart / method for stats +/-. Saving throws, Attacks, Ability checks – all work about the same way

I still have reservations about death, and the prolonged process of rolls that happens when ending the life of a character. I haven’t delved too deeply into the section yet, so perhaps I am not fully understanding it. I have a sneaking suspicion that I may house rule it out, and keep to the short negative number rule.

Also – Still don’t like halflings with little tiny feet.

Stay tuned for my journey to learn 5E part 3.

~Lloyd M

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