Redbeard's Ravings

One of the gamers in our group is hosting a tournament at his house a drive south east of Seattle on Saturday, August 28, starting at 2:00PM If you are in the area and read this blog - send me an email at redbeard dot seattle on gmail. Here's the text used in the invite: You are invited to the 2nd Annual Old school RPG/BBQ summer party! I will be providing a 1/4 barrel of micro-beer, polish dogs, chips, and some soda. We will be looking to get enough players together to play 1e AD&D , with 2 DMs, and playing a tournament style game of the TSR module A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity. Pre-gen characters will be provided. All you need to bring is your dice, imagination, and anything different or additional you want to eat or drink. While I prefer sandbox campaigns to tournament modules, I dig getting inspired by seeing how other folks play and DM. Plus it should be an opportunity for a bit of a blow out, gaming wise. Odd things happen when game for over five hours, odd, fun things...

There have been a number of blog posts lately on universal mechanics. If I may, I'd like to present some guidelines to follow BEFORE you tell your players to roll. Now, I'm a fan of universal mechanics and feel they're one thing from latter permutations of DnD to import into old school play. However, a universal mechanic has some pitfalls. I say this as a DM that has played those latter permutations and is now running a game that harkens back to old school ways. I try to challenge the players, not just the characters. As a DM, I like the convenience and freedom of deciding how difficult a task is and having a framework to place that in. The essential elements of the framework are a scale of difficulties (including opposed checks) and measurement of character ability. During play this means that I can concentrate on creating, listening and adjudicating without pausing the game to look up a rule. The players also don't need to be confused unduly and have some expec...