Straight Out of the Box!

One of the hallmarks of old school gaming, at least as its talked about on the net, revolves around the notion of DIY, or Do It Yourself. The DIY attitude might be summed up by saying that the Referee is best served when he makes up his own stuff for his campaign, including the rules used to run it. The old school, DIY attitude insists that the Referee does not need a canned game spoon fed to him, but should instead embrace the imaginative aspect of the game and make it all up as he goes along, or at least fill in the parts that are missing with his own ideas, rules, content, and so on. I am sure some might take exception to my admittedly limited and/or poorly written definition here, but I am not interested in dwelling on this too much as it is not the thrust of this essay.

However much I appreciate and even practice this DIY attitude myself (and I do very much), there is a fundamental flaw in this outlook as it pertains to new players entering into the hobby and what the definition of old school might actually be. Now to be perfectly clear, I'm not talking about the best ways of bringing new players into the hobby, any sort of felt need to evangelize for new players, or any movement to "preserve the hobby for the next generation."

Rather, I am simply speaking about the casual gamer, or maybe a better term would be the "contented" gamer. I would define the casual RPG gamer as someone that likes to play, or even Referee, The Game, but isn't all that interested in tweaking the rules to make a "better" game, or even a game that is "better for themselves and those they game with." This hypothetical gamer enjoys playing the game "straight out of the box," and is more interested in playing the game than playing with the game, if you take my meaning. This does not mean that the casual gamer lacks imagination, certainly not; to wit, the casual gamer may be very much interested in creating his own campaign world, monsters, dungeons, spells, character classes, treasures, and so on. In other words, the casual gamer does not necessarily have to be spoon fed content for their campaign, they simply work within the bounds of whatever system they have decided upon because they are content that the system serves their needs.

Certainly there are casual gamers who prefer to use campaign settings, supplements, adventures, etc., written by others (whether by professionals or hobbyists) for their own gaming sessions. Someone who has a very busy life may well enjoy playing the game, but not have the time necessary to devote to building their own campaign. But this does not mean that they are limited in imagination or enthusiasm either, as should be patently obvious.

This is where the DIY attitude fails as part of the definition of what makes old school... old school. Someone who is playing an old school campaign (with whatever tropes one believes must be included to be "old school"), using an old school rules set (lets say OD&D plus Supplements for the sake of argument, doesn't get much more old school than that!), and who is playing in an old school manner or style (however we want to define that), should rightly be said to be an "old school" gamer, regardless of whether they make up their own rules, tweak existing ones, spend hours every week making their own dungeons or campaigns, and so on.

The DIY attitude often insists that "making up your own stuff" is the way to go, but completely fails to take into account the guy who wants to play something straight out of the box. Some might argue that playing "by the rules" is lame, lacks creativity, indicates a lack of authenticity or enthusiasm for the hobby, and that playing certain games like Moldvay Basic or AD&D is not really old school because those games are "canned" or "dumbed-down for the general audience" or a "straight jacket for the Referee and/or players," and so on. But this is hogwash and is precisely the kind of elitism that makes the hobby unfun at times.

If a gaming group spent 20 years raiding Dungeons, & killing Dragons, and having lots of fun and camaraderie together, but never did more than crack open the Moldvay/Cook Basic set or the AD&D big three (PHB, DMG, and MM), and ran whatever modules they could get their hands on or create in their spare time, would anyone be so jaded  as to insist that this group is not "old school?" If so, then they are schmucks, or worse.

A hobbyist is not a person that constantly seeks to redefine the game, or exerts tremendous amounts of imaginative energy creating  new content for their game. A hobbyist is someone who participates in the hobby out of a love and enthusiasm for it.

In nearly any other hobby, playing a game "within the given rules" would certainly define someone as "part of the hobby" if that person has enthusiasm for the game being played. Someone who loves playing chess is considered a "chess player" and enthusiast, regardless of their level of skill with the game or attendance at chess tournaments. Finding great enjoyment in regularly playing poker or bridge would certainly indicate that a person is part of the card-playing hobby. A board game enthusiast does not need to tweak the rules of the games they play or invent their own board games to be considered part of the hobby. And so on.

And yet, "old school" is often partly defined by a DIY attitude, and there is at times an almost sneering contempt for those who are not interested in that aspect of the hobby. DIY certainly falls within the rubric of "old school," but it is neither synonymous with it, nor even necessary for it.

It is perfectly legitimate and consistent to say that a gamer that loves playing or Refereeing OD&D, or Moldvay Basic, or Call of Cthulhu, or Mutant Future, or AD&D, etc. is "old school," regardless of their penchant for rules tweaking or content creation. The lack of a DIY attitude does not indicate any lack of "old school" fervor or gaming style.

Indeed, it might even be said that playing "straight out of the box" is more fun, since that means more time for actually playing the game and less time for navel gazing. Now of course, folks greatly enjoy tweaking or creating rules and rule sets (I do!), as well as content for their own games or for publication (I do!), and thus that too should rightly be considered part of the "fun." Thus, the whole "navel gazing" bit I just mentioned  above is shown to be what it is, a stereotype that is as useful as yapping about how DIY is one of the true hallmarks of old school gaming, with the implication that non-DIYers are somehow not "old school." See how easy it is to create a meme?

My love and enthusiasm for The Game came straight out of the box, without any extra bells or whistles, and I have not become so jaded about The Game as it was originally presented that I find myself enjoying it only when I deconstruct it or remaster it.

Sometimes I like my gaming the way I like my booze; give it to me straight! How about you?

A love for The Game should be the most basic rubric for what "old school" means, and yet it is often the most overlooked.

Monsters as PCs, or The Paradigm Shift

In the Original Edition, it was not anathema to consider doing something "gonzo" like playing a Balrog or some other monster (I believe there was a vampire character in Arneson's campaign, which brought about the cleric class as a counter-force to undead). However, in the First Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, Gygax (presumably) made the point to frown upon using monsters as player characters, offering various "gaming" and, for want of a better word, psychological reasons why this should not be so.

This got me to thinking about why it was allowed in OD&D, but not in AD&D. Gygax goes to great lengths to explain why a monster as a PC does not work in AD&D, and yet it was an option, subject as always to the whim of the Referee, in OD&D. Reading through the relevant section in the DMG gives one the impression that its all about a humanocentric campaign, and so on.

However, I wonder if there is a more fundamental reason why this notion was looked down upon in the later edition. OD&D, of course, had its roots in Chain Mail and the wargaming background of both Gygax and Arneson. Indeed, all of the LBBs and the Supplements have as their subtitle, "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures."

Now, folks can (and have) argued that OD&D was really a new thing, that it was no longer a wargame, that it was now a ROLE PLAYING game, and so on. That all well and good, but is not the main point here. Lets suffice to say that OD&D grew out of wargaming, and that even if it shouldn't be considered a wargame in the "true" sense of that term, it was in fact heavily influenced by wargaming and shows a great amount of similarity to them in many ways.

One of the (many) criticisms of AD&D is that it grew away from its roots. Now that is not to necessarily say that this criticism laments that AD&D grew away from its wargaming roots (although this is one such criticism); usually such criticisms revolve around the game becoming too complex, too rules heavy rather than "rules lite," that the game moved away from its "dungeon" roots, the power curve went way up, the DM became straddled with rules (and rules lawyers) rather than living in that OD&D "sweet spot" some refer to as "rulings, not rules," that the game became more dogmatic about the right way to play in contrast to the "fast and loose" feel of the Original; and so on, ad infinitum.

However, if we harken back to the roots of the game, to wit, the wargame, we may come to a much simpler reason why the monster as PC was no longer acceptable, and it may shine some light on why the paradigm shifted from the Original edition to the next Advanced edition. Namely, it is the fact that the game had shifted from its wargaming roots to "something else," as illustrated by the fact that the player no longer controlled a gaming piece (i.e., a miniature figure), but a character. In other words, the player no longer controlled the pawn on the chessboard, or the shoe on the Monopoly board, but something else, something different, something that was meant to be role played, rather than simply "roll played" and pushed around the game board.

The Balrog, or vampire, or whatever, was much more acceptable to the Original gamer than the Advanced gamer, because the Balrog was closer to being a gaming piece, a token, than he was a character.

On a fantasy wargaming battlefield based on Chain Mail, it might be totally common to see a player field a force of orcs, trolls, and ogres as soldiers, with some special units like a dragon, a manticore, or perhaps a Balrog, all led by an evil wizard, with the opposing team made up of true men, elves, dwarves, hobbits, perhaps with a flight or two of giant eagles or hippogriffs, and backed up by their own powerful wizard or cleric. These units were basically nothing more than metal figures or paper chits assigned variable numbers with which to simulate a combat.

With the LBBs, the battlefield had shrunk from unit action to "man-to-man" action, and had indeed moved off the battlefield and down into the dungeon. The miniature figure no longer represented a unit of men, or a "special unit" that was a cog in the greater war machine, but was instead a hero, an individual piece; a nascent persona. He was now something much more closely tied to the player. No longer was the player constrained to merely overseeing the action, to act as general of his miniature army; he could now be the piece, in an imaginative sense, and live out his fantasy.

This is the much more important paradigm shift between the Original and the Advanced to my mind. The Original game still wasn't sure what it was supposed to be, existing in the older, wargaming paradigm, while at the same time it was becoming, or embracing, the new role playing paradigm. The Advanced game thought it knew what it was (whether it achieved that or not is beside the point), and it certainly was no longer a wargame.

Certainly the Advanced game had most, or at least many, of the trappings of the wargame. There were detailed rules for man-to-man combat, aerial combat, naval battles, hiring non-human troops, advancing to name level and becoming a lord, building a keep or other stronghold, etc. However, the action now was the player, or at least the party, against the world.

Perhaps this is where some dissatisfaction or frustration comes from when high level play is reached. Its been said that at high levels, the game begins to break down, as the characters are simply too powerful, have too many magic items and spells, and the overworked Referee must resort to throwing larger numbers of foes against them. With a +5 to this and a +3 to that, the numbers become so great that dice rolls almost become meaningless, and the winner is often the one who was able to strike first (and thus last!).

High level characters may be the shoals against which many campaigns founder, because they have not moved on to their natural, logical conclusion; namely, the battlefield. When all of the other challenges in the game are no longer challenging, perhaps its the battlefield where higher level characters belong, commanding vast armies and shattering enemy kingdoms. The term campaign itself made a paradigm shift between the wargaming days and the roleplaying phenomena, where a campaign in the former meant war upon the battlefield, and a campaign in the latter meant episodic adventures in the gaming milieu.

Maybe this illumines as to the a reason that most high level campaign fall apart, why most groups prefer to reboot to new or lower level characters rather than advance to the next level, the fantasy wargame. Role players are used to being the individual piece, having an attachment to that character sheet, not wanting it to be nothing more than an "advanced gaming piece," as some have quipped. To assume the role of king, or baron, of lord, to marshal one's forces and set off against the enemy in battle, to rule a kingdom and all that goes with it (even in a fictional game kingdom) moves that persona back onto the game board, at least to some degree, and forces the player to a level of detachment that may not be comfortable.

After all, most of us enjoy adventure gaming, and didn't Conan himself lament his days as king, dealing with the court and the business of ruling and governing, longing instead for the days of high adventure?

“...these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did. I wish I might ride..." said Conan. “It seems ages since I had a horse between my knees. When I overthrew the old dynasty... it was easy enough, though it seemed bitter hard at the time. Looking back now over the wild path I followed, all those days of toil, intrigue, slaughter and tribulation seem like a dream."

“I did not dream far enough... When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless." -Robert E. Howard, The Phoenix on the Sword.

When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat,
The people scattered gold-dust before my horse’s feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.
– The Road of Kings.

If we were to move our high level campaigns from man-to-man scale to wargaming scale, perhaps we'd lose that sense of identity with our characters, that sense of persona, and for want of a better term, that sense of closeness. But maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe we need a little detachment.

This begs the question; does the wargame offer adventure, enough to sate whatever it is we crave when we role play? Might it offer new vistas to a campaign that has become stale, even though it may require us to accept a level of detachment from our "advanced game piece?"

I dare say it might.

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars... Hither came Conan (the adventurer), the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.” – The Nemedian Chronicles.

Let our campaigns become such in the truest sense, the older sense, that we might get over ourselves and let go of that stained, dog-eared "advanced game piece" of paper, realize what the accumulation of riches and minions is for, and grasp that most fleeting of prizes....

                                                                Glory!

Game Theory: Principles for House Ruling

Some abstract thinking about introducing house rules into a game system.

1. Understand the game system as a whole to avoid unintended consequences.

Understanding the rules as written, and how they interact with the rest of the game, can save a lot of time and effort. Why spend time rehashing rules only to find out that the a "fix" or solution to the "problem" doesn't work any better for the system in question? Certainly there is trial and error in any endeavor, but a little contemplation and foresight may save time and prevent frustration.

For example, consider the rules for psionics in First Edition. These rules are often cited as a broken subsystem, and either tossed wholesale from most First Edition games, greatly reworked, or replaced with a new system or one ripped from another edition or game 

However, redoing the psionic rules can lead to other headaches as well. There are a ton of monsters in First Edition that make use of psionic attacks, defenses, points, abilities, and disciplines. If another psionic system is to be used, whether invented out of whole clothe or brought in from game, how does that effect using those monsters effectively at the game table? Psionic abilities can certainly be treated as "spell-like abilities," and I suspect that this is the most popular way to treat them, but what about psionic combat? If a completely new psionics subsystem is used, how are the attacks, defenses, and points given in First Edition interpreted with regards to the new subsystem replacing the old? This might be a lot of work, depending on how compatible the new system is vis-a-vis the RAW. On the other hand, if psionic attacks, defenses, and points are simply dropped, a number of monsters are greatly weakened. This illustrates in a simply way that complexities that can arise when house ruling.

2. Identify the general purpose of the rule or rules so as to reconstruct or replace them in the same spirit.

The unarmed combat rules in First Edition are another oft cited subsystem that are thought to be overly complex, inconsistent, and/or contradictory. To rework or replace them, its helpful to boil down what the point of those rules are; i.e., they offer a means to adjudicate

what happens when a character or monster throws a punch, grabs an opponents, or attempts to knock an opponent down. The Referee can then determine whether to follow this pattern with new or tweaked rules that serve the same purpose, or whether to add to or subtract from the available options. One Referee might desire to add in a means to adjudicate kicks, flying elbows, and head butting, while another Referee may feel that having different ways to strike with a fist, knock an opponent done, or grapple with an opponent, add too much complexity and seek a general rule of thumb that covers all of these.

3. Realize the motive for tweaking, replacing, or dropping a rule.

Why we are interested in altering or replacing the rule in the first place. What is our own goal in changing this or that rule? My own motive for house ruling almost always boils down to facilitating the action at the gaming table, eliminating confusion or discrepancies in the rules, and reducing or removing the paperwork that comes with gaming as much as possible. Others may seek more "granularity" in their rules, some want a greater level of "realism,"  while others want more detail or complexity, and so on.

Once the motive is known, this may present means by which to accomplish the goal. Make a game more "rules-lite" will almost certainly result in a different applied paradigm  than making a game more "realistic."

4. Consider whether other rules or subsystems within the game itself that might meet the desired goal that is being attempted through house ruling.

Rules changes that make use of existing rules, terminology, and formulas can also be a helpful rubric. Why create a new rule when other, existing rules or subsystems that are already familiar to the Referee and the players may suffice? Hit dice, attack dice, saving throws, and rolling against an ability score (strength, intelligence, etc.) are popular examples of existing rules being made to serve double duty to adjudicate situations at the game table that are not already covered by the rules, or in place of existing rules that are thought of as "broken."

5. Allow the rules to succeed or fail as a result of organic play.

This point probably cannot be stressed enough. What works should be determined at the gaming table by play-testing them.The play is the thing! Its doesn't matter whether the Referee and/or players are shooting for "rules-lite" or "more realism/simulation/complexity," what matters is whether the house rules are achieving their desired goal by actually using them. Let game play reveal whether they serve the intended purpose to the satisfaction of the Referee and the players.

Players and Referee alike will have input on how various rules are working out. Be prepared to tweak new house rules, or ditch them altogether, if they are found to be lacking through game play. If play testing reveals that house rules are not serving their intended purpose, its important to be able to let go of a house rule rather than insist on its use. 

Copyright GA Norris 2011

Stand Fast!

Have business at the Keep do ye? Put up your weapons! We hold no truck with vagabonds, bandits, or thieves, but if ye be true men and upright ye may enter.

Oh, you're looking for adventure, eh? Well, there's plenty to be had hereabouts if you're foolhardy enough to go looking for it.

Now then, the stable boy will see ye to the Inn. Watch you're manners, or ye will run afoul o' the Watch!

Welcome to Blog on the Borderlands. Primarily this blog will focus on exploring the First Edition game penned by Gary Gygax, but other early incarnations of The Game will be considered as well (the Original Edition by Gygax & Arneson, and the Basic iterations by Holmes and Moldvay/Cook/Marsh). Gaming products, books, movies, and other material and sources of inspiration for gaming will be considered or reviewed as well. Further, it is hoped that new gaming content will be made available, along with new or variant rules. For the most part, other editions and games will fall outside the scope of this blog.


I enjoy gaming, and hope the emphasis here will be kept on their entertainment value as a hobby. I'm frankly not interested in the state of the gaming "industry," the latest and greatest controversy or source of indigestion amongst the "old school crowd," nor am I interested in evangelizing the next generation to keep the hobby "alive." As far as I know, the game never died to begin with!

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." -H.P. Lovecraft, from The Call of Cthulhu