We're a few sessions into the new Dungeons & Dragons Basic game, and already we're managed to change a few of the club's perceptions about D&D, potentially changing several of our fundamental approaches to gaming across the board. The schedule has changed, and now we're focused on a single, larger scale game than we have before. Our battle games and roleplay games are folding into each other in very pleasant manner.
Some interesting new activities are going to be born of our infatuation with retro-gaming, and I know everyone here at the Wargate is pleased with most of the proposed changes to how we approach our narratives as well. You can check out the current situation on Mystara by visiting the State of Play, to your right. The log will soon be expanded with more detailed character information and some more interesting bits that will be necessary for our players to conquer Mystara.
Incidentally, none of this buzz about D&D has to do with the impending new edition - honestly our club couldn't be bothered to care less, I believe. I spoke to our players about 5th Edition but received a lukewarm response, coupled with "what about all this other great stuff we have that we haven't used yet?" - so naturally we've focused on what we already had. Just this, by my calculations, will keep us gaming well into our retirement homes.
So, lets talk about how we're going to handle certain aspects of this game. The particulars:
- Most Players start with two Player Characters.
- If you lose one PC, you may not make a new character to replace it.
- Lose both characters, and you may make a new one at an XP penalty.
- If you are absent, your PC's are taken over by a member of the party that is present.
- Time no longer stops for any man. Or Dwarf. Or Cleric.
- You gain no XP from missed sessions.
- Your characters are in just as much peril as if you were here.
- A character that is killed while their player is not here will not be interred into the Death Roll.
- The Player retains the total number of earned XP throughout the campaign.
- However, penalties can be levied against your total.
- Each time you generate a new character (because you have perished) a 10% penalty will apply.
- New Players create 1 PC.
- New players use the lowest XP score among active players as their entry level XP.
We have elected to enact some new policies here, but rest assured it's truly in the group's interest. Due to time constraints and the sheer scope of what we have planned, we can no longer allow characters to pop in and out of existence all willy-nilly. For the sake of continuity, it's better to just get them planted.
Whether it's the nostalgic resonance on the part of these ancient game books or it's the sheer freedom we have with how we use them, it's safe to say there's quite a bit of interest in the old warhorse that is D&D. We have some more cool surprises to drop here during the rest of the year, which has henceforth been declared D&D season. Just rest assured, we're going to get a lot more use out of our miniature collection than was previously allowed in certain rulesets.