I've been trying to think up a game to run in PbP, and it's been surprisingly challenging. I want to run something immersive in a deep world, and I want to subvert player expectations in order to restore the sense of wonder that lies at the heart of a good campaign.
Here's what I'm thinking: I would like to try a game using the old Moldvay basic rules, AKA B/X, from the Basic and Expert boxed sets TSR published them in.
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B/X is an excellent edition of the game. It's rules-lite, and you can read the entire rulebook in an afternoon. Characters don't have many special abilities, and you can fit everything you need to know about one on a single piece of notebook paper. You can create a new character in minutes. The idea is to start the game with your character in an unfinished state and then discover more about them during play, should they be lucky enough to survive (B/X is a famously lethal edition).
And B/X is fast. Simplicity goes a long way towards making a game fun.
But this isn't your standard B/X game. I've made some small but impactful changes to it, inspired by over 30 years of experience running a dozen different systems.
I won't go too into the campaign world here, but it has a good foundation. There are multiple kingdoms and historical epochs to discover, and I dove deep into the concept of alignment as a foundational piece of the world. In this campaign, everything has an alignment. Players, places, countries, magic... it's all bound to it. Your character's alignment isn't their sense of morality so much as a spiritual link to the universe's fundamental forces. It's a world in motion and in conflict. It will be up to you where your characters go in it.
I also won't hesitate to borrow from other sources. There is an extra character class that I take from BECMI basic. There are monsters that I'm going to pull right out of 1st edition AD&D. There are character advancement ideas that I'm going to use from later editions, such as increasing your character's ability scores over time.
And there will be some original material too.
There won't be any dedication to OSR (old-school revival) principals just for the sake of including them. No one is going to be tapping hallway floors with a 10' pole, for instance. There won't be any monsters waiting around in their chambers in some 150 room mega-dungeon.
The idea is to take everyone out of their element a bit. Old-school players will find some of their expectations about old-school games don't hold in this campaign. Newer players who cut their teeth on 3.5 and later will find their ideas of optimized builds won't protect them. Resources will be scarce, and monsters will be dangerous. Characters will be individually weaker than in modern editions, so the party members will have to rely on each other to survive.
There's more to this game than you'll see on the surface, and there is a lot I'm not telling you.
Don't think of this as an old-school game. Look at it as an exploration of something new. Even if all you've played is 5E, even if you were born ten years after these rules went out of print, consider trying this game out.
I'll be looking for 5 - 6 players. Can I find them here?
Here's what I'm thinking: I would like to try a game using the old Moldvay basic rules, AKA B/X, from the Basic and Expert boxed sets TSR published them in.
110274.jpg
B/X is an excellent edition of the game. It's rules-lite, and you can read the entire rulebook in an afternoon. Characters don't have many special abilities, and you can fit everything you need to know about one on a single piece of notebook paper. You can create a new character in minutes. The idea is to start the game with your character in an unfinished state and then discover more about them during play, should they be lucky enough to survive (B/X is a famously lethal edition).
And B/X is fast. Simplicity goes a long way towards making a game fun.
But this isn't your standard B/X game. I've made some small but impactful changes to it, inspired by over 30 years of experience running a dozen different systems.
I won't go too into the campaign world here, but it has a good foundation. There are multiple kingdoms and historical epochs to discover, and I dove deep into the concept of alignment as a foundational piece of the world. In this campaign, everything has an alignment. Players, places, countries, magic... it's all bound to it. Your character's alignment isn't their sense of morality so much as a spiritual link to the universe's fundamental forces. It's a world in motion and in conflict. It will be up to you where your characters go in it.
I also won't hesitate to borrow from other sources. There is an extra character class that I take from BECMI basic. There are monsters that I'm going to pull right out of 1st edition AD&D. There are character advancement ideas that I'm going to use from later editions, such as increasing your character's ability scores over time.
And there will be some original material too.
There won't be any dedication to OSR (old-school revival) principals just for the sake of including them. No one is going to be tapping hallway floors with a 10' pole, for instance. There won't be any monsters waiting around in their chambers in some 150 room mega-dungeon.
The idea is to take everyone out of their element a bit. Old-school players will find some of their expectations about old-school games don't hold in this campaign. Newer players who cut their teeth on 3.5 and later will find their ideas of optimized builds won't protect them. Resources will be scarce, and monsters will be dangerous. Characters will be individually weaker than in modern editions, so the party members will have to rely on each other to survive.
There's more to this game than you'll see on the surface, and there is a lot I'm not telling you.
Don't think of this as an old-school game. Look at it as an exploration of something new. Even if all you've played is 5E, even if you were born ten years after these rules went out of print, consider trying this game out.
I'll be looking for 5 - 6 players. Can I find them here?
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