Yet another tabletop rpg blog.
21 Apr 2021 - mr. m
I had a bit of an “ah-ha!” moment while reading issue one of Knock! Since I have switched from DMing modern systems, mostly 5e, to B/X and 1e, I have somewhat struggled to convey my reasons for doing so. Of course, I do not need to explain myself to anyone, but when most of your D&D friends play 5e and you still want to run games for them, it is kind of important. Ultimately, I realized my preference for B/X over more codified systems can be described using the OSR mantra “Rulings, Not Rules.” You will hear this ad nauseam within any online OSR community such as r/osr, but Arnold K’s article, “Rulings Not Rules is Insufficient” put it in a way that clicked, and finally allows me to communicate the style of game I run to potential players.
Arnold mentions OSR encounters as having “no easy solution, has many difficult solutions, requires no special tools, and can be solved with common sense (as opposed to system knowledge).” These are all things I include in my adventures, but I never put together how much this style of play goes against the grain of some rulesets. This is of course not to say you cannot run this style of encounter in 5e, it’s just that, in my experience, a different edition resulted in less work for me as the GM and more fun for everyone. On the GM side, you need to meet your players halfway and present encounters that call for practical problem solving.
As Arnold mentions in his article, this also encompasses the rewards you give players. Rewarding players magic items with less than straight-forward use cases, such as a bag of infinite rats as opposed to another +1 weapon, is a great way to encourage creative problem solving
Another massive aspect of what D&D looks like to me is the differences between player and NPC/monster capabilities. Emmy Allen’s article, “Leaving Kansas” explained these differences in a way that provided me ammunition to confidently combat questions from “rules-lawyer” players. If everything the players encounter can be explained by what their characters are familiar with, you lose, in Emmy’s words, The Weird. The Weird is pretty much everything external to the players and the “safe” areas of the world. Essentially, the capabilities of NPCs and monsters should break the rules known to the players; If players can cast magic, then magic itself is not weird. However, monster spells should not look like, or maybe even behave, like the spells listed and available for players. Additionally, if your players can make characters of a certain class or race, those classes and races are no longer a part of The Weird. For a long time, I never liked the idea of players being left in the dark rules-wise like Dave Arneson supposedly did with his Blackmoor campaign, but I can see the benefits now
I believe the philosophies of Rulings Not Rules and The Weird versus The Normal go hand-in-hand with each other and slot very nicely into the framework that is B/X but would require a considerable amount of energy to get my desired effect in a post 1e game. For this reason, I prefer B/X. I am grateful for authors like Arnold and Emmy that are willing to share their experiences and ideas and in such a way that gave me information that I could immediately incorporate into my GM arsenal and use at my next session.
When I introduce my style of game to players, I explain I prefer a limited race and class selection to keep The Weird; I award seemingly useless items to encourage creative problem solving and less time spent scouring character sheets for answers; A monster’s spell-like ability is stronger or has an additional effect than what you’re used to because it didn’t learn magic the same way you did. These all may seem harsh on the surface, but in my experience, they certainly make for a much more exciting, a much more rewarding, and a much more enjoyable game.