Campaign Kick-Off

The much-vaunted AD&D campaign kicks-off today, which is fitting, as it is "Worldwide D&D Day" according to maker, Wizards of the Coast. To kick-off the release of Monster Manual 4e, they are giving participants a copy of their pregenerated character sheet and miniature, should they find a participating dealer (who gets to host the event in his store, run the module, and keep it). Well, good luck with that and all, but I'm sitting on literally 25 years' worth of D&D shit, so I feel certain I can cobble a system that works for me and doesn't require several hundred dollars to get started.

A lot of hardcore gamers deride AD&D with (some) good reason(s). After all, RoleMaster is a much better system... if you can figure it out (it really is easier once you get started, but getting to that point literally takes hours - just generating a character is a full session!). Warhammer FRP is a better system and setting - especially if you prefer realism and/or literary "realism" (it's based almost solely on Medieval history, legend, and fairy/folk tales). But the truth is that AD&D is so old, so venerable, and so well-known/-supported that you can either find rules for any style of play or crib them together yourself from any number of play-aids and magazines every erstwhile gamer has picked up over the years. At one point, almost every game on the market was based on the AD&D system or provided conversion rules for it, so no matter the "flavor," style, mood, tone, atmosphere, et.al., you are going for, AD&D can be bent to it... Again, the detractors do have a point, because no matter how much you dress it up, you know when you pick up that d20 that "it's D&D."

That said, I gave-in a couple days ago and decided to set the campaign in Atlantis. I picked up the Bard Games supplement years ago for Bill Sienkiewicz' art (and instantly became a fan of P.D. Breeding-Black's) and even got into it at some point (it's filled with notes in the margins, underlined passages, and maps, etc.), but never actually used it. I'm sure I got on one of my kicks and decided I was going to do something with it and it never panned-out, but the guys were over here all day yesterday, buying equipment and populating spellbooks, so the game's definitely a go this time.

So, as I've been saying, this game is based on a slew of third-party supplements I've had for years and never used - mostly because TSR/WotC covered every aspect of 2^nd-Ed. with Handbook after Handbook, Dragon articles, et.al., meaning your third-party supplements and handcrafted classes and errata were "unofficial." Further, I have most of the 2^nd-Ed. Handbooks (along with at least two milkcrates full of Dragon), so it's interesting, throwing together a bit from this and that and just going with it. Even better, the box with my Monster Manual and Greyhawk books is not here, so I have to use creatures as they are written in these sourcebooks or 1^st-Ed. MM; I probably would have just gone with Greyhawk and the 2^nd-Ed. Monster Manual, had they been here, so I'm glad they aren't.

I'm blogging the routine as it goes, largely because I've never read/seen anyone else cover it. There has to be at least a handful of DMs and players out there with some of this material, yet I have never read or heard anyone talk about using the old Role-Aids supplements or Bard Games' Atlantis setting (The Arcanum rules supporting it use a 3d6 system, but provide copious details on many subjects, including herbs, Alchemy, magic circles, et.al.). Again, most of this stuff was eventually covered within the AD&D system either by the company or Web creators, and I am making full use of those materials as well, but a lot of that stuff is pretty keyed to use in "Official" games and settings - you can use them independently, but they often refer to the Flanaess (Greyhawk) or "across the Realms" (Forgotten Realms), etc., so I'm going to use the stuff in these great supplements and see what we come up with.

More to come...

© C Harris Lynn, 2009