24 March 2010
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Births and Deaths
MAR 23, 2010 04:04P.M.
Although the usual terms are “renaissance,” “revolution,” or “movement”
to describe the resurgence in interest in old school RPGs, I think it’s
more properly called a “counter-reformation,” as it’s at least in part an
attempt to “push back” against what are seen as uncongenial
developments in the hobby. Consequently, some of its more vocal
proponents — myself among them — are apt, for rhetorical reasons, to
exaggerate certain aspects of the Old Ways. A good example of this can
be seen in the way that “cheap death” and “expendable characters” are
often emphasized as key elements of old school play, often to the
detriment of the very points we’re trying to make about how RPGs have
changed over the years.
In the old days, the death of a player character was not a rare occurrence,
but it was far more common at the beginning of a character’s career than
later on. That is, low-level characters did in fact die quite easily and
regularly; their mid to high-level counterparts, however, did not die
anymore frequently than most PCs created nowadays. Certainly they
might run afoul of a save or die effect of some sort, but it was rare that a
character stayed dead unless his player had tired of playing him for some
reason.
In remembering our early experiences of gaming, we probably remember
the deaths of many ill-fated low-level characters before we finally hit
upon the character who, through a combination of luck, skill, and
perhaps referee mercy, managed to make it past 3rd level, but do we
actually remember those dead characters? With very exceptions, I can’t
recall the name of almost any of the poor schmucks who were killed by
being turned into a pin cushion by kobolds, level drained by wights,
dissolved by green slime, or just falling into too deep a pit trap — not
unless their death was particularly memorable in some other way. I don’t
expect I’m unique in this regard.
Part of the reason we don’t remember those dead characters is that
because, in old school games, most of them weren’t characters, not really
anyway. Becoming a “real” character was something one earned through
play. Prior to 3rd or 4th level, it was generally unwise to get too attached
to a PC, as he was both mechanically fragile and sufficiently lacking in
the experiences from which a character is made. Characters are only
truly born after they’ve survived a few adventures. The kind of
detachment necessary to undertake this kind of play is made easier with
random generation in my opinion. When you sit down at a table without
any preconceptions about the kind of character you want to play and see
what the dice give you, it’s a lot less traumatic when that character
1
suddenly dies in play than if you provide him with an extensive
background, personality, and goals due to careful thought beforehand.
That’s why I think old schoolers are right to emphasize random character
generation as a cornerstone of our preferred style of play. One can
distance oneself from such characters sufficiently so that the referee can
feel little compunction about letting the dice fall where they may. A
closer bond with one’s character is something that, in my experience,
only grows over time, after the experience of surviving the many things
that resulted in the deaths of previous characters. Then one can go ahead
and start fleshing out the character further, creating a “living” alter ego,
because, despite all the chest thumping and machismo, even mid-level
old school D&D characters are very resilient and, when they do die (or
get level drained or whatever), it’s not that hard to “fix” things if one’s
willing to make the effort.
In short, I sometimes think we exaggerate the deadliness of old school
play, or at least misrepresent the nature of that deadliness.
Simultaneously, I think we sell short the importance of random
character generation as a necessary corollary to conveying the kind of
flavor we prefer. To my mind, the two go hand and hand and I must say,
based on Jeff’s report, that it sounds as if Goodman Games’s DCC RPG
gets at least this aspect of old school play. I find that cheering, honestly,
and I hope it’s something that we collectively might do a better job of
explicating.
ROGUE FEED
No Such Thing as Too Many
MAR 23, 2010 09:17A.M.
The growing awareness of Goodman Games’ upcoming (in 2011)
Dungeon Crawl Classic Roleplaying Game has once again generated the
chorus of “there are too many clones,” etc. that we hear every time
someone decides to produce a new old school fantasy game. My own
position on the matter remains the same, namely:
1. The more old school games that are available, from a variety of
publishers, the less likely it is for any one of them to become the old
school game, either in theory or in practice. Speaking for myself, I prefer
diffusion to centralization, as it’s a good safeguard against repeating the
mistakes of the hobby’s past. Likewise, the more games available, the
more cross-pollination of ideas we’ll see and that too is an unqualified
good in my opinion.
2. However, my position is predicated on the assumption that these
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 24 March 2010

clones are all roughly compatible with one another, sharing similar
mechanical roots, so that cross-pollination is encouraged, if not actually
facilitated. I prefer that new clones make their rules available for free, as
Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, and James Raggi have done
for this very reason, but it’s not essential. At the same time, when a
publisher introduces a proprietary “old school” RPG, my skepticism is
heightened. That’s why I tend to view games like HackMaster and
Castles & Crusades differently than the aforementioned games, even
though I find a lot to like in both of them. I suspect I’ll feel similarly
about the DCC RPG, but it’s too early to tell.

The old school movement is a gloriously chaotic mess of creativity. That

chaos fosters creativity and impedes the centralization of authority in
any one game or publisher — both positive outcomes in my view. So, the
more, the merrier, I say.