What are the basic principles for good play receipts 🤔

Both sides of this debate seems weird, one side making the definition quite wide, the other quite narrow. And there are plenty examples of Gyxian mythic dungeons and naturalist dungeons. Even dungeons that are a blend. It seems entirely a preference based choice instead of some philosophical based one.

So the multiple attacks is only for Fighting Men, not for Cleric and MU ? And it means a fighter can multiple attack any monsters below 4HD, right ?

Great point about the DMG. It has a lot of rules variants and add ons and tables that nobody ever ever talks about (maybe because no one bothered to read it!) . Also this channel’s intro music is 🔥

The "clerics cannot use swords" trope probably dates back to the medieval Holy Roman Empire. Therein, when they went to war, Prince bishops - who being clergy were not really supposed to engage in much violence to begin with - tended to symbolically use non-bladed weapons as their war time badges of office. As opposed to a lay Prince who was most likely to use a sword - a strictly war focused item, and an expensive one at that (clergy made vows of poverty so flaunting their wealth was in bad tone even though a Prince bishop would have been very rich pretty much by default). So clerical lords gravitated towards ornate maces as their side arms of choice. . Clarification: a "Prince" in the Holy Roman Empire is basically any landed individual who had no lord above him, besides the Emperor himself. So both the King of Bohemia and the Bishop of Meinz were Princes of the Empire, even though the former was much more important than the latter.

Common idea, but probably not correct. The D&D draft that was released a few years ago lays out exactly how Chainmail was supposed to fit into D&D during development: * Men vs. Men (small numbers): Use the man-to-man tables. * Men vs. Men (large numbers): Use the mass combat tables at a ratio of 1:20. * Men vs. Fantasy Figures: use the mass combat tables, but men only score 1 hit point when they hit, while fantasy figures score 1-6 hit points when they hit. * Fantasy vs. Fantasy: Use the alternative combat tables. "Fighting Capability" of any number of "men" counts as "men," above, while Hero, Superhero, and Wizard count as "fantasy." And, of course, Hero counts as four men and Superhero as eight men, light, heavy, or armored as appropriate for the equipment and fighting style of the character. Wizard counts as two armored foot. You don't use Fighting Capability in the alternative combat tables AT ALL - it's only for fantasy vs. fantasy, and relative levels have already been taken into consideration. The vestiges of this breakdown remains in the published D&D rules, though much condensed, under "Land Combat" in volume 3. The language becomes vague and wishy-washy, not recommending which system to use in which situation except that of large numbers of figures using the 20:1 (mass combat) rules, mentioning that fantastic types use those same rules at a 1:1 ratio instead. (That is, it covers the "Men vs. Men (large numbers)" and "Men vs. Fantasy" categories from the draft.)

Thanks for the video Jon!🤘🥰🤘

On the encumbrance section I think its good if everyone involved is willing to do the bookkeeping. It could be cool to have to ditch your armor one session in a cave, and then maybe much later you play as an exile and you go back to that spot to recover it, all dusty and worn. Or play another character and find it as loot in an ambiguously described cave and realize its the same armor like 25 years later on a new character, and enjoy the reference. Not something you'd encounter organically without encumbrance, but also not something you'd experience without having the proper notes of where things have been left behind.

I was wondering why you valued play reports. While I'm figuring XP awards for a session I make a very short, comma separated list of everything the PCs did that is worth Gold or XP. That wouldn't pass muster as a play report but it's enough of a reminder for me to recall the session.

Lot of neat discussion here! I do kind of agree with Mike Shea's concept of "you can play 'D&D' without playing WOTC 5e - there are (often many) alternate versions of every edition now and many different twists on them as well, but you're right it's good to specify the particular game we're playing - I would want to know in order to have the same experience again in the future that we were playing Swords and Wizardry or ACKS or whatever, rather than just "basically D&D". I think a lot of modern houserulers are like a lot of modern writers (and artists in general). At first there were people who developed the rules. Then there were people who mastered the rules so thoroughly that they knew how and when and where and WHY to break them to good effect. In D&D's case particularly, I'd argue these groups are largely overlapping. However what we've seen develop in modern art and recent DMing trends, in my opinion, is this idea that oh, people before bent or broke the rules and it was good, so the rules don't matter, or at least aren't very important. And then you get a bunch of people breaking the rules in every conceivable different way, but largely just because they felt like it. Without understanding the rule, without thinking carefully about their aim in breaking it, without really taking the time to compehend the game on a deeper level. Many of the early players were exceptionally well read in both history and fiction - sort of mirroring what you said about the Prussian generals and free kriegsspiel, but we end up with a lot of discordant noise or simplistic slop when everyone just does their own thing on a whim. On the topic of theorycrafting - I think doing the crazy in-depth absolute optimization stuff, especially if breaking the game is your goal is genuinely terrible. If I'm playing 3.5 or 5e I will tend to glance over some of the class handbooks available, moreso just looking to see "hey are there any options that sound really cool but for a particular reason I haven't really considered aren't going to do what I want because of rules interactions or stuff like that". More avoiding "trap" options I guess than fine tuning every little aspect to make the most beastly character *OF ALL TIME*. I think worldbuilding can offer some utility in various ways, I know a friend who's built out this little province of land consistently since B/X days and now basically knows it like the back of his hand and can run adventures in it anywhere at the drop of a hat, which is definitely something I envy, though as you note it's through getting it to table that you gain most of that utility. But even if you take a while building a world while playing other stuff and then have a cool world that you know intimately and can run stuff in really easily, I think that can be good. There definitely are people though who just don't seem to care about ever bringing it to table.

Re: your section on 0e stat generation and Story gamers around the 19:30 mark - I have noticed that a fair number of players who cry out the hardest about the story being all important, are the ones who also protest the most when narrative conflicts and interesting events happen to their characters in a way they don't like. Apparently it's only a good story if they get to be a mary-sue. 🤦‍♂

Check out Curmudgeon in the celler #329 36:30 timestamp

How OD&D handles ability scores is what convinced me to embrace the OSR, back when I first read Philotomy's OD&D musings back in 2007. I can have the excitement and emergent fun of rolling ability scores and not have to worry about players feeling mechanically gimped or cheated? Sign me up!

If there's no place for your players to sell captured enemies at, you're not playing 0e

For AD&D (1E) I made Read Magic work like an ability score check (roll under Int.) I would also give Read Magic to the Magic-User in the spell book at character creation.

When I was a kid, I thought it was pretty funny how all the adults would broadly refer to any video game activity as "playing nintendo/nintendos".

Here's another one that's easy to miss, straight from the author's mouth: Melniboné = "mel NIB oh nay" And don't feel bad. Moorcock's chock full of names from Gaelic lore and other influences that I doubt anyone but he knows how they're all supposed to be pronounced. Like his million alterations of "Jerry Cornelius" thruout the books. He's the main reason I believe that every author should include a guide in each book, tho given the most obvious examples, Tolkien and Robert Jordan, it doesn't seem to matter, since even hard core fans seem to ignore the "official" pronunciations. (Did you know it's actually "Gan-dalv" not "-dalf"? That's what it says in the appendix.) Butchering "Zelazny," however, was inexcusable. 😉 (also, "progenitor" became "progenerator"?) Great work tho. Don't sweat the little stuff. You're absolutely right about the game being misunderstood, even by many of us old schoolers, and especially by the new players, who have a tendency as all young people do, of thinking they know everything before they've even begun to learn anything.

2-16 is 2d8, could be also d10 + d6, actually. But it's more logical to be the same kind of dice :)

Seriously, pulling in the flavors of the elder church traditions is a big win for ancient/medieval vibes. With a good grounding in ancient myths of the Levant and Persia, and in Islam the other side of the medieval vibe could be created. That sort of game setting would probably benefit from coasts, grasslands, desert and mountains, with forests de-emphasized, appearing primarily in hills, with almost no deep woods or jungle. I'm personally not interested in simulating conflict between different monotheisms, so having both in the same game might be a little much, but parallel flavors are cool.

Products like these definitely take time, it's a one man team so the only way to make it better is to put down the money and pray it becomes better every year!

Perhaps just using roll to cast on the first 3 times the spell is used by that character to reflect some insecurities or the inexperience.

As a former World Weaver, it's probably the most disappointing waste of time one could ever do.

John, question. I was looking at XP awards, and it mentioned dividing XP by PC level, then multiply by dungeon/monster level. My question is, if its a party, do you divide by the PC with highest level? Abd then, multiple by the highest between Dungeon and HD? Sorry for all the questions lately. Im just not used to these type of mechanics, and thanks for all the help

Roll to cast is a good way to help the fighter keep up with the wizard as they level it also keeps magic more sword & sorcery like magic should be hard to control and have consequence to casting

Oooooi

Thanks for the video doggie. Great as always.

Remeber that there is no roll to cast fireball or lightning. I do no believe that 0D&D was intended to inherit spell complexity but the turn undead table inherited from this. I love rill to cast in Chsinmail encounters personslly. It simulates interruots and thr like.

There's a lot to think about here. I appreciate the attitude you bring to the hobby. There's obviously a bunch of ways to approach things, so I appreciate your focus on the RAW. Let's be focused on the games and how they can provide fun to us and the tables we play with.

I've never understood the "strength make good to hit!" and "armor make it harder to hit!" idiocy...or the intense need to make "new" games that are just...DnD for the thousandth time. I get it, its ubiquitous, but can we please not gloss over the fact that it's the same thing over and over? Maybe a little bit of difference? Some real innovation, instead of the same thing since the 1970s?

Great video.

I wouldn't use _roll-to-cast_ for the reasons you don't.

I recently bought Wight Box, and my son and I have been playing through random terrain and a randomly developed Appendix A dungeon. I've spent the last half a year or so figuring out Chainmail and I just wanted to let you know that channels like yours and Jon Mollison's have been fantastic in this regard!

I have been considering adding a roll to cast, and forgotten about cleric spells not being included. I was a kid when playing those early versions and I think the idea is that devine spells by nature of origin are given. With that context I would exclude the warlock class from arcane casters needing to roll.

I started in '81 and 2-16 was always 2d8. On casting: While I think that overly procedural games can be fun sometimes (such as Rolemaster, aka "roll-master"), overall I think it's a choice between rolling to cast and allowing saving throws. Both can be a bit much, especially as you say within the context of limited spell slots. I tend to like roll to cast better nowadays, ala Shadowdark, because you're less likely to use spells for quotidian tasks (you never know when they'll implode on you). It makes magic feel more unruly and dangerous. The classic system is fine too if a little dry. In AD&D we always had PC MUs start with Read Magic, Detect Magic and 2 other spells of the DM's choosing. I like the idea in OD&D (with its very limited spell lists) that each level of spell has a book, and you have to find a copy to have that level's spells. Like, you start with the "Blue Grimoire" of 1st level spells; the Book of Red Magic is 3rd level spells, the Dreaded Necronomicon contains 5th level spells or whatever. I've come to prefer that over the Greyhawk/AD&D system of rolling % dice for every spell of every level to see if you can learn it. Not because it shouldn't be that way (it's magic so it can be whatever you say it is), but because it's hard to keep track of and not very much fun.

04:18 Personally, I'd have suggested using 2d8 rather than 1d10+1d6 to give a 2-16 range, as d10 is not a platonic solid and wasn't used in games prior to around 1980 (yes, I know that you could roll 0-9 just by ignoring the leading digit on a d20 roll, or having 2x 0-9 colours).

Everyone knows it's not real D&D unless you are using Chainmail and Outdoor Survival! 😜

In Chainmail, I had understood Roll-to-Cast as being how 'Wizards' cast spells vs troops of Normal Men, as the Heroes/Superheroes are given a chance to make a "save". How des 0e handle spells cast vs units? Do you roll a bunch of saves for the troops? Is it handed by the Fantasy Combat table? But I agree, Clerics probably wouldn't need it as their spells are more support focused.

I used roll to cast. I thought it was fine. Would do it again.

Sir I accidentally bought Beneath the Sunken Catacombs Osr(0e) game (I thought it was an adventure) . It's brilliant. Alot of great suggestions and varients in it. And I have looked and there are no videos in English.

I will check it out! Thanks!

Great video as always. Also...The thumbnail using The Wizard with 18 STR! Classic!

So, if im understanding correctly, with regards to the troll: It can, either, attack 3HD or lower targets 6 times at +3 or attack a target of any HD once at + 6?