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    I was never a big fan of Oriental Adventures, mostly since I run an eurocentric style of game, so I had decided not to use that book.  Then yesterday one of the guys playing asked me if we were going to use OA since he was interested in playing a gnome samurai.  A gnome samurai?  How could I say no to something like that, so now OA is on the table.  I need to read the Best Of again before I decide if I am going to use that or not.  I know I want to use some of it, the original Anti-paladin was downright scary.   We are defintiely using Unearthed Arcana and the 2 survival guides.

    I finally settled in on a group of old school modules that we will be adventuring through, with me adding in my own little bits and pieces as needed.  We shall start with the Village of Hommlet, which actually needs a lot of prep work on my part, but it will be worth it.  We will then slide on over to the Temple of Elemental Evil.  Then we will go to the Against the Giants series and delve right into the Descent and the rest of the drow series.  Once we come out of that, the players will make their way over to the Tomb of Horrors.  I figure that is a pretty good sample of some of the best gaming mods TSR ever put out.  I already figured out how to link the end of the Temple of Elemental Evil in with the Giants and drow series.  I still need to figure out how to link the end of the drow series with Tomb of Horrors.  After all this, if the players want to continue, I have maps of a huge underground complex that I will have to flesh out and then run for them.  It's just a set of maps, no history or anything else.  I found them in a packet of maps I bought years ago from a 3rd party publisher- Wyrm Works. 

     A really cool thing was that we found some of the old school marigold colored character sheets, and I also found references to some of the other old school sheets that I will have to use.  I still have my original DM screen, so that is taken care of.  The other big question is whether to use the old plastic dice or get the gamescience dice that have the really sharp edges.  I still have my old lead mini's- yes they are lead - and a goodly supply of other mini's so that should be good.  I think I will have to buy a new megamat, though, since I only have hex and will want to stay with square.  Or I could go the way we used to play and just do it all with the theatre of the mind.  (Which was just a topic of another blog for D&D Next.)community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2012/... 

    In order to keep our significant others happy, we shall only be playing twice a month on Sunday evenings.  In a basement.  Okay, a finished basement and a really nice one since it is not all damp and spooky, but it is still a basement.  I'll put up some of the old fantasy posters I still have to help with the atmosphere.  


    On a side note, one of the players found this and posted it for us to watch.  It's a 60 minutes expose on Dungeons and Dragons from 1985.   Laughing Squid just recently posted this on their website, and that is where I am pointing people to go.   It's pretty wild and at the height of D&D fear from parents, schools, religious organizations, etc....  I'd also post the Chik track, but that always seems to cause issues, so I won't do that here.  So here is the expose and it is 26 miutes long:  laughingsquid.com/dungeons-dragons-on-60... 

      

    One of my friends has been talking to me for the past 6 months or so about playing an old school, 1st edition, AD&D campaign.  I really jumped at the chance to play in this, since I figured it would be a lot of fun, but a few weeks ago it finally dawned on me that there is no one who is willing to actually act as the DM so I decided to step up and take on that task.  It has been about 1.5 years since I have run or played in any game that wasn't a MMO. (My 4e campaign came to an abrupt end a few months after my wife and I moved and it became apparant that I could no longer keep up my end of the bargin as DM.)  I have also found myself gravitiating towards the old school game and wanting to play in that style once again anyway,  pulling out all the old rules and adventures to read through them again even before my friend planted the hint in my brain- or so he thought-, so I guess this just ends up working out for all. 

  This will be a 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign using the Player’s Handbook, Unearthed Arcana, and perhaps some of the old Dragon magazine articles taken out of the Best of magazine collections.

The game will be comprised of old published adventures along with some new adventure material mixed in.  Requests have come in to play the G series, the D series, the S series, the A series, and perhaps we will also play the T series as a starting point.  I also figured that if we were going to use the old school adventures, we might as well use the Greyhawk world as our adventure background since that is where most of these old adventures are located.  (plus it fits in with our old school theme.) 

The plan is to use a lot of the old rules that we ignored in the past when we were kids like the hireling and henchmen rules, encumbrance, weapon speed, spell components, etc…  along with things like castle building and attracting followers at higher levels.  We are going to attempt to stay as close to the original rules as possible and play the game as intended.  (Though we have already run into an issue with PC creation and the rules in trying to figure out how a half-elf can dual class and become a bard.)  The one house rule so far is that 1st level characters start with max hit points.  I’m sure there will be more added as we go on and I familiarize myself with the rules once again.

For all of us playing, it has been many years since we have played 1st edition.  For some it will be the first time playing D&D in many years, while for others, it shall be a nostalgia trip to go back and play since this was when we remember having the most fun playing the game.  (Or it could be that we are just old and fondly look upon this past time through rose colored glasses.  I guess we will find out.)