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I've thought on what I want out of D&D... D&Dish games.
There's some flavor of 'wild & crazy' that the other systems I favor usually eschew.
It goes all the way back to Arduin. I love Arduin, but I never loved D&D.

Like, I favor BRP and its various permutations. I play in a Magic World game and Mythras is on the cusp of happening... but for whatever reason BRP games always tend to play a bit more 'straight' (serious?) and I'm not sure why. I doubt it's just the dangerous combat.
I really doubt any GURPS game would feel as open to bizarre elements as D&D does. It can do anything, but not casually.

I don't think it's because of classes and levels and 'vancian' magic (the primary elements of D&D I want to escape).
Maybe it's the 'assumed setting' of D&D... that whole buffet of colorful content rather than something more focused... that fuels the gonzo.

DCC gets to it, and it's not entirely D&D... but I haven't experienced any BRP/GURPS game that feels that way.

I don't think it's the inflated HP and survivability... I'm never really all that enthused about combat or worried about dying. GURPS is a chore to whip out a new replacement PC with, but most expressions of BRP aren't.

I'm tempted to say it's the audience these games attracts... but being so popular (comparatively) that's a wide array. It's not like D&D is wild because of the gonzo games that use its system... they use its system, I think, primarily because its popular and most everyone is familiar with it.

I don't get where the flavor I associate with D&D and want out of D&D comes from exactly... otherwise I'd distill it out and inject it into some other system I like better.
 
I've thought on what I want out of D&D... D&Dish games.
There's some flavor of 'wild & crazy' that the other systems I favor usually eschew.
It goes all the way back to Arduin. I love Arduin, but I never loved D&D.

Like, I favor BRP and its various permutations. I play in a Magic World game and Mythras is on the cusp of happening... but for whatever reason BRP games always tend to play a bit more 'straight' (serious?) and I'm not sure why. I doubt it's just the dangerous combat.
I really doubt any GURPS game would feel as open to bizarre elements as D&D does. It can do anything, but not casually.

I don't think it's because of classes and levels and 'vancian' magic (the primary elements of D&D I want to escape).
Maybe it's the 'assumed setting' of D&D... that whole buffet of colorful content rather than something more focused... that fuels the gonzo.

DCC gets to it, and it's not entirely D&D... but I haven't experienced any BRP/GURPS game that feels that way.

I don't think it's the inflated HP and survivability... I'm never really all that enthused about combat or worried about dying. GURPS is a chore to whip out a new replacement PC with, but most expressions of BRP aren't.

I'm tempted to say it's the audience these games attracts... but being so popular (comparatively) that's a wide array. It's not like D&D is wild because of the gonzo games that use its system... they use its system, I think, primarily because its popular and most everyone is familiar with it.

I don't get where the flavor I associate with D&D and want out of D&D comes from exactly... otherwise I'd distill it out and inject it into some other system I like better.
As a latecomer to BRP after years of being rooted in D&D this is something I really struggle to articulate (or fully grok). At first I was tempted to put the difference on the strongly defined archetypes of D&D, but occupations and careers will get you nearly all the way there. Combat is more dangerous in BRP, but then I think about it and all of my favorite bits about D&D combat (low level, TSR era D&D) and it's frequently just as punishing. The bestiary differences aren't necessarily wildly divergent (thinking of Magic World and Mythras here).

All I can think of is the magic systems and the implied setting of D&D (clerics, guilds of thieves and assassins in every city or town, etc.) as being the key . . . And now that I've typed it all out I'm still not convinced that's what makes it go. Hell. I'm not even sure I ever did D&D right; we never really did dungeon crawls, sometimes we'd go multiple sessions without combat, we rarely had a campaign exceed 4th level, and my friend who was the primary GM never used standard critters or magic items. Maybe it's just some weird alchemy of all the things in the big soup of D&D that makes it tick? (I suspect the answer will always prove a bit elusive for me).
 
A Maybe it's just some weird alchemy of all the things in the big soup of D&D that makes it tick? (I suspect the answer will always prove a bit elusive for me).


That's kind of why Old-school games don't work for me. They focus on very different aspects of D&D than the D&D we played. It's strange reading OSR games and realizing most of them are designed with an expectation of design to redirect us to how D&D was written/played by others, but almost never the way my (varied and different groups) played.
 
That's kind of why Old-school games don't work for me. They focus on very different aspects of D&D than the D&D we played. It's strange reading OSR games and realizing most of them are designed with an expectation of design to redirect us to how D&D was written/played by others, but almost never the way my (varied and different groups) played.
Bear in mind we played Menztzer Basic and AD&D 1st ed. All through junior high and high school in the late 80s, early nineties this way. Based on conversations I had (and have had) we were not the norm; most groups seemed to love their modules and dungeons.
 
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That's kind of why Old-school games don't work for me. They focus on very different aspects of D&D than the D&D we played.
I'm sure it's a bit different for each person. I'm certainly NOT trying to get back to the sort of games I played in High School.
When I want D&D it's probably more about what I read into it nowadays... and my experiences with playing some OSR stuff and DCC.

Maybe it's just the way D&D inherently works against my inclination to rationalize things... which BRP and GURPS do not. So D&D force feeds me the sort of wild & crazy I want but can't seem to otherwise justify. Or something.
 
What I have discovered playing through Barrowmaze via the Old School Essentials B/X engine on Roll20 is the exploration angle that I was less into as a teen in the 80s. Maybe it's the dynamic lighting, but there's something about the mystery of what's around the corner of the maze that I haven't experienced elsewhere. (Put another way, it's the combination of the constraints of the dungeon and the sheer possibility of what's around the corner that interests me now.)
 
Welcome to the Pub, peteramthor peteramthor :smile:! You're preaching to a choir, here. I'm also of the opinion that Fantasy Craft is very much "one of the few d20 variants or d20-inspired games that I can stand". And I'm by far not the only one who prefers it to D&D!

Now, I'd add a couple others, like DCC and Beyond the Wall, to this short list...but it's still short compared to all my different games. (And my other answers are pretty much of the OSR variety that goes quite far from D&D to make a game better suited for other stuff:wink:).

I've thought on what I want out of D&D... D&Dish games.
There's some flavor of 'wild & crazy' that the other systems I favor usually eschew.
It goes all the way back to Arduin. I love Arduin, but I never loved D&D.

Like, I favor BRP and its various permutations. I play in a Magic World game and Mythras is on the cusp of happening... but for whatever reason BRP games always tend to play a bit more 'straight' (serious?) and I'm not sure why. I doubt it's just the dangerous combat.
I really doubt any GURPS game would feel as open to bizarre elements as D&D does. It can do anything, but not casually.

I don't think it's because of classes and levels and 'vancian' magic (the primary elements of D&D I want to escape).
Maybe it's the 'assumed setting' of D&D... that whole buffet of colorful content rather than something more focused... that fuels the gonzo.

DCC gets to it, and it's not entirely D&D... but I haven't experienced any BRP/GURPS game that feels that way.

I don't think it's the inflated HP and survivability... I'm never really all that enthused about combat or worried about dying. GURPS is a chore to whip out a new replacement PC with, but most expressions of BRP aren't.

I'm tempted to say it's the audience these games attracts... but being so popular (comparatively) that's a wide array. It's not like D&D is wild because of the gonzo games that use its system... they use its system, I think, primarily because its popular and most everyone is familiar with it.

I don't get where the flavor I associate with D&D and want out of D&D comes from exactly... otherwise I'd distill it out and inject it into some other system I like better.
As a latecomer to BRP after years of being rooted in D&D this is something I really struggle to articulate (or fully grok). At first I was tempted to put the difference on the strongly defined archetypes of D&D, but occupations and careers will get you nearly all the way there. Combat is more dangerous in BRP, but then I think about it and all of my favorite bits about D&D combat (low level, TSR era D&D) and it's frequently just as punishing. The bestiary differences aren't necessarily wildly divergent (thinking of Magic World and Mythras here).

All I can think of is the magic systems and the implied setting of D&D (clerics, guilds of thieves and assassins in every city or town, etc.) as being the key . . . And now that I've typed it all out I'm still not convinced that's what makes it go. Hell. I'm not even sure I ever did D&D right; we never really did dungeon crawls, sometimes we'd go multiple sessions without combat, we rarely had a campaign exceed 4th level, and my friend who was the primary GM never used standard critters or magic items. Maybe it's just some weird alchemy of all the things in the big soup of D&D that makes it tick? (I suspect the answer will always prove a bit elusive for me).
You guys are trying to tell me that there's something about (TSR-era/OSR) D&D you can't get with d100 systems:shock:?
Please, do open a thread! But just as a question before that, has either of you played Barbarians of Lemuria?
 
I've looked at True20 as something that could be hacked into a pretty good version of D&D.

(Although any version of d20 I run these days would use 13th Age's movement and positioning rules).
 
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Welcome to the Pub, peteramthor peteramthor :smile:! You're preaching to a choir, here. I'm also of the opinion that Fantasy Craft is very much "one of the few d20 variants or d20-inspired games that I can stand". And I'm by far not the only one who prefers it to D&D!

Now, I'd add a couple others, like DCC and Beyond the Wall, to this short list...but it's still short compared to all my different games. (And my other answers are pretty much of the OSR variety that goes quite far from D&D to make a game better suited for other stuff:wink:).

. . .

You guys are trying to tell me that there's something about (TSR-era/OSR) D&D you can't get with d100 systems:shock:?
Please, do open a thread! But just as a question before that, has either of you played Barbarians of Lemuria?
It's just a tonal thing I suppose. For instance, I'm running a Magic World (i.e. Elric!/Stormbringer) game using the B/X D&D-based Dolmenwood setting. Now granted I've made some fairly significant changes to some of the underlying setting assumptions to fit my own whims and to mold it to some BRP-based conceits, but there is now something about it that is distinctly not-D&D. If I was running Dolmenwood using Old-School Essentials, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess or AD&D it would just play differently (not "better" or "worse"). Lest you think I'm running some low-magic, gritty, dark-fantasy game (well I am a little bit) players have made a brief foray into Otherworld, accumulated at least 2 significant curses, foiled a virginal sacrifice by nefarious Drune, liberated a town from over-zealous witchfinders, have been mutated by the waters of a strange pool, burned down a wealthy artist's manse, explored a haunted keep, been chased by wraiths, and are (ostensibly) trying to free the spirit of a famous knight, whose skull was dipped in bronze and forged into the head of a mace. But nary a fireball to be found. No magic missiles. No holy warriors bearing holy symbols against the undead. Just not D&D (and that's fine).
 
It's just a tonal thing I suppose. For instance, I'm running a Magic World (i.e. Elric!/Stormbringer) game using the B/X D&D-based Dolmenwood setting. Now granted I've made some fairly significant changes to some of the underlying setting assumptions to fit my own whims and to mold it to some BRP-based conceits, but there is now something about it that is distinctly not-D&D. If I was running Dolmenwood using Old-School Essentials, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess or AD&D it would just play differently (not "better" or "worse"). Lest you think I'm running some low-magic, gritty, dark-fantasy game (well I am a little bit) players have made a brief foray into Otherworld, accumulated at least 2 significant curses, foiled a virginal sacrifice by nefarious Drune, liberated a town from over-zealous witchfinders, have been mutated by the waters of a strange pool, burned down a wealthy artist's manse, explored a haunted keep, been chased by wraiths, and are (ostensibly) trying to free the spirit of a famous knight, whose skull was dipped in bronze and forged into the head of a mace. But nary a fireball to be found. No magic missiles. No holy warriors bearing holy symbols against the undead. Just not D&D (and that's fine).
Yeah...and then the question: have you tried BoL:smile:?

Again, maybe we should open another thread, something like "the distinct flavour od D&D".
 
Yeah...and then the question: have you tried BoL:smile:?

Again, maybe we should open another thread, something like "the distinct flavour od D&D".
I own the PDF of the first iteration of BoL, but I've never played it. It seems fine, but I honestly can't remember it well enough to get why you ask?
 
I haven't run Barbarians of Lemuria because I usually prefer more crunchy systems - but in these days when the necessity of being online slows everything down, I've been thinking about giving it another look myself.
 
Blue Rose 1E.

Admittedly mostly because that's the one I actually know how to run. :tongue: But it's genuinely a pretty good game for traipsing through underground ruins and getting ambushed by giant spiders.
 
Blue Rose 1E.

Admittedly mostly because that's the one I actually know how to run. :tongue: But it's genuinely a pretty good game for traipsing through underground ruins and getting ambushed by giant spiders.
That's basically just True 20 isn't it?
 
I've thought on what I want out of D&D... D&Dish games.
There's some flavor of 'wild & crazy' that the other systems I favor usually eschew.
It goes all the way back to Arduin. I love Arduin, but I never loved D&D.

Like, I favor BRP and its various permutations. I play in a Magic World game and Mythras is on the cusp of happening... but for whatever reason BRP games always tend to play a bit more 'straight' (serious?) and I'm not sure why. I doubt it's just the dangerous combat.
I really doubt any GURPS game would feel as open to bizarre elements as D&D does. It can do anything, but not casually.

I don't think it's because of classes and levels and 'vancian' magic (the primary elements of D&D I want to escape).
Maybe it's the 'assumed setting' of D&D... that whole buffet of colorful content rather than something more focused... that fuels the gonzo.

DCC gets to it, and it's not entirely D&D... but I haven't experienced any BRP/GURPS game that feels that way.

I don't think it's the inflated HP and survivability... I'm never really all that enthused about combat or worried about dying. GURPS is a chore to whip out a new replacement PC with, but most expressions of BRP aren't.

I'm tempted to say it's the audience these games attracts... but being so popular (comparatively) that's a wide array. It's not like D&D is wild because of the gonzo games that use its system... they use its system, I think, primarily because its popular and most everyone is familiar with it.

I don't get where the flavor I associate with D&D and want out of D&D comes from exactly... otherwise I'd distill it out and inject it into some other system I like better.
I do get where you are coming from here.
The closest I did with BRP to try and grab that essence was run Magic World in an inferred gonzo dark ages fantasy setting inspired by DCC and Appendix N.
It turned out quite well, very Fritz Leiber meets Moorcock flavour. It landed in the ballpark of where I was wanting to hit.

I think Magic World would also work well in Dolemwood (as Nick J Nick J has already indicated), and it could easily be retrapped for The Witcher as well.
But I was pretty happy with how it went in my Leiber/Moorcock sandbox style setting.

However if you are seeking further, then I recommend you try Low Fantasy Gaming (Deluxe Edition).
It really ticks alot of the boxes you are after, and runs more cleanly than OD&D, yet retains alot of the early classic low-fantasy vibe.
Now you'll probably remember that I am likely just as big as BRP fan as yourself, yet I'm recommending this D20 game as a solution, so you know that this must be a weighty recommendation in the first place.

I reckon give it a go and see how it rolls
You never know where that mojo will come from


Just an idea :thumbsup:
 
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For me it's a toss-up between 3 systems:

  • Castles & Crusades: I like it because there are plenty of class choices, but only casters get spells and also because it reduces most tests down to a variant of the attribute system.
  • Delving Deeper: Extremely simple version of D&D with minimal classes but everything you needed to run a quick game.
  • Old School Essentials: If I'm looking for a faithful translation of basic d&d but vastly easier to reference and with beautiful layout and increased clarity, I reach for OSE.
 
I've been wanting to get a hardcopy of this for a while, that book is just too damn pretty. I'd enjoy hearing your experiences with the system and setting.

It’s great as long as you know what you are getting into. Very much a death metal version of D&D with a more streamlined system ala Black Hack.

There are plenty of good podcasts around into Red Moon Roleplaying that ran the adventure from the book, being the one I ran also.
 
I used to reach for Holmes Basic, but that ran out at level 3 so I had to write a quick expansion.
 
It’s great as long as you know what you are getting into. Very much a death metal version of D&D with a more streamlined system ala Black Hack.

There are plenty of good podcasts around into Red Moon Roleplaying that ran the adventure from the book, being the one I ran also.

Got to admit the artpunk label put me off, always sounds pretentious to me.
 
It’s only pretentious if it isn’t close to being true. If any RPG can justify that label, Mork Borg is it.
 
It’s only pretentious if it isn’t close to being true. If any RPG can justify that label, Mork Borg is it.
Fair enough, can't say it appeals to me (I got my fill of games claiming to be "extreme" or
"metal" with LOTFP), but each to their own :smile:
 
Fair enough, can't say it appeals to me (I got my fill of games claiming to be "extreme" or
"metal" with LOTFP), but each to their own :smile:
I'm not sure a game can be metal. Metal these days is so factionalised that hi gs that are fairly similar are consided totally different.

The 80s was.much easier for genre. Theres was metal, there was glam, there was rock and thrash. That's about it.
 
For this, Dungeon World or Black Hack. Or my Black Hack mod that incorporates DW usage (I don’t like the usage die mechanism in BH). I like to keep it fast and simple.
 
That's kind of why Old-school games don't work for me. They focus on very different aspects of D&D than the D&D we played. It's strange reading OSR games and realizing most of them are designed with an expectation of design to redirect us to how D&D was written/played by others, but almost never the way my (varied and different groups) played.
I see most of the OSR as an attempt to create a mythological RPG past rather than actually recreating older playing styles. Apart from anything else, very few of us would actually want to be in the same campaign as when we were 13.

It's why I find the stuff where people take D&D as a base and use it to do their own thing a lot more interesting than retroclones or archeological attempts to dig up the "true" playing style of Gygax and Arneson.
 
Funnily, I found that Arneson's is one of the only playstyles that actually matches mine, which developed independant of D&D and I don't really care for OSR games overall. So I end up being very interested in Arneson and "RPG archaeology" involving him, but next to no interest in games that try to do "new things" with D&D.

There are exceptions. Mothership is great. As is Morg Bork and Black Sun Deathcrawl.
 
Funnily, I found that Arneson's is one of the only playstyles that actually matches mine, which developed independant of D&D and I don't really care for OSR games overall. So I end up being very interested in Arneson and "RPG archaeology" involving him, but next to no interest in games that try to do "new things" with D&D.

There are exceptions. Mothership is great. As is Morg Bork and Black Sun Deathcrawl.
It's mostly settings for me. Not really interested in D&D style high fantasy, or I'd play D&D. I like stuff like Apes Victorious or Mazes & Monsters.
 
The 80s was.much easier for genre. Theres was metal, there was glam, there was rock and thrash. That's about it.

Death metal too by the late 80s. A number of early doom bands as well but I don't know if it was a named style yet, just some bands that sounded like Sabbath.
 
Death metal too by the late 80s. A number of early doom bands as well but I don't know if it was a named style yet, just some bands that sounded like Sabbath.
Death and Thrash were almost interchangeable back then. And it was ok to listen to Bon Jovi, then Metallica, then Napalm Death and then some Steve Miller.

It's funny how now, people think that what they now call hair metal was hated and reviled in the 80s. When in fact, it was just what was around. And some bands, Motley Crue and Skid Row in particular, that carry the hair label now, were heavy as fuck back in their day.
 
Got to admit the artpunk label put me off, always sounds pretentious to me.
It’s only pretentious if it isn’t close to being true. If any RPG can justify that label, Mork Borg is it.

It is a term borrowed from music, in reference to bands like Wire or The Fall who of course never used the term themselves but were called it, which seems appropriate and the closest thing to a defintion by Patrick Stuart here doesn't strike me as pretentious.
 
Death metal too by the late 80s. A number of early doom bands as well but I don't know if it was a named style yet, just some bands that sounded like Sabbath.


And even grindcore. It's a trip to think that this came out in 1989...



Death and Thrash were almost interchangeable back then. And it was ok to listen to Bon Jovi, then Metallica, then Napalm Death and then some Steve Miller.

It's funny how now, people think that what they now call hair metal was hated and reviled in the 80s. When in fact, it was just what was around. And some bands, Motley Crue and Skid Row in particular, that carry the hair label now, were heavy as fuck back in their day.


Among my friends and I, it was definitely NOT OK to listen to Bon Jovi. If you did, you kept that shit to yourself. Obviously, I'm more mature and secure now. Hell, Hanoi Rocks is one of my favorite bands. But there was definitely a division among the different genres of metal, at least regionally. I first went to high school in Southern CA. We were all about the hardest and fastest stuff. Slayer, Celtic Frost, etc. I then moved to a suburb of Phoenix my sophomore year. The kids there were still listening to Rush and Led Zeppelin. It was like going backwards in time lol.
 
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And even grindcore. It's a trip to think that this came out in 1989...



For me early grind and death metal are the best, before things settled into formula, although that's not to say some great bands (Nasum, Pig Destroyer) didn't come later.

I would consider most of the early grind bands like Napalm, Terrorizer and Repulsion more coming out of crust punk and hardcore rather than metal but I don't draw a hard line between punk and metal (it usually came down to the length of your hair and clothes than anything musical).
 
For me early grind and death metal are the best, before things settled into formula, although that's not to say some great bands (Nasum, Pig Destroyer) didn't come later.

I would consider most of the early grind bands like Napalm, Terrorizer and Repulsion more coming out of crust punk and hardcore rather than metal but I don't draw a hard line between punk and metal (it usually came down to the length of your hair and clothes than anything musical).

This is very true. Metal has a long history of "borrowing" from punk. Both thrash and grind are a direct result. A blue-haired high school classmate back in the day said he hated thrash because it made all of the punk bands "start growing their hair long and playing shitty music" lol.

But when I first moved to AZ, I found myself the only long-haired guy in a group of punks, because I had more in common with them musically than I did with the kids who were still listening to what I considered "old" stuff. A lot of speed metal fans were also listening to stuff like Discharge, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, etc.
 
It is a term borrowed from music, in reference to bands like Wire or The Fall who of course never used the term themselves but were called it, which seems appropriate and the closest thing to a defintion by Patrick Stuart here doesn't strike me as pretentious.
Mark E Smith would have punched you if you'd called him that to his face, after barking unintelligably at you for half an hour.

I would consider most of the early grind bands like Napalm, Terrorizer and Repulsion more coming out of crust punk and hardcore rather than metal but I don't draw a hard line between punk and metal (it usually came down to the length of your hair and clothes than anything musical).

Napalm definitely. Their first ever stuff was on a Crass records compliation.

Lemmy once suggested that punks liked Motorhead because if you closed your eyes they sounded the same.
 
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