Grim and Perilous Adventures

[dorchadas]

Being watching the D&D Youtuber Mystic Arts lately, lured in by his Icelandic accent and actual production values on his videos, and it got me thinking about actually trying to run D&D again. The only problem is that the way I like my D&D is much more similar to OSR D&D, with relatively lower power scales, less flashy magic, where elves and dwarves are very different and not just the RPG equivalent of Fortnite skins, where the wilderness is wild and untamed, that kind of thing. I've heard people say that modern D&D is like anime (derogatory), with its cat-people and everyone using magic and bards seducing dragons, though to be fare, I've also heard people say modern D&D is like anime (affectionate) for the same reasons. Really, though, it comes back to modern D&D, and modern D&D players, being filtered through the medium of video games instead of pulp fantasy novels. Cloud, instead of Conan.

Alright, I could write multiple blog posts about that but that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to mention that yesterday I learned there's a new edition of a OSR/5e blend game I bought a while ago, originally called Low Fantasy Gaming and now called Tales of Argosa. It's got mostly humans, it has Advantage and Disadvantage, it has the 5e skill list, it has limited hit points, it has dangerous magic, you know, all of those classic points in the well that the OSR goes back to.

But, as my icon above indicates, so does Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.


Points in favor of me running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:

1. I've run a long game of it before (~30 sessions) so I know it can last for longer campaigns
2. I've already come up with a bunch of homebrew rules that I tested in that game so I know they work
3. It already has a world with dangerous magic, elves and dwarves that aren't just exaggerated archetypes of humans, characters who are lower-powered and don't rapidly become superheroes, and so on.
4. The base setting for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the Old World, has tons of both official and fan material for it already made
5. It has explicit attributes for ranged and melee combat, which avoids the common non-class-based-game pitfall of making a character who cannot contribute to combat at all.
6. Even though it's not D&D, it's a percentile system, and it's very easy to grasp "Your Weapon Skill is 43%, roll under that to hit."
7. It has armor as DR. This is a personal thing, but I greatly favor Armor as DR vs. Armor abstractly makes you harder to damage (aka Armor Class)

Points against me running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:

1. All material is geared toward running in the Old World, if you buy into the game, you also buy into the setting
2. Percentile systems can have scaling problem even in the range of foes that you'll be expected to fight as jumped-up ratcatchers and roadwardens and hedge wizards--if an ordinary human has Strength 31, and an orc warboss has Strength 51, and a vampire lord has Strength 95, well, where do you go from there?
3. WFRP has a well-known whiff factor (high likelihood of failure). I solved this in homebrew by letting people pick how they want to read the dice, so if you roll a 3 and a 7 that can be either 37 or 73, whichever is the best for you. This does not, however, solve it in combat--if you succeed on your attack and your opponent succeeds on their defense, then the round ends and nothing has happened.
4. The default setting of WFRP is not amenable to armed bands of homeless vagabonds (read: adventurers) roaming around. If you're openly wearing weapons and armor in any civilized area, side glances and people muttering and avoiding you is the best you can hope for. You're more likely to be harassed by the local petty lord, who doesn't want anyone capable of violence who doesn't work for him in his territory.

Points in favor of me running Tales of Argosa:

1. It's D&D. You know, we know it, everyone knows it. It's got Fighters, it's got Thieves, it uses a d20, it's got all the classics.
2. Being adjacent to the OSR means there is practically an infinite vault of material to draw from. With a bit of work, anything AD&D 2e or before and anything online compatible with them can be finessed to work with it.
3. Tales of Argosa has an assumed HP range of about 45 for a high-level Fighter: HP is Constitution + (modifier * level) and the modifier ranges from +1 to +3. That means it avoids the modern problem of hundreds of hit points taking hours to chew through.
4. It splits Wisdom up into Perception and Willpower, once of those things I've always wanted to do (along with splitting Dexterity into Dexterity and Agility)
5. Despite having rigid class progression which I'm usually against, every class's powers at level 3, 6, 9 is "Make something up!" with a big list of suggestions, so you still get a nice amount of customization
6. It uses basically the same skills as D&D 5e, so modern players will be familiar with them
7. Monsters are statted with Attributes, so you can finally know how much Strength that grizzly bear has when the Fighter tries to suplex it. This is standard since 3.0 in main D&D but OSR systems usually avoid it.
8. There are no Saves, it's instead abstracted into a Luck attribute that goes down the longer you go before resting back in a safe place. Does the party keep going--literally pushing their luck--or retreat and regroup?
9. There's plenty of opportunity for worldbuilding. Sure, I wrote above that the Old World being a defined setting is also a point in favor but the truth is that I just really like worldbuilding. I always hear about those people who are like "I've been running D&D in my homebrew world for 40 years" and that sounds amazing, what other game lets you do that?

Points against me running Tales of Argosa:

1. The skill system is vestigial. It exists, which is more than I can say for a lot of OSR games, but nearly everything is based on your attributes and having a skill or not is just a +1 on your check. I'd have to make it a bit more complicated.
2. It has a mix of roll-over and roll-under, which is the classic design but I do like all roll-over. By the book, rolling high in combat is good, and rolling low for skills is good.
3. It has range bands instead of explicit distances. Another personal preference thing--I just prefer explicit distances. This is easy enough to houserule but is nonetheless something I have to mess with.
4. While I could run WFRP right now with the homebrew I already have, which I know because I've done it, I'd need to do some tinkering with ToA before it'd be ready. Come up with a couple extra races, make custom magic classes--magic in the game is basically "6th level spells and below but you always have a chance to go insane and mutate" and I'd like some classes with safer but much lower-powered magic--add Armor as DR, all of that stuff.
5. Maybe the single greatest hurdle: the conceptual leap between what people think of as D&D nowadays (5e) and the grittier OSR method of play. With a separate game, people know that it's going to be different. It's the classic problems of what people sometimes call "fantasy heartbreakers"

I don't have a group or anything waiting, so this is all theoretical at the moment, but it's getting the gears turning.