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I keep coming back to my nostalgia for this edition. I really do think it's D&D's Goldilocks, not as complex as later editions nor as stripped down as B/X, etc. A much cleaned up, trimmed, and revised 1e. Some of the more interesting elements of 1e are trimmed off, but those are so few that they can always be added back in. Everybody house rules, everybody alters the core product. This edition provides a great foundation while allowing for adding whatever you want. You can even add in feats, if you like.😂

MultiMulti xXx MUUUUUUUUUTIIIIIIIII CLASSING nowadays. Because class-system is much more fun! (When you can have em)

WotC is turning D&D into a girl’s brand 🤣

I'm definitely not a metal dice fan. Better bring a dice tray before wrecking my table. Lol

I love the bookshelves!

Paul pulled the whole thing out with that swarm spell, getting eating by locusts is a tough way to go out, though

I have understood the basic concept of OSR style gameplay, but this was a good breakdown thanks

I’m late to comment and I’m only part way through the video, but I completely agree. I’m tired of hearing, “I roll perception, I roll insight, I roll arcana!” Recently I have my players 3 rings. They took them and were like “what do they do?” I was quiet and then all of them started chanting, “I roll _____.” I got so fed up. Without my encouragement they began rolling and one screamed out, “I got a natural 20 on my arcana, what does the ring do.” Eventually I blurted out, “you wanna know, but the ring on.” All I can think of to compare it to is if Bilbo picked up the One Ring and immediately knew what it was and what it did. That would’ve been very boring storytelling. Edit: I’m had to take a break after that session. And if I ever hear, “I roll perception,” after I describe a scene vividly again, I’m going to eat that player’s soul.

Regarding the illogical & dumb dungeon designs - they certainly appeared in some Old School publications, but even back then we knew they were dumb! The dungeons I designed myself (usually on graph paper notebooks in the back row of my chemistry class) were very different and I tried to make them make sense. New commenters on Old School gaming seem to think players back then were unsophisticated rubes that played rules as written without any input or creativity themselves and this wasn't the case. I've seen comments on OSR threads in reddit etc that praise a style of play as "authentic" that back in the day we'd already houseruled away from just like any newer player would. We made the games fit our playstyle and table just like gamers always do.

oldschool means different stuff to everyone but the more of your thoughts I hear the more your ideas resonate with the game I'm trying to set up

Love the way you talk about the game

Bards, when played as outlined in the DMG are not bad. I think the problem is that no one wants to play through till 9th level before becoming a 1st level bard. The 2nd edition way of starting out as a first level bard ment that you were playing a 9th level character, while everyone else was playing 1st. I have DMd RAW for 1st or 2nd and have no problem. I even ran an all bard game, with each player focusing on one aspect of the type. Just my opinion bards are fine RAW.

I've signed up to run an Oldschool D&D campaign at my local library. I've made it clear in my advertisement that its not a modern game, but a lot of the people that signed up are younger folks whose only concept of the game is 5e and "Critical Role". I feel like I have a challenge ahead of me.

This is awesome. I was showing my uncle your 2nd edition stuff (his jam) and now you're playing SD (my jam).

Holy crap, Tim looks old!!

18:00 all hail Doomcock!

GMs create the setting and the conflicts in it. Players decide what to engage with and how.

It is really sad with the RPGs which have a wisdom/insight how much they poorly write a lot of the social stuff. They give much better ways for them to be used, but put in the DM book which players do not normally read. ie, the examples of players using insight in the social section in the 5e DMG are about ferreting out stuff about an NPC's characteristics, not per se about detecting lies.

Here's how I do it. Play B/X. Don't play 2e. Roll 3d6, down the line. Do not allocate points, do not use point buy, do not "Roll 4 drop the lowest". Play with Fighter, Thief, Cleric, and Magic User. Do not use "Alignment", for all characters are "Lawful". Use Descending AC, use the classic Saves, if someone's HP reaches 0 they are dead without exception. Keep track of in-game time to the T. Roll before every encounter to determine enemy disposition. Always roll morale as the encounter goes on. Keep exact count of inventory and encumbrance. Only offer experience for gold recovered when the party arrives back at town. Do not offer experience for Role Play, do not offer experience for Milestones, do not even offer it for killing foes. Do not have a "Session 0", do not accept character "Backstories". The only backstory a character has is what they did in previous sessions. Only play in person, never online, and everyone leaves their phone by the door. If anyone, at any time mentions Baldur's Gate III or Critical Role they are shown the door. All of this will ensure that a modern player will experience a game completely unlike anything 5e has to offer. If they like it, they're invited back. If they didn't, don't compromise on the type of game you run.

Thanks for the video. I recently switched my group from pathfinder 2e to playing Dragonslayer by Greg Gillespie. We are playing B10 A Nights Dark Terror and it has been awsome ! Roll 20's and keep on swinging.

Always seem to just miss these streams. Damn timezones

Cleric's need to have a hand up the fighting men's ass like a muppet

Blessing us with some Shadowdark? Love it.

Now I’m gonna picture Mike whenever Joe talks 😅

Wait, Rob is woke?! 🤣

Nice video! Where is the art from? It's amazing!!

I buy a lot of old AD&D modules on eBay and love the odd comment here and there in pencil (even pen as long as it doesn't obscure the original text) - I buy them to read and mine ideas. Collectors with their shrink-wrapped blah...blah....blah shit me to tears, all they do is drive up eBay prices to stupid levels - I get a module in shrink wrap, that plastic is gone right away, they're there to use, SFA value otherwise. Cheers!

To play devils advocate/my two cents/unsolicited advice/and so on: Point 1: Sense Motive/Insight Check (Etc): players are are not wise, they are often not strong, they often do not have great intelligence - compared to their characters. The point of a Role Playing game is to play something you are not. The exact same argument you make against sense motive can easily be made about other attributes from a logicians perspective. In general, I agree that Role Playing should not completely devolve into pushbutton game play, but that's exactly what your characters Strength Score is by definition. How do you roleplay getting diseases in your games, do you have the character make a save, or do you just decide they get a disease because they touched something that is diseased, and if so, is that fair to not give obviously healthier characters a better chance to stave off the disease because they have a higher CON Score? How is that not the same thing as a character who would know if an enemy is lying but the player in general might not because they themselves are an idiot? The argument works both ways and I am unsure that you are landing on a good answer for both, instead choosing one side of the coin instead of the other. You need a solution on a different coin. -So here is a better solution (IMHO): Make it a Static defense. Make it to where if someone is bluffing, a character with a higher Wisdom is harder to bluff and is able to tell if someone is being dishonest, perhaps give clues that the person might be lying, in the moment based on the characters higher wisdom. You dont have to give it away so to speak, but you dont have to dump the entire subsystem per se either. Point 2: Intelligence for bonus spells. Why the heck would a Priest need higher intellect to know more spells? Moses was slow of speech, so Charisma doesn't make sense either. The source of magic is not their knowledge, it would be faith and their connection to deity. I could see this having some more nuance depending on the priests religion, but for the most part you might as well get rid of the separate Magic User classes at that point and instead have one class that the player can choose a specific spell list for at 1st level to customize it. Which is not a bad idea, but you need to differentiate the classes better mechanically, or, consolidate them. One or the other. I disagree with you on the concept of Wisdom in general on this front. Marcus Aurelius is a great example of a Wise Man, but not one of superior IQ per se, etc, and the reverse could likely be seen in Stephen Hawking or Neil deGrasse Tyson. -- So sure, nuke Wisdom, but I personally think you need to replace aspects of it with additional subsystems. Pendragons Trait System comes to mind to a degree, but I have not been a huge fan of gamifying personality traits quite like that. I think a defense system like how I mentioned Sense Motive above would be a good way of dealing with a few of things. Adding character 'Drawbacks' that give them penalties to certain types of situations like 'Extreme Curiosity' forcing them to make a check to keep themselves from having to explore that weird 4ft diameter hole in the ground that seems super out of place and totally is not covered in spider webbing . . . could also be a good subsystem for dealing with certain aspects of the Wisdom subsystem. And so on. . . At the same time, because Wisdom represents so many different aspects of the game, and can act as a guide, esp for new players to the game, its simpler to just keep it. In fact a number of the issues you mention are in the players court, but to be fair, some are in yours too. It sounds like you might be able to DM it better.

On lying, how can a player ever get any clues that an NPC is lying? Unless you as a DM are an Oscar caliber actor, what clues could you possibly give? There is simply no way a player can "figure it out". Also, this means that a character can never be more perceptive than the player. My autistic girlfriend isn't going to be able to detect an NPC's lies. I think your problem is that you think that an Insight check is "detect truth". It's not and never has been. Passing an Insight check is just getting a feeling that the NPC isn't telling the whole story. It simply detects that the NPC used Deception instead of Diplomacy on their check. It doesn't tell you why or what. The other problem is that you as a DM know that the player is lying, so every NPC always know if the PCs are lying since there is no opposed check. If the player has to convince YOU the DM that their character is telling the truth, then only players good at lying can play a character that's good at lying. I just don't understand the problem you are trying to solve.

What about Perception? Willpower checks?

I agree about mostly replacing it with INT. But I do think there's a use for wisdom. However, when I need it, I just use character's level. You character's level is already you EXPERIENCE converted to a d20 scale.

IMG I renamed Wisdom to be Willpower to remove any confusion over what the attribute covers. As with the other mental attributes, it mirrors the equivalent physical attributes, in this case Constitution. So it is essentially mental and spiritual fortitude. And yes this means that it acts as a bonus to SP rolls (the mental equivalent of HP). [Also clerics IMG use Charisma (mental and spiritual force), which is appropriate since it originally means "god-touched."]

A player asking for an insight check is a hard no from me. However, contested insight v deception is compelling for pvp. DM should call for skill checks, so an insight check (for example) should never ruin pacing.

What a interesting channel, I clicked on this getting ready to disagree but I kinda agree with most of your points.

I share your sentiments, but the same may be said about Intelligence and Charisma, especially the part about role-playing wisdom or carelessness - you can say a player should role-play being smart and reasonable or charming and inspiring instead of relying on Int or Cha. I know players who want to use Int to recalling something they've forgotten and I feel like it's a short-cut for not doing proper notes :-D "oh, there was something about a red gnoll several sessions ago, was it at the bugbear's camp? Can I roll Int to recall all that stuff?" ;-) If players want to reason with hobgoblins to persuade them that a temporary alliance would be beneficial to both parties they have to come up with reasonable and logical arguments not roll for Int, if they want to charm an ogre by appealing to his vanity and pride they have to come up with some convincing pleasing praises, not roll for Cha. Just a food for thoughts 🙂

It's such a great set. Glad I got it. "Jaquaysing" is the term based on her name. Long story short he called it "Jaquaying", misspelling her name because he thought it sounded better, then she asked him tk fix it and he promised he would. Fast forward ~3 years until his book is coming out, and instead of fixing the spelling he renamed it after himself, allegedly at the suggestion of his publisher. Still a good essay despite his being a weirdo and dishonest about the name.

Insight rolls are dumb. I don't use them in my campaigns. Before I quit using them I would let the players roll for it IF they knew the NPC and was able to pick up on odd behavior. Then I would fail forward. It just isn't needed. Neither is perception.

I don't like "insight rolls" ir anything similar to that. As you said, if any of my players' character wants to know if a NPC has lied to him, is trying to con him, or something like that, that's up to the player to decide. Otherwise, if you're gonna solve everything with dice rolls, what's the point in role-playing non-combat encounters?

I felt like many of the Wis based skills should have been Int.

10:14 Weirdly enough, the 2e Bard is my favorite interpretation of what that class is trying to be (as in a Jack-of-all-trades, someone that can support other character roles at what they do or fill in for them in a pinch.) and no edition prior or after captured that feel for me. Keep in mind I'm basically a baby (at 30 YO) compared to most folks in the OSR scene so my practical experience with the TSR-era games are minimal at best. I'm mostly just curious as to what puts you off from them? Is it the mechanics or flavor? Sorry if you've answered this elsewhere. I just recently found the channel.

How about an episode on Waterdeep, the Moonshae Isles, and/or Joe's planned invasion of Evermeet?

1:27:51 I'm only here to hear the Romantic Adventures of Joe 😄.

Without having seen your video yet, ( because its not out yet), I would guess one of 2 different things, 1. Your trying to get rid of all the Skill checks ( just like in OSR type games). or 2. Since most players are all too STUPID to play a smart or a wise character, so you have to both be the DM and the Players Brain, at the same time, and if that's the case, you figure you might as well just be playing a SOLO game!!!!! its easy to have a player roleplay a strong or Dexterous character, but not so easy to have someone roleplay a character with a INT or WIS above a 5. Just saved everyone from having to watch you video, sorry about that!

its really cool seeing GMG continue putting out classics like this. It's like seeing people get into an older band after one of their singles or albums gets reissued and it bumps its way back into the charts for a little while. RIP Jennell.

Nice!

Can’t unsee the magic the gathering point dice.

Megadungeons kind of suck and kind of always sucked and kind of never made a damn bit of sense.

We had the exact same problem trying to play dragonlance

Ambitious

Maybe the Goblins wrangled the giant rats into the room to be used as food for the Worgs…open the door and let a Worg run in to fight the rats. Loads of fun for chaotic/evil creatures.