0e Characters Are More Heroic Than You Think
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- čas přidán 17. 10. 2023
- #OSR #TTRPG #ODnD #0e #OldSchool #DnD #dungeonsanddragons
0e came out in 1974. It's very misunderstood. One thing leveled at it is how "weak" player characters are. In actuality, if you use chainmail as suggested... It simulates the pulp stories you imagine it is supposed to.
Have to give credit to my friend @crossface, his insights were key here. - Hry
This is actually the best rundown of how to use Chainmail in OD&D that I've come across yet. Very clear and concise. Thank you!
My pleasure. Thank you for the comment and encouragement.
Sounds interesting. I think Bandit's Keep has been playing using Chain Mail for combat. I would like to see an OSR Clone that puts it together in a more easily read way.
Funnily enough: both Daniel and Taylor over at Clerics Wear Ringmail/Whispering GM have both made ODnD + chainmail shitbrews
@@rodyle1313 sorry what is a s**tbrew? it's like an homebrew?
@@lucio8349 Yes, but more akin to a heartbreaker than just some set of house rules on top of an existing system.
If I'm not mistaken, Spellcraft & Swordplay (an RPG from the earlier days of the OSR), is kind of this. It's sort of a "what if D&D continued to evolve but with Chainmail as the method of combat still in-tact" interpretation of the game. I've not yet played it myself, but I'm quite eager to!
Great video! Just read my Swords & Wizardry Revised copy and the following entry in the fighter pops up: "Multiple Attacks: Against creatures with 1 (8-sided) hit die or less, a Fighter makes one attack per level each round."
Yep. That is drawing from SR VOl 1 Issue 2 which I think contradicts many things that are implied subtly in the 3LBBs. But it makes sense, the game was changing directions at that point.
I've been watching Bandit's Keep's videos where he combines 1e with Chainmail and it's fascinating. Your argument that "normal" foes are anything less than 4HD has given me much to think about.
Excellent video. Make me think the clone needs a separate book on the research and design notes. Fascinating.
very interesting! always great to see videos like this delving deep into concepts from 0e that are so easy to gloss over, I've perused the White Box rules a handful of times but your videos provide the deep analysis I often don't have patience for 😅
Amazing video, feels really professional and very informative.
I think 0e, Basic, and AD&D all have a certain heroic factor that later editions lost. Your caricature of a 5e player evokes this idea that heroic means being stronger than everyone else off the bat, having a character sheet sprawling with options and powers. But the older editions have a different philosophy that heroic means getting to that point by defying the odds through smart decision making.
For me the latter is way more heroic than having your ability be agiven
Amen! To me, there is nothing "heroic" about someone who is entitled to success and is greater than all others by sheer nature of their birth. Heroism must be earned, fought for-often in spite of or because of the things that may make you less-than.
This was incredibly interesting,. Not having read 0e (nor played as much old school gaming as I should), your video made me want to pick up the books and read them asap. Amazing job!
Have to give credit to my friends for their ideas and guidance. This is all through trying to figure out how to play this thing and make a clone that meshes chainmail and 0e.
Cant wait for more!
D&D came about from the idea of you being a soldier in the war games they played that would then climb up the ranks. They then added fantasy but it’s the journey to power that is lost in wotc versions. I grew up playing 2e and even there we would die.
This is fascinating, thank you!
100%. The very interesting thing here is that when you starting looking at Wilderness play vs Basic in B/X you start to see side by sides to the Normal man to Hero Type play of 0e. A note. Arneson started his players at HD 4/Hero Type. I believe he did this to allow fantastical combat from day 1 but that is theory crafting.
I challenge you to play pure Chainmail magic point party at least once.
Since Arneson populated based upon Chainmail points try this:
We have been experiment with party creation purely on chainmail point values. Rolling a d20x10 for your party point limit and then buying characters from that pool. Once they are purchased you can easily assign stats and saves.
Looking forward to more vid/discussion on this most excellent topic doggie.
I'd absolutely love to see some videos on this! Do you think you'd be interested in making any? :D
A very peculiar you got there.
I’m going to have to read what you quoted but indeed, unlike b/x od&d is heroic
Great video. Been reading 0e lately and look forward to your WightBox
yeah! you're finally back with a new vid! I missed you :)
I think you may have just sold me on your clone... And the fact I might need to track down those Chainmail books.
Best of luck on the clone, if the skill you put into your other games is any indication of your abilities you will succeed. As an aside "3 hit die or less" is the same thing as "Less than 4 Hit Die"
More of this please.
Have you checked out "The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg" by Greg Svenson? It is one of the megadungeons from the Blackmoor campaign (Arneson's group) and it contains lots of notes and insights about how that group played OD&D (at least, as Greg understood it and ran it). It's well worth a look, and contains an adaptation of OD&D as an appendix. One of the things I really like about 0e is how you can just make it your own. It's a toolkit for making your own fantasy campaigns.
I have Tonisborg and have interviewed Griff from Fellowship of the Thing on my channel.
Discssion? No i beat people over the head with my Original White box! Its heavily Duct taped with spikes from the punk era for added persuasion!😂
Nothing in the rules says you can't do that!
@@TheBasicExpert 😂
Hell, by the original book, you can play a young dragon. People get so many things wrong with 0e.
0e sounds perfect for adapting into the setting of Conan the Cimmerian.
Yeah I think once the fighting-man gains some levels, the class will feel very much in line with what many envision Conan as.
Fan of the channel, I think you have a lot of good takes. Some constructive feedback dude, the music for this new format is pretty distracting.
I would argue OD&D is even more heroic when you use Chainmail to resolve combat than the great points you already raised in this video. To me, the largest “loss” from OD&D when the alternative combat system is used instead of using Chainmail is the loss of the Fantastic Combat table and ideas around it from OD&D.
Point 1 is that when using Chainmail, several monsters cannot be affected at all by the attacks of “normal men.” For example, in the trolls entry in Chainmail, it says “True Trolls can only be killed in Fantastic Combat …” and then it goes on to give a special Fantastic Combat table for “hero types” and other supernatural creatures (like Elementals) to use when trying to kill a Troll. Literally 100 normal men with normal weapons cannot kill a troll! In terms of PCs, they need to be a Hero or Super Hero or be armed with a magical weapon to kill aTroll . In the fight of a Troll against 100 normal men who do not have magic weapons, the 100 men roll NO dice against the Troll and the Troll rolls 6 dice against them with each successful hitting die roll killing one of the normal men. This monster is terrifying to regular men and PCs who are not yet “Heroes” or “Super Heroes” (or “Wizards” as well)! For the Dragon entry it reads, “They melee as if they were four heavy horse being impervious to missile or melee hits in normal combat (see Hero and Super Hero sections for the only exceptions). Normal men of any number fighting a dragon can’t hurt the dragon! Even in the entry for the lowly giant spider it reads, “… a giant spider might be unkillable by normal men, but will kill them unless they roll a save of 8 or better …”. And finally, wights and ghouls cannot be harmed by normal missile fire, but given it doesn’t say that about melee combat could be harmed by normal men in melee with them. But even in this case these monsters are terrifying! 10 archers firing at wights or ghouls roll no dice, can’t hurt them with arrows. 10 sword armed normal men, however, would be able to do so in melee combat. BUT let’s say these normal men are the best, they are “armored foot.” Since the wight or ghouls defends as heavy horse (also in their description) this means that only 1 die would be rolled for every 3 armored foot attackers. So these 10 sword armed men in melee against wights or ghouls would only roll 3 dice. Because wights and ghouls attack as light horse (also in their description) they are going to be rolling 1 die per each wight or ghoul against armored foot. So even if the normal men outnumbered the monsters 2 to 1 (10 men vs. 5 wights/ghouls) the men are rolling three dice and the monsters are rolling 5 against them, and in both cases each successful die roll will kill one of the enemy. My money is on the wights and ghouls! Especially because after killing only two men, the men would then only roll 2 dice, 1 die per 3 men with the 2 remainder men not counting. These monsters are terrifying!
Point 2, and even more epically heroic in my opinion, if the Hero or Super Hero (or Wizard as well) decides to (or has to in the cast of a Troll) engage a monster in Fantastic Combat using that table rather than the standard combat table for normal combat, a successful attack roll by either the monster or the PC using the Fantastic Combat table (2d6 roll in this case) KILLS the defender. Outright. No hit points, no loss of hit dice, nope, kills the defender outright. So if the PC has the option to fight these types of monsters that can only be hurt by Heroes or Super Heroes (or Wizards) they must also decide, do I want to fight them normally (say a Hero rolling 4 dice against a Troll that rolls 6 dice against the Hero), or do I want to fight the Troll using the Fantastic Combat table where they could kill the Troll outright in one combat turn … or also themselves be killed by the Troll in one combat turn? That’s epic and it is also terrifying and a tough decision!
When I first started playing in the mid-70s as a kid, we made a lot of mistakes with the rules, but we played using Chainmail and I absolutely loved the way combat worked. Especially after becoming a Hero, the game felt more like a knight slaying a dragon, Conan killing a demon, or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser wading through dozens of men at arms.
Hey what was the background music used? I love it!
I can look. It's just from the creator studio on CZcams.
There is another aspect of the "what is a normal man" question that deserves some elaboration. It was touched on early in the video but, I think, is even more important than the number of allowed attacks. It's that heroes do not make morale checks. Normal men make morale checks. And that is a key difference between D&D (all editions) and chainmail. Player characters are not subject to morale checks. E.g. they are all heroes.
On the flip side, I have been dabbling with running 0e with Chainmail and subject player characters to Moral rules, capped before surrender, and it adds a lot to their survivability. Effectively given them a fighting withdrawal, and straight into the evasion rules where they can throw coins, or food, or fall back further to avoid the foes that overcame them.
@@Vasious8128 Oh, indeed. I've long advocated applying morale to PCs. But, I've often wondered why D&D didn't do so. This I think is why. PCs started as being viewed as heroes and thus at least having the potential of being foolhardy brave.
@@btrenninger1 it certainly gives the hero tier fighters a change to use their leadership abilities gain at the higher levels to hold the line and rally the men at arms hirelings
From my experience running & playing 5e, its very lacking and the things that have truly made me stick to the game are my friends. Not the game itself.
I think your idea that 4HD and below can be treated as Normal has a lot of weight even in later editions: in Basic the most powerful of the lesser spells only work on targets with 4HD and below (Charm, Sleep, Hold)
I was just explaining to someone that the "lethal old school" trope is oversold. If this game were so frustratingly lethal as people like to say, would it have had the cultural impact it had? It became an instant phenomenon in the seventies because people could live out their heroic fantasies. Obviously they died sometimes but they succeeded often!
I've never heard the term mudcore. Not really sure what it is supposed to mean.
Mudcore is sometimes used a pejorative for low level old school play. Live in the mud, and die in the mud.
It was Arneson who came up with the idea of leveling up, along with the dungeon adventure and the ongoing fantasy campaign world. The players at Arneon's table, however, didn't actually know all the rules he used. Even Gygax, who asked to see Arneson's notes to he could publish the first set of D&D rules, couldn't fully decipher them. Arneson mataintained that the published rules didn't match the way he ran his game. So there's no knowing what the original, "correct" way to play is. But maybe you'll come up with something better!
How did they misunderstand the rules so completely, for so long, without any correction?
D&D was always heroic if you could survive
i can't understand chainmail
0:47-1:25 Editing/scripting/acting advice: this bit went on waaaaaaaaaay to long.