Tuesday, July 19, 2011

We Are Experiencing a Golden Age

For those of you out there that are still wondering why we need any more retro-clones or other iterations of the original FRPG, take a few moments to look at this.

What Evan has demonstrated with his list of rules is the modularity of the retro-clone. Here is a short list of all the rulesets he has cobbled together for his Nightwick Abbey campaign: LL, S&W, LotFP, AEC, AD&D and RC. We all have the the freedom to cobble together our own rules list from even more sources, if we so choose.

It gets better. Not only do we live in the age of the OGL but Dan Proctor has made his rule sets available as .txt files. Therefore, using the plethora publishing software available to us, we can edit these .txt files to reflect our own house rules.

It gets better. We can also save these house rules as a .pdf to distribute to our players. For those that are really ambitious (and have the cash), we can even to go the trouble of publishing these rules via a POD company and see them as a glorious hard cover.

It gets better. Even games that seem to be outliers like Epées & Sorcellerie have great ideas that can be swiped and written into house rules. For example, if anyone wants to convince a grumpy old grognard like myself to switch to AAC, all you have to do is cite E&S and how it gives players the freedom to use their Dex score for an AC if they don't like their armor's AC.

The real beauty, though, is that if I still want to have DAC in order to take advantage of Delta's Target 20 Algorithm (d20 + level + AC + mods ≥ 20), I can make a table converting Dex scores into DAC equivalents and edit that into my own house rules document:
Dex 18 = AC 1
Dex 17 = AC 2
Dex 16 = AC 3
Dex 15 = AC 4
Dex 14 = AC 5
Dex 13 = AC 6
Dex 12 = AC 7
Dex 11 = AC 8
Dex 10 or lower = AC 9
I reiterate: the more the merrier. Why? The more options we have, the more the game becomes ours — the more golden this golden age becomes.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said and very cool. There's room for everybody at this table. Because another great element is if people are making stuff you don't like--you don't have to use it! So why rain on the parade?

Padre said...

Great post and I agree it is something of a golden age for RPG gaming. I tend to be an options glutton as well, I tend to see more choices as more freedom.

Paul said...

I completely agree. I've spent this week personalizing my own S&W Whitebox edition.

Anonymous said...

I wholeheartedly agree. The OGL gave us the game, it's ours now. We have the tools (desktop publishing and even PoD) and we have an incredible smorgasbord of options. What's not to like?

woðbora said...

This would work great with variable damage based on armor worn...

JB said...

...and a glass-is-half-full kinda' guy, too.
: )

Mel said...

...and if someone wanted to swap Wisdom and Charisma, as you suggested in an earlier post, they could!

Completely agree on a golden age. Btw, it's not just Dan and LL. Matt Finch also made S&W available in .rtf as a free download for those who want to mash its best bits with LL, etc.