Interest Check for Old School D&D ruleset
I would be interested in seeing how much interest there really would be in seeing a new working ruleset created for old school D&D.
I'm always seeing posts asking about it and the response is always that there isn't enough interest to make it viable to devote official resources to it, and that's totally understandable, of course. It is something that has to come from the community, but there doesn't seem to be anyone willing or able to step up and do it, which also is understandable.
I look at the numbers of games played chart and I wonder if there would be more games played of old school D&D if there was a good ruleset. Maybe, maybe not. I'll get to the point though.
I have no programming experience at all. Well, not since I learned BASIC back in the 1980's anyway (if you don't know what Basic is, well, that's my point), but year after year, I keep waiting for someone else to step up and do it and it doesn't happen, so it looks like I'm going to have to take a try at it if it is going to get done. I don't know how long or how hard it will be or even if I will be successful at it. But, I have a 15 year old that says he wants to be a computer programmer when he grows up and this sounds like a perfect father/son learning project, so I'm willing to give it a shot.
I have two questions though. 1) Will this actually get used? Be a real shame to put that much effort into something that no one actually wants. and 2) What game would you like to see made?
I'll qualify that second question. Here are the choices, filtered through my own interests, because obviously I want to create something I would use. I personally consider old school as being 0e, Basic and 1e or any of the retro-clones of those. I don't personally consider 2e as old school. I never played it. I have never even read the books. So, that is off the table.
So, what I would consider would be: a) Labrynth Lords b) Swords and Wizardry or c) AD&D 1e
Those three choices bear some discussion, unless you are totally familiar with them already.
Labrynth Lord comes in two flavors, as I understand it. The core game, which is like 0e (or basic, not really sure) and the AEC which adds in rules which make it more like 1e. It's been a couple years since I've read the ruleset, so things are a bit fuzzy. One benefit to having a new Labrynth Lord ruleset would be that it opens up the possibility of games such as Mutant Future and Apes Victorius, which are based on it.
Swords and Wizardry is 0e. It comes in 3 versions, "White Box", "Core" and "Complete". They differ in how many supplemental rules are included. Complete is basically 0e as it was at the release of AD&D. One plus of S&W is that it has been greatly embraced by the OSR movement and there have been a great many games based off of the rules, such as Xplorers RPG, White Star and Stars Without Number. So, the possibility of those and others come with that ruleset. Another advantage is that S&W actually has the ascending AC system included as an option in the rules, so that makes it more approachable to newer folks.
AD&D, of course, is what a lot of people know and love. But, AD&D is out of print. Sure, some of us still have our old books or were lucky enough to snag a set of the new ones when they got reprinted for the Gygax memorial a few years ago, but technically, it's still an out of print and totally unsupported game. Meaning to say that it might not be too inclusive to make a ruleset for a game that only us old grognards have books for. At least with LL or S&W, they are living and breathing games. Also, as so many have pointed out, C&C actually does a pretty good job of handling the 1e feel. So, maybe what we really need is some coverage of the rest of the OSR movement. There are a tremendous amount of new material coming out for the OSR retro-clones, so that is something to consider.
In an ideal world, what I would want to do is a ruleset that is flexible enough to handle most of the needs of the DM in the form of options. For example, being able to select to use either descending or ascending AC by selecting the appropriate option. I really don't know what's possible and I especially don't know what I can learn how to do. I just know that having options is good.
Please step up and give your opinions on the subject. If you need to peruse the rules, LL and S&W are both free or very low cost on rpgnow.com. And if there is someone that can help, I wouldn't turn that down.