Author Archives: Newt

Back this Kickstarter: AD&D sheets just like they used to make them.

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Based off the sheets Games Workshop made in the late 70s that where still knocking about in Toy shops like Beatties, when the young Newt picked up on D&D in the 80s. In fact the creator, Peter Regan, comes from Leicester which is just down the road from Loughborough were I was when I bought my first batches of D&D stuff. Small world eh 😉

I actually got a couple when I rebought Ad&D 1st edition, but I’m down to get a pad or two 😉

One caveat ignore the bleepy music (apparently its a tie in to Computer Games of the era), substitute it in your mind for some Sabbath or Judas Preist \m/

Thanks to Gordon Richards for pointing this out 🙂

RIP Lynn Willis

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I’ve just heard that one of the founding fathers of D100 gaming has passed away, Lynn Willis who had a hand in a staggering chunk of Chaosium releases and was one of the driving forces behind the mighty Call of Cthulhu, went to the great gaming table in the beyond yesterday. Although I never knew the man except for his work on the Chaosium releases that shaped my adolescence/young adult years, the dedication and love he put into those books shines through and had a quiet but powerful influence on me.

I don’t think it was an accident I reached for my copy of Call of Cthulhu last night 🙂

Read the Chaosium announcement for more information

Avoiding the Grind

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Back in my yoof I lived with the grind of “I try to hit, I fail to hit, he tries to hit me back, he fails’ combats. RQ3 was particularly bad, surprisingly at high 75%+ levels.

Then two games really blew my mind open and redefined how I refed the grind.

Cyberpunk 2013/2020 – There’s a small bit of GM advice pointing out Cyberpunks don’t get into Grinding fights. No they plan ambushes with Claymore mines and other such wacky hijinks. Unless they are surprised by an ambush themselves, a Cyberpunk never gets into a fight that they haven’t already won.

Feng-Shui – Awarding a bonus for good narration and coming up with cool stunts. Surprisingly if players don’t make up stuff to their advantage in this way it soon becomes a Grinding combat akin to the worst excesses of AD&D.

So in short these days I let players set up cleaver ambushes Cyberpunk style, let them draw enemies into that arrow trap the thief discovered earlier, and give bonuses and effects for cool stunts, such as bringing down loose masonry on the heads using a Telekinesis spell.

Funnily enough all this is echoed in Matt Finch’s’ “Quick Primer for Old School Gaming”, which contains a ton of advice about this very dilemma.

This all came out of a thread over at a thread on UK Roleplayers :Old School Conversations With Baz :: Whiffing