5E Marinated Brain Blown By OD&D
So much context. So many answers.
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Intro
The headline of this article is something many of the old guard of the TTRPG hobby might read and say "yeah, of course", but it has taken me a very long time to truly understand the old game. I came online seriously running games during the initial rise of Critical Role and jumped on the 5E bandwagon for years. I was hooked by "the big damn quest", watching a group of characters steeped in a game world grow to weave themselves into the story of a place and then save it from forces of evil.
As I expanded my repertoire to keep games interesting, delving into the history of D&D itself, reading about the golden days of the home games of the 70's where people would travel from all over to play at different tables but characters with them from game to game just sounded so cool to me. The dragon I've been chasing is a long-term "analog massively multiplayer" world that I can use to run games for friends and create a rich history to spawn a world that feels alive in our imaginations. Endless grist for adventures of all kind that gives a connected story to share.
I used to think 5E was the only game I would run for the rest of my life. Luckily WOTC and Hasbro fumbled so hard with the OGL debacle (and many other stupid moves besides), that I was dislodged from that thought and started checking out the OSR and looking again at the history and at the vibrant communities that exist playing clones of echoes of the game across time.
What Else Is Out There
Once I started looking around, I was surprised to find so many games that did not have the barrier to entry that 5E had for me. It felt like teaching people 5E was so hard because the way it is explained in its own rule books, there was just so much to understand before you could start rolling dice in a real situation...but it was an illusion. Other games just get straight to the point and explain what's necessary in simple terms and then you're playing the game. It seems like there is obscurity just to make people think they MUST be buying 5E books to play the game, which is garbage.
While exploring clones of older editions, I tried looking to Dungeon Crawn Classics (DCC) and Old School Essentials (OSE) and though I've read them I really didn't feel like I understood them. I felt like if someone ran it for me, I'd like it, but if I'd have to teach people just to try it the barrier was too high for me. Just recently, I was lucky enough to be invited to read a copy of "Delving Deeper" - an Original D&D clone - by
right here on Substack.You can find the latest version free here: https://ddo.immersiveink.com/dd.html
I gorged myself on the V2 Adventurer's Handbook, Monster and Treasure Reference, and Referee's Guide in short order. When I say this is the cleanest, most straight forward and understandable presentation of old school D&D I have ever experienced, I mean I really felt like I was able to intuit what the designers were going for with every system and aspect. I finally not only understood but internalized THAC0, Why it's called Armor Class, Hit Dice Design, and so many things about simulating a regional area that were abstract before.
That's the thing about the 2014 5E books that makes them so difficult to wield, when you're running a 5E game, you're given enough rules to have a complicated, combat-focused, skill based D20 system and then much of the finer points of exploration and social interaction and worldbuilding are just left vague and "up to the GM". The context to fully understand any of these things is just left out, which is why I feel the 2014 DMG is so bad for new GMs.
By contrast, Delving Deeper has a couple sentences or paragraphs and charts that serve to provide guidance on literally any aspect I can think of for going exploring in a fantasy world. As a game designer, this context-rich approach that connects dots from the rules to the design unlocks it for me. After reading the three Delving Deeper OD&D books, all the little systems created to simulate an entire world are fully realized and my understanding enables me to come up with my own such tools that could plug right in without having to reinvent the wheel in all directions to make it feel cohesive. It feels like a license to explore and create more things than previously. I have actually spent A LOT of time looking at the population sizes of medieval villages, towns, cities, researched about the building blocks of movement in games, among other rabbit holes.
That's the thing that many OTHER games do well by today's standards. Much like my darling Shadowdark, the game gives you a complete understanding of what running THAT game is, then it's up to you if you want to tweak or manipulate or ignore some rules. This is far preferrable to the approach of "the GM just figures something out". Even Shadowdark, as a well rounded dungeon exploration ruleset with a lot of tools and roll tables, when I'm running it I feel like the game world outside of the dungeon is under supported. There are systems for generating towns and safe places, and taverns and shops and districts and those are all great, but in the open world game I've been running there's been missing some specifics with relation to exploring a wide open Hex map.
OD&D looks like it has at least examples of what I've been missing.
Everything from the direction the wind is coming from in a hex to how many leagues a boat can travel in a day on the open sea has a simple (usually D6 based) solution that both randomizes and feels real and simulating. I will take these ideas and likely play with how exactly they are executed in my own game world, but the example goes a really long way in kick-starting my creativity. Much like the tables in the Tome of Adventure Design and the Mythic Game Master Emulator push my thoughts just enough out of the grooves in my brain to help me create something new, these ideas are going into the blender of my mind to help me come up with more solutions to the problems that come up simulating an entire region of a game world.
There will likely be more on this topic soon. I want to try my hand at creating some OD&D content. I was also surprised by the scaling of the OD&D rules to be able to go from dungeon delving individual characters to playing out overworld combat with each character representing a group of led individuals to large scale warfare battles like sieges. I am quite excited by this development and I have ideas to work through. I think some solo gameplay to try them out is coming next.
Till next time!
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You said it better than I could have myself. Great article! I never knew I loved running sandbox wilderness hex-crawls until I started running OD&D. Thank you OD&D Primer. My goal is to get to a high enough level that my players can establish strongholds and run baronies. I would love to run and see some mass scale combat play out. barony against barony. Having players carve out their own Kingdom would be so cool, and that is exactly what my players goals are. Should be fun. I would love to hear more of your journey into OD&D. Possibly an interview for our community dungeon newsletters if you would be down?
Alex I so get what you said about DND 5th ed. I too thought it was the best out there to understand and to teach. It’s what I cut my teeth on so it will always be special to me. But like just like you, Hasbro/WOTC missteps over the past few years have ticked me off. I started looking closer at Solo playing. When I discovered the multiple options out there as well as OD&D, I was like hmmmm, I no longer feel tied to 5th ed. As it was, I probably only stuck to about 75% of the rules for 5th ed. It was too hard for my family to grasp and too hard to teach them. Plus, we wanted to just play!!! Great insights!