Posting has unfortunately been a bit sporadic recently, as my girlfriend is visiting for the first time in what seems like months and I try and spend as much time as I reasonably can with her when she's here. Still working over ideas for games with my friends, as I've had impassioned pleas of "When are we going to play some D&D?" to "When are we going to kick off that Feng Shui game that I was excited about?" All this plus ongoing schoolwork and reading 5 books a week for Resources for Young Adults. I'm conflicted. :)
A few of you folks may remember a post that I did before I disappeared off of the face of the earth called Old School D&D My Way, which I think captured a lot of what I've been trying to accomplish with my D&D musings. I was born in the tail end of the 80s and came into gaming well after the majority of people who are revisiting old-school games from their youth. I've become much more exposed to the influences surrounding early edition D&D in recent months, but at the time I thought that immersing myself in thematically appropriate material would help me get old school D&D better than I did.
In retrospect, it was a bad decision.
Though I did add some personal elements to my Swords and Wizardry game, mostly the quasi-Western setting, I really didn't feel like I put enough of myself into it. I just got so inspired by other people's stuff that I thought a patchwork assemblage of their work would somehow result in a great game for me. Now I know that's not the case and I'm going to try my damnedest to put together a D&D game that I feel is mine.
In the coming weeks, I'll probably be using Fistful of Coppers as a public forum to work all of this stuff out. I hope that some of you will find it interesting.
I went through a similar process with the OSR. In the end, I had to admit that I was Silver Age through and through and just embrace that. Looking forward to your own process!
ReplyDeleteI think the underlying lesson one should gather up from the OSR, and from this series of tubes we call the internet, is that there are as many ways to play as there are gamers. As long as you all are having fun, then that style of play is right, for that group for that night.
ReplyDeleteI went through a similar thing with my Mars game. I was using a lot of outside influences to come up with my own brand of Barsoomian chili, and it just didn't fly. I wouldn't say that I was too beholden to source material, but creating this stuff whole cloth (with a healthy amount of theft from other bloggers), is so much more satisfying.
Anywho, can't wait to read what you've come up with...so I can steal it for my own game :)