This blog is about my adventure into playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. With this being the first post; I'll provide some details about myself to give context to my opinions that may come up in the future. I'll also define what the OSR means to me, since in some circles it has a nebulous meaning.
I'll start with what the definition of OSR is. In my opinion it refers to TSR era D&D. That's it. There are other games that are old school but as far as the OSR term; it's old school Dungeons and Dragons. My particular interest on this blog is for Gary Gygax Advanced D&D. Specifically number 2 from this blog post by the T. Foster: https://mystical-trash-heap.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-taxonomy-of-d.html?m=0
I believe the play style associated with #2, in the linked post, is something that needs to be preserved for the future. Gygax got screwed in 1985 and the game and company he built, was stolen from him. Then the demoness from hell made sure that the fans would never see the game, as defined by Gary, again.
What could have been, had he stayed? What if he had been allowed to clean house and turn things around? What products would he have produced? We will never know for sure, but, we can speculate and have fun trying to expand upon the style of the game that he made.
I started playing D&D in 1991 with big black basic box. When we exhausted that, we went to the game store and chose to move up to AD&D 2nd edition. The other option, at the time, was the Rules Cyclopedia. But we were mature 12 year olds and the "advanced" game seemed the only reasonable choice.
We played 2nd edition for the next 9 years and switched to 3rd edition in 2000. At first I liked 3E well enough, but after a few more years that started to change. I was getting tired of how it played. Probably a combination of the rules and the adventure paths the DM mostly ran. In 2008 we switched to Pathfinder. My friends thoroughly loved the 3rd edition derived game, but some time later, I had enough. I quit playing D&D for the first time in nearly 20 years of playing.
It was also around 2008 when I discovered the OSR. In my growing disillusionment with the current editions of the game, I started to look into the old games and discovered retro-clones and the online blogs that were extremely popular during that time. Also, 2008 was the year that Gary Gygax passed.
I started consuming every clone that was released. I gravitated to Swords & Wizardry Whitebox the most. It was a dramatic change from the rules heavy 3e/Pathfinder. I thought it was wonderful. So much so, that I decided to make my own version of it. I reached out to my gaming group and asked if they would play (they had kept playing Pathfinder after I left the game) and they agreed. Eventually the game died and we stopped playing for a while.
Then, I met up with another old friend who I hadn't seen in years and talked to him about the current state of D&D with 5th edition and showed him my White Box book. He chose to get a game up and running because his daughter wanted to play. She got to choose between my White Box version and 5th edition. She chose 5th because the books were so much prettier and had color art. Can't say I blame her and who am I to argue the merits of art with a 12 year old kid. So we have been playing 5e pretty regularly for the last year or so. And I like it well enough to keep playing, unlike Pathfinder. But I still have lots of issues with a lot of the rules and the style of game it entails.
I have been reading my old 1st edition AD&D books over the last couple years for fun. And reading all the books about the history of D&D as they are released. And my attention keeps being drawn to Gygax in the Golden Age of D&D, specifically to the #2 of T.Fosters post. That's what I want to dig into more. That's the style of D&D that I believe needs to be preserved going forward. I want my kids to understand the game principles that go along with that play style, not because it is old school, but because its a good game. That I believe does a better job of presenting role-playing in a believable fantastic medieval world than the current edition.
So that's where this blog comes in; to chronicle my journey down the road of discovery of Gygax's Dungeons and Dragons. I'm hoping it helps me to clarify my thoughts on this topic. Because I'm not an expert and I have never actually played 1st edition.
This blog "Swords Against Chaos" was created quite a while ago. I made up the title and logo and the blog sat empty. I knew it would be the name of my next campaign. I just didn't exactly know what it would be. Now all the pieces have fallen into place. I will be using Gygax's Keep on the Borderlands and expanding on it to fit an advanced game. It will be an interesting exercise because the module was written for B/X but has the advanced game hiding just underneath the surface. Waiting to be pulled up from the depths of the earth.
More to come
