Two weeks ago we had our first OSRIC game session. The players created characters to take on Stonehell dungoen. Since we are using David Bowman's Entourage system from Fight On! #2 I had each player create two PCs one of which will be their main character and the other will be their Loyal Henchman.
I pretty much want to leave the world open for the players to create as much as possible so I was happy to see them start filling in the racial details as we made characters (female dwarves have beards!). It has been a long time since I had a group make up 1st Edition Characters and I forgot what a pain it was. Character creation requires a total of 8 die rolls (6 stats, hit points, starting gold) for most characters, but it still takes almost as long as 3.5 until people get familiar with the system. The problem is the race/class combos and the non-universal stat bonuses. Not only do the stat bonuses vary from stat to stat, they also vary from class to class! AAAAARRRGGG!
This problem was made worse by the fact that I allowed them to assign their stats after rolling. I wanted them to be able to play characters they liked, but the random attribure bonuses means they have to flip around the book forever to figure it out.
Once we internalize all of that character creation will fly by, but I forgot how much pointless chart checking there was. The OSRIC layout makes this much better, but you still have players making race/class combos that are not allowed (for no reason anyone can figure out) if you aren't on top of them. 3.5 characters take forever to make because of the number of choices, in 1st Edition it takes forever because nothing makes any sense. You just have to memorize it all.
I knew I should have used Labyrinth Lord instead.
So we didn't get any gaming in, just character creation.
This Saturday:
Welcome to Stonehell
I pretty much want to leave the world open for the players to create as much as possible so I was happy to see them start filling in the racial details as we made characters (female dwarves have beards!). It has been a long time since I had a group make up 1st Edition Characters and I forgot what a pain it was. Character creation requires a total of 8 die rolls (6 stats, hit points, starting gold) for most characters, but it still takes almost as long as 3.5 until people get familiar with the system. The problem is the race/class combos and the non-universal stat bonuses. Not only do the stat bonuses vary from stat to stat, they also vary from class to class! AAAAARRRGGG!
This problem was made worse by the fact that I allowed them to assign their stats after rolling. I wanted them to be able to play characters they liked, but the random attribure bonuses means they have to flip around the book forever to figure it out.
Once we internalize all of that character creation will fly by, but I forgot how much pointless chart checking there was. The OSRIC layout makes this much better, but you still have players making race/class combos that are not allowed (for no reason anyone can figure out) if you aren't on top of them. 3.5 characters take forever to make because of the number of choices, in 1st Edition it takes forever because nothing makes any sense. You just have to memorize it all.
I knew I should have used Labyrinth Lord instead.
So we didn't get any gaming in, just character creation.
This Saturday:
Welcome to Stonehell
“3.5 characters take forever to make because of the number of choices, in 1st Edition it takes forever because nothing makes any sense. You just have to memorize it all. I knew I should have used Labyrinth Lord instead.” – Quotable material! :)
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to hear more about how Stonehell goes, now that you're over the hump on PC creation! :D
ReplyDeleteAllan.
I can't wait to play again. If only it would stop snowing all the time, we could get a game in.
ReplyDelete