Things just fell into place after I wrote this short story, read China Mieville and started to think of dungeon fantasy on its own terms — not “dungeonpunk,” the OSR’s homage salad or as an unwanted deviation from high fantasy (2e’s sin). I’m interested in justifying the bizarre AD&Disms of my teen years and wrestling them into something adults can play with. What’s on the menu?

• Working class adventuring
• Dungeon-driven boom towns
• Name level
• Strange dimensions
• Magical alignments
• Anachronistic gods
• Monster generators
• Magical transhumanism
• House rules!
• More . . . .

I don’t have a huge fetish for authentic AD&D and to tell the truth, some rules just aren’t going to pass the first session. Starting house rules include:

• 10+ armour increasing AC.
• Hit bonus instead of to-hit tables, but with a +5 bonus on a natural 20, and a -5 penalty on a natural 1.
• Saving throws use a bonus of (save-20) to roll against a target number of 20 on a d20.
• Reroll all hit dice at each level and after each rest, if the player wants to.

I will be using armour type modifiers, segments and helms (by rolling a d6 with attack rolls). I want to relearn these little-used parts of the game before I fool with them.

The setting? Earth, at least 250,000 years in the future. Vance, Wolfe, Barker and Moorcock. Dungeons are ancient. Magic is a psychic science. Thousands of gods come up with relics of the past: Zeus, Thor, and nameless beings constructed by old books and crazy visions. Demihumans come from other worlds and genetic engineering. The moon is green.

I’m talking about the movement to return to earlier versions of D&D. I’ve long been interested in older versions of games, particularly elements that fall by the wayside as design trends change. I’m also skeptical of the notion that games get objectively “better.” When OSRIC came out I even released some short supplements for it. They sell okay.

But I think the Old School is going down a bad path where it is not only becoming insular and less of a contributor to the health of the hobby, but is actually squandering the heritage it wants to uphold. Here’s why.

False History: The Old School movement focuses on a monolithic style of play and often represents this as a true revival of something that we lost, but when we go back to what people said and did it doesn’t hold up. There have been divisions in what people anted to do with D&D since the dawn of the hobby. I’m not talking about whether the Thief is a good idea or anything because that’s trivial. I’m talking about folks who thought Vancian magic sucked in the 70s. I’m talking about folks who thought D&D combat was unrealistic in the 70s. In short, people have been radically at odds with some of the Old School’s tenets about what makes for good D&D ever since there was a D&D. But they don’t count.

This definitely extends to play style. How many people played OD&D like this? The answer is more than none, but less than everyone — in fact, I’d say it was less than the majority, particularly when we look at the history of other fantasy RPGs, which were obviously designed as a reaction to D&D. In fact, there are signs in older editions that definitely deny the historical heritage of the Old School “style.” How many of you play with 20 people (the top end of the recommended number of OD&D players)? Or use a caller? Not too damn many, I’d guess.

There was no Golden Age – just people arguing about D&D, playing D&D however they wanted to. There was no consensus. This can easily be seen in Gary Gygax’s old columns, which were all about cleaving to orthodoxy because so many people thought orthodoxy sucked.

Design Conservatism: This is one folks will deny. They’ll tell you about all the new Old School gaming supplements, but I know from experience that this argument is . . . bunk. You’ll get plenty of modules, new character classes and such, but no radical deviations from a roughly imagined set of principles that is in essence “anything that smells like the ideas came from 2nd edition or later.”

As I said, I produced a number of very short supplements for OSRIC. One of them is a hack of feats for the system. The results were interesting. It sells pretty well, but customers’ feedback resembles a kind of shamefaced slinking into the porn shop, leaving with a plain paper bag clutched in hand. People wanted the remix but didn’t want anyone to necessarily think they approved of it. Openminded communities don’t make people feel this way.

Elements of the old ae defended more as articles of faith than either statements of preference of arguments from principles. For example, there’s certainly no consensus from lower-better AC proponents about why it’s better. I’ve heard plenty of them. That’s because it’s the kind of apologetics where any argument will do, as long as it advances the position. I think this is a tragedy because in my opinion (as I said earlier in this article) is that older versions of D&D are an underappreciated (by disinterested gamers and by the Old School scene) storehouse of fascinating design ideas. Faith-based appreciation gets us nowhere.

Where’s the gold in old D&D? Here’s where I think it is:

Situation, Not Principle Driven Rules: Old D&D isn’t about shoehorning a situation into a core system. It’s about developing a system for the situation. A few games preserve this idea, including the Palladium system and more recently, The Riddle of Steel and Aces & Eights.

Manipulating Game Balance for Atmosphere: This is one of the real treasures that modern RPGs have consistently stamped out. Save-or-die is part of this, but the element that stands out for me is the difference between dungeon and wilderness encounters. Dungeons are “leveled” with challenges appropriate to ether depth or party competence. Wilderness encounters (and planar) are not; it’s the luck of the draw. The wilderness comes across as the darkness amongst the “points of light” in a way the current “points of light” edition doesn’t portray nearly as deftly.

Asymmetric Design: This is a big one for me, and I’ve talked about it before.

Old Schoolers point out that many games are laden down by unnecessary rules, but they rarely express this as a positive design principle about how the rules they do have contribute to the shape of the game. Because the game’s systems are added situationally instead of the situation being ported into an existing core rule there’s no aesthetic demand for equal time for all situations. There are many modern games that are stuffed full of rules because it’s easy to create a core mechanic variation, or because the designer feels that he or she needs to rescue the game from being focused on one thing. 3e had this issue.

(In modern games, I always think of computer hacking rolls, because many games include oodles of rolls for hacking, but outside of cyberpunk gaming nobody cares. People want to know if they get the data or control the system. But it’s so easy to ask for a standard roll again and again.)

You’d be hard pressed to get OD&D fans to admit it but 4e has actually moved back in this direction by loosening up skills simply because a skill check doesn’t need the same detail as a power. Classic D&D has no skills because the basic relationship with the world uses your own problem-solving skills. The dogamtic route would be to call this part of the “essence” of the game, but that’s not true.

The essence of the game is that you only add what you need to accomplish a particular goal in an interesting fashion. Once you loosen your grip on how you expect other people to play something, the possibilities of this idea reveal themselves, and provide insights into how games evolve. Rules get added to meet a play requirement until they get too cumbersome, get streamlined by core mechanics, and then those mechanics get extensions because once you have a core mechanic you can easily be seduced into elaborating it.

(This makes me think that 4e’s nonspecific damage – you don’t have to declare subdual – is actually more OD&D than OD&D.)

Without these more fundamental points of view the Old School becomes an increasingly tight box, limited by its ideology and genre. There should be an Old School horror game. An Old School modern game. An Old School game about transhumanism. I don’t think any of these things will come from the Old School except as a reaction to something like this post.

Hm. Maybe I’ll design one.

The Halo series has a rich background and good enough plotting to provide the illusion that as Master Chief, my lone operations are part of something bigger. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for many first person games. For me, Mirror’s Edge was an example of a game with great play but a dull plot (the fascist super Parkour conspiracy!). FPS games need the tabletop RPG setting’s strengths: story events with gravity, the illusion of a bigger world and a wealthy idea mine to compensate for the fact that story mode is not always a high priority — so the more inspirations around, the easier it is to do it right. Twitchy RPGs and RPG-like FPS games are improving too, but the empty and silly aspects of many examples (like open world games) demonstrate that there’s room for improvement. So let’s explore five tabletop RPG settings that could make great FPS games.

Dungeons and Dragons: Warforged

D&D is a huge license, and its computer game implementations usually choke on the sheer size of it — and invite comparisons with tabletop play that never go well, even when the games are good. Let’s cut it back; you’re not playing a party or a guy in a party. You’re one of Eberron’s warforged, magically programmed for battle, revived from an Adamantine crypt by adventurers. and bound to serve their master because of the artifact he carries (you’ll kick that guy’s ass later). Yeah, that feels like Halo, but Halo rocks.

Advantages: The enormous D&D bestiary is yours to fight. As a warforged your unnatural toughness is believable. You have limited item slots built into your body, so no scratching your head at inventory or wondering what hyperspace your items disapear to. Even your interface can be immersive, because maybe warforged do see a tactical display: glowing runes instead of a helmet HUD. An integral crossbow with magic quarrels takes care of the ranged weapon thing to start, though you’ll find stuff as you go, too.

Vampire: Solomon Birch

You’re God’s own vampire, blessed with supernatural strength, quickness, and a series of occult rites that might be revelations from the Lord Himself, all to punish the wicked – in this case, a demonic conspiracy that runs from mortals to Kindred to . . . whoever you meet at the climax. Once again, we’ve cut back from the whole World of Darkness. Hell, there’s no character creation, but that’s okay, because Solomon Birch is enough. Just don’t have him talk too much in cutscenes.

Advantages: Birch’s Daeva clan and Lancea Sanctum sect give him the powers and motives of a tough FPS protagonist.  Celerity is bullet time. His organization provides rites that he uses as between scene buffs. Vampire: Bloodlines had some excellent concepts for making use of mortals, so let’s revisit those, too.

Aeternal Legends: Knights

Yes, I went and did it – suggested a game that I publish in a blatant example of bias! It’s a good thing that Aeternal Legends (yes, a link, but I publish it because I like it!) really does work for this. Now unlike the other examples I wouldn’t stick to one character, but would go with a selection of four preset Strength Sphere users (Knights): one for each Clade. This restriction justifies fighting ability and means it’s easy to tweak story mode for each character. The Ministry charges you with destroying  one of the Swords of Yesterday – but it’s in the hand of a rising Dark Lord. Along the way you’ll fight subway pirates, slaves of the clockwork realm and evil Legends.

Advantages: Aeternal Legends‘ power system is easy to adapt to FPS play and would create definite changes in tactics based on your choice of Knight – something that can be spun into team-based PVP, too. The setting is at once familiar and includes enough hidden world stuff to let you design wierd and wonderful levels without straining credulity or lining a place with crates.

Talislanta: Thrall

Talislanta is kind of the Dying Earth’s meathead, metalhead cousin — that’s a compliment, by the way. It may not be as witty, but it is quietly imaginative and satisfyingly rewards brute force in a way Jack Vance’s decadent wonderland shouldn’t. You’ll play a Thrall: a hulking, tattooed soldier that moves from galdiatorial challenges to swashbuckling across the decks of windships, guided along the way by one of the mysterious Black Savants.

Advantages: Thralls are a warrior people, so suspension of disbelief is built in. You’ll believe that a tattooed man can kill 100 ice giants! You’d have a signature spikey close combat weapon (the Garde) and enough strange magic to supply any FPS mainstay. Maybe you can even commandeer windships and mounts. But in the end, the sheer variety of the setting and its strange but accessible nature makes Talislanta a winning license. This isn’t just look and feel, either; every group in the setting is chock full of story motivations, from Quan nobles after a cheap thrill to the Xambrians and their big grudge against wizards/Toquarans. (In fact, Xambrians are misunderstood violent loners, making them good FPS types, too.)

Lessons Learned

I got a few ideas out of writing the above. I’m coming at this as an FPS player who vastly prefers story play, so take it in that context.

1) Don’t Eat the Whole Sandwich – But Let ‘Em See the Tomatos

In each entry I cut down the options not just out of respect for the format, but because many things have impact in backstory and suggestion, not integration. When I’m playing Master Chief Halo lets me know enough to think of a whole infrastructure backing me up, and a rich setting that helps me ignore the restrictions of each level. Cutting down to one or a few preset characters also provides immediate motivation (I know my job and perspective) without making any of it seem petty and isolated from the greater world.

2) Settings Should Inspire Neat Levels

Crates and  shopping mall features are the bane of modern-era and futuristic levels. Every setting should inspire interesting level designs. (This is weak in my Vampire choice, but let’s plug some underground Belial’s Brood temples in there). D&D‘s assets are self-evident. Aeternal Legends has lots of neat hidden worlds a la Hellboy II and Harry Potter.

3) We’ve Got to Get Bigger Guns!

You need an excuse for interesting ranged weapons. Modern and futuristic games have this in the bag, but it requires imagination to apply this to fantasy worlds. Warforged can get Predator-like shoulder crossbows, so they work. Talislanta has lots of oddball magic – enough for gun substitutes, though I admit it’s the weakest entry in the list. Of course, you could get by this with ranged magic as well.

4) One Cool Thing Per Character

Every protagonist should have one cool thing they can do by virtue of their background. Knights can be super accurate, bust through armor and so on, depending on the character’s Clade (fantasy “race”). Solomon Birch has magic and Disciplines and is easily the best example in the article. Our warforged protagonist can magically upgrade him/her/itself. I must admit I missed the boat with the Thrall, though.

That’s it. What tabletop RPG do you think would make for a great FPS?

The marketing position of hardcore D20 advocates is naturally based on real sentiments: that there needs to be room for straightforward gamist play without too much analysis. I agree; this is the root of the hobby and where you get your foot in the door. What I’ve seen and read, though, goes far beyond that. It reminds me of nothing more than the RPG equivalent of Republican entitlement and false persecution.

You know what I mean: Dungeon crawling was in about as much danger as American Christianity. The rhetorical tactics are the same (and it is a pity to see them employed by ostensibly left-leaning gamers): identify a cohesive group (“liberals”/”storytellers”) opposed to populist values (Christian “moral values”/dungeon crawling) in a way that encourages hostile discourse (“faggot”/”faggot”). And to say something that will probably get me trolled: It’s no accident that the main architect of D20 as ideology is a Republican who characaterized Democrats as folks who believe that people are “evil,” and who is no stranger to dirty tricks and media manipulation, though to be fair, when the industry is so small, this sort of stuff isn’t that hard to do. It’s just harder to undo it when it tells gamers what they want to hear.

I’m using US politics as a model largely because, like the two party system, this tension doesn’t really have a strong ideological character in terms of how one should actually get things done. Everybody plays D&D, after all, and whether playing D&D is a good idea is about as likely to be challenged as the US’ semi-free market economy. The days when it was politically credible to challenge either are long gone (not that doing so wouldn’t be a good idea), and the false arguments being employed to create tension exist to weasel more money. There was never a “storytelling dominant” era in gaming. There was an era when Vampire and Vampire clones were popular and TSR fucked the dog despite D&D’s success.

Gamers are susceptible to this sort of thing. They like to be peer leaders with a strong persecution complex. Witness, for instance, the fact that so many still act as if (the now dead) Pat Pulling was still after them. Since this is a pretty silly position to have, it encourages a culture of denial which I think is becoming a serious problem when it comes to encouraging a fluid, diverse hobby.

Something I’ll call anti-analysis (there’s surely a better preexisting term) is making the rounds with serious strength. Consider the old debate about orcs and racism, which is about as emblematic of this problem as any other. Earthdawn, Harn and other games actually wrestled this problem and ended up richer for it.

The fact is, though, that orcs are basically “safe” versions of colonial racist imagery. Appealing to Tolkien won’t help here, nor will any other characterization of orcs as inherently evil automotons, because this is completely divorced from how they’re used in games. Read The Orcs of Thar for the apotheosis of orcs-as-safe-racism, where orcs are divided into tribes that parody different enthnicities (with “red” and “yellow” humanoids that represent exactly the stereotypes you’d think they did).

In fact, anti-analysis about this isn’t “old school,” at all. The first writing about a distinct D&D orc culture began with AD&D’s orcish pantheon, which was a creation myth about a marginalized race coming to claim their rightful due. (Did Roger E. Moore write that stuff? He was a pretty clever guy.) It’s only recently that gamers have so fought in earnest for the right to ignore culture (though they still fetishize silly monster “ecologies”) — fictional culture, real culture and the intersection between the two. Instead of using these questions to improve traditional dungeon crawling, they’re being rejected because insecure gamers have adopted an ideology of dungeon crawling that has little to do with actually playing the game.

What happens when you boil the little nuance down into a soundbite position? An opportunity to call somebody a faggot for playing an “enemy” of D&D, of course.