Dungeoneer Adventures: Designer Diary #2: No +1 Swords
Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:58 pm
No +1 Swords
Way back in the day the big kids next door let me join them for a dungeon stomping adventure. I will never quite understand why the 15 and 16 year old guys wanted to play with a 10 year old kid, but heck, stranger gaming groups have been formed. Way stranger.
We were playing with the very first set of fantasy role playing rules available. Before 1st edition, before the blue book. No editions, no modifications, just three little brown books covered with simple black and white art. I still remember a beautiful witch with a comely friend on page 27 .... There were supplements and other stuff available at the time, but not to us, we lived way out in the sticks and were thus unaware of the most recent stuff. The only extra rules we had were in a zine published by some local guys. Back then the rules were simple and the game was fun.
We ran around in a maze-like dungeon full of bloodthirsty orcs, stupid trolls and burbling magic fountains. Eventually one of us got his hands on a +1 sword. We were all impressed. Within our group, he became the local hero. Always at the vanguard, he would charge forward hacking apart everything. Most importantly he would take down the wights. (They could only be harmed by silver arrows and enchanted blades.) He would swing his mighty 1d6+1 weapon and the monsters woudl go down like ripe wheat. He had a mighty 14 strength, which provided no attack or damage bonuses at all! (But it did let him add 5% to earned experience point rewards!.) Back then just about everything did 1d6 damage. No ones chance to hit would change until they reached fourth level.
I had heard of one guy who had made it all the way to fifth level. When I started playing that was just a rumor, we all expected to die well before that. I did not hesitate to play a hobbit that could not even go to any level higher than fourth. Fifth level seemed ridiculously far away.
The bonus to hit, the bonus to damage and the ability to harm those wights without wasting our precious silver arrows was very important. That +1 sword meant the world to us. It was a thin shining sliver of metal that held back the darkness of the dungeon. When its wielder died at the hands of a wight, I still remember the feeling of awe I experienced as I pried that +1 sword out of his clammy grasp and continued the mad rush forward. Now with the awesome power of the +1 sword in my own hands, I went into a frenzy. When the previous wielder of the sword rose again as a wight behind me, I cut him down like a sapling and then began a happy hackfest among the remainder of our foes. A few lucky die rolls later, I stood alone upon a huge pile of dismembered wights.
I was 10 years old.
I was a god among men.
It was awesome.
Conan, Lancelot or Hercules had nothing on me.
It is this kind of experience that Dungeoneer Adventures strives to produce.
I had a +1 sword. It didn't have a name. We never referred to it as 'magical'. It was just 'the +1 sword'. No one else had one. Sure one guy had that coin with 'continual light' on it (who knew where he found a 5th level Bishop to cast it for him?). Some other guy had a bag that always had what he needed inside it (including a fresh chicken at dinner time). I had 'the +1 sword', and I was proud. I folded up that character sheet after the adventure and knew that next Thursday night, between suppertime and bedtime, I would again revel in the awesome power of my mightily armed hobbit.
Oh how times have changed! The games we play have changed as well. These days a plain old +1 sword is almost a disappointment. A first level d20 fighter can easily have +6 to hit before the game even starts (BAB +1, Str 16, weapon focus and a masterwork blade). When that fighter gets a hold of a +1 sword, the increase in combat power is nominal. If he is replacing a masterwork blade, his chance to hit will not even change. WTF!
Slowly but surely, a constant escalation has occurred over the history of gaming. Nowadays, a '+1 sword' means almost nothing. What you really want is the 'excellent, keen, smoldering +6 longsword of the harrowing feral dire weasel'. Some of you may remember having sat in front of a computer for about 63.2 hours, just to upgrade your sword from +378 to +383. How did a fun filled nights entertainment get turned into an amateur math quiz?
With the current generation of rules, no one will get that amazing rush over a '+1 sword'.
In Dungeoneer Adventures we have taken care to refresh the RPG genre.
We have taken out the tedious number crunching.
We have sped things up and removed slow, boring, incremental progress from the game.
Each and every treasure you find will make a real difference in how you play.
In a world where everything is escalating out of control, we bring the RPG back where it belongs.
Power in YOUR hands.
Get ready to roll 1d6 where +1 means a heck of a lot.
You are the hero of your own story.
Stomp through the dungeon.
Watch as your foes cower before the might of your amazing magical weaponry and insanely powerful spells.
Play is fast.
Combat and furious.
Dungeoneer Adventures makes for a great night of entertainment, not 6 months of tedious grinding.
Let the games begin!
Way back in the day the big kids next door let me join them for a dungeon stomping adventure. I will never quite understand why the 15 and 16 year old guys wanted to play with a 10 year old kid, but heck, stranger gaming groups have been formed. Way stranger.
We were playing with the very first set of fantasy role playing rules available. Before 1st edition, before the blue book. No editions, no modifications, just three little brown books covered with simple black and white art. I still remember a beautiful witch with a comely friend on page 27 .... There were supplements and other stuff available at the time, but not to us, we lived way out in the sticks and were thus unaware of the most recent stuff. The only extra rules we had were in a zine published by some local guys. Back then the rules were simple and the game was fun.
We ran around in a maze-like dungeon full of bloodthirsty orcs, stupid trolls and burbling magic fountains. Eventually one of us got his hands on a +1 sword. We were all impressed. Within our group, he became the local hero. Always at the vanguard, he would charge forward hacking apart everything. Most importantly he would take down the wights. (They could only be harmed by silver arrows and enchanted blades.) He would swing his mighty 1d6+1 weapon and the monsters woudl go down like ripe wheat. He had a mighty 14 strength, which provided no attack or damage bonuses at all! (But it did let him add 5% to earned experience point rewards!.) Back then just about everything did 1d6 damage. No ones chance to hit would change until they reached fourth level.
I had heard of one guy who had made it all the way to fifth level. When I started playing that was just a rumor, we all expected to die well before that. I did not hesitate to play a hobbit that could not even go to any level higher than fourth. Fifth level seemed ridiculously far away.
The bonus to hit, the bonus to damage and the ability to harm those wights without wasting our precious silver arrows was very important. That +1 sword meant the world to us. It was a thin shining sliver of metal that held back the darkness of the dungeon. When its wielder died at the hands of a wight, I still remember the feeling of awe I experienced as I pried that +1 sword out of his clammy grasp and continued the mad rush forward. Now with the awesome power of the +1 sword in my own hands, I went into a frenzy. When the previous wielder of the sword rose again as a wight behind me, I cut him down like a sapling and then began a happy hackfest among the remainder of our foes. A few lucky die rolls later, I stood alone upon a huge pile of dismembered wights.
I was 10 years old.
I was a god among men.
It was awesome.
Conan, Lancelot or Hercules had nothing on me.
It is this kind of experience that Dungeoneer Adventures strives to produce.
I had a +1 sword. It didn't have a name. We never referred to it as 'magical'. It was just 'the +1 sword'. No one else had one. Sure one guy had that coin with 'continual light' on it (who knew where he found a 5th level Bishop to cast it for him?). Some other guy had a bag that always had what he needed inside it (including a fresh chicken at dinner time). I had 'the +1 sword', and I was proud. I folded up that character sheet after the adventure and knew that next Thursday night, between suppertime and bedtime, I would again revel in the awesome power of my mightily armed hobbit.
Oh how times have changed! The games we play have changed as well. These days a plain old +1 sword is almost a disappointment. A first level d20 fighter can easily have +6 to hit before the game even starts (BAB +1, Str 16, weapon focus and a masterwork blade). When that fighter gets a hold of a +1 sword, the increase in combat power is nominal. If he is replacing a masterwork blade, his chance to hit will not even change. WTF!
Slowly but surely, a constant escalation has occurred over the history of gaming. Nowadays, a '+1 sword' means almost nothing. What you really want is the 'excellent, keen, smoldering +6 longsword of the harrowing feral dire weasel'. Some of you may remember having sat in front of a computer for about 63.2 hours, just to upgrade your sword from +378 to +383. How did a fun filled nights entertainment get turned into an amateur math quiz?
With the current generation of rules, no one will get that amazing rush over a '+1 sword'.
In Dungeoneer Adventures we have taken care to refresh the RPG genre.
We have taken out the tedious number crunching.
We have sped things up and removed slow, boring, incremental progress from the game.
Each and every treasure you find will make a real difference in how you play.
In a world where everything is escalating out of control, we bring the RPG back where it belongs.
Power in YOUR hands.
Get ready to roll 1d6 where +1 means a heck of a lot.
You are the hero of your own story.
Stomp through the dungeon.
Watch as your foes cower before the might of your amazing magical weaponry and insanely powerful spells.
Play is fast.
Combat and furious.
Dungeoneer Adventures makes for a great night of entertainment, not 6 months of tedious grinding.
Let the games begin!