Counter Revolution – Part II

So, I decided last week to run AD&D for my next campaign. I was tempted to go really Old School and run Swords & Wizardry, but, if I took that route, it wouldn’t be  so simple. There’s a lot of great material being produced by fans, not to mention the stuff they want $$$ for. Like this, for instance: Thief. This is from Beyond the Black Gate, one of my favorite blogs. Anyway, between what I’ve found on the net and the changes and additions I would make myself, I’m afraid it would end up looking a lot like, well, AD&D.

I could be ruthless and run the White Box version. But that one saving throw thing bothers me. Also, I understand the idea behind the max +1/-1 adjustment, it just doesn’t sit well with my sensibilities. I could get behind a +1 for 13 – 15 / +2 for 16 – 18 mechanic. But, if I go that far, well, I like the Thief, the Druid, and away we go, right back to AD&D. Or, at least, B/X. So, AD&D it is!

Now I just have to decide what campaign world to use. My original Kastmaria campaign ran for about five years. This was back when I was in my late teens to early twenties and had a lot more free time, as did my friends. So, for about the first three of those years, we would play two to three times a week, often for six to eight hours at a time; there was  closer to eight years or more worth of actual  playing time. Not only did I get to experience the fun of running a high level AD&D campaign, I also got to see my sandbox flesh out, transforming into a rich world, with history and depth. After that campaign, I ran another Kastmaria game that lasted about a year or so. Then, I shelved the world and went on to other places. Until 3e, and Sorcerers.

At the end of the first campaign, a long term plan set in motion by Ithquaris, the divinity of Magic, came to fruition. The purpose was to increase the capacity for magic-use in the inhabitants of the world, creating beings with inborn magical ability. Sorcerers. When 3e came out, with the Sorcerer Class, I decided it was time to dust of my old notebooks and update the campaign to the new edition. The timeline was set several hundred years after the last campaign ended and The Gift of Ithquaris had a profound effect on the subsequent history of the world. There were still fewer Sorcerers than Wizards, but, their numbers were increasing. As were the number of other creatures who were manifesting spontaneous magical abilities. Then there were the Bards. Here’s the entry from the Kastmaria Encyclopedia – 3e edition:

Bards – Centuries ago, the isle of Aldhuine hosted several Bardic Colleges, which were tightly allied with the Druids of Aldhuine. After The Dragon was transformed, the druids withdrew their support and banished the bards, along with almost all humans and demi-humans who weren’t true druids. Only the Wood Elves were allowed to continue living in their ancestral forests. The bards wandered Kastmaria, occasionally taking apprentices, but without a central college and staff of instructors, the quality of the new bards began to deteriorate. As the bardic lineages were at the point of disappearing, a few of the inheritors of The Gift of Ithquaris began to take an interest in Bardic Lore. They discovered that their talent for sorcery was a perfect medium to express the musical power of the bards and several young sorcerers began seeking out the few remaining bards of old, to learn their music and lore. Today, bards are still relatively rare, but there is a thriving modern tradition, composed of semi-secret brotherhoods of sorcerous musicians who pass their occult lore onto others with the talent and inclination to learn the ways of this ancient tradition reborn.

All tying very neatly into the 3e mechanics.

The whole Gift of Ithquaris thing actually runs so far back into the history of the campaign, that unless I want to create an AD&D Sorcerer class, which I don’t, it’ll be quite a headache. Back in the day, I experimented with creating a spell point system. I’m over that; I like Vancian casting. So, if I don’t want to create an AD&D sorcerer, my options are limited.

I can reboot the whole thing, jettisoning a lot of play and pre-play campaign history. As an aside, I wish that Wotc, if they just had to “fix” the Forgotten Realms, would have done a reboot. A better option than yet another edition changing apocalypse, not to mention offing Mystra and neutering Elminster.

Another option would be psionics. There’s a variant Psionicist class for AD&D that   was published in Dragon Magazine; also, I think the same issue had some ideas on making psionics a variant of magic. There’s a variant  Bard in the Dragon as well. The original campaign didn’t feature psionics, so, using the material from Dragon, and letting any other characters role for psionics, as usual, might allow me to continue with the original history.

If I go the reboot route, it would have to be so far reaching, that I think I would rather just create a new world. Or, run Greyhawk. Never ran Greyhawk.