my thoughts on a heavily simplified Dungeons & Dragons "ninjas and monks"

i click on yahoo news and i find this

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/b2dad272-6fd9-3421-966d-0e78e2ed3047/dungeons-%26-dragons-is.html

Dungeons & Dragons is changing how it makes books
Polygon Tue, Oct 18 10:00 PM PDT

The venerable Dungeons & Dragons franchise, the granddaddy of the modern role-playing game, is now in its 5th edition. And, to hear publisher Wizards of the Coast tell it, the sourcebooks are selling like hot cakes. More people than ever before are discovering the magic of rolling dice and telling stories with their friends, and lapsed fans are returning in droves. For lead designer Mike Mearls, that’s created a bit of a problem. How do you keep the source material fresh for a 42-year old franchise? And, when you’re in the business of selling books, how do you make the next one more interesting than the last? Consider a pillar of the franchise, the sourcebook known as the Monster Manual. The ...

this article was posted today, as i read it, from Tue Oct 18, 2016.

i played D&D from 80's, when the cartoon was also present. i played both basic and AD&D



i preferred the basic simplicity of basic set D&D but all my friends preferred


i actually owned these books.

i also owned and played marvel super heroes


and star frontiers



back in the 80s when the game was out it was really popular, and it also coincided with the east asian oriental martial arts craze as exemplified by bruce lee and the karate kid

i've not played these games since 80's, basically i played it as a boy but when i finished elementary and went to high school i switched to computer and video games.

i can only comment on first editiion D&D and ad&d

these games are extremely difficult to learn and master. however, bc of its popularity, it was the only game system that if you met other rpg' gamers they would know anything they would know and play d&d

it's also highly confusing and difficult, and i've thought about how to simplify it. the problem though is that then and now, it would be hard to find players who would be familiar with rpg's other than d&d. d&d was the standard. i thought star frontiers was superior in rules and simplicity but hardly anyone knew or cared.

some thoughts and observations, only pertains to first edition

the idea of savings throws proved to be an extremely difficult and problematic idea

saving throws like poison petrification and turn to stone, dragon breath, 17

was misinterpreted as saying that you can throw a dragon breath against your enemies 17 times. i.e if your saving throw was dragon breath #17, your character can fire breath 17 times against say zombies. burning them to a crips. this lead to countless arguments.

what savings throws actually means is if your character encounters a dragon, and breathes fire on you, you need to score 17 or higher on a d20 dice to half your damage, which at level 1 isn't going to save you.

i'd eliminate the whole concept and replace it with luck factor or damage mitigation factor %

similarly in ad&d experience points for monsters said 3000 xp + 3xp/hp

the correct interpretation, which again as a kid i spent all time arguing over is, if you kill a dragon, the baseline xp is 3000xp + for every hit point a dragon has, you get 3 xp so if one dragon has 10 hit points you get 30 xp, and if another had 100 hit points, you get 300.

the way it was wrongly meant is if you kill a dragon, you get it's hit points, so if your character has 10 hit points, and with the above example, you gain another 10 or 100 hit points for kiling a dragon. not hard to say then by level 2 or 3 you had characters with tens of thousands of hitpoints and only getting higher.

i don't think gary gygax and the authors created d&d in a way that regular kids thought or would understand it.

alignment was another one. it could be called ethical/moral position: good, evil, neutral, or n/a

simple, easy to understand. vampires evil. red dragons evil. golden dragons good. bears n/a.

ad&d was infamous in creating huge number of distinctions chaotic good lawful good lawful evil lawful neutral neutral good etc.

the armor class system made no sense, thaco meant to hit armor class 0, and you can go into - armor class.

it also required a very large number of lists and tables that had to be constantly looked up, and had to keep track of experience points which was cumbersome. tables from hit probablity and class progression, to turning undead to casting spells, etc.

there were also confusing complicated rules on creating classes, multi-classes, classes with elves, half-elves half-orcs

again d&d is the one rpg that if you met someone who plays any rpg, you're pretty sure it's d&d and not, say star frontiers.

for me, one problem with d&d is if you met some party girls or christian girls who never played d&d and tried to teach them, and show them how it's fun, good luck with that.
very steep learning curve, lots of time spent reading and studying books.

these are some ideas i have, on an rpg inspired by D&D but not d&d but something along the lines of  "ninjas and monks" D&D was originally formatted exclusively on a western european pre-gunpowder, pre-industrial medical world, patterned after LOTR

tsr did release this since 80s was the time of the ninja craze



this is the design objective

create an rpg system that sorority party girls



or christian girls



easy to learn, easy to play, easy concepts to understand, fun

ninjas and monks, n and m N&M

how?

use % system with 2 10-sided dice like star front tiers. % is easier to understand

no rules on how to create a character. that makes it more complicated. instead, all characters, monks, ninjas, samurai, wizzards, are pre-made. if you want to play a ninja, here's your sheet. already made for you. if you want to play a cleric here's your sheet. the sheet describes your equipment, abilities, skills, spells armor attributes like strength intelligence etc.

race humans only

no level advancement. you start on level 1, you stay on level 1 never increase from that.

individual skills like fighting or spells may be slightly increased with gold pieces, obtained only from adventure

no savings throws. damage mitigation % applies to a variety of things covered by savings throws from poison to petrification to dragon breath

simplify alignment to ethical position - good, evil, neutral n/a

fewer dice rolls better than more dice rolls
dice rolling only to determine if it is hit, if character does hit monster, the damage done is fixed.

fewer need to look up tables is better than more need to look up tables.
list weapon and % needed to strike opponent. simple

hit points = stamina + armor
upgrading armor is the only way to increase hit points.

no experience points. may collect gold pieces used to buy better equipment better weapons and armor

all monsters have fixed hit points.

all spells abilities traits should be stated in simple plain english, do fixed amount of damage if offensive.

all areas of mechanics are simplified in every way possible. star front tiers % is a good model of how to do this.

adventures are structured using modules similar to this



the basic game mechanics would mostly be a simplified and cleaned up version of star frontiers.

initial adventures are limited to dungeon crawls and wilderness.

overall the goal is to create an rpg that is simple to learn, simple to implement simple to play, using easy to understand concepts and mechanics

concrete example,

you choose to play a knight

with your sword you can hit monsters at 60% and if you do hit, you do 10 points of damage.

if you choose to play a wizzard

with your staff you can hit monsters 30% and if you do hit you do 5 points of damage

zombie has 20 hit points. it can inflict 5 hit points by biting scratching or grabbing 30% chance

as wizzard you can cast these spells, once per day - fireball 50% to hit, 20 points of damage, lightening bolt 50% to hit, 15 ponts of damage etc

the only time you roll dice is to determine if you hit.


ah well i'm surprised d&d is still being played with VR coming soon.