Been a long time since my last post. Work has been exhausting, and my mind has been fuzzy when I get home. A poor and common excuse, I know. And the only way to change that is to, um, change it.
In the old days of the resurgent old school gaming scene on the internet, most of the OSR blogs would run with a topic that may or may not have been interesting. Since I am looking at getting a gaming group together, and looking to run Original D&D, I have had a few thoughts on a few esoteric matters. One of those is the weaponry allowed to the cleric.
Frankly, allowing them to have “non-edged” weapons is kinda silly. The early rationalization was that Clerics cannot draw blood. But beating a person’s skull in with a mace (the iconic weapon of the class) is indeed drawing blood.
Some claims were made that not allowing better weaponry was a balance issue, but this claim doesn’t add up, for one major reason. All weapons in OD&D did the same damage – 1d6. It wasn’t until the first supplement, Greyhawk, was published that variable weapon damage was introduced to the game. So there was no balancing factor to restricting the arms a Cleric could wield in the earliest days.
There is other inherent balance between the fighter and Cleric. While the priest can cast healing and divination magic, he does not progress as fast as a Fighter does on the combat tables. And the Cleric does not get his first spell until second level.
So when my game starts, the holy warrior known as the Cleric will not be restricted in weapon choice – and there will be variable weapon damage by type.
I will be running OD&D plus some of the supplements. It is tempting to use a clone, like Swords and Wizardy, since they are better organized and available for free on the net for players to download. I am going with the original game because I want something a little more wide open and less codified than later games. The Fantasy Trip stuff from the Kickstarter will be shipping soon, and I’ll be rolling some dice under its banner, but I’ve definitely got the itch for the mysteries from the dawn of role playing. I haven’t run a game of OD&D since I got AD&D in 1980 or ’81.
I’ve got the beginnings of a megadungeon and the outline of a new world we will be exploring. I have a couple of players lined up – I’d like to get a few more. I’ll keep the blog updated with things as they unfold.