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I Can’t Make Up My Mind

Recently I decided I should finally give BECMI a chance. I asked a couple of friends if they were interested in creating characters to which they agreed. We initially planned to meet two weeks later to start playing, but we had to reschedule. At the moment the game is still in limbo.

In the meantime I worked on a simple adventure to get started while also thinking about the bigger picture. Since the first planned meeting fell through I thought I might have enough time to start working on a campaign world of my own. Since previous attempts have often ended up in flames, I decided to follow Michael Shorten’s example and start with just three hexes.

During my two-week vacation I planned to sit down and do some prep work, but I ended up playing Elder Scrolls Online with my wife. That was a lot of fun, but I didn’t come any nearer to my goal of creating an interesting campaign setting to play in.

In the meantime I was also invited into Michael’s Ultima-based PbP game which borrows mechanics from Swords & Wizardry Whitebox, which is among my favorite retro clones. It’s simple, elegant, easily hackable, and I can pretty much run it without having to look up rules all the time. Reading these rules again made me question my decision to play using BECMI rules. There’s a certain charm to these rules, but I just feel much more comfortable with White Box. *sigh*

At the moment I am torn between sticking to BECMI and changing to White Box. I guess I could probably use S&W Whitebox as a base and borrow concepts from BECMI if needed. My players probably don’t mind either way. Sure, we might have to reroll characters but that’s probably done in something like 10 minutes. While I am trying to make up my mind, my anxiety also comes knocking. My fear of failing as a GM is so high that it totally paralyses me sometimes.

My gut feeling is to switch to Whitebox since it’s the easier system of the two. I am also quite familiar with it, while I haven’t really run or played BECMI yet. Last but not least there are the issues with the descending armor classes, THAC0 etc., which I find a bit cumbersome. It’s no real deal breaker but just something which may cause stumbles. If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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7 comments

comments user
Peter R.

If I were in your shoes? Whitebox
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    comments user
    Stargazer

    Whitebox is definitely the easiest solution. I’ve used the version released by Seattle Hills Games several times in the past (for example for a game inspired by Darkest Dungeon) and it always worked great. It’s also extremely easily hackable.
    Reply
comments user
egdcltd

There’s also S&W Complete, just to throw something else into the mix!
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    comments user
    Stargazer

    Another great alternative. S&W Complete still feels like old-school D&D, but offers more class options and feel more streamlined, especially if you’re used to more modern RPGs. Thanks for reminding me.
    Reply
comments user
Michael S

I use all of my D&D with Daniel Collins’s Target20 approach. It uses DAC but eliminates THAC0 and the like.

http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-best-combat-algorithm.html
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    comments user
    Stargazer

    Thanks for sharing! I’ll definitely keep this in mind, the next time I try to run something with DAC. At the moment I feel a bit more comfortable with something like S&W or S&W Whitebox though. The differences are not that huge, but it just feels much more approachable to me. For the game I am currently planning I might actually use S&W Complete, but S&W Whitebox looks great for tinkering with.
    Reply
      comments user
      Michael S

      White Box is fabulous to use as a platform for designing a D&D-based game on top of it. That’s why my Ultima games “feels” like Ultima, but has enough D&D to be familiar enough and to be a good foundation. It’s a great toolkit.
      Reply