(H. J. Ford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
I Ran Old School D&D For Middle-Schoolers. Here's What I learned.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine emailed me. He told me how his neighbor was looking for someone to run a quick adventure for her son’s birthday party. I was surprised at first, but I accepted the job, even though I’d never done it before.
The mother and I spoke on the phone a couple of days later, and I was delivered my quest. I was to run some D&D for a group of eight boys at a birthday party for two-and-a-half hours. Also, almost none of them had played D&D before. I knew exactly what to do.
Since the players were all new, I figured I would have to explain the rules, teach everyone what dice were, and so on. If that’s the case, why should I run a rules-heavy game like D&D 5e? Why not save some more time for playing? I grabbed my copy of Old School Essentials and got started prepping.
For this one-shot, I wanted to run something prepackaged, quick to prep, and that I was already familiar with. I had this one-page dungeon printed out in my binder, which I had run for some friends previously. The Fortress on the Ironflow River by Dyson Logos is a pretty simple adventure. You have a cave, a fort, and a river. The area is filled with lizardfolk, smaller lizards and two ogres. A slight bit generic (though, the lizardfolk shake things up a bit, compared to goblins or orcs), but overall it makes for a fun dungeon crawl. I like this dungeon because it has some interesting environmental factors, specifically, the eponymous river.
Once I’d chosen the adventure, the next crucial step was characters. Again, this was a jump-in-and-play scenario. We only had two-and-a-half-hours to get this done, so cutting down on character creation time was imperative. I printed out somewhere around 24 character sheets — roughly three for each kid, and got to work. I followed the standard procedure for B/X: roll 3d6 for each stat, then select the classes after. It may sound crazy if you’ve only played D&D 5e+, but it’s a blast to find the best classes for the stat line.
I ended up including some classes from AD&D (reinterpreted via OSE’s Advanced Fantasy) to shake things up, along with using race-as-class. The in-session party ended up being a cleric, two elves, a drow, a ranger, two wizards, and a fighter. It forced some interesting thinking, as most characters would not survive most direct combat.
When making the pregens, I discovered something: the default method for buying equipment in B/X and Old-School systems in general is kind of bad. You usually roll 3d6 x 10 gold and can buy equipment. I like this, but it’s really slow at the table, and I wasn’t about to spend an extra 3–5 minutes per 24 character buying items for them. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but D&D 5e actually did it better. Each class and background has a list of basic equipment it gets, as well as allowing for mutually exclusive choices. A fighter can either get chain mail, or leather armor, plus a bow and arrows. It’s a shockingly great system, and definitely something to talk about in a future post. This is a concept I’d love to explore in more depth.
The day arrived, and I rolled up to the house. I came in, talked to the parents briefly and got started. The kids sat down, and I handed out character sheets. A couple of people weren’t happy with their characters. The player who had the drow first ended up switching with another. In total, we had the following Characters: Blue boy, Crazy, Aaron, Laree (pronounced “Larry”), Boooots, Flynn, Him and Cat. Unsurprisingly, it made for a mildly annoying time to talk to them in character. I actually included some randomly generated names for the characters, but every single person, changed their name without fail.
Once everyone had settled down, and received their characters, I explained the rules.
This took 5 minutes.
Essentially: I told them dice nomenclature, how attacking worked, as well as explained turn order, and gave a brief overview of the character sheet. The thing about old school D&D is that it doesn’t require much knowledge. Outside the most basic information, since it favors DM rulings more than actual rules, a game like OSE (Basic Fantasy RPG, Whitebox, Swords and Wizardry, Cairn, etc.) doesn’t have much lead-in. Characters can do anything that’s reasonable. You want to lift that rock? Go for it. You want to smooth-talk the guard? Make sounds with your mouth, no need to roll anything. It’s only in the most aberrant scenarios, where failure is meaningful, that having rolls are useful. Enemies are closing in, there’s a broken bridge, make a strength check to jump the chasm and escape. A dragon is actively trying to fry you, make a saving throw to get out of the way.
It’s for this reason that there was no need for a long preamble to the action, as soon as they grasped the basics of combat — roll a d20, add a number, hope it’s bigger than the opponent’s number — they were ready to go (In case anyone was curious, I opted to eschew THAC0 in favor of Ascending Armor Class for this exact reason.)
However, If there’s one takeaway from this experience, I’d say that it’s to have a caller. If you’re not familiar, a caller is a player who takes in everyone else’s actions and then tells the DM (A rules write-up can be found here). It really helped to get immediate information as to what the characters were planning quickly.
I placed them immediately in the entrance to the dungeon. It’s two battlements on either side of a cave wall with two lizardfolk guarding them. After deliberation on who’d carry torches, which spells did what, etc. they got started with the lizards. They first tried to bribe them, offering something in the ballpark of 5 copper pieces. That obviously didn’t work, so they started attacking. One of the lizardfolk was “programmed” to run and get help at first sign of danger, which he did, leaving 8 combatants against 1 foe. Half of the characters did nothing, a quarter of them missed their first attack, and one hit to do something like half its hp.
I ended up giving them hints a couple of times. Kind of like loading screen tips. “You can light oil on fire and throw it,” or “You can use pitons to keep doors closed.” One of them checked his equipment to find he did, in fact, have a flask of oil. He lit the oil and then, like, poured it at the lizardfolk’s feet. This did the majority of the damage, and another character finished it off. It was a nice moment — one of the players got to feel successful, and everyone benefitted from it. I was fine bending DM Neutrality here, since all the players were new. Even if they’re not new, it’s worth reminding them of stuff they can do.
The party trekked further into the dungeon. It was around this point when I learned that one of the characters, blue boy, was actually the Blue Beetle. Like, the DC superhero. Blue Boy apparently had some special powers, and the player kept trying to convince me that he had a magic suit. How a group of 12-year-olds all knew about a relatively obscure superhero, I will never know. It was at this point when things started to get off the rails.
You have to understand that it had been around an hour by now. Barely anyone had played D&D ever, and due to strategizing, turn-order snafus, some minor rules elaborations, and birthday-related distractions, things took a while. They were getting a bit restless, and half of them decided to convince me that they could craft the Blue Beetle suit out of stones and a torch.
They opened the stuck door, and after deliberation, entered the dungeon proper, coming across a den of lizardfolk, with a small locked chest out in the open. Every character dashed to get the box immediately, leaving four lizardfolk surrounding them all. It was somehow not a bloodbath, and the players all dispatched the other lizardfolk pretty swiftly, smashing open the chest to get 1000 gold.
And that’s about where things ended.
As absolutely shocking as it may sound, it’s pretty difficult to manage eight different personalities playing D&D at once, let alone their lack of frontal lobe development. One of the characters died in that encounter, and I think momentum was lost from there. One of them suggested playing Mario Kart in the basement. I’ve never seen a room clear out as fast as it did then. I helped the kid’s mom pick up, collected my bounty, and left.
All-in-all, I had a nice time. So did everyone else, even if they didn’t make it too far. I don’t really have any parting epiphanies, or revelations. Just a few thoughts.
Old School D&D is so much better for large groups than 5th edition+. There was never once when I felt slowed by mechanics, only the bizarre talk of superheroes. Procedural play makes things so much easier (I talk about this briefly here). Since everything was taken in turns, as well as the caller’s input, everyone’s activities are taken into account, giving everyone equal chances (Though some of the louder personalities will occasionally dominate the strategizing). Combat is as easy as “roll 1d20 — add number,” with the occasional movement or extra strategy. The less-defined rules also puts problem-solving in the forefront, something that deemphasizes the need for hand-designed characters. All of them are equally skilled in most things, with peaks and valleys here and there, meaning that the game only really depends on your problem-solving skills. Lastly, screwing around in a dungeon, eating cake and pizza, killing evil lizards, and throwing flaming oil is just good old-fashioned fun.
Sometimes you don’t need more than that.
This blog is, and always will be, 100% human generated.