Explaining What Adventure Gaming Means to Me

On Fantasy Adventure Gaming

In the past year, I have had the pleasure of being included on the CAG Podcast as a member of the regular panel (at least for the first 3 episodes). I have also had the honor for DM'ing for three out of the five people on those episodes of the show and having Carcass of Hope reviewed, in brutal honesty, by the other two.

The CAG discord has attracted quite a following and it's been interesting watch the discussions unfold. However, while some of what makes CAG and OSR stand apart from each other is more obscured by their overlap on the Venn diagram than made clear by CAGs tenets. 

The preferred way to play for longtime gamers.

This doesn't assume that you need to learn the game. Basic versions are fine for that, but even basic games need to warp and flex the more you play it. CAG is the way to play when you've had years to absorb all the rules and its various options. The years invested provide either a way to codify existing rules, modify them to serve actual play over theory (or compulsion to tinker), or in the case of OD&D, define them specifically to a smooth running campaign.

The longform campaign is the best way to play.

Establishing this rule means that consideration for many variables must be taken into account, which cannot while doing just a one-shot or small string of adventures. Payoffs and investments are commonplace for the players, as well as delayed punishments, early decisions catching up, and great ramifications of the campaign world. Achieving higher levels as players should be more than numbers getting bigger and spells being deadlier. It should be about the game perpetually evolving in terms of challenge, while the world itself needs to be the foam that changes when pressed or pulled.

And for a CAG to achieve this, then that brings us to...

All Levels of play not just some levels of play. 

B/X falls off after level 6 due to many factors, not excluding stacking magic rings and cloaks with magic armor, monsters flattening out in effectiveness while player tactical options are lessened (no attack routines, rate of fire with missile weapons, binary-like initiative system even with casting times, etc).

Not just the dungeon.

With a full breadth campaign comes multiple modes of adventure gaming. Domain play aside, there is massive room for wilderness exploration, ocean, city and some aerial play. With that comes a need of supporting rules to navigate and overcome those challenges. Large-scale conflict should be able to be resolved with relative ease, because it will come up from time to time even if it isn't the games focus. While the dungeon is a primary mode of play, the greater campaign is held together by the world that those dungeons live in. 

Run longform campaigns, use longform knowledge.

Run 30 sessions of B/X and you're mechanically right where you started. Run 30 sessions of AD&D and you've leveled up as a player, you understand the relationships between certain rules, why they exist, and niche things that come up in play. The next 30 sessions will be run with such a higher degree of mechanical confidence and operational efficiency, that you'll start to see play and roads to play opening up before you.

Rules ecosystem or primordial ooze.

Much of the ecosystem that exists to balance the game is left out of B/X because it was intended to be a warped, but simpler, presentation of the game to put on Toys R Us shelf to be a gateway. It was written to support play for the early levels, not stand the rigors of stringent playtesting and time weathering. 

AD&D has an ecosystem for much of its inclusions from how monster charms work to why rangers affect surprise chances. Changing one rule means you have to be aware of any potential ripple effects, because the web that is netted together provides a certain play experience that is guided via the rules that are in place. The choice of a spell to cast, affected by the missile weapon dexterity bonuses, fighter multiple attacks, or opposing magic-user spells presents a game within the game, for example. Do you just open up with the biggest spell you got and hope it goes off first? Do you go for the rapid magic-missile to interrupt the opposition? Does the opposition have a shielding brooch or spell to prevent that interruption? 

Or in OD&D, you are encouraged to fill in the gaps on your own. You get to take your years of experience and mix up your own brand of mortar for the bricks to be held together. And the math works out more to put the least amount at risk. There's less of a dependent ecosystem here, but lots of room for modular inclusion (especially from AD&D since the math is so close).

Final notes about the OSR:

Where the Old School Primers deviates from CAG, though they were once much closer:

Rulings, not Rules.

This has been exaggerated greatly in the years since this came out. Matt wrote this at a point where this was a massively important distinction between old school games and D&D 3.x, where everything had to have a rigid ruling. During that time, making a x out of 6 ruling for an undocumented situation was very clearly a newer concept to those who had started during the WotC era of D&D. These days, even with 5e, it's been taken to an extreme to the point where rules-light is the selling point. 

AD&D, even OSRIC - the first retroclone, stopped seeing table time, products, and discussion for years because B/X was so much easier to parse. The ease of use frenzy snowballed past just introducing players into being a flat and deadly curve to keep the relatively low-complexity waters from boiling over a shallow pot. This can be seen in most OSR adventures being written for levels 1-3, DCC (the entire product line), and the mudcore comments from DMs who brag about the PCs they were able to kill by comparing D6 damage rolls with D6 hit points. This sharply deviated away from longform campaigns with progression, to even lighter rules systems that dominated the market.

In about 15 years, we went from discussing the dangers of using a haste spell instead of a slow spell or the advantage of a bastard sword over a two-handed sword, to the range of anything being 'close, near, or far'. 

Can you use B/X to achieve Fantasy Adventure Gaming?

I guess. I'm not your dad. But I've played in enough B/X games to know it's not the same thing.