I've been reading a lot about Microlite20 recently, particularly this thread on EN World, where it all started. I've also been going back through the archives at Greywulf's Lair, Grognardia and The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, so I'm in a real old-school D&D frame of mind.
I think we'll be back using M20 as our ruleset of choice. D&D 4th Edition is great, and I love the powers system, but the combat is a bit heavy on book-keeping for my liking. I want to move away from miniatures and battlemats, and back to the keep-it-simple M20 system.
Like many people in the EN World thread linked above, I've found that the fact Microlite20 has so few rules actually encourages our creativity. There's less there to worry about unbalancing or overwriting, so you can just muddle along with your own house rules and setting tweaks until you end up with something uniquely yours. And of course there's nothing wrong with sitting down with the D20 SRD and the 4e powers, and coming up with some interesting house rules...
Labels: dnd4e, microlite
We didn't get to play as much
Microlite20 as we wanted during our little camping trip -- bad weather and a very small tent conspired
against us -- but it did get us thinking about pen-and-paper hobbies
and what we want to get out of them.
As there's only the two of
us, we play without a DM, which is both weird and difficult. With
no-one taking the lead, we rely on randomness to shape our dungeons
and control our monsters. It's not as satisfying from a role-playing
perspective as a DM-led campaign, so we tailor our games to downplay
the disadvantages of not having a DM. This means we're light on
roleplay, NPCs and surprises, and heavy on combat and dungeon
crawling. Essentially we play pen-and-paper Diablo, with some
collaborative storytelling in-between dungeons.
We've been
restoring rules from the d20 SRD
to Microlite20, and adding more and more house rules, and it's reached
a point where it's not really very "lite" anymore. So, we've decided
to take the plunge and start using Dungeons and Dragons 4e, instead.
D&D 4e is heavy on combat, and has been compared to an MMO, so
hopefully we'll be right in our comfort zone.
Labels: dnd4e, microlite
Amazingly, we're not playing World of Warcraft at the moment, but I'm sure we'll be back. Where WoW is concerned, it seems
perpetual recovery is the best possible hope.
No, what we're playing at the moment is
Wizard 101, which seems to me to be an under-appreciated gem. Perhaps it's family-friendly image and Harry Potter-esque theme has been putting people off, but then that's their loss. Beneath the simple, childish art style is a very good CCG/RPG hybrid, with all the deck-building and min-maxing potential that entails.
It's also perfect for the way we like to play MMOs -- just the two of us, playing MMOs as basically single-player games with very good multiplayer. You can instantly teleport yourself to any of your friends. Grouping is available, but you can join other people for battles or boss fights seamlessly without grouping. There are no looting options, so there's no drama. Chat is heavily filtered, and can be turned off entirely, so you don't have to endure endless waves of moronic chatter. So far we've been able to duo or solo every boss encounter. Excellent.
Offline, we've also played a bit of
Microlite20, which is a cut-down version of the traditional pen-and-paper
D20 rules system. With a few house rules and a bunch of index cards, we've been playing without a DM, in a roguelike style with lots of combat and emphasis on dungeon crawling. We're
rollplaying, rather than roleplaying.
We're going camping in a week's time, so I'm going to be creating a short campaign for us to battle through while we're sat in a tent in the dark and poring rain.
Labels: microlite, wizard101
