DunDraCon et al...

(2am wrap of another Friday night DDC game.)

I ran at DunDraCon #42 a Vacuous conversion of "Night of the Walking Wet" by Jennell Jaquays, Randy Cox, & Tamara Wieland (originally published by Chuck Anshell and Judges Guild in two parts of "The Dungeoneer," issues 5 & 6, in 1977). These "official" games I run on Friday night each year, although typically because it's a con I permit just about any edition D&D player character, let me sort of playtest my rules and scenarios.

This year, however, I did find that most everyone brought a 5th edition character. While 3rd and 5th are mostly compatible, like hit die, damage, and AC, there are some key differences in saving throws, spells and healing.

Another thing I noticed when we ran our regular game Saturday night, that folks who dropped by looking for a game kind of high-tailed it upon learning we had a 3rd edition hybrid.

Given that 3rd edition is almost 20 years old now, and kind of has a bad rap for being too crunchy, and I don't want to be left behind from playing with new players, I wondered how I might integrate 5th ed. into my Vacuous tomes.

Well, lo and behold, it appears a couple years ago Wizards released a 5th ed. SRD!

Basically, it appears to be a reference of new 5th ed. rules using terms that fall under the old Open Gaming License (ha, which is pretty smart considering some aspiring thinker, given the retro-clones of older versions, would have considered cloning 5th ed. from the OGL anyway).

There are at least two main high points I see from 5th ed. that our game might go with: 1) 5th ed. totally limits skill points and how you keep track of them, which is what we eliminated from our 3rd ed. game anyway; and, 2) monsters are built as monsters - not constructed the same as characters.

Har, one year out and I am already looking at The Advanced Vacuous Grimoire!

(I wanted to add bathing in dragon's blood anyway...)