RPG Horror Story: That's Not What "Classic DnD" Means!

0:20 Hello, measures, thanks much for tuning in. I'm Jason Portiso, I'm Joe o'call, I'm Jim Crocker, and we talked about D and D topics near and dear to role players. Hearts. Now, for those of you who listen to Jimin's and my previous show, Commons and Dragons, you know this was one of our favorite types of the shows to do. And if you were a fan of Curmudgeons and dragons that we are not going to stop doing these. These are the RPG horror stories. Even if you weren't a fan of Curmudgeons and dragons, we're not going to stop doing. I'm just not going to stop doing these. I love there's a couple of YouTube accounts that that do things like this, and this is one of the things that kind of got me into like the discussion part of the game. And these are just fun, not for the people who wrote these stories, but you know, they're fun for us to talk about when your games go poorly, get content. So if you have a horror story or even a wholesome story and you want us talk about it on the show, send us a story.

1:06 Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com. And the story it works for us, then we will gladly talk about it on the air. Which want tell us your story yourself, Helloa Adventurers podcast dot com, slash voice and leave us a voicemail tell us your story. But today's story comes from Reddit user ggm ji dash gm, who is nice not to let us use a history. This is the story of invited to play in a game of quote classic D and D, but session zero was anything but. T Jim writes very light horror with a question at the end. I'm a part of a small group six in total of Forever dms. We call ourselves the DM fight Club. Usually we meet once a week and we'll run a battle Royale style encounter where we put a homebrew monster at a predetermined cr and just socialize and talk about our respective campaigns. A few weeks ago, one of us offer to run a campaign for the other members of the DM Fight Club. He pitched that it would be a classic game of D and D set in the Forgotten Realms, so only wants the official content as written for character creation.

2:07 He worded this like you won't have to deal with any of the Is this balanced or does this fit the setting? Questions you get from players as a DM in this game. Being a group of forever dms by nature, we are all excited to join. The issue came when it was time to do a session zero, and he gave us the house and build rules. He has some pretty wild alternate rules. I'm not talking of variant encumbrance either. Here are some examples. This is where it starts to really get off the rails. Stats would be generated by rolling two D twelve minus one D four seven times then dropping the lowest role. Also, the stats had to go in order not to be freely assigned, so first has to go to strength, second to dexterity, et cetera. Why would you believe it gets worse?

2:53 Magic would not use spell slots. Instead, each character would have an MP pool. Each character, regardless of class, would gain five MP per character level. Then at the class would normally gain a spell slot, they instead gained ten times the level of the slot MP instead, no spell slots magic points. Yes, that's just as needlessly difficult. Hey works for Final Fantasy right. Spells cost three point five MP per spell level rounded up, unless they deal damage, in which case they cost nine point five MP per level rounded up cantrips cost one MP, and spells cast as a ritual cost two MP, and now we're charging them for me per cantrip. Instead of gaining proficiency in all skills and tools given by your background in class, you treated those skills as a pool. You had to choose a number equal to a one plus your intelligence mod from most classes minimum one two plus intelligence mod for Ranger, three plus intelligence mod for Barden Artificer, and four plus Intelligence mode for Rogue. This guy, just man, that intelligence is a dumbstat Sometimes. I guess characters would gain a level of exhaustion in game for every two real life hours that incurred in this session. Say that again, happily, Oh my god, to repeat, beautiful characters would gain a level of

4:26 exhaustion in game for every two real life hours that occurred in sessions. Oh my god. Yeah, we would all be so exhausted. No, I don't know this counts down time, because like we have like one fight over two sessions that we play a month apart, so you're like imaentually in between combat. You just died. Yeah, you died of exhaustion. Your character has been staying there for months and finally, not a major rule change, but coins had a weight of point two pounds per coin. I mean, that's not a major rule change if you're not using encumbrance, but if you are. Ultimately, we all decided to play, but I expressed that instead of the game of standard no frills five V I was expecting, these changes effectively made this an entirely new game system, just set in the forgotten realm setting. Absolutely. Yeah, he confided in me out to the session zero that he was completely shocked and unsure of how I could feel that way, and that it was totally the same game. Am I the one taking crazy pills here? We're all still playing in good friends, but I just wanted to know that my opinion is valid. They're still playing this game. When do you guys think modified D and D is no longer D and D and becomes its own game? This is it now. It's hard to say how long they were playing it, and this posted from a couple of months ago at this point, but I've had it bookmarked for so long that it is just we had to get on the show. We need to contact ope yim.

5:57 What game system did he accidentally create? I think like if you were to look at that spell system he created. Like listeners who are as old as I am will remember the Iron Crown Enterprises arms Law and spell law systems. That sounds to me like spell law. I want to say that spell Like like the original version of D and D came out and then like three days later, the first modification somebody made was doing a spell point system instead of the vancy and magic plot system. So like when you are brand new to D and D, that is like the first hack that like like the first primitive Oh, I know how we can make D and D better, Like everybody does, like wants to find a way to get around the limitation on spells that are built into the game for a very specific reason, and like that's always the first thing to do. It's some kind of spell slot thing. And they're like, well, but then, and it's funny because like as he goes through all of that, you can hear the thought process in the DM's mind as they're coming up with that. Well, instead of spell slots, I want to have people have spell points, So I'll just have it be you know, one point. Oh no, no, that's probably that's too many spells. So if I go and I do you.

7:21 Okay, so like three oh, but it would be funny if it was three point five because then it's like three point five d and d oh. But then it can't be three point five. I have to round it up. Okay, So yeah, so cool that works. So let me see how this. I'll go, oh shit, that means they can cast eight fireballs. Okay, that's not good. So maybe if I make damage dealing spells be a little more how many of them? If I do this, and what happens is you end up with this system that effectively means you're casting around the same spell exactly you have just kept it in spell spell slots in the first place. Yeah, just so part of it reminded me. I don't know if you're familiar with the So when we're at the time of recording, Nick Bargatzi had recently been on Saturday Live and to that whole like George Washington thing, He's like how many feet in a mile? Like you're like one hundred, and you're like, no, that's nobody knows. Nobody knows.

8:15 That's what that reminded me of. Like with three and a half points per beaten the miles fight, right, but the whole point was there's this many in the metric system where it's a real resident of it. But yeah, no, yeah, but five thousand feet in a mile three point five spell slots person, Yeah, And I only know that because one of my friends in high school that was her phone number. That's that's what I remember. I mean, And you and you can make the case that it's like that, it's still D and D because if everything else stays the same. My bet though, is that that is what that player was able to remember or that stood out most because they were playing a wizard. But I bet you, like if somebody and played a Druid, they would have gotten four pages of a wild shape Now works oh yea in that system because because boy, once you decided that you're going to go down that, you know, that rabbit hole of making D and D better, it's really hard to stop, Like, especially if you're like, oh, we're all dms, so like you figure like everybody's going to be down to experiment and mess with it and stuff and everything, So you'll do stuff for a group of other dms.

9:24 You would never lay on players. See a bunch of bartenders, let me make you mild. Yeah, yeah, yeah, trying to fix it's just such a fantastic analogy. So this really kind of boils down to, like, if you're a group of forever dms and you're tired of D, it's totally fine to play in another system that's been played tested and is known to work. Jim does it all the time. Yes, Yeah, I've been dying to play Powered by the Apocalypse and I have the Avatar books. Well, let's go play our vendors. Yeah, that's Part by the Apocalypse. But yeah, like I have books of other systems, have not gotten to them yet, but there's some cool things and and sometimes like you borrow something in kind of like five EI SAP and like, but there's some things that other systems do. Right, if this is the kind of stuff you're trying to do, i'd even, you know, go so far as to say it is totally fine to try some you know, wack and do magic system. Like I've got this crazy idea for how I think this might work.

10:20 But you got to tell everybody going in that that's what they're getting into. Like, like, like you cannot invite people to a play test that you present as just another D and D games. So This is actually where I take issue, and it's not what the DM of this DMS group. It's the rest of the DMS that agreed to this and then are kind of like he the DM whoever was with this, you know, crazy magic system, Like he put it all out there and they said, ray Op says like, well, we played, but I just I mentioned that I wasn't really happy about it. Yes, yeah, well that kind of makes you annoying in a lot of ways. Sorry, Well, that's the others kind of like looking at each other and stepping back at the same time, so that that guy's the only one that's still standing out there, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's I can't imagine that everybody else wasn't like what the hell you know? Or like I said, maybe he's the only one playing a wizard that got this laid on him, you know, the guy playing the fighters. Yeah, yeah, guy playing the Fighters like, oh, special combat moves, Yeah, give me the list, you know, you know, a crazy elaborate critical hit table. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Even the fighters have magic points. Was just like, yeah, I'm not going to use it. Yeah, Corngar the Blameless would thrive.

11:37 Credit to J I GM on Reddit for the story what do you think of this Kami system? It's so wacky that I'm using phrases like kakami, Like it's not like phrases like I said, this is the kind of thing that like, and I hate to say kids, but like new D and D d ms get into this and they get ideas about like this is the like you know, reinventing the wheel, and a lot of these indie game spaces that I'm in, people are like, what about this cool idea? And you know, and it'll be like, okay, so we all know we went through a cycle five years ago where everybody was doing that. But if you're new to it, you don't know that, and so you want to try it and you know, and find out why it doesn't work and why nobody has done it that way, and that's just kind of inevitable, you know what It's like like if you want to have a sense of humor about it, like it's a baptism of fire and it's you know, just going through the same you know, I know how to make D and D better. That has been happening for decades. So yeah, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, right, Yeah, just that it's not that broken, Like even if it's not your favorite, even if five V is in your favorite, it's not that broken that you need to like completely.

12:43 Yeah. No, congratulations, You've just had the same experience that I had, you know, in like nineteen eighty four. So it's a like I like to think of it as you know whatever, it's the circle of life, D and D right time march is on. Tell us about your keist homebrew rules that got dropped on you on session zero. Yeah, presented us no big deal. Yeah yeah, given the word no big deal, what if you and if you ended up being pretty good? Tell us tell us dot Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com, or tell us yourself Hello Adventures podcast dot com. Splash voice and leave us a voicemail and tell us about you. Cracy's humbry game. I think that's going to do it for today. So I'm Jason Portiso, I'm Joe o'call, I'm Jim Crocker and costs me one spell point to say that I don't know if I have enough MP to get through all this. Thanks for listening to Hello Adventurers. Your host Jason Bortizo Jum McCall and Jim Crocker, producer, editor and inineer Jason Portiso. Our music is by Nick Spurry or artwork by Christo Roderick. And I think with nothing else, we're just gonna say adventure