New Experience in D&D Clones (Breaking the Old-School Cycle)

Alvario Tapia's art evokes the lost lands of the Bitter Reach wrapped in ice and snow!

The older versions of D&D, such as B/X and BECMI have a lot going for them and inspired countless clones and revised versions over the years since the Old School Renaissance began. My current version is Old-School Essentials.

These games were focused on exploration in the pursuit of treasure. There is a sound argument that the system of attaching character advancement to the recovery of treasure (experience points for gold) encourages creative play that is not centered on violence. If the goal is to get the treasure out of the ruins and the players receive improvements to their characters based on achieving that goal, the thought is they will focus on that goal with as little risk to their characters as possible. Because fighting comes with the risk of character death, negotiation, trickery, stealth, and imaginative (or preposterous) plans are all preferable to combat.

On the surface, this system seems great, and it does encourage creative roleplay and planning from the players. The problem comes with the way it interacts with the assumptions of the implied setting. It's often said that D&D has as many or more similarities to western fiction as it does to fantasy fiction. The assumption is the characters are on the frontier. They strike out into the wilderness from one of the villages, towns, or cities that are the points of light representing civilization and order in the dark and untamed chaos that is the frontier. The idea is the characters are exploring these spaces that are unknown to, or forgotten by, the civilized peoples of the fantasy world. The problem with the frontier of D&D is the same problem with frontier of the old west: somebody was already there.

The base of most of the older adventures is to acquire resources from the frontier until a character amasses enough power and renown to build a fortress or tower from which to tame the wilderness, settle an area, and move into domain level play.

It's safe to say my worldview changed dramatically since I started playing RPGs back in 1983. for a variety of reasons, I no longer see the colonial patterns of going somewhere different to take resources and setting it with familiar people as a fun adventure. Newer versions of D&D exchanged experience for gold with experience for winning fights and defeating monsters. The result is no better because the incentives encourage ruthless killing of every creature the characters find. 

I feel it is important to decolonize my games and make my table a better place for more people to be. I also don't want to reinforce the assumptions that led to so much harm to people here in Canada and elsewhere. My professional and personal journey of decolonization is a long, ongoing, and important one for me.

I decided to make changes to my B/X home game and follow the example of some new games when it comes to advancement, but still hold onto the flavour of the old character classes from D&D. Two of my favourite RPGs to play right now are from Free League. They both manage to move away from the colonialism of the wild west assumptions of D&D. I assume this has a lot to do with the worldview of the Swedes and their core values. These games are focused on wild adventure and exploration. They both have experience systems that reinforce their respective strengths, by having the group review their characters' performance against these assumptions with a series of questions that grant an experience point for every yes.

Johan Egerkrans bringing the mayhem!

Dragonbane takes place in a world made of the shattered remains of a draconic empire destroyed by conflict with demons. Factions, monsters, and power-mad fools raid the ruins that dot the wilderness in search of artifacts that will help them carve their own little kingdoms and empires out of what is left. These adventures tend to emulate the plots of pulp fantasy and legends, involving thwarting tyrants and pulling off feats of daring rather than pulling enough gold out of a dungeon to disrupt a nation's economy. The first adventure is a race to recover the pieces of and reassemble an artifact to stop an ancient evil from returning to plague the world. 

The experience system in Dragonbane gives points for big moments when using skills. If the player roles a critical success or failure, called dragons(1) and demons(20), during a session they put a mark beside the skill on the character sheet that allows for a chance at advancement. This means the more the characters do things, more they can improve. It favours action that is the bread and butter of this game of, "Magic and Mayhem." The characters get more marks at the end of session the players can place as they want if they are able to say yes to any of a series of five questions.

Forbidden Lands manages to incorporate a community-building element without being colonial. For the two settings I've played so far they focus on exploration in the wake of a cataclysm that kept people isolated in small communities. The disappearance of the Bloodmist in the Raven Lands and the melting glaciers in the Bitter Reach create opportunities for the people of these places to explore the world that was hidden from them for so long and rebuild new communities on the abandoned bones of the fortresses, towns, and cities of the past. The creatures that are normally disposable in D&D are playable "Kin" in Forbidden Lands, with goblins, wolfkin, and orcs travelling alongside humans, halflings, elves, and dwarves. There is still conflict between these groups, but the buffer created by the new revealed lands and bigger threats on the horizon make negotiation between them more attractive than warfare. 

Nils Gulliksson showing a party on the move.

The mechanics of the game are focused on exploration with all the opportunities and dangers that come with it. The combat is so dangerous that if a creature could speak we would negotiate, coming up with some creative solutions; including writing a song about a drake to feed its vanity in exchange for something it had in its lair we needed.

The experience system for Forbidden Lands also uses a series of ten questions about each character's performance with a focus on exploration and roleplay. It is a fun way to wrap up a session with the whole group talking about how each character was great. 

Ending the sessions with these positive recaps solidifies the big moments of the session and makes for some positive vibes at the end of the game too. I prefer it to milestone experience because the old-school classes advance at different rates and milestones can't account for that dynamic. That's why I decided to incorporate the experience questions at the end of my sessions as well. To keep the integrity of the B/X class progression I knocked two zeroes of the experience requirements for each level. This means the Thief needs 12 XP (or 12 yes answers) to get to level two and 24 to get to level three, but the Magic User needs 25 XP (or 25 yes answers) to get to level two and 50 to get to level three. the Thief and Magic User need at total of 1600 and 3000 XP respectively for level nine, so progression slows as they advance. 

In practice it is working well at the lower levels, but a session only renders around 10 XP so I may need to tighten the progression up as they get up there. I don't think anyone wants to take 150 sessions to advance their Magic User from level eight to level nine. The consensus online seems to be that people should be able to level their characters in five or six sessions so I'll probably fix the progression after it gets to be 50 or so XP between levels. Although, I do like the progressively slower progression in how it makes the name-level characters more rare and impressive. It also keeps the party in the fifth-to-eighth-level sweet spot that I like to play in a lot longer than normal. It's an ongoing project with my players, so I'll keep it how it is for now and see how it goes.

My Experience Questions for my home B/X game

The beauty of B/X is it is difficult to break the game with changes because the system is both simple and robust. Adapting elements of newer games to move the assumptions away from its problematic past works well in my experience and helped me reinforce creative play and heroics at my table.

If you have comments, hit me up on Bluesky where I'll be sure to post: @dave-stuff.bsky.social