So far just about every DnD experience I had seemed just a bit tangential to what I was looking for, and so the quest goes ever on.
CC: @randomwizard@vivaldi.net @Craig@dice.camp @phf@tabletop.social @DM_Zeppelin@dice.camp
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@lkh @randomwizard @Craig @phf @DM_Zeppelin it's not ADnD 2e, as I played that and it never was quite what I wanted
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@kyonshi @lkh @randomwizard @Craig @phf @DM_Zeppelin For me, starting with Holmes & OD&D, I hated AD&D 1E, 2E was a little better, but B/X & BECMI were also too far another direction, taking away options. OSR has been a huge help.
Swords & Wizardry, Blueholme, & Basic Fantasy are a spectrum from very like OD&D to very like B/X, but more flexible. Old School Essentials & Shadowdark are much more variant, but still have that tone of little guys against a very hard world.
#ttrpg #dnd #osr
@kyonshi Coming from DSA/TDE, too, AD&D 2E felt quite similar, strong focus on settings, while being a lot more powerful. But the Forgotten Realms and I will never be truly friends, and Dark Sun is more a sometimes setting. We didn't use a lot of adventures back then, and that meant going with my default DM style, which – especially at that time – couldn't really be described as D&D-ish.
So, as with many others, I'm also still looking for my perfect D&D-ish style, too. There's some really good essence there that I want to extract for myself, some style of my own that's still tied to the "gestalt" of the sub-genre. It certainly isn't torch-counting or name level project management, that I'm sure. Simple classes, yes, too simple "universal" rules, no. Hexploration, Wilderlands style, yes, but with some more bones to the setting. That puts me in an odd spot in the hobby right now, there's enough check every item there, but not in the combination I want, usually. I probably should build more myself instead of just browsing through retroclones, heartbreakers and settings…