Back to Basic

In order to center my Chi, I've started work on a Basic (Moldvay) D&D game. Just something quick (I hope) to kinda clear out the plaque accumulated by XXVc. So, this whole thing is gonna be different than the usual Tolkien styled D&D. I think I'm even going to try to avoid Howardian trappings and go for a more dreamlike, Dunsany kinda thing.

BUT! If you know me (and I know you don't,) then you know I've got more than just that up my sleeve. What it is, however, is going to remain a secret to everyone except the people I told. Anyway, enough of that. There are a couple of things I've been considering for a while now. High time I wrote them down.

First of all, clerics are out. I've always felt they were too specifically Christian warrior monk/Templar types. Now, this is fine with me as I tend to tailor my setting to fit that model. In other words, it's a monotheistic setting and that mono-god just happen to be a Jehova facsimile.

If you want to play a priest, make a Magic-User with healing spells. This is actually something I came up with to mimic priests in Conan stories and whatnot. This only applies to a game that doesn't have the mono-god thing happening.

No alignment. Did I talk about this already? Anyway, alignment only barely serves a purpose in the game and causes more problems than it solves, so it's out.

Paladins replace clerics. I've always felt that they were too similar and redundant. Paladins (not the ridiculous Gygaxian AD&D version,) if you power them down, make pretty good replacements, in my opinion. I think the way they were presented in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia was pretty good and would probably be included in some form somewhere at some point.

Okay, so other than that, it's just minor tweaks and whatnot- trolls will probably change a lot; the Fey will have a bigger presence, but humans will still be in the majority. Demons are most likely out, but devils are very welcome. That sort of thing.