Intro: It has been a summer of love for the library – there’s too much on there!
Open Box: We’re in Port Street in Manchester reflecting on the campaign
The White Dwarf: Daily Dwarf goes Against the Giants.
Games Master’s Screen: What’s our favourite class?
Ed’s Shed: Ed decides to ‘bring out the Gimp‘ when he creates a dynamic, digital table top.
Outro: Find out more about the Patreon campaign and the next GROGZINE.
A slightly but not completely incongruous episode, like grandpa on Facebook, the Grogs have made a fine effort documenting and comparing past and present, with some excellent and interesting commentary.
Somehow, 5e still doesn’t seem at ease with me, despite having a cracking good game with it at last year’s Grogmeet Eve. I like the “not broke don’t need fixing” first edition of AD&D with its scrappy indecisive combat and “theatre of the mind”. However, 5e has a more refined combat rules, and the concept of using some map and miniature, turn by turn tactics brings out the wargamer in me. I like using Snapshot with Traveller, or a “RPG boardgame” like Descent, one of my all-time favourites was The Fantasy Trip which involved a lot of hex grid combat.
The real reason I don’t do 5e is the lack of (legal) PDFs – rules are on a tablet, my old back doesn’t cope with carting round a shopping trolley of books, and my old eyes need bigger fonts.
The discussion on power gaming and how it can be encouraged or discouraged was interesting. Part of my reintroduction to the OSR was to study the origins and evolution of D&D and you can see a common thread of conflict between the wargaming roots of the game, where optimising combat was a necessity, and the promotion of imaginary worlds without strict rules. In most RPGs, the rules imply you need to use your skills correctly and effectively, and that involves an element of (literally) gaming it, but it does not necessary mean you need to be a munchkin in doing so if you still adhere to the spirit of the game.
Well done to the Grog Squad in sticking to a campaign that sounded enjoyable and a worthy experience, and for sharing it so well with us.