Starting a journey into AD&D,

So, throughout the last few weeks there has been one phrase ive heard repeated again and again, "One D&D" this phrase has seeped into my subconscious and piled up into my mind until this memetic programming triggered some repressed desire, it's so obvious "One D&D, D&D One D&D 1st edition, FUCK IT I SHOULD RUN AD&D" so grabbing my copy of OSRIC and started reading, in short it's really not that bad, I started with the combat segment system as I know this would be the hardest part to learn, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, hell I think it could be made easier with some tools or visualisation aid of some kind (could be a future blog post).

One of the things i find most appealing about AD&D is the subsystems form managing hirelings' mercenaries and experts to arial manoeuvring it's got a lot of depth that doesn't bog down the core gameplay as well as providing emergent game play.

Another aspect I'm interested in looking into is the "implied setting" a sort of inherent world assumption written into the AD&D rules, with lots of information on the monsters that dwell within this weird Swords and Sorcery world (including how good they are at tunnelling i.e. how well they can make or modify caves and dungeons for habitation) this implied setting is also reflected in what marital is suggested in the Appendix N: list of inspirational reading, which is mostly Swords and Sorcery and other weird fiction (such as the complete works of H.P. Love craft) definitely worth immersing yourself in these story's to understand this particular style of fantasy.

I'll be occasionally trying to make some AD&D related posts in the future, probably looking at some of the sub systems like psionics or arial agility and seeing how it works, if there's any questions about AD&D or something AD&D related let me know and I'll try to write something on it.

Oblivium conversion part 5

So reptilians, classic pulp villain and found throughout fantasy settings, obviously they are the sort of race that would have magic users and maybe clerics (possibly worshiping set or something) and this could be an opportunity to have a multi class combo of cleric and magic user outside of half elf (to represent a sorcerous priest of some dark deity) in fighters and thief's they have some interesting quirks being scaled monsters (AC bonus?) and slippery and Maby camouflaged ( bonuses to hide in shadows and move silently) Oblivium 5e presents 2 sub races the degenerate and the savants, i think the difference between the two could largely be determined by class combination picked (degenerates picking thief's and fighters for instance)

so classes would be fighter(6th level), thief(unlimited), magic user(9th level) and cleric(5th) , they can multi class into magic user-cleric, thief cleric, or fighter thief

they gain a + 10% to hide in shadows and move silently, and a +5% to climb sheer surfaces,

reptiloids gain 60ft dark vision, a bite attack that does d4 +str if fighter, +1 bonus to Ac from their scales, 

you also have a +4 vs poison 

I feel this might be a bit light, but this should be enough for now, i think im going to work on converting some monster stat blocks for a bit before returning to finish off the player races. I also have some other projects that i would like to do for the blog in the near future so hope fully ill have something for that done soon too.

Oblivium conversion part 4

Right today we are going to do the koraara, a race of cat men who are also sailors, judging by the art in Oblivium they are more human than cat like but have some cat features (eyes, ears tails and claws) so of course they have dark vision due their claws and their culture of sailing they are good climbers  (easy enough as a bonus to climb sheer surfaces) a reroll ability, proficiency in perception (bonus to listen checks i think) have a claw attack d4 + str(keep as is) a nine lives ability to avoid dying (might be interesting to try keeping) and of course some stuff with sailoring and fishing (s&w has some ship rules it might be interesting to give something related to them)

So classes would probably be thief(unlimited) and fighter (max level 6?) There is some mention of assasins so giving them the ability to go to level 8 in assassin might be interesting, and Maby monk?(maby not monk is a silly class) they would be able to multiclass into fighter thief or fighter assassin, 

The thief abilities will be +15% to climb, +1 to listen checks, +10 to move silently and delicate tasks, 

Claw attack would be d4 dmg + str if fighter, they get dark vision, for the lucky ability it, might be interesting giving them a +4 vs instant death effects, since they seem to get fairly little otherwise, 

in terms of sailoring, S&W has some rules for ship combat that would be interesting to reference and since these are mostly d100 rolls we could treat them much like thief skills in that the koraara get a percentage bonus to attempting these actions, so when sailing a vessel they have a +10% to patching a vessel and +10% to grappling another vessel, 

I think this should do for now, ive lagged behind with this conversion a bit and need to catch up some pace, next will be the reptilians and then some monster stat blocks.