In D&D, fewer rules = more fun
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Transcript
Hey everybody, this is me, Lance Myxter, Undead Viking. I didn't think I was going to get a video to you this week and then I owe you two next week. I'm finishing a book right now, a fabulous horror vampire book. I should be finished with it relatively soon. I'm going to do a video on that. Nobody seems to care about my book reviews though, but that's okay. I just want to I do those book reviews for myself more than anybody watching. But regardless to any of that, my and I and I was trying to think of some other I was trying to get through that book so I could do a video this video was going to be about reading that book cuz the book is just so good. But
I I didn't get done with the book cuz I've been super busy all week. I've got a bunch of stuff going on with Grey Fox Games, my employer. We've got a upcoming Kickstarter launching next next week theoretically. Reavers of Midgard expansion, go check it out if you want to, I don't care. We're putting the final touches on Champions of Midgard 10th anniversary so we can get our manufacturer to make that and give that to our backers and we're like we just wrapped up all of the game development for Vampire Survivors the board game and now we got to work on you know, finalizing those files so we can tell our manufacturer to make that game. So you know, I I just had a ton of stuff going on. I've had people at the house. I've been able to do anything. Plus my my oldest son is coming back home from college and we're trying to I'm going to this weekend I'm going to go out to his dorm to pack up as much stuff as I possibly can in my pickup and and and drive that home.
He gets done with school next week and then he has to and after that happens and then he has to clean out the last of the stuff and and come home and I'm probably going to have to drive out and and help him get the last of the stuff home as well. I'm excited to have him home. Uh it it's weird not having him in the house and it's kind of sad. My youngest son's been involved in track and field and everything going on. My wife leaves next week for a business trip and she's going to be gone all week, which kind of sucks. Uh you know, cuz I'll miss her and and you know, and we we're we're doing a bunch of home remodeling as well. So, why does what does all of that mean? They all means that they I I haven't had time to read something I I love.
Uh usually I read for about an hour before I go to bed and then and then I fall asleep. Um but uh you know, I with everything I've been doing, I've been just so tired. I haven't had a chance to anything. Plus then I also just haven't had a time to do a video. So, I talked your ear off and you're wondering when am I going to get to this? Maybe I'll finally put a time stamp if you want in the video and say if you want to skip all this, you can just click through like right about here.
And I'm going to talk about why I don't like rules in D&D. Now, this is not a you know, this is not a giant, you know, like me coming down from the mountain, you know, Moses moment, right? There's a lot of people that have the same belief as I do about keeping your rules simple. Uh and which allows things to be more fun. Now, I I and and if you go search some OSR channels and I want to talk about OSR YouTube channels again. I I I like where they're going right now. And I'm enjoying it. But I'll talk that's put a pin in that for a future video or whatever. I want to talk about that more more in depth. But uh so why is keeping rules simple better?
And and mind you, I'm not going to stand and put my flag pole in the ground and say it's better and you should do it, but I'm going to tell people that if you've been playing, you know, hardcore, you know, giant rulebook rules type games and you haven't tried a very stripped-down simple system, try it sometime. Try it because I think you'll see what is appealing about it and I think you may be converted to that. Uh so anyway, uh when we wrote our own rulebook, and I know I've told you about that before. And one day maybe I'll go over how we do the rules, but and it's really nothing amazing about how we do our our version of D&D rules that we wrote uh when my friends and I when we wrote that uh in in high school. Uh which, you know, I'm 54 years old, so you do the math. Uh and and that rule system has seen many revisions over the time. But for the last 10 years or so, we've we've basically played that. That's all we played. Um we would dabble in other rule systems from time to time. Like, let's see what 3.0 is like. Let's see what Pathfinder's like. Let's see what fourth edition is like. And but we would always come back to mama with with with our rule system. So much so that when fifth edition came out, I mean, I've played fifth edition with my family and like some one-offs here and there, but
when we came back uh to to the rule system that we created ourselves and we gave it a really good scrubbing and I and I and a redo, uh we never really played fifth edition as our group. And and the reason for that is is just we kind of saw fifth edition for what it is. It's kind of a rules glut game, if you will. Um I mean, there's a rule that for everything it seems to be in that game. And that's just not our style. Um for us, you know, we always want to keep things moving. We want our combats are quick. I don't even roll initiative anymore. Unless there's a surprise situation, I just tell the players, you go first. If you want to go after the the your opponents, the monsters, for whatever reason, you want to go after them because you want to wait and see if somebody got hurt and fell on the ground and you need to heal them, cool.
You know, great. You can wait for that. Um but for the most part, you know, I mean, I I just I just let the players go and I just go around the table. I don't worry about rolling initiative. It it it It literally to me it feels even that slows the game down because everybody's like, you go on 19? I'm on 18. When do you go? I'm on 16. Okay, when do you go? You know, it's like, when when do the orcs go? When when does the dragon go? You It just go. You guys go and I go I go I just kind of do serpentine. For the first round, I start to my left, I work to my right, and the next round, I start to my right and I work to my left. And if somebody wants to go in front of somebody, they say, "Hey, I should go first and cast my fireball before you run in." Cool. They They just do it. Uh now, that's maybe extreme for a few people.
Uh and you know, and and for a lot of other people that play strip down rules and OSR rules, that is extreme for them as well. They still want to roll the D6 uh and and see what happens kind of thing. And I like the D6 initiative, but my group hates it. I'm like the only person that likes it. I love D6 initiative. I love the fact when you know, cuz it just makes it makes so much uh happen from time to time. Like it it it it adds a little bit of a a snarl to the plans of the party. Um One day I'll I'll I'll switch them over, but I I haven't able to get them there yet. But anyway, regardless, um when you have less rules and and honestly our version of D&D, which we call ED&D for enhanced D&D, it was our name when we came up with it when we were 15. So, you know, give me a break.
Uh when we came up with that, we um we just wanted I mean, we realized, whatever it's worth or whatever it's worth, that all we really needed to play the game was six stats, an armor class, and some hit points. That was it. I I still remember we were sitting at a lunch table in Fargo South High, and I don't remember who said that. I think it was my friend Jeff, who who, you know, is no longer part of our group. He moved away. But he's like he's like, "We don't need anything other than our stats, our hit points, and our armor class. That's all we need. Everything else, I mean, admittedly, like if there's spells and things like that, then then you have that as well. But everything else is just superfluous.
All we need to know is when we were walk into the room and we run into the evil cultists and their demon pet, um what do I roll? And and how do I affect that roll?
And do I achieve what I wanted to achieve? And then when you start layering in everything else, it it just makes it more convoluted and and less fun. Because whenever you start adding those I mean, cuz it just it it it more stuff keeps piling in and piling in and piling in when you open the door. It's like It's like you have a uh, a room full of sand in the other room and when you open the door on the outside, the sand just starts pouring out and it never stops once it starts piling in. And when Jeff said that, like it was a lightbulb went off in all of our brains at that moment. And that's when we made ED&D. And to this day, we play a rule system that admittedly, we have a giant spell list, right? With with and and each spell does have its own entry and it has rules for each spell. But our actual rules are like 12 pages long. That's it.
Uh, and that's all we need and that's all we've needed for for well, a decade now. We've been playing that and for decades cuz we we kept going back to play ED&D over and over again. Now, we had some bad ideas from time to time like when we we had some lesser path and greater path spell systems and all kinds of stuff cuz we would read a fantasy book and we'd say, "Oh, that sounds like a cool idea. Let's implement that in in in our game." And they they didn't work really well. Uh, but the the the point that I'm getting to here is that when you have less rules and you have less worry about how you're going to look things up and the game master has less worry about how am I going to have a a situation that is going to be challenging for everybody in this moment when they have when every single one of them, depending upon they are a, you know, a a rogue mage cleric tabaxi, something, whatever, you know, how am I going to possibly confound them and and challenge them and and make sure that every single possibility is is stopped for those people? Like the the game master gets to relax and and and and enjoy the creation that they're doing.
And the players get to also relax and enjoy themselves while they play. And that's just what I've experienced. And and I am not telling anybody that if they play a hyper hardcore rules intense system that that is is enjoyable to them like having like sheets and sheets of information about their character and all their powers and abilities and being able to look through all those and and and see what you can do. It I mean there's there is absolutely a fun to be had there. I can remember playing Pathfinder which in a lot of ways in was fifth edition light if you will. Uh but with Pathfinder, I mean it it I can remember like like being able to build my character. There's something really really fun about you know stacking powers and abilities and seeing your character grow and and and get more powerful as as time goes on.
And I understand that but I feel like that complexity that you get and that enjoyment you get comes at a loss of playability. And maybe it's just that I'm older now and I I don't have 14 hours on a Saturday to play play D&D and and kick back with my friends like I used to in my my teenage years and my early 20s. Uh but when I only get 5 hours, 6 hours together you know at max uh with my friends every other Saturday [clears throat] I I want to be able to sit down and and go and not have like rules problems and questions and issues.
Uh I mean just the other the other week. I mean we had a the where I was like why does that spell work like that? I mean, in in admittedly cuz I haven't read every single spell in our in our rule the spellbook is but but you know, it was one of those things where I and I had to make a ruling on it because I I said, that's way too powerful. That spell is is way too powerful. It doesn't it shouldn't work like that. And we started to bog down into an argument at the table and I and I felt like my my my the intensity of the situation, my anxiety of the situation growing. And I actually just said, you know what? Who cares? I just said, who cares? It works as written. We'll fix it later. And and we we can we can shoot emails back and forth and fix it later. Now, let's just move forward. And I didn't care. I mean, it was one of those things where it's like, fine. You you you you killed that monster way easier than I and then I wished you to.
Uh who cares? The next monster will just have double hit points. That's what I said to all myself in the back of my head.
So, yeah, I mean, it's it's we're not removed completely from it, right? But we strive for it. And for the most part, we've accomplished it. And I think that if you were to sit down if you were a person that plays fifth edition D&D and like played or or whatever system you play that has a million a million and one rules, uh and you were to come and sit at my table and roll up a character and play and and and start playing, um I think at the end of the session, you would say, it is like surprising how much was accomplished while we played. We We We went to the town, we got a mission, we we we we we traveled to the dungeon, we went through four levels of the dungeon, killed the big bad guy, brought the stuff home, got the reward, and found out about the new about a new adventure down the road that now we're leaving to go and that's going to be our session 2 weeks from now.
And you got that done in 4 hours. Because we figured out a way to remove the extras and accomplish things and have a great time doing it. But maybe I'm off my rocker, maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. What do you think? Let me know in the comments and what have yous. Um, but yeah, strip down those rules. You'll have more fun. All right, until next time. Thanks for watching this video. Uh, take care of yourselves and we'll talk soon.