Rolling 3 six-sided dice to determine a D&D character’s starting ability scores is an iconic part of the game, and certainly part of the fun for a lot of players. Still, some people do find the randomness of character creation can interfere with their enjoyment of the game if they had a particular character concept in mind that they were hoping to play.

When it comes to character names in fantasy literature, movies and RPGs I’ve always preferred them to be genuine real-world names, or at least based on the rules for making real world names (eg. Tolkien’s characters in The Lord of the Rings). I find “fantasy names” that are random syllables jammed together, and possibly sprinkled with liberal amounts of apostrophies for good measure, pull me out of the fantasy world. They break the 4th wall. They ruin the immersion.
I’d rather have characters with names like Roland or Cedric than something …

I was never a fan of the way Original D&D handled it’s stats.
When I started RPGs with the Moldvay Basic edition of D&D the ability score modifiers ranged from -3 to +3 (-15% to +15%). This creates enough mechanical difference between the characters that it matters to players what numbers are on their character sheet and a definite sense for whether a character is good or “bad” based on the stats rolled in the first 5 minutes of the game.

For our Ancient Academy game of D&D I decided to have each player roll to see what extra starting item their character would begin the game with. I saw the idea for a Deck of Stuff on Jeff Rient’s blog, but wanted something a little less gonzo for my game. I looked through the charts of mundane items in the AD&D Dungeon Master’s guide for ideas and put together the following list.

Fall is a very busy time for me – I’m teaching, tutoring, freelancing, working and parenting. I’m also busy designing an iPhone App for Swords & Wizardry and Classic D&D which I’ll post more about very soon.
While I haven’t been posting as much content here on the Robertson Games blog I have been reading the excellent content people are sharing on their own RPG blogs.  I used to use The RPG Bloggers Network as my starting point for finding new and interesting posts, but increasingly I found the blogs I …