Campaign News October 14

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

We have a mix of good and bad news this time. Bad news first, Monica T has decided to retire from the game, at least for now. She lives quite far away and also the between-session demands that 1:1 time sometimes makes of players don't mesh with her schedule and responsibilities right now. Those of us who had the opportunity to play with her will miss her.

For the good news, we had a new player join last night's session, Jeff B. Jeff is an experienced and skillful player and I'm optimistic that he will continue to be part of this club for a long while.

SCHEDULE

Our next scheduled game is on Thursday, 22 Oct. Please remember to review and provide any feedback you have for the 2027 schedule posted in the 9 Sep newsletter.

CLUB BUSINESS 

We will be having a vote on our rules in December. We've agreed to play AD&D "by-the-book" in this group, but "the book" doesn't cover all of the situations we have run into during play in an unambiguous way. As a result, there have been a number of rules extensions and interpretations that the referees have been following to cover these. It is essential to our style of play that we all agree on those rules, hence the upcoming vote.

Although there are several rules we are using whose interpretations might be debated, this year's ballot will address what the referees (that's just me Barry and me at the moment) consider to be the top priorities to agree upon. These are:

1. Character creation rule variations: minimum and maximum ability scores by sex and minimum hit points at first level
2. Family background rule extension
3. Secondary skills rule extension 
4. "Smoothed" and reversed combat matrices.
5. Time-tracking rules, specifically constraining the "spread" in time between the future-most characters and those furthest in the past.
6. Overland movement rate rules contradiction resolution. 
7. Loan rules extension and elaboration.
8. Class wealth restrictions as they related to character upkeep costs.

In this and the next couple of newsletters I'll detail each of these. Please bring up any questions, suggestions, debate, etc. that you have. Ideally, we will have this as a club-wide discussion in the #rules-discussion channel on our Discord, but I invite this feedback from you in whatever form you're most comfortable bringing it.

We will vote on these in December, so please get any discussion in early and please understand these rules so that you can make an informed vote.

Rules Question #1: Shall the club adopt both of these character creation variants:

All characters use the male values for ability score minimum and maximum on PH pp. 9 & 15 regardless of sex.

At first level, the minimum hit point roll is ½ the hit die or dice, rounded up. That is, 3 for d4, 4 for d6, 5 for d8, 6 for d10, and 9 for 2d8. Lower rolls are adjusted to this minimum before any bonuses or penalties are applied.

Rules Question #2: Shall the club adopt the character creation rule of rolling for family social standing and professional background as detailed in Character Family Background Rules?

Rules Question #3: Shall the club adopt the secondary skills rule extension, if the Character Family Background Rules are adopted, as detailed in Secondary Skills Extension?

In a few days I'll post another couple of the questions. Please, please, please ask questions and debate these rules!