I like to play Dungeons & Dragons.

But I was bored of playing the 4th edition of the game, which is too little like the older versions I grew up playing.

And I was also inspired by Zak Smith’s blog and enthused by the re-publishing of the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons manuals. So, for the past few months, I’ve been running an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

It’s early, but so far it has been everything I hoped for.

We have had characters’ lives balanced on the roll of a single die. Quick battles. Running away. Capture. Escape. And the sort of best-plan-busting creativity I remember. And – despite my familiarity with the ruleset – plenty of winging it. The things I truly dislike about the more recent version of the game are out of sight and out of mind, and the game has been fantastic fun.

Beyond simply returning to the older versions of the game, I’m making a conscious effort to be slightly “old school” with my approach. I’m not entirely sure what that is, mind you, but there’s a certain type of randomness I associate with older roleplaying games — the rolling of 3d6 to determine an ability score, random encounter tables, Decks of Many Things, the risk of rolling up a 1st level fighter with 1 hit point.

Once upon a time, house rules were furiously added in an attempt to control this randomness; an approach that must have been popular, as each iteration of the game has further reduced the frailty of low level characters, and the randomness and cruelty of the fantasy world in which the game is played.

Now, all those things are embraced with only minimal nods in character creation towards allowing the players to create a character they will want to play. A random encounter with zombies might kill the entire party — but it was rolled; it happens.

The whole thing is such fun that I’m going to go out a limb and say you should do it too. Not only should you do it, but you can do it. All old books are now published for sale in PDF form.

So go forth, young (or old) gamers! And play like we did in the ’80s. (Or ’70s or ’90s, if that’s your thing.)

So I’ve been playing roleplaying games for a long time. And it’s fair to say that my favourite game of all time is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (in either the 1st or 2nd edition varities). I don’t think it’s the best game ever made, or anything along those lines, but there’s a combination of things that put it at the top and kept it there.

• It’s a fantasy game, and I spent most of my childhood glued to fantasy novels.
• Dungeons and Dragons was the only roleplaying game I was aware that existed for many years.
• I like games that involve characters going on adventures.
• Everybody who roleplays knows it.
• It’s pretty flexible.

So you’ve got nostalgia, people to play with, and an approximation of my cup of tea. Which is pretty much all you can really ask for in a game.

Within the AD&D system, my favourite character class has long been the Thief (or Rogue, after it’s renaming and rehabilitation).

I see combat in the game as secondary, so rarely choose Fighter types (including Rangers and Paladins, who are a bit more interesting). And I was never a fan of managing the long spell lists that Clerics, Druids and Magic-Users build up through a campaign.

The Thief character is my ideal — a character type that thrives in the non-combat portion of the game, who has a well-defined but limited skill set that improves as the game goes along (rather than expands, as a spellcaster’s would). I think I like that the skills are based on real world skills as well. Scaling walls, picking locks, and creeping quietly through the shadows are real-world things that can be done.

But one of the traditional D&D thief skills has always bothered me: picking pockets.

While real world pick pockets exist, and it is a real skill, the application in Dungeons & Dragons has always felt more magical. Like a wallet sewn into someone’s underpants could be removed by someone being watched like a hawk in a huge crowd. I disliked it. In 2nd Edition, where the player can choose where to apply their points, picking pockets was the poor thief skill that I would neglect.

But today, I need to re-evaluate that belief. Because that magical application that I so disliked for its lack of realism? It’s correct.

The New Yorker has run an article on professional pickpocket Apollo Robbins. It’s absolutely unbelievable. Take the following story of him meeting Penn Jilette, of Penn & Teller:

Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with.

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

The descriptions of his feats are ridiculous, and night unbelievable. So I went to YouTube to find him:

And it looks like he really can take a pen out of a person’s pocket, remove the inside of the pen, and then slip it back — all without that person noticing, even as they are aware he is a pickpocket, and talking to them about pickpocketing.

So, um … yeah. Next game? I’m playing a pickpocket.

There’s some trouble in retro roleplaying land.

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons in various forms for about 25 years now. It started with a Red Box, an elf, and Ryan Tunnecliffe behind a DM’s screen. This was followed by years of AD&D, in the form of 1st and 2nd editions.

There have been other games, but it always comes back to Dungeons & Dragons for me. There’s something about it, I guess.

Most recently, I have been playing a lot of 4th edition. It’s still fun, but it’s a very different game, that leaves me wanting to re-experience the versions that have nostalgia attached.

Enter Wizards of the Coast, or so it seemed. This week, the core books for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons were re-released. In theory.

In practice, I’ve tried to find them in two different stores that peddle fantasy roleplaying wares, only to find not a sniff of them. I’ve looked on Amazon, and found this, which looks like my old 1st Edition Player’s Handbook from back in the day:

Except that to buy it from Amazon new costs four hundred and forty three pounds. I wrote that out as a sentence, so you wouldn’t think there was a typo or anything.

There’s one more shop to try in London, but I don’t expect to find it here. Guess I’ll have to fly to America to buy these things.

While today marks the ninth incarnation of GM Day, it is also the first time since I discovered this “holiday” that I happen to be playing a roleplaying game on this most hallowed of days.

Probably has something to do with it falling on a Sunday this year.

So today, over nine years since Spunk Rat deemed March fourth to be holy to roleplayers, and on the fourth anniversary of Gary Gygax’s death, I — or at least the miniature representing the fictional character I pretend to be — will March Forth (get it?) to battle dragons (probably not) in a dungeon (most certainly).

I feel like I should buy flowers for the Dungeon Master. Maybe I will.

Photo by Mr. Topp