Running A Campaign versus Playing Dungeons & Dragons

Do you design a rollicking good adventure? Stock it was amazing monsters, traps, treasure; some drawn from mythology and literature while others are made up from your personal nightmares? Do you cram as much fun and imagination as you can dream up ... then figure out how to make it all run using whatever rules you have handy? D&D, T&T RQ, EPT; no matter. It's the adventure, the rules are just the means to that adventure.

Congratulations! You're playing it old school.

If you design your adventure around the rules, its monsters, concepts, tropes? You should keep trying. It isn't the rules that make the game, its the campaign that brings the rules to life.

It's the adventure, not the rules.

IMC: Brawler Weapons

Brawlers are the bouncers and peace-keepers in my milieu. They are ideally strong and nimble, or at least one of those two. Brawlers prefer non-lethal weapons, so I’m developing the following ideas for their arsenal. The first group can be used to inflict brawling damage or for their special ability, the second group either brawling or actual damage and their special ability.

• Non-Lethal
• Billy Club, daze
• Whip, disarm
• Weighted Net, immobilize
• Cestus, +2 subdue damage in fisticuffs 

• For Bad Neighborhoods, these may inflict either subdual or actual damage 
• Dagger
• Sword Breaker, also disarms
• Bola, also immobilizes
• Cudgel

Brawling Damage: opponents have their current number of hit points but brawling damage is “imaginary.” A hit in a brawl deducts normally rolled damage from the target’s hit point total but the damage recovery occurs by resting 6 turns (1 game hour) after the fight. If the damage roll is “6” one hit point of actual damage occurs, plus STR bonus if applicable.