In defense of the classic D&D saving throws

In a recent reddit thread from a self-described "trolly" poster asking for people to sell them on trying old-school D&D in addition to the more "rules-light" OSR games they've recently been enjoying, I offered to explain what I saw as the design principles behind the old-school saving throws*. As I started fleshing out my thoughts, I realized they would end up far too long for a reddit comment - and figured I might as well drop 'em here!

Fair warning, I'm probably not going to be saying a whole lot that's actually new in this post; most of my explanations are going to be familiar to anyone who has read a lot of blogs or other material focused on old-school D&D. There is nothing new under the sun, etc. (read Jon Peterson's The Elusive Shift if you want to see just how true this is in the RPG space). That said, I do hope some of what comes out of me putting these concepts in my own words ends up being helpful to you the reader (whether you be /u/vmoth or someone else who stumbled across this).

The question at hand: what are the design principles behind the old-school saving throws? I'm going to take a descriptive and/or revisionist approach to answering this question, rather than a historical approach. AKA I am not going to attempt to explain what Gygax, Arneson, et al were thinking when they wrote D&D. Rather, I'm going to look at the saving throw mechanic as it exists in old-school D&D and explain what I think the old-school idiosyncrasies actually add to the experience, as well as why I (as an amateur game designer - for all GMs are) choose to keep them in my game.

Throat-clearing and introduction behind us, let's dive in.

What are the classic D&D saving throws? 

Quick recap for anyone who's not familiar: a saving throw is a game mechanic whereby a character about to suffer some horrible fate has a chance to avoid said fate by rolling a die (usually a d20) and attempting to hit a specific target number. Oftentimes this target number is also itself referred to as a saving throw (or just a "save").

That's the basic idea behind saving throws. Old-school D&D saving throws then have a few defining characteristics that distinguish them from the saving throw mechanic as it appears in newer versions of D&D and in many newer OSR games and retroclones. My answer to our question of "what are the design principles behind the old-school saving throws?" then lies in a closer examination of these distinctive features that set the old-school saving throws apart from their successors.

In roughly descending order of how controversial these are to a "modern" RPG sensibility, the features that make old-school saves unique are that they:

1. Reference specific dangers
2. Are not tied to ability scores
3. Use static targets 
4. Vary between the classes

Each of these characteristics is, to a greater or lesser degree, often maligned by folks like /u/vmoth as "clunky" or outmoded in favor of the (assumed better) newer/modern/simpler way of doing saving throws. I disagree. I think the old-school saves are great! And while I'm not knocking other systems, I'd like to offer an explanation as to how each of these old-school D&D-specific saving throw characteristics acts to reinforce theme and to balance the game - and why removing any of them in an attempt to "streamline" the mechanics sacrifices something distinctive about the original game. 

My defense of the old-school saves doesn't mean I think they should never be tweaked, of course - but I do maintain that it's generally helpful to understand the reasoning behind a rule before dismissing it out of hand (see: my first two blog posts). 

Characteristic #1: old-school saves reference specific dangers

Perhaps the least liked aspect of the old-school D&D saving throw mechanic is that each of the saving throws is named after a specific danger characters can expect to encounter in their adventures. With some minor variations between editions, the old-school saving throws generally are broken out into the broad categories of Poison/Death, Wands, Paralysis/Petrification, Dragon Breath, and Spells.

A new player will first encounter these saving throw categories while creating their initial character. Think for a moment about the psychological effect of this. Somewhere between rolling up ability scores and choosing a character name, a new player is going to find out how likely their erstwhile hero or heroine is to survive encounters with 5 specific dangers, writing down those target numbers on their character sheet right alongside starting equipment and hit points. This is a fantastic way to set the scene for the type of game you're playing. Before even setting foot in a dungeon, we've established that old-school D&D takes place in a world in which one wrong turn might lead you to be dodging fiery dragon breath, avoiding dastardly rays from magic wands, or trying to survive the venomous fangs of a giant spider (crab spiders being a particular "favorite" of my group). 

"Crab Spider Attack" by Jacob Fleming (courtesy Gelatinous Cubism Press)

This scene-setting aspect of the old-school saves can also come in handy when running games not set in the proverbial "fantasy dungeon" setting. If I tell you to create a character for a one-shot and you're writing down targets for saving throws against Toxic Waste, Lasers, Panic, Grenades, and Gamma Rays, you already have a pretty good idea of what kind of world this is just from the dangers you have to save against.

One thing I'll note - just because the saving throws reference specific dangers does not mean those are the only dangers the saves can handle. One erroneous charge often leveled at old-school saves is that they are inflexible due to their specificity. Not so! There is ample precedent for using the classic saving throws for dangers not specifically falling into their nominal categories - including in the text of the Moldvay Basic D&D set itself, which references a falling ceiling block trap that requires a save vs petrify to avoid (B52). This seems very odd at first glance; dodging a falling ceiling block is not the same thing as a medusa's petrifying gaze. There is a logic to this, though...

The save vs petrify/paralysis, far from being only used for resisting petrification and paralysis, is generally used for any effect which requires a character to move quickly to avoid danger or which might restrict a character's free movement. This is not limited to Moldvay; AD&D 2e provides another example of this more liberal application of the petrify/paralysis saving throw by using it for resisting disarm attempts.

These (admittedly mostly unwritten/implied) rules for applying old-school saves to "off-label" uses exist for the other saving throw categories as well. If you wanted to rename the old-school save categories in a less evocative (but perhaps more descriptive) way that incorporates these implied uses a bit more explicitly, you might rewrite them as saves vs Instant Death/Poison/Generic Danger, Aimed Devices, Inhibition of Bodily Autonomy, Area of Effect, and Spells/Generic Magic. 

Rather than elaborate further here, I'll direct the interested reader to the best reference I'm aware of for this: LLBlumire's Which Saving Throw Should I Use?. I cannot recommend that post enough to anyone interested in learning more about how to apply the old-school saves. It's concise, too (unlike me)!

Characteristic #2: old-school saves are not tied to ability scores

The second idiosyncratic characteristic of old-school saves when compared to saving throw mechanics in similar and/or successor games is that they aren't primarily tied to a character's ability scores**. For players coming from newer editions of D&D (or rules-light OSR games like Into the Odd where saving against ability scores is one of the core mechanics), this seems quite odd. Why wouldn't you just use the modern convention of tying the saving throws directly to ability scores? Or perhaps the slightly older practice of splitting the saves into three general categories (e.g. Fortitude, Reflex, and Will) that are then each influenced by specific ability scores? Aren't both of those cleaner and more elegant than the clunky old-school saves that are disassociated from ability scores for no good reason?

Well, no. There are actually a few really good reasons to divorce saving throws from ability scores: namely, limiting the importance of ability scores and allowing flexibility for the in-fiction explanations of successful saving throws.

First, limiting ability score importance. Old-school games often feature character generation methods that generate ability scores with a significant element of randomness. There are many advantages to this approach (faster character creation, more varied characters, challenge of making the most of non-ideal characters, increased rarity of "optimized" characters making them more special, verisimilitude, etc.), but it also comes with downsides - namely, that some characters will have higher ability scores than others, which is unfair.

The degree to which this unfairness will be tolerated by players depends mainly on how invested they are expected to get in their characters (often correlated to campaign length) and on how important the ability scores are to the game mechanics. In a one-shot or very short campaign, players are a lot less concerned about having to play a character who's objectively worse at everything than the other characters... but if you're talking about a 20+ session campaign, people will start to get annoyed. Limiting the use of ability scores to providing a specific enumerated set of bonuses, but not having them define absolutely everything about a character's capabilities, is one of the core reasons why old-school D&D can get away with using highly random ability score generation methods.

This is also why 5e (a game where the core mechanic used for literally everything is the ability check) has point-buy or standard array as the default methods for generating ability scores, and it's one reason why some people describe Into the Odd (a game where ability scores are highly random but also have a huge amount of influence on almost every roll the players make) as great for one-shots or short campaigns, but not well-suited for long campaigns. But I digress...

Second, flexibility for in-fiction description. The other reason not to base saving throws on ability scores is that tying them to ability scores causes the saves to specify, in-fiction, how the character is avoiding the danger in question. Reflex saves are for dodging out of the way of things or diving for cover. Constitution saves are for "toughing it out". There's nothing inherently wrong with this of course - but consider the alternative. When a character passes a save vs poison, all I know is that the poison did not kill them. This could be because of his natural dwarven resistance to poison - it could be because the cleric's deity protected her - or it could be because the thief was just quick enough to suck the poison out of the wound before it entered the bloodstream. 

There's a significant amount of GM freedom that comes with this more "hands-off" approach to saving throws. For example, it is possible to have a villain wielding a spell that in-fiction always kills its target on a successful spell cast, but still allow the PCs to go up against a foe wielding such magic without it being a guaranteed instant-kill by allowing a saving throw (perhaps at a penalty). Any avoidance of the spell by PCs can be described as truly superhuman/heroic exploits or dazzling amounts of luck, without enforcing that the spell is resisted with a Will save and thus anyone who is strong-willed enough can just survive.

Characteristic #3: old-school saves use static targets

The next characteristic of old-school saves I'll discuss is that they use (nominally) static target numbers, rather than variable targets based on (e.g.) spellcaster level***, which is to say, a character's chance to save vs any particular danger does not change with the severity of said danger. This isn't quite as controversial, I don't think, so I won't spend as much time here. 

The main advantage of this approach is simplicity - fixed save targets are easier and quicker to use at the table than variable targets. You don't have to factor in a bunch of info as the GM when a character makes a saving throw - just decide which save to apply and go for it. There's no need to stat out every enemy spellcaster to determine their save DC. It's one less thing for players to deal with when rolling them. One could certainly protest that this it would be more realistic for various dangers to have variable ease in evading them - and this isn't wrong... but when adding any bit of additional complexity to any system, it's always worth asking if the benefit is worth the cost. 

Characteristic #4: old-school saves vary between the classes

Lastly - while the old-school saving throw targets are usually static with respect to the specific danger faced, they do vary between the classes. The main advantage of this approach is that it reinforces one of the central pillars of D&D, which is class-based play. In addition to varying abilities, hit points, and equipment training, different classes are just better at avoiding certain kinds of dangers. In a system that relies on differentiation between classes for a good deal of the implicit worldbuilding and archetype reinforcement, having one more knob to turn to add class differentiation is helpful. 

While this does add complexity, it's a front-loaded complexity. You write your saving throw targets down when you create a character or level up - they aren't going to change in the middle of an adventure, so it won't slow you down at the table.

Wrapping up..

That's probably the longest reply to a reddit comment I've ever written. Thanks, /u/vmoth, for the inspiration for my first blog post in a long while! I hope this was helpful.

I'll leave you all with this: I'm not knocking the saving throw systems in 5e, or WWN, or Into the Odd, or Swords and Wizardry, or any other RPG that does things differently than old-school D&D. All I'm saying is that the old-school saving throws should be viewed not as a primitive version of a mechanic that later evolved into a more fully realized, more streamlined descendant... but as a game mechanic designed with specific features to achieve specific goals.

May your saves vs death always succeed.

Midjourney AI's interpretation of "old-school D&D saving throw". I find this image oddly evocative, baffling though it is.

Further reading

I refrained from looking up similar blog posts while writing this, in an attempt to avoid any inadvertent rote repetition. All the same, here's some proof that there is nothing new under the sun:

• https://magickuser.wordpress.com/2019/08/01/old-school-saving-throws-are-rad/
• http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-i-use-tthe-classic-saving-throw.html
• http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2020/12/saving-throws.html

*The astute reader will notice I also promised /u/vmoth I'd explain the design principles behind THAC0, thief skills, and x-in-6 mechanics... we'll see.

**Yes, Wisdom does grant a bonus to saves vs magic in old-school D&D, but it isn't the primary source of saving throw advancement and that's basically all Wisdom does for most characters so I'm inclined to still say the saves are not primarily tied to ability scores. It's the exception that proves the rule, if you will.

***There are some exceptions to this, of course - especially surrounding poison (which sometimes varies based on monster strength) and spells (which often apply a save penalty when AoE spells are used on single targets). It's worth asking if the old-school saving throws might actually be better off just committing to fully static targets, as Chris McDowall advises here.

Chesterton's fence part 2: idiosyncratic gems in B/X D&D

The strangeness of B/X D&D

Yesterday I began a discussion of how G.K. Chesterton's precautionary principle (to paraphrase: "don't tear down a fence until you understand why it is there in the first place") can allow us to run better games and write better house rules while not missing what the systems we run have to offer in their rules-as-written form. Today I'll continue by talking about a few ways in which this applies specifically to old-school D&D.

The RPG I'm currently running, Old School Essentials, is a much better organized but otherwise identical clone of Moldvay and Cook's 1981 Basic/Expert (aka B/X) D&D. It's a great system - considered by many to be the most concise and playable incarnation of D&D ever written*. 

B/X is also extremely idiosyncratic by the standards of newer editions, containing many rules that seem like oddities to someone who has mainly played 5e. To name a few: "Elf" and "Dwarf" are character classes (character racial heritage and vocation/class are combined instead of being picked separately, also called race-as-class), characters earn XP mainly from recovering/stealing treasure rather than combat or completing story objectives, different classes have different XP requirements to level up, and character attributes are determined entirely randomly rather than being picked by the players via point-buy or slotting an array of rolled numbers into the desired stats. 

Those familiar with newer editions of D&D will recognize that precisely none of the rules I name above have survived to 5e (in fact, none of them made it past 3e). Why is that? Were the original designers of Basic D&D just not quite sure what they were doing? Are the newer editions more perfectly evolved games and the older editions relics we can simply discard? Well, no. They're different games. In fairly stark contrast to some systems whose edition changes are more or less "upgrades" (see: Savage Worlds), each edition of D&D is very much its own thing, chasing a very specific sort of play experience. Different groups will prefer different editions, and each version of the rules tends to be good at running different types of campaigns.

In my (anecdotal) experience, few people who play B/X (I here include those who play the myriad of retroclones that are basically B/X with some house rules) play it entirely rules-as-written. Indeed, hacking the game is a favorite practice of the group of people (collectively known as the OSR, for Old-School Revival/Renaissance) who play these games, other "old-school" versions of D&D, and games inspired by them today. There are about as many versions of old-school D&D as there are GMs who run it, and it tends to lend itself very well to changing and hacking and experimentation. None of the rules I mention at the start of this section are sacred cows in the OSR (though XP for treasure comes close), and they are often bent, discarded, or molded to suit the user's taste. 

As someone who moved from 5e to B/X and has come to look at many of the latter's idiosyncrasies with fondness, I'd like to briefly discuss two of these odd rules, and why after understanding what they add to the gameplay experience, I've ultimately decided they're not only worth keeping, but a vital part of what makes the game special.

Race-as-class

As someone whose favorite D&D character has long been the doughty Dwarven Cleric, wielding mace and shield and holy magic, my first reaction to the idea of folding race and class into a single choice was to look at it as a simplifying design choice that may make things easier for new players, but doesn't really make for a better game. And indeed, both the original (pre-Basic) D&D and all editions of Advanced D&D allow players to choose race and class separately (albeit often with more restrictions than the current edition). 

However, on closer examination this mechanic offers more than mere simplicity in character generation. An underappreciated asset of the race-as-class approach is in the way it absolutely weaves archetype and worldbuilding into the core mechanics of the game. The reason you can't be a Dwarven Cleric in B/X rules-as-written is that Dwarfs simply aren't participants in the same organized vaguely-Catholic-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off religion implied by the Cleric class in D&D. Dwarfs aren't just short bearded Scottish people, they're different, maybe even alien. In the world implied by B/X D&D, it's enough to just say an adventurer is a "Dwarf" or an "Elf". The melding of race and class has significant worldbuilding implications. 

Modern D&D settings almost always imply a cosmopolitan mishmash of a world where everyone is more or less fundamentally human, they just might be humans with pointy ears and a +2 to INT, or short bearded humans with a +2 to CON. Part of this is a chicken-and-the-egg change in the types of fantasy worlds we associate with D&D-type games, but part is certainly mechanically driven. There are no racial class restrictions or level caps in 5e, because as far as the mechanics are concerned, everyone is basically the same aside from bonuses to a few attribute scores.

None of this is to say that if you're running B/X you can't have a cosmopolitan setting. It's quite easy to separate race and class to get that "unrestricted" feel (Basic Fantasy RPG and Old School Essentials:  Advanced Fantasy both do this quite well), and many GMs who run B/X or one of its clones do exactly that. But if you want a setting, perhaps, where maybe the only Assassins are Elves, or maybe Dwarfs are the only people with Clerical powers? It's every bit as easy to just create an "Elven Shadowblade" class or a "Dwarven Stonesinger" class to tack onto the default B/X offerings of (essentially) "Elven Spellblade" and "Dwarven Fighter". You could also take the route I currently take, which is to allow demihuman characters (what B/X calls non-humans) to "multiclass" into human character classes, keeping some of their unique benefits (better saving throws and keener ears, mostly) in exchange for getting a slightly slower start on leveling.

Race-as-class, despite the name, isn't really saying humans are the only fantasy race with any variety in adventuring professions (even though that's true of the setting implied by the core B/X rules). Rather, it's a different way of setting up character creation that is, yes, simpler for new players... but also does significant worldbuilding work for you if you're willing to leverage it. 

XP for treasure

For as long as D&D has existed, players have wanted to gain XP. Throughout the editions, it's always been the main metric judging how they "make progress" in the game, and is thus one of the main incentives the GM has for motivating player behavior. Fundamentally, when designing incentive structures you should incentivize the behaviors you want to see. In the context of a game, you want to see players doing things that match with the theme of the game, so that's what you should incentivize... and here's where we get to B/X being a fundamentally different game than its successors. 

Since 3e (or so), D&D has been a game primarily about fighting monsters. That's what you earn XP for doing, that's how you make progress in the game, so that's what the game is about. At least until 5e where there's a bit of a "or you can just advance whenever the story says" loosey-goosey cop-out offloading that work from the game designers onto the individual GMs... but I digress. B/X is a game about treasure-hunting because that's how players gain XP. It's not like XP actually represents anything specific in the fiction of the game. Diagetically, it hardly makes any more sense for the magic-user to get better at casting spells by stealing a golden statue from a forgotten temple than it does for him to get better at casting spells by killing 100 orcs. 

Realistically simulating how an adventurer improves at their craft has never really been the point of XP as a mechanic (see Gygax's note on p. 85 of the AD&D DMG). The point of XP in D&D has always been to incentivize the behaviors the game is designed around. In new D&D, that's making progress in the story and/or killing monsters. In old-school D&D, that's recovering treasure from dangerous locations by whatever means is most effective - could be violence, could be subterfuge, could be convincing the leader of the goblins that the Great Green Goblin God wishes them to steal the orcs' treasure and bring them to the party, who are of course the emissaries of the GGGG. 

The 5e GM needs to make a special ruling for the players to be rewarded for such a cunning plan - "OK, I guess I'll give you the XP the module would've given you for killing the orc chieftain even though you didn't fight him". The B/X GM (and the B/X players) know that it doesn't matter how the party got the treasure, what matters is that they got it and they will be duly rewarded with the currency the players actually care about (XP, not ingame gold, if that wasn't clear). 

Ultimately, it's pretty easy to turn B/X into a combat-centric game or 5e into a plunder-centric (or anything-centric) game... but I find the starting point of B/X to make for a much more compelling game. XP for treasure does seem odd, at first glance, to the GM coming from a newer edition - but it serves a vital purpose in shaping the play experience.

Idiosyncratic gems

Both of those idiosyncratic rules (and several more besides) could probably (and probably will at some point) fuel a blog post on its own, but for now I'll leave it at this: Almost without fail, whenever I pick up the oddly shaped rock of some strange B/X rule, there's a gem underneath. (pearl? worm? not sure how well this metaphor is working...) Not always, mind you. There are certainly a few design decisions in the game I think are simply wrongheaded. I will never, ever use the "two-handed weapons always lose initiative" rule from B/X, for example. But the vast majority of the time - there's a reason for the fence, and once I see what that reason is I often find myself nodding thoughtfully rather than reaching for the Sawzall.

Of course, I still have my 6+ pages of house rules for B/X. Chesterton's fence need not be left standing forever - simply pondered for a time. :)

In conclusion...

First off, I want to apologize to my high school English teacher (should he read this) for the title of this heading. Won't happen again.

Phew! That was kind of a long one, huh? I don't anticipate most posts being quite this verbose, but I think the meandering took us to some interesting places, at least. While I definitely intend to try to share plenty of more immediately gameable content, I'd also like to put out a series like this now and again - bit more "thinky" and philosophical, still related to RPGs but synthesized with some outside concepts. At least, if people like this sort of thing. Let me know what you think down below!

Further reading on Chesterton's fence: https://fs.blog/2020/03/chestertons-fence/

*For more on the lost "Basic" (as opposed to "Advanced") line of D&D systems, see this rundown. The newer systems most will probably be familiar with - 5e, 4e, 3.5e, etc. - those are all descended from "Advanced" D&D, which ran parallel to the "Basic" version of the game for many years before TSR folded and Wizards of the Coast decided to end the Basic line and rename AD&D simply: D&D.

Chesterton's fence part 1: RPG house rules and Savage Worlds

Chesterton and his fence

"Chesterton's fence" refers to a principle articulated by the writer G.K. Chesterton, who said in his 1929 work The Thing:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

I find this to be an enormously useful concept that applies (at least in part) to almost any arena. By my recollection, I first encountered the principle in music theory class, when the teacher responded to my inquiries about why there were so many rules of composition by saying "you have to know what the rules are before you can know when it's OK to break them." These days, I apply the principle most often in my job as a mechanical engineer, where my first instinct when looking at an underperforming or problematic system is to say "well obviously the designer made a mistake here and we should clearly do X, Y, or Z to fix this obvious deficiency." Sometimes I'm right. Very, very often... I'm wrong - and often spend more time than is necessary digging into the problem, eventually circling around to the same suboptimal (but maybe good enough) solution the original engineer arrived at. This "small c" conservative principle is also often brought up in politics, most often by "large C" Conservative thinkers but (in my humble opinion) also very useful for those who take a more Reform-heavy view... at least if they want to be effective in their reforms.

It's worth noting that the Chesterton's fence principle does not state that one should never make changes. Taken at face value, it doesn't even state that making changes is generally less preferable than leaving things the same. The principle simply states that one should endeavor to understand an existing system, particularly the rationale behind said system, before making changes to it. 

House rules in RPGs

This brings us, dear reader, to the subject of tabletop RPGs and house rules. Yes, I haven't forgotten what this blog is ostensibly about (not yet, at least). Most people who run RPGs (generally I'll just use the generic term Game Master/GM) loooove us some house rules. Arguably, the entire plethora of OSR systems is an outgrowth of the very simple fact that GMs adore bending and tweaking the rules of our games to suit our own preferences.

I am no exception:

• Within a few months of starting my first campaign (5e D&D's excellent Lost Mines of Phandelver) I had developed a 5 page-long modular ruleset for long-term injuries, replacing 5e's death save system with a d20 x d4 table for wound severity/location, along with accompanying rules for permanent wounds, long-term injuries, and healing. My players quite liked it, so I'd call that a success. 

• To support the continuation of that campaign in the Savage Worlds system as the characters journeyed to mysterious Hot Springs Island, I wrote several self-contained rules modules - conversion of the HSI monsters and hazards to the Savage Worlds system of course, but also 3-1/2 pages of rules to make Savage Worlds more closely resemble old-school D&D (for use with HSI, an OSR setting), a slot-based encumbrance system to replace the default Savage Worlds encumbrance rules, and a zone-based movement system combining the abstraction of theater-of-the-mind combat with the tactics of miniatures play (that last one wasn't a hit, my players just found it confusing rather than tactical).

• Lastly, I currently maintain a 6-1/2 page (and counting) collection of house rules for my Old-School Essentials open table campaign, keeping with the time-honored OSR tradition of hacking old-school D&D into exactly the shape I most prefer.

I love me some house rules, is what I'm saying. I'd anticipate, in fact, that a healthy percentage of the posts on this blog will consist precisely of me presenting a specific house rule or set of house rules for a system, then discussing the reasoning behind it. 

But do you know why the fence is there?

Ah yes. As much as we naturally want to bend and tweak our games, Chesterton and his fence offer a valuable counterpoint to those natural GM instincts for excising every aspect of the game we don't like and replacing them with our own homebrewed concoctions. There is absolutely nothing wrong with changing and reforming systems, whether they be high pressure gas distribution networks, governmental policies, or RPG rules... but reformers would do well to understand the systems they purport to improve before diving in. They'll get better results in the end.

Using some examples from my two favorite RPGs, Savage Worlds and Basic/Expert D&D, I'd like to highlight why, in the midst of all our homebrewing and houseruling, we would do well to take a step back and assess the intentions of the fence's builder every now and again.

Tearing down fences in Savage Worlds

If you spend much time on the subreddit for the Savage Worlds generic RPG system, you'll notice an interesting trend. With astonishing regularity, newcomers to the system will post questions that go something like "I'm reading through Savage Worlds, and while I think the system looks really interesting, I was thinking about replacing the wound system with hit points / removing exploding damage / eliminating the Shaken status effect / giving everyone a Wild Die / decoupling Skills from Attributes. Thoughts?"

Anyone familiar with Savage Worlds will recognize that most of these changes would fundamentally alter the core gameplay experience of the system. It's not that they can't be made - just that making them willy-nilly without understanding the implications has the potential to greatly change the feel of the system, often not for the better. And, indeed, the vast majority of the replies to questions like this are some variation on "don't." or "try playing the system rules-as-written before you change it." Inevitably we then see the proverbial backlash to the backlash as others retort "stop telling people they're playing the game wrong" or "way to discourage a new player by gatekeeping."

Is this gatekeeping? I would argue no. Savage Worlds is a weird system. The best adjective I can use to describe it is "cinematic," but that's fairly imperfect as it conjures up images of narrative-first games such as Powered by the Apocalypse, when Savage Worlds is really an interesting blend of traditional, narrative, and unique RPG ideas. It's very much "its own thing", and the system creates a really fun play experience at the table. Note: the key phrase there is "at the table", because there are a lot of rules in Savage Worlds that just seem weird at first glance:

"Wait, you're telling me all damage rolls explode (roll again and add if you roll the highest value on a die, repeat as many times as that happens)? Doesn't that mean a mighty hero could be instantly killed by the smallest goblin even if he's at full health? That's dumb; I like the system overall but I think I'm gonna take that rule out when I run it."

Savage Worlds is full of these kinds of rules - they sound quite strange at first glance, and a novice to the system (particularly one coming from other, dissimilar RPG systems) might think the game would be better off without them. What our imaginary novice GM above doesn't realize, though, is that although exploding damage means a mighty hero could theoretically be instantly killed by the smallest goblin, players can spend Bennies (a metacurrency in Savage Worlds) to "soak" incoming damage before it happens. Additionally, taking too many Wounds will Incapacitate you but won't kill you unless you critically fail a Vigor roll (read: snake eyes on 2d6). Also, due to the way Toughness and Damage interact in the threshold-based (rather than attrition-based) wound system of the game, certain extra-tough baddies would never be damageable without exploding damage dice. Removing exploding damage from the game without addressing all the other mechanics that depend on and feed from it will result in some things simply not working.

The novice Savage Worlds GM who just starts taking down fences, drastically modifying the system without understanding it, will end up running a game where many of the underlying systems are fundamentally broken. They probably won't enjoy the experience very much, and will conclude (incorrectly) that the game just isn't all that fun. This isn't to say people shouldn't modify the rules - not at all. But the oft-given advice to "try the game rules-as-written before changing it" is, far from being an exclusionary mantra, a vital piece of advice for anyone looking to see what really makes Savage Worlds fun. There's just something about Savage Worlds that comes alive at the table, that creates a unique experience hard to conceptualize just reading the rulebook.

To be continued...

I originally intended to roll right ahead into a discussion of some of the unexpected gems to be found in the more idiosyncratic rules of Moldvay and Cook's 1981 Basic/Expert (aka B/X) D&D, and how the principle of Chesterton's fence can help us not to prematurely discard that which we don't understand, thus missing its value... but this post is already edging towards 10 minute reading time territory, and I'd prefer that anyone checking this blog out for the first time doesn't immediately run into a novella, so I will see you all tomorrow for part 2. Thanks for reading!