Gameday: What went wrong? What went right?

FYI, this is not a blog about the session events, this is a blog about today's revelations for me and my group. Stay tuned for session notes!

Well, today was the day. The day I have been waiting for. The day where my friends and I put aside the comfortable 3.5 rule set and rolled up new OSRIC characters. We got to our first battle and I laid out the combat rules. There were a few unexpected growing pains. It took a little getting used to and my players were less then happy with the OSRIC combat sequence. Mind you, my group grew up on 1st and 2nd edition D&D, but that was a long time ago. Their most recent experience with a Dungeons & Dragons combat system has been the god-awfully slow 3.5 version. What is there not to like about the OSRIC combat system? The Party Initiative? The Morale rules? It's combat greatness and lickity-split! Well, one issue that my group had was they did not like not being able to pick a target when in melee with a group of monsters. I can see why they would be frustrated. They feel like they are out of control when they can't designate a victim. I get that. Of course, combat is frantic, so after explaining the dynamics of OSRIC combat once more, we continued our day's adventure. We searched every nook and cranney for treasure, fell into a pit trap, and even touched a statue that caused electrical damage to one of my fighter's for 8 of his 10 hit points. It was dungeon exploration at its finest. The day came to an end and we all decided to honestly review what we liked and did not like about the new rule set. I felt for sure that the group would have fallen in love with OSRIC and yet, they only loved parts of it... and the truth is that most of the parts they did like are not even OSRIC specific. First they loved how much more involved the room searches were when we were not rolling towards a DC like one does in 3.5. They also loved mapping the dungeon as we explore it instead of having a map thrown at them to follow. One OSRIC specific rule that my players did love was how you earn XP for finding treasure and not just killing monsters. This rule discourages the "run from room to room killing monsters" type of play. With those three new ideas, my players requested something that I never expected. They wanted to go back to playing D&D 3.5! Only this time, they wanted to go back to playing D&D 3.5 with modifications to incorporate these new things they loved about our OSRIC experience.

How could this be?

I never saw this as a possibility. I came at this idea of trying out OSRIC knowing that it was an experiment and my players may not like it and want to go back to playing 3.5, but I thought the lack of so many rigerous rules would make them feel "free" in regards to roleplaying and they would feel that 3.5 was to big and cumbersome of a rule set. Well I was half right becuase they realized that dungeon exploration is more fun for them when they take an active role in it instead of just walking in to a room and throwing the 20 sided to reveal whatever their search and spot checks will reveal.
After playing today, I realized that there is no reason for me to feel so "bound" to following the 3.5 rules. I can adjudicate them in the same way that I would OSRIC. My game, my rules. Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 has such a vast array of rules to determine every little thing that could possibly happen, that when the time comes to refrence a rule, if I don't know it, I felt compelled to stop the game and look it up. We all know that is a major no no, but with so many tables to refrence, it seems a shame to just make something up when someone else already has. That is where I need to grow as a DM. I can simply make a ruling on the spot and the players have to go with it. Later on we can go back and see if we should or would have wanted to handle it differently. Hell, they even have that written almost word for word in the 3.5 DM guide. Why did I need to play 1st edition just to cement that point home in my head? As far as combat is concerned, we are going to focus on speeding that up too. There are a number of ways to do this, but I don't want to go into it untill I try out the tecniques and know what works and what does not.

So were does that leave us now? Well , my group really wants to try playing 3.5 again, with the modifacations I have mentioned. Will it work? We shall see. Is it "Old School"? In some circles the answer is no. But for me it will be old school once I have that familier fantasy feeling in my heart after a sesson. That is why I am never going to stop hunting the old school RPG.