I approach AD&D 1E/OSRIC gaming from a storyboard perspective. It's not just a game, it's a series of stories. They are stories about villains, heroes and the wild ways of the world that ebbs and flows in between.
I like to say that there are the books and the rules that are the "straight math" of the game and I know a lot of people that play it that way. That's fine if that's how they prefer to play it. For me though, I find that approach terribly boring. I like to think of myself as a fairly creative person and much appreciate the natural randomness built into the game and the many suggestions by the author throughout the books that the rules are secondary, it's the spirit of the game that is most important and the rules not only can be changed or sacrificed for the sake of the spirit of the game, it is encouraged.
I believe that by homebrewing and creating our own campaign worlds and anything else we come up with takes the game somewhere entirely new. It allows us to make it more uniquely our own and yet be able to share it with others at the same time.
It's a great fantasy adventure of our own making. People start playing, in my games anyway, with characters they have dreamed of and can live vicariously through. Like I said, it's a story and these characters are something that players can become attached to. I will bring in some Ex Deau Machina to preserve the story if need be. I will fudge the dice to get a better, more exciting and more interesting story if the opportunity exists.
I love this game for the great escape that it is. It's a high like no other that I have experienced (and honestly, I have experienced some dubious variety of highs over my ifetime).
It's not just guidebooks and dice and paper. It's imagination and fantasies and dreams made real. It's taking a game and making it more than the sum of it's parts.
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