Thursday, May 26, 2016
Has anyone else played with Centaurs, Satyrs or other non-standard races in their games?
Has anyone else played with Centaurs, Satyrs or other non-standard races in their games? Any thoughts on Holmes' reference to a Samurai fighter? I wonder if he was thinking of a whole new class or a different way of looking at the Fighting Man.
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Chris Holmes ran a Samurai using the class from the Manual of Aurania:
ReplyDeletehttp://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-manual-of-aurania-1977.html
There was also one in Dragon #3, Oct 1976. Holmes may have been referring to either/both of these in the Basic rulebook.
ReplyDeleteEven in the '70s there was a tendency to write up every possible race and/or class - Alarums & Excursions, Judges Guild Journals and the early Dragons are full of this kind of stuff, but there's no record of Holmes actually writing one up himself. So it's hard to judge whether he just made a case-by-case basis or wrote up something more formal.
ReplyDeleteOne of Holmes's short stories in A&E features a samurai, as well as a witch doctor.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, Holmes's own highest-level (4th!) character was a dreenoi, an alien insectoid.
ReplyDeleteThe story "Interview with a Rust Monster" from a very early Dragon features a Samurai as one member of the party. I have seen them played using the standard Fighting-Man Class and also using homebrewed classes.
ReplyDeleteAs for Centaurs, I did run one of those once. I chose Fighting Man with some extra abilities and restrictions to model a Centaur.
In 0D&D circles homebrewed classes, races, spells, etc were quite the norm. They even went on to spawn games like Dave Hargraves Arduin Grimoire
My player wanted a centaur cleric. Best roleplay ever. That horse man was the most devout, serious about cleric who ever clip-clopped over the face of fantasy. I would have let him officiate at my wedding if he was real.
ReplyDeleteI tried to break BLUEHOLME™ in playtest by letting my players play a black dragon, a dreenoi, a medusa, a lizard man, a wererat, and various humanoids. It worked fine, except for the medusa, but in retrospect that was probably because we didn't apply her petrification gaze strictly enough.
ReplyDeleteI don't think centaurs would have a problem going anywhere a mule could go, so I'm sure they would be fine in those 10-foot wide corridors.
His horse body was small and agile like a Connemara pony. He was pretty cool about it. Roleplayed not wanting to do stairs stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteI've run games with PC skeletons, a ghoul (named goolio), a balrog, an intelligent two-headed dog, a miniature Godzilla, and a goblin. No centaurs yet... :)
ReplyDeletenail gun-mime
ReplyDeleteVery cool reading through the responses.. as kids, we were pretty by the book when it came to what races you could play (whatever the system happened to be). Its been fascinating in recent years reading how wild and woolly many campaigns back in the day were with "the older crowd". Back then I probably would not have done this, but now I'd be totally up for it.. back then I envisioned taverns like they were medieval Western saloons, mainly full of humans; these days, I'd much rather run one as being like a fantasy version of the Mos Eisley cantina - full of centaurs, lizard men, assorted beastmen, you name it (very much like the town in Dave Trampier's underworld town depicted in the Wormy strip) : )
ReplyDeleteI added a few non-standard races from various sources to my "Levels Beyond Basic" house-ruled Holmes/0e set. While wrote my own version of the centaur race, I liberally "borrowed" many races from other sources: werebears, Beornings, and the other races that becamse canon in AD&D: half-orcs, half-elves, gnomes, etc. along with classes like samurai, witches & bards.
ReplyDeleteAs far as having players RUN any of them... no takers yet. :P