Experience rules in First Fantasy Campaign

[ckutalik]

Hi all new to the list here (well new in a non-lurking way). I had a question that I thought y'all maybe be able to help me with.

I have been intrigued by Arneson's experience rules for a few years now since catching wind of them. After finally getting a hold of the FFC last month I was even more intrigued by the granularity of the rules he presented for spending gp on special interests (enough to blog about it).

One thing I always wondered though, where these the rules that he actually used in his own campaign as written? I mean most descriptions make it sound so much more loosey-goosey, not like ratios as published. Anyone have a sense?

[gsvenson]

It is hard to answer that. As a player in Dave's original campaign, I only saw my character card (a 3x5 index card) with my characters stats and description a handful of times over a period of over 4 years of playing almost every weekend. So, we did not have a lot of visibility into how these things actually worked. Dave talked about these things, but we didn't see how the actual mechanics worked. None of the rules were published or in print while we were playing in those days. They were all in his notebook.

[aldarron]

Yeah I was afraid Greg wouldn't have a conclusive answer for you because I'm not sure how much Dave actually used those rules or when he came up with them. As printed in the FFC they kinda feel like more of a thought exercise mixed with some older bits from Blackmoor play, and they reference the OD&D rulebooks, so they probably date to '75 or '76. Maybe it was something Dave worked up for Supplement II originally or maybe it was even later than that, perhaps when the Blackmoor campaign wasn't as active. Thier interesting rules and for whatever reason, its one of the things in the FFC that get talked about most, but I doubt they were ever a big part of Dave's gaming.