My Son, the Grognard

So, a couple of weeks ago we decided to put the Greyhawk campaign on hold for a little while and explore some other RPG's. After some discussion, we decided to give 5e a try with the starter box set.

I've never played or ran 5e and Brisco had no experience with it, either. I was looking forward to running it and seeing what my son thought. While I did tell him I thought the game needed some judicious houserules, I said that all in all I thought it was decent, from what I've seen.

I didn't want my own preferences to unduly influence him. For all I knew, he might really like 5e and it could be a good game for him to run for his friends. It's the new hotness, after all. Thus far he's been running OSRIC for his high school crew. They meet about once a month or so and he runs them through a module. He hasn't started an actual campaign with them, which I think is fine. I started in a similar fashion, with my friends and I getting together, taking out our character folders and assembling a
team for whatever adventure one of us was running. Kind of a nebulous, ever shifting world that might resemble Greyhawk one week and ancient Scandinavia, the next.

I've been talking about a lot of different games during our conversations. Rolemaster, OpenQuest, Stormbringer, DCC, various super hero games and so forth. I think giving him information and opportunities to explore different games is a good thing. Hell, I'd even be willing to run 3e for him.

No one else, but I'd run it for him.

So, the 5e session went fairly well. We got past the first part. My son ran two of the pre-gens and I ran the other three as NPC's.

I think the first assault on Brisco's Old School sensibilities was the cantrips. After working an AD&D MU up to 13th level, all that "Phew-Phew" repetitiveness was a bit... dull and uninspired.

The second was the dying rules, which he found irritatingly coddling.

"We can houserule all that if you want to do an actual 5e campaign," I assured him.

The session ended and the next week, I was prepared to continue the adventure.

Alas, Brisco informed me he wasn't interested in 5e, didn't care for it at all and said, "Let's go back to the Greyhawk campaign."

"Are you sure? You know a lot of what you didn't like can be houseruled."

"No, I didn't care for it at all. I didn't like the way it played. I prefer 'To Hit' charts and the way AD&D works."

Swear to Gygax.

"Okay, I'm good with that."