so, hey. 3.5.

By: Unknown on 17:34

Dane, one of the awesome players in my Wednesday night game has threatened to run some Dungeon Crawl Classis-fueld D&D 3.5 this summer.  I got rid of pretty much all my WotC-type D&D stuff awhile back, keeping only Rappan Athuk and anything with the words "Judges" and "Guild" on the cover.  So I told Dane that any character I made would be based entirely on the Hypertext SRD.  Nowadays when I flip through that website I ask myself why I've never seen an old school SRD.  Being able to download a free PDF copy of Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord is rock solid awesome, but at some point mimicking a prior media form is counterproductive.  Like how you gain nothing by limiting a TV or movie production by limiting the action to what will fit on a theatre stage.

Anyway, I got to daydreaming about what kind of character I'd like to play in Dane's hypothetical game.  Most of my first ideas were stuff that could be played in any edition ("Hey, fighters are awesome.  Also: wizards.") or fairly obvious stretches ("Half-elf paladin whose fairy blood and mission from God pull him in different directions").  But I've got two ideas that I wouldn't normally think to try under a TSR edition.

1. A halfling sorcerer who works through pipe-based effects.  Fear my smoke rings, mofos!
2. A commoner.

I'd really like to try the second option just to see how far I'd get while totally sucking, but I'd probably feel guilty about not pulling my weight.  Anyone out there try playing a commoner in a party of mechanically competent characters?