Blogger issues, some food for thought and my gaming woes

First off, I STILL don't like the new Blogger look.  (No, I'm not jumping ship to wordpress.  Just annoyed with the way it is working.  Maybe it is just me.)

There is another blogger out there, known as B/X BLACKRAZOR who has an wonderful OSR blog.  I love reading it.  I recently read to articles about this hobby that he and I both enjoy running and it got me thinking.  Here and here are the two posts.

Both of them make good points.  I think the second one is something I want to deal with a little more.  Because that has always been an issue I have felt is one of the weakest points about D&D.  The fact that magic is so weak as to be more akin to technology.  (By saying these words and using these materials, along with the right hand gestures, you have a fireball.  Or by calling forth to your god/dess and clutching your holy symbol, you can heal someone or all a bless to go off.)  Everything is mechanical, there is no Gee Whiz! stuff going on in the world.  Yes, a DM can try and add to the realism, and the players could try and role play that gee whiz moment, yet it would feel fake IMO.

I have tried to do that in my most recent game, the one that is in a kind of limbo at the moment.  I did find that when I tried to bend the rules, some of my players enjoyed it, while the grognards took umbrage to me bending the rules.

There is a comment int he second rant, by a guy named George, who said it best.  These are his words:

"My new policy, which my players really enjoy, is simply: 'You will never find a magic item straight out of the DMG in my campaign. Never!'

So all my magic is either my own creation or inspired (or copied) from other sources (such as different games, bloggers, forums, etc).

I do the same thing with monsters. So I also tell my players: 'Don't bother studying the Monster Manual.'"

I think that is something I need to take more of a stand on.  It also might mean that some people do not want to play with me again.  (Just something I say off the top of my head, I could be wrong.)

This thought also leads to what I have been calling a schism of my latest game.  I don't want to get into a gaming story, but suffice to say that there were issues in the game that caused the players to break into two groups.  They fall along lines of more New School gamers and Old School gamers.  The Old School guys have effectively quit my game.  The New School group want to continue, yet the drama from both in game and out of game issues has me throwing in the towel.  I have held off on simply calling the game.  Yet, I still might simply stop it and either become a player or just not do something on Monday nights for a time and work on another campaign/or go back and try to re-work the current one and try to use it at a later date.