Thanks, Blackadder! Yeah we found the rules for priest armor failure after the search. The question was: why and what's the penalty if she does were armor, because our loooong 3E background had our brains separating spells into "arcane" and "divine" categories, the former incurring spell failure %, the latter not. Her priest died at the end of last session, torn apart by deinogalerixes (giant shrews), rendering the matter moot, anyway.

As far as finding a new DM, trust and standing friendships plays into it. I want to keep playing with them as much as they want to keep playing with me. They're indulging me this foray into a rules system even though none of them asked for a rules switch and they all felt: the game isn't broke, so why switch? My job tonight is to make them as excited about AS&SH as I am.
 

Because of their typically high DEX, thieves and thief subclasses are pretty good with missile weapons. Flaming oil or holy water (not to mention acid or contact poison, if available) is always nice.

Engaging in melee with them, under any but the most desperate circumstances, is... not optimal. Really, the hit dice say it all: d8 and up, you can melee (for the most part); d6 and under, don't.

Jimm.Iblis wrote:

• Excited to discover the OSR "movement" I found AS&SH to be the best iteration of the "just right" light-rules system I grew up with. It felt like the designer had synthesized all the cool 30's pulp mag weirdness and I had in my own brain.
• Though I wasn't using AS&SH's default setting, the system itself seemed perfectly suited to my Gygax-/Arneson-infused version of Howard's world. I was stoked enough to purchase the physical book (happy to see the second edition just released!).

The Complication: The players, unfortunately, aren't excited to switch, to say the least.

Anyway, I guess I'm reaching out for good tidings and advice...but I need to sell AS&SH tonight hard, because I really want to keep using the system. Considering the context and compromises I've outlined, any suggestions about what I can try or highlight about AS&SH to get my players as exited about the game as I am will be appreciated.

Perspicacious snipping employed, my three sequins of wisdom are:

• Emphasize the "rules-light" and freedom of AS&SH: I make liberal use of the Non-Standard Task Resolution to emulate what PF and 5e do with backgrounds, feats and skills. E.g., the Cleric of Apollo is good at healing, music, poetry, etc. Let your players know they should be suggesting things to you (I guess in DW-fashion, but I've never played it), and that just because it isn't on their sheet doesn't mean they can't try.
• I use my own setting, too, and have a short list of house rules, but think AS&SH shines when you treat even 1st-level PCs as "heroic in stature": the vast majority of NPCs in my world are 0-level, and creatures are BTB.
• Lastly, I'm liberal with the treasure, since they're heroes, not murder-hobos scrounging for coppers. I realize this one is a personal choice of the flavor of my game, and not necessarily "weird" in the way AS&SH is.

I've switched my long running (9+ years) 1e campaign to ASSH. Mostly because they reached a high enough level of play (9th-11th) were things get a bit challenging.

At the moment 4 of the 5 have created a thief subclass character. There are jokingly gonna try to have a party of all thieves :-)

So far: scout, assassin, legerdemainist, and I think a purloiner might be a second legerdemainist.

I am thinking about suggesting the last person try to be a monk. Mostly because they get cure disease at 1st level. Which is helpful in a world where one can become a zombie from a bite. At least, that's my opinion.

Thanks for the advice and kind words everyone!
The game last night went great, in unexpected ways.
The players I anticipated having problems (P2 and P4 from the OP), had, to my surprise, come in having studied the rules and were excited to give them a try. P1, as always, accommodated whatever I was doing because he just enjoys playing.

It was P3, actually, DM of his own 5e game, who was the most visibly and vocally daunted. First off, let me preface by saying he is a dear friend, wonderfully creative, and was probably having a bad day to boot, so forgive the way the following paints his personal character. I think the issue was how, between Oe and 5e, similar terminology means slightly different things and old school play has far less action-movie or anime-influenced superheroics at any level. I like to bring up Conan the Barbarian 82 at times like this, and how in the climax fight with Conan and Rexor, it was just two guys beating each other to death with blades, no crazy flips and twirls and kung-fu--until, you know, "Do you want to live forever?" as a brief interruption of the supernatural--and that's sword-and-sorcery (do I need spoiler tags here if anyone for an iconic 36 year old film?).

Player 3 grumbled about his "low" stats, low for 5e maybe, though in Oe they were far above average (S8 D9 C12 I13 W15 Ch18). I explained play doesn't revolve around stacking huge bonuses to D20 rolls. Only 10 hit points? complained he after rolling a 2 for his second hit die. I explained everyone in the world's hit points are way lower than in contemporary editions of D&D (Demogorgon=200 hit points!!). When he looked at the simplified character sheet (I will have the group switch to the standard in a few sessions), he complained it all looked like complicated nonsense. He didn't like that his 2nd level witch-doctor had but two spells--though I explained the game encourages exploration to build up spells known. After several attempts to explain how fluidly all the weird old-school terms and abilities would play, he basically said its fine and didn't care, to which I responded, "I'd rather you not 'not care' and give the system a chance."

Conversions completed (we'd gotten most of it done last session), we got to playing, and the rules impacted play very little. After a lengthy stretch of dungeon-based sessions (a fusion of B4 The Lost City and the introductory scenario from 2d20 Conan core book), the PCs were on route to Zamboulafor city-based intrigues. Player 3 got to use his high Charisma, which he thought meant nothing under the old school rules, when I assigned a "Simple" (5:6) difficulty to haggle a good price with the city brokerage for the party's stolen horses and military equipment. I explained that unlike 3rd edition and later games that had fixed or arbitrarily scaling difficulties, tests in AS&SH were tailored to individuals, i.e. the same haggling role for the mole-man barbarian/thief would be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible. That turned Player 3 around a bit, and he started participating in role play more at that point.

So, the rest of the game was mostly roleplay, intelligence gathering on the uproar in Zamboula following recent events nearby the city and within. The Temple of Ishtar's high priestess tried using the party's dead comrades' possible resurrection as a bargaining chip to coerce them into a quest on their behalf. The mole-man went to join the Chapel of Bel's Thieves' Guild and learned they had recently been rounded up and executed by the satrapy--following the theft of three museum-piece weapons from three different prominent citizens). A ton more leads and hooks were put on the table. Meanwhile, the PCs are invested in learning as much as they can about the eldritch demi-god they inadvertently helped summon in the session before last. By the end of the the night, everyone was having a good time and roleplaying amongst themselves and interacting with NPCs with gravitas and panache. There was a whispered conversation by the temple nuns that the barbarian-thief and legerdemainist strained but failed to overhear. I explained to the witch-doctor, Player 3, in-scene but who'd not otherwise deigned to attempt, that he was welcomed to try to overhear the nuns though there was significantly greater difficulty than those trained to "hear noise." He got lucky and made it on a 1 in 20. First time in 30 years anyone's cheered a 1 on a d20...

Here is one major massive awesome thing I personally appreciated in an urban intrigue scenario under AS&SH's tweaked-at old-school rules, which reminded me of something I'd lost in the years since the release of 3rd ed. Me and the players role-played straight away. All of them did their best to describe gestures and affectations and suss out advantages that could aid in the present social situation.

In my 3.X/PF games Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate checks interfered with or substituted for role-play. Players that lacked the abilities kept quiet, "let the bard (or mesmerist or beguiler, etc.) do their thing" was the consensus. Not saying my 3plus games didn't have great role-play, but the skills and numbers and die rolls needed to have their say too. A dumb lie... but a high Charisma, maxed out Bluff, and a natural 20 meant stuff like this. Under Dungeon World, mechanics and rules interfered even more directly. A player attempting to negotiate with an NPC made a "Parlay move," rolled, and under the rules I had to respond with a DM move based on the roll. Ugh.

So, yay!. Yes, in AS&SH a high Charisma might adjust an initial attitude or serve as a fall back mechanical function for otherwise lengthy and boring events (like haggling with a brokerage), but for the most part, we were all roleplaying out hearts out--not rolling dice and checking social skill mechanics. That more than anything brought be back to the fun and wonder I remember from playing AD&D as a kid.

So yeah, long story short, I'm glad I didn't stage any combat encounters like I initially intended to "introduce the system." AS&SH spoke for itself in how quietly it hummed in the background during a great urban role-play session, stepping up with a simple check when needed (liquidating mundane loot, overhearing a whispered conversation). Everyone had fun and are at least halfway converted, and excited for next Tuesday's game. Some guys will burst into a room with crossbows, then, to give combat a whirl.
 

Awesome stuff!

That is splendid, and mirrors my own conversion (from D&D 5e, which was itself a conversion from Stormbringer 5e): initial complaints and comparisons with other flavors of D&D fell away once they saw everything scaled differently in AS&SH. At 7th level they're attracting followers, having a major impact on the town they're in, Sorcery is deadly, etc.

One other option I've presented to my new players is to switch classes: the newest player in the group picked up a former player's Fighter, and is thinking he wants to play a Paladin of Apollo instead. I'll probably let him after some more sessions, role-playing the proper devotions and sacrifices to Apollo, etc. I don't know that I would allow this for a veteran AS&SH player to do, and certainly wouldn't allow it to be done multiple times with the same character.

I like how you acclimated to the situation and took the time to introduce older concepts to a group otherwise more familiar with newer concepts and forms of resolution. It's not that their play style is wrong; rather, it's just different than how we always did things growing up. For some, the transition will not always be easy to grasp. They want to roll a die to determine whether or not they can intimidate the savage chieftain. Others might find the transition liberating. They role-play the situation, threatening that they are holding the savage chieftain's missing son hostage, and if he doesn't cooperate, he can assume the worst. Maybe the referee makes a d6 roll, giving the players a 4-in-6 chance of success, because they so adeptly played into the fears and worries of the chieftain. Alternatively, the referee might use Table 85: Reaction to determine results, applying modifiers for CH and maybe another modifier for playing into those aforementioned fears and concerns of the chieftain. And what if the players are bluffing about holding the savage chieftain's son? Well, I would rather hear exactly how they are bluffing as opposed to having them simply tell me that they just passed or failed a bluff check. IMO (and I realize I'm probably preaching to the choir, or else you probably wouldn't be here), it is more fun, but there are many ways to have fun playing RPGs, and I'm delighted to report that a lot of our newer customers are 5e players who are curious about old school gaming and styles of play, which is great, because it is bringing younger people to the fray and some older folks who haven't played this way since the 20th century.

Jimm.Iblis wrote:

Is it pure AS&SH? no, but I love the attitude of "rulings not rules" that informs the entirety of all these iterations of classic D&D, and that they are all effectively compatible (being tweaks of the same game) that I can cherry pick rules and options without "breaking" anything.
 

Indeed, and I'm in the same place: I've house-ruled my version of AS&SH, too. It's like the RPG version of jazz: knowing what rules not to include.