Going Way Beyond

Hackmaster 5th edition
There are times when I seem to yearn for the heavy encumbrance of a detailed rule system, times when I tire of improvisation and welcome “looking it up” rather than “making it up”.  This isn’t often, but there are times…

During those brief times I have been turning to Kenzer & Co.’s Hackmaster 5^th ed. Hackmaster 5 seems to me to be the rules-heavy logical successor to the family of games began with the white box. This is going to be a bit like a medieval line of succession discussion, so having said that I will go on and step into it fully.  3^rd ed. wavered from and 4^th edition broke the succession line for me. 5^th ed. is much better and I give Mr. Mearls credit for pulling the game many of us loved for so long out of the flames, brushing it off, cleaning it up and giving it back to us, well, selling it back to us as 5^th ed. There’s some 4^th ed. DNA in 5^th however, so although it feels like old D&D, it’s also a bit like 4^th.  Hackmaster 5^th is the direct descendant of Hackmaster 4^th which is pretty much early AD&D 2^nd with a lot of humor thrown in. 

I really try to avoid negativity on my blog and before I offend anyone, I want to say unlike a lot of older gamers I played 4^th for a number of years, don’t hate it and think it’s a pretty good game.  It’s just a different game than the one I grew up loving. The change really started with WotC’s later 2^nd ed. and especially 3^rd ed. skills, feats, and so on. As these changes occurred some of us like me played the new editions, but continued to be in love with the old game and playing it when we got the chance.

Well, that’s my wacky excuse for being the way I am, but it’s time to move on.

So what’s so appealing to me about Hackmaster 5^th? The book(s) is gorgeous…which doesn’t hurt. Some of the humor of Hackmaster 4^th is still present and, yes, I kinda enjoy a little humor in my fantasy roleplay. The rules are the real gem, of course, but in Hackmaster 5^th the gem has so many facets it’s hard to know where to begin. Hackmaster 5^th is really three books, a player’s handbook, a bestiary, and the recently published GM guide. Most of the rules are in the PHB, so that’s what I will focus on here. There is a free download for those interested.

The PHB is 400+ pages and starts predictably enough with character generation.  The familiar 3d6 roll for attributes is there plus some points buy elements for classes, proficiencies, talents and skills.  There are eleven races from which to choose, ten classes and fourteen clerics, one each for all the alignment combinations. Honor and fame are tracked as well as experience. Quirks and flaws add character and role-playing opportunities. Magic uses spell points and components. Combat is involved and crunchy using a second-by-second count system so that every character is making decisions every second. Weapon speed, casting time, combat maneuvers and constant movement combine to give combat a very realistic feel. Wounds are tracked individually and may disable or incapacitate without reaching zero hit points. Armor makes one easier to hit, but reduces damage and shields are given their realistic roll as frequent life-savers.

Realism is the overall theme here and it comes through at all levels of the game. One of the things that really appeals to me and sets Hackmaster apart from the later editions of D&D/Pathfinder is the emphasis on starting characters being not much above average folks.  It’s the old story of “zero to hero” that white box gamers are familiar with. I can play the “hero to superhero” games and have fun doing so.  I have found that I do not like refereeing those games. PCs level rather slowly and require time and money spent training in order to level-up.

Having played it twice I find Hackmaster despite all the rules heaviness is a surprisingly simple game.  Part of this comes from the fact that it seems inherently logical and is generally consistent. It all makes sense to me. There is a lot to this system and it has rules to cover just about everything, but it seems to flow and rarely bogs down. Part of it is my own style, but I don’t find a need to thumb through the rules during play like frequently happens with other large rulebooks (looking at you Pathfinder). The combat system requires a good way to keep count of seconds and the referee needs to be organized regarding monsters. Otherwise the system seems to do most of the heavy lifting and play seems rather easy at the table. The system does move slower than white box and combat takes longer. The trade-off is that crunch detail we can think of as “realism”.

The Hacklopedia of Beasts or bestiary actually preceded the PHB and is also a gorgeous book, inside and out. The monsters are illustrated and described in a manner suggestive of a scientific field guide; lots of flavor here for enjoyment! The referee/GM will want to keep the combat stats (rose) handy for use at the table. The Game Master’s Guide is a little more plain in looks, but of the same high quality as the other game books. It contains lots of tables including the critical hit and fumble tables referred to, but not included in the PHB. The GM advice in this guide is direct, meaty and way above the advice usually found in such tomes making this the best GM’s guide since Mr. Gygax’s AD&D 1^st edition in my estimation.

More Greyhawk

The Greyhawk Folio
Eventually someone will ask how far it is to...  Eventually you, as referee, are going to want a map. Five years after Supplement I introduced players to the world of Greyhawk, TSR published the map. The Folio, as it is commonly called, actually comes with two very nice maps of the eastern part of Oerik, a continent on Oerth, often referred to simply as the world of Greyhawk. The color maps are done by artist Darlene and really are works of art (I have seen a couple of them in frames!). They are overlaid with 30 mile hexes and show the features familiar to fans of Greyhawk such as the Free City, etc. The two maps are really the stand-out feature of the folio.
The outside folio itself is colorful and has the shields of various cities and kingdoms printed on it.  Inside are the two maps plus a 32 page booklet describing the world illustrated on the maps. Information in the book includes a listing of all the political states on the maps with brief descriptions of their internal politics and relations with neighboring states. A listing of major geographic features including seas, lakes, rivers, mountains, forests, swamps and so forth, all with brief descriptions of inhabitants is given as well. There is calendar information, a chronology and brief history of the Flanaess, as this region of the Greyhawk world is called. Small maps showing historic migrations are included in the history section.
Greyhawk is the default setting for the early player aids/adventure modules published by TSR. The location of each of the modules published to date is given in terms of the Greyhawk map, so referees can now answer the question "How far is it to..." Toward the end of the booklet is a listing of royal and noble titles and the orders of knighthood to be found. Things wrap up with a list of runes and glyphs.
I find it somewhat odd that in a system with player character clerics there is no mention of deities either in Supplement I or the Greyhawk Folio. Some of the published adventures have deities in them and I understand that Greyhawk deities are given some ink in Dragon magazine of the day (maybe that was a selling point for Dragon?). The Forward to the Greyhawk Folio booklet mentions that the world of Greyhawk is now yours to do with as you please (referring to the purchaser/referee of course). Does the absence of deities imply do-it-yourself regarding a Greyhawk pantheon? Fans of Greyhawk would eventually get the list of deities, but not until 3 years later with the publication of The World of Greyhawk boxed set.
The '83 boxed set contains the same two Darlene color maps and two booklets which repeat the information from the folio as well as introduce some new information on Greyhawk. In addition to information on the deities of Greyhawk, there are numerous encounter tables specific to the world, a weather system and a handful of adventure ideas. Over the decades other pieces of Greyhawk would see publication, but Castle Greyhawk and the dungeons beneath from Mr. Gygax's original campaign were not among them. (I believe at least part of this original material would finally see publication with Troll Lords shortly before Mr. Gygax's death as Castle Zagyg.)
Greyhawk, grandaddy of fantasy roleplay playgrounds, despite all that has been published remains mostly unknown. The Darlene maps only cover a portion of one continent. The 30 mile hexes contain many uncharted features and undocumented wonders. Much of what is known comes to us as fragments or fabled stories, such as surround the legendary Castle and its dungeons. Exactly as it should be, therefore forever encouraging fresh invention, imagining and discovery by those who play the game.

Hit Points

How much health do I have left?
No aspect of white box or D&D in general has caused me more trouble than hit points. What do they represent? Why does a character ignore the effects of being hit right up to the point of going unconscious? When does death occur for the PC? Many such questions have plagued me over the years and I am convinced that it is a sign of overthinking! When it comes right down to it, a hit point is just a game mechanic; an abstraction of a resource that can be worn down and exhausted. To a lessor extent, the abilities of Str, Dex, Int, etc are too, because they can be "drained" away magically. So knowing full-well I am at risk of overthinking hit points, I shall dive right in and discuss them at length, in game terms, of course.
Over the decades I have given a lot of thought to what a hit point represents. At times I have tried to convince myself of the truth of various theories. Obviously it represents in some way the physical body- the body of the PC- that can be damaged, wounded or killed. It is also more than just that, especially at higher levels when PCs have more hit points it really becomes a measure of how long they can stand in harms way and absorb attacks while continuing to function. It seems improbable that a 2-pount hit taken by a PC with say 36 hit points amounts to much of a wound. It's a scratch at best and maybe less. It chips away at the PCs ability to absorb damage from attacks, but in no other way affects the PCs ability.  Healing complicates things a bit because it can take days to naturally heal that 2-point "scratch". All to the good I say for trying to explain things that perhaps are best left unexplained.
I currently tend to think of hit points as hit points...nothing more. My days of searching for "realism" in games is mostly behind me at this point and self-explanations have lost their appeal.  I say mostly, because it's true...occasionally I slip back into my old ways of thinking. So simply put, hit points are a resource, explain it how you like, or don't. It makes no difference. When your PC has some you can take action and when your PC is out of hit points, PC death is immanent.
Narration in game is something different, however. As referee, I like to be descriptive about combat, etc. and I try to tell PCs how they have affected the baddies with a hit as well as how they have received damage. As a general rule, I like to say damage is occurring as some form of fatigue or insignificant injury until remaining hit points are around 6 or so, then I start to describe damage as real bleeding wounds. I say 6 HP because I currently favor all PCs rolling a d6 for hit points regardless of class and I like to start PCs off with max hit points. It makes sense to my twisted mind and seems to be working in actual play. BTW- I also like to invite the player to describe in their own words how they finish off the bad guy who reached zero HP.
I have come to this approach to hit points by traveling a long and often torturous path of reasoning,  borrowing from other sources and trial and error. For a while I used Con scores as "real" body points from which wounds are taken and treated hit points as fatigue (which returned after a good night's rest). This seemed logical to me at the time as it extended the life of PCs by giving them way more ability to absorb damage at low level and "explained" why higher level characters can absorb so much damage. Before trying out that mechanic I had treated the initial HP score as "body points" and all subsequently earned HP as something akin to fatigue points.
Finding a way of making low level characters less "squishy" in my game was a goal of mine for the longest time. It seems to be a morale killer for players to keep rolling up new characters. Then I stumbled on the idea of having them roll several PCs to start and use as many of them at a time as they liked. It's the way we started playing the game way-back-when before the days of one PC per player. White box has a nice feature of making the higher level PCs much less likely to be killed (unless the player puts them deliberately at risk) since they have those higher hit point totals and it is precisely the higher level PCs that players get attached to having started them out at 1st level and seen them succeed while their litter-mates die off.  The survivor(s) develop character through play and become a player's favorite(s). Multiple PCs per player also has the advantage that should a PC be lost at higher level, the player probably has another close to the same level with which to continue campaign play. Henchmen and hirelings are another way of "padding" the party so as to avoid catastrophic PC death. Favored henchmen or even a hireling with "character" can become the player's PC on short notice in the event of character death.
It's fun to think about game mechanics, what they represent and how to improve on them. That's part of the hobby, but it can also become a tyranny if we forget to remind ourselves, it is just a game. Not everything requires a good explanation. The fantasy adventure game, and white box in particular, seems particularly well suited to such rules analysis, discussion and experimentation. I believe the white box practically invites us to take the game beyond the rules as written. Just take my advice and don't overthink it.

Greyhawk Visit

Spending time with an old friend
Fabled Greyhawk, dungeon, castle, city, world and supplement, Greyahawk is all of these and more. Looking at the thief class recently brought me back into the well worn pages of Supplement I Greyhawk wherein Mr. Gygax and Mr. Kuntz lay out the rules as practiced in their Greyhawk campaign. As is evident by the picture above my original copy of Greyhawk has seen some wear. It is by far in the worst shape of my original books, all purchased together for Christmas 1977.  I assume Greyhawk shows more wear because it got the most use of all the books. Probably for good reason...there is a lot here in Greyhawk!
The illustration on the cover (by Greg Bell I believe) is pretty good for the era. The floating eye/beholder/eye tyrant is actually more creepy in my opinion than many later illustrations of the classic beasty.  The smaller, lidded eye and mouth, the latter with just a hint of drool, make it seem more sinister, more patient and confident of it's prey. The fighting man with sword and shield leans away and seems a bit ragged, maybe he is frightened or already turned to stone, hence the confidence of the beholder.
This is a 5th printing from April, 1977. It says so right on the title page.  It also says copyright 1976, but I believe Greyhawk was first printed in 1975. Facing the title page is a full size illustration of the lizardman which can be seen in miniature on the cover.  This fellow was used as the TSR trademark following the intertwined GK and preceding the wizard fellow. It's also attributed to Greg Bell. In his Forward to this supplement, Mr. Gygax tells us what we are getting, "new characters, new abilities, more spells to use, a horde of new monsters, heaps of new magical treasure, and various additions to the suggestions and rules for adventuring above and below the ground."
The supplement uses the same organization as the original three LBBs and is therefore divided into sections titled Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure and The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.  As mentioned in my last blog, under Men & Magic we find two new character classes, the paladin, a subclass of fighting man and the thief class. The PC races as they are used in Greyhawk are described and now include half-elves as well as dwarves, elves, hobbits and humans. Greyhawk changes the role abilities play in the game by giving bonuses, sometimes significant bonuses to PCs with high ability scores.  This makes ability scores somewhat more important than they were in white box. In the world of Greyhawk we are told fighting men enjoy benefits from high strength and dexterity scores. High scores in other abilities may benefit PCs of other classes as well. 
Hit points in the Greyhawk world are determined differently than in the white box. PCs in Greyhawk roll different dice according to class for their hit points. Magic users now roll d4s, fighting men now called "fighters" roll d8s. The experience system in Greyhawk is altered from that described in the white box and therefore sets the trend of experience being one of the most frequently "house-ruled" aspects of the game. The weapon verses AC modification table makes its first appearance here and will appear again in AD&D.  I have used it upon occasion, but find it more trouble than it's worth for my taste.  One of the things I really like about older editions of D&D is how fast the combat goes and the weapons vs. AC table just slows combat down.
Variable damage done by weapon type (and by monster) also makes it's first appearance in Greyhawk and will remain with the game up until today. I have generally used this convention as most of us have, but recently am finding myself more in favor of a flat d6 damage and all classes using a d6 for hit points. There is something that appeals to me about any weapon being able to kill any character with a single blow. When using the "all weapons do 1d6 damage" I usually allow two handed weapons to roll 2d6 and use the higher roll, just because!
Spells now go to level nine! At least for magic users. Clerics can cast up to level seven spells from their list. As I would come to expect when describing the rules for a new world, there are some new spells on the list among the lower level spells. Magic Missile makes it's first appearance and will remain a staple 1st level spell through the editions to this day. The description in Greyhawk is unclear as to whether a Magic Missile to-hit roll needs to be made or not.
We are now about half-way through the 68 page book and entering the Monsters & Treasure section. Again these are two areas I have come to expect to be somewhat unique from world/setting to world/setting and are heavily involved in establishing the nature and character of the world/setting. In Greyhawk I find the usual monsters and treasures from the white box and several new ones.  Some of the "classic" D&D monsters make their first appearance here such as the beholder, umber hulk, rust monster, displacer beast, stirge, owl bear and carrion crawler. Each monster has a few lines of text which frequently makes for good entertainment when read.
Magic items, like spells, generally get a power boost to higher levels, swords and armor reaching +5 bonuses. Some "classic" magic items such as the deck of many things, figurines of wonderous power and bag of tricks make their first appearance. The magic items are briefly described also with a few lines of text.
The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures section is brief, only 5 pages, but in it are described several tricks, traps and monster combinations that illustrate the creative genius that is to be found in the world of Greyhawk. My personal favorite- skeletons that are able to hurl their finger joints as if they were arrows! Greyhawk ends with a page devoted to corrections.
Ah, Greyhawk, origin of many memories, I have spent many hours amongst thy pages. There is perhaps no better known setting in the hobby, especially among us older adventure gamers. As I close your worn covers with care, I ponder the multitude of adventures born of your pages. Origins are just that, places of beginning.  Castle Greyhawk and Blackmoor Castle are two such places of beginning from which so much has spread. As is widely known, Greyhawk was the setting for many of the game aids published by TSR back in the day.  Whether the referee used those play aids as part of his/her own unique campaign or played them as part of their version of the Greyhawk world, or even as stand alone adventures, a part of Greyhawk was there shaping the story that emerged. How fantastic!

White Box Class

Character Class in OD&D
In Men & Magic the player is given the choice of one of three classes for the player character, fighting man, magic user or cleric. The fighting man class is the basic warrior, knight, mercenary, swinger of swords from myth, literature and legend.  The magic user is the basic caster of magic spells, sorcerer, wizard, and magician. The cleric is a sort of hybrid between the two with a religious theme. The cleric can cast magic, but of a different kind from the magic user. The cleric can fight better than the magic user, but obviously not as well as the fighting man. Unless we turn to the supplements, that is it for class in the white box. I have played many sessions using just these three classes and find players very capable of individualizing each character through play without the need for complex class mechanics to do so.
OD&D (and later D&D editions) is a class based roleplaying system. It uses the idea of distinct classes to organize and control the abilities of the characters. The goal is that each class give a play experience distinct from the other classes. The iconic three class system makes sure that there are distinctions between player characters of different classes and incorporates progression in relative power called levels. Characters start out at low level and as they acquire experience advance in levels and become more powerful in doing so. This is all tied to the class system in D&D.
Many of the early roleplaying games were also organized along the lines of character classes, although some games called them career paths or professions, etc. I suspect this was often the case of imitation of the world's first fantasy roleplaying game. The second published fantasy roleplaying game, Tunnels & Trolls, uses a similar class system of warrior, wizard and rogue.  The rogue, like the cleric in OD&D, is a hybrid character able to fight and cast spells, but at the cost of being less competent at both than the "pure" classes. The Fantasy Trip, Melee and Wizard, did away with the hybrid and used just a warrior or wizard two-class system.
I think there is much merit to the original three class system, although I have played many class-less systems and have even devised a variant of white box that only has one class: adventurer. By dividing the player characters into magic users and fighting men, white box D&D mimics the usual division found among its sources in fantastic literature, myth and legend. Iconic characters are often great warriors or powerful magic users, occasionally both. The inclusion of the cleric makes a significant statement about the intention of the white box game, I believe. I cannot speak to the intent of the designers, but character class availability is one way to shape the game by calling out who the principal characters will be. In white box,  fighting men, magic users and clerics will shape the action. By implication of the cleric class, religion matters and divine power exists to shape events.
Spplement I, Greyhawk added a couple new classes to the milieu, paladin and thief.  The paladin is a fighting man totally devoted to Law and as such is a subclass of the fighting man class. As the game progresses through it's many editions, the inclusion of new classes and subclasses will dramatically change the cast of characters shaping in-game action.
The thief is a game changer in many ways and has generated some controversy as to whether the change is positive or negative. The thief is relatively weak in combat, being limited to d4 (like magic users) for hit points in the new variable hit die system of Greyhawk, and limited to leather armor. The thief class's chief distinction as a class comes in the form of percentage based "thief" skills. At low level the skill percentages to succeed are modest. The fact that the skill list includes mostly abilities that I (and presumably others) as referee frequently allow any character to attempt using "house rules" under the white box, skills such as hide in shadows, move silently, open locks, look for traps, listen at doors, brings into question whether these abilities should be the sole province of the thief class. Since the thief starts out with very modest percentiles in these skills and we can assume these are skills in which the thief should be better than other classes, it can pose a dilemma.
Men & Magic makes an attempt to offset the advantages found in player character non-human races with class restrictions and level limits. Humans are the only race that are unlimited with respect to choice of class and level advancement. I like this as I tend to prefer to referee a "humanocentric" (human dominated) setting. I find doing so allows the non-humans to be more non-human (not just humans with beards or pointy-ears). The thief class is open to the non-humans as an unlimited class, which seems to me to go against the original logic. As a player and referee I have used the thief class as presented in Supplement I for many years, mostly to my enjoyment and the enjoyment of others.  I have also experimented with custom thieves borrowed from other sources and designed my own version based on what I prefer to see in the thief class. It is this latter interpretation that I most prefer these days. I should probably say more about that in a future post.
Supplement I brought many changes to the white box when it was released in 1975. Together with Empire of the Petal Throne, released the same year, TSR gives us two fine examples of putting the LBBs through their paces in terms of campaign design and game play. Looking beyond the rule additions, new monsters and magic, Greyhawk and EPT each teaches us how to adapt the white box rules, alter them to suit a unique vision of the game, and to use our do-it-yourself skills to take our fantasy roleplaying into the beyond.

Empire of the Petal Throne

A major variant from TSR
Released in 1975, one year after the LBBs, Empire of the Petal Throne (EPT) is what I call a variant on the original rules. EPT makes some major changes to the original rules, but not so much as to make them unrecognizable.  Changes include use of percentile dice for rolling up characters, substituting Psychic ability for Wisdom as one of the attributes/talents, new spell system for magic users and clerics (including success rolls), a percentile based skill system and alignment based on good and evil rather than law and chaos. EPT also introduces the setting of Tekumel and the rules are closely adapted to gaming in that unique milieu.
Many aspects of white box play remain the same, however. The three original character classes of the LBBs renamed "professions", the combat system, saving throws, treasure and the leveling up concept remain virtually unchanged except for some terminology.
Since the publication of EPT there has been much more written about the world of Tekumel, including several novels by the creator Prof. M.A.R. Barker, but what is included in the original TSR box set is enough to get the referee running adventures in Tekumel. The spiral bound illustrated rulebook includes information on background history, geography and climate, religion and deities, about a dozen intelligent races, their languages and around 70 monsters. There are two colorful world maps and a city map included in the box. These are plastic maps rather than paper and I assume accounted for a good deal of the $25 original price of the game.
The popularity of Tekumel as a setting has generated a large body of information on that world which wasn't available in 1975, at least to anyone other than Prof. Barker. Taking Prof. Barker's advice to the referee to read what's in the box and then develop your own version of Tekumel through play is exactly what I think of when I imagine what the original game is all about. (Don't be afraid to make it your own!) In his preface to the game, Mr. Gygax writes that EPT is something special in the context of gaming, a world created with roleplaying adventure in mind. I see EPT as a powerful example of the flexibility of the white box rules Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson created and of their reinterpretation by a first class world-builder, Prof. Barker. Together these pioneers created EPT and demonstrate to the rest of the gaming hobby what is possible when using our imagination and building upon the work of others.

Evolving the Game

White Box to 5th ed.
Over the decades I have spent a lot of time reading and playing tabletop fantasy roleplaying games. Some I only read because I was curious or the game came recommended, some of those I borrowed ideas from for use in other games. Some games excited my imagination enough to want to play and I have been fortunate enough over the years to get to play most of those. A few remain on my "hope to play someday" list. I have occasionally dabbled outside the realm of fantasy, but only briefly with the exception of Call Of Cthulhu, which I refereed for several years. I started in this hobby when it was still very young and the game choices were very few, mostly variations on the most popular roleplaying game itself. I have always preferred the DIY, customized approach to roleplaying and the systems that lend themselves to that approach, but have on occasion been very impressed with a game played straight-out-of-the-box. Acquainting myself with some of the multitude of independent press roleplaying games has given me more ideas and thoughts about how to tailor a game than I will ever be able to use. Borrowing terms from GNS Theory, I have enjoyed what could be termed gamist, simulationist and narritivist style games and have even run games written for one style in another style, which is not that hard when it's largely DIY. In fact modification of a currently popular game system is how I usually am able to continue to run the kind of game I really enjoy most. I have spoken often of how much I enjoy the white box rules and the free-wheeling style of innovative DIY game associated with the LBBs. The white box influences most any game I referee because I bring that style of gaming, that mindset of going outside the rules, replacing systems, improvising and expanding upon that I first learned playing white box into the game. This approach to refereeing has allowed me to continue to run virtually the same milieu or setting for decades using popular rules of the day. Dreadmoor started out as just a cool name (or at least I thought it was cool) for the world that existed outside of the mostly dungeon adventures I ran.  When I acquired a published game aid I found a place for it in Dreadmoor. When the newest edition of the game was released I tweaked the rules to fit how I liked to run things in Dreadmoor. Eventually I acquired a better feel for and understanding of what Dreadmoor was about and it really began to shape whatever version of the rules I used. I am finding this is mostly true for whatever game I am running.  Once I get a firm concept, vision, feel for the milieu/setting/world, the game seems to flow from that using the rules to help a story set in that world emerge from play. Understanding the in-game world has become key for me to understand what I want the rules to do. There are other approaches a referee can take, but I am currently pretty comfortable with how this is working for me. It's all about evolving as a referee, evolving the setting and the game.

5th ed. White Box

Trying something new
Started a new campaign of my old Dreadmoor setting using modified 5th ed. rules over the weekend.  I am fairly pleased with how things went and the players seemed to have fun and want to play again in a couple weeks.  The 5th ed. rules are relatively easy to modify, yet persist in carrying their own feel despite my tinkering.  My goal is to have play as close to my old White Box campaign as possible while using a modification of the new system.  I have been playing, and occasionally refereeing, the 5th ed. game since it was released last year. I basically like this edition, well much more so than the last two and a half or three editions. One of the principle reasons is the smallish monster stat line as opposed to paragraphs as seen in some editions.
I think 5th ed. has been easy to modify, up to a point.  For Dreadmoor I limited the class and race options, ignored feats and multi-classing and reduced alignment to the big three, Law, Chaos and Neutral. The spells that I don't think fit are unavailable and of course the Dreadmoor specifics are brought in, such as the way I handle religion. Aspects of 5th ed. I found more difficult to change and which are persisting in giving the game a somewhat 5th ed. feel are the saving throw mechanic based on ability bonus plus proficiency, if applicable, and 5th ed. skills. I am trying to look at skills as a formalized way to test attributes in order to accomplish certain tasks, which is something I have done for decades in White Box, but the saving throw seems a game changer. Yeah, I could just take out the saving system of 5th ed. completely and substitute the White Box save tables (with modification for new classes), but I am trying to play 5th ed. in a white box manner, not rebuild white box using 5th ed. tools. The fact that I could probably substitute one saving throw system for another is something I like about both white box and 5th ed.
The backgrounds aspect of 5th ed. I am really liking and I think does a nice job of helping get the imagination going regarding PC backstory. We did character gen at the table as a group activity which I think has advantages and disadvantages, one of which is the pressure to think quickly. The background section of the 5th ed. PH can result in a multitude of variety and all the players seemed to have a good feel for their PC by the time we started roleplaying.
The five players, three of which are under twenty-five and have no idea what white box amounts to, probably don't care. They seem to be taking my game modifications in stride as part of the peculiarity of the Dreadmoor setting. We are only one game into the campaign so I don't know if the changes will ultimately be to their liking or whether they will eventually express a preference for 5th ed. as written.  Meanwhile this is a rather fun "experiment" for me and an opportunity to take white box into the beyond!