What Are the Attributes of an Old-school Game?

Yeah, okay, I went there. I'm not sure I want to, but as this OSR thing keeps rolling on, it's going to become a bigger and bigger question. Clearly, D&D, Traveler, Rune Quest, early versions of GURPS, Star Frontiers, and similar games are all old-school. Are there games from the '70s and early '80s that are not old-school? Are their new and original games that are? Exactly how far can Raggi go with his alterations to the basic D&D chassis and still be able to call his games old-school?

I ask this because I think the OSR is about to turn a corner. Most of what we've seen up until now has been attempts at faithful re-creation of the old games. There have been notable exceptions, including X-plorers, Mazes & Minotaurs, and possibly Mutant Future. But I think we're about to start seeing a number of games that are not so faithful to the mechanics of the games of yesteryear. I think we're about to start seeing games that try to capture the spirit of old-school while striking out much further afield in terms of mechanics.

The OSR is getting very playful. For instance, there are things like Zak's map of an inn run by a medusa and Raggi's excellent character sheets and encumbrance system. We are seeing a lot more tweaking of rules to support emergent play from long-term gaming, especially in terms of reward systems and balance issues. And there is, as always, just the usual playing with the aesthetics, especially with things like magic systems.

And I'm seeing a lot of stuff around the edges of the OSR that looks like brand new games with inventive new mechanics, things like the work of the Evil DM, Barbarians of Lemuria, Warriors of the Red Planet, The Metal Earth, and others. Even WotC is clearly trying to get its old-school on with its random character generation and frequent deaths in the new Gamma World game.

now I could just launch into what I think an OSR game is, and I kinda sorta almost did that I when attempted to define neo-classical gaming, but let's be honest here: any definition from me is going to be heavily influenced by the Silver Age and my love of verisimilitude. And I'm pretty certain that's far too limiting. The OSR so far has easily bridged the Gold and Silver Ages, and maybe even a bit of the Bronze as well.

So I toss this out to you: what are the bare minimum attributes of an old-school game? I'm tempted to say any true answer cannot be as specific as, "it must include random character generation." I think that gets too specific. I think the true answer has more to do with goals and attitudes than techniques and tools. But maybe that is too slippery. So what do you think?

D&D's Gorgon Found!

So that's where they came from!

Like most, I was confused by D&D's reptilian bull gorgon, since the gorgons of Greek myth were three sisters, one of which was Medusa. But, via the quite fun Monster Brains blog comes this Life magazine article from 1951 which includes mention of Libyan gorgon more in keeping with what's presented in D&D.

15 Games in a Distracted Troll's Chest! Yo-ho-ho...

Ok, hoppin’ on the meme. I believe it’s something like the 15 most meaningful games, scribbled out in a quick 15 minutes:

1.  D&D ‘cause, yeah…
2. Dark Tower: I still want to build an RPG campaign off that game board.
3. Joust: more for what I thought it should be than what it was.
4. Warhammer 40k: more for what it wanted to be than what it was.
5. Shadowrun: elves and cyberpunk and the end of the world as we know it
6. Star Frontiers: H. Beam Piper, the RPG!
7. Revolt on Antares: so many cool little pieces.
8. Trust and Betrayal: the Legacy of Siboot: rock, scissors, paper for world domination!
9. Blue Rose: never played, but the fever-dreams it inspired still get to me.
10. StarSiege
11. LotFP: elegance and focus. Maybe I can do that too!
12. Ultima series: World-building is about culture, not just where the orcs live.
13. Space Rogue: Elite with focus.
14. Elite: huge universe, small ship.
15. M.U.L.E.: Unfairness can be a feature, games can be different, and people play for different reasons.

These are not in any real order. So why these games? Because they fired off my imagination and led it in interesting directions. I mean, Settlers of Catan is a fun game and all, but it does make me go, “ooo, ooo, what about a world in which sorcerers can transform bricks into sheep?!?”

Joust is the most interesting one to my mind. My first encounter with the game is seeing classmates in 5th grade draw pictures of it. They just reproduced what was on the screen, but my mind invented a game in which noble aerial knights rescued and safeguarded eggs from ravening bandits. My conception of the game was a lot more fun than the real game turned out to be.

Games like Dark Tower and Revolt on Antares had similar effects, even though I did play them. These games were vague and handwavey in their details, with just enough art and detail to ignite sparks I could nurture into full-blown daydreams. Who were those named mercenaries at Anatares? What exactly did those keys open in the frontiers of the Dark Tower map? Cool banners and futuristic wargear still simmer in my imagination.

Art by Bob Pepper.

Death is Boring

New Fish in an Old School asks, “To Kill or Not toKill?” and comes down on the traditional (and, I think, fairly common) compromise of not to kill much, with an emphasis on letting the dice fall where they will. (Frankly, I think that’s the actual Old School preference. Yes, the dungeon is designed to be deadly, but it’s also beatable. That’s often what Old Schoolers mean when they talk about putting “game” before “role playing.”)

That’s an attitude I have a lot of sympathy with, and it’s been my default mode for decades. Lately, however, I’ve been drifting away from it. You can see that in my Table of Death & Dismemberment; sure, there are broken bones and lopped-off limbs, but the most likely results are knock-outs.

Why is that? It’s not because death is inconvenient. I do not base my campaigns around any one character (PC or NPC), so simply killing or dying won’t derail things. Likewise, with the opportunity to hire henchmen, it’s fairly easy for the PCs to fill out the ranks of the party if there are holes in their team.

No, the real problem with death is that it’s, well, boring. You roll up a new character, the other players weave in a bit of grief and angst into their play, and you move on. And that just feels rather “meh” to me.

(Let me make an important distinction here, however; while death itself may be boring, the threat of death is not. Though this can highlight the problem even more, as the death of a character can feel horribly anticlimactic, after the threat of it has been ramping up.)

So, what other than death? Maiming, broken bones, and unconsciousness. If only one or two PCs are incapacitated this way, now the others need to figure out what to do with them. They certainly don’t want to abandon their comrades to capture or being eaten. Now the tension of the fight rises. The players of downed characters are still riveted to the game. Will the others be able to drag them away to safety? How much will those still standing risk to safeguard the fallen? This is a lot more thrilling than rolling up a new character.

This means, of course, that I have to be a bit more on top of things ahead of time. What does it mean when the bugbears capture the party? Do they have a history of ransoming captives? Do they keep slaves? Or do they have a relationship with some other race, deeper in the dungeon? Will the PCs be kept in cells until they are to be eaten or sacrificed to their dark god? And if that’s the case, what are the cells like? How or when are the PCs fed? How long will they be kept before they are sacrificed? What are the opportunities for escape?

It also means TPKs are far more likely. Defeat to unintelligent monsters probably means some, if not all, of the party gets eaten. (And though they were intelligent, that always makes me think of Bilbo and the dwarves, strung up by the spiders, kept poisoned and weak until it was time to feast.) Who gets eaten first? What happens to those “saved” for later?

Luckily, I love answering those questions, and usually I find examples in real-world animal behavior or the fantastic cultures I’ve created for my game. And heck, if I do get a TPK, the way my campaigns are usually put together, that means an adventure in the realms of the Afterlife.

Art by Charles-Gustave Housez and Edmund Blair Leighton.

Mice in a Box

Via the Hopeless Gamer blog, comes word of a new boxed set, this one for the Mouse Guard RPG.  For those not in the know, Mouse Guard is comic of anthropomorphic mice in the wilderness of medieval Europe.  It's all about loyalty and intrigues, legends and betrayals, and courage and death.  Heady stuff, and ripe for RPGing.  The game itself is a variant of Luke Crane's Burning Wheel game.

I'm not sure how much crossover potential there is here, and I doubt we'll see this box in places where we don't already expect to see RPGs (comic book stores and FLGS).  Still, it promises to be a lovely box with unusual goodies in it.  And, I must admit, I'm still buzzing from how the boxed set has gone so quickly from the pariah of gaming accessories to the must-have new product of the decade.

The Great Purge

In the future, I'm thinking it would be appropriate to wait until May Day to commit such atrocities...  ;)

I've gone through and cleaned up my RPG links along the right side of the blog.  It's been long overdue.  I was sad to see so many blogs had gone dormant (many, for some reason, last saw action in July '09).  Still, I've been adding new ones, and the old ones were making it impossible to find them.  I'd especially like to draw your attention to Henchman Abuse,  Gaming All Over the Place, and New Fish in an Old School.

Bigger, Better, and Quite Insane

So if you've been following along in the RPG pundit-sphere, you know that there's been some thought that RPGs will go the way of wargames and model railroading. That is, as the niche shrinks, more and more products will become very high-quality collector's treasures, and will be priced accordingly.

There's a push-me-pull-me effect right now. In addition to WotC's very cheap new Red Box, there are lots of projects with a strong do-it-yourself vibe, like Fight On! and now Paizo's talking about an intro set to their Pathfinder game.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have things like Raggi's boxed set and the latest version of the Warhammer RPG. I'd thought that things like that, and the Ptolus mega-book, would be what premium RPG products of the future would look like.

That was, until Raggi linked to this today. Ye gods...

I'm a little torn when I see something like that. On the one hand, yeah, very cool. I'd love to be involved in a product that looked like that. On the other, I have to wonder at the utility of most of it. CoC has long been a game associated with props: photographs, coffee-stained letters, edlritch inscriptions and rubbings, and other such. Creating the proper mood and atmosphere is vital to the game, and the props help.

That said, some of this looks cool, but extraneous. The box, for instance, is awesome, but would it really help to set the proper mood? Ditto for the flag. I suppose we could mount it on the wall, crank the AC down to 30, bundle up in our sweaters and turtlenecks, and try to recreate the feeling of being at the bottom of the world, but...

Still, if you shoot for the moon and miss, you're likely to land among the stars. You certainly can't fault the French here for a lack of audacity. If nothing else, they've created a piece of gaming history.

MZB Takes JB to School

Hey, remember me waxing enthusiastic about books targeted at gals? JB over at B/X Blackrazor has a fascinating post up today, inspired by his recent reading of some of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels. Here’s a teaser to whet your appetite:

In some ways, she’s RE-teaching me things I already knew but forgot. For example, fantasy/sci-fi adventure doesn’t have to include combat to be powerful, dangerous, dramatic, or life-and-death.

Really.

I remember reading a comment on someone’s blog (maybe even mine), that fantasy role-playing games require some sort of combat system because, for a game to BE a fantasy adventure RPG, COMBAT needs to be involved. I know this echoes a sentiment expressed by my brother in a discussion we had awhile back (when talking about RPG design) that people EXPECT some sort of combat/fighting action to take place in any role-playing game.

Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

All I’ll say on that front is that it’s been literally over a month of real time, with weekly playing, in the game Oddysey is playing in, since we last rolled for to-hit. And that was in a game of skill, not combat. And we’re having a blast! Though she does accuse me at times of playing not-D&D with her. ;)

As for JB's discussion of motivations, this is also great stuff. Speaking of Paizo, one of the things I appreciate about their Pathfinder adventures is the option for personal motivations and quests for the PCs. I do think they work better if they come from the players and the intersections of their interests and the themes of the setting, but having a goal beyond just completing the grand quest (or amassing great wealth, as is the default in traditional sandbox play) just makes the game richer to my mind. So it’s not something I push on players; if that sort of thing interests them at all, there’s more than enough time after the game begins to develop goals, rivals, and conflicts a-plenty.

Sandbox-finder?

There are so many good blogs out there! I might almost say too many; I'm having a devil of a time keeping up with all the good stuff going right now. Case in point: nearly a month ago, Navdi posted about his desire to use Pathfinder materials to run a more sandboxy, Old School game. I just discovered this last night. It struck a chord with me because 3e in all its incarnations leaves me cold, but I love Paizo's design style, artwork, and just the look-and-feel they give their stuff. So, how to infuse a more Old School feel into a game that is based on Paizo's rules and Pathfinder adventures?

I offered some suggestions in his comments, and this is expanding on what I wrote there. Generally, what the players want from 3e and its ilk is a sense of story and verisimilitude to their adventures; they don't want to just whack random monsters for random amounts of treasure. What DMs pining for a more Old School game often want is a more open-ended story and a more proactive approach from players towards tackling challenges; they don't want the players twiddling their fingers while they wait for the DM to deliver the adventure on a silver platter. With a creative and flexible DM, those goals are absolutely compatible. (Where you'll run into trouble is the conflict between the players' desire for mechanical customization of their characters and the DM's desire for simplicity. If you find a good way to harmonize those discordant themes, please let me know.)

I don't know any of Paizo's adventure paths well enough to say, but the ones I have read at least make nods towards player choice (and their latest, Kingmaker, promises to do more than that), and as Navdi points out in the comments of his blog, Paizo does a great job of establishing settings that are larger than the mere adventure path and its dungeons. With all that in mind, here are my suggestions to Old School-ify your existing collection of Pathfinder adventure paths:

1) start the players off with a clear, obvious, but open-ended problem. My favorite is a shipwreck (players need to gather supplies and find their way to civilization), but you can also use a natural disaster or alone in the wake of a military defeat for their side.

This works great because the players are presented with concrete, obvious problems to solve, but while there's no dungeon in sight, they're immediately put into the proper, creative, open-ended problem-solving mode that is the backbone of Old School play.

2) Once they've reached civilization, shift the focus to an urban environment. Everyone knows that Old School play and city adventures are incompatible, right? (We just won't mention Aerie of the Slave Lords and Vault of the Drow. Or the Random Harlot table. ;) ) Give them something concrete to do as soon as they get into the city, or better yet, have it be something they need to do that they discovered while solving the issues of the start of the campaign. During the course of this first urban adventure, start planting the seeds of conflict that will inspire the players to make choices: let them hear rumors, find treasure maps, or make enemies that will guide them to your adventure locations. Let them choose sides in local conflicts, and make those choices matter. Most importantly of all, make it clear to them as early as is reasonably possible that their choices have a direct and powerful impact on the setting. If they're not utterly bizarre, they'll love it. And again, that puts them in the proper headspace for Old School play.

3) Use more than one Pathfinder series. Since you're giving the players choices about what challenges to tackle, you'll likely need more adventures than one Pathfinder series can provide. So feel free to seed your CotCT adventures with some cherrypicked from Rise of the Runelords or Legacy of Fire. If they don't know much about the OSR, you might be able to squeeze in a Raggi adventure or something from Fight On!

4) By the time the PCs reach 4th or so level, most of the work should be done; they'll be interacting with the world as a place, rather than looking for the markers pointing them towards the next adventure. Don't be surprised if it takes that long, however. Even when the players are all on-board for that sort of thing, it can take some time before they know enough about the setting and the NPCs to really start being proactive and taking their destinies in their own hands.

Fabulous Wealth

This grew out of a number of conversations (some online) about the massive amounts of wealth old school characters (who earn most of their EXP through treasure) tend to acquire. Carousing rules work great, but if you don't want to use those for some reason, the PCs are going to end up with giant piles of treasure. Here's what I've done in the past to allow the players to fritter that great wealth away:

Potions and Magic - I've usually had a very small local market (usually one hedgewitch or the like) selling potions and a few magic spells. The potions are usually utilitarian things, like healing potions and waterbreathing potions, and sell for 100s of gp per use. Even first-level spells should probably sell for no less than 500 gp. Nothing above 2nd level is available, and little of that.

I also allow the PCs to pay sages and such for identifying magic items plundered from the dungeon. This also tends to be expensive, usually costing 50 gp or so to identify a potion and 300 gp for weapons and armour.

Fates Worse Than Death - catch a nasty disease from the giant rats? Or get cursed by the witch? Getting that sort of thing undone can cost some serious coin. The typical price I've seen for having a spell cast for you is 100 gp per level of the spell, making cure disease and remove curse cost 300 gp for each casting.

Transportation - Do the PCs need to travel by sea to get somewhere? There won't be regular cruise-ship traffic to the Isle of Dread, so they may need to buy their own war galley (60,000 gp) and crew it with rowers (300 at 2gp per month), sailors (30 at 10 gp per month), and a captain (250 gp per month). If the trip requires they sail out of sight of land, they'll want a navigator too (150 gp per month). Some marines (up to 75 at 4 gp per month for hazard pay) might be nice in case they run into pirates or sea monsters as well. And all these people will need potable water and provisions to consume on the voyage.

Throwing Money at Problems - Allow the players to solve some problems with money. Let them hire and outfit henchmen to accompany them on their adventures. A sage (2,000 gp per month) might be able to learn more about the dungeon or the evil duke who is threatening the region, while a spy (500+ gp per mission) might be able to ferret out the Duke's vile plans. Maybe the orc tribe will take a bribe to go pillage elsewhere, or could be hired to help take on the hobgoblins next door. Maybe the dragon won't eat you if it let it eat your horses.

Making Friends and Influencing People - Being known as philanthropists and high-rollers can result in beneficial modifiers to local reaction check rolls. This can include things like sacrifices at the local temple of a patron deity, weregeld paid to the families of henchmen who died on the last adventure, or rebuilding the orphanage burned down by the goblin lackeys of the evil duke. My college crew celebrated important milestones and achieving long-term goals with wild parties, in which they invited many of the important NPCs from past adventures. These were fun to RP, and allowed me to sow the seeds of future adventures. And, of course, they required the spending of lots of coin on food, entertainment, and clothes.

Bling - Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man. Allow them bonuses to reaction rolls when they dress to the nines (after spending money on it, of course). Maybe a high-plumed helm or banner gives a morale bonus to their henchmen in battle. You're more likely to get an audience with the Lord Sheriff if you're dressed like someone who ought to be given an audience with the Lord Sheriff. A few bribes and a fancy gift might make things go smoother, too. If you really want to look the part, you'll need servants and a carriage and all of that as well.

And if you're knighted after rescuing the count's daughter, you'll owe him a certain amount of military service every year. To avoid having dull patrols and sentry duty interfering with far more profitable dungeoneering, pay enough scutage to his lordship so he can hire mercenaries instead.

Property - There's no need to wait until reaching "name level" before allowing the PCs to start spending money on lands and property. A small house in town can serve as a start, with a few servants and guards to protect it while they are away on adventure.

The nice thing about most of these suggestions is that they don't make the PCs feel like they are being punished for their success. Taxes and theft only make the players suspicious and angry. They can be used, but only with moderation. Instead, let the players use that money to make the lives of their PCs more fun and comfortable. Once you get the ball rolling, the players are likely to make suggestions of their own. Whenever possible, let them get what they want; "no" just shuts things down, but "yes, and..." creates new adventures and new fun.

Art by Joseph Mallord William Turner, Jean Limbourg, and Hans Makart .

New Monster: Merochi

Merochi

AC: 6 (+4 if using ascending AC) for males, 8 (+2) for females
Hit Dice: 3
Move: 120’
Attacks: 1
Damage: by weapon type, or 1-3 for claws and 1d6 for bite
Number Appearing: special
Save As: Fighter 3 or as a witch, when applicable
Morale: special
Treasure Type: A
Alignment: Neutral

Merochi are lion-like humanoids who inhabit tropical and sub-tropical plains and jungles, though some prides have been known to stake claim to lands in more temperate zones. The males stand near 7’ tall with the females rarely more than half-a-foot shorter.

The leonine merochi lay claim to broad territories far beyond what would normally be expected of their limited numbers. This is largely due to the structure of their civilization. With an economy based heavily on hunting, and only supplemented by agriculture and herds, the merochi require large territories which are jealously guarded. Poaching on merochi territory carries the most severe penalties, especially if those poachers are male.

Gender roles are strictly observed among the merochi. The principal, some say singular, duty of the males is warfare. There are only three acceptable professions for males: warriors, sorcerers, and the craftsmen who make weapons and armor. They'll spend the majority of their time training, caring for the youngest cubs, teaching the next generation of males, and overseeing the slaves that care for their fields and herds. When necessary, they also spend a considerable amount of time patrolling the borders of the territories claimed by their pride.

The duties of the female are to hunt and bear young. Indeed, they are even expected to do both at once; until the final stages of her pregnancy, females continue to bring in their share of the meat. Females may also be priestesses or witches, overseeing and caring for those spots within their territory deemed sacred.

This is probably due in large part to the fact that only females may own land. The males patrol and defend it, but it actually belongs to the females of the pride. Females born into a pride tend to stay with the pride their entire lives, and so inherit their land from their mothers and bequeath it to their daughters. Hunting grounds, fields, water, and the structures built upon the land remain the property of the pride, for as many generations as the pride lasts. The only thing a male may bequeath to his sons, and very few do even this much, is his weapons.

Young males who survive the arduous rites of passage to adulthood are ceremonially ejected from the pride. Those who would not live as landless brigands or mercenaries in distant lands must claim a pride for their own. The traditional method for doing this is to drive or slay current males of an existing pride. Warfare among the merochi is in the heroic style. The only ranged weapon allowed is the spear and the javelin. Indeed, so strict is the adherence to gender roles, the male will not touch bows, arrows or slings, since those are traditionally weapons of the females. Likewise, the female will not touch a shield or a sword as those are strictly weapons of war. The favored weapon of the merochi warrior is the spear. They usually also carry a shield, and will often wear breastplates of hide sometimes reinforced with metal. Ambushes and subterfuge are allowed, as are potions and spells to increase the vigor and strength of a warrior, but poison is forbidden. Among wealthier warriors, chariots are common, but only to transport the warrior to the battle. Once he has arrived, the warrior dismounts and fights on foot.

Poaching in the pride’s territory is seen as a challenge to their control of it. It is also seen as a direct challenge to the males whose duty it is to protect these territories. For their part, females rarely involve themselves beyond tracking poachers and pointing them out to the males. Should the males in the pride be slain the females will engage in the traditional three-day period of mourning, after which they will engage in a traditional seven-day period of celebration and revelry, welcoming the victors as the new males of the pride. Even though they may not be able to mate successfully with victorious males who are not of their race, they will still expect such males to take up the traditional duties, since "furless" protectors are better than none at all. Males who refuse will be viciously hunted by the females, and if caught, will be butchered and their meat spoiled and ruined, then scattered along the edge of their border as a warning to others.

Merochi align themselves into loose nations based around large ceremonial sites. These religious complexes are dominated by ziggurats and pyramids and include broad courtyards, arenas for sporting events, granaries and storehouses, and long, low dwellings. Most of these latter remain empty for most of the year, but fill up during important religious festivals. Males are forbidden to linger longer than a week in these places; those who remain longer will have their manes shorn, and may even be castrated or have their thumbs cut off.
Merochi huntresses encountered in the wild will almost certainly be hunting. Roll a d6 to see how many are encountered; if a 6 is rolled, roll the d6 one more time and add the two rolls together to see how many are encountered. A group of eight or more will include two young huntresses recently elevated to adulthood who have but two hit dice. A group of ten or more will include one witch between 3rd and 6th level. There is a 1-in-20 chance that any group of huntresses encountered will include an apprentice witch (2nd level), though there will never be more than one any group of huntresses encountered.

Huntresses hunting for game have a morale of 6 when facing organized opponents. However, they will never flee when defending their homes and sacred sites, and all fight as if one hit die higher when defending their young.

Merochi males on patrol are encountered in small groups of one or two, but will be accompanied by a slave shieldbearer (who does not fight) 25% of the time. There’s a 1-in-10 chance that the merochi will be mounted on chariots, in which case the chance of a slave to drive the chariot is 75%. Merochi warriors have a morale of 8 which rises to 10 if their females are in sight.

A merochi warband includes 2-8 individuals. In groups larger than four, half of them will have 1-2 healing potions, and two will possess potions that provide +2 on attack and damage rolls due to strength enhancement.

Art by Wilhelm Kuhnert and Johann Jakob Frey.

Some Quick Pathfinder News

A bit late to the game, Paizo decides to jump on the intro-set (and possibly boxed-set) bandwagon. That could be huge for them, since they appear to be really popular already. Unfortunately, the general consensus appears to be that selling rules promotes the sale of adventures, and the last thing Pathfinder needs is more rules. Here's hoping the market doesn't push them into a ditch on this front.

4e Schadenfreude

Old conventional wisdom: old school games are nothing but a string of combats in rooms just large enough to host a fight in.  Newer games have skills and social mechanics that allow for more role playing and less tactical-minis play.

New conventional wisdom: 4e adventures are strings of combats in featureless rooms just large enough to host a fight.  Meanwhile, Raggi's Tower of the Stargazer barely has any combat in it at all, but is thick with mood and atmosphere.

There's a lot of interesting thinking and tinkering going on in regards to 4e these days, brought on, I suspect, in part through the release of the Essentials line. As some have pointed out, a lot of the issues may be due to what the game rewards, specifically combat. EXP are not everything, however. There's the relationship between resting and recharging powers which is central to the mechanics of 4e. The game has a number of systems that interact in complex ways which give rise to all kinds of unintended play styles.

I'll grant you, I saw a bit of this resting-in-the-dungeon-after-every-second-or-third-encounter stuff in the 2e games I played in college, so these issues aren't new. I do think there's a cautionary tale in there for those of us who like to kit-bash various incarnations of D&D into our own games. The urge towards modeling everything and building greater complexity brings with it the greater chance of really skewing things in weird directions. It's why I'm not a huge fan of adding lots of new classes to the game (even though I can't seem to stop doing it myself ;p ).

Common sense and a few good rules of thumb seem to work pretty well. Honestly, the game I'm playing is probably a lot more complex than I need; there are huge swaths of rules in Labyrinth Lord I don't really use. This is why I keep harping on understanding what the rules do, and how they aid or inhibit getting what you want out of a game. Some of the poking at 4e is exactly the sort of thing I do with Moldvay/Cook D&D: tweaks to optimize the game for the way we play. In other cases, I can't help but think they'd be having more fun with a different game. In either case, there's a lot to learn, and it's always fascinating to see what folks who are working from a completely different set of principles and goals do with a hobby I spend so much time poking at myself.

Story vs. Railroad - A Reaction

Jason, over at the excellent Wasted Lands, doesn’t like people dissing on his story-based RPing style:

There seems to be this attitude that's become more prevalent over the past few years, which says that any GM who wishes to have a plot or story arc for his campaign is a shit GM and is just railroading his players…

I find this attitude from old-schoolers, who tend to champion concepts like the megadungeon, baffling. Let's look at the megadungeon concept. A dungeon is completely scripted out in advance, unless you're using a random dungeon generator as you go (and let's face it; random dungeon generators as a general rule don't work well on the fly). Every room in the dungeon is mapped out. Wandering monster tables are set. Key rooms with monsters and treasure are placed with care and detailed. Players are deposited in the dungeon and their meaningful choices amount to not much more than up, down, left, right, forward, and backward. They can choose to sally forth or leave, parlay, flee or fight.

That's...really about it. And every one of those choices exists in a story-based game as well. A plot hook is not a railroad, because you can always choose not to follow it, in which case the GM has to come up with a new hook (and a good GM will do so, even if on the fly).

Of course, not everyone agrees with Jason’s views on dungeons. For instance, pages 104-15 of Gygax’s DMG details suggested responses monsters might take, both when they are first attacked by the PCs, and then after the PCs retreat and regroup. These responses include fleeing the area before they can be attacked again, laying traps to cover weak points in their defenses, and even joining in alliances with other nearby monster groups for mutual defense.

So what gives here? The issue really comes down to definitions. Railroads don't just constrain choices; railroads dictate the end-point. The problem with Dragonlance wasn't that it was “too… Tolkien, and not enough Vance and Howard” but rather that at the end of every module the PCs must have accomplished certain goals and be in a particular place, and that they then must move on to the next module in the series. There was no option for jumping off the tracks. Paizo's Pathfinder adventures are the same way (though Kingmaker has been described as a "sandbox" so maybe it's different? Anyone who's played it want to give an opinion?). When you finish an adventure, you must have achieved certain goals and be in a particular geographic location, and you must begin the next adventure.

Yes, there are occasionally side quests. But those side quests, and the players choices to pursue them or ignore them, do not change the important fact that the PCs must finish the adventure in a particular way at a particular endpoint, and then move onto the next adventure in the series. There is no other alternative.

Here's where the issues of storytelling come in. Stories are structured to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In computer gaming, RPGs typically have a single story with a few branching options which will eventually feed back into the main trunk. Therefore, it is very easy to give them a beginning, middle, and end. Dragonlance did the same thing with pen-and-paper RPG's. The adventures of the PCs had set beginnings, middle, and a single end, and all were pre-scripted before the players even rolled their first die. This is incredibly useful for somebody who wants to tell stories. It allows for such techniques as foreshadowing and the use of a rising and falling action to set a certain pace to the story or adventures. It does so, however, at the cost of freedom; if the Dark Lord is to be present at the grand climax in Chapter 10, it really makes a hash of things if the players kill him in Chapter 3. It also means that if the players decide they don't give a hoot about the Dark Lord, well where's your story now?

This isn’t exactly how Jason is using the term “story.” Jason is talking about something a little more complex. Jason is talking about creating a living, breathing world that reacts and takes the initiative every now and then. Or, I think in Jason's case, takes the initiative every chance it can get. This is not the same as railroading. In Jason's version of storytelling, the end is not predetermined. Certain things are going to happen, unless the PCs get involved. They might choose not to, in which case the Dark Lord’s evil will sweep across the land! Or, they might fight the Dark Lord and be victorious, in which case happiness and butterflies for everybody. Or, they could decide that the Dark Lord's offer of six figures, four weeks vacation a year, and generous dental plan sound pretty darn good. These are extreme (and extremely silly) examples, of course. I suspect what actually happens in Jason's games is that sometimes the heroes win, sometimes the heroes lose, and sometimes the heroes are just in the absolute wrong place to get involved at all. The map becomes a patchwork of victory, defeat, and detente for both sides. And since nobody knows what that that's going to look like when the game starts, this is not railroading. Technically, I'm not sure I would use the term story telling either. But that's just me being anal; my battle cry in college was, “Situation, not story!” I offer players the opportunity to tell their story based on the situations I hand them, or those that resulted from what they had done in previous sessions, but if anyone was crafting stories, it was the players. Not me.

I like this sort of play because it keeps everything fresh and surprising and I don't know what's going to happen next. I suspect this is very much what Jason is doing, and what happens in Dwimmermount and at Raggi’s table as well. The give-and-take and back-and-forth between the PCs and the world is what makes these games fun for many of us. And I think it’s exactly what A Paladin in Citadel is talking about when he describes implied narrative as:

No writer-defined (or Dungeon Master defined) narrative. I think this is the key (or what we imagine to be the key) to the appeal of Trampier's artwork, and the appeal of old-school gaming. The lack of agenda on the part of the Dungeon Master when it comes to what story will be told.

Like a good Dungeon Master, Tramp wasn't necessarily rooting for the good guys. Heck, we don't even know that characters in his illustrations, or the player characters in our games, are the good guys! That is up to the players themselves, or the art-viewers, to decide.

Just like the ending to their story is up to the players.

Art by Friedrich Stahl and Charles Marion Russell.

Images of D&D

Mr. Maliszweski has posed a fun question over at Grognardia: what cover art "encapsulates... 'D&D' in a single image"?

Having really gotten into D&D in the Silver Age, Elmore, of course, springs first to mind, and I think I'd have to go with this one. It's from the cover not of a rule book, but one of the early Endless Quest books TSR put out way back when. In this one, Return to Brookmere, you're an elf returning to your family's ancestral home after it's been overrun by monsters. The story is fun, and mostly consists of you sneaking about, trying to find your way out after a bad cave-in nearly crushes you.

There's a lot to like in this picture. The humanoids with their horned helmets, banners and skull-topped standards, the sinister wererat on his throne, the subterranean locale, and the bar of gold caught in the decorative border.

But most of all, I really like the hero. He (She? It's appropriately androgynous for a first-person choose-your-own-adventure style protagonist) has stolen a humanoid helmet and cloak to hide the finer garb of an elf warrior, including bright mail and soft boots. As decorative as his crenelated cuffs and purple tabard might be, his notched shield and long blade certainly look all business.

But if I'm willing to follow the lead of my fellow bloggers and not limit myself to simply covers, I'll have to go with this image. Yep, that's Elmore again, and I think it was originally released as a promotional poster at Sears (buy a certain amount of TSR stuff at Sears and get this cool poster type thing). I love the stories this one tells. Does the dragon know she's down there? Is he only distracting the dragon to give her a chance to get away, or to set up a back-stab? Clearly, an attempt to steal some gold without attracting the dragon's notice has gone awry. Do our heroes have any other tricks up their sleeves?

And I love the little details: the mountainous background, the clearly functional but not historical armour, the expressive faces of everyone in the painting, including the horse. This is a great painting, and has, for quite some time, been the picture that epitomizes D&D to me, and the you-are-there feeling I've always tried to evoke in my games.

But if we're not going to limit ourselves to just D&D and the clones, I'd probably have to say that this (NSFW!) painting by Keith Parkinson comes closest to encapsulating my gaming these days.

Podcasting Part Two: Weird Finnish Boogaloo!

Hot off the success of our first podcast, Oddysey and I return with a second.  Since we've run out of things to say (Ha!  Not!), we're joined this time by James Edward Raggi IV to discuss his newly released (and soon-to-be-sold-out-in-its-first-printing) boxed set, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying.  It was a very fun interview, in large part because Raggi is a great guest.

A few words of warning: James asked us at the beginning of the interview what our language policy was.  We told him the truth: we don't have one.  So the interview is liberally sprinkled with the occasional four-letter word.  We also (briefly) discuss the whole "Spokesmodel of the OSR" thing.  So don't say you weren't warned.

Links of interesting stuff we talk about:

The Infamous Spokesmodel Image (WARNING: not safe for your SAN score, forget viewing at work!)

James (have you noticed just how many of us Jameses there are in the OSR) Maliszewski discusses his theories on the different Ages of D&D.  And more on the Silver Age in particular.

Elmore and the "you are there" school of fantasy art.

Cynthia Sheppard's art page.

The Patty Duke Show.  (No, really, this is a vital part of Raggi's design process.  O.o )

In related news, Oddysey has tracked down an option for proper podcast posting, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work.  (Utter troll fail! D:< )  The plan is to have it properly set up before the next part of the interview is posted.

Power to the People

I’ve ranted about capitalism before, and so far as that goes, I have to disagree with JB on this score. Capitalism has made our country great, but greatness isn’t measured in the philanthropy of our wealthiest. It’s measured in the breadth of our wealth, and in the fact that a truck-driver and factory worker can pool their money, buy a nice home to raise their daughters in, and give those daughters dance lessons and horseback riding lessons and send them both to college, while still having enough left over for when the Red Cross calls for donations in response to disasters around the world. Granted, most of that happened midway through the previous century, but it did happen and it did happen in America, and it happened because of capitalism.

But I’m not writing now to disagree with JB, but to agree with him. Capitalism works best when buyers and sellers send clear signals to one another. Unfortunately, advertising is frequently a murky business. But when you buy something, especially when you buy a lot of it, that’s a signal that’s heard loud and clear. You’re saying you value that thing, you’re saying you want more of it. You’re making it possible for the people who made it to spend more time (time they might otherwise need to spend keeping the lights on and putting food on the table) making more of whatever it is you liked so much before.

This gives you power as a consumer, power you need to wield responsibly because, yeah, it really is voting. And, at the end of the day, what products rise or fall is entirely up to what you buy and what you pass up.

I used to love reading DRAGON magazine. I never had a subscription, but I probably should have through my junior high years, when I purchased three of every four issues published. It was a fun read, with a wide range of articles, some of which had nothing to do with D&D, and saw me through brief periods of gamelessness. But, as time went on, I read it less and less. During my college years, it was an occasional read, and I was down to probably buying two a year. By the time 3.5 came out, I was buying maybe one every two or three years.

And here’s where things get interesting. I was still playing a lot of D&D back then (usually two games per week, and rarely as few as one), but I wasn’t buying much of anything. So far as the market was concerned, I was invisible. TSR and the others couldn’t tell what I wanted because I wasn’t buying anything they were selling. So far as they could tell, I (and, apparently, many others like me) simply vanished. In response, TSR flailed around; they tried making a CCG thinking maybe we’d left to play Magic, they tried converting Ravenloft into a gothic setting to lure us away from White Wolf, they made new game systems thinking maybe we were just tired of same-old D&D.

Nobody seemed to know much of anything about this hidden market, lurking about playing old games and having fun, until the OSR popped up. And then, as if from nowhere, there were magazines like Fight On! and games like Labyrinth Lord seeming to spring up out of nowhere. Only it wasn’t “nowhere” really; we’d been here all along. We’d just been ignored.

And that brings up another aspect of capitalism most folks miss: there’s very little preventing a buyer from becoming a seller. That’s why I bridle a bit at the “we don’t need no stinkin’ industry” talk that sweeps through the blogosphere every now and then. The truth is, we are the industry. Or we can be. The barriers to entry are pretty low these days in RPGs. There’s nothing stopping any of you from throwing together a module, a supplement, heck, even your very own boxed set. Raggi’s shown that you can push pretty damned close to industry-standard visuals and production values. He’s about sold out of his original run on his box. Swords & Wizardry did damned well with their box sets, too.

You think WotC hasn’t noticed?

Seriously, where do you think the idea for a nostalgia-focused boxed set came from? Sure, they may have come up with it on their own, might have realized the conventional wisdom about boxed sets was flawed without having watched what’s happened with Mythmere and LotFP, but you really think they haven’t noticed? You really think our enthusiasm and productivity didn’t plant a few idea-seeds?
So WotC’s come out with their boxed set. I’m pretty sure we’re not the target audience; it may have Elmore on the cover, but it’s 4e inside, and we all know that. Sure I could have bought it, but instead bought the LotFP boxed set which costs more than three times as much. Why? Because the WotC box isn’t much use to me, but I’ll play with the stuff in the LotFP box.

Really, how much more of a “duh” decision could it be? ;)

And I’ll likely also buy the more-than-double-the-cost-of-WotC’s-box Pathfinder GameMastery Guide because it looks like a great companion to Gygax’s DMG, the most used and abused book in my gaming collection. And I’ll almost certainly be getting JB’s B/X Companion because my players may be using Labyrinth Lord’s rules, but I’ve got Moldvay’s and Cook’s books sitting on my desk right now, and I reference them nearly every game.

So now the ball’s in your court. This is a golden age for RPGs. There’s never been such a wide array of products out there. The reviews are being posted all over the ‘net. It’s up to you to vote with your dollars, either by buying products that improve your gaming, or in making products you haven’t seen yet but would love to have. What happens next, as in all good RPGing, is entirely up to you.

Tracking Down the Flame Princess

Raggi is trying to find out where his Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying box set has shown up. I've been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger this week, so I haven't even been by Tribe or Dragon's Lair this week. Any fellow Austinites been in either store recently? I'd be surprised if either had it, but I've seen Dogs in the Vineyard at Dragon's Lair and bought Savage Worlds at Tribe, so it's not entirely out of the question.

Diesel's TSR Collection at ArmadilloCon

If you're in the Austin area and a fan of old school D&D, run, do not walk, to ArmadilloCon at the Renaissance Hotel this Sunday morning or early afternoon. Diesel has his collection of art from his TSR days on display in the art show.

When he told me he was bringing this at GenCon, I thought it was just going to be some of the stuff he did, which would be cool enough. But he's got stuff from a wide range of artists, including Elmore, Otus, and others. He's even got the beholder piece that would become the cover to Greyhawk book of the original brown books (apparently rescued from the trash!). It's an amazing and very cool collection, some it of never released commercially.

The art show is only open from 10 AM to Noon on Sunday, so be sure to get there in those hours to see it. It's a really cool slice of the hobby's history.

Proving Grounds of a Million Mad Overlords

A bit over a year ago (Friday, July 17, to be exact) I complained about the lack of outreach to potentially new gamers. Apparently, I should also start complaining about not having a million bucks because oh what a difference a year makes. Old conventional wisdom: box sets are impractical and led TSR to financial ruin. New conventional wisdom: box sets are teh awesome! It's like everybody and their grandmother has a box set coming out now. Troll Lord Games has something like a dozen of the things now, including rules, campaign settings, and adventure construction sets. The two biggies right now are, of course, the D&D Essentials starter set and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. Both of these are ostensibly aimed at new players. This is undercut somewhat in Flame Princess by the cost of the box and the game-store and online-order focus of Raggi’s distribution model, which seems more aimed at existing gamers, and the nostalgia-based design of Essentials. In spite of these issues, both boxes have contents clearly designed to get the neophyte up to speed. They both have a choose-your-own-adventure style introductory adventure (Flame Princess actually has two), they both sport simplified rules, and they both include an additional DM-run adventure as an example of how these games can be played.

Of course, I'm going to give the advantage to the OSR. Granted, it's a very slim advantage; the Essentials box is inexpensive, designed to grab the attention of lapsed gamers more likely to introduce the game to their children, and it'll show up in places where non- and lapsed gamers are likely to stumble across it. It's an exceptional piece of marketing, and is likely to sell 100 times more units than Flame Princess. And I, for one, hope this is a pessimistic prediction.

Still, I think the OSR has an inherent advantage in the simplicity and flexibility of its games. For instance, check out this character sheet that Robert gave out at the Old School game he ran at GenCon. In spite of the fact that over half the table didn't play these games regularly, we had no problem generating characters, even though there wasn't a single rulebook at the table. That's right, we did it all based on the character sheet and these other handouts. Now it is true, all of us were familiar with gaming. We were, after all, all attendees at GenCon. Still, making characters was a snap.

You can see this in Flame Princess as well. The last two pages of the rules book is an annotated copy of the character sheet, making it easy to understand what goes where and what rules apply to which parts. Even better, like with Roger’s character sheets, everything you really need is right there on it: skill rolls, to-hit numbers, even a quick and elegant way to figure encumbrance. If nothing else, the OSR is all about quick and easy.

It's going to be interesting to see where these developments take us. The starter set is, to the best of my knowledge, the only box set in WotC's Essentials line. Raggi still isn't sure if the next printing of his weird fantasy role-playing game is going to be in a box (which he prefers) or in strictly book form. 2011 should prove to be another very interesting year for RPGs in general, and the OSR in particular. And that's not even considering what Frog God Games might get up to.