LoDS Session 4

Legend of Doom Scroll: Rumours of Rhax & Roon

Session 4 Actual Play.

Once more into the necropolis delve our heroes. This time our bravos were accompanied by a sultry and mysterious eleven assassin, her lithe body covered in viper tattoos. The site was infested with lizardmen, the foul saurians gorging themselves on the rotting flesh of fallen brigands. So intent were they are on their grim banquet that they let the searchers pass with only hungry looks in hollow eyes.

               A priest of Hermes was discovered in a cell, with his jailers a week dead by our heroes hands he was near dead of hunger and thirst. A former cohort of their young wizardess retainer Pinella, the Hermitic Priest Paxton was insensible and had to be carried from the complex where he could be tended at the camp by the girl.

               They pressed on, killing kobolds first subdued with sleep spells, for such is the quality of their mercy.

And all the time there was the mysterious droning music, a lament or funeral dirge that echoed through the complex and seemed to emanate from Hades itself, a music like the rustling of the rude reed pipes of Stygia.

               Finally, they came upon the source the source of the droning song. A vast creature, a crude effigy of a man constructed of a substance like ancient coral or bone, and through which an eerie wind constantly blew. The monstrosity was confined to a silver cage at the heart of a great chamber, the walls of which were covered by the serried ranks of the dead interned in shallow alcoves.

               Our heroes vowed to destroy the beast and, using a silver key they opened the cage. The beast attacked with sharp claws and crushing hugs, but, like a bear driven before mastiffs, the beast succumbed to a flurry of attacks from every direction.

               Yet even as the beast died a more terrible enemy reared its terrible deathless head for, as the song ceased, file upon file of skeletal abominations arose from the sleep of eons and advanced upon the party with the mien of those who have long dreamed of murder and madness in the lower depths of the seven beastly hells.

               Verily, the party did flee. The rest is screaming and blood and murder in dark tunnels, for even has they ran blindly through the labyrinthine blackness they encountered the lizardmen they had early shunned. Only this time the reptiloids would not be content with carrion, but hungered for the flesh of man. So it was that blood red battle raged in the secret underplaces of the earth.

               And yet, by some miracle our heroes emerged from the tomb and into the sunlight, even as the unquiet dead teemed in the blackness beneath.

               Returning to camp they regaled the wizardess and the priest with their exploits. But, on describing the bone creature and its destruction, the priest set up an anguished wailing and tore at his hair and raiment. For, from his insane ranting the party surmised that the creature they had destroyed was the only force preventing an ancient evil from flowing once more into the world of men.

LoDS Session 3

Legend of Doom Scroll Actual Play.

Rumours of Rhax & Roon.

Once more the heroes descend into the Neropolis. This time joined by the Dwarven Fighter Rubynose. The party elected to explore the secret passage they discovered. The passage led to the mechanism side of a secret door. They burst through to found a bearded brigand menacing a young woman with a red-hot poker.

Like the heroes they are the party fell upon the brigand and cut him to pieces before releasing the maiden from her manacles. She introduced herself as Pinella, an aspirant sorceress who had entered the Necropolis as part of a luckless band of adventurers and was duly captured. She knew little of the complex but agreed to accompany the party if they could guarantee her safety.

The party realised they had stumbled upon the brigand lair and a long and learned tactical debate ensued. Such was the length of the debate that two lizard men burst through the eastern door and attacked. After bloody close quarter fighting the beasts were dispatched. The eastern door revealed a semi flooded chamber in which hundreds of skeletons had been submerged in a pit. The topmost skeleton was bound in chains and richly robed. A search of the body revealed a serpent mace and a strange bone whistle.

Pressing further they found a single hobgoblin rummaging through a pile of rusted torture equipment. The hobgoblin, though sorely outnumbered, fought with a valour more akin to a Titan than a goblinoid. Even has he died the hobgoblin swore to find them again in the afterlife and slay them all in the final battle of Raganorok and mocking the feebleness of man. The party, thus chastened, returned to the flooded chamber and climbed to a high concealed balcony that overlooked the pit.

From here they identified a hidden passage that led to the rear side of another secret door. The door was breached and a wonderous chamber was revealed, a glittering waterfall pool lit by six multicoloured lanterns. In the centre of the chamber the glamourous witch Odo reclined on a couch, lost to the purple lotus dreams that issued from the water pipe that she smoked. Surprised by the arrival of the party she rose, and in imperious tones, began to intone fell syllables of sorcery. But her magical efforts were no match for the speeding of steel of the party’s swords. Even as she died her minions leaped to attack, mutant goblinoids from the pool and armoured henchman from the adjoining chambers. To late to save their mistress, many brigands fell and yet more fled, only to be cut down as they ran in shrieking cowardice.

The party moved from chamber to chamber, slaking their blades on the blood of the enemy. An old man in mysterious black priestly robes stumbled from a chamber and fell to his knees in craven surrender. He was bound and taken captive. The chambers were ransacked and much treasure was recovered, including two spell books, one belonging to Odo and one to Pinella. Sated by gold and bloodletting the party loaded up the spoils and returned to camp.

LoDS Session 2

Legends of Doom Scroll.

Rumours from Rhax & Roon:

Session 2:

Once more our heroes choose to explore the Necropolis.

Upon entry they found that the bodies of the dead brigands from their previous delve had been dragged away, seemingly deeper into the structure.

The party explored further. They found a nine foot black stone statue of a robed female with a gaping fanged mouth. In her hands she carried a bowl that issued water from a mechanism below and a rod in her other hand. The statue was badly damaged from time and seismic activity. Careful search of the statue revealed a silver key concealed in a cavity beneath the tongue.

They noted with unease that the droning song that filled the vaulted chambers continued and grew louder as they ventured forth.

Deeper in the complex the party found catacombs, consisting of great avenues, containing hundreds upon hundreds of skeletons resting uneasily in their arcosolium (shelf graves). The part elected not to disturb them.

At the far end of the avenue the party found another statue, this time the statue was made of black metal, fifteen feet high, a skeleton dressed in robes. The statue was a work of unrivalled artistry, seemingly out of time, there minds boggled at the skill with which it was wrought.

Exploring a side passage the party was ambushed by a huge spider, the agile predator descending from the ceiling to ravage the party. Greenlow the halfling was sorely rent by the ravaging chelicerate of the beast, and for a time it seemed that the spider would have four additions to its larder. After striking many blows that failed to slay the beast the party fell back. Quick thinking Dvalinn cast a sleep spell, the beast succumbed and was duly hacked to pieces.

Careful search revealed a fissure in the wall in which the spider had stored the remains of its previous victims. Two skeletons were found, wrapped in  silken bails, the desiccated bones of small folk adventurers. Recovering a curious sword, a diamond ring and a number of vials. The party choose at this time to flee the necropolis but vowed to return on another, more auspicious day.

Greenlow (hfF1,T2) and Zigfried (F2) @dantas

Edric (Cl2) and Dvalinn (elMu1,T1) @Baron Greystone

LoDS Session 1

Rumours of Rhax & Roon: Legend of Doom Scroll Session 1: Actual Play

The travellers assembled at the rim of the Koth Basin, final stop on their journey to the city of Irrilion. Across the basin an ancient megastructure could be seen, cut into the chalky limestone of the cliffs. Locals say it is an ancient Necropolis, a cursed place but filled with treasures.

               Eager to enter the city as rich men rather than penniless vagrants, the travellers choose to investigate. They enter the structure by an old wooden bridge, a series of fallen bastions appear deserted. Stone steps lead down to black water of the basin, a huge bronze door bound in great chains and iron bars that must lead deeper into the structure. The door is adorned by the stylised forms of skeletons dancing within a black flame. While investigating a dilapidated barge tied to the dock, the party disturb a pair of hideous giant lamprey. Even as the blind beasts rear from the still waters they are slain by a flurry of blows. Search of the barge reveals a casket containing trinkets of gold and silver. Their appetites wetted the travellers push on through a door to the east.

               Creeping stealthy, the halfling Greenlow finds a large chamber filled with an eerie, droning roar, a sound like an ill wind singing a song of ancient lament in a dead language. Three bodies lie in the centre of the chamber, two are heavily decayed, one less so, but more hideous, its once human face a rictus grin of distended lips, filthy fangs, blood black eyes rolling in their sockets. The bodies twitch, but do not rise. Greenlow moves away, overcome by superstitious dread. He explores further, carefully opening a door to the north. He sees three humans, rough men of the road, framed in a circle of torch light, their swords drawn and pointed at a sturdy door. The brigands notice not the halfling, so intent are they on a door to the east.

               Greenlow returns and reports his finding. Edric and Ardwell take the lead. The Northmen Clerics inspect the bodies and adjudge them abomination. After much learned discussion, they determine to call on their respective deities, Thor and Tyr, to vanquish the evil. Much oath-making and brandishing of talismans ensues but to no avail. The gods of storm and sword turning their backs on such lowly supplicants.

               The warriors Vendric and Zigfried take matters into their own hands, putting the corpses to the sword. Even as their blades bite the undead begin to rise and claw at the travellers. With grim determination the warriors strike them down. The mysterious droning continues, and our heroes muster to attack the chamber containing the three men.

               Suddenly, they hear a distant clanking to the west, fearing a pincer attack, the party rush towards this new threat. The great bronze and black flame door is seen to slide up into its casement, seemingly unbidden by the hand of man. Behind the door is no great chamber, only a narrow passage hewn into the living rock. The party view this development with the upmost suspicion. Once more the halfling Greenlow, an expendable abhuman, is dispatched to investigate. The twisting passage ends in a stone panel in a hinged iron bracket, perhaps the inner workings of a secret door?

               The party crouch in readiness, expecting an attack from any quarter. Such is their procrastination that two lizard men appear from the surface of the lake and rush to attack. As the two sides clash the spears of the reptiloids strike first, but the superior tactics of man are two much for the primitive minds of the saurians, and they fall beneath before the steel rain. The glittering, green scaled bodies yield nothing of value.

               The band suspect that they have been the victims of a ruse and rush back to the chamber containing the three men. They make a grand entrance only to find the men have gone. Gnashing their teeth in rage at this deception the party investigate the door the men were guarding. Within they find an emaciated young man in a gaudy robe. The waif flourishes a wand in their faces and advises them that he is none other than Amdor the Magnificent, a mighty wizard. When asked what he is doing here Amdor states that he is engaged in arcane endeavours beyond the ken of mortal men. When the party menaces him with drawn swords, Amdor issues terrible threats. He vows to turn the travellers into toads and then summon larger toads to devour them. The party scoff at these claims, but Amdor persists, vowing to disintegrate them and scatter their ashes across the astral and ethereal planes. Once more the party scoffs and taunts, suggesting that Amdor is either a lunatic or a charlatan. Seeing his opportunity, the crafty elf Dvalinn plunges his dagger into the wastrels back. They watch the strange fellow die, choking on his own blood. They discuss the morality of Dvalinn’s act but come to general agreement that Amdor brought his fate upon himself. The wise clerics concur, and, with their consciences clear, the party loot the little chamber recovering a rusted but serviceable suit of chainmail. They also discover a pair of levers they believe control the mighty door.

               Returning to the rampart docks, the party detect the three brigands, now with an elven archer engaged in deep conversation at the entrance to the structure. Dvalinn steals up to them, and from a position of concealment amid the rubble, casts a sleep spell. The brigands fall to slumber, but the elf resists the dwemour. It is no matter, even as he notches an arrow, the elf falls to a flurry of shafts loosed by the party. The brigands are bound, robbed and then awakened by rude slaps. The party interrogate the hapless  men. They are treasure hunters like themselves and beg to be taken into service. The party refuses, disgusted by their craven ways. The men are provided with meagre weapons and sent on their way, with a strict warning never to return. Before they depart the brigands advise the party that the witch Odo and her minions have taken up residence within the necropolis.

               The travellers resume their delvings. Greenlow explores a chamber to the south. He attempts subtlety but is discovered by a band of goblins, lead by blue-faced hobgoblin. The quick thinking Greenlow rushes from the chamber leading the cackling humanoids into an ambush. Greenlow’s iron clad allies close on the goblins and the fighters Vendric and Zigfried dispatch them in a red orgy of bloodletting. The hobgoblin chief awaits them in his chamber, shouting oaths to his bestial god. The fighters enter and, though the hob fights with the zeal of many men, he eventually falls to grimly determined sons of man. A search of the chamber reveals an Amethyst of excellent size and clarity.

               Tired of slaughter and cognizant of the coming of night, the travellers retire to their camp to lick their wounds and tell tall tales of past valour.     

Players:

Vendric (F2) and Ardwell (Cl2)

Greenlow (hfF1,T2) and Zigfried (F2)

Edric (Cl2) and Dvalinn (elMu1,T1)

Legend of Doom Scroll

Legend of Doom Scroll.

The red sun of Old Terra casts long shadows over mountains that scratch at the sky like the fingers of a dying man. Rising between the Barbarian Kingdom of Rhax and the Tattered Empire of Roon, these barren wastes are home to ravening hordes of orcs and goblins, mutants and heretics, demons and the restless dead. Higher still, the airless summits are home to older and weirder horrors.

This is a domain fallen to chaos and evil. Where fiendish beasties cavort in the green vaults of forest and jungle by the light of the gibbous moon. Where good folk huddle behind high walls, forsaken by their distant and indifferent overlords.

A realm of bloody swords and fell sorceries.

But where Kings and Emperors turn away, heroes may yet show their mettle.

The bravest may even discover the lost secret of Doom Scroll.

AD&D Sandbox Campaign, using the original/expanded set of books (as Gygax intended) PHB, DMG, MM I & II, and FF.

The theme is Sword‘n’Sorcery/Hammer-Horror Mashup in the style of Clarke Ashton Smyth’s Zothique Cycle and Vance’s Dying Earth Series.

Ongoing Sandbox Campaigns in Old School Advanced Fantasy Adventure Roleplaying Games

Is your game like this? It should be.

This blog is about running Ongoing Sandbox Campaigns in Old School Advanced Fantasy Adventure Roleplaying Games. This is a gamist blog where I talk about running the game. Other topics, like the history of games and game designing, old school products, RPG politics, the state of the OSR etc. might get a (very) minor mention. We will also look at some of the fiction that inspired the original old school games and see how that can inform running games today.

My game of choice is OSRIC, an open-source game inspired by Gay Gygax’s seminal roleplaying game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition. A link to the OSRIC guys can be found here and all the rules are available in PDF. Though I urge you to pick up physical copies. I will explain why I like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition (AD&D1e) and its faithful clone OSRIC as we go along.

So, lets dive into a definition of terms. Roleplaying games are a broad church, I describe the games I like as: Ongoing Sandbox Campaigns in Old School Advanced Fantasy Adventure Roleplaying Games. But what do I mean by this?

Ongoing: I want a game that lasts from session to session, week to week, month to month, year to year. A persistent game where the characters, settings, locations and players change over time in response to numerous iterations of play.

Of course, such an ongoing game necessarily has an element of ‘Triggers Broom’ (A UK reference, Trigger was a sitcom character from the 1980s. A street sweeper, in one episode Trigger wins an efficiency prize from the council for using the same broom for twenty years. When asked how he managed it, Trigger tells us that “its had 17 new heads and 14 new handles”). This paradox is also known as ‘the ship of Theseus’.

I think this is ultimately what I mean by ongoing, a game that starts in one place and goes somewhere else, we are still playing the same game even as the playing pieces change. It’s not like chess, a game that runs out of pieces and ends. This type of play necessarily requires some sort of procedural generation in order generate new pieces and keep it going.

Sandbox: If ‘Ongoing’ refers to the temporal then ‘Sandbox’ refers to the spatial. The ongoing game requires a sufficiently large space to explore. A map. The term sandbox has its roots in wargaming and the sand tables they would reshape to make an infinite variety of battlefield topographies. In RPGs Sandbox is an often bandied term but for me it has a specific meaning:

For me Sandbox means that the setting design is sufficiently rugged that the referee/judge/DM/GM can adjudicate any course of action that the players can think of. Of course, the GM needs the players to engage to some extent with the material he has created, but it is on the GM to build a sufficiently large map that the players can say ‘we go South! (or east, or west, or north)’ and have a reasonable expectation of bumping into something unique to interact with. Unique is important here, the choice of direction must be important (their should never be a quantum ogre), going in a particular direction has a unique set of consequences. When explaining this idea to new players in my campaign I explain it in these terms ‘There is no story, you can go wherever you want, do what you want, look at things and I will tell you about them, talk to people and I will tell you what they say. If you want to plant an apple tree and watch it grow you are welcome to do so. But this is a dangerous world, if you choose to do nothing the world will still happen to you.’

I believe this sandbox play requires a map to explore and, like the ongoing game, procedural tools to fill it. Again, it is different from chess, it should be possible to extend the game beyond the finite 8x8 grid. I will write much more about this concept in subsequent posts.

Campaign: Another word that is often bandied, and another word from tabletop wargaming. But what does it mean?

Dictionary says:

Noun

1.       an organized course of action to achieve a goal.

2.       a series of military operations intended to achieve a particular objective, confined to a particular area, or involving a specified type of fighting.

Verb

Work in an organized and active way towards a particular goal, typically a political or social one.

So, these definitions all point to the idea of goals. Goals in an ongoing sandbox campaign should therefore be evolving, and ideally player generated.

The caveat here is that, to use the military expression, ‘the enemy gets a say’, while some goals should be generated by the player others will be necessitated by the actions of NPCs or random monsters and events. Sometimes a dragon attacks the town, and the players will need to take action or watch their holdings be burnt to the ground. Just like trying to organise a game session, life has a habit of getting in the way.

A campaign then is about players taking a long series of actions to achieve a particular set of goals in the game world. This is different from a picaresque tale like REH’s Conan or Vance’s Cugel the Clever. Yes, they both want things and hatch various plans to get them, but both characters basically roll from adventure to adventure. No one more so than Conan, where a story can open with Conan sitting on the throne of Aquilonia, we don’t need to know to much about how he got there, he’s Conan.

However, in an Ongoing Sandbox Campaign we want to explore Conan’s rise to power in all its mechanical details. We want to experience every moment, make the decisions, ask the question at each moment ‘What would Conan do?’. It’s a testament to the skill of REH that he is able to create this feeling of depth and adventure in just a few short sentences in his stories.

My conception of the campaign is more like the Count of Monte Cristo. Edmund Dantes starts of as a level 1 Fighter (Sailor), in a dungeon. He must achieve a large number of minor objectives (escape, becoming the pirate leader, recovering the treasure, fighting bandits, becoming their leader, entering Paris society, spying etc.) over the course of many years, to achieve his major objective (the nature of which is itself subject to change). War and Peace is another example, here a large ensemble of characters try to survive a real-world military campaign, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Dracula might be another example; the characters spend the first half of the novel being terrorised by the count before deciding to get proactive and destroy the beast.

 Here is another difference with chess, while the objective of chess remains the same (destroy white) the long-term objectives in an ongoing sandbox campaign are subject to change.

So, that completes the first part of our definition Ongoing Sandbox Campaign. Such a game could obviously be played in a variety of different systems including, computer games, war games, theatre of the mind, kriespiel, Braunstein etc. They also get played in real life, in corporate and military strategy meetings. As I write this, I am reminded of the War Room in Doctor Strangelove, and before you seek to argue with my definitions so far, please remember: There is no fighting in the war room.

Is this your D&D table? It should be.

Let’s go on to look at the systems we could use to play such a game.

Old School: I include ‘Old School’ in my definition of the kind of game I’m interested in order to pay homage to the masters. I say ‘Old School’ in reference to Gary Gygax and his contemporaries and the games that they played. In his 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide Gygax sets out in the greatest detail what fully developed fantasy campaign gaming might look like. I believe very few people (possibly nobody) have run campaigns that really go beyond the scope of what is described there.

               I choose to play Old School games, particularly AD&D 1st edition, because it is there. I don’t believe that we need a ‘new’ game while we still have yet to master the game that is in front of us. I see so much talk on the internet about modifying the game, or creating new mechanical content (spells, classes, monsters) for it as if people have somehow used it all up. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of d&d players have never used more than 10% of the options listed in the core books.

               I say I like ‘Old School’ not because I think that it is impossible to make a new game that would be better than AD&D (it obviously is within the wit of man to achieve such a thing) only that I have not yet seen such a game.

I certainly do not believe that I am about to invent one.  

               I would say that both Marc Miller’ s Traveller is another example of an old school game that has the depth of Gygax’s conception. But that is a conversation for another time.

               The fact is that inventing a new kind of game is hard. Particularly a game of the complexity of D&D. Gary Gygax was a genius. We are not geniuses, but we know them by their fruits. Many people think that they can make a game like D&D, it seems easy, just look at how many people try. You may have tried yourself.

No one tries to make a new version of chess (or very few, and most of them are very well-established rabid chess enthusiasts). The strange thing about people who make new versions of D&D (whether official or OSR) is how little regard they seem to have for the original and advanced versions of the game. They say that it’s ‘broken’ or ‘unplayable’ or ‘unrealistic’. And it’s fine to criticise a game, I just wonder how much of this criticism is really based on play.

You will notice that NO ONE makes any criticism of chess.

I think that AD&D is robust simply because it was played more and play-tested more and more rigorously than any game since. AD&D is at the summit of that development process. Subsequent versions and games make design choices that are clearly fail states for reasons that we could discuss all day long.

Advanced: I am interested in advanced gaming. I write this blog for people who know what a ttrpg is and understand the differences between them. I want to play a challenging, difficult game, a game that has specific, detailed rules for determining the outcome of a very wide variety of game situations. I want a large number of specific options which are mechanically different from each other in a meaningful way.

I am not interested in playing a game that is very simplified or streamlined. A game where the GM gets to make it all up as he goes along, or worse still a GM that lets me make it up all.

I don’t personally think AD&D is that complicated. It says ‘ten and up’ on the cover. Yet today we seem to have a whole industry devoted to making games that are extremely simple. Where the idea of counting twenty arrows is seen as too complicated for an adult player to manage. OSR aficionados will notice how quickly we went from original rules to no rules and how quickly the game crashed because of it.

Some of this desire for simplification comes, I think, from a desire to attract new people to the hobby. However, I don’t understand why these new people would not be able to understand the existing rules or why it is somehow felt that new players would be attracted to a greatly simplified version. Most people are introduced to the game by a friend who has already played a more demanding version, why not assume your friend is equally able to understand it? It’s like saying:

‘I’ve read this great novel! Why don’t you read the cliff notes?’.

Another part of the desire for simplification comes from the number of people who want to make their own version of the game. The vast majority of new versions are dramatic simplifications with many of the original rules being simply stripped out. Designers likely do this because producing a work on the scale of the AD&D is very hard. It’s a lot of effort to sit down and write an encumbrance rule that is better than Gary’s. After all, many players don’t use it, or don’t understand it. So, it’s easy for the designer to dump it and save themselves some words. Indeed, the number one dumped rule seems to be encumbrance, the number two being specific time rules.

Obviously, an adventure game needs to account for what the players can carry and how long things should take. If you are hand waiving that, then you are hand waiving the entire economic basis of your fantasy world. Everyone has whatever they need whenever they want. The ongoing sandbox collapses. It becomes like a George RR Martin novel.

For me an advanced game suggests a detailed demanding world where an impartial referee adjudicates the players actions using a robust system for good or ill. It speaks of a world where the number of monsters appearing and the quantities and types of treasure they have are determined by a set rule, not a wave of the GM’s hand. As such the monsters and treasure are concrete facts of the game world and they must be dealt with. They are not movie extras or set dressing being moved about by the GM. Gary has determined the probability of goblins appearing in the local wood during the day and they have appeared. There are two hundred and ninety of them, deal with it.

Wandering monster tables and probabilities are another often scrapped set of rules in retro clones. I wonder why?

No player in chess laments the asymmetry of knight and queen or suggests we do away with castling. These are facts of the game and the emergent complexity should be celebrated.

Fantasy: I love history, more than I love fantasy. I read a lot more history than I do fantasy (I love them both, a LOT). Now, a game like the one described above could be run in a historical setting, and it might be very fun. So why include fantasy?

               Firstly, the worlds of fantasy are simple and rich in easily identified archetypes in a way that history is not (the archetypes are there in history, but a high wisdom score is needed to spot them). Fantasy worlds like Howard’s Hyboria or Tolkien’s Middle Earth are just easier places to run these types of games than, say, the Middle Ages. Fantasy worlds are less contentious, and they are fundamentally bounded by the fact they do not exist outside the writers imagination. I will write much more about this subject in future posts.

               But for me, the major reason to include magic and monsters in the game is to increase its tactical scope. Many people are attracted to RPGs because of the possibility of ‘tactical infinity’ the idea that the players could do anything. The addition of spells like invisibility, teleport, gate, rock to mud, passwall, polymorph, wish etc. greatly increases the tactical possibilities that may occur in any game by an order of magnitude. We can now change the map, change the dispositions of enemies, the way we move etc. Monsters also have these abilities. In an advanced game they are not just hand wavy or vague, such abilities are clearly defined, and this greatly increases the tactical depth. We enter what might be described as ‘Meta Tactical Infinity’ where all game elements are open to manipulation in a way that all participants can understand.

This is unique to D&D. Imagine a game of chess where all the rules, the board and the properties of the pieces are open to manipulation by both players in a way that is transparent to both players.

Adventure: I want to play a game that is about exciting adventure. Exploration, Combat, War, Theft, Espionage etc. These are the exciting and emotive subjects that games should be based around. I prefer games that are more grounded in these kind of physical challenges with real world analogues. I see some OSR material that seems focused on encounters with very weird situations and entities. The weirder the better it seems. I feel that this focus on weirdness somewhat detracts from the ongoing sandbox campaign element. Its hard for the players to work out what’s going on and what they can do about the situation.

               For me this is like the difference between Howard and Lovecraft. I love both these writers, but Howard is much more suitable for gaming because the situations Conan finds himself in are understandable. There are Picts chasing him. There is a giant lizard. A tower is full of treasure, and an elephant guy, and a wizard. In each of these situations Conan has a lot of choices, we can predict the actions and motives of the enemy, there are clear rewards (treasure, girls), and, in the end, he wins.

               Lovecraft’s characters don’t win. They have few choices. They continue to research strange things and poke about for dubious rewards (there is no treasure, no girls). Until something weird, and bad, happens. Lovecraft’s protagonists are not adventurers, they are all, eventually, losers.

Of course, this can be fun and entertaining, but it is not very gameable because all play is survival gaming, being the last one to die. Like a game of hide and seek. How long can you hold out?

Roleplaying: Of all the terms I have defined here this is actually the one I care about least. I don’t require players to speak in funny voices, I don’t mind if they do. First or third person. I don’t mind. I sometimes do voices, but I am a good talker, very experienced in public speaking in unfriendly rooms, so I can do voices as required if I think it will aid the players understanding of the situations or if I have had a glass of wine. I don’t think the voices are necessary and actually often inhibit play. Acting is hard. Often I have found that the players have much better discussions as themselves when they are ‘acting’ their characters. Very often the requirement to act makes it very hard for less confident players to chime in.

One of my sons loves to act his characters (he is always a lizard man of some type, he does a gravely voice) but I note that when he has a particularly creative idea he expresses it in his normal voice. My other son never does the voice, he always describes action in strict third person. He thinks the voices are silly.

When it comes to ‘playing the character’ and ‘meta gaming’, I think it’s all a load of nonsense. Players can engage with the game world in any number of ways. I could write a long bit about how later editions of the game were ruined by their focus on ‘roleplaying’ and ‘narrative arcs’ and ‘character backstories’ and ‘lore’ and ‘story paths’.

But, I simply don’t care about that style of play. My game doesn’t support it.

I think that a deeper and richer emergent roleplaying occurs when we focus on other areas of play. I prefer to think of roles in terms of what the different classes can actually do in a game session.

Sometimes I feel that RPGs have, in some quarters, become like a version of chess where one player’s bishop does not take the knight because ‘that is not what his bishop would do’.

 Game: It’s a game. Players win and lose. You have to get points, to go up levels. You get 1XP for each GP found and returned to the base. It’s a game about collecting coins, in a maze, full of ghosts. It’s PAC MAN. Advanced PAC MAN. That’s why we’ve been pumping in the quarters for more than 50 years (33 in my case).

The rules in short:

Get as many GP as you can, any way that you can.

Make sure you don’t lose too many HP.

Convert some GP into XP to go up levels, to get more HP.

Run out of HP. You die.

If you are a player, you control the PC.

If you are the GM, you draw the map and control the monsters.

A simple play loop for a simple game.

This for me is why Old School D&D is still the premier TTRPG. It’s just that simple.