A Historical Look at the OSR

[robertsconley]

Also, I agree that there is serious between-game work that needs to be done to move the world forward incorporating the consequences of the previous session. You have to be content with constantly ditching old plans and reinventing.

What I do to organize things is that only one thing has to be continually reworked and that is the actual plan. The personalities, motivations, and overall goals change much more slowly.

When it comes to locales, I try to flesh the location out enough that it functions as a place within the setting and thus other reasons could crop up that cause the PCs to visit. Not to get the plot back onto the rails, but it makes sense it is involved in the new thing that happening as a result of PC action or non-action.

I documented a campaign below and there was only two things when I had to come up with a lot of new things at once. That is at D where the party playing a group of fantasy mercenaries decided to buy off their contract and seek work elsewhere (Point I). And point L where the party bagged an enemy king and sold his ransom. The decided to "retire" to order to build a crossroad inn that occupied the rest of the campaign. I winged it on the basis of my general notes for the region from D to I, and then again from L to N as both involved the party traveling.

Once it became clear what the party was intending to do, I fleshed out the stuff that formed the adventures around I to L, and then from N to the end of the campaign with the Inn successfully built. The campaign ran for 32 sessions from July of 2012 to July of 2013.

Also no my notes are not that incredibly detailed. This was run on-line using Roll20 because a couple of friends lived in other states. Whenever I do that I just log the date into the program I used, The Keep by nBos. And maybe if I am lucky I will write some notes beyond a short to do list as a reminder about what to work up for next time.

And it helped that the campaign just shook out to be have three distinct phases that make easy for me to remember more details than usual. And it helped that I wrote a pair of blog post right after in 2013.

A Sandbox Campaign, the Nomar Campaign Part 1

Since the Summer of 2010 I been using NBOS's The Keep to keep track of notes for the various campaigns I been involved with. At a minimum I...

batintheattic.blogspot.com

A Sandbox Campaign, the Nomar Campaign Part 2

Part 1 The campaign takes place in Nomar, a Ghinorian Realm with many elements similar to the mythos of King Arthur. It is ruled by P...

batintheattic.blogspot.com

 

[squeen]

Wonderful map Robert. There is no doubt that most of the best DMs are also the hardest working. I think "creatively" is 10% inspiration and 90% persperation (or however Edison's quote goes).

 

[Hemlock]

I'm not familiar with Dungeons of the Mad Mage, so I can't comment. If it was me I would make a product where death was common enough that it was normalized, so that the chances are better than not that you wouldn't be finishing the module with the same character that you started with. I would also want lots of opportunities for those deaths to be entertaining. It is a lot less likely that you will be upset over the death of a character if you are laughing about it. So some advice to the DM to narrate these deaths as less tragic and more over the top would be helpful.

Honestly, I would probably release a Hommlet conversion - but not the normal, milquetoast conversations, something as lethal as the original - with better support for playing in the village (yes, squeen I already know what you are going to say). That partially solves the "character stables" issue, since there are a number of replacement characters in the village. And I might make the parties bigger, with DMs helping to turn the supporting characters at first ("I'm sorry your fighter died, here, take over this NPC.") with the option for more experienced players to run a main character and their dogsbody.

But I entirely agree that WotC is not up to this task. It was clear to me from their treatment of some elements they brought back onto 5e (I can't remember which, it has been a while since I looked at it) that they don't understand the actual function of a lot of those elements, other than "MOAR fights! Randomness is fun!"

My response to this post turned into a question:

Have any of you ever played an RPG where losing is inevitable, like Call of Cthulhu? Do you have any opinions on what is needed to make that a fun experience, whether in terms of adventure structure, narrative, setting player expectations, etc.?

 

[squeen]

Not really. However, we always played until character death --- no one ever retired. Eventually you over reached and then RIP. It was a given.

 

[Alexander Moonbeam]

Not really. However, we always played until character death --- no one ever retired. Eventually you over reached and then RIP. It was a given.

When I briefly played Call of Cthulhu, this is how we did it. Eventually, one by one, we each took a risk and suffered the consequences.

 

[Hemlock]

When I briefly played Call of Cthulhu, this is how we did it. Eventually, one by one, we each took a risk and suffered the consequences.

So, what was fun about that experience? Was it the stuff you discovered about the world before you died? The impact you had on other characters' lives and the gameworld? The challenge of surviving as long as possible? The atmosphere and interactions with other players?

 

[Alexander Moonbeam]

So, what was fun about that experience? Was it the stuff you discovered about the world before you died? The impact you had on other characters' lives and the gameworld? The challenge of surviving as long as possible? The atmosphere and interactions with other players?

In this particular scenario, we were exploring a large house where some cosmic fuckery was occurring. What made it fun was, everything in this house was something we could interact with. Even things that did not turn out to be useful seemed like they could be useful. Importantly, we never felt like the GM killed us; we each got killed when we, of our own volitions, tried something risky. A feeling of agency helps a lot.

....actually, we were playtesting a module written by the GM. I probably should have told him, at the time, what I just told you!

 

[squeen]

So, what was fun about that experience? Was it the stuff you discovered about the world before you died? The impact you had on other characters' lives and the gameworld? The challenge of surviving as long as possible? The atmosphere and interactions with other players?

As soon as I played with the group and my 1st level PC died I was hooked. All the video games back than were similar---my generation went up against the impossible and tried to see how far you could get before you failed and died. Period. No saved resets, no easy modes.

The creativity of my old DM was off the scale. His world was vast and deep. It was very much OD&D (which to me something that shares no traits in common with B/X, which feels nerfed), and a shear joy to see what you could discover. There was no sense of "I want to find/achieve this thing I read about in the books", everything in the world was slightly altered. The possibilities seemed unlimited and untapped. Despite playing for a decade as a group, we believed that we'd barely scratched the surface.