This post has me excited to try classic play some day. I feel that a lot of OSR fans put too much emphasis on the rules-lite and rulings-not-rules side of things and forget the emphasis on the Game.
You differentiated between player/character-facing rules and world/simulation-facing rules. Do you think with the right world/simulation-facing rules, a game with minimal player/character-facing rules such as Shadowdark or Cairn can work on this grand scale?
I really like the bit about world/simulation-facing rules, it's making me wonder if I've always underestimated this as an important part of OSR gameplay.
I keep thinking about Cugel the Clever here. The classic RPG protagonist, a guy with no skills of any kind who has to navigate an entire complex fantasy world using nothing but his wits and a complete lack of moral fibre. I can see running a game where the PCs are just a health bar and an attack roll but there's a million systems for controlling economics and magic and war between kingdoms.
Hello again Guy Potts. I'm back at my computer. To answer your question, "yes." To further answer it in three games: Adventurer Conqueror King, Classic Traveller and OD&D.
I'll post here a similar response I gave elsewhere. It’s related imo to the earlier blog about Classic Traveller.
In Classic Traveller the rules that are character facing are almost as minimalist as Knave. The rules that are world facing are almost as complex as AD&D.
The Character facing elements literally can fit on a single line of six alpha-numeric characters. (Yes there's skills and money, all together they can fit on a single line across a page.)
The world facing elements require you to have money, which require you to Travel(l) which require you to get involved with problems, which require money. Imo, OD&D is also a great example of this character facing minimalism vs world facing complexity and diversity
I often think about how the players in Blackmoor didn’t know the rules to the game and Dave’s character died in Wesley’s game to a single die roll. But there were immensely complicated rules for siege warfare and the effects of wind 😂
Which leads me back to: Adventurer Conqueror King
I think ACKS is the ultimate expression based on my reading so far of "this will bring simulation to B/X." As noted in this blog, I did attempt to use elements of BECMI in Evening Lands. In other games I tried other grand simulation elements such as the faction system in Worlds/Stars Without Number. None were terrible, but none caught on. Most of them were held back by elements that ultimately made the game face the characters and had problems similar to those I describe above.
ACKS could simply have it's mechanisms for markets, economics, warfare and trade played independently of the character facing game I think. My friend says his players would solo play some of it's elements between gameplay sessions, and that he has a second layer to the game which is a wargame where whole portions of the map change, while players play within it's boundaries unaware. I suspect ACKS tables could be used in Knave, Cairn or Shadowdark.
That is an experiment for another time, but one I hope to do. My next blog post will be about our experiments with Shadowdark, and I'm considering mentioning that as an experiment.
I’m reassured to hear you say that it’s possible, and it’s so interesting to learn that traveller’s player-facing rules are compatible to Knave in complexity! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for world-facing rules in other systems and will have to have a proper look at ACKS. I gather that Harnworld/Harnmaster is highly simulationist and probably has a million world-facing rules, I wonder if it would be the ultimate version of this concept.
An epic write up my friend! I'm running an OD&D campaign right now and now that we found our groove its become the best time I've ever had running games.
Some notes, as well as places I'd love elaboration:
> Another problem was horses. In OSE horses travel at 24 miles per day if encumbered and there is no further nuance given. In the Evening Lands OSE Advanced Fantasy campaign as soon as the players bought horses, they could traverse from one end of the sandbox to the other in a day or two. Exploration was over. [...] In S&W it is nuanced and more limiting, going so far as making the speed of a mount possibly less than their rider in some terrain (and changing it even further if they are trying to map and explore!)
> This is related to the previous point but it could basically be summed up in that Old School Essentials does not offer a lot of reasons to buy estate, and there's not much else to spend your thousands of gold pieces worth of treasure on. And yet thousands of gold pieces of treasure is how you level.
Totally agree; BX *showers* players with money and nothing to spend it on. Later you write:
> The result was that in a game that was hard, and had a clear goal, that required money, it was very much a game they could win or lose. Much like a wargame, the players began working together to come up with solutions. They chatted continously between sessions. It was hard to keep up with at time! I even had to create limits on gameplay between sessions just for my real life sake!
What did they need money for in your Otherworld game? I see "The whole thing created a loop where they needed to go adventuring to get money, and they needed money to build estate, they needed estate to deal with overland problems and progress their goals (help people, provide security, clear monsters, craft spells, many things!)."
Those all sound like fictional problems that would exist if you were to play rappan athuk with BX, or was 1e adding something here? Granted, BX's specialists, mercenaries, and construction guidance is sparse.
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The big takeaway for me here is that it's sometimes easy to think of the system as being the game when really it's the *system and adventure*. It sounds like your otherland campaign was better designed (the pieces fit together better, the incentives were better aligned, the scope was more focused, etc) than your evening lands campaign.
Take, for example, The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past. The "system" is all of the back end programming. How movement works, attacks, the game's resources like hearts and rupees. Then, the adventure takes that system and builds an actual adventure on top: the palaces, skull woods, ganon's tower, the boomerang, hook shot, fire rod, etc.
The adventure can't be built without a system, the system isn't a game by itself, but together they form a wonderful game.
It's hard to sum all of this up, and I tried to condense it into the blog post, but by implementing the principles I read about in the 1e AD&D DMG, there was a constant need for money and power. In Old School Essentials there was no need for money or power. Probably the best extrapolation of creating a need for money and power in B/X math I've seen has been ACKs. For example, the rewards of monsters are different between the two, distances are different, the number of monsters appearing are different. You *could* apply principles from the 1e DMG to a B/X game, and I have, but we are talking about something greater than a year long spanning more than five levels that may include siege engines, the speed of horses vs. donkeys, flying mounts and fall damage (not in OD&D except in aerial combat!) It starts to fall apart or become fiat when it becomes complex enough.
As a result, if you are aiming for a sprawling, serious, grounded world that the players can consistently invest in and know you aren't just pulling stuff out of your butt, here B/X and AD&D diverge in math, rules and concepts. I found that players who wanted a serious challenge in a complex world really engaged with the game when they knew that I was impartially adjudicating these models upon which the world worked.
In the 1e DMG there's a particular section I think is mainly applicable called "The Campaign" and it's unique ideas are the main ones I'm talking about. There it suggests how fast monsters should repopulate an area, how the migration of adventurers might work, inflationary economics and the scope of a campaign to name a few things. While it's ensconced in a lot of Gygaxian prose, there are ideas there for how a whole fantasy simulation can unfold that OSE just doesn't have.
It's hard to answer some of your questions because it's kind of holistic, it's "all of it." When I didn't have a robust fantasy simulation, I either had to make up the challenges for players when they ask a question ("Why don't we just convince the Bailiff to loan us 200 men? The kingdom is at stake!"), or I had to leave the world static and unprepared for their solutions (horses now negate the sandbox.)
When you do have a robust fantasy simulation, what happened in my experience is that world was *just there.* It didn't care, or face the players at all. At the same time it was *fair*. I felt like I could hand players the rules (and often did) and just shut up and they'd run the game until I was needed. When everything from economics to weather works on predictable models, the players could make real plans without any "mother may I?" to it. It's not just "why do I need money" it's that if you bring any amount of treasure in town to get xp you'll gain notice by the local margrave. He is a wicked man, and there's not doubt he'll start a provocation.
Right off the bat you'll need a safe place to store this gold or it will be gone. You could work with a fence or broker to allow you a cache in the undercity, that could work for a time (for the reasonable price of 500 gold pieces). Ultimately you are going to need to deal with these bullies though. For that you will need power. It so happens there are sellswords who already hate the Margrave, but they aren't cheap either....
Something something sword and sorcery, etc. etc. etc.
The entire game is about gaining power and money. You need money and power to survive in the overworld, and to get it you'll need to go into the underworld. But to get the wealth from the underworld you need power.... The gameplay loop runs itself! I could point to the principles on Page 90 of the AD&D DMG, but here Appendix N is important (which is mentioned on Page 90), and concepts in other sections. No one has said the 1e DMG is an easy read!
Even the level design point is holistic to system. Rappan Athuk is thoroughly, thoroughly 1e AD&D in character. I think this is a problem sometimes when discussing game systems. Sometimes we tend not to think of them as the artists, the prose, the vibe, the artwork, the culture of play, the adventures and the implied fiction all together, but just the buttons you press in a math formula. To me, this "classical play" represents the whole thing, not just the mechanical math. So yes Rappan Athuk was better suited for Otherworld, but I *used adventures perfectly made for OSE threaded into Evening Lands.* For example: Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, The Monolith Beyond Space and Time and The Shadow of Tower Silveraxe were all used in this ambitious OSE campaign. They were perfectly suited for it.
Just as Rappan Athuk was perfect for Swords & Wizardry, those threaded OSE adventures were perfect for OSE, but the entire vibe, art, culture of play and...well *everything*, not just the rules or the level design, all of it aimed for something different than something classical.
I think it wasn't that the level design wasn't appropriate, I think that the campaign scope and style wasn't appropriate.
I think a modern adventure game is just really great for hopping in and getting at an adventure.
I question if it's great for a massive, simulationist wargame.
I had a read through the campaign section of the 1e DMG, and the main bits that stuck out to me were that you subjectively grade each player's handling of their character on a 1 (best) to 4 (worst) scale, and then that's how many weeks of training it takes to level up provided that you have enough xp to do so. Each week of training takes 1500 • current_level gold. So if everyone is getting an average grade of ~2, then we're talking 3000g to go from level 1 to 2, which is more xp than it takes to go from level 1 to 2. All of this is found on the 1e DMG page 86.
These training costs are linear, and xp to level is exponential, so eventually this is fine, but this consumes *a lot* of gold.
The second bit that stuck out was the taxes section on p90. Gygax suggests: a 1% tax on all trade goods (2% for foreigners), an additional 5% (so 7% total for foreigners) for luxury goods, a totally laughably small entry fee, a 10% sales tax, a 5% property tax, a 5% foreign currency tax, a 10% exchange rate tax, and a 10% tax on transactions involving gems.
You can... tell that Gygax was an accountant :D
So, if I'm getting this right, a party of foreigners who loots 1200g in ancient gold pieces, 300g in trade goods, 400g in luxury goods, and 200g in gems would:
Assuming that they're liquidating a haul to pay for training expenses, they'll pay 2% on the trade goods (6g), 7% on the luxury goods (28g), 5% on the ancient gold (60g) for a total of 94g. Then, they'd need to go exchange the gold for proper gold. They have 1106g left, so if they exchange it they'll have 995g (111g loss). Then if they attempt to sell the liquidate the trade and luxury goods, they'll pay 70g in taxes there. They'll lose 20g in value from the gems. At the end, they lose 201g of their 2000g haul. So they're able to buy 1799g worth of training.
It sure seems like we could either give out 10% less treasure or make things 10% more expensive and not do any of this bookkeeping :shrug:
> You need money and power to survive in the overworld, and to get it you'll need to go into the underworld.
> Right off the bat you'll need a safe place to store this gold or it will be gone. You could work with a fence or broker to allow you a cache in the undercity, that could work for a time (for the reasonable price of 500 gold pieces). Ultimately you are going to need to deal with these bullies though
Is this a mechanic from the book, or something that you're doing with a house rule or GM fiat? Like, say that they *do* get a room in the inn and store there valuables in it. Are there rules around how to resolve that, or do you just decide that it's gone? Say they spend their money on securing their money - are there mechanics (like some sort of mini game) for how well their protections work? Trying to figure out how the players would be able to make informed decisions on protecting their money vs money spent on stuff they actually have to buy like training.
Just to be clear: "1:1 timekeeping" (as the term is generally employed on the internet these days) is NOT a principle of AD&D play nor "classic gaming" in the "Gygaxian milieu" sense.
[I acknowledge that you may not be using the term as it is bandied about by certain members of the community/hobby. However, in "classic D&D" circles it has come to take on a particular meaning...similar to the way "roleplaying" has. And so I feel the clarification is necessary]
Sounds like you had great fun running Rappan Athuk. I've heard good things about RA, though I haven't read/played it myself. The Webb quote is a little weird...but I'm probably not getting the full context. Regardless, it sounds like you're (still?) enjoying that campaign, which is great.
That being said, I'm not sure I dig on some of the conclusions you've drawn here. The judgment you've made on your experience (what's worked, what's hasn't, and why) will, in my estimation, limit your ability to continue play and find enjoyment with the hobby going forward:
1) you've decided "I'm not a designer," and are thus reliant on a premade setting/world that is "expertly crafted" (even though you write "the world building was actually about the same in scope and complexity to Evening Lands").
2) you've decided that the game requires "highly invested" players and that you lucked out by finding a group that is "nearly perfect."
3) you've decided that one "downside" to classic adventure gaming is that the "modern style" is easier and more accessible.
4) you SEEM to be saying (perhaps I'm wrong) that the main way to keep players "hungry"/ambitious for more treasure (i.e. in order to perpetuate the gameplay loop) is to restrict or limit the amount of treasure they find...you seem to be praising RA's "seemingly cruel lack" of loot in contrast to your Evening Lands' players having so much treasure that there was no incentive for them to adventure further.
So, yeah. I'd refute all of this.
The basic versions of D&D (Holmes, B/X, BECMI) were written to be INTRODUCTIONS to the game, using simplified/streamlined rules to introduce concepts to new players. They were not designed to be played long-term. The various retro-clones (Labyrinth Lord, OSE, etc.) based on these basic games were written for different reasons, but suffer from the same issue.
If sustained, long-term ("campaign") play is desired, different systems (like AD&D and OD&D) work better. However, these do not require "expertly crafted" settings...the system itself force players to interact with the economy (spending money, requiring the acquisition of more), perpetuating the gameplay loop.
Likewise, these systems do not require "elite" "highly invested" players. I've taught AD&D to kids as young as 10, and it is fine for a pickup game (I've run 1E games at conventions with new adults and one-off games with youngsters; my regular campaign is run for kids ages 10-13). The DM needs to be competent with the system, but it's not all that tough to learn/play. ALSO, it's far simpler to create characters in 1E than in 5E (a modern system)...and while something more "rules light" might be quicker in THAT regard, rules light systems suffer from a lack of robustness and, thus, should not be in the discussion if you are looking at the classic adventure paradigm of play.
Just reading this post again, I'd hazard to guess your Evening Lands campaign would have worked better (and been sustainable) with a system other than OSE...something like 1E AD&D (perhaps with some *Oriental Adventures* flourishes to give it that Studio Ghibli vibe). Thousands and thousands of gold pieces in treasure means little when PCs are spending hundreds (or thousands) per month (on themselves and their henchmen) for the built-in lifestyle expenses.
["support & upkeep" expenses being a part of OD&D, I'd be surprised if they weren't also present in S&W (though I don't play S&W, so what do I know?) which would have me wondering how any party with a "cruel lack" of treasure isn't eating dirt after a handful of adventures]
Anyway. I'm glad you found a way to play D&D that gives you some juice. That's great! But I would suggest AGAINST limiting yourself to premade settings and "elite" players. In my experience, adventure gaming is a bit broader than this.
1:1 timekeeping is clearly described in OD&D Book III, as well as in the 1e AD&D DMG. It may not be how most people play it, but it is what is described in the books. It even gets reference in D&D modules, including the Tomb of Horrors. It appears in many other TTRPG rulebooks of the era, even to the extent that games would call out that they used some other scale of timekeeping, like a game season per week or month of play.
The concepts of playing with game time associated to real time predates D&D by at least 50 years, and remains alive and well in other TTRPG lines. When using the OD&D and 1e AD&D rules as they are (not imposing BX-derived conceptions onto them), 1:1 time still proves its strength to this day.
I am speaking of a particular take on 1:1 timekeeping that is promulgated about certain areas of the internet based on a poor interpretation, not 1:1 timekeeping in general which (in the DMG) is suggested as best to use "when no play is happening."
I suppose I'm not clear on what 1:1 timekeeping you're arguing against?
1e AD&D gives clear examples of how to use 1:1 time between sessions, as well as examples of how game time relates to real time even during sessions. Citations from the 1e AD&D DMG unless otherwise noted...
Page 37 is the well known "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening", and page 38 explains that characters may be "excluded from game sessions" based on characters already being played out in-game past the current date.
Page 71 discusses hesitation by players during combat, meaning their entire turn could be skipped if they dither too long: "Delay in deciding what is to be done should be noted, as such hesitation will basically mean that the individual is not doing anything whatsoever during the period, but he or she is simply standing by and dithering, trying to arrive at a decision as to what should be done."
Page 71 clearly suggests that nearby enemies could overhear the players actual talking: "Conversations regarding such activities is the same as if player characters were talking aloud"
PHB, page 39 talks about the passage of time during play sessions: "while actual time playing is about the same for a dungeon adventure, the game time spent is much greater in the case of outdoor adventures."
Spellcasting gets even more callouts regarding real time during sessions in PHB page 39 "If it takes 6 seconds to decide on which spell to cast, 1 segment of the round is gone." and page 88 "Casting time is the actual number of seconds - at six per segment - to phrase the limited wish."
This is not to say you must sit around doing nothing for 10 real minutes to pass 10 minutes in the game, but simply to say that game time -never pauses-, even in sessions or during combat, or between sessions.
Folks are, of course, allowed to enjoy their gaming however they like. The point of my comment was only to clarify what is (and is not) a "principle" of "classic" adventure gaming.
Thanks! Yes I think Evening Lands would have worked better with a more robust system. Disagreement on the conclusion that one doesn’t need to be elite to approach the 1e DMG style of play noted! I do think I disagree, not included are my many attempts to actually do that.
I think there might be good ways to have a bridge from a simple game into a robust, ambitious one though and heck, OD&D seems to offer solutions there. There are plenty of very simple OD&D retroclones, or an experienced referee could do it. Or you could start with something closer to B/X then move to something more robust if the campaign demands it.
I didn’t mean to paint an “all or nothing” point of view, but I remain convinced that the style of play described in the 1e DMG is ambitious and not for everyone, and that’s ok.
I’m 50 years old. Because of the life I lead, my time for gaming is limited. For me, there came a point when I had to decide: do I want to keep restarting my campaign with different settings / different systems every few month/years? Or do I simply play a system I know well (and that works for long-term play) and devote my creative juices to building a perpetual game world (and designing adventures therein) that will be available for me every time I and some friends want to sit down and game?
I chose the latter path, and I think this is the kind of game Gygax is outlining in his DMG text when it comes to “building campaigns.” And it’s made all the difference in the world.
Perhaps you prefer S&S stuff; perhaps you prefer whimsical Ghibli. Perhaps you’d like a mash-up of both. All three of those things are possible with AD&D, if you’re talking about FLAVOR.
But AD&D gameplay isn’t the same as story-focused gaming. It HAS a focus…one supported by the system…that has elements of various storytelling mediums (books, cinema), but its gameplay is its own. Players (or DMs) that ignore the gameplay it provides will generally be unsatisfied.
However, those who embrace it will have some good times.
RE “bridge games”
If you’re playing with people completely new to D&D, B/X is the simplest, best introduction. If the players already know B/C (or a clone like OSE), then 1E will face few wrinkles for them…it’s a fairly easy step-up, depending on the age of your players. For adults it shouldn’t be very hard at all.
Now, for YOU (as DM) it might be a tad more daunting…but you already have the capability of world-building (as demonstrated by your Evening Lands setting). After knowing the rules, world building is the second biggest priority of play. Nail down those two things, and you’re golden…for a long, long time.
Dead serious.
Sorry if that all sounds preachy, but as a busy (and old) guy, I don’t have the time or bandwidth for lesser forms of (D&D) gaming. Some day, you might feel the same…and you might find yourself saying (as I did myself) “man, why did I wait so long to do this?”
Really good post and I'll be chewing on it for a while.
"In a kinder, gentler fantasy world, the only thing that ever made sense to put an adventure toward was heroism and curiosity, and I found this to be an exhausting matter of continually trying to come up with the next entertaining thing to try to keep players playing."
The "greed is good" concept is really important I feel. Players being dodgy rogues who venture forth out of direct self-interest have a way of automatically generating stories in way that heroes don't. They're antagonists, they have a reason to actively involve themselves in other people's situations instead of just responding to whatever it is the baddies do.
I ran a game once where the PCs were supervillains literally just fighting Spider-Man. It worked a lot better than if they'd been superheroes. Villains can make their own decisions about whether they want to rob a bank or crash a party or build a doomsday device, etc, whereas superheroes have to sit around waiting to see what the heroes do.
One thing I think is really valuable here is your point about having detailed rules to model the world. If the players are going to be actively modifying the world to suit their needs it's good to have a whole bunch of procedures you can use to work out what's going to happen, instead of just making ad hoc rulings all the time. I'll have to think more about that.
I can imagine that if you were going to run e.g. a supervillain game, the best way to do it would be to have all sorts of information about how to rob a bank or build a death ray on hand so that you can generate a sufficiently complex response from the world in a way that mere ad hoc rulings couldn't do.
The bit about explaining to the players what they need to do, and what's being asked of them, is also very helpful. An underrated part of RPG theory is the question of what players need to bring to the table, and how DMs can make sure they have the right expectations.
Hi, Shadowdark has a free Quickstart that covers levels 1-3. We played for months using the Quickstart rules, which includes a great starter adventure, The Scarlet Citadel. You may want to add this to your resource list at the blog's end. https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/413713/Shadowdark-RPG-Quickstart-Set
Excellent article! I'm a big advocate for the "zero prep" playstyle. Sitting down for the first session of a brand new campaign with nothing prepared except a mostly unlabeled world map, and no adventure material at all (because I didn't know where the players would want to play), was absolutely nerve wracking, but it actually worked! The referee must read the rulebooks and become familiar enough with them to be able to find rules quickly. Practice with the random generation systems, like Appendixes A through C, helps them to be used seamlessly throughout play.
Recording your experiences, the good and bad of each playstyle, is a big contribution to the hobby. Hopefully it will help us break through the idea that all D&D campaigns have to be centered around stories for the player characters.
Zero prep is the golden dream of RPGs but you have to actually do a fair bet of prep to enable zero prep. Which is funny. You still save time though.
A really important point of OSR games, I feel, is that the PCs are not the protagonists. Something that often works well is having them go up against people who are the actual protagonists - like paladins or detectives or a farm boy who's secretly the chosen one. Decentring the players and putting them in a world that doesn't care whether they live or die is really important. (This is why Cugel's Saga is so iconic, I think).
I super appreciate your thoroughness and honesty in this piece and it mirrors a lot of my own journey, even as I realize that if I ever did want to engage in the sort of Adventure Gaming you're talking about I'd need to find a completely different group and I don't even know if I'd enjoy it as much - but that's got me at least thinking I should try to play in a group like that and hope I could live up to the standards required.
While I might still like to include more High Weirdness and Nonhumans in my player character groups, I think it can work when you remember that just because the _party_ gets along doesn't mean that the rest of the world sees eye to eye, and in fact can be used as a great source of conflict as it would in numerous real world examples of a band of rangy outsiders interacting with organized society.
One of the greatest things about this hobby is just how much room there is for all of these things and more and it's wonderful to see such a well-thought-out take on a very specific niche.
Hi! That's a really nice articles and I agree with some of the points. Howeve, I think you're stretching it a bit far here.
In game #1 you had a bad campaign, made bad rulings and had ordinary players (I don't want to call them bad, but there is nothing good to say about them, from your experience)
In game #2 you had a good prepared module that was the core of your campaign, had your rulings done by Gygax for you and had awesome players.
I... Don't really think the trouble was in the game, TBH. Yeah, advanced game gives you A LOT of needed rules so you never need to do the legwork yourself - but it limits you to a specific mileu Gygax imagined, while you can replicate the success collecting rulings after each game - all while making them good for your specific mileu.
I don't think that playing RAW Adnd was the most important part here.
This post has me excited to try classic play some day. I feel that a lot of OSR fans put too much emphasis on the rules-lite and rulings-not-rules side of things and forget the emphasis on the Game.
You differentiated between player/character-facing rules and world/simulation-facing rules. Do you think with the right world/simulation-facing rules, a game with minimal player/character-facing rules such as Shadowdark or Cairn can work on this grand scale?
I really like this question a lot. When I get back to my computer this evening I look forward to chatting about it.
It's legit a really good question I feel.
I really like the bit about world/simulation-facing rules, it's making me wonder if I've always underestimated this as an important part of OSR gameplay.
I keep thinking about Cugel the Clever here. The classic RPG protagonist, a guy with no skills of any kind who has to navigate an entire complex fantasy world using nothing but his wits and a complete lack of moral fibre. I can see running a game where the PCs are just a health bar and an attack roll but there's a million systems for controlling economics and magic and war between kingdoms.
Hello again Guy Potts. I'm back at my computer. To answer your question, "yes." To further answer it in three games: Adventurer Conqueror King, Classic Traveller and OD&D.
I'll post here a similar response I gave elsewhere. It’s related imo to the earlier blog about Classic Traveller.
In Classic Traveller the rules that are character facing are almost as minimalist as Knave. The rules that are world facing are almost as complex as AD&D.
The Character facing elements literally can fit on a single line of six alpha-numeric characters. (Yes there's skills and money, all together they can fit on a single line across a page.)
The world facing elements require you to have money, which require you to Travel(l) which require you to get involved with problems, which require money. Imo, OD&D is also a great example of this character facing minimalism vs world facing complexity and diversity
I often think about how the players in Blackmoor didn’t know the rules to the game and Dave’s character died in Wesley’s game to a single die roll. But there were immensely complicated rules for siege warfare and the effects of wind 😂
Which leads me back to: Adventurer Conqueror King
I think ACKS is the ultimate expression based on my reading so far of "this will bring simulation to B/X." As noted in this blog, I did attempt to use elements of BECMI in Evening Lands. In other games I tried other grand simulation elements such as the faction system in Worlds/Stars Without Number. None were terrible, but none caught on. Most of them were held back by elements that ultimately made the game face the characters and had problems similar to those I describe above.
ACKS could simply have it's mechanisms for markets, economics, warfare and trade played independently of the character facing game I think. My friend says his players would solo play some of it's elements between gameplay sessions, and that he has a second layer to the game which is a wargame where whole portions of the map change, while players play within it's boundaries unaware. I suspect ACKS tables could be used in Knave, Cairn or Shadowdark.
That is an experiment for another time, but one I hope to do. My next blog post will be about our experiments with Shadowdark, and I'm considering mentioning that as an experiment.
I’m reassured to hear you say that it’s possible, and it’s so interesting to learn that traveller’s player-facing rules are compatible to Knave in complexity! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for world-facing rules in other systems and will have to have a proper look at ACKS. I gather that Harnworld/Harnmaster is highly simulationist and probably has a million world-facing rules, I wonder if it would be the ultimate version of this concept.
An epic write up my friend! I'm running an OD&D campaign right now and now that we found our groove its become the best time I've ever had running games.
Howdy! Thanks for the thoughts; this is in-depth.
Some notes, as well as places I'd love elaboration:
> Another problem was horses. In OSE horses travel at 24 miles per day if encumbered and there is no further nuance given. In the Evening Lands OSE Advanced Fantasy campaign as soon as the players bought horses, they could traverse from one end of the sandbox to the other in a day or two. Exploration was over. [...] In S&W it is nuanced and more limiting, going so far as making the speed of a mount possibly less than their rider in some terrain (and changing it even further if they are trying to map and explore!)
The 24 miles/day speed should still be subject to terrain modifiers: https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Wilderness_Adventuring#Terrain_Modifiers so they'll going 12 miles/day in mountains, swamps, and jungles.
> This is related to the previous point but it could basically be summed up in that Old School Essentials does not offer a lot of reasons to buy estate, and there's not much else to spend your thousands of gold pieces worth of treasure on. And yet thousands of gold pieces of treasure is how you level.
Totally agree; BX *showers* players with money and nothing to spend it on. Later you write:
> The result was that in a game that was hard, and had a clear goal, that required money, it was very much a game they could win or lose. Much like a wargame, the players began working together to come up with solutions. They chatted continously between sessions. It was hard to keep up with at time! I even had to create limits on gameplay between sessions just for my real life sake!
What did they need money for in your Otherworld game? I see "The whole thing created a loop where they needed to go adventuring to get money, and they needed money to build estate, they needed estate to deal with overland problems and progress their goals (help people, provide security, clear monsters, craft spells, many things!)."
Those all sound like fictional problems that would exist if you were to play rappan athuk with BX, or was 1e adding something here? Granted, BX's specialists, mercenaries, and construction guidance is sparse.
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The big takeaway for me here is that it's sometimes easy to think of the system as being the game when really it's the *system and adventure*. It sounds like your otherland campaign was better designed (the pieces fit together better, the incentives were better aligned, the scope was more focused, etc) than your evening lands campaign.
Take, for example, The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past. The "system" is all of the back end programming. How movement works, attacks, the game's resources like hearts and rupees. Then, the adventure takes that system and builds an actual adventure on top: the palaces, skull woods, ganon's tower, the boomerang, hook shot, fire rod, etc.
The adventure can't be built without a system, the system isn't a game by itself, but together they form a wonderful game.
It's hard to sum all of this up, and I tried to condense it into the blog post, but by implementing the principles I read about in the 1e AD&D DMG, there was a constant need for money and power. In Old School Essentials there was no need for money or power. Probably the best extrapolation of creating a need for money and power in B/X math I've seen has been ACKs. For example, the rewards of monsters are different between the two, distances are different, the number of monsters appearing are different. You *could* apply principles from the 1e DMG to a B/X game, and I have, but we are talking about something greater than a year long spanning more than five levels that may include siege engines, the speed of horses vs. donkeys, flying mounts and fall damage (not in OD&D except in aerial combat!) It starts to fall apart or become fiat when it becomes complex enough.
As a result, if you are aiming for a sprawling, serious, grounded world that the players can consistently invest in and know you aren't just pulling stuff out of your butt, here B/X and AD&D diverge in math, rules and concepts. I found that players who wanted a serious challenge in a complex world really engaged with the game when they knew that I was impartially adjudicating these models upon which the world worked.
In the 1e DMG there's a particular section I think is mainly applicable called "The Campaign" and it's unique ideas are the main ones I'm talking about. There it suggests how fast monsters should repopulate an area, how the migration of adventurers might work, inflationary economics and the scope of a campaign to name a few things. While it's ensconced in a lot of Gygaxian prose, there are ideas there for how a whole fantasy simulation can unfold that OSE just doesn't have.
It's hard to answer some of your questions because it's kind of holistic, it's "all of it." When I didn't have a robust fantasy simulation, I either had to make up the challenges for players when they ask a question ("Why don't we just convince the Bailiff to loan us 200 men? The kingdom is at stake!"), or I had to leave the world static and unprepared for their solutions (horses now negate the sandbox.)
When you do have a robust fantasy simulation, what happened in my experience is that world was *just there.* It didn't care, or face the players at all. At the same time it was *fair*. I felt like I could hand players the rules (and often did) and just shut up and they'd run the game until I was needed. When everything from economics to weather works on predictable models, the players could make real plans without any "mother may I?" to it. It's not just "why do I need money" it's that if you bring any amount of treasure in town to get xp you'll gain notice by the local margrave. He is a wicked man, and there's not doubt he'll start a provocation.
Right off the bat you'll need a safe place to store this gold or it will be gone. You could work with a fence or broker to allow you a cache in the undercity, that could work for a time (for the reasonable price of 500 gold pieces). Ultimately you are going to need to deal with these bullies though. For that you will need power. It so happens there are sellswords who already hate the Margrave, but they aren't cheap either....
Something something sword and sorcery, etc. etc. etc.
The entire game is about gaining power and money. You need money and power to survive in the overworld, and to get it you'll need to go into the underworld. But to get the wealth from the underworld you need power.... The gameplay loop runs itself! I could point to the principles on Page 90 of the AD&D DMG, but here Appendix N is important (which is mentioned on Page 90), and concepts in other sections. No one has said the 1e DMG is an easy read!
Even the level design point is holistic to system. Rappan Athuk is thoroughly, thoroughly 1e AD&D in character. I think this is a problem sometimes when discussing game systems. Sometimes we tend not to think of them as the artists, the prose, the vibe, the artwork, the culture of play, the adventures and the implied fiction all together, but just the buttons you press in a math formula. To me, this "classical play" represents the whole thing, not just the mechanical math. So yes Rappan Athuk was better suited for Otherworld, but I *used adventures perfectly made for OSE threaded into Evening Lands.* For example: Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, The Monolith Beyond Space and Time and The Shadow of Tower Silveraxe were all used in this ambitious OSE campaign. They were perfectly suited for it.
Just as Rappan Athuk was perfect for Swords & Wizardry, those threaded OSE adventures were perfect for OSE, but the entire vibe, art, culture of play and...well *everything*, not just the rules or the level design, all of it aimed for something different than something classical.
I think it wasn't that the level design wasn't appropriate, I think that the campaign scope and style wasn't appropriate.
I think a modern adventure game is just really great for hopping in and getting at an adventure.
I question if it's great for a massive, simulationist wargame.
At the very least I failed to do it!
Thanks for the extensive reply!
I had a read through the campaign section of the 1e DMG, and the main bits that stuck out to me were that you subjectively grade each player's handling of their character on a 1 (best) to 4 (worst) scale, and then that's how many weeks of training it takes to level up provided that you have enough xp to do so. Each week of training takes 1500 • current_level gold. So if everyone is getting an average grade of ~2, then we're talking 3000g to go from level 1 to 2, which is more xp than it takes to go from level 1 to 2. All of this is found on the 1e DMG page 86.
These training costs are linear, and xp to level is exponential, so eventually this is fine, but this consumes *a lot* of gold.
The second bit that stuck out was the taxes section on p90. Gygax suggests: a 1% tax on all trade goods (2% for foreigners), an additional 5% (so 7% total for foreigners) for luxury goods, a totally laughably small entry fee, a 10% sales tax, a 5% property tax, a 5% foreign currency tax, a 10% exchange rate tax, and a 10% tax on transactions involving gems.
You can... tell that Gygax was an accountant :D
So, if I'm getting this right, a party of foreigners who loots 1200g in ancient gold pieces, 300g in trade goods, 400g in luxury goods, and 200g in gems would:
Assuming that they're liquidating a haul to pay for training expenses, they'll pay 2% on the trade goods (6g), 7% on the luxury goods (28g), 5% on the ancient gold (60g) for a total of 94g. Then, they'd need to go exchange the gold for proper gold. They have 1106g left, so if they exchange it they'll have 995g (111g loss). Then if they attempt to sell the liquidate the trade and luxury goods, they'll pay 70g in taxes there. They'll lose 20g in value from the gems. At the end, they lose 201g of their 2000g haul. So they're able to buy 1799g worth of training.
It sure seems like we could either give out 10% less treasure or make things 10% more expensive and not do any of this bookkeeping :shrug:
> You need money and power to survive in the overworld, and to get it you'll need to go into the underworld.
What are you spending the money on? OSE has monthly mercenary costs (https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Mercenaries) but they're *cheap*. Heavy infantry costs 3g per month, which is laughably small. Does 1e use similar numbers?
> Right off the bat you'll need a safe place to store this gold or it will be gone. You could work with a fence or broker to allow you a cache in the undercity, that could work for a time (for the reasonable price of 500 gold pieces). Ultimately you are going to need to deal with these bullies though
Is this a mechanic from the book, or something that you're doing with a house rule or GM fiat? Like, say that they *do* get a room in the inn and store there valuables in it. Are there rules around how to resolve that, or do you just decide that it's gone? Say they spend their money on securing their money - are there mechanics (like some sort of mini game) for how well their protections work? Trying to figure out how the players would be able to make informed decisions on protecting their money vs money spent on stuff they actually have to buy like training.
Just to be clear: "1:1 timekeeping" (as the term is generally employed on the internet these days) is NOT a principle of AD&D play nor "classic gaming" in the "Gygaxian milieu" sense.
[I acknowledge that you may not be using the term as it is bandied about by certain members of the community/hobby. However, in "classic D&D" circles it has come to take on a particular meaning...similar to the way "roleplaying" has. And so I feel the clarification is necessary]
Sounds like you had great fun running Rappan Athuk. I've heard good things about RA, though I haven't read/played it myself. The Webb quote is a little weird...but I'm probably not getting the full context. Regardless, it sounds like you're (still?) enjoying that campaign, which is great.
That being said, I'm not sure I dig on some of the conclusions you've drawn here. The judgment you've made on your experience (what's worked, what's hasn't, and why) will, in my estimation, limit your ability to continue play and find enjoyment with the hobby going forward:
1) you've decided "I'm not a designer," and are thus reliant on a premade setting/world that is "expertly crafted" (even though you write "the world building was actually about the same in scope and complexity to Evening Lands").
2) you've decided that the game requires "highly invested" players and that you lucked out by finding a group that is "nearly perfect."
3) you've decided that one "downside" to classic adventure gaming is that the "modern style" is easier and more accessible.
4) you SEEM to be saying (perhaps I'm wrong) that the main way to keep players "hungry"/ambitious for more treasure (i.e. in order to perpetuate the gameplay loop) is to restrict or limit the amount of treasure they find...you seem to be praising RA's "seemingly cruel lack" of loot in contrast to your Evening Lands' players having so much treasure that there was no incentive for them to adventure further.
So, yeah. I'd refute all of this.
The basic versions of D&D (Holmes, B/X, BECMI) were written to be INTRODUCTIONS to the game, using simplified/streamlined rules to introduce concepts to new players. They were not designed to be played long-term. The various retro-clones (Labyrinth Lord, OSE, etc.) based on these basic games were written for different reasons, but suffer from the same issue.
If sustained, long-term ("campaign") play is desired, different systems (like AD&D and OD&D) work better. However, these do not require "expertly crafted" settings...the system itself force players to interact with the economy (spending money, requiring the acquisition of more), perpetuating the gameplay loop.
Likewise, these systems do not require "elite" "highly invested" players. I've taught AD&D to kids as young as 10, and it is fine for a pickup game (I've run 1E games at conventions with new adults and one-off games with youngsters; my regular campaign is run for kids ages 10-13). The DM needs to be competent with the system, but it's not all that tough to learn/play. ALSO, it's far simpler to create characters in 1E than in 5E (a modern system)...and while something more "rules light" might be quicker in THAT regard, rules light systems suffer from a lack of robustness and, thus, should not be in the discussion if you are looking at the classic adventure paradigm of play.
Just reading this post again, I'd hazard to guess your Evening Lands campaign would have worked better (and been sustainable) with a system other than OSE...something like 1E AD&D (perhaps with some *Oriental Adventures* flourishes to give it that Studio Ghibli vibe). Thousands and thousands of gold pieces in treasure means little when PCs are spending hundreds (or thousands) per month (on themselves and their henchmen) for the built-in lifestyle expenses.
["support & upkeep" expenses being a part of OD&D, I'd be surprised if they weren't also present in S&W (though I don't play S&W, so what do I know?) which would have me wondering how any party with a "cruel lack" of treasure isn't eating dirt after a handful of adventures]
Anyway. I'm glad you found a way to play D&D that gives you some juice. That's great! But I would suggest AGAINST limiting yourself to premade settings and "elite" players. In my experience, adventure gaming is a bit broader than this.
; )
1:1 timekeeping is clearly described in OD&D Book III, as well as in the 1e AD&D DMG. It may not be how most people play it, but it is what is described in the books. It even gets reference in D&D modules, including the Tomb of Horrors. It appears in many other TTRPG rulebooks of the era, even to the extent that games would call out that they used some other scale of timekeeping, like a game season per week or month of play.
The concepts of playing with game time associated to real time predates D&D by at least 50 years, and remains alive and well in other TTRPG lines. When using the OD&D and 1e AD&D rules as they are (not imposing BX-derived conceptions onto them), 1:1 time still proves its strength to this day.
I am speaking of a particular take on 1:1 timekeeping that is promulgated about certain areas of the internet based on a poor interpretation, not 1:1 timekeeping in general which (in the DMG) is suggested as best to use "when no play is happening."
I suppose I'm not clear on what 1:1 timekeeping you're arguing against?
1e AD&D gives clear examples of how to use 1:1 time between sessions, as well as examples of how game time relates to real time even during sessions. Citations from the 1e AD&D DMG unless otherwise noted...
Page 37 is the well known "it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening", and page 38 explains that characters may be "excluded from game sessions" based on characters already being played out in-game past the current date.
Page 71 discusses hesitation by players during combat, meaning their entire turn could be skipped if they dither too long: "Delay in deciding what is to be done should be noted, as such hesitation will basically mean that the individual is not doing anything whatsoever during the period, but he or she is simply standing by and dithering, trying to arrive at a decision as to what should be done."
Page 71 clearly suggests that nearby enemies could overhear the players actual talking: "Conversations regarding such activities is the same as if player characters were talking aloud"
PHB, page 39 talks about the passage of time during play sessions: "while actual time playing is about the same for a dungeon adventure, the game time spent is much greater in the case of outdoor adventures."
Spellcasting gets even more callouts regarding real time during sessions in PHB page 39 "If it takes 6 seconds to decide on which spell to cast, 1 segment of the round is gone." and page 88 "Casting time is the actual number of seconds - at six per segment - to phrase the limited wish."
This is not to say you must sit around doing nothing for 10 real minutes to pass 10 minutes in the game, but simply to say that game time -never pauses-, even in sessions or during combat, or between sessions.
Game time certainly may pause between sessions; it would otherwise be impossible to run something like the D-series of adventures.
I've already written at length about this, and do not wish to take up MMR's blog space refuting points here. Feel free to comment on my blog:
https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2022/07/jeffros-d.html
Folks are, of course, allowed to enjoy their gaming however they like. The point of my comment was only to clarify what is (and is not) a "principle" of "classic" adventure gaming.
https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2023/12/taking-castles.html
Thanks! Yes I think Evening Lands would have worked better with a more robust system. Disagreement on the conclusion that one doesn’t need to be elite to approach the 1e DMG style of play noted! I do think I disagree, not included are my many attempts to actually do that.
I think there might be good ways to have a bridge from a simple game into a robust, ambitious one though and heck, OD&D seems to offer solutions there. There are plenty of very simple OD&D retroclones, or an experienced referee could do it. Or you could start with something closer to B/X then move to something more robust if the campaign demands it.
I didn’t mean to paint an “all or nothing” point of view, but I remain convinced that the style of play described in the 1e DMG is ambitious and not for everyone, and that’s ok.
All well and good.
Here’s one(+) thing I’ll add:
I’m 50 years old. Because of the life I lead, my time for gaming is limited. For me, there came a point when I had to decide: do I want to keep restarting my campaign with different settings / different systems every few month/years? Or do I simply play a system I know well (and that works for long-term play) and devote my creative juices to building a perpetual game world (and designing adventures therein) that will be available for me every time I and some friends want to sit down and game?
I chose the latter path, and I think this is the kind of game Gygax is outlining in his DMG text when it comes to “building campaigns.” And it’s made all the difference in the world.
Perhaps you prefer S&S stuff; perhaps you prefer whimsical Ghibli. Perhaps you’d like a mash-up of both. All three of those things are possible with AD&D, if you’re talking about FLAVOR.
But AD&D gameplay isn’t the same as story-focused gaming. It HAS a focus…one supported by the system…that has elements of various storytelling mediums (books, cinema), but its gameplay is its own. Players (or DMs) that ignore the gameplay it provides will generally be unsatisfied.
However, those who embrace it will have some good times.
RE “bridge games”
If you’re playing with people completely new to D&D, B/X is the simplest, best introduction. If the players already know B/C (or a clone like OSE), then 1E will face few wrinkles for them…it’s a fairly easy step-up, depending on the age of your players. For adults it shouldn’t be very hard at all.
Now, for YOU (as DM) it might be a tad more daunting…but you already have the capability of world-building (as demonstrated by your Evening Lands setting). After knowing the rules, world building is the second biggest priority of play. Nail down those two things, and you’re golden…for a long, long time.
Dead serious.
Sorry if that all sounds preachy, but as a busy (and old) guy, I don’t have the time or bandwidth for lesser forms of (D&D) gaming. Some day, you might feel the same…and you might find yourself saying (as I did myself) “man, why did I wait so long to do this?”
Just saying.
; )
thank you!
Really good post and I'll be chewing on it for a while.
"In a kinder, gentler fantasy world, the only thing that ever made sense to put an adventure toward was heroism and curiosity, and I found this to be an exhausting matter of continually trying to come up with the next entertaining thing to try to keep players playing."
The "greed is good" concept is really important I feel. Players being dodgy rogues who venture forth out of direct self-interest have a way of automatically generating stories in way that heroes don't. They're antagonists, they have a reason to actively involve themselves in other people's situations instead of just responding to whatever it is the baddies do.
I ran a game once where the PCs were supervillains literally just fighting Spider-Man. It worked a lot better than if they'd been superheroes. Villains can make their own decisions about whether they want to rob a bank or crash a party or build a doomsday device, etc, whereas superheroes have to sit around waiting to see what the heroes do.
One thing I think is really valuable here is your point about having detailed rules to model the world. If the players are going to be actively modifying the world to suit their needs it's good to have a whole bunch of procedures you can use to work out what's going to happen, instead of just making ad hoc rulings all the time. I'll have to think more about that.
I can imagine that if you were going to run e.g. a supervillain game, the best way to do it would be to have all sorts of information about how to rob a bank or build a death ray on hand so that you can generate a sufficiently complex response from the world in a way that mere ad hoc rulings couldn't do.
The bit about explaining to the players what they need to do, and what's being asked of them, is also very helpful. An underrated part of RPG theory is the question of what players need to bring to the table, and how DMs can make sure they have the right expectations.
Hi, Shadowdark has a free Quickstart that covers levels 1-3. We played for months using the Quickstart rules, which includes a great starter adventure, The Scarlet Citadel. You may want to add this to your resource list at the blog's end. https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/413713/Shadowdark-RPG-Quickstart-Set
I’m a huge fan of ShadowDark and my next blog post will detail the several campaigns we played of it!
Excellent article! I'm a big advocate for the "zero prep" playstyle. Sitting down for the first session of a brand new campaign with nothing prepared except a mostly unlabeled world map, and no adventure material at all (because I didn't know where the players would want to play), was absolutely nerve wracking, but it actually worked! The referee must read the rulebooks and become familiar enough with them to be able to find rules quickly. Practice with the random generation systems, like Appendixes A through C, helps them to be used seamlessly throughout play.
Recording your experiences, the good and bad of each playstyle, is a big contribution to the hobby. Hopefully it will help us break through the idea that all D&D campaigns have to be centered around stories for the player characters.
That’s great advice about solo playing through the appendices. When I finish my training (work) and return to the hobby I’m going to do that.
Zero prep is the golden dream of RPGs but you have to actually do a fair bet of prep to enable zero prep. Which is funny. You still save time though.
A really important point of OSR games, I feel, is that the PCs are not the protagonists. Something that often works well is having them go up against people who are the actual protagonists - like paladins or detectives or a farm boy who's secretly the chosen one. Decentring the players and putting them in a world that doesn't care whether they live or die is really important. (This is why Cugel's Saga is so iconic, I think).
I super appreciate your thoroughness and honesty in this piece and it mirrors a lot of my own journey, even as I realize that if I ever did want to engage in the sort of Adventure Gaming you're talking about I'd need to find a completely different group and I don't even know if I'd enjoy it as much - but that's got me at least thinking I should try to play in a group like that and hope I could live up to the standards required.
While I might still like to include more High Weirdness and Nonhumans in my player character groups, I think it can work when you remember that just because the _party_ gets along doesn't mean that the rest of the world sees eye to eye, and in fact can be used as a great source of conflict as it would in numerous real world examples of a band of rangy outsiders interacting with organized society.
One of the greatest things about this hobby is just how much room there is for all of these things and more and it's wonderful to see such a well-thought-out take on a very specific niche.
Hi! That's a really nice articles and I agree with some of the points. Howeve, I think you're stretching it a bit far here.
In game #1 you had a bad campaign, made bad rulings and had ordinary players (I don't want to call them bad, but there is nothing good to say about them, from your experience)
In game #2 you had a good prepared module that was the core of your campaign, had your rulings done by Gygax for you and had awesome players.
I... Don't really think the trouble was in the game, TBH. Yeah, advanced game gives you A LOT of needed rules so you never need to do the legwork yourself - but it limits you to a specific mileu Gygax imagined, while you can replicate the success collecting rulings after each game - all while making them good for your specific mileu.
I don't think that playing RAW Adnd was the most important part here.