So the Old-School Essentials mini campaign I ran is now over with. The group explored The Mountain of the module Cold Wind Whispering, which is a module written for use with any Original or B/X based D&D edition (and easily usable with AD&D as well). As I had originally prepared the module I realized that I was sending in a gang of level 1 PCs to a module that had a lot of 2-4+ hit die monsters, so I ran a short dungeon crawl in an abandoned temple before it, which I will probably post on the blog soon. The dungeon crawl was fine, but it was what reminded me that the old school format of dungeon crawls could sometimes be less exciting than we remember....I've been around the block too many times now to get that excited by a standard dungeon crawl, I guess (though my son enjoyed it).
Anyway, a theme in Cold Wind Whispering...and, real quickly:
SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!!!!
TURN BACK IF YOU PLAN TO PLAY THIS!!!!
OKAY?
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Okay, so the Mountain in Cold Wind Whispering is the location of an ancient crashed space ship. In the module it's Zhu, the basis for a cult of worship, and an ancient monastery which is corrupted by a demon. Lots of other stuff fills out the background and exploration areas of the modules, from lost dwarven empires to ice fairies and frost elves, talking wolves and a witch who likes turning children in to cats. The module is written as a Path Crawl, which is a fancy way of saying you give the players a limited number of choices to take (do you go down this trail or that trail?) and if they break off from the established paths the chances of getting lost or eaten by wandering monsters goes up considerably.
The module also introduces a Body Heat Die mechanic, which is a fun way of ascertaining whether the group is at risk of exposure to the cold, and to what degree. It's a depletion die mechanic not unlike what the Black Hack is famous for. In actual play I didn't remember to call on it nearly as often as I should have.
What I did with the module was add the ruined temple dungeon at the beginning to bolster PC XP, then renamed some items to disguise them/fit them in better with the world I set the module in, renamed Zhu to Zhuul, and elaborated a bit on what the space ship was (a giant sentient exploration ship), why it was crashed, and why it could continue to work. At least one patron NPC with the group had a vested interest in finding the shrine of Zhuul/Zhu, and each PC got a motivation from the chart in the module to be there, too.
Similar to the tri-fold modules I was raving about last week, this module, despite being around 70 pages in length, takes advantage of a kind of brevity of design. Each area of the mountain takes up about 1 page, and a few areas then open up to dungeons with several pages of description. My group never visited the monastery, and they explored about half of the ice lair of the mad wizard before fleeing in terror. In Saturday's finale, they found the ship, and I elaborated on it in more depth. They ultimately were able to get the vessel going (after an overheat roll caused a glacial meltoff and avalanches), and in the very end, half the group stayed with the ship to depart to parts unknown, and the other half asked to be dropped off in their home city, which the Zhuul AI obliged.
The campaign ended with a unique situation, two branching paths for equally interesting potential campaigns:
--The group dropped off in the city of Zalfurak were deposited in the royal gardens, where the giant bird-like ship left them. As they departed, terrified witnesses in the city proclaimed them oracles of the goddess Zhuul and asked what must be done to appease the goddess, who's last priest had died and for whom no one had believed in --until now!
--The other half of the party departed with Zhuul into the depths of space, on a voyage which is best handled by other game systems. Alas, OSE's closest "stellar" campaign on offer is Planar Compass, which is more of an astral/dream adventure type thing, and the idea I had in mind is more hard core SF. I could crimp from something like White Star*, but the truth is using something like Starfinder or the 5th edition books published by Legendary Games for SF adventuring with D&D would be more suited to what I have in mind. Heck, even Spelljammer adapted would be a good option.
(My son suggested that I could keep running the game with each group split like this, but I pointed out old dad was old and knew better than to run two completely different campaigns that would never cross again in the same session, and it would send him to an early grave if he tried!)
Anyway.....my time with OSE has been fun, and I can respect what the game system does, as it does it very well. I concede that ultimately this system is too simple in scope for my tastes, and in the process of playing I realized that there are a lot of Old School things which, looked at through OSE today I now realize were easy ways to model skills and such back in the day....Detect Secret Doors is just a Spot or Search skill. Listen to Doors is just a Listen skill. Break Down Doors is just Feat of Strength/Athletics. Framed that way, they become more broadly useful for resolution. Not having other skills outside of basic class abilities or the optional proficiency mechanics makes characters feel a little anemic by modern standards, but there is definitely much fun to be had in a system where things are largely undefined.
It is strange, though....OSE feels so much simpler than AD&D 1st Edition, although technically it's still modeling that system (at least in the Advanced mode). I think that may be one reason that OSE, while fun, hasn't been scratching the nostalgia itch for me as much as I thought it would......AD&D was loaded with individually complex or arcane subsystems, proficiency rules later being added, and lots of specific stuff which you had to parse out, ignore, or replace as needed to enjoy the game. The XP system, for example, which I had previously mentioned I never used the GP=XP standard when I actually ran AD&D in the 80's, and it took me approximately 2 sessions of the mini-campaign to ditch it with OSE as well.
I think the next excursion I make with an old-school nostalgia trip will, for clarity's sake, be to attempt to run actual AD&D again.....though which edition (1E or 2E) remains in question. I had speculated that 2E would make more sense, but not really; everything about 2E that was clunky or annoyed me was fixed in D&D 3rd edition, so just looking at 2E makes me want to play 3E instead. AD&D 1E, however, has a level of mystical recollection of youth to it that might make it more fun to re-experience again (in my defense, I ran an AD&D 1E campaign back in 2008 and it was fun). We'll see. For now, I think it's time to get back to more modern games.
My son chose to go with the space ship Zhuul. I showed him Starfinder after that, to see what his gnome barbarian character might be in the Starfinder universe, and he promptly took the rulebook from me to go read it. I may finally have the motivation to run Starfinder again and stick to it for a while as a result. The infectious value of a new gamer to the mix, one who is earnestly enjoying the hobby for the first time, is well worth nurturing.
EDIT: Aside from Legendary Games' 5E SF stuff and Starfinder, two other possibilities include Esper Genesis and Cypher System. The latter would have the most flexibility but also thematically the stories would change as Cypher works best when its not all about combat. Esper Genesis I will have to investigate, though, as to the feasibility.
*I feel bad about it, but realize White Star's Galaxy edition really killed my interest in the game. Too much riffing on satirical/pastiche material from established IP like Star Wars, Transformers and such. In the original White Star it wasn't much...minor riffs like Quinlons, star knights and Cannicks were easy to overlook, but the core conceits were closer to, say, a OSR riff on Traveller more than anything. But when taken in total in the galaxy Edition I was just....it was too much for me to soak, man. I guess I just like my SF systems to be a little more serious; let me add in appropriate humor, and leave the generic off-brand ewoks, wookies, and yodas on the cutting room floor.
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