Five RPGs That Maximize Your Time (and yes they are all OSR)

In thinking about the issue of time and RPGs...and how much time it can take to get the most out of your average contemporary game, I realized a few things:

1. I remain obsessed with the idea that my "golden age" of campaigning was when I focused on short 5 month-long 10-12 session campaigns in AD&D 2nd edition during my college years as the "gold standard" of enjoyment, but acknowledge that my ongoing campaigns I ran from roughly 1981-1989 prior to college were really like dozens of these 10-12 session games strung together into a coherent arc.

2. My current Call of Cthulhu game, which is running long-term and indefinitely, proves that the "long term campaign" model is not in and of itself the issue that bugs me.

3. While considering OSR games in this regard I realized that most OSR games, by virtue of their design and focus actually have "respect for your time" built in to their model of play. This happens by focusing on three elements of classic gaming that lend well to this approach: procedurally generated content (i.e. roll to see what happens tables), hexcrawl style exploration (move around a literal map exploring and looking for encounters/adventures), and resource management (you have limited resources that deplete, so you are incentivized to explore and replenish those resources).

Point 3 is the one that got me to thinking about this idea: current RPGs that respect your time as a player and/or GM, and provide you with the tools to enjoy a game for one night --or twenty-- and never feel like the burden of playing or running the game demands too much of you. There are actually several games on the market that fit this bill exactly.

In the interest of promoting games which really do respect your time and provide you with a framework designed with the general experience of enjoyment and a greater "return on fun" in mind, I would propose that the following five games are excellent examples of this:

1. Stars Without Number

Stars Without Number shows up first here because I've been reading so much of it lately. It's designed with simple character generation that nonetheless allows for a wide range of interesting options to "flavor" your PCs and make them feel different. For the GM it provides a working toolbox with lots of premade content, but also provides a solid structure for quickly designing worlds, encounters and plots on the fly. Once you've used the World Tags option, for example, you will never want to play a game that doesn't offer this. Or, you know, just use SWN's system for all your gaming needs, regardless of the game you play!

2. Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons

The simple fact is, no one has beaten classic 1981's Basic and Expert D&D on ease of use and applicability. Just in the Basic set alone you can run any dungeon with minimal effort, and you have all you need for delving into D&D's worlds without any fuss or muss. Expert D&D adds wilderness exploration, sailing, and some measure of politics. There's simply nothing you can't do for at least 14 levels of play with these rules that requires overt levels of prep. The mechanical structure of B/X is it's only failing....if you don't like racial classes, that is. Otherwise it's perfect. Hell...for most people hexcrawling was essentially invented by this edition of D&D (it wasn't but for most --like me--this was the first actual exposure to the concept!)

3. Beyond the Wall

It makes sense to include this because Beyond the Wall starts with the core conceits of OD&D and Basic/Expert D&D, reimagines the magic system, then, builds the entire game around the concept of the playbook, in which you get to roll a lifepath history for your character while (and this is key) the GM uses a similar playbook to create the scenario you are about to explore. It's simple genius and hard to not want to see this style of game available in every genre once you've been exposed to it. You can literally run Beyond the Wall with all prep starting at the table at the same time as character generation.

4. Traveller

Okay, Traveller may not be technically OSR in one sense, but the current iteration of the game from Mongoose is actually still adhering to the principles that made Classic Traveller just as accessible and fun....just with more stuff to play with. Traveller, like Stars Without Number, provides procedural rules for generating worlds and systems on the fly, rolling quick patron encounters and generally offering procedural adventures that demand only that the referee make some effort at improv. Personally I like spending lots of time engaging in the "subsector generator" minigame myself so I often prep lots of stuff in advance, but it can be a very interesting experience to just sit down and run Traveller cold. You'll learn a lot about how to think on the fly using the tables in the game as the springpoint.


5. All of the White Box Family of Games

I am cheating here, because by "White Box Family" I am including the actual Swords & Wizardry White Box, the "White Box" version of the same, White Star (for SF), and the many, many other iterations that are inspired by OD&D (Warriors of the Red Planet, for example). Each of these games is built on a minimalist rules system which also encourages procedurally generated sandboxk style gaming content. Each offers enough in the way of setting background, encounter data, and rules on how to work the pieces for even average GMs to pick up and play without much effort. Pretty much any game which provides the proper tools for sandbox gaming can do this....and all White Box/OD&D variants excel at this approach.

Honorable Mention: D&D 5E

D&D 5th edition tries hard to provide the tools to do what these games, above, all do very well. And it works! 5E, when you dig in the DMG, has a lot of useful content for running procedural or hexcrawl style gaming. Now that said, there are things in D&D 5E that may or may not capture the magic of what it is like to run a sandbox old school adventure. I think that the overall experience is simply not as sharp as it could be (but it is damned close) if only because some of the core conceits of all of the above systems (which all involve careful management of depleting resources) is not as prevalent in D&D, which puts too many safety stops on those same resources. The net result is one in which D&D 5E often feels like it hits those marks, while accidentally defeating some of the more interesting elements of the resource management game that makes the old school method so fun. But despite that....it still deserves honorable mention as the first iteration of official D&D in 18 years to try and get back to that feel again.

The Long Term vs. Short Term Campaign Model in RPGs (or: why board games and card games thrive while RPGs remain a niche within a niche)

Board gamers and card gamers have it so easy: they show up, play a few hours, and when they are done it gets packed up and you don't think about it again --at all-- until you feel like playing again. And if you never feel like playing again? Well there's no great, personal commitment beyond the moment (and the initial cash to buy the game/cards) so hey, no big deal!

RPGs are not like this at all, of course. They demand almost as much time when you are not playing as when you are. To get the most out of an RPG you need to play it, a lot, and you need to spend a lot of time prepping for it, learning its nuances, and then teasing those out of the game, possibly over dozens of games.

I run in to this constant problem as a GM. How to apportion my time to gaming? There's a general feeling, at least partially perpetuated by my own style of gaming, that an RPG campaign needs to be Big and Long and other verbs such as protracted, extended, eternal, etc. RPGs demand a lot of time, and feel like you aren't getting your buck's worth unless you then dedicate much of your free time to them.

This is partially due to the game of choice for most sessions: D&D 5E and it's cohorts (from Pathfinder and Starfinder to pretty much every iteration of D&D, ever*), which tend to encourage long campaigns so you can get from level 1 to level 10, 15, or maybe even 20. These games ask of the player and GM that you stick with the characters for a long time, see them grow, develop, and expand in to the Big Damn Heroes from their roots as wanderlusted nothings. At best there are some variations of D&D such as 13th Age which contort the campaign into a more bite-sized option, with the best iteration being 13th Age's optional "1 level/1 session" campaign model in which you streak through ten levels of play over ten sessions of gaming. It feels rushed and artificial, but it also accomplishes something important: it provides "mechanical closure" as well as plot closure to a storyline in the campaign, by both giving the group ten levels to play through and encouraging the GM to pace the game to last those ten sessions of play.

Recently I hit the level cap in Tom Clancy's The Division, a computer game which lets you level your post-apocalyptic Division Agent through to level 30 in a story campaign, after which you are then unleashed on the world in a level-free environment that ironically is loaded with secondary leveling mechanics for different types of missions as well as your "gear score" which is a bit like the ultimate leveling system since there's always better gear to get. Some other games, such as Guild Wars 2, also do this: provide a structured leveling experience through a story/campaign mode, then at the end it explodes wide open in the so-called "endgame" content. The idea is that the story mode meets the traditional game qualifiers, but the endgame content is where the hardcore come to play, and the publisher and developer of the game tries to monetize the game for the hardcore to keep playing and paying.

In tabletop terms, I think it's interesting that we don't really see any game try to structure itself like this. Leveling up can be a long, drawn out process in many RPGs, and RPGs that look at the subject differently do so not by making the leveling process the "opening act" followed by a post-level-up endgame, but rather the alternatives eschew level mechanics entirely, or better yet focus on tighter, shorter campaign experiences with advancement rules there primarily as a minor extra perk. FATE Core for example is an excellent example of an extreme alternative to classic D&D leveling mechanics. You don't really need to level up at all in FATE, though it does provide rules for advancement, and in fact it seems that a great many FATE gamers are accustomed to short story structures in their gaming: advancement is incidental to the goal, which is a short campaign experience.

I've been running lots of Call of Cthulhu lately, and as a BRP system CoC does have some advancement mechanics (skill gains), but the net effect of skill gains is slow and over time; the real enjoyment comes from the prolonged experience of the campaign scenarios themselves. The fact that I've kept up a coherent campaign in Call of Cthulhu for close to eight months now shocks me, honestly....and it's thankfully because the story itself is so engaging. But this is in some ways the exception to the rule. I do feel that the fact that "mechanical advancement" is so nominal/secondary in CoC actually helps make the long campaign more interesting, because nothing that happens in the campaign feels like it needs to be there to promote artificial level advancement. The thematic core of the game opposes this style of play as relevant to the experience....so as a result, players don't need the feel of "mechanical closure" to appreciate the game itself.

All of this has been a lot of rambling discussion to get to my core problem with this model: I don't actually get to play the games and scenarios I want most of the time, because every time I start something it's essentially designed to accommodate the "long campaign model" of play and the level mechanics of the system usually encourage that it function this way, otherwise it feels like you're not really getting the most out of the system. This is in contrast to, ironically, the other long term campaign I have where leveling is not such an issue but the campaign itself is sufficiently rewarding that everyone is happy with it without the feeling that you're missing out if you don't play for dozens of sessions to level up.

Back in the old days, I designed some of my best campaigns around 10-12 session story arcs designed to run through a single semester when I was in college, with the idea that I never knew if I'd have the same players the following semester. A side effect of this was that most of the AD&D 2E games lasted for maybe 5-6 levels of play (we'd start with a specific level and everyone would level up every other session or so) but the campaign would have a very satisfying conclusion. Characters could continue on a future campaign, absolutely....but that would be a new story arc, lasting 10-12 games, with another satisfying conclusion. And so on and so forth.

These days, I kind of feel like what I need right now is the opportunity to play more games with less dedicated time and effort to get payoff. I'd like to try a campaign of Symbaroum for 3-5 games, just to see how it is. I'd like to run some scenarios for Conan RPG without feeling like I have to commit for six months or more to get it done. I'd like to run another ten-session arc in 13th Age down the road, or take that model and apply it to D&D 5E. Just to see how that feels. I'm kind of doing that in my current D&D game right now...so far everyone has done enough to gain a level per session, but admittedly they all started at level 1 and the first 2-3 levels in D&D go by quickly if you're busy.

The downside of this model is that some of the really interesting emergent gameplay and RP that pops out after very long campaign sessions might not come to pass. But then, the opposite also applies: the sort of intensity and focus a tighter scenario or campaign run with a deliberate aim toward brevity can lead to sessions where players will behave very differently than if they think they're in for the long haul.

I'll wrap my planned 10-game D&D run and see how it goes, then maybe propose some shorter, more focused games later this year. We'll see how (or if) that goes over.....for me, I'm just hoping that I can find that particular beat and rhythm I need to really enjoy the gaming. I'm getting it in spades right now with CoC on Saturday, now if I can only find that extra something to make Wednesday great as well....maybe my instincts at the start of 2018 are right, and I really do need to give D&D a break for a while, focus on other games and/or genres.

*OSR and old school games are different, though. There's a fundamental shift in how an RPG feels when played out over time when you adapt old school sensibilities which actually makes long-term play more comfortable and interesting (and also simultaneously making you feel like you get more out of each session)....but more on that in a future column!

Death Bat's Top Five Tabletop RPGs for 2015

Now for the paper, pencil and dice side of the equation! In keeping with the computer gaming awards I'll give categories to each of the five.

#5. Best OSR Game: Beyond the Wall and Other Tales

I wrote about it already, and concede this game has been around longer than 2015, so I'll just point to the Further Afield source book and say it's enough justification. Beyond the Wall is like only a handful of other OSR RPGs on the market, of which I include Dungeon Crawl Classics and some source books like a Red and Pleasant Land: these are brilliant, unique tomes that take the core of classic D&D and spin it in directions you really want to play. Beyond the Wall does this by modeling the fictional realms of Lloyd Alexander, Ursula K. Le Guin and other young fantasy authors to recapture a feel and style I had all but forgotten I loved, then codified it in the unique playbook and scenario pack mechanics which make gaming on the fly easier than ever, and also provides a technique for teaching GMs (old and new) how to run improvisational games using the scenario packs. Fantastic books, get both the core book and Further Afield.

Runner Up: Everything publish to date by New Big Dragon Games.

#4. Best Fantasy RPG: Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls

Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls is the definitive, fantastic "ultimate edition" to the second RPG to come out after the original D&D. Now with tons of extra content, rules options and world details...yet still compatible with older editions. A must have if regular gaming is hard for you to find, thanks to T&T's long line of solo adventures, or want to learn about Troll World, or just want the best pickup-and-play beer-and-pretzels RPG to exist, period.

Runner Up: Luther Arkwright is an amazing multi-dimensional modern fantasy setting (with sci fi trappings) for Runequest 6 (alias the Design Mechanism Engine) and is well worth checking out. Based on a series of graphic novels it gives you all the tools you need to engage in modern gaming with the RQ6 engine.

#3. Best Horror RPG: Chill 3rd Edition

If you missed the days when Chill was a thing, now's your chance to experience it again, in a modern format with what is very much still the same core rules and setting intact, a rarity for so many games these days. Chill is about monster hunting, exploration and stopping great evil as an agent of S.A.V.E. which works to protect mankind from ancient horrors. The newest edition has the right lineage of design and does a great job of bringing Chill back to life. My suggestion is to splurge for the deluxe premium color POD edition.

Runner Up: I was really impressed with Silent Legions from Sine Nomine, which includes a unique sort of "create your own mythos" mechanic.

#2. Best Science Fiction RPG: The Last Parsec for Savage Worlds

Written for use with the Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion (which I went gaga for last year), the Last Parsec is a multi-tome setting and campaign aimed squarely at big-concept SF in the modern tradition of the fiction and films which inspired it. If you get the four core books you'll have enough immediate scenario content to run several years without exhausting what has been provided. The writing, imagination and graphics are all top-notch.

Thanks to my wife who recently ran a Last Parsec scenario which I got to play in!!!

Runner Up: Retrostar, the RPG of 70's era science fiction. This amazing book precisely captures the style of SF in the delicate years of 1970-1979, a time when SF was experiencing a revolution in interest and imagination, limited only by the crappy budgets most TV series labored under.

#1. RPG Book of the Year: Fantasy AGE

Green Ronin finally released the AGE System as a stand-alone rule set, immediately creating a unique contestant for the otherwise crowded fantasy game corner of the market. Fantasy AGE introduces mechanics which put it in direct competition with both D&D and Runequest, while retaining its own unique style of play that focuses on the epic story and quest over the more mundane. It only has one sourcebook out there right now (Titansgrave), but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping Fantasy AGE gets a lot of new content for 2016.

Runner Up: Out of the Abyss for D&D 5E. This is not only a cool module but the first one they devised which I feel is relatively easy to adapt to other world settings, and adds themes and elements distinct in flavor that set it apart from the last two years of official adventures. Fans of the Underdark must check this one out.

Honorable Mention

I'd like to point out that a lot of good RPGs came out this year, and a few worth investigating that I didn't mention include:

White Star: takes the core conceit of the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox edition and applies it to SF (EDIT: given how much fun I am having with this one in 2016, I think it will be my 2016 OSR game of the year....unless someone comes along with something even more impressive....)

Class Compendium: Barrel Rider Games' compendium of classes for classic-era B/X style D&D is an invaluable resource to old school gaming.

Cypher System: possibly the best new multigenre RPG out there the only reason it didn't make my top five list somewhere is that it's got a set of core mechanics that are taking my brain a bit of time to adjust to. The book itself is presented as a robust toolkit and well worth investigating, especially if you like Monte Cook's other titles.

Peril on the Purple Planet: this boxed set is the first truly distinct setting/module set for Dungeon Crawl Classics to emphasize the weird settings that the game is most suited for.

Review: Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures

I can stop looking for the OSR game I will run. I might use Basic Fantasy to fill in gaps and corners in Beyond the Wall (the two have enough in common for this to work) but I am completely smitten with how Beyond the Wall takes the concept of the playbook and makes it the most engaging and creative experience I've had in D&D in a long, long time. I want playbooks in 5E now, damnit!*

I'll provide some more detail as we go, but for those who are curious here's a bit about what Beyond the Wall does: it provides a very stripped-down, easy to use version of the classic D&D rules and focuses on a simpler, more fundamental fantasy setting derived from the works of Ursula K. Le Guin and Lloyd Alexander (using the two key examples provided by the author). The setting isn't so much defined as it is implied and enforced through concept...you fill in your own world, but use the framework of a land in which a village, that the heroes all grew up in, is the centerpiece of their heroic journey to become great defenders, protectors and explorers of the land. It exudes an interesting mythic resonance, and the game focuses heavily on making that feeling a reality in play.

The core rules provide a basic quick character creation system and all the rules you'll need to do your own thing if you so desire. Then it moves into the playbooks. The first supplement, Further Afield, expands the concept to include various style of sandbox play as well as more general ideas on how to GM open-ended campaigns.

The playbooks are basically lifepath generators (think RTG's Interlock system for a close example) with a different lifepath for each character concept: so you have things like the witch's apprentice and the would-be knight, the self trained wizard and the village hero. Conceptually these occupy the same space as the backgrounds that D&D 5E uses, but they are specifically aimed at building your character's history, not merely your personality. The D&D 5E approach is great....it really is....but when you start a Beyond the Wall playbook you end up a few minutes later with a complete character, ready to go, with a full history that ties them in to the other characters at the table. Cool stuff.

Beyond the Wall also dares to mess around with D&D magic. At first I was expecting to read yet another OSR system that faithfully tries to replicate an older edition magic system using the D20 SRD. Instead, I got a strong, flavorful variant on D20 magic that takes everything familiar and skews it toward theme, style and feel of the story, creating a system of cantrips, true spells and rituals that is so cool it almost pains me to think of doing D&D magic any other way now.

The GM has his own set of tools as well: scenario packs and playbooks for threats, which let you quickly construct a scenario and send adventurers off that is both unique and reusable. The scenario packs aren't just aimed at a generic adventure generator, either; each one is specifically tailored to create a variety of unique themes for the specific topic of the scenario, such as "The Angered Fae" and the "Hidden Cult" in the main rule book. You can use this to create more than one such scenario for even the same group...it's a simple bit of genius. Threats are equally interesting, letting you create random or custom major foes/villains for the overall story arc. All of this is designed to be quick, too: it will require a GM who's comfortable with a bit of improv, but I wouldn't say it requires an experienced GM....in fact, this method of play will make life easier for old vets like myself while simultaneously teaching new GMs how to run games in this style. It's an incredibly well executed idea that I think other games ought to learn from.

Beyond the Wall is doing something that only a handful of OSR games have dared to do, and that is make it's own unique flavor, strongly enforced by the game itself and its modifications to an otherwise familiar rule set. This is some incredible stuff, seriously....and it's a delight to read; this book was made to both be read and played.

Beyond the Wall didn't come out this year (it looks like the first tome dates from 2012-2014 in origins although it's first supplement "Futher Afield" was just released), but I did discover it in 2015, thanks initially to a Bundle of Holding that led me to the very nice quality color hard cover copies on rpgnow. As with most things in life for me, what was new in 2015 isn't necessarily what's got my attention, so my plan to put this on my top five games of the year list is my way of telling you that you need to get this game, now.

Ten Interesting Things About Beyond the Wall:
10. it has a freeform skill system
9. ascending AC
8. classes are not tied to race but races also get unique classes
7. the core mechanics make conversion to other OD&D and B/X D&D based systems simple
6. warriors get more useful stuff than in typical classic-D&D systems
5. The spell system's cantrips, true spells and rituals are compelling
4. there's a mythic resonance that exudes from every line written in this book
3. the playbooks are incredibly fun to roll through
2. the playbooks encourage relations with all PCs at the table; no more meeting in a bar unless the playbook pushes you there...
1. The GM's scenario packs and threat sheets are incredibly cool for facilitating quick play, overcoming lack of prep time and teaching new GMs how to run improvised games on the fly



*Playbooks differ from backgrounds in that they integrate character creation into the process. When you make a 5E character the background is usually the last thing you add on. When you start a playbook you end up with a complete character that makes contextual sense in terms of your life path rolls.

OSR Problems; on finding a way to run OSR games, and settling on a system...

...and one day I looked up and realized three sections of my shelf were entirely OSR. The biggest chunk by far was for Swords & Wizardry Complete, which is of course supported by the Frog Gods with gigantic tomes of various and sundry....but there's a lot more:

Swords & Wizardry Complete
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Labyrinth Lord
For Gold & Glory
Beyond the wall and Other Tales (my new favorite darling of the moment)
Spears of the Dawn
Castles & Crusades
Iron Falcon
...other stuff I have no doubt forgotten about. Let's not even bother mentioning the actual original B/X D&D, 1E AD&D or 2E AD&D tomes.

And for each of those I have a big fat mess of modules and support, and some of the support is ephemeral and easily transits from one system to the next, such as Yoon-Suin, Deep Carbon Observatory and the D30 Sandbox Companion which are all easily utilized with any of the above titles.

I have a real desire to actually run one of these, not merely convert content over to D&D 5E like I've been doing lately. My thought is that my local gang of players might put up with a couple nights of one, but it's not going to have legs for the long haul....and I do love D&D 5E, so not interested in forcing that system into competition, anyway.

My Saturday group is pretty much dedicated to Pathfinder and I know them well enough to know that that boat must not be rocked any longer; delving into 13th Age and D&D 5E was enough for them. My Wednsesday group is more flexible, but I have some players who, when I break from established D&D, will simply vanish in a puff of smoke and I'd rather not make that happen just because I happen to want to play some OSR stuff.

My thought then is to delve into online gaming again...Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. I ran Fantasy Grounds for my old players in Seattle a lllloooong time ago when I first moved to Albuquerque....surely it's gotten even easier to work with since those hallowed days of yore. Plus, Roll20 seems pretty cool. Maybe what I need to do is find some games to get in to as a player first, see how it works....I'm thinking Mondays and Sunday nights are good for me. Hmmmm.

But when I run...it's definitely going to be one of the above titles. Probably DCC or S&WC but For Gold & Glory is damned tempting. Labyrinth Lord would be more tempting, but to try it out only begs the question of why I don't just run the original.....and ironically, I know I will find the race-as-class element distasteful once I'm actually dealing with it. This doesn't bother me with DCC strangely, because my sense is that the Tolkienesque races have no real place in DCC anyway and can be ignored.

But then there's Beyond the Wall....have you seen this book? It's pretty amazing. I'll have to talk more about it and its supplement later.

There's other stuff, too: Perils of the Purple Planet. The Chained Coffin. The Haunted Highlands. Tranzar's Redoubt. A Red and Pleasant Land. Razor Coast.....these are all begging me to run them. And yet I'll probably ignore them all and do my own thing anyway. I always do.