The Shifting Sands of Fantasy Gaming - OSE, DCC, and the Rise of Games that Are Better at D&D Than D&D Is

 So over the last couple years this has been a gradual process that has built up for me, with opportunity to run Old-School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, Shadowdark and other sundry old school games and systems, even going back to 1st edition Gamma World for a campaign at one point. In 2026 my entire perspective on what I find fun has more or less snapped in the wake of D&D 5.5 and to a lesser degree Pathfinder 2E, which I happen to like, but it just pales in comparison to the more organic and satisfying engagement you can get with the OSR and actual original editions of these games.

Take, for example, Dungeon Crawl Classics which once long ago I would hold up as an example of just how interesting altenative takes to D&D could get, while lamenting that it nestled itself in the core conceits of a B/X era of D&D with race-as-class and minimal to no skill systems. For me, at least, and for a long time I was very invested in the more mechanically deep and rigorous sort of gaming experience you could get out of D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder 1E, and while I loved AD&D 2nd Edition (my primary game of choice in the 90's outside of GURPS) its messy application of endless splatbooks bade a return to that edition unwieldly and, well, unfun.

Well now these days Dungeon Crawl Classics looks like about as much game as I can (and want to) handle, and the notion of simplified classes such as you have in B/X has been renormalized thanks to Old-School Essentials in a way that doesn't feel weird, it instead feels liberating. When I run my mashup of OSE and B/X D&D it is a weirdly liberating experience, and strange things can happen on the fly, by design, or as part of the inherent randomness of the system that shadow just how mundane and uninteresting the current era of fantasy games are. D&D 5.5 is nothing if not boring and predictable. Pathfinder 2E is marvelous in its balance and rigor, and equally condemned for it.

Running Pathfinder on one day and OSE-B/X on another day is what I think is breaking me, and also what is fuelling my fascination with what DCC's goal is. When I am designing for Pathfinder I am looking for level appropriate items, not because those items make sense in the world but because they mantain the mechanical grace of the system. Combat is fun, and even a bit exciting at times as PF2E can generate more tension in battle fairly easily (unlike D&D 5.5 which kills tension wherever it sees it), but when I run the OSE-B/X game it is truly marvelous to watch the players actually strategize and consider alernative approaches to potential combat situations, think strategically and work to execute actual plans rather than synergize feats. The first time they got their asses almost handed to them by wights and then trolls and they decided it was time to camp in the woods for a while to recover was a special moment....no one ever stops to think about the need for recovery in modern editions of the game anymore, its been done away with in favor of video game combat pacing. 

I still like Pathfinder, in so far as current modern game editions go, as it tries to at least make sure the game feels challenging....but designing scenarios for it means designing within the scope of the rules, not around them. For example, in my OSE game the players found some random loot which was on its face a sword +1, +3 vs. dragons. But in short order I decided it was actually a cursed blade, one which had a 5% cumulative chance for every foe slain with it that a dragon would hear the song of the elven maiden spirits trapped within, and come to immediately seek to destroy the blade's wielder. 

I mean, you can do that in Pathfinder 2E, but it will probably break the system, require you spend time mechanically plotting out what the blade's properties are, havw to justify its existence to the one or more rules lawyers at the table demanding to know what level the blade is and if they can farm it for runes, and then wonder if the blade allows them to effectively summon level appropriate dragons for XP farming. More importantly, it is much easier to do something like this ad hoc in OSE than it is in Pathfinder.

Anyway....that is a lot of text to say "I will be writing more about OSE and DCC in the blog now!"

Too much Text in RPGs vs. Not Enough Text

 In 2026 I finally realized that the tabletop RPG market appears to be heavily weighted in two directions: those games of enormous page count, laden with a density of information; and on the other side of this curve is a veritable mountain of tiny, often zine-shaped games filled with what can only be described as a strangely minimalist approach to content. 

I feel like there's probably a line to be drawn from how RPGs used to be, and how for many people the barrier of entry was finding the time and energy to read hundreds of pages of material to get familiar with a game or setting to run it, and today, where you have games like Mork Borg where 90% of the game experience is interpreting the surreal art and parsing out tiny nuggets of rule or setting data. 

The interesting question is maybe not whether minimalist game systems are a response to the older style of dense, text- heavy games, but rather: is the market for more "information lite" game systems and text actually a sign of changing times? Even dense tomes like the newest 5.5 edition of D&D are actually rather information light; these books use less of the page with a bigger font to convey less information per page; just look at the D&D 2014 race write-ups to the 2024 ancestries for a fine example. Or take the 2014 DMG, which is packed with stuff (both to its betterment and its failure) compared to the briefer and lighter 2024 DMG. 

There are plenty of games where word density and system or setting depth is important; just witness Pathfinder 2E for proof this is still a thing. Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun 6th, Coriolis, Call of cthulhu, Mythras, etc....there are plenty of these sorts of games, the "old guard" if you will out there and in circulation.

But then we have some games where the line is crossed: Shadowdark is what got me thinking about this notion in the first place. I mean, Shadowdark is a minimalist spectacle where you get the Big Fat Rulebook experience with a torrent of supplemental material, but the actual result is a shockingly low word count, a system that appears to be allergic to exposition or setting depth, and a paucity of rules content that borders on a sort of weird art. 

I was going to argue that Old-School Essentials is more of a middle ground here, given it is a precise retelling of the original B/X D&D system, and it really is....but all that demonstrates is that the idea of "rules with lite content in presentation" was also a thing in the early eighties. Indeed, one need only remember the myriad titles of Fantasy Games Unlimited to remember that this is actually a very old concept. So if oneis trying to ascribe the current wave of minimalist RPGs exclusively to short attention spans of modern crowds, I think that is probably not true, because we had plenty of games like this back in the day. What is true now is that the density of informtion in current rulesets is even skimpier and more graphically dependent than the many old FGU games ever were, though.

On the other hand OSE is a great example of how even a famously simple ruleset that has been presented in a somewhat minimalist fashion (B/X D&D editions) later evolves into something much more dense and complex (D&D Rules Cyclopedia). Indeed, for fun just read through the original Basic Set (Otus edition) D&D book, then contrast it with the OSE book (which is probably of the same word count, but manages to organize the information much more efficiently) then contrast the two with the much more elaborate and denser combat rules section of the Rules Cyclopedia. Same game....but just now with more density and more use cases being documented. 

Lately I have been a bit torn about the fact that I definitely fall in to a more old school camp when it comes to how I like my rulesets, dense and thick with too much information, vs. the fact that a game like OSE is so wonderful in its concise get-to-the-point approach of design, and then Shadowdark, which I love because it is designed to reduce complexity that could get in the way of jumping right to the part where you play the game, but perhaps at the expense of making its rules tomes and supplements anything more than utilitarian outlines that feel like a Cliff's Notes edition of D&D. 

This means that....if you are still in a corner of the hobby where part of the experience is reading and figuring out these rulebooks and their systems, then a game like Shadowdark really doesn't offer much to you.

Ah well....I guess while I mull that conundrum over I shall just resume reading the latest batch of Mythras books I just got (a Fioraccita supplement, Mythic Venice, and several third party modules I found on drivethru that I finally took the plunge on). Mythras is unquestionably in the old school camp of "there is no such thing as too much information." 

Or maybe I will read through some of my Mothership books....despite being definitely part of the zine scene where the "rules lite, informtion lite" era of gaming has been flourishing lately, a nontrivial number of Mothership books are actually super information dense (albeit for scenario and setting content), but in a tricky way where it disguises this density through the medium of contemporary short-form module design. 

I guess the one thing I can say for sure is: there's definitely something for almost everyone out there!

Increasing Appreciation for Old-School Essentials

 Laat night I managed to get our Friday group to start a classic B/X D&D campaign using a blend of the Erol Otus edition Basic and Expert rulebooks, with a few extra resources, including the BX Blackrazor Companion and Adventurer books, and some material (the skill sytem) from the D&D Cyclopedia. It was fun! I think we'll be playing this game for at least the length of the adventure I have set up, which has enough content for several sessions.

We did run into some interesting hiccups, though. I learned, for example, that the Basic and Expert books are awfully vague about things like: fighting in darkness, what blindness means mechanically, how darkness the spell works when used to cause blindness, and what those penalties look like. In looking through later editions (Mentzer era books, the D&D Cyclopedia, and then the OSE rules) it became clear that a creature with the blindness condition can't attack at all. If you're in the darkness area, does that mean you are considered blind? Also, if you are shooting into the darkness, what sort of cover penalty is that?

Little questions like this....as well as movement rules during combat, are a little difficult to parse out in the older B/X books. The clarifications get better in the later versions of the ruleset, and then the complexity magically starts to ramp up in the D&D Cyclopedia, which I noticed manages to take an inherently straight forward ruleset and make it more complex (but hey, that is supposed to be the definitive edition of the BECMI rules so that is to be expected). 

Where I found the best clarity, and developed a strong appreciation for what it is doing, is in the Old-School Essential rules. The deliberate clarity that the OSE rules focus on is excellent, and I suspect that the ease with which I could find answers to these questions (or at least guidance) is probably because the author's goal was to address exactly these issues of needed clarity. And the OSE rules succeed to great effect in this manner.

Moreover, it's been long enough since I last messed around with B/X D&D that reading through and running it again, then reading through OSE for comparison has really hammered home to me that the OSE rules are a shockingly exact translation of the classic rules in almost every possible way. There are little oddities; I notice an absence of electrum pieces, for example; and devil swine are recategorized as proper lycanthropes with associated traits in OSE, while their original counterparts were more like "lycanthrope adjacent," as examples. I am looking only at tbe B/X component of OSE, too; I am much more familiar with AD&D and so realize that the Advanced elements introduced in OSE are a bit more fluid in their reinterpretations of those rules elements, more a blend of B/X with AD&D elements wedded to them....which honestly is a bit closer to how I ran the game in the early eighties. 

Anway.... I let the group know that going forward I will be keeping the OSE rules handy for quick reference as they are just so much easier to find clarity in, and that PCs can be built from original rules or OSE rules and both are accepted in the game. 

EDIT: As an afterthought, I realize that had this rule been presented in a more, shall we say, "mechanics and ruleplay vs. reality-based rules and roleplay," then I would probably just accept it. So, for example, game systems like D&D and Pathfinder often have rules that have no functional basis in reality, but are grounded in the mechanical contrivances of the game system. It is possible this Mythras rule is intended to dissuade players from just trying over and over on a task....a rule attached to a stick with a soft, suishy rationale for the GM to lean on when the player argues with them over it. But that's technically not how its presented...it is trying to make the case that trying a task twice in a row increases the odds of failure, but that just doesn't mesh well with real life, which is what systems like Mythras are trying harder to emulate. So....yeah. Hmmm.

The Fire Knife Assassins for Old-School Essentials

 

Fire Knives – Secret Assassin Society of Lingusia

Group Alignment: Neutral (evil)

Leader: Shadulos Elas Boron (In Octzel); THE THIRTEEN (world-wide)

Octzellan Headquarters: An anonymous guild hall in the Guild District

   The Fire Knives are an international organization of illuminated conspirators who have supporters within Hyrkania, Octzel, and Jhakn. Rumors indicate that there are even members operating within the empires of Persedonia and Galvonar to the south, and maybe even as far east as Cretea and Namintha. The Fire Knives are a vicious order of assassins seeking to manipulate kingdoms from the shadows. The Fire Knives are motivated less by religious or moral principles than they are by political gain, despite their origins as a cult to Haro, the god of murder. The mysterious Council of Thirteen are a secret council of dissident political radicals from across the Middle Kingdoms who work together to maintain long distance ties and support for their network of contract killers.

   Their agendas are many and varied. Some employ magical prowess which is often taught in secret classes by the Cabal of Southern Hyrkania, while others practice bastard magic, culled from the blood-stained books lifted from mages and druids who dared to cross their path. Most members are otherwise of a more conventional talent, common men and kindred folk who rely on stealth and swift assassination to accomplish their nefarious deeds.

   On the surface the guild looks like some sort of thug-enforcer type of thieves’ guild that seems to have little obvious direct connection to their actions as killers. In some cities, such as Octzel, their movements are silent and unobserved by most people, and appear to be a network of hired thugs protecting the interests of certain merchant houses. In Krythia, they wear their symbol, a shield of stars surrounded by trade weapons, proudly, and are believed to be a mercenary's guild by most people. In Jhakn the existence of the Fire Knives is unknown, as their movements are so carefully concealed and hidden that not even close allies know who they are dealing with. Only in Hyrkania are they reviled for their reputation as assassins, forcing them to work underground and out of sight.

   In Octzel, the Fire Knives have few allies and many enemies, often coming to blows with rival organizations and guilds. Of the many thieves and mercenaries guilds in Octzel only the Order of the Blade maintains neutral relations, and is willing to hire out sellswords to the Fire Knives for any unsavory deeds that require some useful fodder.

   The Fire Knives have the primary support of three Barons, and possibly other nobles, in Octzel. House Boron, House Killaman, and House Agrapor are the primary backers. House Boron, of the Merchant Lord Shadulos Elas Boron, and his wicked daughter Teylayurana Sorinos are the most dangerous members. Hallergan Blacknails is an infamous orc assassin of the order, and senior enforcer for House Boron.

   Beside the illegal and secretive activities which likely take place in the shadowed chambers of the manors of each noble house, the Fire Knives own property through indirect channels throughout the city. They own a trade and import shop in the Marketplace which leads to a secret meeting place. They own a Guild Hall that is rented out regularly, except on dark, moonless nights when they convene for a recap of their actions. They own warehouses by the docks, where imports of special naure are often kept, or where bodies can safely be dumped. Members of the Fire Knives learn as much as they can about the back alleys, secret passages, sewers, and catacombs beneath the streets of Octzel.

   Some would say that the Fire Knives go beyond being a society of political assassination and into the realm of a secret society for the sake of secretiveness. Much of this is due to the fact that the three barons behind the house lack the backing or funds of a major political interest, and it is believed that none of them belong to the Thirteen. Yet, since some claim that Fire Knives in Hyrkania, such as Dame Magna Mordent, say that there is a member of the Thirteen in Octzel, then who is this mystery member of the Council, and what are they planning?

Machinations of the Thirteen

   The Thirteen are an entity unto itself, operating in utter secrecy throughout the Middle Kingdoms and the East to further its diabolical ends, using assassination, slavery, and the sale of opiates (especially of the blue and black lotus) to manipulate the political currents of the realms.

   An agent, follower or servant of the Thirteen is likely to be a lower order member of the Fire Knives, but someone could also have a conflicted relationship if they revere the god Haro, or are independent assassins, and an adversarial relationship could stem from any number of cases where one would see cause to oppose the actions of a murderous guild-cult. These members swear fealty to the Thirteen and the God of Murder, in that order, and earn ranks in the society by working their way up “circles” of power and status. No one knows how many circles there are, though rumor has it there are nine, one for each of the Nine Hells.

The Fire Knives of Octzel

Shadulos Elas Boron (purportedly a member of the seventh circle)

   The guild master of Fire Knife operations in Octzel, Boron is a local merchantman with family ties back to Hyrkania. His rise to power on the surface appears to be one of a shrewd businessman, but behind the scenes he is suspected of being ranked as one of the Thirteen, relying on the bloody death that his guild can heap upon those who stand in his way to further his ambitions.

   Boron has locked down the city for the Fire Knives, eliminating most other rival guilds, and now schemes to find ways to dislodge the Black Lotus and the Guild of the Spheres.

   Shadulos is a skilled interrogator, shrewd with a cunning eye for detail and an excellent negotiator in trade deals. He is a master pickpocket and moves with great stealth despite his girth.

Shadulos Elas Boron Human fighter 6 assassin 7

STR 12, DEX 16, CON 18, INT 15, WIS 13, CHA 17, AC 3 [16], HD 9** (46 HP), Att 2 rapier+2 of disarming (1D6+2) or dagger (1D4+save vs. poison or either paralysis 1 hour or death on failed second save after one minute), THACO 17 [+2], MV 120’ (40’), Saves D 10 W 11 P 11 B 13 S 14, AL neutral (evil), XP 2,300, TT C (Lair H)

Skills: Assassination -2, Climb Walls 93, Hear Noise 4 in 6, Hide in Shadows 36, Move Silently 46

Disarming Personality Shadulos has learned a little magic in his time and may cast charm person 3 times per day and charm monster once per day. Shadulos has subjected his very body to complex rituals to allow for unnatural magical guile.

Entourage Shadulos rarely travels alone. Typically he travels with 1D6 assassins in his presence at all times.

Equipment scale mail, Rapier +2 of disarming (target must make a save vs. spells or drop weapon within 10 feet), a bandolier of 2 dozen poisoned daggers, 3 vials of lethal paralytic poison (6 doses per vial; save vs. poison or become paralyzed 1 hour; after one minute make a second save vs. poison or die), 1,230 GP pocket change

Teylayurana Sorinos (agent of the fifth circle)

   The bastard daughter of Shadulos Elas Boron, Teylayurana has worked her way up the ranks in the Fire Knives to become the premiere assassin in Octzel. She is ruthless and efficient, though regarded as unstable by those who have seen her succumb on occasion to a bloodlust driven by her madness. Some believe that when she experiences these “episodes” she is actually channeling the spirit of Haro himself; no one knows for sure, but her skill has nonetheless attracted the attention of Celiobantes Astiriate in the east, and within the guild it is rumored the two have had relations.

   About two years earlier Teylayurana also traveled with the adventurer Cassius Augustus and was lured into a war between the Fire Knives and the Guild of the Spheres. This conflict led to ongoing enmity between the two guilds.

Teylayruana Sorinos human assassin 14

STR 14, DEX 18, CON 13, INT 16, WIS 12, CHA 14, AC 1 [20], HD 9+19* (60 HP), Att 2 twin daggers+1 strike (1D4+1+blue lotus poison) or twin hand crossbows+2 (1D4+2+blue lotus), THACO 12 [+7], MV 120’ (40’), Saves D8 W9 P7 B10 S8, ML 10, AL neutral (evil), XP 1,600, TT C (Lair H)

Skills Assassination -6, Climb Walls 99, Hear Noise 5 in 6, Hide in Shadows 60, Move Silently 70

Blue Lotus Poison target must make a Save vs. Poison or target is confused (as per spell) for 1 minute due to intense and sudden hallucinations.

Blindsense Teylayurana functionally has infravision for 120 feet

Equipment Leather +2 (wyvernscale), 2 daggers +2, 6 vials of blue lotus poison (5 applications per vial), one hand crossbow +2, a case with 30 bolts, pocket change of 500 GP

Hallergan Blacknails (agent of the fourth circle)

   Hallergan Blacknails is Shadulos Boron’s right-hand man. He is an accomplished mage, a tough fighter, and a tricky devil. Hallergan is approaching middle years, but has worked hard to keep a lean figure, and avoid the bloatedness so characteristic older male orcs. His snout is stubbier than usual, perhaps due to some forgotten human blood in his ancestry, and he will often pass without question in the city streets if he wears heavy robes like a priest. He is a master tactician when it comes to weaving his magic, and he can bring down some rather impressive foes with little difficulty.

Hallergan Blacknails Orc fighter 9/magic-user 9

STR 18, DEX 12, CON 18, INT 15, WIS 14, CHA 16, AC 0 [19], HD 9+27** (58 HP), Att 2 battle axe of the beheader+2 (1D10+6+decapitation on critical), THACO 11 [18], MV 120’ (40’), Saves D8 W9 P10 B10 S12, ML 10, AL chaos (evil), XP 2,300 TT K (Lair C) Spells: 3-3-3-2-1

Spells Prepared: charm person, magic missileX2, invisibilityX2, phantasmal force, hasteX2, lightning bolt, charm monster, hallucinatory terrain, cloudkill

Equipment Battle Axe +2 of the Beheader, full plate +1, loose change of 225 PP and 1,500 GP

New Magic Items and Gear:

Battle Axe of the Beheader Very rare weapon

   This +2 great axe decapitates the target on a critical hit (natural 20). If the target does not have a head it severs a random limb. If the target is unconscious the axe automatically crits.

Rapier of disarming Very Rare melee weapon

   This +2 rapier (1D6 damage) makes disarming an opponent incredibly easy. Whenever a strike connects, instead of dealing damage the wielder may declare a disarm attack. The target must save vs. spells or is disarmed, dropping the weapon within 10 feet.

Blue Lotus Poison Uncommon (poison); typical retail value 250 GP/vial

   The blue paste that is made from the leaves of the blue lotus poison is well known for it’s strong hallucinogenic properties, which seem to cause distressing feelings of madness and entrampment within the walls of the City of Nith in the Dreamlands of Ethenur; some mages speculate that the person’s astral self is actually displaced by this poison.

   When used the target must make a Save vs. Poison or target is confused (as per spell) for 1 minute due to intense and sudden hallucinations. One vial contains 5 doses.

Black Lotus Poison Rare (poison); typical retail value 4,000 GP/vial

   The incredibly deadly black lotus leaf, when treated correctly with a special alchemical ingredient known only to assassins and poisoners, can be applied in food (for ingestion) or to a blade (for wounding). A typical vial of black lotus poison contains 3 regular (small) doses and comes with measuring tools, pestle, and the “vitae mortae” liquid added to bring out the lethal component of the leaf. One vial can be applied up to three times as small doses, or the full vial can serve as the base for a single large dose.

Small Doses: The poison can be applied quickly (as an action) to weapons in miniscule doses, causing severe hallucinations and catatonia (save vs. poison or become confused as per the spell for one minute; on a natural 20 the effect lasts 1D6 hours).

One Full Dose: At full dose for ingestion or to thoroughly coat a blade (the process takes 3D10 minutes) the user must make a save vs. poison at +2 (+4 if an assassin) to avoid accidentally making contact with the poison, subjecting him or herself to its effects (roll with an additional +4 bonus if wearing thick leather gloves; cloth won’t do). Once applied, a single full dose will last until a target drinks or eats the poisoned product, or a wound is made. The target then makes a save vs. poison at -2 penalty or immediately drops to 1 hit point and falls unconscious. The victim will remain catatonic and unconscious for 1D6 hours, after which they must make a save vs. death or fail to awaken. Legends say a victim of the Black Lotus poison killed in this manner appears as a spectral phantasm in the dreamlands of Ethenur, where they will seek out the dreams of their killer to haunt them. Allegedly some Fire Knives like to boast of how many ghosts visit them in their nocturnal slumber…

Origins: The black lotus leaf can only be found in three known locations: deep beneath the Mountains of Madness in central Hyrkania, in the depths of the jungles of Amech, and in the underworld dominion beneath Mitra’s Forest. It is the only known lotus plant that can grow and thrive without sunlight, and indeed even seems to thrive in wet, dark environments. Efforts to cultivate the plant are almost always unsuccessful, though stories that one of the Thirteen has mastered this art may or may not be true.

Old-School Essentials vs. Shadowdark - Battle of the Retro OSR Giants???

 As I assembled all of the many half-size tomes I have on the shelf, realizing I had bought a disproportionate number of books (and booklets, and brochures, etc.) for a few games in particular (Mothership, OSE, Shadowdark, Mork Borg and to a lesser extent Liminal Horror), I started comparing the crop of Shadowdark books to the Old-School Essentials tomes. I've run a couple campaigns or multi-session adventures with both systems, though not as yet been able to commit to picking one of them for a long-haul. In many ways these two games are extremely similar, at least in terms of their overall goals, but in other ways they are surprisingly different. Here's a few of the more interesting differences I noticed, with the caveat that I won't talk specific rules too much, because both systems are mechanically quite different. Anyway:

Design Goals:

OSE: it's goal is to create a retroclone emulator for Basic/Expert D&D and the Advanced version gives you the tools to bolt on an AD&D style experience. It's not restricting itself exclusively to true emulation, though it does so surprisingly well, and expansions and 3PP content offer a really diverse array of interpretations of fantasy powered by OSE (Planar Compass, Kalinga Plateau, The Painted Wastelands and Dolmenwood being the four I am most familiar with). A lot of weird settings get the OSE treatment, though other weird settings seem to gravitate more toward the Into the Odd mechanics. I think it depends on the depth to which the designers of a setting want to plumb the rules; Into the Odd seems to be the preferred choice for player groups that are extremely shy of mechanical depth, while OSE ends up attracting a broader range of interest for those who want an old school mechanical feel, but are inspired by weird art, themes and interpretations of fantasy that may have been popular in their style but were too "out there" for D&D's early era shepherds (TSR).

Shadowdark: It looks to me like Shadowdark's core intent, which was to provide numeric compatibility with older editions of D&D as well as D&D 5E resources, ended up really being about creating a tightly defined set of rules for a very specific style of play: dungeon crawling, completely unapologetic, with all of the traditional bells and whistles, or at least those as perceived through the lens of a new age of gamers who love the notion of what D&D was without having actually been there. Most of the Shadowdark players I know aren't picking it up because they want a reasonable facsimile of original D&D or B/X D&D, but rather they want a D&D 5E experience without all the clutter. For this reason Shadowdark has a lot of interesting but weird little rules that are designed to streamline the experience, but also trip up older gamers or those used to early D&D (such as the way leveling works, or the way magic works) and don't in actual play feel very old school. Shadowdark is to OSR what a modern computer game that touts its amazing pixels s being Playstation One era style graphics (while being totally better looking than the actual original PS1 games of its time) are like....simulacra.

Winner: OSE wins by a slim margin, because it really is closely backward compatible and very customizable within a time-tested framework of rules. But Shadowdark is its own special beast, and if you think of it as being like the RPG equivalent of Hero Quest, its role makes more sense.

Rules Presentation:

OSE: OSE's core strength is that it's the most pragmatic, no-nonsense presentation of a OSR ruleset I have ever seen. There is no authorial intrusion, there is no empty chit-chat, there is precisely as much flavor text as is necessary, no more and no less. It's incredibly clear and well-organized (across all its rulebook iterations), and finding what you need is a breeze. So Necrotic Gnome's core presentation was to make OSE very, very user friendly. This is a huge plus as I see it; when I pick up this book and browse through it, I find myself urgently interested in playing it, which is something a lot of RPGs out there fail to accomplish. 

Likewise, adventure design for OSE is concise, driven by necessary information only, and laid out in a clean and to-the-point format designed to make GM prep smooth and easy. OSE has borrowed heavily from the indie zinerpg scene to manifest a module design approach which works incredibly well, and I feel like even Wizards of the Coast has noticed this and tried some half-baked attempts to emulate this with recent books (such as Forgotten Realms) recently.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark seems interested in brevity almost to a fault. Many rules are explained with the barest possible amount of information, often leaving the players and GM to parse out the implied results of what are in general basic rulings. This work against it at times if you are reading it from the perspective of one familiar with older D&D editions or the OSR movement, as Shadowdark is a modern game in OSR clothing, which means you can't assume anything with it. Shadowdark's communication style is so brief that it can be bothersome to people who prefer a more comprehensive or detailed explanation of mechanics, and also requires at times a lot of GM adjudication due to the lack of guidance it provides. This contrasts with the OSE rulesets in that OSE usually conveys to you the exact amount of information you need, while Shadowdark conveys the minimum amount of information....an important but subtle difference. 

On the other hand, Shadowdark's module design is heavily influenced by the Indie zinerpg scene, as is OSE. As a result, the actual modules for Shadowark are often using identical approaches to conveying necessary information in modest bites, and this leads to a sense that you could easily use Shadowdark modules with OSE and vice versa, just swapping out stat blocks as needed. 

Winner: OSE again, because it's friendly organization and "just the right amount of detail" approach to information makes it incredibly functional as a table resource. Shadowdark's brevity and bare-minimum approach to explaining anything will work best when you really are preferring a lot of interpretive freedom, though. It's almost a tie as I see it, but for my own personal tastes: OSE hands down.

Graphical Design:

OSE: OSE's art is an homage to B/X D&D and AD&D of the 80's. It's got a vaguely fetishistic approach to reimagining Erol Otus inspired artwork, and often relies on artists like Peter Mullen to accomplish this. I like it's approach more than with Dungeon Crawl Classics, which does something similar but often leans into a Retro 70's Kitsch aesthetic of a time that only existed in the doodles on the back of your High School textbooks (or so I imagine, as I was 10 years old in 1981 so I am definitely a product of the 80's rather than the 70's, when I was a little kid).

That said, OSE leans on a lot of art styles across many tomes, and some of the best and weirdest art manages a style that feels to me like "Erol Otus, if he was responsible for Adventure Time." So it's got a wide range within its deliberate aesthetic.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark is heavily focused on white-on-black aesthetics and a art style that feels divorced from B/X D&D and firmly rooted in AD&D 1st edition. It's art style is surprisingly uniform, across even third party publishers, to the extent that I think out of a couple dozen Shadowdark books I have, only one or two even bother to use real color at all....I haven't seen the 3PP design guide, but maybe there's a style guide somewhere they have to follow.

The good news on this is that Shadowdark books all look like they are part of a set; you can tell a Shadowdark book just by looking at it most times. The even better news is that a surprising amount of this art is actually really cool and evocative. The downside is I have also noticed a disproportionate amount of AI generated art in third party Shadowdark books, sometimes bad enough that it impacts my desire to even consider using the book (as is the case with Gammadark, the post-apocalyptic hack of Shadowdark, where the AI art is basically just "We have Warhammer 40K At Home" armored troopers in every other image). Luckily (so far) this does not seem to be an issue for the core books coming out of Arcane Library, though. 

Winner: Tough call! I will say Shadowdark for its stark white on black design aesthetic and imagery that feels very, very old school to me while still being quality art, but OSE is also very good at this, so its almost a tie. The third party content is more disappointing with Shadowdark, however, as too much AI generated art detracts from the books that use it, whereas that does not seem to be a problem with OSE's third party content at all for some reason.

Actual Play:

OSE: So I ran a bit of OSE a while back, a fun little campaign that ran for several levels and took advantage of one of my own campaign settings, mixed with some published modules, including maps from Trilemma Adventures (one of the greatest dungeon map books ever next to Dyson's works). It ran smoothly, it felt very old school even with using lots of third party content to "upgrade" it to some modern conventions in terms of the fantasy options available, and it was very fun. I don't think it felt terribly like the actual experience of playing AD&D I had back in the day, mainly because the core B/X emulation at the heart of OSE is just not as complex as the actual AD&D experience as it once was, but we all did have fun. I recall some of my players, far too enmeshed in modern game design, actually sat out the campaign for the most part. My own experience as a GM was pretty satisfying, though, and the play experience was not marred by 30-45 minutes of rules lawyering and lookup as tends to happen Every. Single. Session. with pathfinder 2E. Fun enough that I am now thinking about running a new OSE campaign soon, this time using The Panted Wastelands campaign setting.   

Shadowdark: I ran a short campaign last year.....a lengthy dungeon crawl, really, also set in my oldest campaign world (Lingusia), but not really using too much of it. We had fun, it was an entertaining system and its interesting quirks (including deciphering the level/XP process, the way magic casting works, and the disparity of power creep between the core book and sourcebooks) wasn't overly bothersome. It felt like a game system that wanted to just be played and get all the micromanagement out of the way, unless it involves light sources. It clearly works best for very dungeon-delve heavy gaming, although some soucebooks try to expand on wilderness delving and a few even dare to entertain using it as a "full featured" RPG though never enough to make one feel like Shadowdark would be a proper substitute for long term campaigning. I know its a style and feel preference, and Shadowdark may just be a little too simplistic for my own tastes; I know of at least two groups locally that play this game all the time, and abandoned DCC for it. For me....I kinda like it, but only maybe enough to crib some content from it for use with OSE, which really is the nicer overall product. That said....if I didn't feel like diving deep into the OSR experience and just wanted a fast play dungeon crawler for a session or two with tons of randomization, Shadowdark is pretty well the best option out there. In a sense that puts it next to Mork Borg, a system which I love running in spurts but never for long term campaigns. 

Winner: I have to give it narrowly to OSE as I really enjoyed running a couple campaigns with it and want to do more. But I also enjoyed running Shadowdark, even though the system itself often felt janky a times....but both are eminently playable. Because I prefer slightly more granularity in my OSR experience though, and also prefer the broader compatibility of OSE, I will give it this prize for being more playable.

Conclusion:

So, overall, for what I need at least I find OSE simply works better as a more well-rounded D&D OSR experience. Shadowdark works well as a pickup and play game for a session or three, but for me at least lacks the depth I need to feel like it is more versatile. OSE is on the edge of what I consider "acceptable" for versatility, but it is lovely because its close compatibility with older editions of D&D means if I really wanted to I could just hack the proficiency system from AD&D 2E into it without any fuss or muss, stick to descending AC for flavor, and grab a copy of The Night Below or Queen of the Demon Web Pits and run it pretty much as-is. I'd need to do some hacks on these modules to get them to play nice with Shadowdark, by contrast. As for adding rules from older editions, I could do that with Shadowdark, too.....but with OSE it feels like that is an option I can take if I want and its intended to work, while with Shadowdark it feels like I'd be defeating the point of the system's deliberate brevity, and also would probably find it easier to weld the 5E skill system onto Shadowdark instead of the AD&D proficiency system and kits and such. 

So! I'll talk various products on these over the next few weeks or so, including Shadowdark....which does have a lot of good sourcebooks out. I may be looking at them from the angle of "How can I get this to play nice with OSE?" though, so there ya' go!

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

Last blog talked about how I use round outlining (as I call it) to work out scenarios and even whole campaign ideas. This time around I wanted to talk specifically how that technique is in regular, constant use in the indie RPG scene right now, and its a very effective way at creating and running ready to go scenarios. The most effective examples of this technique are found in Mothership modules, specifically the trifold brochures which are an extension of the one-page module designs that started becoming popular a decade or two back (from the One Page Module contests, AAW games adventure-a-day and more). The Mothership modules (and there are also Mork Borg, Cairn and other modules of similar nature) are generally built around packing an entire session (or more) on two pages, which can then be folded as a trifold module. This forces the author of the module to maximize their use of space. 

One way to do this effectively merges the module description boxes, the map and the adventure path all into a single mixed graphic....the Haunting of Ypsilon-14 is the first such module for Mothership, and an excellent example of how to execute this (I do a deep dive on it here). Each area of the haunted space station has a quick series of bullet points on the salient elements of the area to be explored, and line/arrow links showing you where in the space station you can then go to from that location. Some extra page two text covers NPCs, the monsters and encounter timers and events. I managed to get three or four sessions out of this module, it's that good.

These modules my design work best for GMs (Wardens in Mothership) who are accustomed to improvisation, because the space limits mean you will inevitably have descriptions or events that cannot be covered; the design is meant to force emergent gameplay, and a GM running a module in this design would be best aided with a notebook on hand to take notes as you expand upon the module as you go, to keep your plot and detail additions consistent.

Doing this for a homebrew is actually a great exercise in thinking about what the core conceits of the scenario should be. You also don't need to limit yourself to a one or two page format, though that can be fun as an exercise in creativity and design. That said, look to systems like Shadowdark, Cairn, Mork Borg and Old School Essentials for examples of how this concept is expanded upon into multi-page modules that are still, at their core, using the "what matters most in this area" conceit of tight design with outline-focused dungeon design. 

Gaming This Last Week: More DCC (it's getting good), D&D 5E Keeps on Going, OSE returns and Lots of New Books (Path of the Planebreaker, Ruins of Symbaroum, Anime 5E)

 Well, the last week has proven exciting, as I resume GMing duties on Saturdays for a while. The recent gaming events have boiled down to the following:

1. Weekly Dungeon Crawl Classics on Monday nights. As we play further and deeper into this particular game I feel that, as mentioned last post, DCC is a game best enjoyed around a live table with fleshy humans; VTT just doesn't do this system as much justice (though in fairness I think approaching the VTT carefully with some clear rules on conduct in the funnel crawl would help). Either way, DCC is fun....maybe I will think about running it, or one of its cousins (Mutant Crawl Classics) sometime. I just can't get over "race as class" in 2022, but MCC handles it well enough with its post-apocalyptic theme (for me), so....yeah, probably that eventually.

2. D&D 5E Wednesdays continue, and it's been a blast. I've developed a very pleasant relationship with 5E, and my strategy of reducing non-critical foes and encounters to minimum permitted HP has helped a great deal with keeping the combat, when it happens, from overwhelming the evening. My setting for the campaign continues to be fun for me, with a large focus on an archaic world straight out of the fifth century AD steeped in traditional folklore, magic and superstition, and eschewing much of the more fantastical/farcical elements of the genre to keep it simple and mysterious.

3. We had a final night with Call of Cthulhu on Astral Tabletop Friday. The Keeper is taking vacation for two weeks, and when he returns Astral will be gone. RIP Astral, you were a decent VTT environment. 

4. Saturday I returned to the GM seat, and while we had bandied about returning to Starfinder I convinced everyone I could no longer pretend I even cared about that system anymore, and we should just resume Old-School Essentials again, which we did, with a follow-up campaign to the first one. Since some high-tech sci fi elements were inevitable in this sequel, I am cribbing content from a combination of Gamma World, Mutant Future, Star Crawl and Mutant Crawl Classics for now to "fill in the gaps" as it were. So far, working great! As the group reaches 3rd level (give or take) they are starting to see how the system, despite feeling anemic compared to modern iterations of D&D, is actually quite robust as a story engine type game. We're using the Advanced Edition rules in OSE, which is where my comfort zone lies; although I did start with the Otus red cover Basic D&D set back in the day, my second purchase was the AD&D three book set and my second game was in AD&D. For this reason the "class as race" thing never made sense to me and feels too limiting. I ordered a second set of the rulebooks for my wife as well from Exalted Funeral, I think for the games she runs for kids at school it might be a great choice.

Several new tomes arrived within the last week: The Ruins of Symbaroum is a really interesting adaptation of that system to D&D 5E, though maybe most useful for use as-is; I am not sure its all that easy to extract content from for other games. 

I also got my copy of the Path of the Planebreaker from Monte Cook Games today. Just started reading it, but already looks like an amazingly interesting approach to cross-planar travel with tons of useful content. It feels like a spiritual successor to one of my favorite 3rd edition books, Beyond Countless Doorways. 

Finally, ordered (and snagged the PDF) of Anime 5E, from the company which apparently now controls the Big Eyes, Small Mouth property once held by Tri-Stat. This book is really dang interesting, and I must write more on it soon, as it provides an apparently very nice approach to turning D&D 5E into a point-buy system of design, and all the rules to allow for it. More on this one very soon.

The Slow Burn: Wanting to play more Old-School Essentials....

When I wrapped my foray into Old-School Essentials RPG a month or two back, it was with a couple observations. One of those was that, at times, I felt like the game was hitting too low on the complexity bar for my tastes, but it was also admittedly a lot of fun and exceedingly easy to adjudicate. Realizing (somehow, after all these decades) that abilities like "Open Door" can just be reskinned as "athletics" and "listen to door" is just a Listen skill check....Detect Secret Door is just "Spot..." it was a bit of a surprise to me that I never considered that back in the day. Probably because, if you roll back to actual AD&D, the measurement and enforcing text in the rules gets wonkier and more specific. But for OSE--yeah, they are totally athletics, listen and spot. 

Anyway, after running more D&D 5E for a while (and having fun doing it), along with diving in to the latest hardcover release fo Pathfinder 2E (Book of the Dead), I find myself drawn back to the elegant simplicity of OSE. I want to run more of it, and preferably sooner than later. This is even in the face of my current other major obsession: Pathfinder Savage Worlds! PFSW is itself an amazing pairing.

Anyway, no idea what to make of this or where to go with it, but I feel now like my only real mistake with the idea of continuing the OSE game in space was simply not finding the best OSE resource to crib content from. I'm snagging a copy of Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, for example, and also reconsidering if maybe I can use just the core rules of White Star and ignore the Galaxy edition. These could all be viable solutions. Heck, I can just crib from my Spelljammer books, which I'm already doing for 5E, although I concede my vision for the OSE in space game was to have actual technology and science-fantasy in the style of Starfinder, just without all the thousands of pages of excessive rules. 

Well, got plenty on my plate as it is, and my main game night (Saturday) is likely stuck doing D&D 5E for a good long time now. My Tuesday night group is aware of my interest in trying out Savage Pathfinder, though. As to where I fit more OSE in.....good question! But I keep thinking about it, so I need to do it.

OSE Adventure Conclusion - Cold Wind Whispering Module

 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.

OSE Session Three - Getting Better (also: on cutting the boring stuff from dungeons and ditching the gold standard of XP)

 The Old-School Essentials game continues, now hitting session three. The group is in the thick of a pathcrawl style scenario (I won't mention which --yet--) and its a fun one I modded for my Enzada campaign setting. The first two sessions had been a dungeon crawl I used to get the group some extra XP, and I realize now it was ultimately not necessary or as fun for me. I can write 'em, but I don't really enjoy them anymore (well, I say that, but see below). The pathcrawl style is fun, though, with situational/exploratory events at each location making for some fun stuff.

The game almost feels like a family game (it sort of is!), as both my son and wife are playing, along with two long time friends who also have gamed for ages with me. One of our regulars is out due to work for a while, the other two regulars disappeared for a bit (on Saturday night, anyway), possibly due to work but also possible because they are not overly interested in OSE for various reasons. Still, a four person group is a nice size, especially on Roll20.

I wrangled with the XP process but have grown increasingly annoyed with it. In the Old Days of Yore, those dark times of the 80's in which I was forced to experience ages 9-19, I never actually used the GP metric for awarding XP. Part of the issue was that I subscribed to Ken St. Andre's sound logic, as expressed quite well in Tunnels & Trolls: gold is its own reward! XP is for things you do, not things you loot. Either way, I made sure that by session three they got enough XP for the things they did to merit hitting level 2 (though had the group's rogue not been killed last sessions he'd have leveled up at the end of session #2). 

The dungeon thing is something else. I've run plenty of dungeons, but at a certain point I realized that most dungeons end up being filler. Sometimes they can be fun, sure. In fact, oddly enough I'd argue that dungeon crawling is exceedingly interesting in the versions of D&D that have the largest number of fiddly and specific rules about such. D&D 3rd edition is shockingly good at focusing on the dungeon crawl experience with lightning rod precision, so well perhaps that I find it less pleasant to do the dungeon crawl setting in any other system now as a result.

D&D 4th edition did something more subversive, though: it focused less on the dungeon crawl as a big process, and more on the dungeon crawl as a series of set pieces. The idea was to cut filler out, tighten the experience, and let the game dwell longer on the really good parts of the story, or where the action was. 4E had lots of issues, but this was not one of them; focusing on the good stuff was what I had done for decades already, and for a while at least I bought in to the ideas of how 4E did that in its map and minis-obsessed mechanics.

With D&D 5E, a return to form and also a return to large dungeon set pieces with lots of filler became more normal. But, D&D 5E combat can be more boring if you are not careful, as it makes hard-hitting monsters less impactful, and fights prolonged with too many hit points. I got sucked in to this trap a bit, too. But....I am working to get out of that mindset, and with the Tuesday night game I am running a campaign that is designed to focus only on the big set pieces, the interesting stuff, if you will, and cut out the doldrums.

With OSE, the module I am running does have the travel, the camping, the setting up watches....all of that. But its pathcrawl design makes it simultaneously methodical and interesting as you will find at least one really weird thing to figure out, explore, solve or ignore at your peril at each location. It's a fun approach, and melds the procedural elements of dungeon crawling/wilderness crawling with a format that tries to aim for the most bang for the buck at each location.

Anyway......I'm just happy to be finding some fun in it. I was worried for a while now that I was really burning out on D&D and fantasy in general, and I don't feel so much like it with these recent games. I am still tempted to suggest to the group that if they like the OSE game that the next one I run adopt the advanced rules, as those are just more comfortable to me since my early experience was primarily with AD&D, but honestly it's got me back to thinking about what other classic experiences I could revive soon....Tunnels & Trolls, for example!

The Gaseous Form Rabbit Hole

 Saturday I ran the second session of Old-School Essentials, in which the group braves the mysterious Mountain (after surviving an old temple). 

A tiny bit of a rabbit hole was formed when, after a party member who had been gassified by a Potion of Gaseous Form, was subsequently the target of a trap which dealt fire damage. The question was....would the gaseous form be subject/vulnerable to the effect?

I ended up making a quick ruling on it, but not before growing increasingly confused as I kept looking for the gaseous form spell and not finding it. The rules were luckily with the Potion of gaseous Form listing, but that didn't mention it's a derivative of Wraithform, which I eventually found out was how the gaseous form was listed in the old days. Who knew! I had no memory of it. 

Anyway, the trip down the rabbit hole went like this:

OSE - can't find the spell, use the potion to adjudicate.

Check Labyrinth Lord Advanced, don't find the spell.

Check 1E Player's Handbook, don't find the spell! What the heck, I remember using this spell in the early days, right?!?!?!

Check 2E Player's Handbook, still can't find the spell! Now I am suspecting I am having a Mandela Effect moment.

Check Player's Handbook 3rd Edition, find the Gaseous Form spell. Okay, so maybe somehow we really never used it except as a potion in 1E/2E? That makes no sense...

Go google it a bit, find the Forgotten Realms Wiki which suggests the spell used to be called Wraithform, referencing the 2E to 3E conversion document. I have no such recollection, but sure....

And sure enough, Wraithform is in OSE and the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, but not in the 1E PHB, so I bet it showed up in a later book, or not until AD&D 2E. Admittedly, I ran the most 2nd edition AD&D (far, far more than I ever got to run AD&D 1E) so my memory of the spell being connected to that edition makes sense. But I am stumped at the fact that I do not recall the spell being called Wraithform. 

Anyway, a fun short rabbit hole on old trivia on a D&D spell....

GM Style vs. Campaign Styles - show vs. tell and how it changes in RPGs

 Saturday we tried out an initial session of Old-School Essentials. This was due to the Call of Cthulhu campaign hitting a dramatic climax, reaching a point where plenty of PCs needed to go into psych wards, some players needed to roll replacement characters, and the rest of the Delta Green team needed to do some new recruiting. While the GM concocts the next story arc I suggested OSE as a filler between sessions until I was ready for whatever I come up with next.

To get this out of the way: Roll20 has a nice Necrotic Gnome branded character sheet which made playing OSE in VTT easy, and it was a fun session. My son has joined the Saturday group and his presence was critical, I feel, to helping me better understand both the baseline appreciation for the game in general, and also helped me to realize why I often have a sort of "GM crisis" where I find myself feeling extremely dissatisfied with the games I have been running. 

Part of the issue, I now realize, is that the VTT format really leans heavily on the "show, don't tell" methodology, and by virtue of the tools at hand that means its easy and almost feels necessary to throw out battlemaps of everything, along with minis. If you have a dungeon map, after all, why wouldn't you use it? But this is actually rather contrary to the way dungeon delving actually worked back in the Old Days. In 1981 when I ran the Caves of Chaos I actually did put down the dungeon map, and we actually used push-pins on the map which I put a foam backing behind to track movement of the group (the horror!) It was a glorious mess, but quickly afterwards I realized several things:

1. Don't do something to the map which makes it non-reusable/messes it up.

2. Describing things to the players and letting them map it out is both what the game expects you to do and also kind of more fun (but not these days; I think around 1990ish is when I believe players stopped wanting to do their own mapping, I noticed).

3. Tell don't show was the norm back then because describing something gave it much more detail than you could get unless you were a proficient illustrator. Today, google searches make it trivial to find some artwork to do the same, but in truth it's also a placebo effect, a prop might lock you in to something not quite in alignment with your vision for the module.

From pretty much 1981 until around 2002-2003 I was a "describe the thing" kind of GM, telling players what was going on, where they were, and so forth with occasional illustrations in play. I had dungeon, city and overland maps but their purpose was for me to keep track of things, and the players needed to assess where they were from my descriptions. When we had complex battles a sheet of scratch paper was usually deployed to provide a rough sketch of what was going on. That was it.

2002 was notable because I got in to a group where I rotated GM duties and gamed at a house with a friend with an enormously complete collection of maps and minis, and even props. This scenario would repeat again with another friend who had even more maps, minis and props in 2008ish. By then, I had acquired lots of maps and minis myself....D&D 3rd edition, particularly 3.5, leaned heavily on the implied expectation that these were advisable to have, and it was a norm that I had to get used to. In truth, I never did; the only reason I can enjoy D&D 3.5 today is because its no longer played much, and I can set the game table expectations back to my own preferences, leaning less on maps and minis. 

In film, there is a general notion that showing the audience something is better than telling them. If you have to convey information that cannot be shown, it may be necessary to rethink your approach a bit. I can think of no better illustration of how this works in cinema than the 1980's era director's cut of Dune vs. the 2021 Dune chapter I. Both films are telling the same story from the same book, but one does a borderline maddening level of "telling" to get the audience up to speed and the other leans 100% into the "show the audience" side of the process. 

Likewise, a concept like this can apply (and often does) to novel writing. In writing, it is often (not always, but often) better to have someone within the story convey information in a meaningful manner. If you have to exposition dump in a novel to get the reader informed, and that exposition is not conveyed in the course of the plot or through the voices/sight of a protagonist or other character, you risk losing some audience when they feel like the author is maybe just sharing their notes to get everyone on the same page.

But in GMing, the concept of show vs. tell is different. There are elements of the two concepts from above which do apply: a GM who can show an illustration of a trap room might find it evades confusion in explaining what things look like, for example. Old modules did this, a lot. Look at Tomb of Horrors, for example! The idea of providing illustrations of complex or interesting rooms from the perspective of the players is a great idea.

Likewise, it is much better to have a character within the game (or a good skill roll) tell players some useful information or backstory....and to write the module to include said backstory as a findable easter egg, if you will. Often many modules include pages of explanation for what brought the situation or location to its current state, enveloping the GM reading it in lore, then fail to provide any mechanism by which that lore can be meaningfully imparted to the players. Some GMs just infodump, but that is a terrible idea. There is such a thing as too much information (for some players) and a GM should know where that threshold lies with their players.

But when it comes to the show vs. tell concept in VTT and specifically the use of maps and minis, this concept changes....at least for me. The difference for me between RPGs as a strength and RPGs as combat miniatures games boils down to whether the use of maps and minis hinders or enhances the flow of the narrative. If you like the combat, if you enjoy the tactical elements, the maps and minis are useful tools, obviously. But if you are like me, and you never even considered maps and minis to be necessary or even helpful for the first 21 years of playing the hobby, they are a bit of an anathema to the tale-telling you are actually aiming for.

In the old days, I called this the "swing from the chandelier" scenario, with the implication that players might try to do something like that if the location of a fight is fluid and descriptive, with the players asking questions about the environment to see if there's something they can exploit. This means you could have possibilities to consider in battle that simply don't exist until you bring them up....but once asked, make sense, and so become available. To contrast, a map lays it all out clearly, and also cannot adequately convey three dimensions....and 3D scenery can do that, but at the expense of a heavy cost in cash and time, plus of course being actually good at making 3D scenery and props is a skill unto itself, and if that were the initial barrier to entry for this hobby then I simply would not be in the hobby.

All of this is a long way toward me realizing that one of the reasons I have been less satisified at times when running games in VTT recently, while at other times I have been having a blast, is because I have fallen in to the trap of what I call the VTT Hammer. When your tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, of course. In VTT, when your tool is designed from the ground up for you to use virtual maps and minis, then everything revolves around that. But it doesn't need to be so; I never use maps/minis as such when running Call of Cthulhu, for example. And in my Mothership games the maps as such are point-locational, by design, which means that you are using them merely to keep general track of where people are at, not as battle maps. Either way....my Mothership and Call of Cthulhu games have been amazing, whereas my recent D&D, Pathfinder and OSE games have been utterly m'eh.

I'm looking at how to handle this for Pathfinder 2E tomorrow. Thankfully it really is possible to run PF2E, D&D 5E and OSE without the conventional maps and minis....go back to the descriptive theater of the mind approach, as the appellation eventually came to be. One huge advantage to this approach is that it tends to force the GM to think more about what you want to present in a scenario, rather than doing it procedurally. As an example: there are four interesting encounters I want to get to in the dungeon crawl in OSE, but the rest of the dungeon is just obstructive and boring chafe....so why am I slogging everyone (and myself) through the procedural of dungeon crawling when the old players in the group are, as veterans, going through the motions just because, and the new player in the group, who is having fun with all of it, will also happen to find the actual fun stuff just as fun, if not more so, and never know the difference? 

For me, it is reconciling the notion that "just because VTT expects me to stick a map and minis out doesn't mean its a good idea." Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't always a bad idea, but a friend of mine read an article on this, and I wish I knew the source of this rough paraphrased quote, that boils down to, "never hide your good ideas." And in truth, I think a lot of scenarios in gaming do exactly that: hide the good ideas.

Okay, enough rambling! More on OSE later.....I have a lot of thoughts about the game now that I've run it a bit, more about the general nature of classic retro gaming in and of itself. Likewise, more on the conundrum of being an old veteran player and the idea that young, new players are actually a great way to invigorate your own interest once more.