Pass it along…

Face to face, out in the heat, hanging tough, staying hungry…

                                                                                                                                             — Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”

In a proud GM Dad moment, my eldest daughter just ran her first RPG session as a Game Master! I let her be, but stayed close enough to answer the occasional question, and by all accounts and an enthusiastic reception from her players she did a great job!

While preparing for her first session, she asked me a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could and thought that incorporating that advice into a single primer might help. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to finish this before she started running, but I thought I’d finish it anyway and put it here in the hopes that someone reading this might find it useful.

In terms of background, I’m coming at this from the POV of a Call of Cthulhu Keeper (GM), as that is what my daughter was running. Thus, my headspace was focused on investigative adventures, but I’ve tried to make the advice universally applicable.

So, without further ado…

Trust your group.

This is a big one and I think should be stated first. Unless you are running a convention game, you are probably playing with your friends, friends who understand that this is your first time taking the chair. They know that it’s a big responsibility and they’ll be willing to cut you a lot of slack. They’re happy that you’re willing to run a game for them. So, relax and don’t worry about being judged!

Note that this holds true for convention games, too. Believe it or not, many attendees who join convention games are home GMs who are happy to be players for a while. In any event, most of your players are getting used to playing with each other as much as you, so don’t think that a quiet table is an unhappy table. Everyone needs a little time to feel things out.

Expect to make mistakes.

You’re going to make mistakes, probably lots of them. But that’s okay. As a new GM, you’ve got a lot to keep track of and a responsibility to guide the session. You’re going to get tripped up here and there. Your players know that, and they’ll be fine with it. Again, they’re happy that you’re trying your hand at running!

And here’s a dirty little secret (or not so secret): we veteran GMs make mistakes too! The best advice I can give is not to hide it when you mess up. Nothing eases the stress on you like admitting that you made a mistake. If it’s something that didn’t derail the adventure, then just note the mistake and keep going. If it adversely affected the players, then compensate them and move on.

Be fair in your rulings.

While your players are going to give you their trust, it is up to you to keep it. A good way to do that is to be fair in your rulings. Note that “rulings” aren’t “rules,” they are how you run the game and apply the rules. As long as your decisions feel rational and you apply your rulings fairly, you should maintain the trust of your group.

It’s okay to take advice from your players regarding rules or rulings, but don’t let things get bogged down if a quick ruling keeps things moving. Ultimately, the rules are simply there to help you make decisions. Just make a decision for now and look up the rule after the session. You can apply the rule in the future.

Only appeal to chance when it matters.

Players generally want their characters to be competent. They don’t want to create a martial arts expert that gets easily clubbed unconscious by a purse-wielding senior or a scientist that doesn’t know basic chemistry. An easy way to do this is to simply assume competence when the act ultimately doesn’t matter or when the task seems too easy to fail. On the flip side, you can also say “no” when a character tries to do something that is obviously beyond their capabilities.

This is especially important if you’re running an investigative adventure. If your characters are investigating a crime scene, then they should be able to find any obvious clues as well as clues that they would know to look for. Nothing kills an adventure dead like the players not being able to follow leads because their character missed a skill roll to find a necessary piece of evidence!

There may be times when you’ll want the players to roll but you also need them to succeed. Keep in mind that you don’t have to make the roll a pass-fail test. It may be that if they fail, then they still succeed but draw some sort of complication. For example, if a character fails a roll on an internet search, then you may rule that they found the information only after wasting all night surfing and now they’re exhausted the next day.

Roll in the open.

This one isn’t truly necessary, as there is a long tradition of GMs rolling dice behind screens, but rolling in the open does two things. First, it fosters trust between you and your players that you are keeping things fair. Second, if you know that you’ll be rolling in the open, then you’ll also make sure that you’re only calling for rolls when you can accept the result. If you can’t, then why are you leaving it to chance?

Know the basic beats of your adventure.

Hopefully, you’ve done your prep work on your adventure. If you designed it yourself, then you’ve already internalized it. If you are using an adventure that you didn’t create, then you’ll want to read it at least twice (three is better!).

After reading the adventure, make a quick flowchart that follows the basic beats of the adventure and note where player choice matters. This flowchart doesn’t have to be very detailed, just enough to remind you of where the adventure is heading and how to guide the players back if they take their characters too far afield.

If the players need to meet a key NPC, find a crucial clue, or otherwise need a McGuffin to get to the next part of the adventure, then you’ll want to note that on the flowchart as well. That way, the flowchart will remind you of the important things you need to introduce along the way.

Keep things moving…

One of the worst things that you can do as a GM, new or veteran, is to allow the players to be stumped for too long. Sometimes what is obvious to you isn’t obvious to them, or they’ve simply discarded a clue that’s important because it doesn’t fit their theories. This can lead to unnecessary frustration.

Don’t be afraid to offer guidance. Sometimes, you can simply remind them of what they’ve found or offer suggestions to follow leads. A gentle reminder that they never visited the business on the matchbook they found, or they never thought to check the hills for the goblin encampment may be enough to get them moving without feeling like you handed it to them.

Also, don’t be afraid to end an encounter early if the conclusion is obvious. If the player characters are wiping the floor with kobolds, then you can simply say that they’ve finished them off without having to waste another 15 minutes. If an NPC isn’t going to give the players the information they want, then you don’t need to wait 10 minutes while the players keep asking questions.

…But don’t railroad.

If you’ve played RPGs for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard about the dreaded “railroad.” Simply put, railroading is whenever you take agency away from the players in situations where they believe that they should have agency. If the players are going to follow the adventure, it should be because it feels logical, or at least rational, for them to do so.

A good way to counter this is to always offer an open-ended option whenever you offer suggestions. “So, do you want to go to the business on the matchbook, follow up on Mr. Tanner’s interrogation, or do something else?” reminds the players of leads they haven’t followed but also tells them that you’re willing to go with whatever they decide.

Simplify the rules and internalize them.

Note that while I think most GMs get intimidated by the rules, I’ve made rules the lowest on the list of priorities. That’s because rules are the responsibility of everyone around the table, especially given that most out-of-game arguments during play tend to be about rules.

You don’t need to commit an entire rulebook to memory, but you should internalize the basic mechanic. Don’t worry about side cases. You can always make rulings until you’re more familiar with those rules. Just remember that point above about being fair!

In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, most tests involve rolling a d20 and adding modifiers to meet or exceed a target number. That, along with granting advantage or disadvantage, is enough for you to run a session with little trouble.

You’re supposed to be having fun, too!

This is not so much a guideline but a reminder. As a GM, you aren’t supposed to sacrifice fun; you are simply trading one type of fun for another. You get to see all the behind-the-scenes plotting, enjoy having the players interact with your adventure and make creative (and sometimes bone-headed!) decisions, play a bunch of NPCs, and overall control the flow of the adventure. It can be a blast!

Your players have a responsibility to ensure that you’re having fun, too. While there will certainly be times that a player doesn’t agree with you, they should respect your ultimate decisions. If things become too aggravating or frustrating, then it’s better to take a break or even shut down a campaign until those issues are resolved.

Wrapping Up

While taking the GM Chair can seem intimidating and even overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Hopefully, the advice above is helpful in showing you that it’s possible to ease into GMing and, hopefully, lead to your guiding friends through many new adventures!

And as a final (and most important) reminder, GMing is not something to be tolerated, it is meant to be enjoyed!

Hopefully not a bad moon rising…

In the shadow of night, I see the full moon rise, telling me what’s in store…
                                                                                                — Whitesnake, “Still of the Night”

Being creatures of the modern world, it can be difficult to get into a medieval mindset for our fantasy medieval/renaissance RPG campaigns. Things we take for granted, such as a wide variety of food, a robust nightlife, and indoor heat (absent numerous fireplaces), work their way into our ostensibly medieval settings, often without anyone around the table realizing it.

Of course, indulging in the “fantasy” aspect solves a lot of these problems. Maybe medieval France didn’t have potatoes, but that’s not to say your Western Europe-inspired setting doesn’t have them. Similarly, a city with wide magic may have light globes or enchanted ceiling panels that enable buildings and streets to be adequately lit at night. And maybe your fantasy medieval town watch does act like a modern police force with a dedicated investigative division.

A few months back, in the waning days of 2023, I found myself researching something on the internet when I came across the idea of biphasic sleep. After falling into that rabbit hole for a bit, I decided to incorporate biphasic sleep into my campaign.

What is Biphasic Sleep?

Without going into a lot of scientific jargon that I’d probably be misusing anyway, biphasic sleep is a sleeping pattern where you sleep during two parts of your day. In our modern world, this typically manifests as a normal night’s sleep and a daytime nap (or siesta).

In the past, however, it is thought that, with artificial light being expensive or, in the case of tallow candles, too smelly, most people went to bed with the sunset and rose at dawn. This is a pretty long period, especially in winter months, so people would generally sleep for a few hours, get up in the middle of the night for an hour or two, and then go back to sleep for another few hours until dawn.

This hour or so in the middle was rarely spent staring at the ceiling. People would get up, have a snack, hit the outhouse, do chores (anything that could be performed in the moonlight), say prayers, or, in the case of romantic partners, put on the Barry White album (you know what I mean!).

Once artificial light became more ubiquitous, sleeping schedules shrank as people could stay up longer and wake up earlier. The reduction in sleep time meant that more people, most people, would simply sleep straight through or, if they did wake up, try to get back to sleep as quickly as possible.

Is this actually true? Maybe, maybe not, but it still gave me food for thought!

Thanks for the Lecture, but What Does This Mean for RPGs?

Most roleplaying games assume that player characters must rest for 8 hours or bad things start to happen, whether that be some form of exhaustion check or penalties to actions. I’ve never read a rulebook for a game set in a pre-industrial period that suggested that an 8-hour sleep, or “long rest” in modern Dungeons & Dragons parlance, can be split into two sleep periods with a semi-active period in between.

Having said that, I know that you can easily read biphasic sleep into the long rest, as the definition includes light activity and 2-hour watch periods, but I’ve never played or run in a game where the whole party made a ritual out of getting up in the middle of the night together. It just seems weird because that isn’t how we sleep today.

For me, the idea of biphasic sleep fits comfortably into my OSR campaign, especially considering that the chief lawful deity, Valtar, is represented by the moon. It makes sense that Valtar’s worshippers would pray to him at midnight when the moon is at its highest (my campaign world is Earth-like, with one sun and moon).

Note that, in my campaigns, both OSR and modern, I usually ignore the rule that an interrupted night’s rest prohibits healing or spell memorization, as these only serve to slow the game down. If the group is camped, and they can’t heal or refresh their spells because a couple of hobgoblins wandered into camp and caused trouble, then they’ll probably just stay camped for another night.

So how does implementing biphasic sleep impact my campaign?

Time Matters

Ordinarily, at the end of the game day, my group builds a camp, eats supper, and then hopefully gets a good night’s sleep. During the night, they set watches, but everyone is stuck with the resources they have left as they don’t replenish until morning.

In my campaign, I’ve divided the night into 5 phases. There are two “watches” of about 2 hours each, followed by a 1-hour or so period when everyone is up eating, praying, and studying, followed by another two “watches” before daybreak.

As I’ve ruled that the morning 4-hour “snooze” followed by an evening snooze replenishes everyone at midnight, then when a night encounter takes place matters a lot more. Player characters have diminished resources when facing monsters during the early part of the night, but they’re at full power in the pre-dawn hours. Unfortunately, that also means that the resources they spend in pre-dawn conflicts affect them for the rest of the day.

Even if you want to keep resting as-is, biphasic sleep offers opportunities for roleplay. Wandering NPCs may wait to approach a camp until midnight, and there is always at least part of a night when everyone is up and alert, rather than just the watchers.

Magical Adjustment

Having the player characters refresh at midnight comes with a few adjustments. For example, when in dangerous territory, characters may choose to consume rations rather than cook and risk having a campfire attract danger (unless, of course, the bitter cold is a greater enemy).

Light sources are another problem. One of the reasons for biphasic sleep is the idea that candles and oil are precious and that no one wants to waste them but sleeping for 10-12 hours every night is not practical (although it sounds like paradise to me!). So, how is one expected to regain spells?

For divine casters, this isn’t a problem, as they are usually encouraged to either use rote prayers or speak to their deity directly; the powers that be don’t usually require precise readings that haven’t been committed to memory over time.

Arcane casters are another matter. If you’re playing any flavor of D&D, then arcane casters “fire-and-forget,” requiring study after a good night’s sleep. (In my current campaign, arcane casters don’t so much forget as they need to study astrological charts and fluctuating ley lines to ensure that their spellcasting is effective on any given day).

My solution was to take the need for sight away. In my campaign, arcane script is a semi-magical type of braille. Any arcane caster that runs their fingers over the script can both read the symbols and decode the magical meaning and power within them (so a non-arcane caster can learn to read “Xanish” (my deity of magic is Xanadu), but they still can’t cast it or otherwise access the magical properties).

Midnight Services

As I mentioned above, Valtar is a lunar deity, so it makes sense that my campaign follows the more modern convention of having a day begin at midnight, as opposed to sunrise, sunset, or any other norm. Also, given Valtar’s status, midnight is considered the time when worshipers can best connect with their deities, so most of the powers in my campaign encourage midnight prayers and worship regardless of alignment.

That means that, within a community, it wouldn’t be uncommon for everyone to get up in the middle of the night and attend services. At this hour, the temples would likely be the only buildings in the community fully illuminated (although some may worship privately or even in secret, depending on their deity).

If the community is generally lawful, then everyone would be expected to attend, with innkeepers rousing their guests to make sure they get to the temple on time (and, more importantly, ensure that they don’t remain to rob the inn blind!). Town watches are empowered to skip services to patrol and any crimes committed during this time are harshly punished (also, while it goes unsaid, watchmen are encouraged to root out secret chaotic meetings during this time, so such services are usually well-hidden and constantly changing as to actual time and place).

 Wrapping Up

As I hope you’ve noticed by now, introducing biphasic sleep has had a profound effect on my campaign world. Sleep patterns change, time of night matters, arcane script is affected, and even the daily calendar is a bit different. I also hope that I’ve encouraged you to give it a try. It may or may not be more authentically medieval, but it will certainly help make it seem a bit more fantastic.

Have you tried using biphasic sleep or another alternative to the traditional “sleep for 8 hours, then prep and breakfast?” Let us know in the comments!

Open the gate to agency!

You know in some way you’re a lot like me

You’re just a prisoner and you’re tryin’ to break free

                                                                         — John Parr, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”

One of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, elements of roleplaying games is “agency.” When RPGs claim that “you are limited only by your imagination” or similar, “agency” is what they mean. The idea that a group of people can get together and decide how a fictional group of characters is going to react to situations without artificial limitations is a very strong draw.

When we speak about agency in RPGs, however, we tend to focus on the players. Do the players have agency when it comes to creating their own characters? Are they free to make their own choices? Are safety tools in place? Are they stuck on the dreaded “railroad?” I think most Game Masters would agree that giving players as much agency as possible is a good thing.

But what about agency for GMs?

I know, I can already hear some of you snickering. Why does a GM need agency? Don’t they have total control over their gaming table? Aren’t catchy terms like “Rule 0” and “rulings not rules” just fancy ways of saying that the GM has final say over both rules and play? Why the heck do they need to worry about their own agency?

I used to think that way as well. But after a year of running a sandbox-style old school campaign, I found myself musing that I’ve had a lot more agency lately. Hopefully today’s article will inspire you too!

Sandbox Sensibility

Normally, starting a new campaign is a pretty massive undertaking up front. I need to design an adventure path and a setting to go with it. While some campaign prep is easier than others, each still tends to involve a lot of reading and writing to wrap my mind around it and get something in the players’ hands to help them create characters.

For my old school campaign, world prep was a lot easier. As I mentioned in my previous article, all I really needed to prep was a map, a home base, and a dungeon or three to sprinkle around the base. And that was pretty much it!

It is truly amazing how much this has freed up my prep time. Occasionally I need to add another dungeon or conflict for the players but, for the most part, the campaign is self-sustaining. I don’t feel the need to keep rereading notes or worrying about whether I’ve fleshed out enough to get through the next session.

It’s worth noting here that what makes my prep even easier is the sheer wealth of material that’s already out there. In addition to the many official TSR modules put out (all of which are largely compatible no matter which TSR edition or retroclone you are using), there is a wealth of material available on DriveThruRPG and other sources.

Players Handle Characters

While I always try to give my players as much choice as possible when it comes to creating their own characters, I usually spend a good chunk of time writing up a primer that explains the game world and the cultures that I expect the PCs to come from (not to mention the invariable retconning when a player really, really, really wants to play a Drow in my Drow-less setting).

In addition, I often find myself sticking my hand into PC generation to ensure that the group is a good fit for the missions, or “adventure path” in modern D&D parlance, that they are expected to face. And then, once it’s perfect, it only lasts until the first character dies or a player gets bored and wants a change, which then involves a lot of finagling to integrate the new character into an ongoing plot.

Running an old school campaign frees me up from most of that. The group begins each session anew in a tavern or other safe location, and it doesn’t matter whether they are continuing their old characters or bringing in new ones. Even the class mix isn’t an issue. The group knows what they have, hires a few retainers to shore up weak areas, and decides for themselves where they want to explore.

That’s not to say that I don’t set limits. I do have a list of classes (yes, I use species-as-class) that they can select from, but it’s a pretty large list. And if someone really, really, really wants to play something else, then it’s a quick discussion – I don’t have to worry about how they fit, only that they might encounter some resistance (“You really want to play a dragonborn in this Tolkien-esque setting? Fine, the keep guardians have heard rumors of dragonborn but have never actually seen one, so be prepared for suspicious stares and awkward conversation”).

There are No Rails

Another key point of GM agency is that, in my old school campaign, I don’t have to worry about keeping the players on track to complete the mission. In fact, there are no “missions” per se, just a list of rumors (compiled from the dungeons I pick) that the group gets to point them in various directions. It is entirely up to the players where they go and how long they stay there. If they dip into the Crypt of Terrors and find that too deadly, deciding to leave and spend some more time exploring Monster Island, that’s totally cool.

Even better, I let my players know at the start of the campaign that a lot of stuff would be made up as we go along, becoming a part of the campaign only after being introduced. Thus, my players understand that if they decide to explore a region that I haven’t prepared, that they can wait a few minutes while I randomly generate encounters or lairs (as I write this, the group spent the better part of our last session hunting a monster that was randomly generated because the Dwarf recalled lore about the value of its eggs, which led to a lair stake-out and ambush that I came up with on the fly).

 Letting Fate Happen

One of the most difficult things that can happen to a GM during an adventure path is for a PC to die at a critical moment, prodding you to use GM fiat to save them lest the entire mission falls apart. And it is very difficult to maintain the veneer of deadliness, telling players that “smart play matters” when you constantly pull them out of the fires they blunder into or create.

While running an old school campaign doesn’t necessarily eliminate the “GM’s saving hand” when a GM doesn’t want a treasured PC to die, it does free GMs from the repercussions of losing a PC in the group. A PC’s death in an old school campaign won’t disrupt the flow of a mission or force you to rewrite your plot elements because you expected that PC to handle them.

Room for Whimsy

While much of the above can be attributed to GM privilege as much as agency, this section is where the agency really kicks in. When you have built a sandbox in which the group can freely explore without worrying about overarching metaplots and such, it frees you to toss anything, and I do mean “anything,” into that sandbox that you wish.

Feel like tossing a crashed spaceship into the mountains just beyond the home base? Why not? Feel like introducing traveling NPCs that look like they stepped out of a Saturday Morning cartoon? Sure! Feel like tossing in a new Big Bad and stronghold that had never been mentioned before but are now just across the Great Lake? Go for it!

The beauty of this agency is that you don’t have to have fully formed ideas or spend a lot of time trying to fit your idea into the campaign. It’s okay to have Dr. Strange or the Flash accidentally breach dimensions for a session, exhausted and leaving the PCs to deal with someone from their rogues’ gallery. It’s fine to have a saucer descend and unleash a squad of daleks to storm the castle where your group is resting.

Wrapping Up

In short, I’ve found that running an old school campaign has freed me from a lot of my usual worries and let me kick back and have some fun! Hopefully those of you indulging in classic play are enjoying the same agency!

Hexes!

Don’t you remember? We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll.

                                                                                                — Starship, “We Built This City”

As I began preparing my Old School campaign, one of the first things that struck me was that my attempt would be more of an OSINO (Old School In Name Only), as I’d never actually played that way (as noted in the disclaimers of my previous articles). While I did get my start in the halcyon, pre-internet, Cold War days of 1981-ish, the way I played is very similar to how I play today, namely through “mission-based” adventures.

To clarify, a “mission-based” adventure means that there is a goal to be accomplished before the adventure is over. In the old days, a mission could be as simple as “Hey all, I just bought a copy of the “Spirit Tower of Newport,” want to run through it?” or something more involved, like rescuing a noble’s kid from the clutches of the Evil Duke or finding the magical starfish blade in the “Volcanic Caverns of L’Kurl.”

From my understanding, Old School adventures were less “mission” and more about exploring the campaign world. At the start of each “adventure” the characters would gather in a safe place (archetypically a tavern) and decide what they wanted to do, based on rumors they gained, requests for help, or other “hooks” designed to entice them. These hooks would invariably lead to dungeons, where the party would delve, face dangers, and gather treasure. The adventure ended with the characters back in the safe place, dividing treasure, gaining XP, and maybe leveling up.

So, for me, Old School play was as fresh and new as it was for my players, both veteran and newcomer alike (my group runs the gamut from Boomer to Gen Z; I haven’t yet convinced my Gen Alpha child to play!). For my experiment to succeed, I needed a plan.

My Old School Template

Before gathering my players, I set down a number of ground rules to help me shape my Old School campaign.

• We’d be using Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy (OSE) with a few house rules.
• We’d be playing on an irregular schedule (about once every 3-4 weeks) but playing 6-hour sessions as opposed to the 3–4-hour sessions that my group was used to. Unlike true “Old School” play, I wasn’t going to run other sessions or groups in the same campaign.
• Each session would start with the characters in a safe place and end with the characters in a safe place. This allows for missing players and character changes between sessions without breaking verisimilitude.
• Every character’s motivation is “seek fortune and glory.” At the start of each session, the group would decide where they wanted to go adventuring to find that fortune and glory.
• Once the game got running, I wanted my prep work to be minimal.

The last point was crucial. I wanted this to be a “beer and pretzels” type of campaign for myself as well as the other players. I couldn’t do that if I was stressing about plotlines and creating content for each session.

Deciding on a Map

With the ground rules set, the first thing I had to do to build a campaign was decide what map I was going to use. In keeping with the kit-bashy nature of my experiment, and the possibility that we’d only play once or thrice, I didn’t want to invest a lot of time designing a game world. I decided that I’d go with something that felt “old school.”

As is my wont, I thought first in terms of world settings. Specifically, I thought of the first two “official” settings for (A)D&D, Oerth (the World of Greyhawk setting) and Mystara (the B/X and BECMI default setting). I also thought about early third-party settings like Kethira (okay, I know we all call it “Harn” as that is the most fleshed out corner of that setting) and the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

All are fine choices, but I quickly realized that I didn’t need any of them. What I really needed was a small corner of a world, any world, where I could set a home base and sprinkle in as many dungeons and other encounters as I wanted. By using an established setting, I’d have to pick an area that made sense for the world and had enough ecological variety so that a dungeon set in the hills could be close to one set in the forest or even one set in a desert.

But if I was going to stay away from an established setting, then all I needed was a cool map. With that in mind, I turned to Outdoor Survival.

It should have been my obvious choice from the get-go. Outdoor Survival is listed in the old “White Box” set as recommended equipment on p.5 of Book 1. Yes, the authors of the game expected you to pull the map out of another game from another company to incorporate into your D&D game! You don’t get much more old school than that!

Laying out the map, I decided that my campaign would involve an area of land destroyed by the nebulous “Wizard War” that lasted for centuries. When the dust settled, the entire area was littered with ruins and overrun with monsters. Only now, decades after the war had ended, was civilization beginning to creep back into the area.

Planting a Home Base

With my map in hand, I needed a home base, somewhere the player characters could rest, recuperate, and resupply. It really didn’t take me long to realize that what I needed was a certain keep on the borderlands (reflavored as “Onyx Keep”). Looking at the map, I found a good spot where I could plop the keep in the southwest corner.

The player characters would come from the civilized lands behind it, so there’d be no impetus for the player characters to adventure backwards on the map. That threw the entirety of the Outdoor Survival map out in front of them.

As a bonus, this campaign world didn’t care where the player characters came from, so each player was free to invent a “home culture” for their characters, or just go with the generic “just came from civilization” angle.

Sprinkling Dungeons

Telling the players that their characters were seeking “fortune and glory” is all well and good, but I needed places for them to go find it. Again, given the kit-bashy nature of this campaign, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time designing dungeons. Fortunately, I have a lot of the original modules (adventures) and Wizards of the Coast has made them available through DriveThruRPG.

In addition, the OSR movement has spawned dozens (hundreds?) of modules, including several megadungeons that can provide months and years of gameplay exploring just one of them. And while individual OSR games model different early D&D systems, they are all largely compatible with each other.

I chose adventures that were true “modules;” that is, they were easy to plop onto my map and justify as being part of the Wizard War. Obviously, the Caves of Chaos found their way on the map, so too did several others, including the original orange cover version of “B3: Palace of the Silver Princess.”

For my map, I used 6-mile hexes. In OSE, that means that the party can travel 2-4 hexes a day based on their encumbrance. So, any dungeons I placed within 2-3 hexes of the keep could be reached within a single day, while those further out would require overnight rests along the way.

Creating a Rumor List

With a map, a home base, and several dungeons sprinkled around it, what I needed next was a good list of rumors to entice the player characters. Fortunately, most of the published modules had a rumors list, so I plugged them into a d100 chart and made up a few of my own based on my own knowledge of the modules.

I’d like to pause here to note that a rumors list is one of those things that I never really understood in the past. After all, if I already told my players that I’d be taking their characters through The Tower of Power, then why did they need rumors? Was it just to tease what might be inside?

In old school play, rumors made a lot more sense. They’re designed to bait the player characters into choosing that dungeon/locale, and whether they were baited by a true or false rumor is on them. In my own campaign, I’ve had one player character obsess over a large ruby that was supposedly in a dungeon and he was frustrated every time the rest of the party chose a different place to explore. He’s either going to be really happy when he finds that ruby, or he’ll have egg on his face when the party finally explores it and there’s no ruby to be had!

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, this was a very long-winded way of saying that setting up an “old school” game is pretty easy! All you need is a map of a walkable area, a home base, a few published dungeons (although you are certainly free to create your own!), and a rumors list to get started!

Next time, I’m going to talk a bit about agency!

Such nostalgia…

I don’t know where I’m going, but I sure know where I’ve been. Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday…”

                                                                                                — Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”

Old habits die hard.

In my last article, I said that I’d be talking about setting up an Old School campaign. But before I get into the nuts and bolts of Old School design, I thought that I’d focus on the first thing that I needed before diving into this, and that was changing my mindset on my role as a Game Master (or Dungeon Master, or Referee, or you get the idea!).

You see, for the last several decades, my style put me firmly in the driver’s seat of my campaign. I’d decide on a setting, its tone, design adventures, guide the players on creating appropriate characters, and then run them through those adventures, shepherding them back on course if they’d go astray of the intended direction until they reach the thrilling climax.

But that was not the expectation of an Old School GM, at least one pre circa 1983. The idea of assuming that characters would participate in a prepared adventure was anathema to Old School players. If they were going to delve into the Dungeons of Discord or pledge themselves to save the Baron’s son from the Ophidian Cult, they wanted it to be because they decided to do it, not because that’s what I prepared for them to do.

And since I wanted to emulate that Old School experience as much as possible, I had to dismiss a lot of my traditional thinking as a Game Master. I had to learn how to think of myself as less of a “Game Master” and more as a “Game Facilitator.”

So, beyond semantics, what does being a Game Facilitator mean?

[Disclaimer: When I use the phrase “Old School,” I am specifically talking about how I’ve interpreted what I’ve read about “the way things were” during the “color in your dice with a crayon” era and how I’m implementing them at my table. I claim no authority on the subject beyond that!]

You Aren’t Writing a Story

Throughout my time in the hobby, both personally and professionally, there’s been a lot of debate over whether it is appropriate to call adventures “stories.” Understandably so, many players feel that “story” implies that their characters are riding the railroad of the GM’s novel rather than being active drivers of the adventure. And there’s a bit of truth to that.

When I write an adventure, I usually have a good idea of where the characters are headed. If they accept the mission at the outset, then their “orders” pretty much point in that direction. If nothing else, their in-game reward (represented these days by “milestone advancement”) usually motivates them to stay the course and finish the mission.

While I do my best to give my players meaningful choices and agency over what their characters do, I can’t say that I don’t gently steer them towards my prepared materials. After all, if I spent weeks designing the Sapphire Skull Fortress, then I certainly don’t want them to skip it by waiting until the Grand General marches out with her army and setting up an ambush!

As a Game Facilitator, however, I had to toss that all away. Yes, the Sapphire Skull Fortress might be somewhere on the map, but so are the Castle of the Electrum Viscount and Dinosaur Island. It’s up to the PCs, through rumors, interactions with the locals, or prior experience, to decide where they want to explore. I can certainly have an influence by ensuring that the players learn about the lucrative sapphire mines beneath the fortress or that a local baron is willing to handsomely reward anyone who can bring him back a living dinosaur, but setting tantalizing hooks is as far as I go!

Motivation is Baked In

Unless they craft a very focused campaign, one of the most difficult things for a GM to do is ensure that the PCs bite on the hooks they’re given to participate in the prepared adventure. While this may seem like a no-brainer, I can’t count the number of times that my players have gotten so invested in their character’s lives protecting a remote village that pulling them away to sky-sail to the mountaintop ruins of the Snowcap Kingdom is a tall ask.

But in an Old School campaign, player character motivation is not an issue, as it is presumed that they are after fame and fortune. Any rumors that they are given that potentially lead to growing richer and more powerful are likely to attract them. A player is still free to create an elaborate backstory for their character if they wish, so long as their motivation gels with the base assumption.

And if the PCs are looking for fame and fortune, they are likely only going to find it in the mysterious dungeons, ruins, and evil fortresses that populate the campaign world (i.e. the map that you’ve prepared). Thus, there is little to motivate them moving beyond what you’ve set up.

Randomness is Expected

Another thing that I’ve struggled with as a GM are random encounters. In the past, I never quite understood their purpose beyond “give the PCs another annoying distraction” and I quickly dispensed with them in my campaigns. PCs tended to only encounter things in my adventures that they were meant to encounter (unless they avoided them), and these encounters tended to be helpful for the overall mission.

My players also expected me to always be on top of things. While they weren’t averse to the odd random encounter per se, they tended to see too much dice rolling on my end as a sign of unpreparedness and, therefore, unimportant. Why bother treating an unnamed NPC as someone important or follow a randomly generated teal dragon back to its probably unmapped and unstocked lair?

In the Old School, however, randomness is not only expected, but part of the game. I quickly discovered that my players really leaned into the randomness if it all and weren’t bothered if I had to take a quick pause to roll on a couple of charts or look up monster statistics. They realized that I was playing the game as much as they were, and that I could be as pleasantly surprised or horrified at rolling a fearsome monster or awesome magic item as they were.

It’s Okay for Them to Break Things

Another lesson that I quickly learned was that it was okay for players to do the unexpected. In the past, my adventures had a narrative flow and defeating a villain too early could derail the entire adventure (in fact, I recently flummoxed my GM in a D&D 5e adventure by flying up the side of a tower, correctly presuming that the Big Bad was at the top and not wanting to waste resources ascending the tower from the inside!).

In the Old School, however, coming up with creative solutions to bypass encounters or defeat enemies without rolling out the battle mat is encouraged. Since I’m not nursing any particular plot, it doesn’t really matter to me how the PCs stomp through a dungeon or bait out powerful enemies. And, even better, if the dungeon remains, then it won’t be long before new tenants move in, and new rumors bring the PCs back to it!

Wrapping Up

If there’s one lesson I’d like to impart after almost a year of Old School play, it’s that being a Game Facilitator is much less stressful than being a Game Master as I understood it for decades. By allowing my players to explore the world I’ve created at their own pace and following their own agendas, I don’t have to worry about them following any particular plots or worrying when they stray off course.

Nor do I have to worry about “saving” an NPC or Boss Monster because defeating them early ruins the rest of the adventure, or foil by fiat an awesome idea that a player has simply because allowing it would mess up the intended flow.

And, as an added bonus, I get to enjoy and be surprised by the development of the campaign as much as my players do without feeling like it’s going to make more work for me!

That’s all for now! Next time I’m going to take a deep dive into building an Old School campaign world!

So many choices for the Wayback Machine…

I wanna go back and do it all over but I can’t go back, I know.
                                                                                                — Eddie Money, “I Wanna Go Back”

Can you make what’s old new again?

Hi, all! It’s been seven years since this Original Gnome has been a regular contributor and six years since I’ve produced anything for the Stew. So why have I finally gotten out of the rocking chair and off the porch? Well, because I’ve finally found new things to say about, well, old things!

Specifically, I’ve spent much of my gaming time this year running Old School Essentials (OSE), which is essentially a repackaging of what is commonly known as the B/X edition (1981) of Dungeons & Dragons, and I thought I’d share some of my insights!

How it Began

This journey started when I was watching a YouTube video last year by Matt Colville and my eldest daughter said that old school dungeon delving sounded like a lot of fun. I decided that I’d show her how we used to play by putting together a group and playing like it was the early 1980s.

I also printed her a copy of A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming and shared it with the budding group before play, as well as took a look at the notes for the West Marches campaign, which, like I was hoping to do now, emulated that 1970s playstyle.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the Wayback Machine. I realized that, despite owning and playing the B/X edition (my first roleplaying game), I’d never actually played in the Old School style. If I was going to pull this off, I had a lot of learning and adapting to do!

Disclaimer

Before continuing, I feel that I should point out that I am not claiming any familiarity with the way Dungeons & Dragons was originally intended to be played nor am I familiar with the Old School Renaissance/Revival/Rules movement (OSR) beyond playing a big game of catch-up this year.

Nor am I claiming that I am playing OSE exactly the way Gary Gygax’s group did in the 70s or even the way Tom Moldvay intended in 1981. This series of articles is my interpretation and implementation of old concepts for my gaming group.

The First Lesson: Defining a Campaign

While the ruleset I’m using is a restatement of the B/X rulebooks and written by someone other than Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson, there is a lot of terminology and assumptions regarding familiarity that simply went over my head as a kid (which I later cheekily termed “High Gygaxian,” although I’m sure that I’m far from the first!) and only now, decades later, do I better understand what was being conveyed in many of those Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books.

But let’s step back a minute. As a forever Game Master (my preferred title), I’m used to thinking about my games in terms of sessions, adventures, and campaigns. “Sessions” is by far the easiest to define, as it is the time that the group gathers (physically or virtually) to play. It doesn’t matter what happens during that period; being together is a session.

An “adventure” is the journey to complete a shared objective. This could take one session, multiple sessions, or even just part of a session. As long as the player characters are given a goal and they go about completing it, overcoming the challenges along the way, that’s an adventure.

It’s “campaign,” that I sometimes struggle to fully define (I often resort to US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s description of obscenity when defining a campaign: “I know it when I see it”). When I come across a GM that proudly proclaims that they’ve been running the same campaign for 20 or 30 years, I just can’t comprehend it. Three decades? With the same characters? With the same storyline?

To me, a “campaign” is a series of linked adventures that builds to a hopefully exciting conclusion. The final adventure in a campaign might be having the now-powerful PCs taking on the Big Bad of the campaign, or it may simply be the last adventure that these PCs have before walking off into the sunset. Usually, a campaign has roughly the same cast of PCs at the end as at the beginning, but sometimes PC turnover can lead to a completely different cast finishing the campaign.

But while preparing for my OSE campaign, I realized that I needed to replace these definitions.

Old School Definitions

In the Old School (at least as I recognize it, see the above disclaimer!), there is no concept of a “session.” Everything is defined as an “adventure” or a “campaign.” To take the latter first, a “campaign” is merely the playing area that the GM (or Referee or Dungeon Master) prepares for the group to go adventuring in.

When Old School players speak of exploring the world, they really mean this map. Thus, the “world” can be as small as a single town and nearby dungeon, or as large as an entire world (and beyond!). It’s really up to the GM how much they want to create. But whatever they design, Old School players want to feel free to roam all over it at their discretion.

For them, an “adventure” means the same thing as a “session.” It is understood that the session begins with the group gathered at a home base (usually a town or a keep out on the borderlands). The group decides where they want to explore, they spend the bulk of the session doing it, and at the conclusion of the session they return to their home base to bank treasure, learn about magic items, gain XP, and potentially level up.

Since the group probably doesn’t explore an entire dungeon in a single adventure/session, the terminology can be a bit confusing to modern minds. Cleaning out, for example, the Tunnels of Terror, might take several adventures. It’s also possible that the group might move on to explore the Caldera of Doom before finishing the Tunnels.

One Last Point about Campaigns

I stated above that the campaign is simply the area that a GM has prepared. While that is true, there is a bit more to it in the Old School. The GM’s world is a “living” place, and any group of players that plays with that GM is assumed to be playing in the same campaign.

So, you could literally have a situation that a group that meets on Sundays may be exploring the Tunnels of Terror, only to find one Sunday that a group that met on Wednesday finished cleaning it out. It’s even possible that some of the same Sunday players and characters might have been in the Wednesday group.

This is the thinking behind Gary Gygax’s infamous line in the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, “YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT” (emphasis his). As Mr. Gygax was running several groups through his campaign at once, he needed to keep track of where all the characters were at any given time. He assumed that all other GMs would be blessed with the number of players, and opportunities to play, that he had.

Wrapping Up

Having educated myself on the terminology, I knew I couldn’t fully embrace them. My campaign was going to take place at a set time (about once a month) and whoever showed up that day would go on an adventure. The group would start in a safe place and end in a safe place.

As a nice bonus, this meant that there wouldn’t be a need to worry about missing players. Anyone who couldn’t make the session simply didn’t join the party for that adventure, and it also allowed present players to swap out characters if they wanted to.

On the potential downside, I also needed to get the PCs back to a safe place at the conclusion of each adventure. This meant that I’d sometimes have to handwave things to ensure that happened, no matter where the group found itself by the session’s final hour.

Hopefully, you found this discussion as insightful as I did! Next time, I’m going to talk about setting up my Old School campaign!

And the old Gnome Emeritus Walt Ciechanowski speaks from the comfort of his rocking chair on the porch of the Gnome Retirement Home…

My D&D 5e group is a mix of 5 seasoned players (including myself) and 2 teenage newbies. Obviously, there’s a bit of hand-holding for the new players and it can take some coaxing to get them beyond seeing their characters as a combat piece on the grid and engage in social roleplaying. This is, of course, completely okay; I remember how difficult it was for me to make the leap.

One of the teenage players, we’ll call him ‘Tom,’ is a sorcerer with a habit of tossing fireballs into areas where other player characters are standing. Believe it or not, this is often encouraged by the seasoned players, as they’d rather soak the damage in return for battering the enemies. Generally speaking, he usually only does this when enemy forces seem overwhelming.

In a recent session, however, Tom had already pulled the trick once and was considering doing so again. Unfortunately, one of the PCs was badly injured and the affected player, Tina, was trying to call this to Tom’s attention. Tom decided that Tina (out of character) was being too annoying and decided to throw another fireball.

I called a time-out and explained that I had an issue with Tom’s reasoning, since it was based on Tom’s feelings towards Tina and not anything going on with their respective characters. Another of my seasoned players, Harold, then added that “it’s only a game.”

At first, I thought Harold was backing me up, but I quickly realized that he was actually advocating for Tom’s action. In Harold’s mind, if Tom felt like throwing the fireball, then he was entitled to do it; the only thing getting hurt was character sheets, which could be replaced.

My take on “it’s only a game,” however, is that everyone around the table has a responsibility to ensure that everyone else is having fun. Picking on other players violates that responsibility. I’d rather not game at all than allow that to happen; I’ve seen too many campaigns with great potential disintegrate early because player infighting made its continuance impossible.

So what say you? How would you resolve this situation? Are you in Harold’s camp or mine? Does “it’s only a game” give players carte blanche on their actions? Is it okay for a GM to say “no, you aren’t doing that because…”? Where do you draw the line?

Greetings from the rocking chair of the Gnome retirement home!

I know that it’s been less than a month since I’ve officially retired, but I thought that my birthday (my 44th! Where does the time go?) would be a great time to make good on my promise to occasionally contribute.

Last month I had the pleasure of being a guest at the (Re)Generation Who convention for my work on the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. Part of my duties involved running games in the game room and I’d brought along a couple of adventures that were designed to be run at conventions.

I quickly discovered that my adventures were designed to be played at gaming conventions and thus were ill-suited for a Doctor Who convention, where players are looking to kill an hour, not three or four. If I couldn’t give them a complete gaming experience in an hour, then they weren’t interested; they didn’t come to a Doctor Who convention to spend 4 hours in the game room! What they were looking for was more akin to a “demo.”

Pondering this made me think about my home games and how I pitched new games. Normally this involved talking to them about the game and following it up with a “pilot” that lasted one or two sessions, with an additional character generation session before or after the pilot. That’s a lot of time investment for a game that the group may ultimately decide not to play.

It occurred to me that it might be more effective to give my players a quick pitch followed by a one hour ‘demo’ of the game. This demo would serve the same function as a pilot – giving my players a taste of the setting/tone and how a typical scene/encounter would be run – without having them play through a whole adventure (it also doesn’t saddle them with characters that they aren’t invested in). This way, if the players enjoy themselves and want to continue, we could spend the rest of the same session making characters for the real campaign (or, if it was a bust, doing something else).

For this to work keep the following points in mind:

• The pregenerated characters for the demo should reflect your preferences for the party composition in a campaign based on the number of players you have at the table. For example, if you have three players in a typical fantasy game and you present a cleric/priest, rogue/thief, and wizard as pregens, then you’re projecting that fighter/warrior types aren’t necessary. Similarly, if your cyberpunk game has an NPC decker/hacker, then you’re telling the players that computer hacking is something that’s going to be handled off-camera. If, on the other hand, your pregen selection is not important, then offer your players more choices to reflect that (i.e. “sure, I can work decking/hacking stuff into the campaign, but if no one wants to play one then we’ll handle it with an NPC).

• The demo should be a resolvable mini-plot within the scope of a larger adventure. This mini-plot should be typical of the kinds of plots the players could reasonably expect in the regular campaign. A possible scenario for an espionage game that involves lots of social interaction could be trying to intercept a courier at a social ball held by a master villain. On the other hand, if you expect your players to play rough-and-ready cargo-haulers in space, run them through a gauntlet in a pirate-infested asteroid belt.

• Make sure the mini-plot highlights any unique or interesting rules in the setting. If your fantasy campaign takes a horrific approach to magic, then that should be evident in the demo. If your espionage game has an intricate subsystem for social interaction, then the players should be using it while at the aforementioned ball (in other words, don’t hand wave important rules during the demo if you’re going to enforce them on the characters in campaign). The reverse is also true; if you’re neglecting certain rules in the demo, then the players should expect those rules to be hand waved or downplayed in the actual campaign.

While I’ve only used this approach so far when introducing new people into the hobby, I think this approach might work well with even seasoned groups. Have any of you tried this approach in your home games? Is an hour enough or do you really need to run longer pilot/demos?

Well, that’s all for now! If you’ll excuse me, I need to ease myself out of this rocking chair to go shout at some kobolds to get off my lawn!

If there is one thing in common with the endings of all of my campaigns, whether it was a Total Party Kill from an unexpectedly hard encounter or things went swimmingly to plan right up until the end, I always feel like there’s something I could have improved upon and made that campaign better.

With the changing of the guard at the site I’ve decided that it’s time for me to retire from the Stew as a regular contributor. While I have full faith in John’s captaining of the S.S. Gnomie – I know he’ll do an awesome job and heck, he already has! – and I wish him and the now and future gnomies all of the success we’ve had in the past and more. I simply don’t have the time or energy to keep up with them anymore.

I’ll always be grateful for the doors that Gnome Stew opened up for me and the camaraderie I’ve had with my other gnomes. Martin deserves special mention here, as it was his gaming blog Treasure Tables that got me hooked as a rabid reader and sparked our correspondences that led to him asking me to help him start his next brainchild, Gnome Stew. Thank you for everything, Martin. It’s been a lot of fun!

We’ve had a lot of excitement over the years, writing books, winning awards, and running con seminars just to name a few, and I’ll sorely miss it in the future. I’ll certainly miss my regular interactions with Ang, Don, John (both of you!), Martin, Matt, Phil, Scott, and Troy Troy, and Bob (hmm…I feel like I’m missing somebody; hopefully the editor will fix that…FIXED! LOL). And while they’ve left before me I’d still like to make a shout out to Adam, Kurt, and Patrick. I’ll miss you all!

I’ll still be around, of course, both as a fan of the Stew and an occasional contributor. As with the ending of an RPG campaign I still feel like there are things that I’ve wanted to write about in GS articles that I just never got around to doing and John has graciously left the door open for me to contribute when the opportunity arises – I’ll just be that crazy old gnome on the porch rocking chair that occasionally babbles something interesting!

But before I take off my pointy hat and shuffle off into the sunset, I just wanted to take an opportunity here to personally thank all of you who have been reading my articles over the last eight <gasp!> years, especially those who’ve taken the time to comment or chatted with me at a con. I’ve really appreciated it (even when the comments weren’t so positive!) and I know that in reading and internalizing those comments you’ve all helped me to become a better Game Master.

Thank you all for everything and game on!

I can only presume that what players really hate is the wasted time, or the feeling that the GM is just playing for time by throwing random stuff at them because she isn’t ready for them to move onto the next plot point just yet. Sometimes this is baked into the game – side quests being a prime example – as the group isn’t ready to move onto the next plot point until they’ve gotten some more experience under their belt. And sometimes it’s just player confusion – players forget particular plot points between sessions or gloss over something that their character wouldn’t, leading to a lot of lost time as they charge down the wrong path.

Over the years I’ve come up with a few guidelines when I use red herrings. I thought they might be useful to share:

1. Challenge the character, not the player. In spite of appearances, a mystery adventure is not a battle of wits between a GM and her players; it’s a battle of wits between the adventure and the characters. If a player seems to be missing something that his character would not, clue him in. Don’t be afraid to correct a player if she obviously misunderstood the information you gave her.

2. Recap the salient points. If the session starts mid-adventure, I always offer a recap that summarizes the adventure thus far and reminding the PCs of the clues they’ve uncovered and the leads they’ve already chased down. This is also a good time for me to make sure that Point 1 above is being followed.

3. Red Herrings should be short. In television mysteries, a red herring rarely lasts more than one scene, as the investigators confront a possible suspect only to learn that said suspect lacked means, motive, or opportunity. Similarly, I don’t let my players chase down the wrong lead for very long. Blowing 10 or 15 minutes of a session on a red herring is much better than most of the session (heck, I’ve had games where red herrings lasted multiple sessions!).

4. Red Herrings should teach something. I’m sure that one of the reasons players dislike red herrings is because they feel stupid for following them, especially if they don’t gain anything from it. I always try to give them something useful, whether it be to rule out a certain class of suspects or offer an additional clue that may help them narrow the search. Side quests also fit in here, as they give the PCs the experience and additional support they need to face what’s coming next.

5. Own up to your mistakes. Sometimes the players end up burning through false leads because I got something wrong – I forgot to hand them a clue or I changed something in the adventure while it was in progress. In these cases, I’ve found that it’s better to confess the error and work with the players to move things forward rather than try to conceal and fix my mistake behind the screen while the players wander aimlessly.

So how about you? Do you revel in red herrings or avoid them like the plague? How do you incorporate red herrings in your adventures? How well have they worked? Have you ever let a red herring go on for too long?