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Okay, so I'm pretty much down to the "Advice" part of the system where most of the rules are already laid out and I just try to give Old School Hack DMs some thoughts on how to run the game. Since I've got limited space in my layout and I don't have a whole lot in my notes to work from I figured I'd just start a thread with some stream-of-thought ideas and throw them at you guys and pick and choose later what I feel are the salient points to plug back into the official rules.
I feel like we're also reaching a threshold where we've got people interested in running OSH games just around the corner here that haven't actually been exposed yet to someone who's seen me run a game, which is a pretty important point for the game's development and which I hope will give us a nice new influx of feedback from people approaching the ruleset a lot more objectively. But to better facilitate those games, please feel free to use this advice thread to throw some questions back at me.
Okay.
So.
Most anybody who's going to run OSH in the near future here has run and created adventures before and knows the basic stuff. Old School Hack exists unapologetically in the D&D universe, with the heroes taking the classic class archetypes, and going and exploring dangerous places and fighting monsters in order to get cool stuff and become more powerful. You don't have to meet in a tavern, form a party, hear a rumor, and head out to fight evil, but it's definitely set in the kind of world where exactly that kind of stuff happens all the time. ;)
To play to the game's strengths, when planning ahead for a session I just try to think of a single thing that's big and cool, a place, an item, or a monster, something that feels big and evocative and I can build a whole encounter just around the idea. I don't worry about the getting there because we've got a whole big bag of fantasy clichés that can easily be plugged in to fill in the details. Here are some of these kinds of ideas that have shown up in Old School Hack games I've run:- An attack on a floating caravan by bandits on wasps in the middle of some badlands desert.
- A massive underground cavern so large and bottomless that it's only the massive spiderwebs and ancient chains that hold large pieces of rocks in place.
- A humongous cloud whale used as a floating castle by a malevolent empire docked at a tower over the town it's occupying.
- A narrow bridge in front of an underground waterfall that provides the only chokepoint against an invading army, and the secret temple entrance under the rushing water.
- A goblin tribe engaged in a malevolent demon-summoning ritual in a hidden canyon, summoning an amorphous blob that's nothing but mouths and daggers.
Let's call this the "setpiece" encounter. It's going to be the one chokepoint in the entire session that you know the players are going to be involved in, that whatever they want, they have to get past this encounter to get to.
I picture the environment of the encounter, and try to make it as broad as possible. Old School Hack is all about moving from one Arena to another as you fight, it's a combat system that's supposed to encourage a certain amount of traveling here and there, back and forth, voluntary or no, so this encounter should encompass a variety of different Arena types (no less than four or five is good). I find it helps to think three-dimensionally, and of course anyone appreciative of pulpy tropes knows that High Shit You Can Fall Off Of always translates to MORE EXCITING!
Let's look at the Arena types:- Tight Arenas - Narrow corridors, stairwells, thin ledges, doorways, etc.
- Hazardous Arenas - Crumbly rooftops, pits of lava, thin ledges over precipices, spiky areas, poor visibility, etc.
- Open Arenas - The sky (always), the open floor (what you fall onto from the Hazardous Arena), the grand chamber, and so on
- Dense Arenas - The crowded shop, the thick forest, the thatch village, the store-room, you get the idea.
- Neutral Arena - The I-can't-think-of-what-arena-this-is-Arena.
So we can come up with a rough map of our encounter, and the "rough map" can literally just be labeled circles with lines connecting to each other as clusters or linearly. Don't be afraid to repeat Arena types as makes sense for your environment "theme" but do try to break them up with other types in between. You can also start to keep in mind the relationships between the different Arenas at this point as well, which can be directional: falling off one Arena to another might be easy, climbing back might be trickier. Arenas don't have to be stationary either - elevators can move up and down, ships can be racing alongside each other, cool stuff like that. The map doesn't necessarily need to be totally locked down, often times I just have a main area firmly established in my head but leave it's peripheral surroundings to be made up on the fly as needed later - you can leave room for the environment to "evolve" as the situation changes, or sometimes even plan for that (halfway through the encounter the cavern will start to collapse), and definitely leave room for players to suggest arenas as well. But really we've just essentially built a whole little mini-"dungeon" (in the abstract tabletop sense of the word, not the literal) designed around the premise of a single but fairly complicated and hopefully exciting setpiece encounter.
You should have more than one wave of bad guys: one or two big guys or brute-type monsters, a whole gaggle of minions, and then either an evil villain or a couple of mid-level guard-type creatures/bad guys. Each of them should have a "home" arena where basically they start at, and don't be afraid to put one or two in the "entrance" arena if you feel so inclined.
Cool, so I label my encounter, scribble a few notes, than throw it on the backburner in order to flesh out the rest of the adventure. I usually keep myself limited to only really detailing what I think the group would realistically play through in the session I'm planning for, I find that the stuff that extends past that starts getting inspired pretty naturally along the way anyway.
As we're looking at the greater adventure our encounter is in, it's pretty obvious that we need a macguffin. An object of value, someone to be rescued, or vengeance/foiling of an evil plot (and any combination thereof) are the pretty standard go-to formulas here. I look at the "flavor" of the setpiece encounter I've come up with and try to think along those lines in order to work up a motivator. From there I just need to connect that motivator to the nearest civilization either by simple rumor or someone/thing more invested in it. Really at this point it's just coming up with names: "Lidas the priest of the one-armed God is after the fabled Floating Cask of Nifleb" or "Kruzzered Kraw needs his daughter to be rescued from the Ironjaw goblins, but ultimately it's to sacrifice her to the six-demoned altar under his inn".
Last but not least I think up a diversion or two along the way (or after the fact, like old Kraw), either some third party getting its nose into things, some "wandering monster with a lair" type that just happens to be en-route, or just some extra "fun facts" about the whole situation in general (The desert bandits have nothing to do with the Cloud Whale empire, but damn does that cloud whale love to eat the bandits' flying wasps!). The diversion might come with it's own two or three arena-type environment, but we're not really looking to fill this out much beyond "theme".
That's the basic formula for prepping for a session's worth of gaming, now let's talk about actually running the damn thing. -
If the players are making their characters at the beginning of the session, I've found that that process can be a lot of fun, give you a whole mess of last-minute adventure-tweaking ideas, and be thoroughly entertaining and even involve some roleplaying. Don't be afraid to start tossing out Awesome Points to players for just coming up with cool character ideas - in fact that's the best way to introduce the Awesome Point mechanic and get the economy rolling. Be sure to stress that anybody can reward them, and that in fact as DM you're usually, you know, busy with shit and thus rewarding each other really is their job (they're playing to each other as much as you, after all). Really quick, here's how I like to walk players through character creation.
- Spread out the class sheets, and make it clear that everyone picks a unique class, by actually taking that particular sheet.
- Hand out the character sheets, have everybody roll their Attributes (note that everybody should have the Bonus table reference on their class sheet).
- Have them write their Class & Concept on their character sheet, and then pick a single talent off the class sheet and write that in the appropriate box. Explain the Talent categorization (Constant, per-Arena, or Rested).
- Go through the Weapon types and explain the Arenas, have people come up with their own weapons, but just picking the type. Then go, "oh wait, I forgot about encumbrance" and explain why not everybody can pick a Heavy or Very Heavy weapon. Make sure they note the Weapon type on their sheet, understandwhat's special about their particular weapon type (3d10 drop lowest, AC bonus, extra damage, etc.) as well as the Arena it gets a bonus in.
- Go through the Armor classes, being sure to note why being armorless is sometimes Awesome and worth it, and also once again noting how encumbrance can be a pain in the ass and maybe you should have picked a Reach weapon, huh smart guy?
- Note that since they now have an idea as to what their character is like and how they're armed and what they can do, they need a name, but most importantly, they need an Adventuring Goal! My recommended guideline is "something fun that says something about your character and is reasonably achievable - or if unreasonable, at least entertainingly so". There's often a line-checking of smartassiness that shows up at this point that can really affect the whole game if you let it, so decide how much you want to let players get away with in terms of being cheeky with their goals. "Two chicks at the same time" is fine and even hilarious if you're playing that beer & pretzels past midnight game, but may not fly if you're hoping your adventure has at least a modicum of heroic nobility.
Okay, so that wasn't that quick, but it covered all the bases. I'm not going to tell you how to start your adventure but I will note that I always like to have a round-robin where each player gets to introduce their character and brag a little, and I'll also note that I've had perfect success just hand-waving a whole "you guys all know each other and have adventured together and now you've all agreed that you're after the sacred gem of blazzle-blah." and started straight from there (usually right into some sort of dramatic action) but obviously any ramp-up of momentum or "let's meet each other for the first time" type of roleplaying you want to try is just fine and completely up to you, and I'm going to go ahead and just skip straight to running your first combat. -
In terms of tactile materials, I have a big laminated 2x3 foot sheet I use as a sort of "tabletop whiteboard" with wet-erase markers but your average gridded gaming mat'll do fine as well, just ignore the grid. All else fails just have a stack of scratch paper handy. You need a token to represent each player and each bad guy, and for this thread we'll assume you're using the handy-dandy Rel-patented Combat Hex-tracker, so you'll need an extra set of tokens for that.
I start a combat by sketching the immediate environment out, in nice big labeled "areas" that I know the tokens can be grouped in, labeled with a title and the Arena type: "Rooftops, Hazardous" "Alleyways, Tight", you get the idea. I do this on the spot because I like the fact that I can describe it as I'm doing it and solidify the scene in the player's head - but for the less artistically inclined you can just pull out a pre-sketched-out map or even a large print-out of some landscape art that you can then just label (and make circles on with a hi-lighter) indicating different areas that the players can see."So you step through the cavern entrance and you can see that you're way up here on a ledge (up here, Tight Arena) overlooking a vast crevasse (Open). There's a long suspension bridge (Hazardous) that leads over to the other side, where the orcs have set up some rough fortifications (making it a Dense Arena), they're over there sniggering and loading their crossbows and talking about how ugly your elf is."
Arenas can be used to designate areas as large or as small as you like, they're an abstract concept that just means, "place where you fight that's different from the other places around it that you might fight in". I haven't had anyone yet get pissy about that being too abstract or arbitrary. Generally each round players get to either fight where they are or move to a new arena somehow for fighting there next round. "Moving" in OSH combat is a specific term for changing arenas, it's assumed that when fighting in your arena you can move around all you like in that arena, ducking into cover, dancing around obstacles, etc. so when the players are looking through their combat options and seem distressed that moving takes up a whole action make sure you specify that point and that they can move where-ever they like in their current arena for free.
If you think of it, point out when Arenas which might be adjacent could be tricky to Move to and from, requiring Daring checks (climbing) or Awareness checks (dodging stuff) or even one-way connections (You can fall off easily enough, climbing back on is another matter), but don't stress too much or get bogged down in detail, you can adjudicate the situation if it comes up later.
Initiative is not something you roll right away, so don't make the mistake of calling for initiative when combat starts like I sometimes do. At the beginning of a new combat round, you just have each player pick one of the six combat actions, either by displaying one of their combat cards or by placing their spare Token on the right hex on the Hex-tracker, whichever method you've chosen to use. You need to pick combat actions for your guys as well - just do one of everything that you think your guys would do at that moment based on who they are - when in doubt, bad guys (at least the stupid ones) will almost always Move to the nearest arena with good guys in it and then Attack.
I like to have the Combat Crib sheet handy in front of me to just remind myself of the order of the round. Go through each of the Combat Actions IN ORDER (1:defend/protect, 2:Shoot, 3:Focuse/Impede, etc), looking around for players (and your guys) activating whichever action you're announcing. Initiative is only rolled if both bad guys and good guys are acting on the same combat action (turn); everyone activating rolls a d10, lowest goes first (you can house-rule that to highest if you're more comfortable). Don't forget to tell the elf that they get a bonus to this roll.
Naturally, either you or the player should try to describe what's happening with each action in somewhat theatrical terms, the awesomer the better. Prompt people as often as possible ("The Orc snarls at you, you hit with your attack. How are you attacking it?") and hopefully you can get a fun cinematic momentum to the combat, back and forth. On your end, always look for ways to Make Things More Fun. Throw PCs off cliffs (Awareness check to catch on to something and be in a new Arena: Hanging on something below ledge, or else take damage and be at bottom with a couple Moves to climb back up the hard way), change the environment, bring in reinforcements, feed Awesome Points to give your main bad dude an interesting power, whichever works best for preventing back-and-forth combat monotony. -
Pretty inspiring, as well as useful.
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Kirin: You might want to (not necessarily in the main book) describe how to convert old D&D adventure modules.
Also, RBH supported Attribute rolls to create Arenas with barriers to them (so that you could trap someone or get somewhere you couldn't be followed (Ranged)). Thoughts on that?
If I missed either of those two points above, forgive me in advance. -
MarkCausey said:
Kirin: You might want to (not necessarily in the main book) describe how to convert old D&D adventure modules.
I've been thinking about that a little, but conversion is honestly a pretty low priority.
And something I've been forced to admit after running through multiple playtests is that the game actually doesn't function at its best in the traditionally carefully-mapped limited-options environment of an underground dungeon. It functions best in fast-and-loose-and-more-vaguely-described open and diverse places, the more fantastical, the better. I'm not saying you can't run OSH in a grid-based and box-texted dungeon, but it's a different, and in my opinion, somewhat more limited, game.
What I tend to do is take the greater plots, characters, and themes of some of the old modules and run with those, a little bit more loosely, with an eye on an inspired big setpiece encounter thought up as above, tweaked from the module idea.
Oh, definitely. "suggesting your own arena" is explicitly encouraged in the rules, and doesn't even cost any APs. Ranged-weapon characters are always asking the DM for high, difficult-to-get-to places to zip off to; and I think the malleability of the system totally facilitates that. Just expect OSH orcs to carry a lot of wood-chopping axes for dealing with those damned tree-climbing elves.MarkCausey said:Also, RBH supported Attribute rolls to create Arenas with barriers to them (so that you could trap someone or get somewhere you couldn't be followed (Ranged)). Thoughts on that?
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How about tomb robbers on flying carpets?
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"Mognol's Flying Carpet" is actually canon in the rules (it seats one or three people, but not two), along with the "Eight-Faceted Eye of Grimdol" and "Besuvius's Trousers of Comfort".MarkCausey said:How about tomb robbers on flying carpets?
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