I've got one foot out the door (ok we don't leave until tomorrow but we're packing and stuff) to WNCGD but a couple ideas off the top of my head:

New Talents: There should definitely be some of these but I'm thinking not necessarily one per level. There are already 5 Talents per Class, which covers more than enough for levels 1-4. And I think it's ok to assume that by the time they are reaching the top of Heroic that they are basically required to branch into other classes a little bit.

As a very broad brush idea, do you own a copy of the 4e D&D DMG2? It's got a lot of cool ideas in there that I've been reading lately about awards that go outside the D&D standards. Things like divine boons and "grandmaster training" and that sort of thing. Another idea that it addresses more fully is that of artifacts that grow in power as the characters go up in level but also as the PC pursues whatever agenda drives the artifact in question. I really think you might draw some inspiration from it.

I do agree with your overview that OSH, the way it has been presented to me and the way I'm passing it along, is very one-shot oriented. But I also agree that one could tone down the wahoo/silly a bit to make it feel more like a "serious" contender for campaign play. Since I'll have the ears of some really cool gamers this weekend (including Nareau who really needs to get in on this whole conversation), I'll talk to them about it and we'll see what we come up with.

Rel said:

I do agree with your overview that OSH, the way it has been presented to me and the way I'm passing it along, is very one-shot oriented. But I also agree that one could tone down the wahoo/silly a bit to make it feel more like a "serious" contender for campaign play. Since I'll have the ears of some really cool gamers this weekend (including Nareau who really needs to get in on this whole conversation), I'll talk to them about it and we'll see what we come up with.

I wish Nareau posted on these forums more. :(

I don't even necessarily think that campaigns have to be played seriously - certainly the ones that I've run/played have always had their ridiculous elements (surprise surprise). But yeah, the OSH games I ran at GenCon were pretty deep in the "wanna be crazy? Go with it" attitude of one-shot-land.

What frustrates me a bit is that Old School Hack really started out on the DM's toolbox side of things, a collection of notes on "how to run Red Box Hack in the D&D world" before I realized how limitingly DM-centric that was (and how actually generic and sort of "you could find this stuff anywhere" my notes were) and thus really rolled up my sleeves to fine-tune the game towards the player. Since then I've hit some epiphanies in the game's development, most of which I've mentioned before on here:

• Old School Hack isn't dungeon-centric. It's right there in the title for D&D, but Red Box Hack/Old School Hack exists (and flourishes) in a much more free-form world of ACTION where there's a lot more give and take between players and DM as to where exactly you're adventuring, rather than "the DM's got the room-by-room map and a mess of notes, and you're either adventuring in that specific locale or you're not."
• Old School Hack is more scene-oriented than progression-oriented. If you don't even know what that means then I'll admit I kind of don't either, but my sense of how OSH has best been played is with much more up-and-down pacing than trad D&D, which I've only been pushing further with my setpiece-based encounter design advice. I think a certain degree of zooming-in-and-out is inherent in most systems and I guess I've just embraced it a bit and made it explicit.

Anyway, I don't know why I felt compelled to outline these thoughts, or what they have to do with making the game campaign-oriented. Guess I'm being a bit rambly today.

I have some tables I'm going to use next time I play for describing the hex you're in. I'm hoping to explore a world I've never thought of ...

A couple quick thoughts/questions/rambles:

I like the idea of adding two more hit points as cushioning. For the players, its good cushioning. For DMs, we still don't have to worry too much about advancing the bad guys. The rules as written work just fine. We can always just toss on an extra talent or two for advancement.

I came to this table planning on a campaign not a one shot--even if it's a short four level campaign. I recognized the possible zaniness and I was definitely wackier in my execution than in any of my typical games. Still, I was thinking 'campaign.' Part of the appeal to me is that this system is so loose while still feeling classic. So, you should know that I ran that one shot two weekends ago and despite the completion of my mini story arc, two of the players asked if we could play again this past weekend. If I had had free time, I would've made it happened.

I think you're dead on with your description as it being more scene-oriented. The progression of traveling cross-country to get to the tomb in my one-shot wasn't the focus during that part of play. The focus was how the players interacted with the depressed traveler or the slavers.

First of all, WNCGD was a big success and I look forward to doing it again next year! We managed to get in two session of OSH, the first run by me and the second run by Nar. What was cool was that most of the players got to use the same PC's and Nar basically ran a sequel to my game. I got to play a cleric for the first time and really enjoyed it. But that's all a topic for another thread.

I'm hoping that I can get Nar engaged here at the OSH forums (he's been hella busy at work) because he's got a lot to contribute. Regardless, we discussed the topic of OSH campaigns a LOT this weekend and it was pretty awesome. I think this general topic of OSH Campaigns has a couple of different facets. One is obviously features that the game needs or wants for higher level play. The other is about the inherent suitability of the system for campaign play. I'm going to talk about the second thing first because it is more philosophical and that's how I'm feeling right now.

I'm convinced of a couple things at this point:

1) Some of the "wahoo" is inherent in the system, not simply in the presentation of the system. The Awesome Point mechanics, starting with the fact that they are called "Awesome Points", systemically skews behavior toward that which is "over the top". Those I talked to generally agreed that too much "wahoo" is difficult to sustain for a longer campaign.

2) There is no single solution to the "wahoo", nor is there agreement that it is a "problem".

I think that the best we're likely to accomplish is the understanding that a GM needs to have a good understanding of what his players want from the game, what he wants from the game, and possibly taking some steps before the campaign starts to achieve the feel he wants from the game. I'll now proceed to make a couple more posts that address different goals and a few ideas about how one might achieve them.

Next let's assume that the GM thinks that wahoo is a feature, not a bug. If everybody else agrees about this then you're good to go and OSH is a great system for the group. I still think that it is a reasonable assumption that the over the topness is going to eventually wear thin after multiple sessions of play for some of the group.

One way to deal with this is to break the campaign into smaller chunks in order to give players a break in between. Having an ongoing campaign with the same PC's pursuing a set of goals in a setting with continuity doesn't have to happen with weekly game sessions. I think that, as a general rule, people will be more tolerant of the wahoo if it isn't happening every week. If your group only meets bi-weekly or monthly then this may be no problem at all.

Alternatively the GM can set the campaign up such that it runs say 3 sessions at a time. Then you spend a few sessions doing another RPG or boardgames or whatever else it is that your gaming group wants before returning to the next arc of OSH that runs for another 3 sessions before you take another break.

I'll further note here that Nar's preference was the concept that OSH "tiers" be 3 levels rather than 4. He liked the idea of the game running from levels 1-9 with 3 tiers of 3 levels each. He proposed the idea of doing something like the previous paragraph and running 3 sets of 3 sessions with the assumption that the PC's level once per session.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I think that a group could have a perfectly good time "embracing the wahoo" provided that it's broken into shorter chunks. I think that the wahoo starts to lose its charm if the knob is cranked to 11 every session for a longer ongoing campaign.

Ok so now let's assume that the GM wants to run a game with less wahoo.

I think that the unquestionably primary step that must be taken is an open and frank conversation about "what this campaign is all about". Our group calls this the "buy in conversation" and we do it for every campaign, regardless of system. It just gives us a chance to share a basic understanding of what both players and GM want from the campaign and establishes some "ground rules" about what is acceptable and what isn't.

In the case of OSH you're obviously setting the rules about what level of wahoo is acceptable (perhaps among other things). Once that is agreed upon, I'd strongly suggest providing specific examples of what is acceptable and what isn't so that people have some benchmarks to operate by. Once that is done then you're off to the races.

The next question is what you do when things start going wrong. Here again I think this is likely to be done according to whatever social conventions apply to your group. If we'd agreed to a more serious sort of game and one of the players says, "I am going to backstab the Ogre King and I spend an Awesome Point to set his pubic hair on fire!" then probably myself and the other players would laugh and then give them a "but seriously..." look. If necessary we'd reference the buy in conversation and the player would probably redact the part about the pubic hair.

Other solutions that occurred to me were:

You gotta spend more awesome points to do silly stuff. This would mean that it probably still happens from time to time but it's costly so it will be limited.

If people do silly stuff the GM removes the Awesome Point Bowl for the rest of the scene/next scene/game session. This is a bit more punitive seeming but it probably isn't something you gotta do very much before the players get the point.


Anyway I think I'm getting my point across here. Probably the most major thing is for the players to understand that earning Awesome Points is not about oneupsmanship. It's about doing cool stuff that is in keeping with your character concept and the party goals. It doesn't mean that you have to swing naked from the chandeliers while Rickrolling the monsters.

One final comment on the Quest idea presented in the first post of the thread:

I'd like to hear more about how you'd implement this but it seems a little rigid and I think that flexibility is one of OSH's greatest strengths. Nar and I kicked the idea around a little (I highly recommend doing your idea kicking in a hot tub - it's Awesome!) and we came up with a concept we both seemed to like:

When coming up with your character's Adventuring Goals, choose one that is short term with the understanding that it is likely to happen during the current session. Choose another that is long term and is likely to be met during the course of that Tier of play. Doing this gives the GM a guide to what the players are interested in happening over the course of the campaign and you can aim for that, as well as the resulting complications that may arise, right from the start. In effect, everybody will accomplish a Quest each Tier but it isn't hard wired as the dividing line between 4th and 5th.

Some suggestions for advanced talents:

Fighter:
- armor training: for encumbrance purposes heavy armor is considered not heavy, very heavy armor is considered heavy
- two weapons combat: the fighter can use two light weapons, the second weapon allows a second attack with no face die on turn 7 if he's not been pinned/impeded/hit
- shieldbearer: a fighter with this talent and a shield canignore the first hit the shield absorbs
- brawler: always gets to add his Brawn to unarmed combat rolls or deals real damage
- wrestler: rolls 2 dice takes best for throwing/pushing people
- Dodger: +1 to AC if not caught off guard

Thief:
- Mobility: allows to roll three dice and take the best result when trying to move and you are being impeded
- Tumbling: reduces damage from falls
- Contacts: once per gaming session you can find a contact that gives information...
- trapsense: the thief gets a +2 awareness bonus to spot traps

Elf:
- speak to trees/plants: constant
- animate trees/plants: once per day animate (level/2) trees, same stats as guards, only outdoors
- invisibility: once per day (level) rounds of invisibility
- shapechange: once per day (level) hours as a plant or animal
- multi-shot: and elf taking a shoot action gets a second attack on phase 7 if not hit/pushed/thrown/impeded

Magic User:
- Teleport: you can move to any arena in sight and can't be impeded
- Shield spell: increases AC of target/self stops magic missile
- Timestop: once per arena you can make an extra round
- Enchant item: for one combat/scene item is +1 to rolls
- mastery of implements: constant, can use any magic item one additional time per day/arena

Cleric:
No ideas :(

Dwarf:
- speak to stone: constant
- runecarving: alarm: once per day, when the rune is crossed the dwarf is alerted
- runecarving: protection: once per day, for the rest of the day the item can not be broken
- runecarving: trap: once per day, if the rune is crossed everybody in the arena takes 1 damage point

Goblin:
- troll blood: constant. At the end of combat you automatically heal one damage point, you only bleed out on a roll of 1 or 2
- band of rats: once per day, if in a dungeon or urban setting you can summon (level) rats, they fight as minions
- spiderfoot: constant. Excellent balance and extra-strong feet allow you to consider Hazardous areas as Tight

my 2 cps

These are great! This is exactly the kind of brainstorming I was hoping to hear, thanks!