Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A weekly blog-letter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We explore design, execution, and culture relating to anything played on a tabletop. If you find this post useful, please share.
Introduction
About a week ago, we completed fulfillment of our system neutral tabletop roleplaying adventure zine, The Almanac of Abominations and it is available now in our webstore. This marks completion of our second project, the first being a D&D 5E zine by the same name. This series will be exploring design considerations for 5E and system neutral adventure content. Over the next couple weeks I use one of the creatures within in discussion of the design principles of the enemy creature, the supplied accessories per system, and my related thoughts.
Overall Concept: OSR/NSR
Old School or New School Revival/Renaissance. In the very human attempts to identify, codify, and label all things, there is debate across the internet about what defines OSR/NSR in tabletop roleplay. This is a deeper topic I will likely put forth more opinions on as I continue to read every game I can get my hands on but for the purposes of this discussion when I mention OSR, I am talking about the general concepts as I see them.
The main tags of an OSR game are modeled after original Dungeons and Dragons Basic and Expert (B/X) and the focus is on compatibility with modules created in the first era of D&D. A great and succinct explanation can be found on this Reddit thread.
Games like Old School Essentials (OSE) and Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) (Hardcover affiliate link) have re-imaginings of these original rule sets in their own vision. I think they’re interesting games but they do still have a higher barrier for entry.
NSR games try to take the spirit of the old school and transmute them into new rulesets and games in their own right. Focus is on open-endedness, challenging play, PC’s finding answers outside the character sheet, but with modern game design and aesthetic. My favorite example, and the game i’m currently GMing right now,is Shadowdark by The Arcane Library.
Contemporary Play Versus OSR/NSR
Different playstyles will bring different expectations and focuses and thus drive different design.
To bullet point some of the playstyle differences I see between 5E and OSR/NSR
5E
Primary design pillar: Combat.
Creature killing is primary rules as written experience source. Players will usually choose fight/kill as the way forward.
Battle maps/set piece maps are more useful than area maps.
3-5 room dungeons are optimal. Keep ‘em small and focused.
Random encounters are in the way. XP measuring becomes difficult and the reason many GMs just do milestone leveling. Adventure day XP quotas are not great, and the 5E challenge rating is quite bad in most situations.
Encounter design is around the very specific language of the stat block. Every action a creature can do must be meticulously codified and provided, or you will run into issue in implementation.
Higher numbers - Ability scores and modifiers, difficulty classes, and the like.
Baked in negation of old school mechanics - IE - ability to see in the dark.
Roll table created randomness can be a detractor.
High bandwidth requirements of DM/GM.
OSR/NSR
Primary design pillar: Exploration.
Finding treasure, advancing the story, doing cool things is the primary rules as written experience source. Players will think about interacting with their environment and if that fight is worth it.
Dungeon area maps and Hex maps are more useful than battle map/set piece maps. Discovering information about the the environment is important and rewarding. Maps can be gigantic and areas can be explored multiple times without feeling spent and old.
Random encounters provide subtle pressure, and don’t always mean a combat encounter.
Lower numbers - Ability scores and modifiers, difficulty classes and the like.
More tools for the Referee/GM to make an adventure site interesting and challenging.
Roll table created randomness is usually a boon to the story in any case.
Bandwidth load more shared between everyone at the table.
Design Tenets In Implementation
With so many games in the realm of OSR, despite their general translatability, I found it simplest to keep one of the games in mind as a touchstone when designing the content and then inform the reader what those design tenets were.
My touchstone ruleset, though not directly designed for, was a system like Shadowdark. Here’s my main design tenets in the Almanac of Abominations - System Neutral:
Low modifiers and roll over DCs - meet or better to pass ability check.
Characters roll ability checks for actions and “saves”.
DCs Easy 9-10 | Normal 12-13 | Difficult 14-16 | Very Difficulty 18+.
Monster Hit Dice (HD) are D8s equal to the creature’s level.
Magic is a Roll-to-cast system. Fail and the spell doesn’t go off.
“Advantage” roll two take the best / “Disadvantage” roll two take worst.
Treasure/Gold rewards experience points.
The Vorlokus
The creature we will discuss in the rest of this series will be the Vorlokus.
The Vorlokus is intended to be a highly mobile glass cannon with a lot of utility at their disposal. The game master will be most effective use of the creatures abilities if it is able to keep distance from the player characters, keeping minion zombies between itself and them that it can explode, and apply a debuff status to the characters that will increase damage output as it teleports around the battlefield picking off targets with blasts of magic.
If the players are able to get close and/or surprise the Vorlokus, it will be immediately in big trouble.
Next week we will look at the 5E and system neutral stat blocks and dig into how they implement the design of this creature in their respective intended systems.
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What I Am Up To
TTRPG Reading: Death In Space, Crown and Skull
TTRPG Production: Almanac of Abomination System Neutral TTRPG Zine is on sale now!
Other Learning: Skillshare - The Rhetoric of Story - Damien Walter
Audiobook: The Graveyard Book, The Hunger of the Gods - Bloodsword trilogy is super good!
Useful Things For Your Games
Spotify Playlist Add - Role: Tension