The Greylands Campaign - Part 3

 Well this is fun. I had half this post written out before Blogger decided to yeet it into the yawning Void. 

Most of this will be just me sharing some player maps, some artwork related to the game and any final thoughts I may or may not have. 

First off though - why even make a post about this? Because I personally love artifacts like these that a game generates. Note sheets, maps, artwork, portraits, sketches and scribbles. This to me is what makes the game last after you actually stop playing. It's what shows that it even happened. 

So, let's start with the player-facing overland map that I gave them at session 1 and that they slowly added to over time:

Player-facing map of the region

Note that there are no labels or notes anywhere on it - I did not put any to begin with, and the players generally seemed uninterested or unwilling to add stuff to the map.  While there's a few extra locations added, mostly in the forest to the southeast, that happened quite a few sessions in.

Player-made map of region and tower.

Compare to this player-made map that the usual mapper in the group drew at some point. While more abstract than the one I made (and the one I made is plenty abstract already!), it does feature notes, labels and annotations for the locations listed. 

Next up we come to player maps made of the various dungeons. While I did not insist on any specific player necessarily taking on a mapping role, I also would not draw a map for any location in a dungeon for the players.

Part of it is because I feel that mapping adds an important step to slow the action down and make it (hopefully) a bit more thoughtful, but part of it is also simply me, as a GM, having to juggle plenty of other elements already. I don't want to also have to do the mapping for the players. 

So, onto the maps!

Player map with extensive notes and annotations.

Here's an example of a rare occurrence in the campaign - a player actually taking notes as we play. I am not sure why there was not that much note taking throughout the campaign. It might be simply people enjoying the game enough to not want to stop and scribble down this or that, or it might be most of my players coming from a more Trad play culture and thus just not used to writing down information, as one of the GM's duties is to keep all that information accessible to the players upon request. After all, can't have a plot-driven game progress if literally nobody has any idea what the plot actually is, can you?

That map, by the way, was impressive enough that another player copied it for a different trek into the same dungeon:

Copy and expansion of the above map by a different player.

Here is an example of a much rougher type of mapping:

Map of the Boyar's Manor, a central dungeon in the campaign.

What happened is that the usual mapper was not playing in that particular session, and the party was venturing into a yet unexplored part of the dungeon, so they could not rely on simply redrawing a copy of an existing map and using that to navigate.

The mapper for that session was quite reluctant in their role. The player didn't really feel comfortable with trying to follow directions (and, in fact, managed to draw the map completely opposite in the first go and had to be corrected by another player. Hilariously the mapper's character is the only one that owns a compass in the entire group.), and it shows in their mapping. This is a cave system, but drawn using squares and lacking in most forms of annotations or navigational aids. 

The party still did okay, but the player declared that they are absolutely not doing that again. This is a player who enjoyed the game immensely and was one of the most enthusiastic for the campaign itself, but even that could not overcome the struggles of mapping it seems.

Player map of a tomb in The Barrows.

Player map of level 1 of the Boyar's Manor dungeon.

Player map of level 2 of the Boyar's Manor dungeon.

A variety of other player maps from different dungeons in the campaign.

In my campaign I also made it a point to reward mapping and session reports, as those required additional effort on the part of players, and also saved me the trouble of having to do either of them. The reward was a standing 100 exp per session spent mapping or report written. However I think in the future I would likely bump up that experience to 100 exp per PC level, thus making still be a relatively meaningful activity even for PCs of level 3or or higher.

Tishomir the War Bear, a hireling.
Portrait by a player.

Landalf the Fragile, MVP of the game and a staunch survivor.
Portrait by me. 

So then, in my first post about this game I laid out my goals - Have a weekly in-person game, introduce people to the OSR style of play, have fun. 

On the first goal I would say I succeeded, even if some weeks were missed for this or that reason. The game became a steady element in my week to week life, and I enjoyed having it. My plan is to return to running such a game once I can.

On the second goal, I think I also mostly succeeded. Different players had different experience levels and expectations of this style of gaming, and some had more difficulty than others wrapping their heads around how to play in this manner, but I think I got at least a few people introduced to this way of play and I hope that it will stick (Only time will tell). 

On the last and probably most important goal - was the game fun? Yeah I think so. It was fun for me to GM, which has been a struggle for me over the years. The players generally seemed to enjoy it, and judging by how many of them ended up joining at least a second session I would say that is a good barometer of enjoyment from the activity. After all, nobody was ever under any obligation to come play. So if they did, it meant they wanted to. Any further notes on this would have to come from the players themselves, not me though. 

What's the future of the Greylands?

Uncertain. I am currently unable to run it as I am out of the country and thus don't really have access to my players or my notes and documentation, and I have zero interest in trying to run the game online. 

Some number of players have expressed interest in continuing the campaign after I return, and I would agree it might be nice to continue it as there is already established connections and story lines have emerged organically from the sessions. 

On the other hand I feel drawn to different things, different campaigns and systems to try and refine my idea of what the OSR is and what it means to play in that play style. The Greylands were very much a testing ground for me, and so while I am attached enough to this little campaign to have written 3 blog posts about it, I also feel no problem moving onto something else. 

The Greylands Campaign - Part 2

 In this post, I am going to just go over some stats that I tracked the duration of the campaign. I enjoy reading bits of info like this about people's games, and I figured that at least one other person out there might be interested in this, so here we go!

STATS!

Sessions played: 11

Players in the campaign: 17
PCs crippled or mangled by the Death and Dismemberment Table: 3
Highest character level achieved: 5
Highest total XP earned in one session: 11,356 xp per character
Classes Unlocked: 2 ( War Bear and Cleric)
PC Class Breakdown

• 4 Fighters

• 4 Thieves

• 1 Magic-User

• 2 Illusionists

• 3 Dwarfs

• 2 Elfs

• 2 Acolytes

• 1 Druid

• 1 Cleric

Most unlucky class: Thief
Most unlucky character: Big Pavol, the illusionist retainer
Longest surviving character: Landalf the Fragile
Longest surviving retainer: Spyro, a porter and torchbearer
Number of war dogs in the party: 3 good boys
Number of war hogs in the party: 1 sort-of-good boy

Number of "nodes" on the overland map explored: 7
Number of dungeons partially explored: 4
Number of lairs cleared: 1
Magical items acquired: 3
Single most expensive piece of treasure acquired: Silver serpent crown worth 5000 gp
Toughest monster defeated: Basilisk
Number of dragons the party ran away from: 3

Players who have played in two or more sessions: 11

Most players in a single session: 7

Fewest players in a single session: 4

Total PCs in the campaign: 20

Rolls on the Death and Dismemberment table: 6

Dead Characters: 1

Dead Retainers: 7

Number of PCs that slept with Medved: 1

Overall MVP of the Campaign so far: Evtim, for getting a level 1 elf with 4hp to level 4 without a single Death and Dismemberment roll. Good on you, man!

Observations

Something I noticed quite early on was how surprisingly forgiving the Death and Dismemberment roll can be. Despite PCs rolling on it 4 times (and on retainer - twice!) it only ever resulted in 1 actual death. Sure, people got their arms and heads broken, suffered concussions and so on, but ultimately they survived. I am seriously considering making the table a bit more brutal, or outright removing it as a rule. 

Another observation might be the rather absurd number of exp listed in there. That's not a typo, and not a mistake - the party had an absolutely enormous haul in session 9. And since I give experience per SP, not GP (while not adjusting treasure numbers in the modules I use to populate my game), it meant the party actually ended up bumping up against the "only one level gained per session" rule! 

Speaking of levels, level 5 might seem high too, but I start all new characters with 2500 exp, meaning that everyone but the Thief and Elf start as level 2. Thieves start at level 3, and Elfs only halfway through level 1. If anything I'm surprised there's nobody at level 6, but I think there's a few characters that might be quite close to that. 

Next post I think I'll write down some more personal observations from the campaign - memorable moments, lessons learned, etc. 

The Greylands Campaign - Part 1

 This year I ran my first OSR campaign, which also has the (dubious) honor of being the longest campaign I've ran, as well as the one with the most sessions in it. As I will not be able to run the game for several months, it is currently on a (hopefully non-permanent) pause. 

I thought this would be a good opportunity to write down some thoughts, observations and stats for this campaign, for the benefit of mostly myself. 

This is going to be a series of posts, and in this first one I would like to present a general overview of campaign, my goals with it and some details on how it actually was organized and run. 

System

The game was ran using Old School Essentials with a bunch of house rules and on the fly decisions, as one would expect in any real tabletop experience. The majority of those house rules were collected in a Google Docs document, but for the sake of both presentation and ease of use at the table, I also made them into printed booklets which the players could reference during gameplay:

Player booklets for the campaign.

I made 6 of those in total and they are one of my favorite things about the campaign, providing a wonderful physical artifact for the game and also serving to impress people at the table.

Campaign Structure and Format

This entire campaign was started because I wanted to have a weekly, in-person, OSR game to play in. As none of those were available, I had to make it happen myself. The game was ran as an open table, with no single player ever being required for the game to commence. 

The campaign was ran in person at my LGS, with sessions usually averaging around 4 hours, though we've had some short ones and some that go for 6+ hours too (with breaks included of course).

The initial recruitment for the game was done through either just telling people I knew would be interested, as well as making a recruitment post on said LGS's Facebook page. I had also spent a good few weeks telling people I was going to launch the campaign, drumming up interest, which I think helped in the long run.

The image accompanying the first player recruitment post.

From there on most week to week games were organized through a discord server I set up for the campaign, and I'd say it worked quite well overall. The game would consistently have 5-6 players, with only a few occasions where there were not enough people available to actually get a game to fire.

The actual sessions themselves followed a pretty standard pattern. Wait for everyone to show up, tell them any rumors or news that their characters have heard over the previous week of downtime in town, finish up any last-minute gear purchases (for characters who chose to spend their downtime buying and selling stuff), retainers hiring and so on. Then, ask them what their plan was for this expedition, usually them following up on events from the previous week's session, or exploring places on their map they've not run into yet. Then the bulk of the game happens, and once we reach a natural stopping point, or it gets too late, the party goes back to town and we do downtime activities for the next in-game week.

Setting

The setting for the campaign was quite sparse, serving more as matte painting in front of which the action takes place, rather than having exploration of the setting and its themes, characters and so on being a primary aspect of gameplay. As such I decided to just make the campaign's setting be a very broad strokes rip-off of the excellent Hill Cantons by Chris Kutalik with the serial numbers filed off. The entire setting bible is this very sparse Google Docs file that I sent to the players after they asked me for some setting clarifications.

The tl;dr version of it is this - In one of the border territories of a NOT!16th Century NOT!Holy Roman Empire a cataclysms of some magical origin causes the entire region to lose some of it's vitality and color (hence the Greylands) and makes dungeons and treasures and weirdness start popping out of nowhere. The place turns into a frontier for adventurers, outlaws, heretics and other such assorted Player Character types. There's only one major settlement, a town whose inhabitants and the rest of the empire have even forgotten the name of. The adventurers who hang out there call it Greytown, in a stunning display of creativity. And...that's it.

Goals

The main goals I had for this campaign were to have a weekly game happening, to get over my problems and anxieties associated with GMing, to introduce people into the OSR style of play (whatever the hell that even is or looks like these days), to have an actual campaign that runs for longer than 3 sessions and to just have some fun.

How well that that work out? Well, pretty good I think! This was one of the more enjoyable GMing experiences that I've had, and despite an initial hump of prep work most week to week game prep was quite minimal and tended to follow just obvious progression from what happened in the previous session.

I also think I did an okay job in showcasing and introducing the OSR play culture to people of varying familiarity with it, plus helping me get some more experience under my belt. 

The game also was quite consistent, only missing a few weeks usually due to me being unavailable, which resulted in a total of 11 sessions over the span of roughly 3 months. Compared to some other games I've run over the years, this has been outright unprecedented! 


I think this is enough for now. In the next post I think I'll write up some interesting stats that I've tracked for the campaign.