Houndmaster, an OSE Class

This was born out of a discussion with my partner, broadly on the topic of having the Druid-style play of animals as followers, but getting rid of the spells and other such trappings.

Combined with my love for the class of the same name from the Darkest Dungeon, and here we have it! Also in my game I plan on removing the default 11 morale score for War Dogs (as per Advanced OSE) and instead have them use normal follower morale, since that makes the Houndmaster’s ability more notable.

The Houndmaster

Requirements: None
Hit Dice: 1d6
Maximum Levels: 10
Weapons and Armor: Houndmasters can use any weapon, and can wear all armor except plate. They can’t use shields.

Description

Houndmasters are people who have an almost supernatural bond with dogs. They know how to train and command them better than anyone and are often the ones developing new breeds of dogs. Often found in the courts of rulers or nobles who enjoy dogs, the Houndmaster can also be found out adventuring with their four legged friends. 

In the Greylands Houndmasters have a strong inclination towards Beast worship, maintaining small shrines and giving offerings to Brother Dog.

Abilities

Animal Bond: You feel a strong bond with your dogs. As a result you can’t have non-dog followers. You can have a maximum of 3 dogs with you at first level, and then +1 to that maximum for every 2 levels after that (so 4 at level 3, 5 at level 5, 6 at level 7, etc).

Special Training: Under your care and training hunting dogs and war dogs become a lot more effective and dangerous. They gain the following benefits.

• Your dogs have their morale set at 11.
• Your dogs add your character level to their max HP
• Your dogs add your character level to their damage rolls
• At level 5 your dogs get +2 to their to hit rolls. At level 9 that bonus increases to +5

Emotional Support Dog: Once you reach level 2 you can designate one of your hounds to be your support dog. Once per day, you can spend a turn petting and soothing your support dog, allowing you to restore 1d3 HP both to yourself and to it. If your support dog dies you lose 1d4 hit points (this can’t bring you below 1 HP and can’t kill you). You must spend a downtime action to train a new dog for the role.

Level Progression

Experience requirements like Magic-user, attack bonuses and saving throws like Cleric

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 11

    

Summary 

Level 5 of the dungeon is explored further, then during downtime the party is visited by the strange warriors they met earlier, clearing up some more details of their background.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 4 Druid 
• Pipam the Younger - Level 4 Thief
• von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 4 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 3 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear) and 3 War Hounds

Session Recap

Continuing where the last session left off, the party regrouped after their encounters with the strange emaciated talasumi and decided to explore some more of the dungeon level. They found a room with floating candles close to where they were, but decided to instead focus on exploring more of the level and go back to the candles later.

Further exploration brought them to the odd encampment of small and fuzzy creatures (kobolds) living in a series of hanging platforms above the dungeon floor and away from the dangerous denizens of the place. Some friendly chatter, gifts of seed cakes, and general banter ensued, interrupted by a jiggling mass slowly approaching the group.

Realizing that the Gelatinous Cube was actually too slow to really catch up with them, the group proceeded to retreat and kite the thing with arrows and Sunfire, destroying it in the process and claiming a curious golden ring from the jelly-like slop left after the thing melted away.

Further exploration led them to a room of mirrors and an odd staff hovering in the center of it. Cautious of any obvious traps, the group approached the  staff, only to find that the reason for it hovering mid-air was that it was, again, in the middle of another Gelatinous Cube. This time the thing had somehow managed to get the drop on them (by remaining perfectly still in the middle of a room, no less! Devious thing that it was) and so the group instead relied on their usual Bear-focused strategy, with Baba Tonka ripping apart the thing in a round. 

With the obviously magical staff retrieved the group found a room with iron statues in it, two of which rather predictably turned out to be alive. However with some quick thinking (and slow movement of the statues) the party simply...closed the door in front of them. The statues then happily returned back to their pedestals, clearly uninterested in pursuit. 

Finally, with some poking and prodding of candles the group realized that they would naturally levitate when light up, otherwise acting as normal candles that do not appear to burn out. Gathering them all, the characters were satisfied and headed back up to the surface.

The haul from this run was quite good, and so the group felt happy to spend some of that cash on identifying the magical ring as well as figuring out what the staff's deal is. The priests of the Greytown Church explained that the staff was able to heal people with a touch, while Frantishek the Magician, the local high level magic-user of the town, found out that the ring was actually a cursed Ring of Weakness and offered to buy it off the party, along with the floating candles. He explained that the ring was actually exactly the kind of stuff his contacts back in the Imperial core got asked for by their clients, while the candles he just personally found neat and wanted to use them around his tower.

Most importantly, the group now had the extra funds on hand to go talk to the builder's guild and arrange for the construction to begin in earnest on restoring the fortified manor. To make sure they don't get any surprises, they also hired a pair of men-at-arms to hang out there and keep a watch out.

While back at their manor and preparing things for the builders to begin work, the characters were approached by Anna, the fighter that lead the group of plate-clad warriors the party had encountered earlier. She told them that she and her men were working as muscle for an underground temple dedicated to the four elements, and that the head priest was interesting in talking to the party and wanted to ask them for help (with what, she didn't know, as she was just there to relay the message). 

Also now that Anna was no longer flustered and slightly confused by running into the party in the middle of what was supposed to be a mostly abandoned level of a dungeon, she also gave the general lay of the land as she knew it, and said she'll come back soon to help escort them down to the temple's level and talk to the priests.

GM Observations

So, finishing up the delve from last session wasn't too problematic, with the party getting a very friendly reaction result from the kobolds, fighting a pair of gelatinous cubes (who, with their abysmally low movement, are honestly not THAT much of a threat unless you just stupidly run right into them, and generally got a good amount of loot.

We also finally got around to explaining a bit what the deal was with the warriors they met. The players had been very confused about what had just happened, and if these warriors were simply just "things"  spawned by the dungeon, if they were rival adventurers or something else entirely. I did not want to reveal too many details before I had figured out what exactly the Elemental Temple actually was going to be about so I kept things vague which contributed to the confusion.

After talking things over with people on Discord (thanks folks!) I got a better idea of what the temple wants as a faction, which in turn made it so I can actually figure out how to run them and how they would react to the knowledge of the party's existence. After all, a topic that was brought up during that discussion that I have had on my mind, is just how much information do NPC groups or factions have about the PCs?

You as a referee already know what the players are planning on doing, how they plan on doing it, what resources and personnel they have and so on, and so presenting a competent and devious enemy which also knows these things can get the game into outright hostile GMing territory, since it is a lot easier to just make a group that can outright kill the party if they wanted to.

Obviously that's an extreme case and not really good campaign design, but it is something I've been thinking ever since writing up the rival adventuring party for my previous campaign. 

Thief's Candles

Thief’s Candle

Cost: 150 gold
Description: A small candle of yellow wax. Inside the wax is a preserved finger, wrapped with the candle’s wick. When lit, the candle’s flame is a blue-ish black color.

Effect: When lit and held by a Thief, the candle produces just enough illumination for that person to see in. Nobody else can see the light produced by the candle, except the Thief holding it. The candle can be extinguished and relit many times, just like a normal candle. Otherwise it burns out in 6 turns of continual use.

Background: Thief Guilds are usually seen as little more than crude attempts at organized crime, and they like it when it stays that way. However, they have tricks and secrets of their own that only members know of. One of those are the Thief’s Candles.

The punishment for theft (or association with the Thieves’ Guild) is chopping off the offender’s left hand. The Guild goes to great lengths to collect those, and uses the fingers to produce these artifacts, allowing the fallen member to continue helping the Guild even past death.

Thief’s Candles are seen as a very precious resource for a guild, and the secrets of how to make them rests with the highest leadership of the organisation. Anyone found sharing the secrets of their manufacturing with anyone who isn’t supposed to already know gets put on the Guild’s highest To Do list.

Precious as they are, the Candles are usually sold internally to members at a steep price, or handed out for important Guild business. They allow a thief to freely traverse in (what appears to outsiders) as utter darkness. The item is only a minor magical trinket, so it doesn’t really make the wielder invisible or anything, and creatures or spells that allow one to see in darkness can still show the Thief holding the candle (though still not the candle’s light).

The Primordial Beasts

A recurring bit of worldbuilding that has been going on throughout my Greylands campaign have been the Primordial Beasts - large, quasi-divine animals of varying power and influence.

Unlike the Sun God (who’s religion now dominates the world), and the Wild Gods (who still have pockets of worshipers doggedly holding onto their ways), the Primordial Beasts don’t really offer much in the way of magic to those who follow them, as there simply isn't much there to give. They are barely godlings in their own way, and even then that applies only to some of them.

However that has never stopped some people (contrarians, as they are usually called) from trying anyway. And so the Beasts do occasionally get small pockets of non-animal worshipers.

This has actually caused surprisingly little friction with the Sun God’s followers. After all, while some of the Solar religions are more syncretic than others and incorporate acceptable versions of the Wild Gods, the veneration of Primordial Beasts is such a backwoods and rare occasion that most church leaders simply don’t even believe it to be true. And with how little it produces in terms of tangible effects on reality - who can blame them?

And yet, those who dedicate themselves to a Primordial Beast do get a small benefit or two from it. As such, below I will explore in some more detail the three Primordial Beasts that players have encountered so far throughout the campaign, and what (if any) potential powers aligning yourself with them can bring you. Who knows, maybe it’ll be something players are interested in doing in the campaign.

Simple Rules for Beast Worship

A character who devotes themselves to the veneration of a Primordial Beast must spend at least one downtime action per month in maintaining a shrine to the beast in question, offer sacrifices and generally refrain from harming normal animals of the appropriate type, save for ways allowed by the Primordial Beast in question.

Failing to follow these duties for 6 months or longer simply withers away the connection. Depending on what boons the devotee was granted, they may or may not still keep them anyway - the Primordial Beasts usually don’t have enough divine power to exert punishment. Faith is lost not through grand gestures, but through apathy.

Medved (Bear)

Description: The Master of the War Bears is arguably the single most potent and powerful of the Primordial Beasts currently alive. He still causes fear and respect in humanity, for those were instilled within their collective unconscious very firmly in the old and hazy past. He keeps them current too by the presence of his favored children, the War Bears.

Medved likes to travel a lot, usually setting up camp in some border territory or forgotten piece of unfinished Chaos and spends his days in leisure, merriment and laziness. He has enough personal magical power that he can change his appearance at will. When dealing with humans he often makes a point to appear as a large, hairy, bearded, and usually buck naked, man. In most other cases he appears as an impressively massive brown bear with a golden shine to his fur.

 
Cult Requirements: Being a man’s man (in every way you can imagine), Medved greatly prefers and favors male characters, however he will still accept anyone’s veneration if given.

Boons: Characters that worship Medved get +1 to reaction rolls when interacting with War Bears and +1 to the morale of War Bear hirelings. Furthermore if the character is looking for new hirelings and there are War Bears around, at least one will always be willing to consider joining them (and only them).

A devotee of Medved of level 2 or greater can also temporarily set their Strength to 18 and perform Feats of Strength (ripping off doors, hurling small boulders, bending iron bars etc) for 1d4-1 turns (the -1 is because Medved sometimes just zones out and forgets about you). They can use this power once per day.

Markings: Male, non-ursine members of the cult find themselves becoming noticeably hairy over time.

Svine (Swine)

Description: Svine is a minor Primordial Beast, really little more than a very big and ponderous swine with a faint aura of magic around her. She is quite happy with that, as humanity keeps her children well fed and taken care of, breeding more and more of them all the time. Sure, the wilder ones tend to get hunted down and killed, but that is how life goes.

Her current residence and center of power, if you can even call it that, is a small commune of Wild Gods-worshipping pagans living in the magically desiccated zone known as the Greylands. She is given veneration, offerings and worship by these people as well as physically taken care of by them.

Svine appears as a fat and quite large swine, covered in glittering fur and with shining tusks. She does not have the power (or the desire) to change her shape.

Cult Requirements: None

Boons: Svine is willing to grant some of her larger and more aggressive children to aid her followers. These War Boars have the same stats as the monster entry. A devotee may have as many war boars for followers as their character level.

War Boars do not require upkeep, still take up a follower slot, and as long as treated well will never abandon the person they follow, even if that person stops being a devotee of Svine.

Markings: Especially devoted followers sometimes find themselves granted boar heads in place of their usual faces. The effect is only ever temporary though, lasting for several months to a year at most.

Vuycho Vulk/Uncle Wolf (Wolf)

Description: Uncle Wolf was once as powerful as Medved is now, if not even more so. His presence sent humans fleeing in terror, for they knew that his arrival heralded only bloody death for them and their kin. His family to this day are feared by humans, even if not respected much and though humanity keeps trying to eradicate them, wolves are smart and also know the value of cooperation just as well as humans do.

In his day he was able to freely turn himself into multiple forms - a human warrior, a giant wolf, a large black shadow that stalked the night. He cut his way through entire kingdoms, gorging himself on their livestock, their children and everything else he wished.

That all changed once he got himself killed. Nowadays Uncle Wolf is barely venerated or worshiped at all. Oh sure, human mothers still use his name to scare their pups into obedience, but in reality he can’t do shit to anyone anymore. And yet, he still persists. Despite being dead, his aura of fear is still there, still lingering in the primal parts of the human brain.

He has mellowed out significantly since being decapitated - not having a physical body makes it hard to revel in bloodlust and carnage like he used to. Nowadays he is just happy for anyone to remember him and leave him an offering once in a while.

Cult Requirements: Vuycho Vulk still pines for the good old days and so will generally only grant boons to warriors or at a pinch, thieves. War Bears can join, because he finds it deeply amusing.

Boons: Once per day, a devotee of Uncle Wolf can channel that deep-seated fear in any targets they choose within a 20ft radius. Those targets all have to immediately make a morale check, and if failed will stop whatever they’re doing and flee in terror. This ability does not work on the undead or, for that matter, on wolves.

Markings: No overt ones, though devoted followers of Uncle Wolf just make humans around them kind of uncomfortable, even if people can’t quite place why.

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 10

   

Summary 

The party continue with preparations for winter and the explore the next level of the dungeon, meeting some very strange people.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 4 Druid 
• Pipam the Younger - Level 4 Thief
• von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 3 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 3 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear) and 3 War Hounds

Session Recap

Deciding to spend some of the money well earned from the last delve, von Plarf decided to spend some of it on herself, going on a two week carousing bender that ended up with her leveling up.. and also incurring a 600 gp debt after a botched game of dice with some other adventurers in Greytown.

While she was busy doing that, the rest of the party focused on preparing for the winter and securing the dungeon. With the first four floors now very firmly under their control (and the control of their allies), the party brought in workers to build a wall and solid stone door, restricting access to level 5 of the dungeon. With some of the beefier talasumi put to guard duty, the group ventured further down, now knowing they have a safe route to retreat.

The first thing they discovered is that the dungeon was now markedly different on the fifth level. The walls and floor looked different from the catacombs above or the caves that connected to them. They also discovered the source of the gusts of wind - two sizable holes in the floor producing a constant stream of wind and seeming to have no bottom. The walls of the dugeon were also carved with gargoyle faces, with holes placed in their mouths producing a constant whistling or howling sound. They also found some strange tapestries hanging on the walls in one of the rooms, their designs seeming a bit nonsensical as if created by a shitty AI image generation software. They decided they wanted those for their future manor so took them down and stored them for later.

Exploring the dungeon the group ran into a room containing a pair of carion carcass crawlers, easily dispatched through a Sleep spell. Going through their disgusting nest and feeding room the party found the half-devoured remains of some soldiers, one of which carrying a strangely ornate and distinctive shield. It was quartered and with each quarter designed with ornate reliefs depicting the elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Picking up the shield and loot from the room the group ventured east, and found what looked to be the fallen warriors' companions. Four fighters, all clad in full suits of plate armor and bearing simplified versions of the quartered shield, approached them. 

Both groups were rather suspicious and mildly confused of each other. The party had no idea how these people had gotten down here without going through the upper floors, the warriors in turn were very tight-lipped and refusing to answer questions. After some stilted attempts at negotiations (how do you do that when one party simply refuses to talk?) the leader of the warriors, a woman named Anna, brought over some more plate-clad warriors and the two groups returned above ground, going through the upper floors.

As they emerged in the ruins of the manor, the warriors left towards Greytown, though taking an odd route to get there. The party were all thoroughly confused s to what had just occurred, but decided to not worry about it too much and simply went back down to continue exploring level 5.

After having to disable several traps, the group found themselves in a room with some more gargoyles. Instead of the obvious attack by the gargoyles, however, the group were ambushed by four strange looking talasum that emerged from behind the statues. These looked gaunt and off, like badly taxidermied versions of the shaggy beings the party had allied with, their eyes being dull and not very reflective. The quartet were also completely silent, not saying anything as they paralyzed Rusty and attacked the others, eventually being ripped apart by Baba Tonka and missile fire. 

Since the party were stuck waiting for Rusty to snap out of his paralysis, they decided to spend the following turns poking around the room, and indeed they found a trapped and locked container within the mouth of one of the gargoyles, getting some solid treasure from there. They were interrupted by another one of the oddly gaunt talasum, but it was quickly dispatched by liberal application of animals and steel.

GM Observations

Another session of pausing the game in the dungeon. It still feels a bit weird, having been very strict about ending games back in town or at least a safe location for my previous two campaigns. 

This session also presents a shift for the campaign overall. Not only have the group secured the first 4 floors of the dungeon, cut off access to the 5th and gotten enough funds to get their manor built, but the 5th floor and onwards is when Dyson's Delve starts to get a lot more complex in the relation between the various factions within it. The strange warriors the party encountered being one such.

For me the reason I played them as oblique and refusing to answer questions (while asking plenty of their own) was two-fold. Part of it is simply that they are similarly trying to learn about the party as the party was trying to learn about them. And part of it is that they represent a larger faction within the dungeon that I have yet to quite figure out how will react to the actions of the players in the past 10 sessions and what that means for the dungeon itself.

This has been a consistent issue for me as a Referee in both previous campaigns. At about session 10 or so, the party usually have started to properly set themselves up as parts of the campaign's setting, having goals and having interactions with enough various factions that the game's position becomes rather complex. 

That is, of course, one of the beauties of sandbox campaigns as opposed to plot-focused affairs. A plot never becomes much more complicated than it was at the beginning, since ultimately the players are there to simply walk their way through it, rather than create it. Conversely, a sandbox game can generate quite complicated and complex situations that are more or less unique to each group of players that play in it.

And as one of the main problems I always fight with as a Referee is becoming overwhelmed by having to keep track of too many things, that has been a problem for me as well. In this specific case I have intentionally kept the campaign very tightly focused on the dungeon under the manor, plus I've not done a lot of radical changes in the dungeon itself based on the actions of the players. And that has worked well so far, but now the game is reaching a state where that will begin to actively break the fiction of what has happened in the past 10 sessions. The Dungeon, and the setting by extension, simply has to respond. 

It ties into a broader problem of me not having the mental load to do much scheming and plotting and figuring out the moving pieces, due to a combination of life and also running a play-by-post game simultaneously. The PbP game is now over, so I am hopeful that will give me the bandwidth to properly let this campaign become more reactive and from there - living. We will see how that goes.

Further thoughts on Experience Gain in a megadungeon campaign

 Consider this a sort of part 2 to this previous post. After reading through some articles regarding alternate experience gain methods in the context of OSR play (notably this one from Ben L.) as well as the comments under said articles, it got me thinking of a potential alternative approach.

Now, to be clear, as with the previous post, experience for treasure recovered is good, fine and works great. However, I can't help myself when it comes to tinkering of this sort, so please indulge me on this one.

First off, an important piece of context - I am thinking of this solely in relating to an open table megadungeon-focused campaign. For broader sandbox play, this might not work great (almost certainly won't in fact) and for a consistent player group it is meaningless, and you might as well use modern day milestones where you just get experience because the GM decided to give you some. So keep that in mind.

The basic setup is this: For every session in which the party has delved into the megadungeon, each character participating in that delve gets N experience points. 

Yeah yeah, xp for just participating, boo boo the man. But let us actually think about this. XP for GP is good because it presents a simple, clear and transparent framework for character advancement tied directly to playing the game. You play the game, you go in the dungeon, you find treasure, you get exp.  The function of XP for GP is to give players a direction at least initially on what to do in the campaign - go find you some treasure! You get experience for, in short, playing the game! (The game, in this case, being location-based exploration, a.k.a. dungeon crawling) 

So the thing above simply cuts out the middle man. You get experience for going into the dungeon and not dying. The amount is simply decoupled from the treasure you returned with or the enemies you defeated or the McGuffins you diddled or whatever other scheme. The more you play, and the more consistent you are in being part of the game, the more experience your character will get, while also risking more opportunities for that character to die.....oh wait, that's just what getting experience for treasure and monsters already does!

Discussing this general concept both on Discord (hello!) and with my partner also helped me crystalize some of the questions, issues and solutions this brings.

1. This is not experience for "just showing up". 

You only get experience for a session in which the party actually went adventuring into the dungeon, thus exposing themselves to the risk of character death. Sessions set during downtime or focused on the town do not give XP, just like they don't under XP for GP

2. This method flattens out the ups and downs of treasure based xp gain.

An aspect of XP for GP is that it is basically never consistent. In some sessions the party pulls nothing out of the dungeon, in others they hit a motherload and get a ton of xp in one chunk. This method flattens that out to an even number. This is not necessarily better or worse, just different. Missing a session (which should not be too punishing in an open table campaign) in which the party found a ton of treasure now doesn't seriously kneecap your character's XP growth. However you still don't get to have any of that actual money for the treasure, so there is still some consequence, just not as sever one in xp.

3. This should not invalidate gathering treasure and resource management.

Finding treasure will likely still be the focus for most of the player character. After all, you have living expenses, or maybe the characters want to make items, scrolls, research magic, build a base of operations, help the community, do any of that fabled Domain Game stuff. Well that stuff still costs money (it makes the world go round!) and the reckless endangerment to oneself for the possibility of finding more money than a peasant will ever see in their life is still present. Just that that aspect is now no longer tied directly to experience gain and level progression is all.

This means that balancing the party's finances, figuring out hiring retainers, figuring out how to haul expensive but problematic items out of the dungeon, all of that stuff is still present. It just does not affect your xp. That's all.

4. Number go up!!

Look, people like it when numbers go up. That is a fact of life and a fact of gaming. The reasons behind it are deep, numerous and way beyond my artist-level brain can comprehend fully. But people like it when number go up. Well this makes it so number goes up, while also avoiding some of the previously discussed relations to treasure. 

Pictured: Every D&D player.

5. Motivation for play is not related to specific in-game activity.

This one is, again, not inherently a better or worse thing, just a different thing. People have observed in plenty of blogposts, that XP for GP being your primary way of leveling up (a thing you want to do in D&D, because that's what you do in D&D) leads logically to specific types of motivations and actions. Picaresque tales of rogues and other adventurer types, focus on hauling everything not nailed down (and prying the stuff that is) and so on. That is loads of fun, of course! 

However in this case this allows me to simply take a bit more of a meta look at the situation. The thing that I want people to do, is to play in my megadungeon campaign. The whys and hows of the motivations of their PCs then don't entirely matter to me when it comes to that goal. Your character can have whatever possible reason you can think of to venture into the dungeon - that is fine by me. What I want from you is that you go into the dungeon. This, again, cuts out the middleman and simply gets to the point. We are playing a game. Let's play that game.

6. This does not preclude other methods of earning experience.

Just because you get a steady flow of the Good Stuff for every session you shove your PC in the megadungeon, doesn't mean there can't or won't be other methods to earn XP. Specific objectives, quests, goals whatever you want to call them, that can give a higher (but one-off) experience to the party. This still keeps the relation between risk and experience gain. Every time you go in the megadungeon there is a background noise level of risk to your character, so you get an appropriate amount of experience. When you go do something particularly risky you get more experience. This still maps to how older D&D functions - more powerful enemies give more experience, because they are riskier to deal with. 

7. It makes it a bit less of a headache to figure out the campaign's pacing.

A question that always comes when making a dungeon is "how much treasure do I put in here?" Because that question ultimately is "how much experience do I want the PCs to earn from this?". And we know that that is what it means, because it is straight up stated in so many words in B/X. So again, why not simply address it directly. 

I still need to figure out how much treasure certain parts of the megadungeon should have, but now the treasure can be a lot more interesting, weird and maybe not as expensive. And I don't have to calculate it based on party numbers and levels etc. No, everyone just gets some experience for delving into the murderhole.

Of course, this still leaves the question - okay, so how much is N in that sentence up there on top? Well, I don't know. If we make it, say, 100, that means that a level 1 Fighter will need 20 sessions to get to level 2. That is probably slower than it is reasonable for most people in our day and age. However, I also don't want it to be too high and get to a point where I have been with my other campaigns, of character levels outpacing my capacity as a referee to figure out what to do with the game.

So I also had an interesting idea on how to help with the pacing. Let's use that 100 xp for our example. From level 1 to, say, level 5 your character gets 100 xp per delve. However from level 5 to, say, level 7 they now only earn 75. Or 50. progress slows down, without me needing to still shovel kingly sums of money at the party just to even get that much. So okay, you get to level 7. Well from here on out, you get 25 exp per delve. The game slows even further, it stretches out. However that is fine, as the stretching out happens in what most people consider the "sweet spot" for a lot of D&D, old or new. So getting a character to level 9 or 10 is still a challenge and an actual achievement. 

This is hardly original - Empire of the Petal Throne famous does that too. This method also means that, due to this being an open table, a brand new character joining a higher level party into the dungeon can catch up relatively fast to them, as they will simply gain more experience. 

I know the OSR has had this weird obsession with low level play (and low level play has plenty of charms in it too), and I know the reactionary contingent (or as they are better called - living shitstains) have kind of monopolized the interest in higher level play, but....it doesn't have to be that way you know? Levels 3 to ~5 or 7 is fun. Magic-Users get fireball, Fighters can still dish out damage, but can take a few more hits, Thieves become barely competent (barely), etc. Also at that point the players have usually figured out for themselves what it is they want out of the campaign and can pursue their own goals and have most of the tools to do so. 

Again, all these numbers will need a lot of tweaking. But that can happen as play happens. It is the easiest part of designing systems, and the hardest at the same time. But RPGs are much more forgiving than, say, board games or card games, when it comes to number tweaking. 

So, that is where I have this idea developed so far. The more I think about it, the more I seem to convince myself it has legs, so I might end up going with it at least initially. And if it doesn't work, or feels lame or flat? Guess what, it's my fucking campaign I can just go back to XP for GP and it won't really matter!