Review - Muster, A Primer for War

Time for another review! And since I just finished re-reading Muster, let’s talk about it! This is going to be a bit more rambling as a review than the two modules I did, because, well, it’s a different kind of book!

Muster cover art.

Overview

Muster is a rather interesting read, as it is not really an RPG book or a module. Instead it’s a book of theory and advice on how to place D&D in what the author calls “the wargaming way” - a style of play similar to or adjacent to OSR play, though with some interesting peculiarities. This puts it in a similar category to Philotomy’s Musings, or perhaps smaller works like the Old School Primer by Matt Finch and the Principia Apocrypha.

The book was written by Eero Tuovinen and illustrated by Sipi Myllynen. I am not sure who did the layout and editing, but it is published by Arkenstone Publishing so…someone from there, presumably?

What works for me

I like this book a lot. I mean a lot. It’s 250 pages and I’ve read it twice now, which considering the size of my To Read list is probably unwise, yet here we are.

Let’s try and go over some of the things present in the book, because there’s a lot. The book begins by laying out first off what is meant by “wargaming way”. It is a curious term, as it refers to the old Prussian kriegsspiel which are generally seen as the progenitor of civilian hobby wargames that came in the century or two after it.

On one hand, it is rather odd why this term was chosen, as opposed to simply using the much more popular label of OSR. However I think since this method of play was developed within a relatively small group of Finnish gamers (from what I can gather from the text at least), I think it is also okay to give it a distinct name.

Next up the book presents the basic tenets of the Wargaming Way of play, divided into a Basic Outlines portion and an Advanced Matters portion. The Basic Outlines covered are things one can find in the other theory or instructional texts that I linked above - do not fudge dice rolls; always start at 1st level; the importance of the campaign as a coherent world rather than an individual character or party of characters; goal-based XP (usually 1 exp point for 1 gold. We’ll get to this later); player-driven gameplay and general disregard for formal rules texts in any situation where they do not actively contribute to helping run the game.

One thing that is a common feature of OSR pedagogical texts and has become a common mantra, and yet is missing from this text, is the whole “combat is a fail state” declaration. The book does not seem to agree, with that combat is in fact often the entire point of the specific scenario or situation set up by the GM for the players, and figuring out how to tackle it in a way which can lead to victory may be the entire point.

The book also covers stuff like Dungeon Doctrine and how a group can go about developing it - how to open doors, how to explore corridors, how to react to given situations. The kind of play that groups playing in high-lethality dungeon crawling scenarios tend to quickly learn how to do simply so they don’t just get wiped out every 10 steps.

There is also advice for the GM on how to set up this type of game, denoting two forms of campaign - the basic and extended campaign. The basic campaign consists of simply picking a module, running players through it, then picking another one, and then another one and so on. The extend is what is commonly called “sandbox” play where you have a wide open world through which the players are free to explore and direct the game.

I do wish the book actually went into a bit further detail on how to actually do the work of organizing this however. Of course every Referee’s workflow on preparing a campaign is slightly different, but outlining good common practices to keep in mind like how to organize players, how to keep track of time, location and note taking, how to incorporate modules that do not quite fit with your world’s setting into it - those are all good pieces of advice I think would have fit quite well within this book.

Next up a thing that I like is a small chapter titled D&D and Chauvinism which covers D&D’s ties with adventure fiction of the early 20th century and the implication that has for what kind of stories D&D tends to replicate - tales of colonialism, imperialism and so on. If you’ve read anything by Traverse Fantasy or Zedeck Siew you probably already know all this stuff. The book also does come to the same conclusion that I have come to regarding all of this, which is that attempting to seek some kind of political (or god help you, moral) purity through playing elfgames is probably misguided and it’s a lot simpler to just acknowledge that the characters in these games are, well, amoral (if not immoral) assholes.

The inclusion of this chapter is one I feel was a good call. While it is mostly unrelated to the rest of the text and feels a bit shoved and out of place…that’s also kind of the point, I feel. It acts as a good stopping point for the various flavors of self-deluded reactionary elements in the OSR. And anything that reminds those people that they’re fucking idiots is alright by me!

Other things of note - the text comments on experience points and their importance to the wargaming method on numerous occasions. It instructs using exp as more or less a victory points score in an old arcade game. An indicator of how far you’ve gotten and how well you’re doing in the game. The book is very very clear that experience points should be earned through clearly predefined goals, and not as participation awards or awards given for doing any out-of-game activity.

While I do agree with this sentiment to some degree… I also give experience in my current campaign for numerous activities such as carousing, players doing mapping, acting as a quartermaster or as a caller or writing session reports. However my reasoning behind giving experience of those things is that that experience acts, in its own way, as a teaching tool - it rewards what I consider good practices for players in an OSR play style.

An interesting aspect of this approach to XP is that I did not find anywhere in the book a mention of giving experience points based on enemies defeated or killed. The only concrete example is giving exp for treasure retrieved (the typical 1 gp = 1xp practice found in a lot of OSR games). I am not sure if that is a deliberate omission or simply one that was not mentioned but still used. The whole “goal-oriented exp” thing is also something I’ve been thinking about as well in my own campaign. In the session where my players were attempting to break into and disable the garrison of a gatehouse I had decided early on that they were not going to receive experience points for killing the guards or the loot they foud in the gatehouse, as giving experience for that means that the next logical step would be simply murdering people in the streets for exp too. However, as you see in the Observations part of that session recap, I also in the end decided to grant the party exp based on the fact that they had a specific goal for this session and they managed to achieve it.

So I suppose I do see the value in goal-based experience points, however this is another case where I wish the book actually laid out a much more practical example of “This is how this Referee in our game used experience points” and lay out what kind of goals were used in the game as well as what kind of experience points were given. I suspect not a lot of exp though, considering that the book says that getting a character from level 1 to level 2 takes about 10 to 12 sessions of play!

There are a few “war stories” sprinkled throughout the book of various players from that play group discussing situations that occurred in the campaign(s?) they’ve played in over the last few years, and used as illustrative examples of the wargaming way. They’re neat, and also can easily be skipped which I think is probably the best way to handle these types of stories. They did, however, offer some amazing bits of writing like the party in one game deciding they will bring down a group of body-possessing witches by…framing them for witchcraft. Or the curious cultural touchstone of the module B9 Caldwell and Beyond and its place in Finnish D&D culture.

The last thing I’d like to single out to comment on is what the author terms the Nihilistic Void, which is the strange situation that results in this style of gameplay - the fact that the Referee, despite moving the enemy pieces, should ideally not actually play as an enemy of the players. Which then means that the players simply are struggling against the void of failure itself. The book spends a few pages discussing the implications of losing characters and the emotional impact it has, and I’ll admit that this is something that I’ve struggled with on how to handle as a referee myself.

There is a lot of good in this book, and honestly, for me to cover all of it would be to essentially write a very messy synopsis of every chapter, so let’s move on.

What doesn’t work for me

I have only one main criticism of the book, and that’s to do with layout. While the actual text itself is laid out perfectly well and is easy to read, at some point there was an odd decision made to include these pages of schematics which are, at least in theory, supposed to visualize what the text around them is talking about.

This is not really helping.

However the issue with them is twofold. First off they just kind of don’t do a good job at actually explaining the text in a visual way, and I personally found the more confusing than the actual body of the text, not less. Secondly, they are inserted often right in the middle of a chapter, basically splitting the text from one page to another, which is not unreadable ro anything, but definitely a baffling layout decision regardless. For my money, they could have easily been moved around to split the text between chapters or topics…or just outright dropped.

The layout issues continue with the fact that the Table of Contents is not really in the beginning of the book. Instead there is a manifesto of sorts for the wargaming way, and only then do you get to the table of contents. I personally would have switched them around.

Lastly, the artwork in the book. The book actually has a surprisingly high amount of art, and some of it in full color (so are the pages of visual aids too, as you can see above). Meaning no disrespect to the artist who illustrated the book, most of this art could have simply been cut. While the actual style of the illustrations itself is sketchy and generally fine for this sort of book, their implementation within the layout and text is mostly just “waste of space”. There has not been a single page in the book which I felt was improved by the inclusion of art in it and so that made the art feel peripheral and sort of just solved in, rather than an actual contributing element to the overall quality of the book.

Beyond these minor quibbles though there is not much really bad with the book. For me at least these were, at best, minor irritants rather than something that actively made me unable to read the book.

Conclusion

I would say this book does a very successful job at what it attempts to do - act as a primer and instructional text for how to play in the so-called wargaming way. I have found a lot of useful ideas and approaches in the book that I’ve either implemented in my own games or am considering for future ones. There’s also been several things that I don’t really agree with and so would not use. I’ve not really mentioned those here though, because to me this isn’t a problem with the text itself, simply a difference in opinion on playstyle.

My conclusion to this is simple - this is a good text and I think most people who play or run OSR games should read it, if for no other reason than to simply see another similar approach to this style of play.

Where to get it

You can get it for free from DriveThruRPG. Print options are also available. You can also find more from Eero at Arkenstone Publishing.

BSSS - Session 12

 

 Summary

A side-story set a week before the previous session of characters heading out of the Undying City to figure out where the barbarians that keep attacking it are, what their deal is, and, hopefully, bringing back information about it before the big procession at the end of the week. Then a whole lot of murder happens. Characters

• Shimsusa the Archer - 2nd Level Fighter
• Sargira - 1st Level Psychomancer Sorceress
• Hazail - 1st Level Fighter

Session Recap

With the big procession for the beginning of the new year (and, unbeknownst to most people, for the transformation of everyone into the city into the Unliving) the authorities recruit a group of Scavengers, give them some muscle, and tell them to head north and figure out what is the deal with the barbarians that have spent the last month or so showing up outside the gates of the city, murdering everything that is caught outside the gates...then simply leaving. 

While the Undying City is quite used to Northern Barbarians trying to attack the city, especially so after it had aligned itself with a lord of Law, they have always been interested in actually attacking the city. These guys were clearly acting different, showing no desire to actually go inside (and at a horde of several hundred strong it is not beyond the realm possibility they might be able to do it too) or even besiege the city, simply leaving once they have left the fields outside its walls soaked in blood. 

Shimsusa the Archer, former mercenary and now full member of the Hedgehogs of Mercy company goes along with the expedition as both an "expert" and also to keep an eye out for what is actually going on.

The expedition had headed up the river, following the road, being almost certain that these barbarians were followers of the Sword God and so figured the best place to start looking would be his temple. They also suspected (quite rightfully) that they were probably being lead by their old acquaintance Conan. 

The trip following the road north is quiet and uneventful. After all, with these barbarians roaming the plains and seemingly coming out of nowhere, it's not exactly common to see many merchants around (plus the only large city up north was destroyed several months ago by strange heavily armored assailants). 

Eventually the party reached some ruins that the players were familiar with from an earlier expedition and decided to look around the place (having found signs of fires and camps in an earlier ruin along the road) and just settle in for the evening. As they were in the process of searching the ruins, they saw a great dust cloud approaching them and soon were greeted by a host of 45 Chariot Nomads, out looking for barbarians as well. Apparently the barbarians had assaulted one of their camps, inflicting heavy losses, so the Chariot Nomads were out for vengeance. The two groups agreed to cooperate, having a shared goal, and the party went back to their search. 

Among the remains of a brick tower (likely an old grain silo) they found a nest of some large and missing creature, and among the nest found a veritable treasure trove - expensive pelts, rare and valuable saplings, two strange potions, a map to a dungeon, a magical spear and a magic sword! Hazail the fighter picked it up, and learned that it's name is Ruin to All Cities, and the only thing it desired was to slay the forces of Law. An awkward predicament, considering the 135 Law-aligned warriors presently making camp for the evening on the other side of the ruins. With some discrete fenagling of keeping Hazail and his new sword away from that group, a plan was hatched for the next day.

The next day the whole host set out, first spotting and confirming that they had found the barbarian camp next to the river, right where the Temple of the Sword God was located. The chariots charged right through the camp, killing about a third of the barbarians in just one swoop, but as they wheeled around to charge a second time, the berserkers had managed to organize themselves and counter-charged, losing many in the process but being able to halt the charioteers and turning the entire thing into a horrible, bloody melee. 

Meanwhile the party was trying to approach the camp, when another 40 berserkers, led by a host of five champions and a large individual with a powerful magical aura about him, spotted them and charged them in turn. What proceeded was a running fight of the archers pelting the barbarians as everyone just kept running away, managing to kill the bigger majority of the attackers before they finally caught up with them. 

The powerful man who's aura up close resembled the red of rust and blood, and thousands of swords stabbed into his silhouette cut 3 of the heavy infantrymen that were with the party straight in half with a single fell swoop. Luckily some bad saving throw rolls on the barbarian parts had them falling asleep due to Sargira's magic. The pushing of her magic had cost her quite dearly though, her skin starting to bubble and painfully peel away from her muscles  After the fight had settled the party was somehow miraculously still alive and victorious. Their chariot nomad allies had also managed to finally clear the mass of berserkers as well, though at extremely heavy losses - only 7 of the 45 chariots and their crew were still alive at the end. 

With Sargira passing out from the pain of the magical corruption that had begun in her, the party realized that, indeed, the terrifying warrior who's throat they slit was Conan, and he and his champions were all wielding 6 magical swords, not at all dissimilar to the 3 that the party itself possessed. 

Borrowing an spare horse from the Chariot Nomads the party loaded their loot, swords and sorceress onto it and headed back to town, arriving as the day of the Ritual was about to begin...

Observations

So this was kind of an odd session to organize. My plan for the next (chronological) session is to play out the battle within the Undying City, for which I have actually constructed an entire tabletop wargame! More on that in a future post though.

But while I was still working on the wargame, I didn't want to simply skip a week of gaming, having already skipped two due to a trip out of the country. So after consulting with my players, one of the things they did want to explore (and had been curious about during the last two sessions) was what was the deal with these barbarian attacks, and had Conan actually succeeded in finding the missing sword pieces in Gladio's temple (He had!). 

The fight with the berserkers and the party I handled this time using the, much more elegant than my own, skirmish rules from Marica B's excellent Fantastic Medieval Campaigns. Despite me accidently misremembering the rules and having warband attacks dealing HD instead of HP in damage..the fight was still shockingly close and the party really only survived due to sheer luck of the dice. So even "Easy Mode" ended up feeling quite risky. 

Also with so so many enemies killed, the party had their single biggest exp gain in the campaign so far, with all 3 characters gaining a level at the end of it (the two new ones being level 2 now, and Shimsusa being level 3 and quite far along the path to level 4!) 

While I don't regret going with the 100 exp per HD of enemy defeated rule for this campaign, I do see why in Supplement 1 experience for enemies was cut way way WAY down in OD&D and has been the case for subsequent rulesets of classic D&D. I suspect that in whatever next game I run (either continuing the Serpents of Smoke & Steel or something new) I will definitely be cutting that way down as well. Maybe 20 exp per HD? 10 even? I haven't decided yet.

So, at some point soon, expect a post about this wargame nonsense I've made as well as a report of how it actually played out during the session! 

On Alignment

This came to me as an idea originally when I was watching this excellent video about the history of alignment and the planes. Go check it out! 

So, Alignment. I know, right?! The never-ending font of Discourse™ in which not just the OSR but broader D&D has been swimming in for literally decades. And here I am, joining in that time-honored tradition. 

Alignment is a pretty decent allegory for nationalism. 

Not so much alignment in and of itself, as much as the way alignment has been approached by the people creating and playing D&D over the years. Hear me out.

Alignment comes into D&D through its inclusion by Gygax in his game Chainmail. Below are the alignment charts from Chainmail's Fantasy Supplement and OD&D. Please note that these are basically the same chart, just reproduced twice. 

Chainmail "Alignment".

OD&D Alignment.

Alignment's original purpose was quite simple. In a wargame you need two sides to fight. In Historical Wargaming (which was virtually all wargaming back in Gygax's day really) that is kind of selected for you depending on what battle or time period you are playing in. But in a fantasy game of fantasy creatures, what do you do? Well, you do what Gygax did and simply slap everyone into 3 teams and give them an excuse to fight in a game about fighting. It is, honestly, one of the better game design decisions made by Gygax. 

And from here on out is where the whole "Alignment is like Nationalism" thing starts going. Because while the purpose of alignment - giving you a reason why your dudes should fight other dudes, was clear and concise very soon, within probably a decade at most from it's creation, Alignment started to change.

It started becoming about something more than just having a side so you can punch the dudes on the other side. In B2 the Keep is Law and the humanoids are Chaos. They are barbaric and "non-civilized" and all that other fun stuff you can read about from people who've already written about it. Alignment now could no longer be a simple "us vs them" thing, it had to stand for something greater. It had to Mean Something. 

Just as the process of getting a group of people to think of themselves as a nation, while having a common enemy is more or less a prerequisite (be it The Ottomans, The British or The Jews) sooner or later people come around to invent all kinds of peripheral stuff around it. Art, culture, traditions - things which are either created out of whole cloth or simply repurposed to somehow mean something else now (the meaning being "We are a Nation"). 

Alignment had the same thing happen to it. It started as a simple pretense for violence (again, just like nationalism!) but people were not content with that. It had to Mean Something. Suddenly Law and Chaos were not just a random football team you cheered for, no no. They were  Good and Evil (despite Gygax intentionally not labeling them that in the original version of alignment above). They were about Ethics and Morals and World Views and Cosmic Struggles. 

Suddenly your alignment started to matter a whole lot - Paladins could fall from grace if they acted against their alignment. Which lead to the famous Gygax postulation that a Lawful paladin slaughtering Chaotic orc children is somehow still Lawful and not, ya know, monstrously genocidal and evil (please just imagine that from now on I just add "ya know, just like nationalism" after every statement, because I hope I've made the point clear by now). 

Suddenly there were entire other planes of existence who's purpose was to give Meaning to your alignment. You weren't just "Lawful Good" meaning you were a good boy scout (who murdered the young of thinking people like orcs), oh no! No, there is now an entire infinite plane of existence devoted to the concept of Lawful Goodness. It can't possibly be arbitrary, after all look at how much ink had been spent printing books upon books of details about why your Alignment is totally an important thing and an important part of your character.

And on and on it goes. What's important to note here is that the backlash against Alignment is itself also just something that reinforces this mythologizing of it's importance. People who declare that Alignment is stupid and you can not possibly map ethics and morality onto a 9 point grid are still acknowledging the myth that this nine point grid somehow matters. It doesn't. 

Me though? I don't really dislike Alignment. I used to, mind you. Until I realized what Alignment is actually for. And what it's for is, as was stated earlier, was an excuse to provide you a simple pretense as to why you should fight in a game about fighting. And it does that job perfectly well. 

BSSS - Session 11

 Summary

This session was mostly confused on the final preparations for storming the inner gatehouse of the Eternal Bridge, and the actual fight itself and its consequences.

Characters

• Maru the Witch - 4rd Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Rajini - 2nd Level Sorceress [Now Dead]
• Athra - 4th Level Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko - 3rd Level Giant Lizard
• Arrim - 1st level Fighter
• Alorus - 1st level Vivimancer Sorcerer

Session Recap

We pick up where we left off last time, with the party returning to the Undying City and using their last week of Downtime to prepare for the upcoming fight. The gatehouse was scouted, people went to buy extra equipment (and also animals for the new sorcerer's trick) and a chance encounter with one of the sorcerer-priests of the Pale Stillness of Justice ended up with him bound and gagged and his and his men's clothes appropriated for ease of entering into the locked down gatehouse.  They also got in touch with a contact for the cult of The Decomposition and agreed that the attack on the gatehouses and the bridge will happen early on the day of the grand procession itself.

There was also so much planning, preplanning and further planning with just trying to figure out how this small group of people are supposed to enter a fortified location and further more - take it over! 

This is where the action takes place.

Finally, as the session was moving ever closer towards its end time, we decided to finally begin with the meat of the scenario. The party managed to bullshit their way through the guards posted right outside the closed doors of the gatehouse, and got access to the inside and talked to the captain in charge of the garrison. However there was also another sorcerer-priest of the Pale Stillness also garrisoned in there (you never know what kind of nonsense can try coming in across the bridge from the old ruins) and he was suspicious of this religious brother of his claiming that there was an imminent Chaos attack that they had only been warned about just now. 

With him claiming to be sent here for back up, he decided now was the time to deploy his secret plan - two poisonous centipedes and 8 rats (the centipedes bought at absurdly inflated prices from a Golden Fraternity merchant specializing in rare and exotic animals) were deployed in the middle of the gatehouse passage, and then he began to cast a spell to transform them into gargantuan and monstrous versions of themselves. As the captain and the sorcerer-priest looked on, the party decided now was the time to strike and blasted the captain with magical lightning, the priest was quickly rushed to knock him out of the fight before he can wipe out half the party with his own magic, and then a bloody brawl began. 

All the while, out in the passageway of the gatehouse, the centipedes and rats kept growing and growing, eventually turning into monstrous and ravenous beasts. The archers deployed on the second floor then used the murder holes in the floor/ceiling and dropped alchemical fire on top of them, turning the small hallway into a living hell of sticky flame, smoke and marauding animals. 

In the ensuing fight several things happened - Maru the sorcerer managed to wipe out a large group of reinforcements coming from upstairs with the use of his Maleficence, Rajini was viciously struck down by several guards and killed on the spot for her attack on the captain, and some of the giant animals that managed to survive being bathed in fire and then shot at by arrows broke down both the city-side and bridge-side doors of the guardhouse and spilled out of there, tearing people, buildings and the bridge apart in their frenzy. The gatehouse was now wide open, with the remaining garrison panicking and retreating. 

The party mopped up the few remaining fighters and then using a Miasma spell they blinded the rest of the garrison that had moved on top of the building (a good defensive position against fighters. Not so great when it comes to magical clouds of demonic energies). 

 Battered, bruised and generally slightly worse for ware, but mostly alive (except the one who died that is) the party looked onto the bridge, seeing the outer and much bigger gatehouse fall before the army of Chaos, as they stormed down the now unprotected bridge (killing off the centipede and remaining giant rat on the way) and then rush into the streets of the Undying City.

The dawn had just broke, and with it the gates of the Temple District were opened and the procession started its ritual, yet unaware of what had transpired on the other side of the city.

Observations

This was quite a different thing for me to both organize and run as a referee. First off this was basically a set piece battle, really more similar in preparation to a wargame scenario than a typical dungeon crawl or exploration adventure. I mapped out the gatehouse, wrote up the garrison involved and even made sure to note on my map where every single person in that garrison was as the encounter began. 

Behold my very messy notes and map!

I really had no idea how the party was going to even do this either. The gatehouse was on lockdown, what with this being the big day and all that. 

Further more the session was run in the evening, rather than the usual Sunday noon time. There was discussion with some of my players and we are going to try doing evening games, which I do enjoy, but have the significant downside of rather strict time limitations - it can only get so late before everyone just starts getting tired and being done. A player, after the session, did raise the point that the tighter timeframe does mean that decisions are more rushed and sloppy. 

I actually agree with him, however for me that is not necessarily a bug in this case. Yes, time crunch means that players need to be way more precise with their plans and how much time they spend actually discussing things during the session, but to me that is, in some ways, just another aspect of the game. How you spend the time we have for the session is part of playing the game. 

Another big topic which was brought out from the session was that of experience points. Now for me it made no sense that any exp be granted for defeating enemies, as this would set a precedent where the party can decide to simply murder people and claim to get experience out of it, and I don't quite like that. So while I had thought about what and how much exp this should give, if any, on the night of the game itself I had kind of settled on it not giving any at all.

However, this I feel was a fault in my role as a referee. What I think is the correct way of handling his would have been to bring up the topic to my other players before the actual scenario was played. And here's why -  Because the point of experience for treasure retrieved and enemies slain, as far as I am concerned, is to provide specific clear goals at any given session as to what moves the characters forward. However this was not a typical session. There was no exploration, no dungeons, no wilderness. It was an assault on a fortified location in, what at least until now, was a friendly city to the party. Therefore the typical metrics of experience (money and monsters) were not valid. 

Conversely though, the party had a very clear and precise goal as to this specific scenario we played out - They needed to neutralize the garrison and also provide access to the Chaos army into the city. They achieved the goal of the scenario quite well I think, so in the end I made the decision as a referee to award each PC with 500 experience for it. I probably would have come to this decision even if it wasn't brought up by the players after the game, but it really should have been discussed beforehand.

With a larger gap between this and the next session, this will hopefully give me the time to discuss the scenario for that one and also what, if any, experience is to be earned from it. I have been re-reading Muster and its point on goal-oriented experience gain is what made me realize that I do think the players should earn experience for achieving the "win condition" of the scenario. 

Also, one of the players decided to not use his current character  for this, but instead made a new one (Alorus the Vivimancer) which I think was also good. I feel it's important that players be able to have multiple characters available that they can use depending on the situation. As long as this is not abused by trying to game the system (which can't happen, because that is what my role as a referee is for) and also those PCs are then treated as "active" in the campaign and therefore provided with accommodations and upkeep, of course. 

Lastly, another thing this session has now done is kind of break the basic structure of my campaign a bit. With this being ostensibly an open table (though with rather a stable core of players for a while now, and not many new faces joining in) each session needs to begin and end at a safe location where new players and party members can be slotted in and out depending on attendance. However right now the next session appears like it would need to take place immediately after this one, thus breaking that chain.

This, I feel, is mostly okay as an exception (and these are exceptional circumstances), though definitely not something I feel should become a regular part of the game. 

“Boring” Combat is Fine Actually

Look at how boring this all is! Nobody is using feats or special moves or anything!

It has taken a while to write this post, mostly because I have tried to somehow form my thesis into anything remotely coherent.

So, let’s start with the title of the post itself - boring combat. What am I even talking about here?

“Boring” Combat - What’s so boring about it?

I have seen plenty of blog posts, YouTube videos and discussions on discord about making combat in OSR D&D less “boring”. The solutions tend to cover more or less the same few templates and ideas, which are implied to help make combat more interesting for the person in question. “Interesting” combat usually involves maneuvers or other actions one can take during a fight besides just move and/or attack; or making weapons and armor more diversified by adding tags or abilities to them; or borrowing the fun Might Deeds mechanic from something like DCC and porting into one’s own game (which in many ways is both previous options combined into one).

So, by inference, if those are all things that make combat interesting, then “boring” combat does not involve a wide variety of codified actions, does not have unique weapons, does not have “tactical” choices (we’ll get to that word later).

Here’s where the problem comes in for me though - I don’t particularly care about or want any of those things in combat in my OSR games. I find that those things tend to make combat overall longer both in in-game rounds and, more crucially, real life time. It makes it so combat essentially takes over large swaths of the game session. And if you are into that, and want to do that - that is awesome! Absolutely! There are entire games focused around that - 3.5E, 4E, Pathfinder…all of those offer all of those things in various shades and quality.

However, I want my RPGs to have something besides just one way-too-long fight in the session. Hence our title - I want my combat to be “boring”.

Combat - An attempt at a definition

Let me step back a bit and actually try and define what I even mean when I talk about “combat” in RPGs. Now in this post I am going to primarily talk about OSR gaming in the way I do it - games focused on exploration, a good amount of dungeon crawling, interacting with factions and NPCs and seeing how players handle tough situations with no clear and obvious answers that their characters find themselves in.

In that context, combat I feel is both a necessary and yet slightly dangerous element of the overall gaming experience. As I said, it can take over the length of the session with ease especially once you have a large number of combatants on each side (see my previous attempts at making those fights flow faster)

And I am not someone who thinks that combat has no place in an RPG session. Violence is an integral and important part of dungeon crawling and while one of the OSR mantras is that “Combat is a Fail State”, combat can also be fun and a lot of dungeon crawls tend to involve a lot of combat and murdering of dungeon denizens! Players are sociopaths like that. So yes, I do still want combat in my OSR games. I just want it to move along already and not take up more space than I feel it deserves.

I think part of my feelings on combat is that what I want combat in the context of an OSR dungeon crawler to be is probably different than what most other people think. My sample size here is mostly like at most a couple of dozen people that I’ve had casual conversations about this, so obviously this is going to be massively generalizing.

Most people I’ve talked to seem to say that they either do not want combat at all in their RPGs, or they want “tactical” combat which they use to mean the style of combat found in 3rd edition D&D, Pathfinder and other such systems with grids, action economies, powers, feats, special moves etc. etc. etc. To me though that is not tactical combat at all.

Tactical Combat - RPGs, Wargames, RTS games and Fighting games.

That definition of what “tactical” combat is to me just doesn’t quit work. I am someone who plays wargames, both the tabletop kind and also the miniatures kind and for me all the minutiae of parrying rolls, called targeted shots, 5 foot steps and special flips and twirls are not tactics. That’s just theatre. I find very little satisfaction in modelling that.


I have a friend who does historical sword fighting and so he is someone who is very interested in just how exactly one holds one’s sword, how they swing, how they parry and all that. And fair play to him, it does sound interesting to do. But in my OSR game? Nah I don’t give a fuck about any of that. That just sounds like the most inane waste of time, equivalent to someone describing to me in exacting detail every single ingredient in every single meal that their character eats. Like, yes, I love cooking and food too - I don’t need to know this.

For me, I want the “tactics” of OSR combat to be closer to those in the wargames I enjoy - tactics in this case meaning what is the general approach the party uses for a particular engagement, how they hope it plays out and how it actually plays out. Do you send out hirelings to flank the enemy? Do you deploy magic as a way to draw the enemy into an advantageous position for yourself, or do you use it to hold them back to control the numbers game? That’s tactics. And none of it ever needs to care about each individual swing of the weapon, each individual dodge left or right or just where EXACTLY your character is standing down to the 5 feet wide footprint they occupy. Those are all elements which, barring some exceptions, don’t really exist or factor into wargames. Even wargames that model figures to people on a 1 to 1 ratio. Most wargames are not concerned just how exactly your block of spearmen are holding their spears, what they care is the end result - did you win this bout of close quarter combat or not?

Tangential analogy number 1 - Video games. For me the “interesting” combat people describe always sounds closer to fighting games - your Mortal Kombat, your Soulcalibur, your Street Fighter, you get it. There all of this stuff not only matters, all of that stuff one would argue is the entire point of the game - just where exactly are you, what position are you in, how exactly do you execute your attack.

Compare this to Real Time Strategy (RTS) games. Age of Empires, StarCraft, Dawn of War. Yes, position matters there too. Weapons matter as well…but the position and weapons are on a broader level. Despite being called Strategy games, RTSs I find tend to actually be more about tactics than strategy - you are often (not always!) simulating the tactics employed in one specific engagement, not the overall strategy of how to win an entire military campaign.

And that second option, the RTS/Wargames option is what I am after. I do want there to be tactical choices in combat in my games, but I want tactics not theatre. I do actually think the fact that I’ve always been more into RTS games than Fighting games has something to do with it. That is a realisation I’ve only come to in the last two years or so, as I have started running weekly OSR games. And don’t get me wrong, rulesets like OD&D, B/X or Into the Odd and their derivatives already handle combat in a generally abstracted way which helps speed things up. It’s why I used OSE for my previous campaign and now OD&D for my current one.

What I want out of Combat - Also, pro-wrestling.

Ok now we’re getting to the actual meat of it - what is it that I want out of combat in an OSR context? Since I hopefully made it clear I don’t care about the action-by-action (or even the round-by-round) details, what do I care about?

Well I care about outcomes. I care about what position the players and their enemies are in prior to combat, and what position they are in after combat. Did they win? Did they lose? Did they win, but with heavy casualties? Did they have to run away? Did one side try and parley and surrender? Those are the things that to me lead to the interesting parts of the game.

The obvious question then is - why even bother with playing out combat then? Why not simplify it down to a single roll like some board game wargames do, where you tally up the strength of the two forces, roll on a chart and see what happens? Well…I’ve thought about doing that in games, actually. And I still might! But the reason I don’t do it now, is that I do like playing out the fights..up to a point.

Tangential analogy number 2 - Pro-wrestling. I enjoy pro-wrestling. (Or, well, used to enjoy pro-wrestling. Kind of burned out on it for the last few years, but that’s besides the point.) There are people who watch pro-wrestling specifically for the matches themselves. For the athletics on display as two or more people perform absolutely insane stunts of physical fitness in the context of a pretend sports fight. There are entire promotions like Ring of Honor which were specifically focused on that aspect of pro-wrestling.

But what I’ve come to realise is that I prefer the other aspect of pro-wrestling - the stories that those matches tell. Yes, I enjoy watching the matches (usually), but what I care about is WHY are these people fighting and what does this person or this other person winning a match mean for the overall story that they are trying to tell and play out.

And this is why I also haven’t quite reached the point where I want to completely abstract combat away into one or two dice rolls. I do sometimes want to see the actual match, even if what I care about is the outcome rather than the actions leading up to it.

Let me try and summarize then what I want combat in my OSR games to look like:

1. I want it to be fast, both in-game and out of game.
2. I want it to be generally deadly as that helps reinforce point 1
3. I want broader tactical decisions to matter more than individual round-to-round actions
4. I want it to be able to produce clear outcomes in most fights that can then lead to further interesting situations in the session
5. I want it to involve the least amount of number crunching, action picking or mental load possible for me as a referee.

What is to be done - What’s worked, what hasn’t, what might work

So, okay, how do I do this? How do I make combat boring in the way that I want it to in my games? Well, good question...

I don’t know. Some things I’ve done simply by picking a system - in OD&D combat and weapon damage are abstracted, you only use a d6 for hits, and I’ve implemented a phased wargames-style flow to the combat round (you can see the details of that in my player’s handbook document) which helps. I imagine also something like Into the Odd, with its removal of attack rolls, might also work.

I have looked at Tunnels and Trolls and how it handles combat as a possible solution, although trying to implement that into the context of D&D might require a bit of work to make it fit. Plus I have zero actual play experience with T&T so far, and as such I would need to run several games of it first before I even decide if it is a viable solution worth putting effort and time into.

I’ve also toyed around with collating the various mercenaries that the PCs have as a way to speed up the process and reduce the number of dice rolls involved in any given round, though that hasn’t had great effect so far. I am eyeballing the skirmish rules that Marcia B. has included in the optional rules document for her Fantastic Mediaeval Campaigns, however I’ve not had the chance yet to actually test it out at the table.

Lastly, as I said above, I have legitimately thought about just abstracting combat into a single die roll. Perhaps something similar to (what I think I understand) Matrix Games do. Just spend the time with the players to outline their tactics, their approach and their strength, compare it to the enemy and simply roll a die to see which way it goes. This one might be hard to sell to…virtually everyone who plays RPGs in the modern day, but it is definitely an intriguing option if I ever choose to use it.

BSSS - Session 10

 Summary

The Hedgehogs of Mercy return to their home in the Undying City, after a cryptic and urgent missive from Bel of the Lotus, the vampire they freed months ago. Turns out things are going down in the city, very very big things - the people of the city are on the cusp of being turned into silent undead if someone doesn't stop the ritual that is taking place. 

Characters

• Shimsusa the Archer - 2nd Level Fighter
• Maru the Witch - 3rd Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Rajini - 2nd Level Sorceress 
• Athra - 4th Level Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko - 3rd Level Giant Lizard

Session Recap

Esho's player had decided that instead of making a new character, he will simply take on Esho's stalwart Companion Shimsusa the Archer and use her as his current PC. With that handled, the party also received a letter from the vampire Bel who they had freed several months ago in their visit to the Temple of Gladio. The message was cryptic and told them that he's in the Undying City and wants to talk to them in person about something big that is afoot. The party took a vote and decided to ignore the dungeon they had been to last few times, finish up their business in the Bastion of the Raging Bull and take a ship back home. On a more cheery note though, they did learn that the reconstruction efforts of the river shrine to the Serpent of Smoke had finally come to an end and the shrine was now fully operational with a small temple and everything. River sailors and merchants had mentioned just how calmer and smoother travel down the river was now. 

As they arrived back in the Undying City, the Hedgehogs were met with tension in the air. The docks were now full of way more guards than was usual and the northern gate out of town was permanently closed. The reason, they soon learned, was that large bands of Northern Barbarians had started appearing sporadically, slaughtering anyone and anything they can catch outside the walls then disappearing back out into the grasslands. 

Returning back to the mansion they were greeted by Bel who over lunch decided to catch up with them, see how their adventures have been going since they parted ways in the temple of Gladio, and also tell them why he wrote to them. As the new year had just begun and the wet season was finally over, the city was gearing up (barbarians or not!) to do the traditional celebrations to welcome the new year. Except this time, the celebrations were going to be different - some of the high priests of the Pale Stillness of Justice, the Lord of Order who was the "protector" of the Undying City, were going to lead the ceremony personally. And Bel, while not having enough sources to figure out what their goal was, knew that something big was going to happen. That these were plans by the Pale Stillness to cement its grip over the city once and for all and make it into a permanent bastion of for the forces of Law. 

Bel, being a former noble, an amoral sociopath, and also someone born before the Empire fell, was generally not happy with the idea of having this otherworldly power dictating things more than it already did, and so recruited the Hedgehogs to help him. How? Well, now that's the question!

After much deliberating, discussing and planning, the party settled on a rather shaky, but at least concrete plan - they were going to venture out into the old city ruins back to the remains of the temple of Ishtar, the very first dungeon they visited in the campaign. They knew that the Slime Priests in there were aligned with Chaos, and therefore were going to want to help disrupt whatever big power move the forces of Law were doing for the city. Plus, they reasoned, these guys had clearly been keeping an eye on the Undying City for months now, so they likely had a better idea of what those plans even were. 

After a trip out into the ruins, a fight with some slime-covered zombies and having to burn an entire corridor's worth of yellow mold, the party finally found some Slime Priests and offered them to work together. The priests wanted to recruit the two sorcerers in the party to join their lord - The Chaos Lord knowing simply as The Decomposition, but they declined. Instead a plan was hatched where the Slime Priests will gather whatever allies and armies they had and assault the ruins-side gatehouse of the Eternal Bridge, the party will then attack the inner gatehouse and allow the Slime Priests and their allies access into the city to help stop the ritual, or at least disrupt it for long enough for a better plan to be hatched.

They also learned what the ritual was going to do - as the procession of the new year celebration made its round around the city, the final gesture of a grand ritual that had been years in the making would take place, and the entire population of the city would be turned into empty undead husks. Perfect servants for the Pale Stillness - obedient, not worried by hunger or pain or thoughts. They also learned that the actual ruler of the city were not the high priests, but a high ranking officer within the armies of the Pale Stillness of Justice - a being not from this reality which is the actual individual performing this complicated magical ritual.

The shaky alliance secured, the party headed back, discussing among themselves just how wrong it felt to stop such a big tragedy by inviting a different tragedy into the city.

Observations

So, right off the bat - this is kind of a big thing to drop on the players, for sure. I did not, in fact, want to dissuade them from visiting the dungeon. If anything, I had spent about an hour last night just writing out more things about it.

And further more - this did not come out of nowhere. In fact even before the campaign had its first session, my plan had always been that eventually the rulers of the Undying City were going to try and pull off this big move to secure the city permanently for the side of Law. There had been plenty of hints thrown throughout the campaign and the players knew that something was going on behind the walls of the Temple District, but they also never dedicated the time to go investigate it further. So now they are left with a situation that is, quite frankly, probably way out of their scale to deal with. 

I also enjoy that, rather accidentally, this session is when so many older threads ended up resurfacing again. The river shrine had been under construction since before the party headed south, the barbarian that left to go look for the other missing pieces of the magical sword has returned, and with the looming threat of the ritual the party decided that they needed allies badly, so badly enough that they went back to the people who nearly slaughtered them months ago (luckily for them, the priests did not really recognize the characters). 

As a referee this whole situation is exciting, and the players are all clearly invested in it too. However it does present a challenge on how to properly map out just what is actually going on, so as to give the players as much of a neutral overview of the situation as I can give, and then let their actions throughout the game actually guide the outcome. Something for me to put on my designer hat on and write out in as much detail as I feel I will need. 

BSSS - Session 9

Summary

The characters return to free the Sea Nymph and there is a sudden and shocking death of a party member as they do it. 

Characters

• Esho - 4th Level Nercomancer Sorcerer [Now Dead]
• Shimsusa the Archer - 1st Level Fighter
• Maru the Witch - 3rd Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Syphon Gandu - 2nd Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Rajini - 2nd Level Sorceress 
• Athra - 4th Level Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko - 3rd Level Giant Lizard
• Arrim- 1st Level Fighter

Session Recap

During the downtime portion of the session, the group gets a properly suitable vessel (an ornately decorated and blessed clay urn) in which to house the Sea Nymph, and also get called to meet with Commander Utu, the bull-headed giant of a man, who has heard of some of their exploits and wants to get the details out of them directly. As the son of a divine being himself, Utu offers some answers to the party's question regarding the Sea Nymph, though he can't really give much specific advice not being someone who has met her himself.

They are also joined by Arrim, a new member of the Hedgehogs of Mercy who's heard of their fame and exploits and wants to join in. Just as well, as Esho finally decides it is time to hold his lecture of "Why Necromancy is Totally Fine, You Guys" in front of the gathered party, mercenaries, hirelings and assorted hangers on. (He had been planning this thing for months, but keeps getting distracted by something else.)

With preparations out of the way, the party finally decided on a course of action. They will head back into the jungle (Aho the guide slightly reluctantly leading them again, this time with an even bigger pay promised) and actively look for river pirates to capture and sacrifice to in order to free the nymph. Luckily for them the jungle outside of Bastion is apparently just crawling with pirates as they run into some of them clearly set up in waiting to ambush a ship. 

There is much debate between the characters, various strategies are formed as to how to approach these guys and finally Athra and Arrim simply decide to act as decoys, walking up out of the jungle and into the river bank and loudly proclaiming their intent to to go back into town and warn the Bull Guards that they've found some pirates. The pirates in turn kindly responded with a hail of arrows, luckily none of which managed to get through the fighters' armor. A bloody and rather messy fights ensued, with spells being cast, pirates being dropped left and right (while Athra keeps shouting at people to not kill these guys as they need prisoners), some of the pirates and the party's skirmishers get into a protracted shoot out, the works.

Finally, after Esho manages to put down some of the pirates to sleep with his magic, the party mops up whoever else is left and gets their new found prisoners (along with their boats for good measure) and heads back to town. They deliver several to the Guards as a gesture of their commitment to aid the city, and after a night of rest head out with the others towards the ruins. 

Along the way, Maru the Witch, still salty and unhappy with the party's plan on freeing the nymph, decides he's going to call for some otherworldly aid and petition a demon to get some answers. He and the other sorcerers go a bit to the side from the rest of the party (not wanting to spook any of the mercenaries, or the new guy for that matter) and perform the ritual, offering the soul of one of the pirates as payment. The being summoned offers some useful, if rather obvious information...and then as negotiations break down Maru simply dismisses it. 

Back into the ruined dungeon they go, and the party is once again standing in front of the Daughter of the Sea (although Maru, as a mark of protest, stays just outside the room). Esho has the honor of drowning one of the pirates into the waters of the fountain, with the Sea Nymph now freed from her confines. She offers all the people who freed her a blessing - the ability to breathe under water. All who agree to the blessing (everyone except Maru agrees) get a kiss from the Daughter of the Sea, which fills their lungs with liquid, slowly drowning them...until it no longer does. And they realize they can now breathe despite the water in their chests.  Thankful the sea nymph went into the prepared urn, which Esho and his companion and mercenary then lug out of the room, as the rest of the party start to loot all the coins and the golden statue that adorn the fountain (the real reason why they wanted to get the Sea Nymph out of there in the first place). 

However, being distracted by carrying the urn, Esho does not spot the fleeting glimmer of a magically cloaked figure that approaches him from the back. And before he knew what happened, he ended up with a dagger stuck into his back, piercing his heart and killing him on the spot. In his dying breath he and his followers see a pale and thin woman pull the blade out of him, before vanishing into the air. 

There is much commotion, people quickly finished gathering the rest of the loot and just hauled everything and everyone (including the urn and Esho's corpse) out of the dungeon, waiting to see if they will be followed. 

As the party finally decide to head back the remaining sorcerers do spot a glowing energy out in the distance tracking the party, but as soon as they stop to pay attention to it, it darts back behind a ruined building. 

On the bank of the Serpent of Smoke the group release the Daughter of the Sea into the waters (she told them she can find her way back to her Mother from there) and as a final gesture ask if she will take Esho's body with her. She agrees, and gently picks up the necromancer's corpse, bringing it beneath the waters and taking it off to dwell in the underwater realm of the Sea Queen. 

Observations

Ho boy! This session. The big fight with the pirates actually felt way WAY too long. And that was strange - it lasted 4 rounds in-game and probably just about 30-40 minutes out of game, yet it felt like it dragged on forever. It was also not big enough to try and dust off any skirmish rules for it. I think the main reason was that the planning beforehand just took far too long without anything actually being done. I was hoping on keeping the session short, but even right before the fight finished...I had realized that if I do that literally this one fight (and the lead up to it) would have been the entire session, and that just sucked. 

The players had previously asked me if the can somehow just go look for pirates. The way I ended up ruling it is that with Aho the Guide on hand and actively looking for pirates, as they do their overland exploration any encounter they run into (if they run into one) will be specifically with pirates. This way they still didn't know just how long this might take, yet it allowed them to direct their efforts. I am happy with this as away of solving the situation. 

Then there was the Daughter of the Sea. I had this written out in the dungeon as I was keying it several weeks ago, but I do love it when characters are able to get blessings or other abilities throughout the course of the game as a result of play rather than simply leveling up. And being able to breathe underwater (for just 1 hour, but still) felt like a very appropriate blessing that the Sea Nymph would give. 

Esho's death was also rather sudden, both to me and to the players. I had rolled a random encounter, and this woman (who my players have now already starter speculating about!) was the one to show up. I had already figured out what her general approach is if she encounters the party, and Esho did have a chance to spot her (and he failed that roll) because Sorcerers in my game all have the ability to spot magic, and Shroud (the spell from Wonder and Wickedness the woman was using) specifically states that incorporeal things or people with second sight can see them. 

So, she's invisible and hasn't been spotted, and she stabbed him in the back with her dagger. Daggers in my house rules do 1d6-1 damage ( so worse than all other weapons), but have the ability to backstab for 2d6 if the target is unaware and undefended. Well...Esho was both. And he got one-shot by it. Fittingly, the player who plays Esho had in fact planned on pulling off this exact same strategy as the campaign was starting hah! 

The player took it in good spirit, and in fact actually got even more hyped up about the game, plus the final scene with handing over the body to the sea nymph felt genuinely heartfelt and touching. This is the kind of stuff I like gaming for, and this is what I feel the OSR does so well. None of the drama or emotions in this character death came from some prescriptive scenario or expectation. People, myself included, cared because Esho had been created in Session 1 of the game and had been a consistent presence in the party since then. It is the kind of attachment and meaning one gets only through actually spending the time with the game and the character. 

Rest in Peace Esho, you weird death-obsessed man. There will be plenty of corpses on the bottom of the sea for you to bother in your afterlife!