Psychotronic Gaming: The Basics

 

Not too long ago I celebrated the 45th anniversary of me starting an AD&D 1e campaign. I started the campaign before I was a teenager and it is still going as I approach retirement. I also have an AD&D 2e campaign that is almost 20 years odl and a Champions super-hero campaign that is ‘merely’ over a decade old

A frequent question is “Why do you think your campaigns last so long?”, a question so common that a few years ago I sat down and summarized my thoughts on it and named the resulting list “Psychotronic Gaming”. Why ‘psychotronic’? Two reasons - it is a term sometimes used in movie criticism to describe a movie without a fixed genre, which I think applies to games to an extent, and because the list is just a summary of a mental attitude towards gaming. 

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Here’s my list of Psychotronic gaming concepts:

1) Strict Time Keeping of all gaming events
My players sometimes call this ‘the game world clock’. All characters are tracked as to location within the calendar and time of the imaginary game world. If the character Max Steele, Private Eye is in the Empire State Building at Noon on July 4th, 2029 in the game he can’t be in Tokyo at Noon on July 4th, 2029. If the fastest in-game-universe transporation from manhattan to Tokyo is a one hour cab ride to the airport and then a 20 hour flight he can’t mae it to Tokyo in less than 21 hours by the game clock.
Likewise, if the non-player character Stan Devlin, International Assassin, is also in the Empire State Building at Noon on July 4th, 2029 in the game Stan and Max might very well meet each other.
The game world calendar doesn’t have to be tied to the real world calendar but it needs to be internally consistent. If Bob, the guy playing Max, needs to stop play in the middle of a gun fight with Stan because he has to get to work tomorrow then the wolrd clock for Max ‘freezes’ at 12:04 pm July 4th, 2029 until the player can return to finish the action.
Likewise if Real World Monday the 1st of August the character Max takes three days in the game world to get a plane ticket, flies to Tokyo, then takes a 1 week cruise so that in 5 minutes of play his character has travelled 11 days forward on the game calendar. Bob could go home right after that, sleep, come back on Real World the 2nd of August, and start playing Max in Tokyo on Game World July 15th, 2029.
The use of the Game World Clock allows actions in the campaign to have natural repercussions.

2) Verisimilitude within the artificial world of the campaign
The world must make internal sense; the logic of the world must be consistent inside the world. If the gravity is just like Earth, it must remain this way unless there is a consistent in-world reason why not. If werewolves can be harmed by silver then that silver bullet can kill that werewolf. If no one is stronger than Amazing man then, well, no one is stronger than Amazing Man. And so on.
This means that even magic must have consistent rules of some sort. The Arcane Defense spell stops every attacking spell then if you suddenly add the Arcane Annihilator without any warning or fanfare and it kills someone protected by Arcane Defense you broke verisimilitude by changing the rules.
Verisimilitude allows players to make plans within the game world. If there is no telling if a certain device or action in the game can ever work the same way twice planning is almost impossible. More critically it allows players to think of the game world as its own thing, as close to being “real” as possible in fiction. If the rules, the history, and so on are always in flux then your suspension of disbelief is much harder.

3)  Status Quo is the Enemy, change is a natural result of actions
The world must change. If an evil cult brings a plague to the town of Oldbridge that kills everyone in the town then the town can’t be just like it used to be a few weeks later. If there is war and the army buys up all the canned food in the city then the characters can’t buy canned food until it is replenished or they go somewhere else. And so on.
Directly related to verisimilitude, if the game world has rules then the game world must also have consequences. Resetting everything to how it started over and over means that the rewards and risks of actions can never be very great. The campaign must grow and change over the course of play.
This means that things must be going on even when the player characters/players aren’t aware of them. The characters destroyed a massive orcish tribe that (unknown to the players) traded loot to an evil wizard = the evil wizard has to find a new way to get the stuff he needs so he has to make a new deal which might mean that distant goblins suddenly have more support.

4) Characters Can Win or Lose based on their actions and choices
This is an inevitable conclusion of 1,2, and 3. And violating this rule is, in my experience of other campaigns, the fastest way to make players stop caring about your campaign.
This is a lot more than just ‘let the dice fall where they may’, it means that there is no plot, there is no pre-determined anything, and that anyone can die - or live! And any plan, including the player’s plans, can be thwarted.
Here is an example from the 1980’s: A fellow DM and friend named David and I would met and discuss our campaigns and what our NPCs were plotting. This was camaraderie and to help each other get fresh ideas. At that time the major threat to the characters in my campaign was the Hobgoblin King, a “super-chief” of hobgoblins that had an army and all sorts of plans to attack the human nation at the heart of active play. David knew that the plan of the Hobgoblin King was a slow war of conquest culminating with a seige of the human capitol city and an epic tale akin to the seiges of fiction.
Then six characters did something insane and bold, actually ambushed the Hobgoblin King and killed him even though they all died. Before the war even really began the leader was dead. I told David about it and he said,
“You can just have his lieutenant take over and still get the war and stuff you planned.”
But instead I followed the internal logic of the campaign and let the heroic deaths of the characters mean there was no war. In time a new Hobgoblin King arose, but a very different one with very different plans. In short, I let the players change everything. Of course, this applies to characters, too!
With this simple idea the players know that they are very important to the campaign and that they can actually “win or lose”.

5) Multiple Characters per Player 
With a strict Game Clock, verisimilitude, and so forth players will often have characters widely dispersed in space and time. Multiple characters are a must simply to be able to play! Also, I have found that with three or more characters per player the players treat tabletop role playing games less like theater/a stroy and more like what they are, games.
Interestingly enough, it also allows a much broader range of interactions among characters. if every player has one character then the characters must get along and cooperate no matter what they internal logic of the campaign or the development of the characters. If every player has multiple characters each things like arguments, fueds, romances, etc. between characters is poossible - and very likely, as I have learned.

6) Players Drive Action
In its simplest form this means the players decide what their characters are doing. But it stretches much further than that.
I do not tell the players ‘on Friday your 4th level characters will be going to the dungeon because that is all I have prepared/what I planned/the next scene in the story’. Instead i ask them ‘what are you planning to do? Which characters?’ and they are allowed to “surprise” me with last minute changes.
One way I facilitate this is that my campaign is not static (see #3, above) so things are constantly happening “off screen” as the Game Clock ticks ever forward. The various characters in various places are told the various rumors they hear, events they witness, etc. and then the players decide who, what, where, etc. for games.
The other side of the coin is that players also drive inaction!
Another example: in Game year 120 (top of my head) the various characters heard rumors, one of which was that the orcs were more active than usual. The characters spent the next game year doing odd little adventures, leveling up, and so on. in game year 121 they hear many more rumors that many small bands of orcs are very active in the Stone Hills. They spend game years 121 and 122 mapping a remote area, delving into a mega dungeon, and traveling across the sea and back.In game year 123 among a ton of other rumor hear that the orcs have drawn in their sub tribes and that their shamans are sending scouting parties over the mountains and the players finally investigate and realize that the orcs have almost completed the process of getting a new Overking that would unite all five of their nations and start a major war and, because they ignored it so long, they have mere days to stop it.
If they had blown it off again? War!
So - while player drive action the NPCs are not frozen, waiting for the characters to encounter them like it was a video game.

7) Genre is Descriptive, not Proscriptive
Some people are sonfused by this, but I find it very importantly. What I mean is this - Star Wars is science fiction because it has space ships. It is also fantasy because it has magic swords and magic force powers. And that is awesome. Your hard boiled campaign about hard-drinking private eyes in 1950’s San Francisco cracking fraud cases for girls that are trouble can have a vampire in it. Your very period authentic 16th century France emulation of a fantasy RPG can have blaster rifles from a crashed UFO. And so on. As long as you watch out for the other Psychotronic rules AND as long as you want it in it can work and be awesome.

And that’s the basics of why I think my campaigns run a long toime!

Common Elements of Epic Adventures: Familiar Faces

   For those that don't know I had a serious health crisis early in the year. I didn't cheat Death, but I did win on the long odds. Three times. So blogging was light.

  Returning to my discussion of Epic Adventures let me address the first element I think they have in common: the characters are neither low nor very high level. 

  This doesn't mean 'start the PCs at 5th level so they can be epic!!'. This means that the PCs have to grow into their own as well as into the campaign. Among the concepts of my gaming philosophy [Psychotronic Gaming] is the ideas that PCs drive action and that status quo is the enemy. Combined with the rest this means that as PCs start, level up, grow, and develop they inevitably change the campaign and grow to be a part of it. Verisimilitude and resource management effectively forces the PCs to have their own individual, unique relationships with multiple NPCs ranging from hirelings and henchmen to mayors and sages. In the end after 2-4 Real World years of gaming the PCs are integrally part of the campaign such that what their actions and fates matter to the campaign as a whole.

  There are no shortcuts to this. This is something that is organic to the "process" of RPG campaigns. Like true inside jokes. in-group jargon, etc. it can only healthily develop and 'set' over time and with familiarity. Just making a mid-level character and slapping them into a contrived huge battle to save the world is going to have the elements of an epic adventure but won't be one.

  Many bad movies have the elements of a good movie: established, well-known actors; famous writers; famous directors; etc.; yet miss the mark and are, well - junk. Do people watch it? Sure. Might it be a cult film? Yes. But that is NOT because it is epic.

  Just like a lot of creative endeavors/art quality and expertise takes lots of time and practice and that includes with individual characters within an RPG campaign. Relationships between PCs and between PCs and NPCs alone take a lot of time! 

  This means the build up to a truly epic adventure is going to take years of Real World time. The good news is, those years will be full of great fun with friends.

Next time: why you can never plan an Epic Adventure.

Back in the Day: Playing The Never Used Rules

   As most everyone who finds this obscure blog knows I started playing OD&D in 1977 and switched to AD&D 1e in 1979 and have been playing 1e ever since. In August of 2022 my 1e campaign, still running, turns 43 years old.

  Online I see a lot of statements that are variations of, 'I am certain that no one ever used [AD&D rule X]', usually met with choruses of approval. So let me tell you the rules I used then and now!

Grappling, Pummeling, and Overbearing:  Always used them. As a matter of fact, overbearing was a critical element of the fight in Eagle Valley. The base numbers are super-simple to pre-calculate and if you understand the rules it is as fast as any other combat.

Encumbrance, Rations, Light Source Duration: Not only have I always used these rules, they are critical to the game!

Maximum Level of Spell Knowable, Maximum Spells Knowable per Level, Spell Components, Chance to Learn, etc.: These rules are very important to make magic-users work right and I have always used them.

Armor Type Adjustments, Weapon Speed, Area Needed by Weapon: Always used them as one of my players pointed out. If used it means more weapons than you think are great weapons.

Maintenance Costs, Training Costs, Training Time, and Modifying Training Time: I have always used them, although I did adjust maintenance and training costs for some classes, like monk.

Psionics: Always used them, although the tiny handful of PCs with psionics sometimes wish they didn't have them.

Reaction, Morale, and Loyalty Checks: Like Grappling, etc., the modifiers are easily pre-calculated and with practice the use of these rules is very fast and smooth.

Race and Sex based limits to Attributes, Classes, and Levels: Again, always used them, still use them with some modifications. For example, very recently a half-elven ranger in Seaward went to 7th level because the character had earned 5 times the normal amount of experience to go from 6th to 7th.

Initiative, Combat Sequence, and Segments: By 1982 I began experimenting with initiative rules and went through at least 5 major variations of initiative by 1988 until I settled on one that is very close to the rules in the book with a few exceptions. So I have played by the book, otherwise, and am now virtually by the book. I have always preferred segments and my players will tell you I 'count segments' as a way to manage and speed up combat.

I probably missed a few, so let me know what other rules you have questions about.

And I was never alone! I have many friends from then and now that used/use these rules!

Psychotronic Gaming: Status Quo is the Enemy

   A key element of Psychotronic Gaming is that change must occur. 

  There is a tendency for campaign settings to remain static, especially mass-produced settings - the same king is King of Kingdom X; the same Cleric is Theocrat of Y; the same dragon menaces trade along the coast of Z; etc.

  This seems very close to how comic book continuity morphed from a tool to allow better storytelling into a straight-jacket that suffocates innovation. In Marvel Comics the Fantastic Four always got their powers about 17 years ago and in DC Superman made his debut as Superman about 10 years ago - forever.

  If you want your TTRPG campaign to last you CANNOT do this! Change is as critical as keeping strict time records!

  Here is an example from Seaward.

Common Elements of Epic Adventures

   Returning to more frequent blogging after a critical illness, I hope that you remember that I was just starting a series on Epic Adventures before I was taken ill. This is what is often called a 'setup post' - I am discussing what I will be discussing in future articles.

  In reviewing the common elements in the various epic adventures I have played in or run I have identified a few common elements they seem to share. To wit:

1) The player characters are neither new nor high-level. What I mean is it appears that the 'sweet spot' of the most epic adventures involves PCs of 4th to 8th level. Competent but nor overwhelming.

2) Treasure is not a primary motivation. While there is almost always a lot of sweet loot involved after the adventure is over, the motivation for the adventure is never primarily treasure.

3) They involve large numbers of characters and/or NPCs, usually enough combatants to make mass combat a necessary element of play. 

4) The stakes are high. 'Failure = guaranteed TPK' is usually the minimum threshold for an adventure to be epic.

5) The outcome is unpredictable. Even if the PCs do everything they can to stack the deck in their favor no one, including the DM, is sure who will win.

6) They involve NPCs familiar to the players. Not as universal as the others, this seems to make it easier for an adventure to be epic.

  Over the next few weeks I will be blogging nd podcasting about these individual elements.

Slowly Turns the Tide

   Back when I started this blog almost nine years ago (hard to believe!) I had never really combined the internet and RPGs. I hadn't ever gone to an RPG forum (and now post about once a year on HERO Games forums). I hadn't ever done much, if anything, on Facebook RPG groups. Heck, I had no idea what Dragonsfoot was until a month before I started this blog! I had made a Google+ account and found out that there were a ton of RPGers there, started this blog, and perused some of the internet's RPG resources.

  There were plenty of blogs and many of the good ones are still around, and have been joined by new good ones. G+ had a ton of good discussions. But I was disconnected from a ton of gaming at the time. I was clueless that the Forge was ever a thing and didn't know how weird people could be, although I learned fast - it is long deleted, but when I did a review of the free 5e PDF and concluded that the free PDF didn't include all the rules I received death threats in my comments. Not tongue in cheek, either.

  But 95% of my online RPG experience has been terrific, with 4% meh and 1% totally messed up. Nice ratio.

  But there is one odd thing to me. When I started writing here a lot of what I was writing about was seen as radical, weird, and impossible. Back in 21013 when I wrote about how I essentially require all players to have and use multiple characters each the G+ crowd concluded I was loopy. Same results from the same year when I discussed strict encumbrance as needed. And my discussion of the centrality of disease rules, parasite rules, strict time records, henchmen, hirelings, sages, and so on. Likewise, when I rejected RPGs being about storytelling and discussed 'emerging narratives' versus pre-planned there has always been a ton of push-back. My instance that alignment, encounter checks, and on and on and on all had a lot of dissent and few supporters. 

  This varies a bit. Why? Over time as I keep mentioning these things and explaining why they are important with examples more and more people have come to agree with me. And many of them spread these ideas on their own, convincing others. 

  Slowly, but seemingly constantly, the ideas and concepts I learned in the '70's and early '80's are spreading again. Convinging people to try the old ways again. It took 7 years but I finally convinced someone to play AD&D 1e ("it is unplayable!" they repeated told be for more than half a decade) and now they call AD&D 1e "how to really learn to play D&D".

  I see the future as less Restoration and more just Original.

Psychotronic Gaming: Multiple Characters per Player

   One of the things I have been writing about for some time is the positive impact of every players having multiple characters available for play. They can be if widely varying levels, but in my experience by the time you are on your 5th or6th session as a group of players everyone should have at least 2 characters each.

  But how do you manage this?

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

 One of the things Gary emphasized most strongly in the DMG was time records have to be kept. And they must be accurate.

He was correct, of course.

But why? and what does this mean?

Reflections on 43 Years in the Hobby

   In less than six months it will be the 44th anniversary of the first time I played D&D and my lifelong obsess-, uh, hobby, began. And this very recent August the 41st anniversary of me starting my own homebrew campaign came and went. We were so busy playing we missed it, which is apropos.

  But it has also been pretty tough in some ways. One of my very first players, Dave, fought really, really hard but lost to cancer. George, another early player, lost all of his early gaming stuff (from first printings of AD&D books to his first 20 characters and notes and the first player-facing map of Seaward) to storm damage. So we've lost at least 5 of the players from the first 10 years of the campaign and a tremendous amount of the original notes, maps, and such.

  Tempus Fugit.

  But looking back there are a few things I learned (or at least came to believe to be true!). I'll try to condense them here.

The Roles within the Party

My theory of The Roles - the positions filled by character classes in D&D and its clones. The roles are:

-Physical Offense: pretty obvious - killing things with weapons.
-Physical Defense: being a 'meat shield' and keeping the physical offense of foes contained.
-Magical Offense: Killing things with magic.
-Magical Defense: Stopping enemy magic from harming the party.
-Scouting and Intelligence: Using information and skills to control the location and tempo of encounters.

The AD&D 1e classes fill these roles like this:
Fighter = Physical Offense
    Ranger = Physical Offense + Scouting & Intelligence
    Paladin = Physical Offense + Magical Defense
Cleric = Physical Defense + Magical Defense
    Druid = Magical Offense + Scouting & Intelligence
Magic-user = Magical Offense
    Illusionist = Magical Offense + counter Scouting & Intelligence
Thief = Scouting & Intelligence
    Assassin = Scouting& Intelligence + Physical Offense
Monk = counter Magical Offense + counter Magical Defense + counter Scouting & Intelligence
Bard = everything

  This framework allows me to get a better estimation of what the party is capable of doing and handling and how to oppose them with clever foes.

NPCs Matter, especially Henchmen

  Time after time I have seen henchmen truly matter in the game. Perhaps most recently and dramatically in the Assault on the Fortress of Lord Whitehill. The PCs were pinned and about to be wiped out when the henchmen, following orders, arrived in the nick of time and just barely pulled victory from the jaws of death.

  If nothing else, with henchmen an NPC or three can play the class no player wants for a PC.

Jazz Band Adventuring Matters

  Something I first tried to describe here Jazz Band play just means every players has multiple PCs in the campaign and the party composition varies by mission, which players are there, what PCs are available, etc. It makes it a LOT easier if a player can't make it or you want your PC to go learn a new spell and more importantly it shifts focus from "this party" to the campaign as a whle..

It Isn't About One Thing

  RPGs are about fun, so it can't be about the GM, or a single player, or even this particular party. What seems to me in my limited experience to matter is that people are emotionally and intellectually invested in the campaign. Less pressure, more fun, at least as far as I can see.

Scaling and Threats: DM Insights

We all know the player where we aren't sure what the heck they're doing at the table. Here's my favorite example, from my old friend Mike Nevala's d6 Star Wars game.

  The young Jedi, hotshot pilot, young senatorial, and smuggler were separated in the Imperial base. The Jedi (me) found the young senatorial (now my wife on what was our first real date a looooooong time ago) pinned down by blaster fire and rescued her. The smuggler (my wife's best pal) had already stolen a shuttle and was waiting for us at a side exit. The hotshot pilot (Dave, in his first game with us) was on top of a lift when this occurred.
  Mike: "Above you you see a metal grate about 4 meters square - the top of the lift shaft. Above it you see the lift machinery. The elevator will be at the top soon, if you don't do something you'll be crushed."
  Dave: "Uhhhhhh. I pray."
  Mike: "Wha?"
  Dave: " I kneel in the corner and pray for the Force to save me."
  Mike: "Ummmm. OK, as you raise your eyes in prayer you see that in the very center of the grate the grill has a different pattern, an area about a meter on the side."
  Dave: "Does the Force tell me what to do?"
  Mike: "....noooo. But that square area could be an access hatch or something."
  Dave: "I don't move."
  Mike: "OK, well. You die."

  Dave never played with us again. I saw him 2 years later and he was still complaining bitterly that Mike was a killer GM.

Worldbuilding: Precision or Atmosphere?

  The Fun Lads Four (who will soon be the Fun Lads Five as the youngest is rapidly joining the nerdery) and I were going over campaign notes last night and we were discussing how very subtle shifts in tone result is massive changes in perception. We think we came up with some insights:

To-Do Lists, Making Friends and Influencing People, and Ruling the World

  One thing that I can struggle with is making sure NPCs stay dynamic. They aren't just animatronic puppets that sit in their castles, inns, and lairs waiting for the PCs to do something.

  I mean, that is a TON easier - everything remains in a stasis-like status quo until the characters get to it = no work for Rick so that is OBVIOUSLY the best, right?

Unfortunately, this makes the game(from OD&D to Champions to any other RPG) predictable and booooooorriiiiiiiiiiing. So how do I solve it?

Worldbuilding and Seaward Overview: Steel, Ships, Schnapps

  D&D has led me to some interesting side hobbies, such as an intense interest in mining, metallurgy, and smithing as a teen. My goal was for an internal consistency to Seaward, a world that made sense inside its own context. My players seems to notice this (hooray!) but sometimes be confused, so here is my thinking.
Seaward as a whole is roughly the High Middle Ages, around 1200 AD, give or take. But that is just a touchpoint. Here is where it differs.

Metals-
In Real Life blast furnaces were only introduced to Europe in the 16th Century, but they were about 1,500 years old by that time, having been used in China that long before. Smelting is a LOT older, as in 6,000+ years.
Seaward has pretty advanced metallurgy with sophisticated blast furnaces (hot blast blast furnaces with water- or spell- powered forced air, distillatory venting, and the use of raw anthracite), a wide range of fluxes as well as ore washing, roasting, and reduction steps throughout. The dwarves are masters of this, although all races do at least base smelting.
This means 'full plate' armor, better tools, improved alloys, etc. are also "earlier". The humanoids are still in the 'age of mail' while the good guys have reached the 'age of plate'.

My thinking/justification: The odd thing (to me, at least) in real life is that bits and pieces of smelting technology were scattered here and there but rarely combined until fairly recently. Water-powered forced air on southern Europe; blast furnaces in China; sophisticated fluxes in Spain, etc. My simple assumption is that long-lived dwarves with different cultural ties were more likely to share and combine these technologies leading to a slightly faster development of metallurgy so that Seaward is about 4 centuries 'ahead' of Europe in mining, smelting, etc.

Sailing-
In Real Life the Medieval Period by about 1200 AD saw the development of the cog, knarr, and hulk in the West and the very sophisticated Song Dynasty junk in the East.
Seaward lags far behind in ship technology. The only common boat is the simple fishing boat with a square sale. The only real military ships of Seaward and Eastford are a few trireme galleys. Trading vessels are simple flat-bottomed roundships with a single square sail. The most advanced ships are those of the Mariner Elves who have the equivalents of longships and simple knarrs.

My thinking/justification: In real life the fact that ancient humans got into boats and sailed out of the sight of land might be the boldest thing our species has ever done - and we did it a lot. The Medieval Period had more population, an improvement in other technologies, an increased need and desire for trade, and seaborne raiders. all of which led to rapid development of ship technology that had otherwise been stagnant since Hellenistic times.
Seaward is still stagnant, as is most of the world around it, for three reasons. One, the oceans of Seaward are much more deadly than the real oceans, which is a terrifying concept. Sea serpents, dragon turtles, weresharks, kraken, sahuagin, koalinth, scrags, etc., etc., etc. mean that there are areas of ocean that are impassible and the rest is much more lethal. There are very good reasons to not go to sea. Second, magic allows you to skip some of the ship technology. A spell here and there makes any ship more seaworthy, so if you must go to sea the simpler ship can do more in a pinch. Third, things like Teleport, Carpets of Flying, etc. mean that the powerful or wealthy can travel much faster and more safely, removing some of the impetus for development.

Alcoholic Spirits-
Archaeologists have evidence that the Babylonians were making simple distilled alcohol by 1200 BC and distillation of alcohol was spreading in both the East and West in the 1st Century, so liquor is fairly old. But it wasn't until about 1500 AD that distillation was more than a novelty or tool of alchemy.
Seaward is about 400 years ahead here, too, allowing for a very wide range of liquors. Pot still are the norm, but both fractional distillation and reflux are well-known and used improving quality and consistency.

My thinking/justification: Essentially the same as with metallurgy.

Impact-
Seaward has the alcohol, armor, and metals of the 16th Century and the ships of the 7th with a few elves carefully guarding their 11th Century ships and Liung Diguo having a few early junks far, far away. The lack of reliable sea travel makes the world effectively larger and forces more overland travel. It also makes magic items and spells with strategic travel capabilities much more valuable.

A Seaward Travelogue: Clothing and Food

  Adding details in the background is important, so in addition to the high level overview of Seaward here is more of a travelogue.

Clothing
Typical clothing is very straightforward;
Rural and Town Men: loose trousers, a tunic that falls to about mid-thigh, soft leather shoes, and a belt. In cold weather a hat and cloak (usually wool) are added.
Rural and Town Women: A long skirt, a tunic that come to just below the waist, soft leather shoes, a belt and a simple bonnet. In cold weather a hat and cloak (usually wool) are added.
Farm/field work, colliers, and other intense or dirty activities: A long overtunic that falls to midcalf is worn. In the Briars it is often of canvas to protect the wearer.
Cooking, Cleaning, and other Domestic activities: Women add a long apron.
Traveling Men and Women: In warm weather a straw hat is usually worn, in cold weather a woolen cap that covers the ears and ties under the chin.
Wealthy or Prestigious Men: Trousers are tighter, shoes are replaced with boots, and colorful vests are worn over the tunic. Merchants and tradesmen often wear flat caps (wool, leather, or felt) and nobles often wear a hat similar to a tyrolean but of soft material.
Wealthy or Prestigious Women: A decorative apron is added, hair is often in a snood.
Priests, Monks, and other Religious Men: Monks, acolytes, and such wear long, simple robes with rope belts, the colors of which identify their membership in various orders; most are barefoot or in simple sandals in all but the coldest weather. Priests wear cassocks with a roman collar and are always shod but wear a monk's robe when engaged is strenuous activity. In cold weather a long, hooded cloak is added.
Religious Women: Long dresses and aprons are worn, the colors of which identify their particular order. Their hair is always completely covered.
Festival or Feast Day clothing: Very similar to clothing worn by the wealthy for all, but non-nobles have added embroidery and bright colors while nobles will add rare fabrics. Typically only festival clothing is brightly colored, while typical/daily wear is brown, beige, darker yellow, etc.

Food
Staples: Rye and wheat are the most common grains in the north, central, and east while oats are more common in the south and west. Cheese (firm and sharp from cow's milk or soft and mild from goat's milk are the two most common), pickles (cucumbers, cabbage [sauerkraut], radishes, turnips, carrots, asparagus, beets, and pears), and potatoes (including sweet potatoes) are ubiquitous. Along the major rivers beef is common while mutton dominates the west and south with pork and goat common throughout the area. Chickens are primarily kept for eggs so poultry is hard to find and expensive. Fish is also common along the rivers and dominates the coast. Game (venison) is popular and usually served fresh while farmed meat is usually preserved (smoked, cured, corned, or pickled). Eggs are popular with all meals.
Tea, ale, and wine are the primary beverages. Ale is only mildly alcoholic and is closer to 'short beer'.

Meals of the Day
The people of Seaward typically eat much less per meal but eat more often than a modern Westerner is used to.

Early Breakfast- Traditionally eaten before dawn immediately on awakening by farmers, soldiers, and such this is a light, cold meal of cheese, pickles, and ale.

Breakfast- Eaten before terce (about 9 am) this is usually unleavened oatcakes (rural) or rye bread (town) with butter, a mug of tea with honey, a bit of cheese, and cold meat.

Second Breakfast/Elevenses/Morning Tea- The name varies by region, but it is always a light snack eaten before midday. In Ekull and the south (Second Breakfast) it is traditionally a mug of ale, a sausage (much like a bratwurst), and a piece of rye bread with spicy mustard. From the Stone Hills through Timberlake and the central valley (Elevenses) it is usually a mug of gruel (usually ground malted barley with a bit of wheat flour cooked by simmering with milk) served hot in Winter, cold in Summer. Along the coast and the eastern areas (Morning Tea) it is typically a mug of tea with honey, either an oatcake with sweet butter or a scone with clotted cream, and not much else

Lunch- Usually served shortly after Noon, Lunch is almost universally a mug of ale, oatcakes or bread, local meat, cheese, and pickles.

Afternoon Tea- Served immediately after None (3 pm) Afternoon Tea (or just Tea) is tea, cheese, pickles, and cold meat with some sort of simple treat (bread with honey or gingerbread). It is traditionally a very informal light meal where courtesy, deference, and rank are respected but at the same time soldiers mix with commanders, servants eat at the same time as their employers, and nobles speak directly to farmers.

Dinner- The main meal of the day, usually 2-3 mugs of ale, meat, bread, cheese, pickles, fresh vegetables (when possible) and potatoes served at or shortly after sunset.

Supper- Far from universal, this is seen as a "soldier's meal" and is usually a bit of cheese or pickles with a bit of cold meat and a mug of ale served right after Compline (9 pm). Priests, monks, and nuns often have a small supper, as well.

Religious Considerations
Members of the Church do not eat meat (fish and shellfish are allowed) on Fivedays, nor on certain Threedays in Spring and Fall nor during any of the penitential days of Advent and Lent making fish the staple of about 120 days a year. As a result many farmers keep fish ponds and the people of Seaward have a fondness for pickled eel, smoked fish, and fish chowders.
At the other end on certain Solemnities (major religious holidays) it is traditional to dress up and eat special dishes!

Weighty Problems

Prompted by a question from James Eck that boiled down to 'why do your players keep going back to Skull Mountain rather than setting up camp and staying there?'.

Here is the player-facing map of the Briars:

1 hex = 1 mile

\It is about 30 miles from the nearest town, Esber. The light yellow is the Lower Briars, the gray the High Briars, then badlands, then the plateau, then Skull Mountain. The line is the Old Road, a paved Roman-style road from the Old Times. On horseback with good weather a party can push from Esber to Skull Mountain in four and a half days.. The road is old, unmaintained, and in some placed washed out and turned to tracks (the biggest breaks are marked with yellow). The first break is called the Patrol Camp because it is the furthest any patrol will go. A wagon could potentially make it to the Patrol Camp in 3-4 days but past that nothing larger than a 2 wheel cart can go. In good weather a two-wheel cart could make it to Skull Mountain in 9 days.
BTW, in typical weather it takes six days and 20 days, respectively. In bad weather (snow on the ground and storms in Winter, say) it can take a month+.
Off the Old Road? No one has ever tried....

When parties set out to adventure in Skull Mountain they have to have enough supplies with them for the trip to and from plus 'loiter time', i.e., time in the dungeon. Sure, you could hunt along the way, but game animals shy away from the road and Skull Mountain and its massive flock of stirges has very few game animals within a 4 hour trip. This means 2 weeks of food per person and mount, minimum. For a real dungeon crawl you'll need a month of food per. With a person needing about a pound of preserved food a day, that is 30 lbs of provisions per person. Since forage along the route is effectively zero horses will need grain and some hay - about 5 lbs a day (minimum) or 150 lbs so a horse and rider really should carry 200 lbs of just food to Skull Mountain. This means the horses are moving slowly, so that gives you about 10 days in the mountain.
If you take a cart or two you can bring more, but extra travel time! Again, this leaves you 10, maybe 12, days of dungeon crawling. You can bring pack mules, for example, but they need their own food and if you have more than 1 or 2 you need teamsters and such.
In short, getting to Skull Mountain to adventure requires a supply chain.

The party has done this in the past. Almost every adventure to Skull Mountain has taken a few in-game days. Especially when they went to the Second Level they spent 10 days inside the mountain and left enough hidden provisions that the mapping expedition only needed to bring half of their estimated provisions, so it can be done. But until some way of providing food locally is found you will need to maintain routine pack trains along the Old Road at least 4 times a year at great expense just to have enough food.
As a result parties tend to plan ahead, arrive for a particular reason, spend 3-10 days inside the dungeon, and then retreat to civilization.

Guess what else is needed?
Light sources. The mapping expedition took an entire cart of just candles and lamp oil. That horse needed provisions, by the way.

This is why Skull Mountain has to be cleared out from time to time.
But that could be changing; the mapping expedition's base camp will stay at the mountain for at least 6 months and could remain as long as 2 years. The cost of the provisions is so high that any stay of more than a year means the expedition will be forced to rely upon treasure found while exploring to break even!

The players are wondering how Skull Mountain was ever permanently inhabited to begin with!

DM Report and DM Tips: Lighthouses, Swords, and Derailing Campaigns

Ran a quick session on Saturday, just 3 hours of gaming (we only expected 90 minutes but Son #5 fell asleep on the couch!). WE played in my AD&D 2e campaign, called Blackstone, and the lower level guys went to stop some bad guys from getting intelligence from a ruined abbey.

Your Party Had Better Have More Than Four People In It - Hints for Players and GMs

When I was just starting out as a wee DM of 11 years old I had to make due with the players I could find. Before too long I was good at recruiting and training players. I typically had 3-7 people at the table with me.
But I always had 6+ characters in the party. Sure, sometimes they were henchmen, but always 6 or more.
When I joined Lew Pulsipher's group he had a pretty firm rule - at least 6 'tough guys' (meaning PCs or close-to-PC-level henchmen) in the party. Eight full PCs and their henchmen is best.

Adventure Design Philosophy, Random Encounters, and Notebooks

Early in the week I started an adventure for the family. We hope to finish it tomorrow before the Easter Vigil. But the adventure made me think about my design philosophy.

So let me share a bit.

How I Prep For Games

  I mean, naturally, 'other than write the adventure and make maps'.
  If we have a quick pickup game, I don't do all of this, but for any game scheduled in advance - I do!

  Once the players tell me which characters they are taking on the adventure I go through my notes on each character to see if there are any hints, hooks, etc. I need to drop. Will Ember recover another lost memory? Will Brigid's sword tell her some lost bit of lore? Will Thorin's bracelet give him more orders?

Let Me Add Something on How To Add More People to the OSR

  Over at Tenkar's Tavern the host has written about how to add players - play in public.
  He's not wrong, but he's missing something.
 
  See, he's talking about playing at a store aimed at us and bringing in people who play Pathfinder, 4e, and other things.
  That's great! Bring them in! But there is more.

  I have mentioned how my son started a new game with total newbies. Well, their tenth game is next week and there are now 5 regular players and they are recruiting more, all of them fresh to RPGs. That, to me, is even more critical than exposing people who play other games to the OSR - bringing totally fresh blood to RPGs in general.

  And it doesn't just have to be teens.

  Think about how long you have been playing RPGs. Now, in that time how many of your non-gaming friends and co-workers have you tried to 'bring in'? I have asked co-workers, classmates, and relatives. My most daring was either the guy sitting next to me on a 6 hour greyhound bus trip or a girl I met on a blind date on our second date.

She and I have been married for almost 25 years, now, BTW.

  I have had a lot of success bringing people into RPGs just by asking 'want to come over for game night?' and not saying anything else. I make sure I have a wide range of games - HERO system, Star Wars, Marvel Super-Heroes, Traveller, and (of course) AD&D. We talk to them about the movies and books they like and then pull out the game that seems most apropos. That date? HUGE Star Wars fan, so it was WEG's D6 Star Wars. These days it is easy to start with the LotR or Hobbit movie franchises or Marvel, but it all works.

  Another thing Ii do these days is have stuff ready to email them - PDFs of OSRIC, character sheets, party log, and a simple free adventure module. As a family we buy those Pound O' Dice packs as needed so we can hand them a set of dice, too.

  Yes! Play in public! But also talk to the people you know.