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Design Theory: Processes, Procedures, and Loops

September 21, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

Play of an RPG is governed by the loops of activity expected and supported by the system rules. On the largest scale, a game system uses one or more play loops, which in turn rely on procedures for each part of the loop, and those in turn rely on procedures to provide the detailed execution.

Loops

A loop is the largest structure to support play in a system. Many systems only offer one main loop, such as “Start in Town –> Travel to Dungeon –> Explore Dungeon — Travel Back to Town.”

Multiple loops are possible, however. When PCs are expected to take actions while still in town, such as solving a mystery or researching a legendary item, then a loop concentrating on that play is offered. Play that involves travel to a known destination and negotiating with entities there is a different loop than exploring a dungeon would entail.

The more explicit a system makes its loops, the easier it is to GM those loops. The system can support each loop with procedures and expected choices to maintain an engaging level of play.

Procedures

A procedure is a step-by-step walk through of decisions and outcomes in support of a specific sub-system required by a game loop. Combat is one such procedure, as is infiltration by stealth, social intrigue among noble houses, magical and/or scholarly research, and any other aspect of play important to the experience desired for the system.

Some systems have but one major procedure with all other aspects of play resolved ad hoc by the GM, despite claiming to have multiple “pillars of play.” The presence or absence of a procedure highlights the relative important of any given aspect of play. Ars Magica, for example, has procedures for magic that show it to be far more important than melee or intrigue or anything else. Contemporary editions of D&D offer up melee procedures as primary, with the social interactions and any other activity as much lesser.

Processes

A process is the structure of a mechanic called on to help adjudicate efforts made during a procedure. An attack during a melee procedure is an example of a process: “If the sum of (2D6 +applicable ability rating + circumstantial modifiers) is => (a difficulty Target Number), then the attack is successful.” A successful attack might then call on a process for gauging how much damage the target takes from the attack. Then the target may require a process to determine how seriously the attack affected them.

Role playing games have long been primarily about the processes used, with proponents of dice pools or percentile systems or the venerable D20 or the use of cards instead of dice or any of the other resolution mechanics that have appeared in game systems over the decades. The processes do have great effect in how play feels and it’s important to find processes that support the game experience desired. I think it’s also important that system rules treat procedures and loops as being just as important.

This has been happening, of course. The Errant game system offers up procedures for major parts of expected play and has been notable for that reason. Find it here. Errant has been described as rules light and procedure heavy, which I think makes it a good illustration of how to make the procedures that use the processes of the game as important as the processes themselves.

At this point, I’ve yet to nail down all of the loops and procedures I expect to lay out in my projects, though the processes are largely already so. I can see a lot of play loops possible in addition to the basic “go forth and survive a dungeon” loop. There’ll be more options for activity when characters are at home/in town, some off-camera, some requiring longish stretches of time, and most tying into situations which involve the PCs leaving town to go forth and survive elsewhere.

Design: Sneaking

September 21, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

Sneaking around a hostile stronghold is a situation that seems to arise with some regularity in the fantasy adventures I’ve experienced. It could be caves with unfriendly humanoids living therein, a hostile noble’s estate manor, alleyways in a border city, or amongst the winding switchbacks and boulders on a mountainside.

One of the weaknesses of the classic Thief character class in D&D has been that the class was designed for the character to operate in solo. Yeah, in games about groups of characters acting in concert, thief characters were designed to do their thing all by themselves. Everybody else can take a break and play some poker or something among themselves while Sneaky McThiefy does their thing. This isn’t a horrible arrangement when it comes to picking locks or checking for traps, though any time infiltrating a stronghold comes up, things can get kludgy.

It’s possible, certainly, for the players to plan infiltrations with the non-thief PCs causing distractions and getting into position for obvious intrusions on the site to mix things things up. Playing out the split narrative between solo sneak and the rest of the party can prove tricky, though. I reckon part of the solution is to simply include the non-thieves in more of the sneaky stuff.

It’s always been the case, as many have claimed, that all PCs can sneak around to some extent; the chance to surprise foes rests on that assumption, despite it never being stated. All PCs have some ability to dart from one hiding place to another, climb over walls, and hide behind furnishings and in dark corners. The difference, as I see it, lies in how well they can do it when compared to the professional sneaks.

All PCs can move quietly. The difference lies on how quickly they can do so and how close they can be to guards without noise giving their presence away. Where a thief can pass within several feet of a watchman without notice, the rest of the party may only be able to pass without tipping the watch off at a distance much further away.

All PCs can hide in places that provide cover and shadow. The difference lies in how much cover and how deep the shadows necessary to allow for it to be effective. I offered up a take on AD&D thief skills some time ago that touched on this, so I’ll see if I can find that again and link to it. (Note: it’s a bit lengthy.) For those who enjoy that classic approach on thief skills, I figure that look at the skills will provide material to consider adding to play.

That take on the classic theif skills speaks to the points mentioned above about thieves being qualitatively better at sneaking around. Thieves can move more quickly and quietly and get closer to guards without being noticed. They can hide better and requires less cover and shadow to do so to avoid notice.

I suspect that there’s a need to describe how amateur sneaks — the other PCs — can sneak around to help integrate the whole party better in plans to infiltrate a stronghold in a way that doesn’t spend most of play time resolving the actions of the solo thief character. So many people seem to have assumed that because thieves have skills explicitly described that other types of PC can’t also do the same activities, which is nonsense. The difference is akin to that between somebody who plays pick up basketball in a gym and the pros who make a living at it; they all play basketball, the pros are simply much better at it. In the same fashion that Hrothgar, the Mighty, is better at fighting than Nimbleshanks, the Quiet, Nimbleshanks is much better at sneaking than Hrothgar.

Laying out some explicit processes for sneaking in general should be included in the rules, certainly. GM materials discussing how to present the situations to include more sneaky activity by other classes also seems helpful. I’m thinking the process offered that walks through infiltration actions should explicitly support actions by all PCs, instead of focusing on what the thief does will carry the rest of the load.

Describing Setting

September 2, 2026 / TAFL / 2 Comments

In the many, many GM sections and GM guides I’ve read over the years, there’s been discussion of how to describe the bits of setting the PCs are interacting with in the moment. What I’ve not seen much of is using the brief description of where the PCS find themselves to impart more information implicitly than explicitly, that is, without making the description of the surroundings the focus of the commentary.

Take the arrival of the PCs in a new village. It’s common to offer up a paragraph about what the village looks like to try to provide a basic feel of it to the players. I’m thinking that can be done more efficiently using fewer words by making the elements that get mentioned carry extra weight.

The village is thriving? How can we show that in few words, words that aren’t simply all about describing the village? Well, how about a short mention of a group of children running by playing with rolling hoops? How about a mule parking its butt in the middle of the street and its owner loudly lamenting the obstinate animal’s behavior? Just a couple of moments from the normal, daily routine of the village.

Now, what if there’s some trouble arriving? A courier racing by on horseback demanding access to the mayor. A cluster of haggard sellswords bellowing at each other drunkenly near a stable. Those moments feel quite different than the children playing and suggest something untoward has happened.

Or there are troops from the baronial guard stationed at key points in the center of town. They’re idle, yet watchful and obviously geared up for possible trouble. The townsfolk hustling around on their daily business may appear oblivious to the guard, which provides one feel, or appear dour and subdued, which provides a different flavor.

And this can all be conveyed in just a couple of phrases or sentences that aren’t really focused on describing the village. “You sidle past a couple of townsfolk who only glance furtively around you as you approach the tavern Reginald recommended you visit, its freshly-painted sign bright in the sunshine” versus “You pause to watch a mule and its owner argue about carrying a load at the edge of the market square before Reginald appears alongside you, laughing at the fuss.”

It might be useful to sketch out a list of elements that can be used to convey normal activity in a site that you can drop in as needed. A list of “Sights and Sounds of a Thriving Town or Village” that includes children playing, people shopping, vendors selling, townsfolk socializing, and so forth. Then a list of sights and sounds of a troubled settlement. Just a couple of lines worked into the narrative of play can go a long way.

Design: On Character Development III

August 27, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

This episode of brain dribbles actually looks at character generation, so should likely be titled as the first “On Character Development” piece. It just happens to be the third to make it into type, so what’m I gonna do?

This could probably be titled “On the Death of Attributes” as that’s the primary focus of the thoughts leading up to this. In OD&D, rolled attributes were used for very little. A prime requisite score lower than average would provide a penalty to accrued experience points and a prime requisite score higher than average would provide a bonus. Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence ratings could affect some specific abilities beyond that xp adjustment, though the attributes didn’t carry much mechanical heft. (Dungeons & Dragons, Book I: Men & Magic, page 11)

By the time AD&D rolled out, attributes carried much greater heft in mechanical terms. The range of bonuses expanded, the abilities to which those bonuses applied expanded, minimum scores were required to qualify for character classes. It was possible to generate a pair of characters of the same class that would have vastly different experiences in play due to one of them rolled poorly and gaining no bonuses and the other rolled well and thus having a much easier go from the outset. The urge for some differentiation resulted in built-in advantages garnered for some PCs, reducing the need for playing skills with those favored characters.

To truly focus on player skill, which is a foundational principle for old school play as I understand it, then ameliorating any significant built-in advantages or disadvantages rises in importance. At this point, I don’t see how involving the same degree of advantages to be gained via random rolls remains viable.

Couple that with the frustration of rolling a set of attributes only to use those to get a modifier that is actually used in mechanics and I’ve ended up where I am now: not gonna bother with attribute rolls. If there are to be modifiers to specific abilities, those need to be generated for those specific abilities without any intervening step.

So, I’ve done away with attributes as a defining aspect at character generation. Any bonuses to specific abilities will be assigned to those abilities directly, whether by random roll or player direction; a random roll may only indicate which set of discrete abilities the player may choose from to assign a bonus to. Limit the number of possible bonuses so a player can’t “win” at chargen and yet still allow for a bit of differentiation at the outset. It could also be a requirement that a bonus apply to one of the abilities important to a character class to qualify for that class.

Old School Hallmarks: Lethality

August 18, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

Over on The RPG Cauldron we have a book club of sorts where we’re reading important blog posts from the heart of the OSR glory days and discuss those. The most recent of those (as of this post) is GusL’s post about lethality in old school games. It was worth a read when I first encountered it and was worth re-reading for the discussion in the book club,

This is what I responded with on the Cauldron:

“I think Gus just touched on the usefulness of mortality in old school play. Each and every incident that costs the PCs dearly helps train the players as to what doesn’t work well and provides a specific context to analyze as to what might have worked better. It provides a learning opportunity with harsh consequences that can provide greater feedback to the players about what works and what doesn’t, which one would hope would inform their play thereafter. “Remember when Ealdric died? We want to avoid that…” when considering activity in a similar situation.

“Those harsh outcomes also bring the setting into sharper focus. It becomes easier for players to gauge risks and judge the information they learn about locations and inhabitants with greater accuracy. The highly abstracted threat of reported giants, say, gets a bit less abstract in the wake of an incident where a few ogres battered half the party into goo. The equation of “Ogres tough = AVOID GIANTS” helps develop the flavor of the countryside in that part of the setting, with smart PCs either routing around the area or making extreme haste while traveling through or sneaking through at night or the like. Each of those different approaches to moving through the area can reveal more of the setting, which makes for a richer experience of the game world.

“The lethality also highlights the fact that player choices are of primary importance. When the PCs step out of the mold without much to set them apart from another of the same class, what ends up differentiating a legendary character in that campaign from the generally forgotten also-rans is both the longevity due to good choices and the added individual flavor and quirks that accrue due to being in play so long. The run-of-the-mill starting PCs become luminaries of the setting after ten levels of care and serendipity. It’s impossible to know at the outset what, exactly, is going to work to make a PC memorable; trying to plan that in advance simply isn’t possible to end up with a diagetically organic PC.”

I’ve also more thoughts on old school PCs. I’ve stated before (here) that old school PCs are differentiated in play and that the greater the specialization, the further one strays from old school ethos. I’ve a more nuanced take on that now, I reckon. I pointed out that the old school fighter is a fighter is a fighter and the more non-fighting stuff that gets added removes from that. I still think that adding a bunch of non-fighting abilities does weaken the archetype. I now also think that specializing fighters with fighting abilities still upholds old school precepts.

So, a fighter need *not* meet “a fighter is a fighter is a fighter” standards and still be a suitable example of the fighter archetype. I’ve been playing with sub-classes for quite a while and finding frustration when wanting to expand the basic class in this direction or that by adding capabilities that aren’t expressly fighting. Now, if all fighters share those non-fighting capabilities, then I can sign off on them; the problem was that many times they didn’t make sense for all of the possible sub-classes.

One of the long-standing issues I’ve had with D&D versions is that fighters arrive as equally adept with missile weapons as with melee weapons, and can hurl spears and axes with equal efficacy as sticking an opponent with said spear in hand. I recently came to terms with aligning the “a fighter isn’t a fighter is a fighter” from above and the notion that different fighting modes are fairly distinct by allowing that this fighter can be specialized in melee, that one in missile fire, and this other guy is dangerous at ten paces with what he throws. A soldier chucking plumbata at opoosing troops’ shields isn’t necessarily well-trained and effective with thrown weaponry, so having a fighter sub-class that is makes sense for some settings. And an archer specialist isn’t going to pick up a sword and not drop off in effectiveness in a fight (nor will a line soldier pick up a bow and place an arrow through a slit at 200 paces simply because they’re a seasoned sword fighter).

I’ve been sliding into this for some time, with sub-classes that offered some fighting abilities not available to all. Rangers possess basic fighter abilities plus specialized monster fighting; Paladins possess basic fighter abilities plus specialize in undead and demonic foes; warriors possess basic melee and hurled or missile abilities; and soldiers possess basic fighter abilities plus added melee abilities.

All of these sub-classes are thus instances of the fighter archetype. Each possesses all of the abilities of The Fighter. Each then also possesses fighting abilities in addition to highlight different ways in which the archetype gets expressed. It remains an old school approach, because all the fighters still fight, and then the sub-class fighters are all “a ranger is a ranger is a ranger” with the differentiation between rangers arising in play.

All of that seems obvious now, though it took quite a while for it to click in my head to where I understand how it all fits together and why. It’s that moment of epiphany that makes the information so much easier to work with and the projects involved then become easier to craft.

Old School Hallmarks: Inventory

August 4, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

I finally realized what left me perpetually unconvinced about notions that requiring players to detail what gear the PCs carry is unimportant. I’m now completely convinced that tracking inventory to some degree is a hallmark of old school play…and understand why I have that conviction.

I read yet another post or comment on one of the many fora dedicated to discussing RPGs that maintained that tracking gear is better observed in the breach, and among other comments in the discussion were a couple advocating for quantum supplies because somehow it’s not a fair challenge to expect players to be able to guess the right equipment to have PCs carry.

That’s when my longstanding denial of that notion finally crystalized and I can now explain it. Inventory tracking doesn’t involve a challenge of predicting what equipment to carry while adventuring. The challenge in old school play lies in using the gear being carried in creative fashion to help solve problems confronting the PCs. It’s not a question of “what did you bring?” so much as it’s a question of “how will you use what you brought?” How will you use that and what you can find nearby? You brought a holocaust cloak? There’s a wheelbarrow in the hollow tree? Well, now we’ve got a plan coming together….

Tracking inventory isn’t just about forcing hard choices about what’s most important to carry. It also forces players to get creative use out of the items the PCs do carry to overcome challenges that arise in play. Lengths of rope are almost always useful in some fashion. Twine, though — is it worth carrying a bundle of twine? What about thread? Chain? All of those could prove useful at some point. Iron spikes, silver stakes, wooden stakes — some of each or just of one? How many? And so on.

The decisions made in packing for adventure should be important. Those decisions should be laying the foundations for possible solutions to challenges. That means it’s important to force those decisions on players as part of playing the roles of the PCs and facing the challenges of play.

Design: Surprise, Redux

August 1, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

I’ve already given some thoughts on the topic that can be found here:

Design: Surprise

I just recently got back to those rules with an eye collecting all the principles behind them for a master file to refer to when writing the rules for all three of my projects. I also want to get them finished and released soon, so they’re out of my head and in the wild where other people can freely use and abuse them and provide me with feedback.

One change I can report immediately is that I’ve dropped the use of “phase” when referring to surprise, and now think in terms of “beats.” I think it works better to think of that time passing in that fashion by removing the association with discrete measures of time. This first occured to me when working on the GG project and needing a good way to describe the progression of action in that project.

I’ve reorganized the Surprise rules to better focus them on “how to.” Peeling away the layer of description that provided the whys and wherefores has been slow, although I think it absolutely necessary. I have a pronounced tendency to explain the reasoning behind rules instead of offering “just the facts” and it’s something that I have to work hard to stymie.

The reorganization also helped clarify what I want surprise rules to do. The encounter system should shuffle some basic information about an encounter to the surprise sub-system — and this is key — to first check to see if a surprise situation is possible and/or desirable for the encounter. That’s something that I find missing from the traditional surprise rules, where the sub-system is assumed to be part of every encounter. It explains all those encounters in play where the parties are too far apart for it to make a difference.

The traditional rules also ignore differences in sensory abilities between the two, leaving that entirely, without guidance, to GMs. I’ve had players act surprised (!) when their PCs couldn’t surprise creatures that were able to smell the PCs well before the two groups got close enough for the PCs to notice the other. They’d never considered scent to be a factor because they’d never read it in the rules.

The first thing I’ve designed my surprise rules sub-system to do, then, is to determine whether surprise can even be a significant factor in an encounter. I’m not going to bother checking for surprise if it isn’t. Are the groups close enough to actually engage in some fashion when one notices the other (or they each notice the other)? That depends on sensory abilities and limits provided by terrain and weather and such, first, and then considerations of engagement and interaction based on the proximity, next. If the parties can’t launch missiles or spells and can’t close to bash each others’ heads, then surprise just isn’t something I care to add to the situation.

I’ve also wondered why the traditional rules want the encounter system to provide one distance for an encounter and then change that distance if one or the other is surprised. I want the encounter system to determine the distance based on sensory limits, then the surprise system can determine if surprise adds anything to the encounter based on that distance. When the nothing burger of both sides being surprised is tossed in at distances where no real engagement is possible anyway…well, that’s nonsense I want to step away from.

So the surprise rules should first check to make certain surprise is possible and would have a significant effect on an encounter. After that, then the details of surprise checks appear, with modifiers to the checks, how many beats of surprise result, and anything that could affect the number of beats for individuals.

I also think the lack of what surprise entails in terms of limitations on actions, for both the surprised and unsurprised, is a failing of the traditional rules. Does being surprised affect saving throws? A PC surprised by a dragon and getting toasted isn’t as likely to save as an unsurprised PC, I reckon, and this sort of thing is unaddressed in the traditional rules (thus relegated entirely to table rulings by default, as with so many other things). I want to provide some guidelines for what being surprised entails in more detail.

Same for being unsurprised and taking actions. What are the limits on movement — charging, sneaking, fleeing? How are attacks limited — in number and/or targeting? Casting spells, using items, loading missile weapons…how are the unsurprised beings limited? Expressly laying out some general rules helps GMs make rulings in the edge cases.

That rough draft is obviously obsolete now. I can say that the 2D6 check is still good. All other parts may have been revamped, though, as I’ve picked through it all and put it through its paces. I’ll offer the roll results again, for those who don’t want to click through to the other post.

* Roll of 2 or 3: surprised for three beats

* Roll of 4: surprised for two beats

* Roll of 5: surprised for one beat

* Roll of 6+: not surprised

Design: Fighting

June 30, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

For many people, it seems, combat is the first sub-system that they read in depth and figure out how it plays in comparison to systems they already know. I’m not among them, as I find other sub-systems more important to my understanding of a new game system, plus I figure I can change out what parts of the combat system I need to to fit my preferences after I’ve played with RAW for a bit.

I have a bit of a luxury, as a designer, with having three projects in progress at once…three projects that are similar in genre and feel, that is, I can work from a set of general principles and flesh those out in three different detailed fashions. I’ll be laying out those principles in another post, though, as this post is actually about how asking questions makes the design wheels go ’round.

A Question That Started a Cascade

I recently had a question come to mind when I was considering armor and how I most want to present its use in the abstractions of the systems. The question was rather basic and seemed obvious in hindsight, though I don’t recall ever having considered it before. Asking that question led me into a bunch of other questions about some basic issues, though, and in a most constructive fashion.

The question: What if we think of armor ratings as what the armor allows through?

Now, I’ve not worked out any way to actually use ratings in that fashion without involving more rolls and steps than I want. I considered dice steps to reflect the damage weapons could do versus the armor — D4 vs heavy armor, D6 vs medium armor, D8 vs light armor, for a simple “armor as damage resistance” approach — and that immediately brought some problems along with it. I don’t see some players handling that well, at all, and it could prove to be a headache for GMs. There’s also the issue that the approach is really nothing more than “armor subtracts damage” in a way that requires more work.

That Leads to Considering Wounds….

What that question and the resulting line of thought did do was lead to more fruitful fields. “Well,” I asked myself, “What does armor allow through on a successful strike?” That led to a consideration of exactly how the game abstraction includes the notion of damage and its effects, how such things are represented and gauged in the system, and what difference the armor can make in all of that. With the DA system, I’m riffing on D&D heavily and paring down hit point totals, with wounds stepping in to do the heavy lifting. The other two systems were conceived with wounds as a primary way to gauge harm.

Wounding is an aspect of damage that I’ve been playing with for quite some time, and working out how different armors can affect inflicting wounds is a design problem I find fascinating. The effects individual wounds can have on a combatant, how long it takes to heal from wounds, what exact effects wounds can and should have — all that is important to work through to provide the desired experience in play.

…And The Weapon Effects…

I also expect I’ll have armor affect any special effects a weapon can inflict. A weapon that can readily stun a target with a successful strike can have that effect made less likely by some types of armor, I think. I also think I can work out how the weapon effects and armor interact in a way that works for the play flow I desire, so I’m going to be experimenting with those interactions.

I also have to deal with how armor and shields affect what PCs can do, how their movements are affected in the wearing. Having a large shield in hand can limit some moves a great deal, for example. I expect most standard fighting movement can take place as usual (though heavy armor may make it more tiring), so it’s the unusual movement that can be affected. Working out what the unusual movements modeled in the abstraction and how they get affected in detail is an interesting problem.

…On To Shield Use…

So, what is it shields actually do? This is an important question when it comes to the abstraction. D&D uses them mostly as just a modifier to AC. Stepping away from that particular “determines difficulty to strike” approach means answering this question is an important consideration.

So, in my systems, should shields increase defensive ratings? How would this vary by number of foes being engaged? How are missiles treated when compared to melee?

If armor is reducing damage from attacks, do shields play a part in that reduction?

Does shield use affect any offensive techniques? Does it add any? Bashes, edge strikes, thrown shields?

Does shield use affect any defensive actions?

There’s a bit more that arose in response to the orginal question. The cascading questions that follow from one simple query is part of what makes designing systems so interesting, for me. And I get to work out a general response that then gets detailed in three most likely different ways.

Design: Saving Throws

June 10, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

I think I’ve finally figured out why I much prefer saving throws in the traditional lineup rather than any of the single saving throw or three throw systems. It came to me when I was reading a post somewhere about how some folks prefer just using ability checks instead of saving throws — that’s when it clicked.

I don’t view saving throws as simple attribute checks. The attributes are used in deciding much of the character’s capabilities, sure (though far too much in modern systems, I think). So, the attributes are what are used to help keep the character from having to make saving throws. Why should they also then be used a second time after failing the first, so to speak? The saving throws, I reckon, are what can save a PC’s carcass when their attribute-based abilities have failed. Thus, saving throws shouldn’t properly be just another check of what failed prior.

The concept comes from minis play, where individual character attributes don’t come into play, so there’s nothing inherent in the origins that would lead to simply making attribute checks instead. Saves in D&D have varied from class to class, which makes for some interesting variety when faced with the specific hazards and challenges that saving throws address, and I see no convincing reason to toss that approach out.

I’ll be using saving throws with such class variance in my systems. I’ll be using throws in the same fashion as the traditional throws — so vs specific types of effects — and I’ve also added a sixth saving throw category. I’ve wavered back and forth as to whether to allow attributes to provide bonuses to saves and have finally settled on not allowing that. Saves are class-based and can be modified by circumstance, with attributes not being a factor.

Saving Throws :

: Save vs Corruption (Death, Poison)

: Save vs Metamorphosis (Paralysis, Petrification)

: Save vs Instrument (Rods, Staves, & Wands)

: Save vs Inundation (Breath Weapon)

: Save vs Imposition (Illusions, Phantasms, Charm)

: Save vs Workings (General Spells)

GMing: Adventures I

June 3, 2026 / TAFL / 0 Comments

One of the hallmarks of old school design in support of classic play and OSR play is the lack of intended stories. A pre-plotted story is regarded as part of poor GMing, putting PCs on rails, so the speak, to experience some tale the GM wants to tell, instead of allowing the actual play at the table give rise to what narrative it will. Grognards appreciate letting play — the choices made by players — decide if the dragon gets rescued from the sheriff’s men.

So, the approach taken for Fogey Play could be thought of as going off-rail. Going off-rail, if done effectively, is to avoid getting on the rails in the first place, ideally. On both the level of an adventure and the level of a campaign, player choice should be driving the narrative and the GM avoiding pushing the PCs into any pre-planned choices. There is no BBEG behind everything in the setting and whom the PCs have to overcome for a campaign arc. (There may be a BBEG, or several such miscreants, though the campaign is *not* focused on them.) There are no storylines PCs have to be nudged into during individual adventures. As there are no character background stories to support in play, there’s nothing involving those that has to happen at any time. Just say “no” to plotting.

The Basic Approach

The most obvious way to stay off-rail is to avoid starting on rails by not plotting any story. The idea of prepping only conflicts, sites, and situations has appeared in many blog posts and on discussion boards. It’s pretty standard advice in OSR circles and invaluable for GMs coming to old school play from contemporary D&D and other modern, character-based systems. It’s a solid reminder to GMs to help them avoid putting their games on rails.

Beyond the Basic

There lurks a danger at the table, however, if the players aren’t veterans of old school play. That is, the players can proceed to play as if there *is* a pre-determined plot to follow. They, themselves, can hop onto invisible rails by assuming there is an actual plotted story and having their PCs act accordingly. They can assume that a local crime boss is the BBEG of some grand story, instead of simply a Bad Guy not possessed of any significance beyond that of directing a cartel/faction/front/biker gang determined to control half a kingdom from behind the scenes, the same as a couple of other local Bad Guys. The players can assume that the first Bad Guy is the focus of a campaign and then try to force a grand storyline on play.

We have to step beyond that basic approach to support the understanding that there isn’t a single storyline. We have to show that there’s no single storyline, nor even a single major conflict, to play out. We have to do so early and often. So, how do we do that? There are things we can do that I’ve observed help keep players from locking in on any one conflict and trying to turn that into *the* story of a campaign.

First, instead of presenting a single conflict for the PCS to engage with at the start of play, present multiple conflicts. Make each of them enticing enough that the players are hard-pressed to choose which to initially pursue. They begin play of the campaign with the understanding that there’s more possible than just what they chose to do.

And keep those hooks freshly baited. Whenever something changes in one of the other conflicts, let the PCs get word of it. Shoot, even if nothing changes, let the players get wind of the conflict in a different fashion than before. If they first heard a rumor at the inn, let a pedlar along the road drop a different rumor about the same thing. Let the players figure out that there’s always something different they could be doing and make it appealing.

Town turns, downtime, ale time, or whatever you want to call it is a fine time to drop more tidbits in front of the PCs. More travelers telling tales. Research the PCs commissioned from sages that provide tantalizing information. Requests for assistance by interested parties. When the PCs aren’t actively out and about chasing adventure, let adventure try to lure the PCs back out. The players have activities they want to pursue while in town, so do your best to distract them by dangling hooks.

Mix the conflicts. That is, have elements of one of the conflicts show up in play of the conflict the PCS are engaging with. An NPC who is an essential cog in a cartel that’s part of a different conflict happens to have business with an old friend in a key cartel the PCs are trying to infiltrate. A raiding party from Site A shows up at Site B when the sites are tied into different conflicts. An item/artifact found in Site A matches one found in Site B and in Site C, providing a bit of a puzzle as to what the items’ purpose is.

Stay Off the Rails

To support the effort to stay off rails, it can help to work with four principles in mind:

PCs can always walk away from any conflict at any time;
PCs can set their own goals for any conflict they interact with;
PCs can negotiate with and influence most NPCs in a conflict;
PCs can side with cartels and switch sides freely, if they do

If you can keep these in mind and help the players keep them in mind, there’s likely little chance of the PCs ending up riding the rails of a real or imagined planned story.

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