OSRPGtalk

Words from a grognard

Tag: #GMing

Off-Screen Adventures

April 16, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This is a topic about which I’m still very much unsettled. It’s the idea that PCs engage in activities which very much involve adventuring, yet it all happens off-screen. How best to approach this, if it’s going to happen?

This is actually present in the early system rules.In 1e, Gygax speaks of spying missions, complete with tables to help adjudicate them. He speaks of assassinations, also including tables. Those tables generate the results of the activities, though, as the activities aren’t played out at the gaming table.

Granted, one could always just use those tables for use with NPCs assigned to spy or assassinate a foe as part of high-level play, without a PC getting involved. there’s no written instructions as to that being the intention, though, which leaves the door open for it including PC activity. When one also considers that Gygax described PCs being out of play off-screen while journeying to consult an oracle, it’s easy to see that off-screen play was part of how things were done. Ergo, we should expect off-screen activity as part of play; the only question is what activities should reside off-screen.

Just riffing on what Gygax has describe, I reckon information-gathering of many sorts would be good options. Consulting with oracles, scouting wilderness areas for basic information on what resides there, spy missions into foreign towns and cities to get the lay of the land before arriving, and so on. Put specialist PCs to work doing their specialist things: send thieves to scout out that city, a hunter or scout to get a general sense of the land beyond that mountain pass, a wizard scrying the area where a transfer portal opens on another plane, and so forth.

This is all stuff GMs can certainly do on their own. I think it would behoove designers to provide guidance and support for it, though, as what the system expressly supports typically appears in higher quality than if it’s just something mentioned as being possible in passing. I know that I’ve very rarely had a player ask for such an off-screen jaunt. I don’t recall any happening at the tables I’ve played at. I suspect it’s not something that is regarded as a normal part of play, in a wider sense.

The 2D6^2 table

April 1, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Some time ago, I read a text about building random tables using different sets of rolls. At the time, it was made little impression on me. That small impression has grown, though, and birthed an expectation of tables that include a lot of entries, with only a couple of rolls.

First, I started with a 2D6xD6 table type. 2D6 roll on one axis and a D6 on the other. 66 entries. Cool.

Then came the 2D6^2 tables. 2D6 roll for each axis…121 entries. Yass!

The way the bell curves on each axis interact means some results have a very small chance of happening–a 2 & 2, for example–which means there’s space on the table for a highly unlikely event to be rolled. It’s far easier to lay out results as common, uncommon, rare, and very rare on such a table. It’s also easy to lay out more possible results than on most tables, with finer control of chances, than even with D100 tables.

The use of 2D6 rolls also keeps the tables a workable size, I think. One could always try 3D6 for each axis, say, and the percentage chance of the corner cases being rolled would be so miniscule as to not be worth laying out (unless using a computer). Printing the tables out would also demand more space than is likely available in a spread, without the entries being too small to be legible (for older readers, anyway).

So, I’ll be availing myself of both 2D6x6 and 2D6^2 tables.

The Wilderness “Dungeon” and Empty “Rooms”

April 1, 2025 / / 0 Comments

As mentioned prior, I’m viewing travel as movement in a much larger dungeon area–the great outdoors–and expect the procedures to provide much the same interest as moving about in a typical dungeon environment. When it comes to stocking the wilderness, the idea of an “empty room” is problematic.

Stopping to describe a scene during travel that amounts to “you don’t sense anything unusual about this place” is rather…boring. And silly. Why bother describing a specific site in which nothing interesting is happening? Background description from travel should be constant, so an “empty” space would be nothing more than additional background description (“a stream crosses the trail”). It wouldn’t even register as a place of any interest.

I think each “room” in a wilderness dungeon should offer something of interest. That’s why I don’t have checks for encounters, I have checks for events. An event isn’t automatically an encounter, though encounters are a type of event. As with dungeon stocking, an event could be a monster, a treasure, a monster and a treasure, or even a trap (that could then lead to an encounter). An empty room result, though, should offer something of interest.

That could be a natural wonder of some sort, say, a waterfall or a flock of birds blacking out the sky briefly. Perhaps a herd of herbivores crossing the trail that takes an hour to clear the way. Or a construction of some kind, say an obelisk or other standing stone, statues of vaguely humanoid figures, a well in the midst of nowhere. Something that can provide a distraction that could lead the PCs to dawdle and lose time examining it, which in turn increases chances of encounters or leads them astray from the planned route.

Make the “empty room” in the wilderness something that lead the PCs into investing time and attention that would best be spent in pursuing their original goals. Entice them to expend resources, even if it’s just some wasted time. It’ll help with the sense of the setting being a real place, too.

Procedural play

March 28, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Another key lesson for GMing, I reckon, is that procedures are everywhere. Becoming familiar with procedures and comfortable with using them is a core element of running a game.

PCs decide they want to hire on a crew for an expedition to find a rumored lost mine? There’s a procedure for hiring on help.

The party heads out of town on the expedition? There’s a procedure for travel.

The PCs hear a ruckus in the forest just out of sight and it sounds like something large and ferocious is headed their way? There’s a procedure for that.

The PCs reach the landmark they seek and begin looking for the mine entrance? Yup, another procedure.

A procedure isn’t anything more than the basic play loop put to use for a specific context. Running an encounter in the forest uses the basic loop to challenge the players to respond to the situation–what choices are they making that are relevant? Fleeing? Hiding? Waiting for more information? Setting up an armed defense? Then another loop begins with the next change in situation as the beast bursts into view.

A GM can use procedures offered in the system rules or develop procedures themself. As long as the procedures cover the pertinent choices available to players and can make significant differences in the situation, they’re good. They also keep the setting and play consistent, with regular use in similar situations.

That works to make GMing easier. A novice can learn the procedures as needed and then have those tools available for all future similar situations. Every trip out into the wilds uses the travel procedures. Delving into a tomb uses an exploration procedure. And so on.

Loops all the way down

March 28, 2024 / / 0 Comments

As I’ve been hashing out my notes over and over and working to polish the material to put together the alpha playtest draft, I’ve begun pondering the material for the Game Masters Handbook. I view the GM instruction as the foundation for good games using the systems, so I want to offer the best information that I can. This goes beyond the simple advice for making encounters interesting and the like. I want to provide a solid foundation for how the GM approaches play, how to string all the bits together into a coherent game.

The most essential loop in role playing is the basic interaction that governs play: the situation is laid out, decisions made as to what the PCs will do, and then the adjudication of that line of action. This loop then repeats endlessly to move play along.

Everything else in play then builds on that basic loop and puts it to use for specific endeavors. The classic dungeon exploration turn is but the basic loop expanded. The loop is considered to cover ten minutes’ time, to place it in the fiction. The situation gets described by the GM–where the PCs are, what they can see and such–then the players have to make choices about what to do. Move this way or that? Open this door? Flee from this monster? Parley with these goblins? The choice is made and the GM adjudicates the activity.

With that in mind, I think a foundational lesson for GMs is how to use the loops to structure play. I think of play as having the PCs always involved in a situation and the players always involved in a turn. With a firm grasp of how everything in play is a structured loop, then it becomes much less of a challenge to keep play moving. The GM notes what sort of turn the PCs are involved in (or will likely be involved in) and run the loops for that kind of turn.

It makes it easier to begin play, even–especially!–for new GMs. Take the typical pub start, for example. The PCs are all in a pub, having a pint, each present for personal reasons. Instead of wondering how to get the ball rolling, the GM considers this the first turn of the game and can use the loop to get things moving. The players aren’t going to have much to act on, at this point, so the GM knows that an interesting NPC will blow in through the door with Something Exciting to share, whether it be a raid happening on the edge of town or a vociferous call for parties interested in hiring on for a trip into the depths of the haunted forest.

There’s the situation. The players now get to decide what the PCs do, how they react. The GM can use a ten-minute turn for conversation with the NPC and adjudicate what the PCs want to do. Will they rush to help repel the raid? Will they simply step outside and watch the locals deal with it? Will they show interest in the expedition into the forest? Sort all that out and the campaign has begun.

Say that business with the NPC takes two turns. What then? Another turn or two with the PCs discussing possibilities and making general plans. The GM doesn’t even have to be involved with this beyond noting the time.

Next? Well, if the PCs have no activities planned until the next day, the GM notes that the PCs settle in for a night and the players have a watch to start the night (whether they actually have anybody stand watch). Nights spent in town may be largely quiet and devoid of play activity, so the GM then jumps to morning and drops the players into another turn to begin the day.

And so on.

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