I don’t know why I have been seeing a recent uptick in discussion on the “blorb” principles method of refereeing, but it seems like it has made its way back around Discord and the various microblog scenes as of late. This is not a style I would normally comment on – I see it very outside of what I like to play, especially when the author gave a very bad-faith hot-take on FKR.
But people have been making assertions about it that seem puzzling to me – they’re recommending it as an OSR prep style, for one, where I cannot fathom how it gets associated with the very emergent, high-trust style refereeing we strive for in various OSR communities.
blorb is extremely low trust – it’s a style that proposes a rigid hierarchy for the referee to follow, going so far as to hypothetically allow players to audit prep or a module to make sure that the referee didn’t supersede prep with emergent tools or fiat. It’s effectively the same sort of justification you see in communities that will allow for toxic play to flourish under the banner of “designer intent”, only the designer, in this case, is your prep.
The whole point of the referee in traditional roleplaying and adventure games is to utilize a source of higher fidelity rulings to step in when the mechanics or situation may produce fictionally inauthentic results. Or when they could use their experience, creativity, subject knowledge, and tools to arrive at a ruling quicker than mechanization could, often with a higher degree of specificity in that they as a human could take into context more elements than any rules text could.
Take for instance this example:
You have prepped a dungeon where a maniacal gnome has created a death trap dungeon. You placed a secret door to a treasure room off of some room – you have some reason why you selected this particular room and secret door setup.
Now let’s say in play that you realize your prior location is not suitable – maybe its in a place that would be generally inaccessible or dangerous for the gnome or its minions to reach. Maybe it does not line up with other emergent properties set forth by tools. Perhaps it doesn’t make structural sense once you examine the dungeon in play.
Now, you see a room that makes perfect sense for this. No sweat – the players have yet to find any hint of this secret door. They’re still at the entrance or fiddling with other elements – you can take a break and just shift the whole thing over to a place that will be more fictionally consistent with the dungeon, as well as the established elements of the gnome – such as it being an architectural genius.
By using your in-flight creativity and expertise around the fictional world you have course corrected a fictionally-inconsistent element into one that fits the setting and established lore. If you used blorb’s rigid adherence to prep you would be introducing fictional inconsistencies.
Having had this discussion with a few of the principles’ adherents, the argument I have received around this is pretty demeaning. It leverages the above as a critical mistake that the referee must work to improve (later… in other forms of prep, but never during the game). It plays into some impossible notion that one will never prep inconsistencies, or run a module that has mistakes in it.
All of this is hogwash, of course. What is better – to assume “perfection” (which I think is a demeaning way to phrase it and one that sorely misassumes the role of the referee), admonish “mistakes”, and force people to play a game that makes less sense in lip service to some arbitrary manifesto. Or is it better to allow for flexibility, trusting a referee to use whatever tools they have at their disposal, and to trust the players to converse, negotiate, and question elements to clarify the understanding of the world – to recognize that not everything is going to be perfect in prep or play, and to allow for the referee to follow their intended role and run the best game possible?
Our party eliminates half of the Cult of the Sanguine Skull.
Characters
Florby, the Elven Alchemist
Apicius, the Farming Gorumond Fighter
Brother Murray, the Cleric of Light Above
Yarlexia, the escaped slave-turned-Witch Elf
Wulfwig the Ponderous, Cleric of Light Above
Steven the non-descript, an average mentalist mage
Downtime
Florby spent the week of downtime adventuring. They were abducted by a mad noble and their entourage looking for a tournament. Arriving at an abandoned monastery that had been turned into a statuary, the noble challenged a statue, which rose to meet them and struck down the crazed gentry. In the chaos Florby escaped, but had no chance to steal any goods.
Apicius proposed that Labrix the hireling wed his cousin, and tend to his farm, and in exchange, Apicius would eventually give Labrix his own sheep flock. The hireling agreed, and in the revelry of the wedding, Apicius became drunk and got into the losing side of a knife fight.
Brother Murray spent the week training his animals to obey simple commands, as well as investigating the locked box the party had acquired last session, finding it magical.
Yarlexia told fortunes and read tarot, receiving a working wage of silver.
Wulfwig decided to drink the week away, falling in with some bandits known as Hegrit’s Harpies, and suffered a massive hangover.
Session Report
Florby tried to pick the lockbox but got sprayed with acid, receiving notable scars to their torso, inhibiting breathing for a while. Inside lay an iron statue of a dwarf, carved into it a curse one could levy at an adversary to “ruin their fingers.”
Yarlexia attempted to summon a demon, slaying a scoundrel from the Copper Cockatrice to do so and called into her protection a humanoid pig/owl demon named Bechisi, who Yarlexia renamed Betty.
The group returned to the cult’s hideout, finding a massive wasp nest on the ascend, and ambushing the two huntsmen who served as guards, learning a bit more of the cult’s intentions, which mostly dealt with traversing through cycles of undead and rebirth.
Yarlexia took the form of one of the hunters and investigated the cave, while the others prepared to tumble rocks and even the tower if need be when enemies were drawn out.
Yarlexia spoke the cult’s secret phrase given to her by the hunter, which turned out to be a signal – the cultist she was conversing with sounded an alarm, ran behind a portcullis, and unleashed a horde of zombies. She began her escape back to the entrance, but as she made her way down the hallway – guards from the other direction were marching at her with bows, she decided to unleash Betsy upon them and make her way out of the cave.
The party waited as zombies followed out, saving the avalanche for the many cultists who came later to see if their pets had dispatched the invaders. The flesh of these dead cultists drew the zombies, and the party made quick work of them as well.
They also witnessed unusual, chaotic operations in the gully before the cult’s cave – dogmen crawling out of a bubbling pit of earth, and a massive bull-headed man disgusted by the carnage before the cult cave.
Entering into the cult complex, they found Betsy had fallen into a pit trap, and freed it – but were immediately attacked as the demon was no longer bound to Yarlexia. In the combat, Yarlexia continued to intone pacts and words of command and was eventually able to wrest Betsy back to her side.
The group proceeds north, finding four acolytes in a store room. They enter into combat and their hireling Hingle is decapitated by an acolyte. Eliminating two in combat, they get the other half to surrender, and piece out a few more details of the cult before delivering justice to these foul necromancers.
Having eliminated half of the cult’s numbers, losing a hireling, and taking some damage from the combats, they decide to make it back to Fortress Solae and recuperate before a final? assault on the cult.
Yesterday I kicked off an in-person open-table game here in L.A. using a hack of OD&D plus a lot of various hex-crawl tools mashed together.
The intent behind this campaign is to get as close to a West Marches as is feasible – I’ve run one successful West Marches late in college, and while I have tried a few times after that I’ve never breached the point of referee scheduling games to players scheduling games. I have a hope we can in this game, but I am not making it an outright goal, instead, I’m letting players loosely provide availability over the week, and if they schedule a game in my availability that’s great – otherwise I’m happy to book the sessions.
I had six players initially, for the first session I almost thought to have eight, but that would have been too difficult, as I was having trouble hearing even the middle of the table at points in the game store. So six players is a great amount, as long as I work to clarify what players say.
Characters
Our six characters were (and apologies to players if I’ve spelled the names wrong, feel free to correct me):
Florby, the Elven Alchemist
Apicius, the Farming Gorumond Fighter
Leandril, the tough-love Elven Fighter
Brother Murray, the Cleric of Light Above
Yarlexia, the escaped slave-turned-Witch Elf.
Wulfwig the Ponderous, Cleric of Light Above
Session Report
Our party met in the Copper Cockatrice, the local mercenary haunt and drinking hole in Fortress Solace. Amidst wine and banter, the party sought out a small collection of adventure hooks, including:
A map purchased from a mourning Hobbit, having lost his companions to a crow demon at the end-point of their quest for treasure.
Investigation of, and eventual elimination of a Chaos cult rumored to be abducting children, northwest of the fortress, paid for by a Bishop of the Church of Holy Law.
A mining collapse in a small village of Bryny to the West uncovered an ancient Lightbringer temple, with the Church wanting such a site cleared out and sealed off immediately.
Having questioned the drunk Hobbit, our party heard horrific tales of a crow demon that slew his companions. Citing the fact that mundane weapons could not hurt the beast, the party instead decided to pursue the more local option of investigating the cult.
They interviewed and hired a slew of hirelings, including:
Drogos the Mercenary, is a stout fellow who has experience with soldiering.
Labrix the Link-Boy. A young herder who lost his flock, and wishes to scrounge up enough silver for an impressive herd.
Hingle the Thug. A tall fellow with many notable facial scars and missing teeth, they wield a nasty hunting knife and has a conflicting relationship between his religion and his zeal for violence.
They also interviewed another henchman with wild eyes and a big beard who began shaking excitedly and licking his lips when the topic of combat was broached, but the party decided his eagerness was a step too far for their liking (as of now 😉)
While the party conducted these interviews, Yarlexia pandered traveling merchants with tarot and fortunes, playing to their egos, and earning enough payment for two silver pieces.
To The Caves
Our party marched off into the wilderness, seeking a strangely fresh forest to the northwest of the fortress. Easy going along the plains brought them to the border of these woods, whereupon they spied a Gnome burrow, a strange fellow named Fluppix had been drawn to recent migration in the area and he decided to start up a bakery and “art experience” to take advantage of the hinterland populace.
The party decided to partake in his venture, although Brother Murray thought better of the situation and kept watch. They ate the Gnome’s tasty bread and were subject to a rather rough massage (Fuppix’s chosen “art” for the day). Utilizing the time to question the Gnome, they did discover that a few dozen folks were camped somewhere nearby and that they did have Gnome-sized beings with them. Apicius provided the Gnome with an onion to feed his “children”, which turned out to include a rather portly badger.
The Gnome pointed out where they headed off to, noting that a troll cave lay between them, best to be avoided. Avoided this ominous cave they did, and found an oval-shaped valley beyond, beset by cliffs to the west, north, and south. Instead of pressing head-on, our group thought it better to circle around to the rear of these cliffs, gaining a vantage point over the many caves below.
Atop this crest, they discovered a camouflaged, but unoccupied watchtower or hunter’s lodge. Rooting around they found a spear and some items, as well as a buried lockbox in the earthen floor below. Brother Murray and Leandril kept watch and saw a hunter stalking a deer in the woods below. After felling the deer, the hunter sounded a horn, which drew members out of one cave to retrieve this deer, while the hunter made their way back to the watchtower.
Our party debated capturing or dispatching this hunter but decided discretion was better, leaving everything but the lockbox and making their way into a dense thicket for cover.
Yarlexia used her witchcraft to assume the guise of the Hunter and entered the caves below. She was met with a robed acolyte, wielding a metal staff whose end terminated in two collared zombies. Yarlexia played it off as if she had brought more food (in the form of her own sheep and goat), and the acolyte told her that the deer was more than enough to get them through the summer. He insisted instead that the goat, Luna, should have its name transcribed in the Book of Blood and enter into unlife as a new guardian for the community.
Yarlexia hesitantly agreed, but mentioned that she felt that she was ready to conduct the ritual herself, and would make her way into the ritual chamber. Passing by the guard she realized the cult’s complex was very deep, and she feared her illusion wearing off, so she turned and stabbed the cultist, calling out to any spirits or demons for protection. She was answered by a fell spirit demanding more supplication and ritual before providing aid.
Deciding against partaking in a full-blown ritual at the cave entrance, she grabbed the acolyte’s religious symbol, a blood-red skull, as well as the dual man-catcher zombie apparatus and returned to the group.
The party decided to make haste and double back to the fortress to provide proof to the bishop of the cult. They were promptly rewarded, and our session closed.
Referee Notes
Hopefully, I did the session justice, and apologies to any players whose antics or quips I may have missed. Running a pretty generative-oriented hex crawl involves juggling quite a lot of details at once, so I unfortunately sometimes misremember a few details.
Overall this was a fun session. Time was a little packed as half the session included character creation and setting summary, so I couldn’t quite get the spotlight on everyone as I would have wished, but I think there’s a decent way forward for everyone to grow and drive goals and ambitions.
I am running this game in real-time, so the party may have a week or more to carouse, do downtime, research, etc. before deciding if they want to fight this cult or go about another hook.
If you happen to be in the L.A. area and are interested in playing, definitely drop me a message and I’ll shoot you a player survey!
So about a month ago (time does fly), I traveled to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to attend Gary Con 15. GC15 was my first convention since the initial outbreak of Covid, so I was pretty excited. I was initially planning on running an event there, but after a lot of life stuff got in the way, I decided to attend as a player for once. Going to a convention without referee slots is quite a change of pace for me, as I have had whole trips to GenCon, where I have run three sessions daily. I did grab some pick-up play as a referee and player, though, so I guess I can’t keep away from the backside of the screen.
I got to play in about 75% of the games I had wanted to try out. Unfortunately, I missed Daniel Norton‘s Unchained sessions, but I could play several other peoples’ takes on D&D + Chainmail, so that was a fitting consolation.
I met with my pal Directsun and played face-to-face with him as he ran his Seer’s Sanctum adventure. I had played in a playtest version, but I often play in adventures I have read or run, so I have no problem playing support for the other players and maybe goading characters into trying “fun” ideas. Directsun ran the game in a very “FKR” sort of style. When players showed up to the table, he had them roll up three stats, ask for something the character is good at and is poor at, and contribute whatever else they wanted, such as background, motivation, etc. I played a braggart mercenary who was adept with a polearm but very cowardly. We got through the dungeon and were able to unleash some stuff in it that the author hadn’t experienced before, so that was a blast.
Most of the games I played were what I would recognize as what Mike Monard described in his original FKR post on the odd74 forums. I think this is a testament to the toolbox nature of D&D’s original three little brown books (and also how vague and obtuse they are, necessitating hacking, I say lovingly). Not to get too into yelling at a cloud, but I think sometimes people chase some big secret when it comes to these sub-niches of games like they need to find some perfect mechanic or principle when it is – play games with people you trust and talks about the fun you want to have. That’s an aside from the con, though.
The highlight of the convention was getting to play a session of Braunstein I with David Wesley. If you are unaware, Braunstein was a “war game” that Wesley ran for his wargaming group, which included Dave Arneson. In this game, everyone played individual characters in a tense situation. Wesley needed to come up with rulings on the fly for all the unexpected hijinks the players got up to. What he thought was a failure became the spark igniting the tabletop roleplaying hobby.
The session lasted six hours, with an hour and a half of setup and discussion. This length of time might seem like a lot. Still, it was an absolute gem of a session for me – Wesley overviewed how and why he proposed the game, the history of how it happened, and the following Braunsteins he ran to eventually arrive at the notion of what made them fun. He also gave a historical overview of the scenario behind the game – noting that many of his original players were familiar with the political situation given their wargaming, so he wanted to highlight the political and religious underpinnings of the adventure.
Wesley immediately handed out a few characters based on contributions and answers to questions he asked during the history section. For example, a player who could recite a quote from Jefferson was handed the role of a dissident student. I was “Student #3”, imprisoned with other students who had incited violence (or defended against it, per their report). I will not go into deep detail on the scenario as I know David Wesley is running this at many more conventions to come, and I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who does want to play it. My character had a cushy job and a somewhat mysterious past, and my goals related to keeping that position, not being expelled, and discovering the details of my background.
Every character had a collection of different, secret goals. While we were supposed to accomplish them, many of us found additional avenues for fun, messing with other characters, repairing or ruining extraneous situations based on the players, and hijinks.
The game is played much like one might think of as a parlor larp. We had sections of the room to represent different sections of the town – the prison, with tables representing cells, various buildings, the university, and a town square. We didn’t have all the players for every single role, so our Referee would go about the players portraying them. For example, he showed up as a corrupt guard to my cell looking for an easy payout, which my cellmates and I jumped at the chance to contribute to on promise of immediate release.
The experience was one of the best games I have played in. After the game, David Wesley signed a copy of Olde House Rules‘ Barons of Braunstein (a book he contributed the forward and some extra materials to). We also had time to discuss historic details I had questions about with the Major and players from his group. I’ll probably collect them in a future post to get further information after I correspond.
Overall, the convention was a lot of fun, definitely one of the better ones I have been to, and I don’t think that is just because it is the first I’ve attended in about three years!
In System Assumptions, I mention that there will be references to skills in the upcoming lifepath posts and various downtime procedures. If you already use a skill system, you don’t need to leave behind whatever you’re using, and you need to have a notion for succeeding, failing, critically succeeding, and fumbling. It also helps if you have a concept of how to “train” a skill – become learned in it, advance to the next category, etc.
I want to be clear that I am not saying one needs to have a skill system for old-school dungeon crawling, just that I find them useful for many of the procedures characters can take that do not involve fighting, magic, or directly manipulating objects/doors/etc.
In this post, I will provide a basic skill system for those who do not have one but want to hew closely to the proposed subsystems of Ye Olde Fantasy. Note that using skills can be somewhat contentious in adventure gaming, so it’s good to clear some principles first. These skills are abstractions – they are eliding details we either do not care about or do not require players to understand, and skills should not use skills instead of negotiating the fiction to avoid things we care about.
I often mention that I use “skills as saves,” meaning you only roll a skill check to avoid negative consequences. However, one can also argue for using a skill to gain additional benefits in appropriate situations. Skills should not roll skills without apparent consequences; the referee should rule how the fiction proceeds. Skills should not be rolled pre-emptively by the players nor called for by the referee without everyone being able to picture what is happening in the scene. If you are a player, you should tell your referee your intent for your actions and what your character is doing to achieve this, and if you are a referee, you should clearly describe what is happening and allow the players to respond in fiction.
Let’s get onto the suggested system with that pre-amble out of the way.
Skill Roll
Having played with many people from many gaming backgrounds, I find that “what do I have to roll” is one of the major stumbling blocks for new people, and with that in mind, we’ll be using Target20. I know “unified resolution” isn’t very chic with the ultra-crusty old heads, and I love using 2d6 for reaction rolls, d100 for some skills, all the xd6 stuff in TFT and HarnMaster, etc. But for ease, let’s go with a system that is “roll a d20 and try to get 20.” So we’ll be rolling:
d20 + skill level (we’ll go over that in a minute) +/- any applicable modifiers + level if the class would feasibly contribute to the task >= 20
Any roll over 20 is a success, with a natural 20 being critical, and any value lower than 20 will be a failure, with a natural 1 being a fumble.
When contesting with others, all parties roll as appropriate, and whoever succeeds with the highest total value wins, with critical successes of any value beating successes of any value.
Skills
Each skill is based on an individual D&D stat. If you prefer, you could go the Harn/OpenQuest route and use an average of two or three stats, but I have opted for one for simplicity. Most roleplaying game stats don’t make much sense when you sit down and think about them, so making Athletics be “STR + DEX” doesn’t make it any more realistic than just one or the other, although it does distribute stat importance a bit. The skill list below is a mashup of OpenQuest, Majestic Wilderlands, and Worlds Without Number – feel free to add, remove or adjust at your preference.
Administer (INT) – the “numbers” skill, planning things, logistics, going over records, stewardship, and knowledge of taxation, could even be roped into a component of the law.
Alchemy (INT) – brewing potions, making poltices, fashioning cures, turning lead into slightly not-lead.
Animals (WIS) – taking care of animals, husbandry, training, etc.
Athletics (STR) – running, jumping, climbing, sporting, etc.
Carousing (CHA) – gambling, drinking, partying.
Connect (CHA) – finding people that you are looking for
Deception (CHA) – Bluffing, lying, etc. Usually, this is used for how convincing you sound, but the actual bluff is something you should come up with as a player, if even abstractly.
Dodge (DEX) – I use this in place of mobility-based saves. If you use a saving throw system, this can be replaced with that.
Ettiquite (CHA) – knowing the ins and outs of the medieval social hierarchy, particularly useful for courtiers or dealing with the gentry and nobility.
Folk Magic (WIS) – uses of charms, simple prayers, talismans, and other “common” magics.
Herbalism (WIS) – the identification and application of herbs- a large component of my games. If you don’t feel this is justified, this can easily be combined with Alchemy or Folk Magic, or Physician.
Horsemanship (DEX) – Riding could be any animal, but I usually only require this for knightly endeavors. Peasants on a workhorse or donkey don’t need to check.
Know: Subject (INT) – The generic knowledge check per subject. I usually use this to encompass both the understanding of a subject and being able to convey it and the knowledge of how to research it. Each could be broken out, but my players rarely rolled “Study” when it was, so I merged it here. It could also be fun and thematic to break this out into Natural Philosophy and the 3 + 4 paths of Liberal Arts. I’ve debated doing as much, but people have been more into precise subjects.
Language: Specific (INT) – The ability to speak and understand verbal or somatic languages.
Lead (CHA) – Leadership, tactics, and sometimes even strategy—the warlord and hireling-manager skill.
Melee Combat (STR) – Hand-to-hand combat. If you are using a level + class system, you may not need this. If so, replace it with “fighter level (or attack-bonus) + STR.”
Notice (WIS) – general perception, awareness, etc. Often used in contests against Sneak.
Performance: Type (CHA) – Oratory, poetry, musicianship, etc.
Persuasion (CHA) – Convincing, parleying, and another social greasing. Much like Deception, this shouldn’t be a replacement for describing what and/or how your character is doing to persuade others, if even just zoomed out.
Physician (INT) – Chiurgery, medicine, and first aid.
Prayer (CHA) – Participating in and conducting religious rituals. Also utilized for divine magic. If using a class + level system, replace with “Cleric levels + CHA”
Profession: Type (varies) – When you specify your profession, discuss with the referee what the base stat should be. This should cover most crafts and trades, although very specific ones could obviously be broken out.
Ranged Combat (DEX) – Bows, crossbows, slings, etc. Much like Melee – it can be replaced with an existing combat system.
Read: Script (INT) – Understanding the written language.
Resist (CON) – I use this instead of saving throws related to poison, death, physical maladies, etc. It can be replaced with a saving throw system.
Seafaring (CON) – Boating, navigating the open sea, deep sea fishing, rope work, etc.
Sleight of Hand (DEX) – Magic tricks and thievery.
Sneak (DEX) – Lurking and skulking.
Sorcery (INT) – Casting of arcane magics, summoning and binding spirits, crafting of scrolls, etc. If you are using a class/level-based system, you might not need this and can replace any calls to it with “level + INT”
Survival (CON) – Navigating, finding food in the wilderness, cooking, and other such practices. Also, hunting and fishing, but feel free to make those separate skills if you find that helpful.
Unarmed Combat (STR) – Scratchin’, bitin’, scufflin’, and generally being physically ornery with others without using weapons.
Willpower (WIS) – My mental-based saving throw, but feel free to replace it with whatever other system you wish.
Work (CON) – General labor could be covered by a profession, but also the kind of thing anyone can do and probably become better at with practice/adaptation.
Write: Script (INT) – Communicating a language through written form.
So those are the skills I have found helpful in my games. One can continue to break out skills into more specific use cases or group them generally. I am not someone who is particularly drawn to “elegance” in design, so I am not even sure of the exact number nor the distribution of stats. That’s just me, though.
Skill Base
Each skill will have an initial base corresponding to an attribute. Adjust accordingly if your attribute range is different.
Attribute
Skill Base
3
1
4-5
2
6-8
3
9-12
4
13-15
5
16-17
6
18
7
For any skill that makes sense a character would be able to do, they “open” the skill at the above value for the skill’s corresponding stat. This is not universal among skills and is left up to the discretion of the table based on the character and their background. Not everyone can do Sorcery in most settings, for example.
Skill Training
When a character is told to “train” a skill in a lifepath, they double the value of the corresponding skills. So as an example – if a character has a 9 CHA and is told to train deception, their Skill Value for Deception becomes 8. If they are told to train a skill multiple times due to an event or lifepath, they mark it and perform a Skill Development roll instead.
A character can also receive instruction during downtime. I will post about Scholarly pursuits, but in the meantime, a shortened version is that a character can spend a season under the tutelage of an instructor. The instructor can charge upwards of 100 times the corresponding stat value that they have, and after the season, they must succeed at the skill in question to have correctly taught the character. If they succeed AND the character has yet to be “trained” in the skill, they adjust their skill value to double the value of the stat base as outlined in the table above. If they already have trained the skill, they add 1 to their skill. If the instructor fails, the character receives no adjustment.
Skill Development
When told to make a Skill Development roll, a character goes through all the skills they have marked and rolls it. If they fail to get a result of 20 or higher, the Skill Value is increased by 1. If not, the mark is erased without adjusting the value.
Skill Marks
Characters mark their skills for a development roll anytime they fumble or critically succeed at the skill. They can also mark several skills that the referee believes the character used in interesting or crucial situations throughout the adventure – learning under fire.
I have also utilized a method similar to Dungeon World, where we ask questions such as:
Did the character explore a new location?
Did the character best a significant adversary or challenge?
Was a treasure looted from an adventure site?
Were personal goals/quests of the character pursued?
Answers to any of the above allow a skill to be marked, per the referee’s discretion.
Next Steps
I know that was a lot of systems-hoopla, which I am usually not a fan of. Still, I wanted to convey a foundation of what I use in medieval fantasy campaigns that extend outside of dungeons and wildness crawls and provide a basis for the upcoming lifepath system, which references skills.
I’ve been thinking of doing a “what have I been thinking about/aware of recently” sort of slush pile to keep blogging progress, so here goes the first bit of that.
Gaming
Continuing to play Dolmenwood with my face-to-face group. We just had a session last night where the party was involved in a bunch of hijinks to use a drug as a lure to creatures from the ethereal plane so they could capture and sell them off. They didn’t do so great but it was a very fun, chaotic scenario.
My online Pendragon game continues to truck along, with the party parleying with a descendant of Vortigern during the Anarchy.
I’ve also been playing in an Age of Sigmar narrative campaign. Holy hell Age of Sigmar’s rules are kind of hot trash, but I’m having fun from a painting and community aspect.
Oh, I also ran Harnmaster 3e using a module on FoundryVTT so I didn’t have to explain the math to a bunch of players. I ran Field of Daisies, with a bunch of modifications, like making one player a wizard and another having access to religious magic. It was a lot of fun and I always love Harnmaster. The scenario kind of plays into making the situation a cave-crawl with a combat, which is fine because the players wanted to test that out, but of course were I running a longer campaign it would have been more of a last resort, I suspect.
I also played in directsun‘s B/X-y take on the classic WFRP adventure Night of Blood, an adventure I have played before but still had a fantastic time regaling party members and NPCs with the miseries of Wissenland and trying to not get sacrificed to thirsting gods.
I will be heading to GaryCon later this month to play in quite a few games, and the week after I am scheduled to run a Mythras one-shot of a kind of John Carter-esque space fantasy gladiatorial game.
News & Links
Marcia B. put out a beta version of her retroclone, Fantastic Medieval Campaigns of the 1974 original edition rules, which includes a useful appendix. While I am very much emotionally attached to the little brown books, I love the color and art of this edition and have used it during online games as the recommended pdf for players.
Wolves Upon the Coast by Luke Gearing is completed. This is one of the most exciting tabletop adventure games ever. I really need to run a longer campaign of it.
Trevor from Me Myself & Die released two videos on Harn, a setting I have quite a bit of affinity for. Here’s an overview of the setting, and here is an interview with Grant D. from Columbia Games. At some point, I’ll have to blog about my feelings on Harn the setting, because I have many – both positive and negative.
Chaosium revealed they are going to be releasing 10! Cult books for Glorantha. While I’m excited about the prospect of that, I am also aware of Chaosium time and how often they over-promise. I suppose we’ll see by GenCon how this timeline is tracking along, as there are supposed to be 3 total books by then.
There’s probably a ton more I should highlight, I need to keep more notes for this pile throughout the month. I’m not trying to be a newsletter or glatisant or anything like that though, so a few pickings that catch my eye are probably enough.
Personal
I had an accident a few weeks ago and injured my head. Fortunately, I had a CAT scan and turned out to be ok, but I have some nasty scars and healing hasn’t been the most fun. Since my other hobby aside from gaming happens to be jiu jitsu, I’ve been jumping out of my skin to get back on the mats, but am still just a little too beat up for that.
Social status plays a significant role for every character in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. Such a society has a very rigid social order, hierarchies of relationships, and classes into which people are born. This provides fictional kinetic energy in the form of players learning these structures, manipulating them, and, most significantly – clashing against them and potentially even changing them.
Keeping in theme with “Ye Olde Fantasy,” this post will not be a history lesson on medieval society. The Middle Ages were a long time, and the world a massive place – it would be impossible to generalize one structure sufficiently for every decade and region.
So, we will do what any good Referee does – handwave and wing it to the degree that it gives our players verisimilitude and interesting setting bits to interact with, but not get lost in the details. I prefer to get setting details through character creation, so before I drone about my interpretation of the three estates and other such subjects, let’s delve into using Social Status in an elf game.
Social Status Score
Every character has a score for social status – typically generated but potentially inherited. Assuming we discover our characters through dice, let’s roll them up a Social Score and see where they land in the realm. I’m assuming 3d6, but feel free to use whatever method you generate stats with – adjusting for the additional statistic if you’re using point-buy or something.
Wealthy farmer, Merchant, Guilded crafter, Important townfolk, Low clergy
16-17
+2
Prosperous
Courier, Bachelor knight, High clergy, Town official, Guild Master
18
+3
Lordly
Poor landed noble, Knight, Sherriff, Family member to high nobles or aristocracy
The chart, of course, goes much higher – High Nobility, Aristocracy, Popes & Anti-Popes, but for now, the synergy with the B/X-y modifier tables works for starting campaigns.
A Note on Categories
When looking at the rough categories above, it’s worth remembering that I am just applying a fuzzy guide for wrangling PCs and NPCs into hierarchies. In the real world, an individual’s social status may vary massively from what I propose above – some serfs could have higher status than a particularly destitute free person. On paper, a broke knight may have more social potential than a merchant, but if that merchant becomes filthy rich, they’ll start tipping the scale.
So if you drop from a 9 Social Status as a free farmer to an 8, that does not mean you necessarily become a serf, but people will treat you like the equivalent.
Starting Wealth
A super easy way to get the Social Status ball rolling is to optionally adjust a character’s starting wealth based on the result. When using old-school D&D, you can use 3d6 * 10 and then an abacus to calculate the resulting value with the multiplier.
Social Status score
Starting Wealth modifier
3
0.125
4-5
0.25
6-8
0.5
9-12
1
13-15
2
16-17
4
18
8
Reaction Modifiers
When encountering other individuals from a feudal society, the Social Status modifier (SOC) is used in addition to any other modifiers when generating reaction rolls. The Referee may call for situations where the modifier table is inverted. For example, their positive modifier may become negative when a pompous noble stumbles into a rough-and-tumble tavern and begins putting on airs.
Of course, one could impersonate someone of higher or lower status – such as through a disguise skill, which only applies when looking the part. One must also be versed in the class etiquette they are presenting as – take a -1 or -5% modifier for every level above/below your social status if rolling to play the part.
2d6 + CHA mod + SOC mod (if appropriate)
NPC Reaction
2 or less
Becomes hostile, calls for guards, demands a duel, attacks, etc.
3-5
Unfriendly, openly mocks and denigrates PC, may call for them to be ejected
6-8
Neutral, may exchange status-appropriate level pleasantries, but unlikely to be an ally or rival without further prompting
9 – 11
Indifferent, may recognize PC or accept their company for a time, could become a potential ally if appropriate and beneficial
12 or more
Friendly to the PC, may recognize them, generally amiable
After this initial disposition is set, the NPC’s mood and reaction will fluctuate based on roleplaying, and if you so wish, skill check to abstract the scene away.
Audiences and Contacts
As we can leverage the B/X Monster Reaction table for social interactions, we can utilize the hireling table for requesting an audience with an NPC or looking for someone in another social class. We use slightly different math to account for the fact that someone with higher status can pretty much demand to be seen, for better or worse.
2d6 + CHA mod + (Your SOC mod – their SOC mod)
Result
2 or less
Audience denied, NPC probably develops a disdain for the PC
3-5
Audience denied
6-8
Audience granted as long as PC provides a status-appropriate gift* or performs a favor
9-11
Audience granted
12
Audience granted, and confer an additional +1 or 5% to any social checks made in the meeting
* gifts will be getting their own little post; for now, assume 100gp times their SOC mod
Maintenance and Adjustments
While some social statuses may be gods-given (or assumed so by the populace), such as the case with the Monarch, most have to spend to retain their status, and one could even get ahead in the hierarchy by throwing around money.
Each category has a rate of living required to maintain status per month. We could adjust the interval, especially for the nobility, who were cash-poor and tended to be pretty regular. But for the purposes of a fantasy adventuring game, let’s initially keep the interval to monthly—adjust to taste with experience.
This money (whatever denomination you prefer) is abstractly “spent” to maintain the characters’ social standing.
Social Status score
Monthly Upkeep Costs
3
0cp
4-5
1gp
6-8
3gp
9-12
12gp
13-15
60gp
16-17
300gp
18
1500gp
If one cannot afford their monthly upkeep, they drop by one point of social status or multiple if the Referee determines them to be living in a particular squalor. If they spend for upkeep beyond their current status, they increase their social score by 1.
Note that this assumes peasants “earn” about 1 sp a day (and we’re assuming 100 cp = 10 sp = 1gp), which is… fine for now. Especially given the equipment costs of most of these games, we’ll have a whole big post on the economy that will reframe and revise this.
The 3 Estates Spiel
I highly recommend reading Skerple’s OSR: The Three Estates (although note his own “ranking” is not our Social Status score), or if you have the time, a history book or course. Tl;dr is that there are “Three Estates” that categorize society into three roles:
First Estate: the Clergy
Second Estate: the Nobility
Third Estate: the Commoners
These estates break down further depending on where and when you have differences between Barons and Dukes, Low Clergy and High Clergy, rural peasants and urban townsfolk, etc.
You also have many examples that do not fit neatly into the hierarchy – outlaws, for instance. You might categorize them as the third estate, but they operate literally outside the law and that estate’s assumed role and responsibility. The monarch sits outside (or perhaps above) this hierarchy, but you can shove them on top of the second estate. You also have clashed with the rise of urbanization and mercantilism, where very wealthy peasants began twisting the above assumptions and sometimes even buying their way into the nobility.
We also have yet to answer where fantastical elements fit – elves, wizards, wildland barbarians, and other oddities. I will have a whole post on wizards and what you could do with them, but for now, let’s assume they operate as members of the third estate but are often of higher status as they will play the archetypical advisor role to many nobles. For dwarves and goblins, assume that human feudal society will slot in the outside to whatever equivalent category they have. Elven Exarch of the Yewwood Realm might be considered a Noble, so assign appropriately. “Barbarians” and fantasy nomads – rural folk who operate outside of the feudal system, would probably also slot into their equivalent, but probably a whole category lower (so a “wildlands huscarl” who could arguably be the equivalent of a bachelor knight would be in the “well off” category instead).
Since you are making your setting, you do not have to get super precise (as it was not in the real world). Just know that I’m going to roughly assume a category of Priests and Temples of whatever faith who serve to guide the spiritual well-being of the realm, violent landlords who “protect” the realm, and a class of individuals who do not fit into the above and have to do the work.
Backgrounds
This system will play heavily into two background systems I use for character generation: quick and detailed. Both of these require their post, but for now, this should give an impression of what background a PC could come from, given the rough category. Go with your intuition and talk to your players if questions arise. While I don’t have a real plan or structure for these posts the character generation methods most likely will occupy a large portion of the next few or many or forever posts, judging by the number of notes I have on them.
Ye Olde Fantasy‘s tools are system-neutral – I have run many campaigns in my pseudo-medieval setting using various rules – Original Dungeons & Dragons, Into the Odd, Basic Role-Playing, OpenQuest, and often a freeform Free Kriegsspiel style game.
So, it would be easy for me to handwave and say, “Just run this however you’re going to run it,” but I have been on the reader side of such text before, which has always frustrated me. I will not write a whole new system, but I will tell you what I will assume. I will also explain why I rule situations the way I do, so hopefully, this will broaden the applicability of these systems with a bit of interpretation.
I will assume you’re running something like a variant of old-school Dungeons & Dragons, one of its more stripped-down cousins like Into the Odd or Cairn, or a version of RuneQuest/BRP. If you’re not – then you’ll need to adjust these tools, but I will guide you with the intent of each system to make that easier.
Attributes
I assume you’re running a game with an attribute equivalent. What those are doesn’t matter much other than they represent your character—typical stuff like Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, and the other usual suspects. I suggest adding an attribute (if your game does not have it) in Social Status, which will get its own post.
In some places, I may say, “Make a Strength check.” This might be a d20 roll under, maybe it is Strength x 5 on a d%, or perhaps you don’t have a “Strength” score and use tags with 2d6 vs. 8, and you decide your tag of “Brawny” applies +1. Whatever that may be, you need a way to make a check against this stat and get success, failure, critical success, or critical failure. I’ll say what I do in these situations, but I suspect you already have your version of such checks.
Skills
Here’s a contentious topic for the old-school D&D crowd. I will mention skills in a few places. For example, as part of lifepaths, I may say, “Take Athletics,” or “Roll Lore to try to get into the Academy lifepath” with pass/fail events. I use skills in a lifepath generation system, as well as downtime. I’m not telling you that you must use an extensive skill list; note how they’re used in their particular subsystem. If you instead prefer to have a background tag, then when you roll up that you were a Turnipmancer, you can write that as a tag on your sheet and trust your table to rule that you’re able to do Turnipmancy effectively without the discrete skill.
Since BRPs already have a skill system, I’ll propose a system for use with old-school D&D if you wish (of course, aside from the Search and Listen at Door and Thief Skills and all other skills already existing in D&D :P). The tl;dr, if you don’t want to wait for/read that post, is “use the Traveller-style system that Kevin Crawford uses, like in Wolves of God or Worlds Without Number.”
Saving Throws
Saving throws are also mentioned but in a general, non-specific fashion. I may say, “Make a save vs. poisoning by your chancellor”- likely to be D&D’s classic Save vs. Poison. In OpenQuest, this is the Resilience skill. Sometimes, I’ll get more out there; I know I have a “save vs. your cottage being burned down,” which might be Save vs. Breath. Or it’s a skill check to stamp out the fire. I enjoy leaving it as an exercise for the player to say how they respond, but that might be annoying, so I might get more precise as I write these. Comment when these come up if they infuriate you.
Classes
While I love D&D’s archetypical class system, I no longer play too many campaigns with it, preferring to let everyone do everything (in the context of how they play). So, I will not make assumptions about any specific class, but I will suggest a few places where the B/X standard classes may come into play if you use them. For example – when to take a class using the lifepath character generation system, adding Magic-User levels to the Summoning or Alchemy systems, etc.
Levels & Experience
Hand in hand with classes – I will not assume levels but mention where they could apply. Levels are a great abstraction, mainly when using classes, but they are optional for the kinds of games I run. Any form of advancement and progress should work hand-in-hand with these. It’s your game, and it can be great to get your table on board with the “goal” of the game through an advancement scheme. But you can also eschew that and trust players will strive for what we all find interesting.
Onward
That covers it, so let’s move on to our first proposed subsystem for use in a pseudo-medieval fantasy game – the Social Status attribute.
“Ye Olde Fantasy“ is my working title for a long-running project to build up a pseudo-medieval toolkit for fantasy adventure gaming. This supplement provides games with quasi-historical flair but is not obligated to complete accuracy. There is a place for historical accuracy, but I am looking for games of dungeoneering that progress into Crusader Kings plus wizards and dwarves.
I am by no means a historian. While my bookshelf overflows with pop history books, and I have taken classes on medieval history and done many of the usual video lectures on the period, I am a novice. While reading a book or watching a course, I often must completely reverse my basic assumptions. So, take my claims with a massive grain of salt, and please let me know where I can improve.
Playing in quasi-medieval settings for fantasy gaming has always appealed to me. There is something to swords and sorcery, given that its tropes predate the hobby and still dominate it. Still, other exaggerations of the “Middle Ages” add further enrichment and impetus for fantasy hijinks. Weird hierarchies of agreements, often broken or betrayed. Peculiar forms of taxation with charming loopholes. A large church is swinging its weight around with varying degrees of success. Schisms and Anti-Popes. Saintly relics and Chaucer-esque pilgrimages. Peasant revolts.
And most importantly to me – a slightly more focused attention on how society works. The implied setting of OD&D is a fantastic fever dream I love to return to repeatedly, but it does not feel like people could function in it. Not that I think you need such attention to detail – the implied worlds of classic D&D have stood the test of time. Still, I am not the first to feel this way – there is an anecdote that Greg Stafford, acquiring an early commercial copy of the game, wondered how people could live in such a world. It does for me what I Cast Light sometimes refers to as “French Vanilla Fantasy” – where you have shared, accessible assumptions and twist them just enough to make it feel unique or unusual.
I decided to stop pretending I would write these as a tightly edited book. I have very little time for my other hobbies. By turning them into posts, I can produce them quicker, and while they may be a bit janky, they’ll at least be what I’m using at the table. Feedback is greatly appreciated.
Isn’t D&D already medieval? No, it’s not: this post covers some great reasons. Why not play a system more oriented toward this style? Why not HarnMaster, Chivalry & Sorcery, the Osprey Games, Mythras, or OpenQuest? That gets right to the heart of these tools. They do not have pilgrimage generators, no means for building a barony, or other flavorful procedures. These posts are my take on providing such systems.
In the next post, I will discuss some mechanical, system-level assumptions. These tools are system-neutral but come with some baked-in assumptions related to adventure gaming.
The Merry Mushmen recently released CRACK! A “Barely/eXplained” Creative Commons adventure game brimming with a lot of cool art and an excellent empowering, DIY attitude. So far, I’ve only looked through the main book, but they have ten additional books of resources, such as more jobs, monsters, and advice.
If you’re in the market for a new tabletop adventure game, I highly recommend checking out CRACK! Below is the embedded link to their post, along with all the resources:
