How to Run Your First OSR Campaign if You're Coming From One D&D | 5e | 5.5 | 6e
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- Опубліковано 26 жов 2022
- #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #dnd5e
I got the idea for this video from Greg Stafford, who in a comment in my last video asked for “Suggestions for an adventure for a newbie to try older system where I’d take players who have only players 5e?” So I decided to answer it here, talking about how best to start an OSR style campaign using all that we learned over the years. Don't do it the old way that we used to, but do it in the old school style. Two different things. I hope you enjoy the video.
My original video is here:
Not Happy with One D&D 5e 5.5 6e ? Check Out the OSR! An Introduction
• Not Happy with One D&D...
Links to videos referenced in this one:
Erik Tenkar of Tenkar’s Tavern: The OSR is NOT What We Remember it to Be - How Many Sandboxes or Hex Crawls Did You Run?
• The OSR is NOT What We...
Greyhawk Grognard Joe Bloch did a video on it: How did you Play D&D Back in the Day?
• How did you Play D&D B...
Benoist Poire: Tabletop RPG Talk: The OSR is not like it was "Back Then"
• Tabletop RPG Talk: The...
I hope you enjoy the video! If you do, please hit the like button, share it out, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss my new videos. Please leave a comment! I respond to all comments made on UA-cam :)
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The way to do sandbox is to ask the players at the end of each session what they plan to do next session.
That’s one part of it. But there’s more to it than that
This is such a good way to go about it. There is this thought that DMs are either supposed to prepare hundreds of pages of potential encounters or be gods of improv, when it’s just the very first session that starts off a specific way. At the end of the session the PCs talk about what quest/rumor they want to persue. This way the DM can prep in a direction, instead of having to prep 100 possible things.
Yup. We’re not kids anymore with infinite time on our hands. It’s a matter of respect mostly. Respect for everyone’s time
Correct. And ask them to lock it in.
Another great part of the OSR is how inexpensive many OSR games are, many are free.
Agreed! It’s not about the money for most of us.
What would be some good games?
@@belyy_rusky old-school essentials, basic fantasy, sword and wizardry, and (not technically but still is in spirit) dungeon crawl classics
Gygax had advice to just pick options that made sense. Pick the monster, pick the treasure. It was always supposed to be a mix. The random tables was there for when you didn’t have time or the cart went off the track.
The west marches game needs a lot of competing players to work how communicated. You make options that aren’t flesh out and are basically just hooks. Then the players would plan expeditions and the DM set a date with enough time to prepare. Part of it was competition to get to the dungeons first. It doesn’t translate to a four person party the same way. The west marches DM was servicing many players.
I don’t think it matters how big of a town you pick really. Most of it comes down to the descriptions and narration. You’d make about the same number of PC’s. You might know everyone in a small town but you can’t know everyone in the city. You know just the people around you. You can make the very same list of important people. The trick is it might just be a neighborhood.
I honestly you included too much stuff. You need a starting safe place and a place to adventure. I would agree you should eventually have everything mentioned but you don’t have to start there.
I think it’s fine to have a smaller scope. Generally you get a good idea of the direction of the party and can plan out in the direction they’re headed. If they’re headed abroad, you detail neighboring countries. If they’re sticking to the city, you detail more NPC’s and city locations.
Gygax suggested you have the next dungeon level prepared for the party so they can head lower if they need. He also suggested a changing map or things that would take work to remove like a cave in blocking progress. Similar things could be used in non dungeon settings.
I think there’s one thing I like about old school play that isn’t mentioned much. It’s that players set the difficulty and choose the risk they want to accept.
It’s a feature of exp for gold. Since treasure is the motivation, you can risk going deeper in the dungeon for a bigger payout. Do you keep exploring just a bit more hoping to find treasure when you’re low on resources or cut and run to heal up and have to fight your way back through?
I think you can get a player picked difficulty other ways but I haven’t heard a good alternative. It’s true higher level monsters give more exp in later editions. However, in earlier exp for gold systems you could avoid the monsters and score the treasure. Letting you risk deadly encounters you’d have to run from to find lucrative treasure.
My group never bought modules, so the published adventures never really gave us the direction for how it was supposed to be played. It was 90s for us, not the 80s so the Gazeteer series was a big influence on us. Lots of hex crawling with delving into ruins we'd find along the way. Exploration was the main thing. Our hex map was blank at the start of the campaign and we'd filled the thing in with colored pencil a couple years later and it felt good.
That’s awesome. Hope you saved it and had it laminated!
@@Joethelawyer One of our other players was the one who got it, and I don't know if he ever thought to get t laminated. I should probably ask when i see him again
T1Village of Homlet continues to inspire me. There are so many good stories to explore outside of what the module focuses on.
For example I recently ran a murder mystery involving a setting very like Homlet. By adding a dead messenger and letting the players "discover" the body, they were instantly "hooked" and started investigating without being hired by anyone. Victim, culprit, motive, this is all you really need for an evening or two of fun. By the time the players solve the mystery, other potential challenges will have presented themselves.
My brother is running us through a reskinned TOEE adventure now. Its fun to go back. Same names, different motivations and agendas of the villagers. Pretty neat!
I like the idea of a campaign setting is the village of homlet where other players are fighting the ToEE but the players are working on something else.
Props to mentioning both Peter Zeihan and Baron de Ropp. 👍
I like to read. What can I say haha
I just ordered the entire catalog of Old School Essentials material, I plan on converting my D&D5e group over to OSR. You are one of the first people I watched on this subject, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
My B/X and AD&D games were sandbox, I used B2 as a starting point.
I really like the pre-determined random encounters idea!
It does take a lot of work off you and helps you make the encounter better with prep time
My return to DMing I gave the players their binding background that they met in the military and one moved to a village to be its blacksmith. He had a letter written (he can’t read or write) to his buddies to come help rescue the daughter of a beloved farmer who was kidnapped. I had an idea of what the kidnappers wanted and that was about it. It became a full blown adventure for two years just in the surrounding community and still more to come. And it took little effort.
Yeah you don’t need to have a big area. It just has to be intimate. I played in one game for a couple years and never got beyond like a day from the main village
@@Joethelawyer I was going to use my AD&D Saltmarsh modules when one player shared the 5e version. There was more laid out in this one. Being me, I simply used it as a template (as I have with all modules because I never know what they do) and I have created a location filled with innumerable plots and twists that can be a base of operations for numerous parties. And yet I desire them to explore beyond. And being that Marsh Harbor (Saltmarsh was an old fishing village of ancient history now) is a port town, there is international influence and intrigue. So yeah, we do use more of what we learn in life as 50 year old men compared to our teen years!
Yup as a teen I would have played it as written because that’s what the rules say to do lol.
Truly inspiring (independent of the OSR byline). Great tips on RPG adventure and fostering role-play mentality. Whirlwind introduction to world-building basics, leveraging what you’ve got. Great sample maps without overdoing it. Love the tips on making a mega-dungeon into “a living, breathing environment” (@25min). Oodles of GM wisdom. Well done and… TY!
Thanks so much! I’m glad you liked it. 😁
Back in the 80's we did a mix of hex crawl, TSR modules and dungeons that we created. The plot was never very complicated. Mostly hack and slash. I think the only difference now, if I would run something now, it would still be a sandbox in the sense that the players pretty much guide the plot but things that happen would be more logical. If there is a dungeon there would be a good reason for one rather than just some weird dungeon plopped into the game for no good reason.
I agree. It all has to make sense now. Random never really appealed to me even as a kid
Hi Joe, I just discovered your channel and am quite enjoying it. I'm also an OG, and played my first D&D game in '80 or '81 (memory fades), but veered off into other genres and systems before finally returning to my first love during the pandemic (and finally dragging my similarly long-toothed group into the 21st century and the wonders of VTTs).
Anyway, I just wanted to do my part for the algorithm and express my appreciation for repping us old-timers on the UA-cams. Cheers!
Thanks so much! I hope it wasn’t a hard adjustment to get the old bastards onto the VTT. 😁
Brother you nailed it. You described exactly what I’ve been doing - much more eloquently than I could. Keep up the content!
Thanks man! I’m glad you liked it. One of the best parts of this UA-cam thing is finding like minded people. 😁
I'm happy to see someone using Forgotten Realms as it should be- a toolbox and set of resources rather than a scripted, metaplot-driven backdrop for NPC Theatre that it has become in the days since the Old Grey Box. A lot of people rag on it as a setting but there's so much good to be mined there, not least of which are the amazing maps. I personally like to set things in Damara- my own little undeveloped corner of the Realms that I've made my own.
Yup. Grey box and the first few books are all I really used.
@@Joethelawyer recently acquired a copy of the gray box in great condition for $20. Quite the deal
Wow that’s a steal!
@@Joethelawyer got Spelljammer and Greyhawk Gold box in even better condition for the same price as well.
Nice find man!
oldschool means different stuff to everyone but the more of your thoughts I hear the more your ideas resonate with the game I'm trying to set up
Excellent! Glad to hear it. 😎
Back in the day we used to run campaigns based on Fantasy novels we read. Usually we would read the same books so we all knew the the world history, setting etc. and those worked out real well. I read everything Conan all the novels plus Savage sword of Conan the old magazine sized black & white comics. YES! The rules always felt sketchy and we were never sure if we were playing it completely right but we had a blast for years. Good times!
I loved Ray Feist's Midkemia stuff, but never knew he had Midkemia stuff published as dnd supplements until I was an adult. I'd have loved to play in his world,
Cannot wait to hear about your Grim-Dark campaign. Thanks for making this video for there are terrific nuggets throughout.
As I have grown tired of the ultimate never can die hero mentality and I will adopt “No bodies from no where”.
This has been very helpful with ideas to begin world building
Thanks man!!
Really inspiring video! Made me want to gi and get to work. Kinda had to hit pause after you talked about designing a starter village. I wanna make sure I master the foundational aspects first. Keep up the good work!
Thanks man!
You note in your video that if you didn't go to conventions you just played with your own little group. I guess I was lucky growing up in Southern California in the 1960s to 1980s that we had multiple of game shops as well where we gamed. So our little groups weren't all that little. Sure I had some junior high and high school groups that formed into friendships. I also had groups who formed from those game shops and there was melding between the various groups and meeting new people. Plus the college groups and soon after for me the groups I joined or formed during the long period I spent in the military.
Plus all the varied ttrpg magazines from the 1970s onward that I read which also informed how we played or gave us new ideas. Then, as you mentioned were conventions of various sizes which impacted on sharing gaming experiences and what we knew or learned etc. I frequently find that people who weren't there or who were but had a narrow experience coming off as quite definitive as to what was an what wasn't. Any anyone who offers different is told they are wrong. I gotta admit that it's been a bit frustrating to run across on forums, UA-cam, Reddit, Discord etc.
Anyhow, the late great Greg Stafford was never a dull person to listen to or read gaming opinions, experience etc from. So I'm always glad to see him get a mention and recognition. Anyhow, I ended going off on a rambling rant, sorry about that. interesting video, I love listening to others take on running and playing ttrpgs even if I don't always agree.
Edit: Forgot to mention, some really good advice in the video, good stuff for new players/GMs.
Thanks for taking the time to write
Such a good post man!
The idea of writing the future history is awesome!
I figure it adds a baseline to everything that happens. If you write the future history as if the players weren’t there, you have all the pieces in play in the region and know how they all interact. Once you have that it’s far easier to see how the pc’s actions affect everything. Thanks for listening and commenting! 😁
Really helpful advice, thank you. I’ve had a lot of success running sci-fi campaigns and making the setting feel vibrant and alive, but having a hard time transferring that over to a fantasy system. When you said that dungeons are there but not the focus it really clicked together for me.
Thanks man! Glad it helped!
Name's "Bun-Wah." And the last name is like "Pwah-rey". Ah well ... lol. BEN is just fine, man. Thanks for the mention!
Great video!
Thanks Ben! Sorry for mangling it too so bad. 😁
@@Joethelawyer You actually pronounce it alright somewhere after the first try! LOL
I’ll say the best tip for running an ol’ school game (any type of game really) is assembling a group of players that compliment each other. After that is figuring out the tone of the game and matching the number of players to that tone. If you’re doing heroics or gonzo or more slapstick, a larger number of players is easier, but I’ve noticed that consistent player engagement in a more grounded and serious game is tough with a large table.
Agreed. I'm going to try and merge the streams here with the 2e game, bringing in people who like OSE and 5e. should be interesting. :)
I also had a paper route during the time that I was playing Basic Rules red box D&D back in the 80's. Great times.
If I saved more money instead of spending it all on candy I’d be skinnier and have more older Dnd books lol
@@Joethelawyer Winter in Cleveland was rough delivering papers on a bicycle when I was a kid. I eventually saved a bit more of my $1 tips per customer and bought the Expert Blue box.
That’s where I got most of my money as a kid too
Lots of great ideas in here. I've been thinking about "time passage" in game and this gives me some ideas.
Great advice on the "townies" too.
Thanks man! Glad you enjoyed it. 👍
in case anyone wanted to see the channel of the geopolitics analysis you mentioned, it's the channel Dungeon Masterpiece
Yes! Thanks. I couldn't remember the name and just moved along. :)
The biggest OSR myth is that we used to avoid combat back in the day. Maybe some groups did but mine didn’t. We brawled.
yeah us too :)
My group had an encounter in a circus tent with a lich and several golems while the entire thing was on fire and people were screaming.
It was a 6 hour fight.
My favorite module is B1. Some years ago, I decided to prove how good it is to my current players. So I wrote a fantasy campaign using the Hero system, complete with a history which included Zelligar and his mate and incorporated B1 as the only 'dungeon', having stripped out all the monsters and added some undead to suit the setting. B1 is far better than anything else I have from early Basic/Advanced D&D.
I’ve never tried it. Have you bought the goodman games combo of b1 and b2? It’s a good book. Lots of good and interesting info in there
@@Joethelawyer Oh, I have the original!
Nice
We mostly did sandboxes in AD&D. I’m sure we were messing up all kinds of stuff but we didn’t know better and it’s not like the internet was over our shoulder to tell us we were wrong
Yup! I had no clue what i was doing because i just played with only a couple friends and never went to cons.
Hi Joe Just found your channel. I remember talking to you and your brother on the Tavern discord when you were starting your Anchor podcast.
Glad to have found you again. Love the style of your posts here on YT. Keep up the good work!
Thanks buddy! Glad you’re here! More firepit shows when it gets warmer. 🥃😂
I have a campaign Sandbox I have been running for 21 years, the most recent campaign is 4 years old, I started everyone out Elderscrolls style, amnesia, slaves in a cage, no equipment. They escape and build lives, trying to figure out what happened to them and why they were enslaves, uncovering large plots, and so on, in the mean time, every quest they do, large and small effect everything. I track all their relevant actions and how they solve problems, some of their characters have even become villains as a result of consequences over time.
As an example, one character makes a deal with an Efreet for it to destroy an undead horde the party released when they were tomb robbing. The deal was that if he did, the Efreet could use the characters body as his holding vessel so he was no longer bound to his Mausoleum. Overtime the characters soul becomes corrupted and his body becomes fiendish, he eventually fails enough saves over the course of 2 years of the campaign (7 years in game later) that I take his character sheet and he tries to kill the party.
I always make sure there are long term consequences for all major actions, and make sure there is a rolling cast of characters they have to choose from (I also have a large 9 player group). Right now, 4 years in, the game timeline is 25 years later, and the party is hunting down some of the old characters from earlier on, as well as some of their equipment, in order to resolve some of the plot hooks they created by accident.
Some of the older characters are retired, some are running a guild they started and are expanding it, and one has become a King of a nation they helped found. But it all started with them as slaves in a cage, and was a long burn toward greatness.
the last 4 years we have been using a heavily modified 5e (I would argue that its not even 5e anymore TBH), I never use prebuilt modules any more, though I will likely be incorporating the Marmoreal Tomb from Benoist Poire here soon.
Sounds like you do it just like I do man. I also like the time jumps. The campaign im wrapping up is like 4.5 years out time but like 8 in the campaign timeline. Sometimes time just passes and you ask the players what their characters would have done this winter. Even more fun to roleplay out some of that stuff. Good way for the world to progress around them and you get more interesting plothooks when they start up again
I don't remember any elder scrolls game starting with amnesia or slavery.
@@Ravum "Prisoners" mostly, but Daggerfall starts you in a cave with implied amnesia and Arena starts you as an implied gladiatorial slave if I remember correctly
@@Ravum Also, thread necromancy much? lol
There are some good reasons and times for the sandbox - I remember campaigns when we as a party explored Waterdeep - there were some plot items that happened and we had fun. But each session is a chance to experience an adventure so a good group of players also what to make some progress on the campaigns adventure. We also did Temple of Elemental evil and it was good in its own way. Thanks for the overview and the history. We played in Forgotten Realms and avoided the railroads. I’m looking now to get back in OSR - hopefully I can find a group.
Join some forums and facebook groups and I'm sure you'll find peeps to play online with buddy. Good luck!
I enjoyed running UK2 The Sentinel & UK3 The Gauntlet in the mid 80s and I'm currently running converted versions using 5e. They are perfect for doing a "Modern OSR" game.
Surprisingly I don’t remember ever running or playing in a UK module. I have a bunch. Just never used them
My first game shop back in 1998 when I was 21 years old when only AD&D was around along with TMNT, White Wolf/World of Darkness (WoD):Vampire and a few others. Then WotC Star Wars 3e hit my area before 3e D&D did. So we applied Star Wars skill check ranks to D&D, cause in a way all of Star Wars PC star out as N/PC. So we played a few games as the N/PCs and have multiple characters within the same village/town. Other than militia training, catching frogs for diner, and killing large vermin such as rat & spiders it is all very low key. Everyone has a day job. As militia they have to do road patrol, which leads to bandit/goblin ambush or a murder/monster kills one of their back up N/PCs.
Base on the campaign type, the PC are invested as the N/PC of the place they live in.
Switch it up, role play the N/PC running from the monster as survival horror, role play the monster making the kill, and finish it off as the hero killing the monster. They are more afraid of said monster cause they know what the monster can do firsthand.
Interesting approach, being PC's as a night job basically. :)
@@Joethelawyer Did multiple games where everyone draw index cards for their prewritten PC, sometimes multiple cards if I am sending them through a meat grinder survival horror game.
a.) Players PCs are 2nd to 4th-level multiclass characters such as rogue1/npc Expert1 with 8ranks in a given skill Profession( sailor, fish processor, or you can pack salt pork like nobody else's business which as a rogue you can make quick raids for supplies.) Craft skills and such.
It is a late night and you have to deal with a rat problem on the docks and warehouses, some strange reason the rats start to swarm, and you end up fighting a small squid monster. Mixing up Poe & Lovecraft themes. Turns out that happens a few times at night each month, so most people always travel in pairs.
b.) Started off players in the middle of the action or start of the dungeon, why they got there doesn't matter, play with the suspense. Two level dungeon with dry rotted wood floors being 30ft by 60ft, equipment being leather pull up cover alls, hand hammer/axes " carpenter hatchet " light rod/club " yard stick," yeah they found out they were carpenters checking out the basement of their babysitter/ schoolteacher with their reward being fresh bake cookies. After they found the missing dog and killing a bunch of large insects and rats.
Flip a coin for starting level being rogue for the most skill points, Toughest PC was multiclass rogue1/fighter1/barbarian1/ranger1 and this PC has anger issues despite growing up in a walled fishing port. All PCs are village militia members. Plot twist after the adventure they slowly find out their babysitter school teach is a mind flayer on of the town's secret lords to protect the area. Now everyone rolls for Psionic wild talents. Another in game reason why they had full hp per class level was cause the mind flayer has been bio engineering them since they were grade school children using Metamorphism psionic power.
Other than the optional rules for starting PC with 3rdE with max Hp at fist level. Any time I hand out cards with 4th-level PC with max hp for all classes, they know they just walk into a meat grinder.
Dungeon/ basement starting point, rotted staircase that risks breaking as PC slowly walk down it. Or just sit on the ledge, turn around and hand hang for a two foot drop for no dmg. The fighter/tank failed two Reflex saves of DC:10 and fails through the stair and takes full 1d6 falling dmg with the stair coming down on him for another 1d4dmg. Everyone laugh that it was a good thing I handed out max hp cause the dice seems not to like no one at the moment. Otherwise if we did this adventure at 1st-level the fighter would already be dead just walking/ falling into the dungeon.
c.) It is a bit cruel having a player PC a town guard with a newborn with penalties on Spot checks cause he is missing sleep. And it is his turn to go on road patrol for the next four days. Doesn't seem very heroic but a good set up for a Lovecraft horror story.
That’s pretty wild man. :)
Great content advice! Thanks! Subscribed!
Thanks very much! Glad you liked it. 😁
Just starting a new campaign in a new setting and I am so looking forward to just having an area map with some interesting points, a starting town, some factions with relationships, some tables for things to find around (which I totally agree about rolling beforehand unless you want some surprise as a GM) a few things going on for players to get started with and pursuing the characters’ interests.
I’ve got a few modules and one page dungeons to drop around that I want to adapt, but mostly just homebrew.
I did spend time fleshing out the geopolitics and sociopolitical culture of the region along with a bit of history as well.
For “real” NPC’s, I have a macro set up to roll across a bunch of tables that will give me a personality, a drive, and a few physical details and a name all rolled together which has made my life so much easier.
Whatever works for you man. The beginning is really a special time in a campaign!
Joe, this was absolutely mint advice
Thanks! I'm glad you liked it man. Anything else you're looking for in terms of content ideas? Please let me know!
in Questing Beasts video "Early DnD was a open-world tabletop MMORPG" at 4.42 he says "... one of the most mind-bending and little-known rules in all of dnd- both original and advanced dnd recommend that between sessions time for pcs in the game world should pass at the same rate as real world time. Was it a week since you last played? Then a week has elapsed in the game world. This rule was virtually unheard of for decades even though it's actually right there in the dmg even among people in the old school renaissance movement is not well known at all and it's only recently that people have been rediscovering it and the implications of the always on campaign. To be fair gaiax mentions this rule in an offhand parenthetical in the middle of another paragraph so it's not like he was really drawing a lot of attention to it once you stop freezing time between sessions your setting becomes more like an actual other world that simply exists on its own terms. For a lot of players this is incredibly exciting and motivates them to return to the world as often as possible and keeps them thinking about what might be going on there in their absence it can be a huge boon to your world building as well. By implementing this rule your setting will actually move forward in time and develop there's breathing room for seasons to pass, for factions to make their moves and armies to slowly march toward their destinations. Most modern dnd campaigns move at such a breakneck pace that when groups look back they sometimes realize that they've gone from level one nobodies to virtual demigods over the course of a couple of weeks of game time. Which doesn't make a lot of sense. "
What are your thoughts on this concept of having a non-pausable world? I think it forces players to seriously get back to a safe environment before "logging off" or ending the session.
I don’t like it at all. Goes against everything in how I run my games. If you’re gonna do dungeon crawls west marches style then fine. I don’t run games like that though
just found your page, really enjoying the videos. I listen to these while im making dice. Im totally stealing your cambion/tiefling bloodwar idea with one tweak.. I already have a player running a tiefling... any PC tiefling is considered a "half breed" where the ones you described are "pure blooded" and they kinda look down on them.. i Have some mechanic ideas i have to work out, but great stuff, thanks for doing these.
Thanks very much Ross! Glad you liked it. If all goes well I’ll have a new video out tonight or tomorrow. Everything seems to be going sideways today 🤦♂️
Thanks, this was really helpful.
You’re welcome! Glad you liked it 😁
OMG, Waldenbooks. That brings me back. I may have done similar as far as spending hours reading game books in there.
It was the only place we could
Ride our bikes too haha
I was playing with a group of my neighborhood friends back in the late 80s and early 90s, but usually we just ran material from some of the different modules, if they looked interesting. Or, I would write something that followed a similar pattern, and then ran them through it. It was also mostly "Episodic."
There is something to be said for episodic stuff. Back then episodic modules meant one shots not connected to the setting or to each other. Nowadays I look as episodic as ones not connected to any greater regional story that’s going on. Like a random encounter, but a full adventure. Sort of like a monster if the week episode on the x-files. But they are still connected in ways to the region the pc’s are in. Not just to any big story like I have going on.
I've mostly run sandboxes with some being hex crawls though one-shots (like convention or gameday adventures) could be more scripted but often went off the rails and became sandboxy. 😄
Those are often the most fun. 😂
What I usualmy plan is pepper some events. Any deviation is noted as threads for a followup and this usuamly gives me a good idea what to do. I also ask for feedback from players. Not sure if this is good. I do fumble it a bit but that is the fun of the learning process I think.
the return of the lazy dungeon master is an excellent book for this
Rule systems exist to give the group an agreed upon framework for the game -- so everyone knows what the bounds are. Yes, rules can also affect the style of game, but a DM can always run a game in a certain style regardless of rules. I run what I think of as "old school" D&D, inspired by tropes from Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, but using 5e rules. Dragonlance was released under the *AD&D* -- that is, "1st edition" -- rules. But as you pointed out, its style was "heroic" fantasy rather than "sword and sorcery" fantasy. All the current hand-wringing over D&D rules boils down to something you mentioned early on -- we didn't have a globally connected community at our fingertips, we played locally and played the way we wanted to play. We didn't argue over the "right way" to play, though we may not have agreed on various rulings. I am beyond thrilled that D&D is embraced by so many different people enjoying roleplaying as a hobby. I love that there are so many styles and approaches to playing and that new ideas have emerged. But most of all, I love that nothing can ever stop me and my friends from enjoying and playing the game the way we prefer to play.
well said steve!
This is really helpful, my man. Thanks.
Happy to be of service man! Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Every sub helps. 😎
@@Joethelawyer What are some more good OSR resources? UA-cam, blogs, etc.?
@michaelcremin6496 that’s a damn good question man. One I should have an answer to or a video for. I’ll make that my next video after the one I drop tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration
@@Joethelawyer I am the wind beneath your wings, my brother
Benoiste Poire would be pronounced Ben-Wa Pwa-hour closest ;) Glad to discover your channel. :)
Thanks man. I tend to mangle every name haha
@@Joethelawyer I only get the right way because I live in Canada and speak French ;) Anyways, instant subscribe for me mate. Great video :)
@@beargenxgm thanks man!
Weird. Back in the day we had no interest in modules. One of the first things I did was create a world on hexagon paper and let my players wander through it; filling it out ahead of them as best I could because the episodic dungeon thing just made no sense. had no idea I was doing an ex crawl and that they were creating the world as they went along which they did
having said that we've come a long way since 1975 and you're right we shouldn't play osr the same way we did, we can do a lot better and create a much more interesting and immersive game experience. You're making great points here!
Thank you! I wish I had that same experience as you back then. I did the duke thing. Didn’t know there was any other way really. Maybe if I started with b1 or b2 instead of palace of the silver princess I would have
Lol, Until I saw a Judges Guild ad or some such in Dragon Magazine, I don't think I knew modules existed back then.
Greeneporte was actually quite fun. it was a port city trade hub on an island run by a capitalist elven merchant prince. you had to take a boat to get to most adventuring hubs. i use level zero for fresh off the farm. a level 1 PC is probably experienced enough to be a relatively fresh journeyman in their field, but not old enough to have too much world experience. for example, a level 1 PC probably has some friendly connections, but also a rival, an enemy and a local reputation in their home town. like a level 1 rogue isn't a master of an assassins guild or ninja clan, but is probably an accomplished junior investigator for the neighborhood watch or a bandit who survived thier first handful of raids. like a level 1 character has their own hook, but they don't have a novel for a backstory. which is where godbound style fact systems come in. you get so many backstory facts at 0 level and a fact every level or few after pertaining to your adventures.
Sounds interesting. Thanks! I’ll look it up!
@@Joethelawyer a fun collaborative hub from a friend's campaign that didn't last due to schedule conflicts.
I hate it when good games fall apart
I like how you're describing my game style. I think I'm curious to know what else you might have to say.
Subscribe for more! As the 2e campaign gets going I'll be posting more videos on my prep and everything about it :)
I've red Matt Finche's Old School Primer. Good read.
I consider Matt to be the Godfather of the OSR.
"It's not Zamfir Master of the Flute." OMG LOL!!!
Long live zamfir!
We had the exact same problem trying to play dragonlance
I had to change around soooo much to make it make sense that it was ridiculous.
I think the only thing I keep thinking about after watching your video is... So much of it sounds like it's only for You, the GM. Like it's stuff the players won't ever see, world-building for world-building sake. Maybe if all of these details are a sentence at the most, otherwise the players won't really be able to notice unless you fumble and tell them.
Take the many jobs you mentioned for a town. I'm not sure I'd ever outright list all of those. But if a player asks if there's a cobbler, the answer becomes yes. They don't need a name, not yet. Not unless the PCs ask anyway.
Same for all the trade and stuff between settlements. I'm not sure I agree that it all needs to be detailed out. You can be more vague, and zoom in only if it becomes relevant.
it is for me, so i'm better prepared for them. that's how i look at it.
29:57 yeah, I’m not 40+ just about 23. Just want to make my world feel like they are real world but with some magic.
Amen!
this is great tips even if not using OSR stuff
That’s what other people told me. Maybe I made the focus too narrow. 🤷♂️
I'm rewatching this video and I have to say I am very impressed, recommended it to my community as well. That said, any chance you could share that list of NPC positions you read off? I think I missed a few for my own setting, Kingsgate.
Thanks man! I saw that. I didn’t even know we could share each others videos like that haha. I can post the npc list over on my website later on when I get home from work. www.analogmancave.com. I’ll let you know when it’s up!
@@Joethelawyer Outstanding! :)
The 2e houserules are now up on the website! This is the master list of jobs and professions in a small town or village in my campaign. Not all towns have all professions. I got them all from this excellent book I believe. There are a few books in the series, all are worth the money
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/2018/A-Magical-Medieval-Society-Western-Europe
Laborer
Tavern Workers
Tavern Owner
Cobbler
Clothing Maker/Tailor
Groom/Stableboy
Furrier
Weaver/Loom Person
Basket Maker
Wheelwright
Wagonmaker
Carpenter Basic
Carpenter Pro/Furniture
Potter
Candlemaker
Baker/Pastry
Butcher
Wood Carver
Stone Carver
Fisherman
Sage/Scholar
Farmer
Engineer/Architect Basic
Cheesemaker
Lamp Oil Guy
Glass Maker
Launderer
Miller
Bower/Fletcher
Blacksmith
Weaponsmith
Armorsmith
Trader/Gen. Store
Herbalist
Apothecary
Midwife
Militia
Head of Militia
Miner
Brewer
Meadmaker
Winemaker
Perfumes
Bone/Horn Carver
Stone Mason
Tinkerer
Beekeeper
Acrobat
Minstrel
Storyteller
Sheep Herder
Cattle Herder
Horse Herder
@@Joethelawyer I'll check them in the morning sir :) Thank you.
No problem man. Let me know what you think. 👍
You have to take old school adventures and rework them. Even back in the day Gary said you needed to adjust it to fit your game. I've run KOTB with a 5e group in OSE and it's been fantastic. You just have to do some work as a DM. You can sand box the old school stuff. It's not hard it just takes some work.
Exactly. I'm prepping today for tonight's game. I usually spent twice the hours prepping than i do playing. I don't have game night i have game day, with the players joining me at night for the actual game itself
Mind blown
Thanks brad! 😁
I’ve tried to do the future history before but ran into impatience with myself. Any thoughts on speeding time up for more time passing in the in game calendar?
Winters are generally times when not much happens. People hunker down and don’t travel. Spring is when stuff starts up again. So you can time jump 4 months or so if you say winter passes peacefully. Maybe give them some new skill that they were working on or a language if they had a person to practice with.
Yeah, I didn't like Dragon Lance ~ too railroady! Not to mention that in order to follow the DL railroad you had to invest in every. single. module! We didn't have that kind of money to waste on a massive arc that no one wanted to play "properly". Hell, we were more likely to kill half of the "important" NPCs and steal their stuff, LOL!
Haha. The old school way!! 😎
I'm doing the legwork for a ravenloft game, but the first town the PCs will be in is gonna be Thrushmoor from that pathfinder "adventure path" that's all king in yellow vibes, but I'm not running all that railroad baggage, I come from 2e 3e days so yeah I'm gonna use the first one because escaping an asylum straight out of hellraiser seems like a cool way to start with a real banger lol, but yeah I'm gonna port the town Thrushmoor over to the lands of the Mists without really explicitly telling them that they aren't in the pathfinder world anymore, mwa ha ha and so forth, but like I'm using the players knowledge of Ustalav from PF kinda against them because the town and immediate surrounding region will be largely unchanged but... The further they go out the more different it becomes from what they are familiar with, they'll probably want to go further out like maybe around lvl6 or something (who knows though right) so I'm laying the groundwork for various schemes of the Dark Powers to have strands they can step in, but really it could go anywhere and in Ravenloft that shit can be terrifying so I'm pretty excited for this campaign I wanted to capture those old modules vibes like "you get lost in a fog and eventually find yourself in the New Orleans style zombie plague" but without being so railroaded and kinda built for one shots, I love those old modules but I have to really work at some of them to even run them like feast of Goblyns, there's a great adventure IN THERE but I had to do a lot of molding myself, which I tend to happily do anyway so no complaints lol.
but this is a great video, I wish I had it to listen to when I was 15 tryna make the neighborhood kids think dnd was cool, I prolly would have converted a few of them lol
Thanks man! Yeah the old modules were fun when we were kids but don’t hold up well now without a lot of work to make then make sense. Your campaign sounds cool as hell. Have a blast!
@@Joethelawyer hellz yeah, thanks man
Average age of D&D players these days is VERY much older than "back in the day". Started playing red box in 1981 at age 10 then progressed into AD&D.
A coherent sand box that employs all the classic components, wilderness hex crawl with populated areas along the way that throw characters onto quests and into deep dungeons. A nice mega dungeon that can catapult PCs onto an alternate plane (teleport) or lead to an alternate land where its opposite of where the PCs came from. Go from high fantasy into low fantasy or vice versa. It's really not that difficult.
Let the story rise from the campaign. Also, each player should be looking to play a STABLE OF PCs, not a single character.
i've yet to find people who liked the stable approach to things.
I remember lookin through game books at the book store trying to figure out what to buy.
I am also the owner of the Forest Oracle, that felt like a confession of sorts.
Haha. How did it go for you? Even at 15 I knew it was utter trash. 😂
I am a "proud" owner of that one as well. I actually updeted the thing into a mini campaign sat in a viking world a few months ago. That was great fun but needed lots of rework.
It’s good for fire tinder haha
No serpent men in the desert? Eh. There's lots of snakes that are adapted to surviving in the desert. I find it a bit lacking in imagination that snakefolk automatically mean jungle terrain in a lot of fantasy :-(
I have worm men in the desert. 😁
8:42 anyone have a link to the UA-cam channel that does the D&D geopolitics? In searching for it I'm not sure if I'm finding the correct one that the narrator is referring to.
Here ya go! youtube.com/@DungeonMasterpiece
Don’t forget to subscribe to this one! 😂. ua-cam.com/users/Joethelawyer
@@Joethelawyer so if I need a lawyer Joe can help me out 🙂?
Haha. I’m an actual lawyer but I don’t practice. I do something law adjacent. I took the name back when I used to listen to Howard stern when he was good in like 06. Everyone had a name like sal the stockbroker. So I logged into boards as Joethelawyer. Kinda stuck haha
Not were I expect to see the Crescent Hawk medalion on a d&d page.
“I don’t think you should run an OSR game the way we did it back in the day, because the way we did it back in the day wasn’t that good.” Well said. Rarely have I resonated more with a statement about old school DnD. It was fun, but we can do it better today. Returning to the feel without all the baggage is the way to go, at least for me.
it was fun, but we were kids and didn't know any better.
Haha, the Forest Oracle sucked!
completely!
300xp
Thanks!
Best take on OSR by far. I hate these nostalgia streams "everything was better in the okd days". No, it wasn't. There was no rhyme or reason to the adventures, there was never an idea why you would do things, there was never a deeper meaning to it. That's why I quit D&D just around the time 2nd edition came out. I returned to d&d with 5h edition - because it felt like now the characters were at the center of attention - they and their relation to the world. I remember back in the 80s we would sometimes have character with no names because - it didn't matter. "oi, you. There's monsters to kill. Go kill!" "Okay." That's about at much role-playing that I encountered.
Now ; I'm not a fan of playing furries, monster-characters, bugbear-baker-babysitters, or even dragonborn characters. Nor do I constantly think about representation and similar issues in D&D. I like a little more grittier attitudes in my rpgs. I don't try to put my political belief in my settings because they are not fit to a medieval fantasy setting.
But I honestly do not the old ways of playing back. As you said - a matured way of playing is what I appreciate. And that is mainly a matter of attitude and less a matter of a certain system. And I think you actually showed that very well.
Thanks! I'm glad you got the main point of what i was trying to say. Sometimes i wonder if i just ramble :)
Developing a whole world that adventures may not see seems like a tragic waste of time
the fun is in the creation!
Plenty of authors wrote masterpieces without knowing if anyone would actually read it.
Roll20? Man... 😂 .
Yup Only way to play with the far flung peeps these days.
It’s like listening to Robert De Niro teach DMing.
Lol one other guys said I sound like Dennis Leary
Imagine still following what WotC has to say.
Homebrew + indie creators all the way
amen brother!
Megadungeons kind of suck and kind of always sucked and kind of never made a damn bit of sense.
Totally agree man. Why would someone dump those sorts of financial resources into it? It must have served a purpose in the world it exists in other than as a place for PC's to loot and pillage. That's why I don't like funhouse dungeons either.
Check out goodman games oar's!
I have alllll of them. 😁