I like Shadowdark here. If I'm spending 10 minutes analyzing a small wall section (this is after walking into the room using a snail pace tier exploration turn), then I only get 16%? Come on. Secret doors can't be THAT well hidden.
This rule keeps being parroted in every retroclone but I wonder if anyone is actually playing it by RAW, where even if the party suspects the door is there and they all search together it's still likely they won't find it. And then most of these doors are just "cold" with no tells or anything!
If there is a secret door in an adventure, I want it to be found. Like you I will re-write the description to add a subtle tell. If they actually interact with the tell then there's a very good chance they'll find it.
I definitely do not want a generic "I search for secret doors" every time they walk into a room like those examples of play either.
Minor correction on the Simulacrum entry: passive group perception checks are made using the party's average perception mod, but individual perception checks actually apply double the searcher's mod if it's a positive value. Not sure if that qualifies as "funny business," but it does raise the odds for the types of characters who are likely to spend time searching anyway. (I'm a huge fan of Keith's work on that game!)
Stumbled across your blog a couple of days ago and have been binging since. It's incredibly refreshing to find analyses so honed in on the practical details that matter in actual play and reviews willing to go deep enough to call the bluffs. Feels like I found a bit of a kindred spirit, concerned with the same particulars. Consider yourself favorited!
Great catch! I edited the post to reflect the correction
> I'm a huge fan of Keith's work on that game!
Likewise! I think I'd currently be playing it in Arden Vul (I'm playing 1e instead), except that Simulacrum was explicitly made for smaller-than-expected tables, and I run for a table of 9.
It's a really solid work, and I think embodies and enforces the OSR ideas better than anything else I've read, including the original works.
> Stumbled across your blog a couple of days ago and have been binging since. It's incredibly refreshing to find analyses so honed in on the practical details that matter in actual play and reviews willing to go deep enough to call the bluffs.
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying, and that's definitely what I'm aiming for, so it feels good to hear that it's working.
Do you know of anyone else doing similar work? The closest I've found has been Keith, but I'd love some others to read.
Sadly, no. That's what made finding you so exciting for me! There are definitely occasional posts here and there that embrace weed diving, but I'm not aware of anyone else doing quite the same thing so systematically in public and on the regular.
Simulacrum is almost certainly my game of choice when next I get a fantasy campaign off the ground. However, I'm surprised its Task system isn't a dealbreaker for you considering your expressed aversion to setting DCs. Is it the fact that most of the critical difficulties are predefined that makes it palatable?
Couple of other questions/content requests for you. I haven't yet made it through ALL of your posts, so apologies if you've touched on these elsewhere.
1) I skimmed Sovereign and noticed quite a bit of shared DNA with Crawford's Without Number games. Haven't seen many references to them on the Substack, though. Do you have much experience with them? General opinion?
2) You've mentioned a couple of times that you run published adventures almost exclusively. I'd be interested in what steps you take to tie disparate modules together for campaign play--assuming, of course, that you're not simply eliding the inbetween-bits and ignoring wider worldbuilding or playing only campaign-length products.
> However, I'm surprised its Task system isn't a dealbreaker for you considering your expressed aversion to setting DCs. Is it the fact that most of the critical difficulties are predefined that makes it palatable?
The DCs (and optional skill system) are my least favorite parts, but I think the rest of the system (especially the precise and concise spells and exceedingly clear instructions) goes a *long* way. And yeah, having almost all of the DCs be pre-defined helps a bunch.
------------------
> I skimmed Sovereign and noticed quite a bit of shared DNA with Crawford's Without Number games. Haven't seen many references to them on the Substack, though. Do you have much experience with them? General opinion?
My gut feeling is that some of the subclasses don't feel well play-tested (especially healer) and that the game falls apart under even mild optimization from the players. Modules which are supposed to represent a particular difficulty and evoke a sense of danger no longer do, for the level ranges they're listed for.
------------------------
> You've mentioned a couple of times that you run published adventures almost exclusively. I'd be interested in what steps you take to tie disparate modules together for campaign play--assuming, of course, that you're not simply eliding the inbetween-bits and ignoring wider worldbuilding or playing only campaign-length products.
For the sovereign playtest, I straight up elided the in-between bits with hard framing. "After a few months living large back in Baklin, Kevan's patron Slarkeron sent ya'll to assist his associate Baktlu-Baadi in Murtar, who needs adventurers to fetch holy ointments from the Temple of the Frog Cult" or similar.
For other campaigns, I'm trying to do as little stitch work as possible. Usually that means having some sort of big setting (Ptolus, Dolmenwood, Stonehell, etc) that they can default to, and then making turning NPCs at the end of one module into the hook-givers at the beginning of the next one, or doing a small hexcrawl and plopping dungeons into self-contained hexes on the map.
Current campaign is Arden Vul, which after absorbing basically plays itself!
> “Yeah so you have two low feet holds; pegs basically. You feet are about a foot apart, your right one about 4 inches higher than the left. You left hand is in a two-finger pocket and your right hand is in a gnarly crimped side cling. You’ve got a higher left foot that would put you into a drop knee and then could gaston over to…”
I read this and immediately went...wait, does this guy rock climb? Then went and checked your profile. Good stuff LoL
I LOVE rock climbing though still at a very amateur level. It was cool to find a description here.
I've been involved in a lot of different sports and outdoor activities over my years and I have consistently found that the rock climbing community is some of the kindest most helpful group of people I've ever encountered in a sport.
Hikers and rock climbers are so consistently just awesome people.
I like Shadowdark here. If I'm spending 10 minutes analyzing a small wall section (this is after walking into the room using a snail pace tier exploration turn), then I only get 16%? Come on. Secret doors can't be THAT well hidden.
This rule keeps being parroted in every retroclone but I wonder if anyone is actually playing it by RAW, where even if the party suspects the door is there and they all search together it's still likely they won't find it. And then most of these doors are just "cold" with no tells or anything!
If there is a secret door in an adventure, I want it to be found. Like you I will re-write the description to add a subtle tell. If they actually interact with the tell then there's a very good chance they'll find it.
I definitely do not want a generic "I search for secret doors" every time they walk into a room like those examples of play either.
Yeah, I think it’s telling that in all of the books I read, only S&W includes an example of play that uses its own rules as written.
I’d love to find out how the original GMs for the various systems *actually* played, so we can write *that* down instead
Minor correction on the Simulacrum entry: passive group perception checks are made using the party's average perception mod, but individual perception checks actually apply double the searcher's mod if it's a positive value. Not sure if that qualifies as "funny business," but it does raise the odds for the types of characters who are likely to spend time searching anyway. (I'm a huge fan of Keith's work on that game!)
Stumbled across your blog a couple of days ago and have been binging since. It's incredibly refreshing to find analyses so honed in on the practical details that matter in actual play and reviews willing to go deep enough to call the bluffs. Feels like I found a bit of a kindred spirit, concerned with the same particulars. Consider yourself favorited!
Great catch! I edited the post to reflect the correction
> I'm a huge fan of Keith's work on that game!
Likewise! I think I'd currently be playing it in Arden Vul (I'm playing 1e instead), except that Simulacrum was explicitly made for smaller-than-expected tables, and I run for a table of 9.
It's a really solid work, and I think embodies and enforces the OSR ideas better than anything else I've read, including the original works.
> Stumbled across your blog a couple of days ago and have been binging since. It's incredibly refreshing to find analyses so honed in on the practical details that matter in actual play and reviews willing to go deep enough to call the bluffs.
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying, and that's definitely what I'm aiming for, so it feels good to hear that it's working.
Do you know of anyone else doing similar work? The closest I've found has been Keith, but I'd love some others to read.
Sadly, no. That's what made finding you so exciting for me! There are definitely occasional posts here and there that embrace weed diving, but I'm not aware of anyone else doing quite the same thing so systematically in public and on the regular.
Simulacrum is almost certainly my game of choice when next I get a fantasy campaign off the ground. However, I'm surprised its Task system isn't a dealbreaker for you considering your expressed aversion to setting DCs. Is it the fact that most of the critical difficulties are predefined that makes it palatable?
Couple of other questions/content requests for you. I haven't yet made it through ALL of your posts, so apologies if you've touched on these elsewhere.
1) I skimmed Sovereign and noticed quite a bit of shared DNA with Crawford's Without Number games. Haven't seen many references to them on the Substack, though. Do you have much experience with them? General opinion?
2) You've mentioned a couple of times that you run published adventures almost exclusively. I'd be interested in what steps you take to tie disparate modules together for campaign play--assuming, of course, that you're not simply eliding the inbetween-bits and ignoring wider worldbuilding or playing only campaign-length products.
> However, I'm surprised its Task system isn't a dealbreaker for you considering your expressed aversion to setting DCs. Is it the fact that most of the critical difficulties are predefined that makes it palatable?
The DCs (and optional skill system) are my least favorite parts, but I think the rest of the system (especially the precise and concise spells and exceedingly clear instructions) goes a *long* way. And yeah, having almost all of the DCs be pre-defined helps a bunch.
------------------
> I skimmed Sovereign and noticed quite a bit of shared DNA with Crawford's Without Number games. Haven't seen many references to them on the Substack, though. Do you have much experience with them? General opinion?
Yeah - played WWN a bit, and then also playtested Sovereign to around level 6 or so. I wrote up some thoughts in reply to a different WWN review here: https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/1h9pquz/a_reviewcritique_of_worlds_without_number/m172vch/?context=3
My gut feeling is that some of the subclasses don't feel well play-tested (especially healer) and that the game falls apart under even mild optimization from the players. Modules which are supposed to represent a particular difficulty and evoke a sense of danger no longer do, for the level ranges they're listed for.
------------------------
> You've mentioned a couple of times that you run published adventures almost exclusively. I'd be interested in what steps you take to tie disparate modules together for campaign play--assuming, of course, that you're not simply eliding the inbetween-bits and ignoring wider worldbuilding or playing only campaign-length products.
For the sovereign playtest, I straight up elided the in-between bits with hard framing. "After a few months living large back in Baklin, Kevan's patron Slarkeron sent ya'll to assist his associate Baktlu-Baadi in Murtar, who needs adventurers to fetch holy ointments from the Temple of the Frog Cult" or similar.
For other campaigns, I'm trying to do as little stitch work as possible. Usually that means having some sort of big setting (Ptolus, Dolmenwood, Stonehell, etc) that they can default to, and then making turning NPCs at the end of one module into the hook-givers at the beginning of the next one, or doing a small hexcrawl and plopping dungeons into self-contained hexes on the map.
Current campaign is Arden Vul, which after absorbing basically plays itself!
> “Yeah so you have two low feet holds; pegs basically. You feet are about a foot apart, your right one about 4 inches higher than the left. You left hand is in a two-finger pocket and your right hand is in a gnarly crimped side cling. You’ve got a higher left foot that would put you into a drop knee and then could gaston over to…”
I read this and immediately went...wait, does this guy rock climb? Then went and checked your profile. Good stuff LoL
I LOVE rock climbing though still at a very amateur level. It was cool to find a description here.
At one point in time, somewhere around 3/4ths of my table were consistently bouldering :D
I love it. I’ve been bouldering since ~2016; such a cool community and fun activity
I've been involved in a lot of different sports and outdoor activities over my years and I have consistently found that the rock climbing community is some of the kindest most helpful group of people I've ever encountered in a sport.
Hikers and rock climbers are so consistently just awesome people.