Here’s a quick preview of the Labyrinth Adventure Game, coming sometime early next year from River Horse Games! I wrote about 85% of the book, and did 100 minimap illustrations. The production quality is going to be off the charts. While it isn’t an OSR game, the River Horse people were definitely inspired by OSR products when it comes to making the book a gorgeous artifact at the table.
So here’s a (probably unoriginal) hypotheses. It’s something that’s been floating in my mind for quite a while and I don’t know how certain I am of it. I’d like feedback in the comments if you have any.
In OSR campaigns, if you change the rules pretty drastically mid-campaign, most players would say that they are still playing the same game because to them the “game” means the content of the game that they interact with: items, spells, NPCs, the setting, etc. To this group, the reality and believably of the game world is paramount, rules are just a convenience to make this illusion easier. Altering the rules will certainly alter the feel of the campaign to one extent or another, but nothing essential has been changed.
On the other hand, someone with a storygame mentality (or maybe this is more of a Forge mentality) would would say that those players are now playing a different game, because that tradition sees the “game” as the mechanics by which you interact with the content. To this group, the particular kinds of choices and twists delivered by the rules is paramount, while the content is a servant to that.
I feel like this is the core of the mutual incomprehension I see between the two camps when they talk about each other’s work.
Maze Knights continues to evolve as a system, but today we’ll be looking at the look and feel of the game. It doesn’t have any art right now, but it does have a pinterest board if you want to see what it looks like in my head. Building this board has been very important to the game’s development, as I find it hard to work on a projects before I lock down the aesthetics. It gives me a more complete sense of the world, and ends up guiding a lot of my other decisions. As Skerples pointed out, making a good game is not so much making all the right decisions as it is making consistent decisions in the same direction. Aesthetics is the first decision I make. It also helps me narrow down artists I might be contacting in the future to do illustration work.
As I’ve been collecting images for Maze Knights, I’ve started seeing a pattern in the images I like.
The biggest single influence was probably Final Fantasy IX. It’s a game I’ve only started playing recently, but I had a copy of the Art of Final Fantasy IX as a young teen and the look of it stuck with me every since.
If you want to follow along with the development of Maze Knights and get regular rules packets, consider supporting Questing Beast on Patreon.
A bunch of the 5th graders I teach have started creating their own customizable card game. It’s called Invasion, and all I can figure out so far is that it involves an attacking player trying to push through a defender’s defenses and kill his characters. I have no idea how the actually gameplay works. They spend most of their free time laboriously drawing hundreds of these cards, each with their own names, illustrations, stats, and powers. There doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to balancing these cards, everyone just makes cards they think are cool.
This blog (as well as the Questing Beast YouTube Channel) is supported via Patreon. Consider becoming a supporter to get shoutouts in my videos and receive draft documents of the Maze Knights RPG I’m developing.
I’ve been playing with short, flavorful classes for Maze Knights, inspired by Daniel Sell’s work on Troika! Here’s one I just typed up:
You awoke suddenly and clawed your way out from your crypt, life suddenly surging through your brittle bones from the final incantation placed upon you at the moment of your death. You now find yourself in a world you do not understand, surrounded by lowborn fools and barbaric customs. Your monuments lie in ruins, your deeds forgotten, your servants gone to dust. But your time is not over. Among the endless dead there must yet lie those who remember your glory, ready to rise at your summons and bring the world once more under your heel.
STARTING LIFE: 4
STARTING MANA: 6
SKILLS: Roll six times on the following table and add the results to your character sheet. If you roll the same skill more than once, add the bonuses. If a roll would raise a skill above +3, reroll.
EQUIPMENT
ABILITIES
I’m working on more of these as part of the slow but steady development of Maze Knights, the expansion/revision of Maze Rats. You can join the Patreon if you want to get regular draft documents.
If you haven’t voted yet, today is the last day! There are more OSR products nominated this year than ever before! Questing Beast is nominated for “Best Online Content” so make sure to head to that category and give me a “1” if you like my stuff. http://www.ennie-awards.com/vote/2019/
I also just did a huge hangout/interview with most of the OSR creators who are nominated. Watch it below and give them a vote too!
Questing Beast has been nominated for Best Online Content and Fan Favorite Publisher at the 2019 Ennie Awards! If you’ve been following my work and enjoy the videos and games I produce, click here and give Questing Beast a “1” on those two categories. There’s a ton of excellent OSR products nominated this year as well, so make sure to look through all of the categories.
If you want to get a Questing Beast T-shirt, you can head over to the recently revamped merch store here.
From the product description:
“The referee advice is gold. I know of few better sources for concisely explaining what to prioritize when running this sort of game.” – Brendan S, Necropraxis, Wonder and Wickedness
“I often quibble with RPG magic systems either being too complex or too restrictive, but this hit a great balance between flexibility and ease-of-use, while adding a special dash of creativity and Lady Luck.” – Ars Magisterii
“Maze Rats is a light, brutal roleplaying game of fantasy adventure which is supported by random inspiration aplenty, which lends itself to a lighter, slightly whimsical tone. It is quick to learn, quick to teach, and easy to play,relying on player ingenuity and cleverness rather than a reliance upon the mechanics.” – Reviews from R’lyeh
Maze Rats is an RPG and sandbox toolkit for old-school-style adventuring. It contains a single, compact page of rules, a one-page character creation guide, a hand-drawn character sheet, and eight pages of 36-item random tables, rollable with two six-sided dice. Each page contains 9-12 tables, covering spell generation, monster generation, NPCs, treasures, cities, wildernesses, and dungeons. If you run (or have always wanted to run) open sandbox adventures, Maze Rats offers everything you need in a compact, easily-referenced format. Also included is two pages of advice for preparing and running open-world games in the OSR style.
The game system itself is 2d6 based. Character are extremely quick to generate, making it great for convention games, one-shots, or introducing new players. The game is highly lethal, and assumes a style of play where caution is essential to long-term survival. It is technically classless, but the leveling options allow players to specialize in fighting, thievery or wizardry or some mixture of the three. Magic is simple and chaotic, with new randomly-generated spells filling the magic-user’s head each night. Everything about the game is designed to be as clean, fast, and intuitive as possible, while driving players towards creative solutions rather than brute force (though brute force is always an option).
I’m unlikely to be using MeWe much. It’s not terrible, but it’s basically G+ without that platform’s best features. Also, I’m very much enjoying the shift to the blogs.
I’ve started using Inoreader to keep up with the OSR blogosphere. I plugged Ram’s OSR OPML into it and was set to go. I sorted the blogs into best and the rest, check in on the best every day, and skim the rest when I feel like it. It’s been incredibly freeing. The stuff I’m reading is as good as it ever was, it’s longer, more thoughtful, and by commenting on the post itself rather than on a separate platform the conversation stays focused and gets archived more permanently. It’s also motivated me to start writing posts in response to stuff I like, which is something I’ve never done before. To be honest, I’m enjoying this mode of discussion more than G+ in some ways. Also, the regular “OSR News” posts on Dreams of Mythic Fantasy keep you updated on everything you need to know.
If I want to just chat casually about the OSR I use Discord, usually either the OSR server or the DIYRPG one (which features an incredible 24/7 Gygaxian Democracy mill). That one is still semi-private, so I won’t be posting a link. I enjoy having long-form discussion and informal chat on two separate platforms.
The /r/rpg subreddit is good for getting the word out about new products but not so great for discussions. The range of assumptions and play-styles is vast, so you inevitably have to restart from ground zero explaining your approach every time you get into a discussion. The OSR subreddit is more focused but it’s never really felt like home. The brand new artpunk subreddit (not sure if it’s open to the public yet) looks to be the place to talk to the NeOSR/Adventure Game/Hipster DnD crowd, so I check in there periodically, but at the moment it looks like its biggest use will be to post the best new blog posts.
I’ve been posting more on Twitter recently, but that’s mostly to keep my Questing Beast followers updated on what’s going on with me and to reshare other OSR posts. There isn’t a lot of OSR conversion on Twitter and overall I think that’s fine. It’s a really anxious, high-strung platform.
Conclusion: BACK TO THE BLOGS! Get Inoreader or Feedly up and running, find a post you enjoy, write a response, and tell the original poster about it.
If you want to contact me directly, my email is questingmaps at gmail.
Here’s a fun dice pool system. I’ve tested it and it works fine. There was a discussion about it at one point on Michael Prescott’s G+ feed, I think, but now that that’s going away I want to preserve it somewhere. Someone else (maybe Michael) started calling it Milton dice so now that’s what it’s called.
What’s cool about this system?