You Can't Force It

In my previous campaign, I told the players straight up that it was going to be a Magnificent Seven-inspired scenario, where they would have to protect an isolated village from a gang of bandits. I started the first session with them in the town, and pulled a few cheap tricks to try to get them attached to the villagers. It worked fine. The players' attitude was: "Sure. We have to protect these people because that's the premise of the story." But they never became very emotionally invested in the town.

In my new campaign, I started out with the PCs at the entrance to a dungeon they knew nothing about. I told them: "This system is more brutal than Dungeon World or 5e. There is a real risk you will die, so play carefully."

They entered the dungeon with trepidation and soon encountered some human-looking NPCs (the Guildless from Through Ultan's Door #1). The Guildless are all mute, so communication was difficult. They seemed wary of the PCs, but the players wanted to make friends. After some deliberation, the PCs laid down all their weapons and allowed themselves to be taken into custody as a show of good faith.

As they were led through the Guildless' outpost, the players were terrified they had made the wrong choice and were about to be killed. Their fears reached a peak when they arrived in a room full of bloodstains and butchering tools. They were very relieved when it finally became apparent that the Guildless weren't going to hurt them. Since then they have helped the Guildless several times and formed a strong attachment to them both in an out of character.

There are two lessons I'm taking away from this. The first is that you can't pre-determine which NPCs the players will become attached to, or which in-character goals they will want to pursue. You just have to let it develop naturally.

The second lesson is more specific to old-school play. The credible threat of death can obviously be used to evoke the emotion of fear. But I suspect that it also enhances other emotive reactions by association. The fact that the Guildless might have killed them made the players that much more relieved when it didn't come to pass.

Play Report: Through Ultan's Door - Session 2

We had another fun session of dungeon crawling in Through Ultan's Door #1. I can't recommend this module highly enough!

This session, the PCs got caught in a bear trap, found a one-shot Web item in a hidden drawer, fought a glistening dream-pudding, and eventually made their way back to the lair of the giggling white swine.

Player A: "I'll use Spider Climb to climb above the pigs and throw the web down on them."
Player B: "That's the perfect plan because pigs can't look up."
Me: "I... what?"

With some quick Googling, the players managed to convince me that pigs cannot, in fact, look up, and therefore could never see an enemy approaching from the ceiling. After some more research post-game, I think that this is basically a myth, but it was good enough to work in the moment.

So the PCs webbed the swine in their lair, then poured oil on the web, then set it all on fire and wiped out the swine completely. The only one left was the gigantic swine-mother, who has 90hp but no attacks of her own. She was helpless as the PCs summoned their friends from the last session (the mute Guildless of the city of Zyan) and together they butchered and cooked the sow queen.

One thing that came up in this session was the question of whom the enemy would attack each round. Specifically, it mattered a lot whether the Oneiric Pudding would keep on attacking the same PC, or shift to attacking a different PC who had just dealt it damage. This question made the difference between life and death, and I had no real 'objective' way of determining it. I decided to just roll a die, which worked out OK. Nevertheless it makes me think it could be useful to note down a monster's attack pattern along with its stats. Most patterns could be reduced to a few words:

"Attacks weakest"
"Attacks greatest perceived threat" (e.g. Magic-Users)
"Attacks nearest" (but who is 'nearest' is often pretty vague in my games)
"Attacks last attacker" (which might lead to the PCs juggling around their turn order to ensure optimal chance of survival. This doesn't seem like a bad thing necessarily)

Lastly, I've noticed that the way I'm running initiative now is: "The party rolls 1d6 and the enemy rolls 1d6. Whoever rolls highest gets to go first. If it's a tie then we'll reroll". This is functionally identical to a coin flip. Technically in LotFP's rules there is a chance of the combatants all acting simultaneously. But that just seems like a headache to run. So I'm thinking of paring it down to just a bag with a white stone and a black stone. Whichever side draws the white stone gets to go first this round. This would also help with another minor problem, which is that sometimes I forget when one round has ended and it's time to roll initiative again.

Play Report: Through Ultan's Door #1

I ran Through Ultan's Door #1 using Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The players were new to the system and to the concept of old-school dungeon crawls in general, but they seemed to grok the game immediately and had a lot of fun.

The PCs' first encounter was with the black-lipped Guildless. The players loved the idea of the Guildless communicating by flute music, and went to great lengths to make friends with them. To show good faith they left all their weapons at the door and allowed themselves to be taken prisoner. There were some great moments of tension as the players wondered if they were about to be butchered. They were horrified to find that the Guildless were apparently pickling barrels full of severed children's hands. But the players speculated: "Maybe they were some kind of evil children?" - which turned out not to be too far from the truth.

The Guildless shaman sent the party on a mission to kill the sinuous white swine. The party got into a big fight with a swarm of swine protecting their nest. They could very easily have been killed here, but the swine rolled poorly and the PCs managed to set their nest on fire, grab a bunch of gems and escape.

The module was a breeze to run. I didn't make any changes to it, but I did go through the text with a pencil and underlined the most obvious features of each room to help structure my narration. The room descriptions in the module are quite detailed, even florid, but I found them useful in play. For example, having the shaman offer to reward the PCs with "a pearl encrusted bandolier" was much more evocative than just saying "he'll give you 150gp".

The only thing I struggled with was running combat in a timely fashion. I started off trying to run it Theatre of the Mind style, but quickly realised I was losing track of everyone so I drew a quick map and broke out the minis. The OSR dream of running 4-6 combat scenes over the course of one session still seems unlikely, but it did move a bit quicker than Dungeon World and much quicker than D&D4e or 5e.

One thing that really struck me was how, despite my concerns, the players accepted all the old-school tropes without batting an eye. Nobody had any problem with simple initiative, rolling for stats, only getting four classes to choose from, or potentially dying from a single hit. I think I spend too much time reading the opinions of online people who are extremely picky about RPGs, which makes me forget that my real life friends don't know or care about any of that stuff.

Review: Through Ultan's Door #1

Through Ultan's Door #1 is a short one-level dungeon released in zine format by Ben L. of Mazirian's Garden. It is set primarily in the Dreamlands, a setting that evokes the baroque fantasy of Lord Dunsany and of H. P. Lovecraft's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Aside from this unusual aesthetic, the dungeon contains many familiar features: a range of monsters, NPC factions to be negotiated with, traps and puzzles to solve. It is written with the assumption that treasure-hunting is the primary concern of the PCs, but also offers some ideas for other motivations. The writing is lush and evocative, yet never purposeless; the whole zine feels like it would be extremely functional at the table.

I'm writing this review after reading the zine, but I haven't yet run it. My perspective is one of someone who has been away from tabletop RPGs, and OSR gaming in particular, for a long time. I would consider myself something of a novice DM, especially when it comes to dungeon crawls.  

Through Ultan's Door #1 looks like an excellent choice as an introduction to old-school play, both for the DM and the players. It appears relatively easy compared to some OSR modules, and has no instant-death situations that might feel unfair to new players. The room descriptions contribute to this feeling of fairness; they are very vivid and detailed, which helps to evoke the Dunsanian aesthetic, but they also give clues to players about what is useful and what is dangerous. For example, a floor littered with melon rinds serves as both a warning that a monster lair is nearby, and a hint that the melon tree in the next room is safe to eat.

It seems to me that clues like these are crucial to the agency-driven play that is so often espoused in the OSR community (and has been so carefully delineated on Courtney Campbell's blog). Without adequate information, the players are just blundering around the dungeon, encountering weal or woe at random. Yet these clues are often absent from published dungeons, or at least not as clearly emphasised as they are here. It's possible that experienced DMs will insert such clues on the fly, or that experienced players will be canny enough to gather information without needing it laid out for them. But as someone who is looking to begin a LotFP campaign with a fresh group of players, I really appreciate the details that Through Ultan's Door #1 provides.

The only real criticism I can make of the zine is that it almost evokes its particular aesthetic too well. If I begin my campaign with this module, and my players love it as much as I do, then I can probably expect most of the campaign to take place in Ben's Dreamlands. Expanding the setting with my own content is a daunting prospect: I fear I wouldn't be able to adequately mimic Ben's style, but if I apply my own style it might be a jarring shift. Possibly my best hope is to wait for Through Ultan's Door #2.