Fellhold Reboot in 25 Words

So, I've been working on rebooting my homebrew campaign setting for a while now, just letting thoughts percolate, challenging myself to get creative, and I think something clicked when I went on the Seattle Underground tour.

As a sneak peak, here's the new Fellhold in 25 words or less:

Endless forest, Germanic dwarves, falling lich empire, Pacific Northwest, pioneers, crapsack, city, demons, witches, brick, dynamite, warrior lodges, feuds, ratmen, wendigos, tides, totem poles, gods’ bones.

"Review of The Pale Lady" and "The Squid, the Cabal, and the Old Man"

So, a couple of adventures that were add-ons to the Better than Any Man kickstarter have been published in the last few months, and I picked them both up today: The Pale Lady by +Zzarchov Kowolski and The Squid, the Cabal, and the Old Man by Andre Novoa. Since both are rather brief, and since I got both at the same time, I figured I'd do a double feature review, especially since there's some nice compare and contrast items. As with previous reviews, I will follow +Gus L 's lead in format and approach.

Spoilers follow! So turn back if you plan on playing either of these.

The Pale Lady


The Good

This adventure is written in Zzarchov’s usually enjoyable writing style - brief, readable, just a hint of silliness, but with his usual “actually darker than you might think” treatment of subjects. It is admirably concise and the set up is interesting.

The layout is clean and easy to read, and the art is somewhat sparse but attractive and evocative. It reminds me of WFRP art in a good way. More importantly, all of the content is admirably concise, focusing on what's interesting and necessary for adventure.

The Pale Lady is an interesting and well done version of the “aloof, amoral faerie” that I rather like. Spending the night with the Pale Lady is at once mechanically significant, creepy, gross, and “magical”, so well done there.

Speaking of the Pale Lady's creepiness, the Rabbit Men are wonderfully creepy and disturbing, and the whole concept of children abducted, neutered, and enslaved if they aren’t sacrificed in a ritual? Yikes (in a good way).

The mirror claiming it is Lucifer is an interesting choice. I find this a much more compelling and useful “unreliable narrator” situation than the poor crazy guy at the beginning of the adventure, where gamer sense will figure out you should believe him pretty quick, unless you constantly screw with your players.

Along the lines of the Lucifer bit, I like the possibly-divine take on the Word of Creation. The benefits are mechanically interesting and do a good job of conveying the flavor of “divine knowledge beyond normal mortal comprehension” - but then, I’m a sucker for the concept of magic = divine language.

It is also nice that there are multiple ways to “win” this adventure, depending on what the players define as a “win” (save the slaves, figure out the cube, loot the place, kill the scary elf witch, et cetera). 

All told, this is one of the more directly usable LotFP modules, even if you aren’t hardcore into the "LotFP adventure ethos", while still retaining the feeling of creepy weirdness. It also is perhaps more “modular” than many LotFP (or other) adventures, being neatly set apart from normal reality, easily engaged with to a varying degree, and then never dealt with again if desired. So, it's an easy way to drop some weirdness into your campaign without committing to possible apocalypse-level events.

The Bad

In an RPG, I’m not sure how much mileage you’ll get out of the “unreliable narrator as quest-giver” idea - your players will be inclined to believe that crazy crap is real, especially in the context of someone telling them about a possible adventure. It's an interesting concept, but I don't know how interesting or useful it would be at the table.

Likewise, not sure how I feel about the fake “reward” offered in the form of the not-really-magical sword the nuns have. It totally makes sense, and the adventure offers plenty of other payoffs, but it feels a bit “gotcha” to me, with very little information given to the players to inform their decision as to whether it's something they might want to undertake an adventure to get until it's too late. 

Inside the Pale Lady's estate, my main issue is with the structure of the main puzzle. The library and laboratory offer a few clues on the cube, but it still feels a bit like a one-solution puzzle - ask the Pale Lady or you're screwed. But maybe I’m not crediting player ingenuity given the available clues enough. Plus, getting inside the cube is hardly "required" so maybe it ought to be difficult.

Speaking of the cube, I’m a little torn on what seems to be the central “Gimmick” of the adventure - on the one hand, it’s an interesting philosophical issue, but on the other, I don’t know how much bringing it up will add to a game or group dynamic, but on the other other hand, I did rather enjoy the conundrum in The Prestige, so maybe I ought to just appreciate this. I guess my main concern is that the philosophical debate that I totally agree is likely to happen at the table might not actually make the game of sitting around the table with your friends pretending to be elves and magic users and what not any better. But maybe I don't have a broad enough idea of what the game is about.

What I Would Change to Run It

Honestly, I don't think much needs changing here for most settings. In the re-reboot of my own Fellhold setting that I am currently working on, I don't think there are elves/fairies, nor is there a proper "right" church. So, the Pale Lady becomes either a demon or a massively powerful witch, I probably keep her Rabbit Men rabbits for the sake of creepiness (goats could work too, but would have less incongruity to trade on), and the Divine Word cube would become some kind of runic object, probably a relic of giants or greater demons. I'd play the crazy quest giver more for pity than for "he's nuts, yo", and I'd either stress the poorness of the quest-encouraging nuns, or else give their offered treasure some benefit (or maybe offset it by combining it with some tangible benefit with being high in the Nuns' books as do-gooders). 

Really, though, one of the best things I can say about this module is that I don't think most campaigns would have to change much to use it, but it manages to do that without feeling generic.  

The Squid, the Cabal, and the Old Man



The Good

First off, I rather like the choice of material - ever since I read Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, I’ve had a soft spot for these characters and this time period. Further, I also rather like Foucalt’s Pendulum and of course Mr. Lovecraft, so the stated influences for this adventure hit a significant portion of my buttons. It helps matters that the writing is friendly and conversational with just a hint of “not quite native speaker” that adds to the perceived enthusiasm and charm of the text. It's obvious that the author, Andre Novoa, genuinely cares about this adventure and wants you to have a good time with it, and that's nice.

The look and feel is pretty good, with well chosen fonts and decorative elements, even if nothing in the font choices or layout jumps out and makes me go "yes! this is the best ever!" Also, +Kelvin Green 's illustrations work well with the feel of the adventure and look good where they're placed.

I love that the set up for the adventure is “here’s three guys and three places, here’s their relationship, and here’s a reason for the players to get involved. Go!” Andre takes some time to tell you not to sweat any particular way for this charged situation to play out, and to roll with whatever develops in play. That's nice. It’s an excellent example of a situation presented, rather than a plot, to reference the Alexandrian.

I like the facts about the setting (late 18th century England) presented as sidebars - they're useful if you want them, but not stuff you have to memorize to run the adventure successfully. And none of the detail given is stuff that doesn't matter to play. As a quick aside, English currency is made of madness. Clearly, the inclusion thereof is meant to further the Lovecraftian vibe. Seriously, though, even though I am someone who values the more naturalistic English/Imperial/Standard units of measurement over the soulless and foul Metric system, my American brain just flat out can’t understand His/Her Majesty's Currency - which is perhaps ironic, given Mr. Newton’s later role as master of the Royal Mint.

Anyhow, returning to the adventure, the imaginary cabal is a pretty nice touch, especially since there is a real secret organization with similar (but by no means identical) goals to the imaginary one. I’m not positive how much the players will get out of this distinction, though, unless they end up chumming up with Newton as well as conducting a lot of investigation. Still it provides a nice roleplaying cue for Newton - paranoid, jumping at ghosts everywhere.

Speaking of the real secret organization, I like the brain-stealing cult quite a bit, and I enjoy their being tied into historical acts of lost knowledge, but I feel like worshipping space squids was the low-hanging fruit in the Lovecraftian orchard. For my tastes, a Mi-Go rip off would have been more fitting, that is if you’re bent on using the trappings of a familiar Lovecraftian beastie. You could always take the approach of some other LotFP modules and use the concepts of cosmic horror with some wholly new monsters/creatures/situations.

Anyway, moving into the adventure locations, Kelvin’s maps are fantastic. I’ve grown to appreciate them even more since I’ve (partially) run Forgive Us for my home group. Also, it is definitely appreciated that they don’t waste space describing normal rooms or regular house stuff - the detailed maps do all of that detail for you, and it works. Only the rooms/stuff that matters gets called out in the key.

Hah! While we're talking about keys, in Newton's secret Alchemical laboratory, there's Easter Eggs! On the Nature of Quicksilver by Stefan Nilsson indeed. (Quicksilver was the first book of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson I mentioned above).

Further, in Newton's reproduction of Solomon's Temple, the fact that how the secret doors are hidden and how to activate them is described is a nice touch. I've got some more thoughts on the temple below, and if you look at the whole thing as  just some bonus material, I guess it’s alright, but I gotta admit, I had a few more negative things to say than positive.

Skipping ahead to the evil cult's temple, I rather like the sphere room, both the image and the weird effects. . . except for the “you’re an evil cultist now, have fun with that!” result. Maybe it’s fitting for LotFP, but somehow this seems worse than either “you’re dead” or “you’re crazy” as the result of a die roll for "doing what the game is about" and "interacting with the space you're exploring." Again, maybe I don't get the LotFP ethos, but it just seems kinda screwjobby to me.

Oh yeah, and the mummy squids are a pretty cool monster, as is the watchful squid in the walls of the corridor.

Overall, this adventure has a fantastic set up and a lot of really inventive concepts/ideas, but unfortunately, there were some downsides that  I dive into in the next section. 

The Bad

Despite the fact that I love the "voice" of the writing, I feel like the text could have used a slightly harsher content edit - often, there were times that the text was lengthier and more detailed than necessary - such as providing referee advice. Now, maybe I'm just too steeped day-to-day in OSR referee philosophy, because I didn't think any of the advice was bad, I just felt like I didn't need it in an adventure. Maybe if it were packaged as part of an intro box, but as a stand alone adventure, I found a lot of the basically sound, obviously well meaning advice to be unnecessary filler.

Speaking of which, the “running the adventure” section strikes me as overly wordy/detailed at best, and unnecessary at worst. As I said, all of the advice is well meaning and pretty much totally correct, just maybe extraneous. I will say though, why on earth are the dice generators in this section presented in paragraphs!? Gah! They are clearly tables in all but form. That’s just bad information presentation. By all means present them in a paragraph, as long as you show them as a table again later. It’s a shame, because these are immediately useful (if pretty basic) tables for helping the situation to be dynamic as the players come into it. More of this sort of thing would have made for an even tastier adventure.

On the other hand, there were one or two areas where I felt like some advice to the referee specific to the adventure would have come in handy. For example, near the beginning of the adventure, the idea is presented that the “real treasure” is knowledge, rather than gold/silver, but then it gives no guidance on how to tweak LotFP’s Silver-for-XP system. Sure, any referee with some experience under their belt can figure something out, and later on, guidelines are given on how to monetize some of the esoteric knowledge uncovered, but if you are going to specifically write an adventure to go against the standard written into the game rules and proven valuable over decades of play, some guidance would be appreciated. 

I've struggled with this very concept in my Heresies Without Number game, because providing indirect, fungible/holographic incentives to advancement is a really robust reward mechanic. Anyway, I think overall it works out okay, but some more thoughts on how this sets up an intrigue based game, or how the players can gain fictional (but non-experience/treasure based) advantages in the game world would have been nice in an adventure that seems to go to some lengths to discourage standard "steal everything not nailed down" play.

Anyhow, getting back to the details of the adventure - it strikes me as a bit wacky that all of the dramatis personae are such hard SOBs. Even Hooke is a 2HD mofo. I get that Halley is a secret sorcerous cultist, so his improved stats make sense, but Hooke and Newton having 2HD seems not to jive with the usual LotFP “everyone is normal except the PCs” approach. I almost wish Andre took it to 11 and made all 3 or them secretly hard ass former adventurers, even if that wouldn't be very historically congruent.

Now, I mentioned Kelvin's delightful maps, but I wish Mr. Novoa and Mr. Jagosz had consulted him on the text and layout of the map keys as well. While it's appreciated that mundane rooms are left undetailed except in the broadest of strokes, the "interesting room" key entries are still somewhat wordy and they fail to fall into Mr. Green's wonderful "one building, one spread" layout from Forgive Us. Just a hair more discipline there would have been greatly appreciated, even if the "crawling" the locations is not the focus of play. 

Speaking of locations, neither Hooke’s house nor Newton's as locations offer a ton of interest. I feel like more clues as to their enmity, madness and paranoia, and/or contact with Halley would be useful. As it is, neither of these locations give much reason to "crawl" them, and I'd probably condense most of the action in them into a pretty abstract terms. Probably even for Halley's House and the Observatory, as well. 

Speaking of breaking and entering in early Natural Philosophers' homes, I’m torn on Newton’s (possible) employment of Ryan O’Flannagan. On the one hand, having a hard bastard come after you because you stole from a rich and paranoid guy makes a lot of sense. On the other, it feels a bit like a “gotcha” for PCs doing what PCs do - robbing a place blind because somebody asked them to. I think I would rather see the threat of this happening telegraphed a little more clearly - give the players a chance to find out that Newton will go to any length, even questionably legal ones, to recover things he considers important, or rumors that he’s been beefing up his security, or whatever. My main issue is not the severity of the consequence, but rather its inability to be anticipated.

Okay, while we're on the topic of "crawling" these locations, the replica Temple of Solomon under Newton’s mansion strikes me as something of a missed opportunity. See, I love that the temple replica is there, given (real, historical) Newton's interest in alchemy and Solomon's temple, but the problem is, there’s not actually, you know, much to do down there, or much of value to find. Certainly almost no leads into further adventure. Just a couple of double-secret treasures/easter eggs.

When it comes to the actual physical format of it, I’m not thrilled with the well entrance to the temple. The key being literally the only way in there is kind of weak, especially when you consider that key is also in a secret room the players will have no particular reason to find, unless they are lucky or careful mappers. Add on to this that if you do figure out the key situation, you get gassed and Newton will get you executed if he finds you, it seems like an overly bottlenecky kind of thing, especially for a not very valuable, not important at all to the "main plot" kind of location. 

Come on! Replica Temple of Solomon.  In he basement of the greatest natural philosopher of his age. This is a solid gold idea that gets maybe a bronze treatment. It's not bad, it just should be so much better.

Anyway, moving on to Greenwich Observatory, which gives the impression of being the "main" adventure site (which I think is sadly back-tracking from the awesomeness of the "three guys, three places, one conflict" set up the adventure began with). I’m not a big fan of Flamsteed being 100% reticent to talk unless the players convince him they’re “experienced enough” - I think a better approach here would be to just qualitatively describe him as terrified and afraid to talk to anybody, then let the referee decide how easily (or not) he’ll open up. Really commit to "here's the pieces, you figure out what happens" rather than trying to push any particular reactions or storylines.

Further, the telescope-entrance to the temple seems waaaay too fiddly. I’m fine with needing to know what star to point it towards, considering there’s still another way in to find or that the players could just crowbar/sledgehammer the stone blocking the entrance, but the fact that they need to find the information about Lyra and then still have a lengthy, boring fiddling around with it to get it right? That doesn’t strike me as a fun kind of puzzle - it strikes me as more of a pixel-bitchy kind of puzzle.

Once the party gets down to the evil temple, the dungeon itself is totally linear. Sure, going in the temple at all is not technically “required” for the adventure, but it’s obviously where almost all of the fun weirdness is, so it’d be nice if it were slightly more compelling as a map. And again, the locations are presented in standard prose form, with parenthetical references to map locations. It's not very helpful for reference or ease of access, and the good stuff isn't really highlighted.

Another specific callout, the cube puzzle strikes me as way too many blind, uninformed decisions unless you found one elusive clue in the house, and even then, you might mess it up. It’d maybe be okay for experimentation, except there’s a huge number of possible combinations, so it’s not really realistic to expect the players to figure out any “rules” in any kind of reasonable amount of time. So this leads to non-meaningful guessing, boring choices, and a puzzle that pisses off more than it tantalizes. I can certainly get behind the inspiration for this section of the dungeon, but I think it deserves its own entire adventure where figuring out "The Cube" is the whole point with lots o ftime and tries and more clues on how to make it work. As it stands, it's more likely for the party to get stuck and super frustrated.

What I Would Change to Run It

So, what would I change to run this? First off, I'd give each of the three main figures some even stronger personality cues, and then leave it up to what the players do to figure out how they interact. I'd probably also leave it ambiguous whether Newton really had stolen Hooke's formulas (just to make it more interesting). I'd insert some more interest into each location - I'd give Hooke some kind of tenuous social connections, play up Newton spiraling into a connection with shady elements, and then put a few more cult clues into Halley's house. 

I'd make Newton's Solomon's Temple more interesting - probably a caged demon down there, definitely some rituals you can accidentally trigger just by moving through it. I'd also make it a little easier to get into without Newton having you murdered.

I'd probably also add in the Royal Society as a form of forced interaction between all of these personalities, a way for the players to meet more weirdos, and a source for further adventures.

Finally, I'd redesign the creepy cult and their temple. Mi-Go (bugs, fungus) instead of tentacle everything, a more Jaquayed dungeon, and I'd probably greatly simplify "The Cube". 

Conclusion

So, overall, I think I found Pale Lady a more immediately useful module, but The Squid, the Cabal, and the Old Man has a lot of promise in its fundamental concept, it just would have benefited from being maybe half as long. Despite the fact that Pale Lady would be easier to use as is, I see it as more likely that I'll modify the basic structure of SCOM to my game than that I'll use Pale Lady at all.

For the price, both are pretty well worth checking out. Pale Lady is a better bet if you're looking for a true "module" that you can drop into any existing game with minimal fuss, while SCOM is a richer vein of mineable ideas. Do what you will with that, and enjoy.

Let's Talk About Campaign Settings IV: What Can We Learn For Our Own Settings?


Previous Posts


Introduction

First off, I made a few absolutely shameful omissions in talking about OSR settings last time. I totally forgot to give a shout out to +Mateo Diaz Torres and the Pernicious Albion setting, which is just awful, since I'm helping with layout on its upcoming publication. Really, it's fantastic stuff. I also neglected to mention +Courtney Campbell 's Numenhalla or upcoming Perdition settings, even though I've read lots of Numenhalla posts for megadungeon inspiration, and Perdition sounds like it will be pretty rocking. Finally, in the published space, I forgot to direct your attention to the very fine Red Tide by +Kevin Crawford . As with all of his stuff, it is chock full of material that has its own strong flavor, but is easily modified to any genre or setting. Go check all of those out if you aren't already familiar.

So, now that we have my foolishness out of the way, let's get back to the topic at hand. We’ve gone through the second edition campaign settings and a handful of OSR settings and figured out what makes them compelling (or at least, elements of what makes them compelling). So now I want to take the descriptive stuff we’ve identified and turn it into prescriptive advice on how to create a campaign setting that grabs people.

What to Do

Have a Strong Guiding Aesthetic: A lot of what made the 2E settings great boils down to having a really clear aesthetic and communicating it effectively. The theme, art direction, and even focusing play on different things all revolve around the setting doing something to your imagination that standard D&D doesn’t do. Dark Sun lives in a different part of my brain than orcs and goblins and such like. It evokes a different emotional response and encourages different adventures and different player decisions to fit into this different aesthetic. This point is at once the most obvious and probably the hardest to follow well.

I think the way to make this advice practical is to use the different lenses we identified in previous posts, but consciously think about how to link them. Does your setting have a theme? What about some distinctly different play style? Art and art direction? Look at these separately, but then come back to “what ties all of these together?” It’s hard to articulate, but I think you can probably go pretty far with “do these go together?”  Trust your tastes.


Use the Right Mechanics: So, I struggled a bit here with the right wording, but the idea is that you need some mechanical differentiation, but not a whole new game. In the Clone-crowded world of the OSR, it might be difficult to select an official rule system with which to be compatible, but the good news is that most OSR folks are well aware of the inter-operability of the wide variety of clones and rules sets. So honestly, if most of your mechanics can slot into “basically D&D” you’ll be alright.

When I say “the Right Mechanics” I mean that you need some rules that reinforce the aesthetic you’ve developed (like a Crab People Race/Class for Yoon-Suin), but that aren’t so wild and involved that you’re pitching a whole new game. I suspect there are a couple of dials and knobs you can play around with here. For example, you can probably include a lot more new DM-facing rules than player-facing rules, because DMs are crazy people who hoard rules like Scrooge McDuck does coins. Likewise, the more central a thing is to answering “what’s new and exciting about this setting?”, the more you can probably introduce new rules. Super involved social conflict rules would make sense in a world of exaggerated courtly intrigue, but would be annoying extra-fiddliness in a world of large scale military command.


Make the World a Canvas: You’ll note that I didn’t say a blank canvas. The idea here is that you want DMs and players to feel like they make a difference on the world. Or at a minimum that if they aren’t going to change the world, they’ll have agency to make their own decisions that matter. The difficulty is in striking a balance between details that give people something to latch onto and drowning them in padding that feels like a straight jacket. One traditional approach is to just go sparse. To make up for the sparseness, many settings spread out and give you a lot of minimal details over a wide area. This bigness is one way to leave lots of blank space for DMs to exercise their creativity and for players to make their mark on. I imagine you can still make a world that feels open to player agency with lots of tightly packed detail, but it might be harder.

In the comments on the second post, +George S Hammond  asked a question that made me think harder about the distinction between "stuff" in the world and people and events in the world, and why detail in one is more likely to be better than in the other. What I realized is that places, things, and cultures in the world are much less likely to impact the agency of PCs than people or events. The worst risk they run is being boring or overly detailed. People and events, though, they act on PCs, rather than being static things on which the PCs can act. So it's certainly not that you shouldn't have people or events, it's just that they have a higher risk of constraining PC agency, and so should be used with care.

So, for the events and people of the world, I think that settings do better to limit themselves to history and the current state and to strictly avoid intentions and what “will” happen. Getting into plans and intentions for NPCs and factions is probably better handled in adventures, where the players’ involvement is assumed, and changes to the NPCs’ plans are expected. I think that the creators of a lot of settings have felt the need to fill it in with a bunch of proto-adventures. This makes sense on first blush, but I think creators do better to instead focus on making an interesting world full of interesting stuff chock full of potential without committing any of it to a particular expected course of interesting events. Rather than intentions, I'd argue it's best to prepare interests for NPCs. Not the actions the NPC will take, but rather the things that they want. That way, how those interests translate into action, and more importantly, how that action interacts with the PCs, is more flexible and more in the hands of the GM and the party.


Get Your Jam On: As an independent creator, you are in a unique position to get the best of “jamming” and ignore the evils of “design by committee”. You have access to blogs, Google+, Fora, and an enormous back catalog of inspirational material. So you can pull in good ideas from other people, bounce your own ideas off of other people and see how they come back different, and even solicit entirely new contributions. On the other hand, you’re running your own show, so you don’t have to worry about corporate telling you what they think will sell best or Steve over in accounting saying that you can’t afford that art you love. All of the access to multiple creative minds, none of the obligation to water down your vision.

What to Avoid


Padding: This one is easy to say, but hard to do. The only real guideline to what you should include and what you should cut out is taste, but there are a few questions you can ask yourself when casting a critical eye over your work: Does this contribute to the central aesthetic? Is this new or different in some way? Can I find almost exactly the same thing somewhere else? Can smart readers figure this out/make their own decision? Is it something that players are likely to find out and act on? If not, is it something that will excite the DM enough to come up with things that the players will find out and act on? Is it something that provides players with choices? Does this enhance or detract from player agency?

Essentially, you should try to filter every sentence you write through the guidelines to a good and interesting campaign setting. I have found in my own editing work that it usually pays to be harsher than you think necessary and cut out more than you think you can. I always just remind myself that I’m writing for a smart audience, and if something is unclear or mysterious, DMs are good at making stuff up to fill in gaps.


Calling Adventure Hooks Setting: This one is more of a hunch of mine I’ve come to while writing this series, but I think I’m on to something. For the reasons outlined above, adventure hooks imply a certain presumption on the DM’s prep, and even a bit of presumption on the player’s agency. I think including adventure hooks in a setting is fine - provided they’re clearly labeled and separate from “this is how the world is”. But when you start presenting the world as a series of “when the players do this, then X happens. . .” style prompts, it stops being a campaign setting and starts turning into just a campaign.



Over-Specialization of Rules: This one is another balancing act with elements you definitely do want. You just don’t want to effectively write a new game tied to your setting that shares certain basic similarities with D&D. I mean, unless writing a new game is what you want to do. But if you want to take advantage of the learnings from this series to write a setting, then only keep those new/changed rules that do the most to advance your desired aesthetic.

Conclusion


Writing a campaign setting that anyone actually wants to read, much less run a game in, is a pretty tall order. The kinds of people who might even be interested in an OSR campaign setting are also very often the kinds of people who would rather make up their own world. To make it worse, setting ideas tend to be less portable than new mechanics: I can tack Gus’s exhaustion rules onto Small But Vicious Dog much more easily than I can figure out how to incorporate the Passenger Class or the Ship Spirits into Warhammer’s Old World.

That being said, I think there’s a place for it. In the last three years that I’ve closely followed OSR stuff, I’ve seen a hell of a lot of discussion and innovation around rules. I’ve also seen a hell of a lot of creativity around settings, but it’s been in a less shareable way than the rules stuff. That’s really what this series is about: how can we figure out a way to share the messy, “fluffy” side of our creativity as easily and successfully as we’ve shared rules and adventures and tools. If this has been at all helpful to you, I can’t wait to see what you make.

Let's Talk About Campaign Settings III: OSR Settings

[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints. 
Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]

Previous Posts


Introduction

Due to my own proclivities, when it comes to more recent settings, I’m going to narrow what I focus on to the OSR, and at that, only those I know something about. I know that I must be missing some great stuff (Strange Stars comes to mind). So, if anybody knows about other OSR campaign settings or even high quality non-OSR stuff, I’d love to hear about it.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at some good OSR stuff that’s out there and see what they have of the good, bad, and mixed characteristics we identified for the 2E settings, and try to determine if those characteristics are important to new(er) OSR settings.

Published Settings

There aren’t that many published OSR campaign settings, at least that I know about. Several products hint at their own worlds (like Dwimmermount or Fire on the Velvet Horizon), but in those, the focus tends to be somewhere else, and the world that holds it is more of an added bonus. That being said, there are a few I want to look at.


Yoon-Suin: Yoon-Suin is the long awaited work from +David McGrogan  at Monsters and Manuals. It hits pretty much all of the positives we outlined for a setting above: it has a super strong theme/genuinely distinct setting, very high quality art and a strong visual identity, and it provides some setting-specific rules without being so changed as to be its own whole new game. The only thing I’m not sure it has is Play About Different Things - I haven’t looked into the final product in enough depth to know how much it changes the basic experience of play, but from what I remember in the blog posts about its creation, play was meant to allow for traditional dungeon exploration, wilderness exploration, as well as city based intrigue. It definitely avoids being “frozen” by presenting random tables rather than “one true answers” about the setting, and it definitely avoids moralizing.

Padding? I don’t think so, but it certainly is big. From what I’ve skimmed/remember from the blog, it’s all got a rather good cool-stuff to number of words ratio. It’s just that there’s a hell of a lot of cool stuff, so there’s a ton of words. I don’t think anyone else seriously jammed on it with David, it doesn’t work within the 2E constraints (and very few D&D constraints), and while it provides some rough and ready NPCs and events, it avoids highly detailed ones (Again, I think so. I might be missing something new to the final book).


Vornheim/Red & Pleasant Land: So maybe these should properly be two separate settings, since Red & Pleasant Land is only sort of technically the same world as Vornheim, and both products aim at pretty different feels and game support. That being said, +Zak Smith 's philosophy is loud and clear through both of them, so I think treating them together makes a fair amount of sense.

Being produced by a professional artist, obviously both of these have high quality art and strong art direction. Padding is pretty much Zak’s arch nemesis, so not much of that to be found. Play and concept are both pretty genuinely different from regular D&D, and the theme is pretty strong, especially in R&PL. Most of the mechanical distinction in Vornheim is DM-facing, but I think it helps to create a pretty different play experience. R&PL definitely has mechanical stuff to make it play differently from regular D&D and reinforce its theme. Both products have NPCs, places, and events provided in a level of detail that’s useful for play, and both definitely don’t moralize. I’m not sure how much the standard constraints of D&D affected either, but R&PL had it’s share of design constraints (making everything Alice In Wonderland flavored, for example). Other than playing with his group, I don’t know if Zak did much “jamming” on this one, but the general zeitgeist of blogging feedback and G+ interaction probably fed his creative processes to a degree.

Maybe the only possibly sad thing here is that neither of these have the expansive, immersive feel of a bigger setting. As negative as all that padding was, it may have contributed to the old settings feeling big, like a whole world. Neither Vornheim nor R&PL quite do that for me, even though both promise plenty of play, and I know from Zak’s blog that there’s a lot of world out there.


Qelong: Qelong by +Kenneth Hite is an interesting one in that it is explicitly packaged not as a setting, but as an adventure. It just happens to come with a lot of juicy setting elements. It has an extremely strong theme and feels very different from standard D&D, especially when you bring in the mechanical reinforcement of the magic poisoning. The art direction is strong, with a single artist providing consistency, lots of pictures, and all of them high quality. Play is theoretically a standard treasure-motivated wilderness exploration, but the strength of the setting and theme makes it come across rather differently.

There is just about zero padding, and I’ve long admired Qelong for its remarkable efficiency in terms of presenting usable, interesting content with a minimum of material. I haven’t seen any evidence of either the good or bad of working with other creative types and get the impression it was the Kenneth Hite show. No especial “wider world” constraints to work within, but the strong theme and small geographical area seem to have provided the needed constraints to spur some great creativity.

The NPCs and events are all geared towards how they can create interest in play, which is good, but they’re on a specific timeline, which makes sense for the adventure, but perhaps provides less scope for the players to have free rein in deciding where the setting will go. Much like Zak’s material above, the ultra-compact nature of the book and hyper-focus on the usable, interesting adventure that is the main point of the book makes the setting less open/expansive.

Blog Settings

There’s a ton of OSR blogs out there, and almost every one of them has a home setting of its own. So, I’ll be forced to stick to the settings that I know and love from my own blog reading. I’m absolutely positive I’m skipping  over some great ones (Hill Cantons is one I only know the barest bits about, but I hear great things).


HMS Apollyon: This one by +Gus L  over at Dungeon of Signs is one of my favorite OSR Blog campaign settings. It’s got a super strong theme, lots of mechanical differentiation, and strong art direction (Gus himself producing all of the art associated with it that isn’t a pull from online somewhere). The play is pretty standard D&D megadungeon exploration, albeit in a cool version of a megadungeon with its own quirks. One thing we get less of as readers is detailed background events and NPCs - we get glimpses of some of these in play reports, but I don’t think I’ve seen much of that stuff presented as play aids the way Gus has released player material.


Centerra: If +Arnold K.  weren’t so damn creative and interesting, it’d be tempting to label his Centerra posts as falling for the sin of padding. I assert that that temptation is wrong, however, because Arnold’s writing is exactly the sort of imagination fuel that grounds a potential GM’s imagination in the world and provides context to be able to improvise on what the players are doing. I think he accomplishes this trick of being voluminous without being tedious by, well, writing non-mundane interesting things. Even when dealing with matters of culture or society, everything is viewed through a lens of how it could interact with player action or create things for players to do. You know that expansiveness I’ve been mentioning recent stuff lacking? Arnold knocks that out of the park. If I had to pick one candidate for “Most Likely to End Up Like a 2E Setting But Better” it would be Centerra - in a gorgeously illustrated hardcover or boxed set. Man that would rock.


Swordfish Islands: Here’s a setting that I’m very excited to see the final product of. +Jacob Hurst  put the blog together specifically to get it ready for publishing. I’d say that the theme is moderately strong (islandy stuff), but the art direction and art are quite good (Jason’s a professional artist), and there’s a lot going on on the islands in the form of NPCs and events and rivalries, but it’s all presented in a way that emphasizes the dynamic nature of the situation and how it will react to characters. Being tightly geographically constrained, the islands lack “expansiveness”, but they have a depth that gives them the feel of something you could sink your teeth into and play a campaign there. This one is also notable for being one of the few examples where I know for sure the author is working with a creative team of friends, and that the project is at least partially the result of “jamming”.


Corpathium: The rest of +Logan Knight 's world is pretty vague, but his grand, vile capital of Corpathium has some of the best fantasy city building I’ve seen. I don’t think I’d say that Corpathium has a particular “theme”, but it sure does have a strong aesthetic. Logan’s voice comes through very clearly, and everything is very vivid, even when presented tersely in a table. What art there is is great, because it’s Logan’s own stuff, but I wish there were more. What play is about is maybe not as focused as some of these other settings, and mechanical differentiation from the player side is cool but a bit haphazard at this point (disparate blog posts on wizards and clerics and weapon rules and what not). There’s loads of people and places and activities to interact with as players, but almost all of them come in the form of hints and pieces presented in tables, rather than anyone or anything presented as really detailed. For all its vividness, Corpathium lacks some breadth or depth as presented to the world, and I get the impression that the depth is meant to be more emergent from using the tables and crawl rules and the like.


Middenmurk: Here is a world with astounding art direction (and I’m including here +Tom Fitzgerald 's remarkable prose as well as his art). Bonus points in the art direction category for having an entire inspirational tumblr full of good stuff. Tom hints at a richness and expansiveness that I’d love to see, but we only get tantalizing snippets. Everything is lovingly detailed and provides a nice counterpoint to the idea that only laconic things can be beautiful in the OSR. I don’t know if I can say much about mechanical differentiation, as we’ve only gotten bits and pieces of that, but the elf types by level 1 spell rule is a pretty good example. If only there were more of it!


Straits of Anian: Oh man is this stuff good. +Anthony Picaro  completely nails “distinct from regular D&D” and “Mechanical Differentiation”. The mechanical differentiation is light-weight but well placed, making maximum impact for minimal changes. There’s not a lot of detailed NPCs or events, but the gods, myths, monsters, and societies presented give lots of opportunity for interacting with the world. I’m not sure the “things you do in play” are that much different from standard D&D, but the fact that the cultures involved are so different might make that moot. Also, other than phenomenal photos of real life inspirational gear and people and artifacts, there is, sadly, no art and no art direction associated with this. Maybe one day.


New Feierland: A very sketchily presented world, I don’t know if +Trent B  has any plans to ever turn this into an official setting for others’ consumption, but I wanted to mention it because I really enjoy it. Mostly it has evocative flavor and subtle but effective mechanical differentiation, but I sure would love to see it with some great art and more developed action hooks.

Speaking of Campaign Settings: Leon Chain Letter

[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints. 
Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]

+Zak Smith had the awesome idea to take Noism's brief setting and add to it, then pass it along. So here's a few additions from me in Green Helvetica.

******************************************************

 stole this county full of D&Dables from Noisms. I've subtracted nothing but have added some bits to it in courier below.

If you like it, I encourage you to now steal it from me and append some more stuff to it in some other font and publish it on your own blog. In a week or two or a few weeks we might have a nicely fleshed-out place.




Here is a crude map--the modern day area overlaid with 6 mile hexes.

County of Leon

Ruled by: Aqable - Count of Leon (Liege: Duke of Brittany)
Vassals: Baron of Morlaix, Baron of Douarnenez, Baron of Plogonnec
Military: 15 Heavy Cavalry (Knights), 50 Light Cavalry, 50 Heavy Infantry, 100 Medium Infantry, 50 Archers.
Income8,828 livres (Total guess--Deep Evan help out?)


Major Towns

Brest (Hex 40)

Population: 800
Major Industries: Fishing, trade
Personages:

Count of Leon and family.

Ibn Al-Aziz - An Ogre Magi from the Sheikhdom of Catalyud, now a powerful merchant who owns five vessels, with lots of 'shady' contactsand a symbiotic eye still connected to his sister (an ogre witch) overseas

A wizard living in a lighthouse on the edge of town - advisor to the Count and ambiguous ally. The light is actually a hive of fireflies upon which the wizard experiments.

Juliette de Nevers, a dwarfess sage, researching in the old library - secretly a spy? Not actually, more just a concerned citizen worried she's more capable and informed on local threats than her lord. Still--she's suspected.

Circle of druids - headquarters somewhere in the forest, occasionally come to Brest. They gather information with the help of their owls.

Lampaul-Guimiliau (Hex 36)

Population: 200
Major Industries: Lumber, Beekeeping
Personages: Baron of Morlaix - a bachelor lord who seeks a suitable marriage.

Jean-Francois, Master Beekeeper - He cultivates various exotic plants to grant his honeys different flavors and properties, possibly even magical properties to the highest bidders.


            Locations

            Wizards Tower - lighthouse, on the rocks on the outside of Brest (Hex 40)
            Ibn's Mansion - also on the outside of town, but on the inland side. Built in an exotic foreign style, unwelcome visitors find the place a maze that continually leads back to the room they entered.(40)
            The Castle - where the Count calls home. Built on the site of a Roman provincial headquarters, the catacombs underneath are extensive.(40)
            Old Monastery - housing a library (& Juliette)(40)
            Smuggler's Caves -  ancient cave system, now abandoned - except for monsters - and the smugglers' hoard? The smugglers remain, as skeletal undead. The actual complex somewhat resembles the layout and content Disney's Pirates of the Carribean ride with the revenant creatures still playing out dramas from past lives.(Hex 20)

            Meriadoc's Tomb - burial place of the semi-mythic founder of Brittany, watched over by an order of clerics. The tomb and the clerics' weapons are made of an eerily dense metal.(Hex 14)
            Conomor's Tomb - burial place of an ancient king, now haunted. It is in a swamp--the ghosts are not that of the king, but of his many lovers and victims. A lich is entombed in a bog nearby.
            Tower of Erispoe - once owned by a now extinct noble line, reknowned for the eccentricity. Glass cages are built into the walls, housing exotic reptiles.
            Giant's Cave - not apparently inhabited by a giant, but a clan of ogres. The locals suspect they are connected to the merchant Ibn Al-Aziz but they despise the foreigner.(Hex 49)
            Oessant - island, uninhabited but excellent shelter for raiders. Contains two hidden objects--one blessed, one cursed.(West of Hex 31)
            Witch's Hovel - home of an enchantress. Her features are ever changing--her head bloats into a morbid caricature at whatever woman is most powerful in the county at the time. (Hex 27)
            Castle of Mauclerc - ruined castle, magic treasure inside?There is, but it's in the belly of one of the creatures (or pigs) inside. The wild pigs migrate to and from the castle by a natural causeway exposed at low tide.(Hex 14)

           
            Adventure Hooks

·       One of Ibn's ships has gone missing and he's certain it's the wreckers in Plogoff, who have caused him trouble before. (It's actually the ogres of the Giant's Cave, but the wreckers are PC-level troublesome dicks--and have treasure. Plogoff is on the coast south of Leon)
·       Juliette de Fevers wants bodyguards to visit the witch with her. They will be alarmed to discover the witch currently wears Juliette's features--because Juliette is sitting on a terrible secret about the Count.
·       A band of gnolls are causing trouble around Morlaix.Their leader communes with the bog lich. (Hex 30) 
·       Pirates spotted around Oessant. They are actually Spanish privateers, including the daughter of a powerful Venetian. Foiling them could result in a full-scale international incident.
·       Druids concerned about a troll. The troll has pustules which burst when struck, expelling poison.
. Pigs are being born with scales like fish.
. The Baron of Douarnenez is rumoured to be negotiating for the return of his food taster from bandits holding him hostage.

                   .  Skeleton warriors around Conomor's Tomb. The bog lich sent them to retrieve an artifact buried with the king which will bring the lich back to life.
                      ·  Troops from the neighboring viscounty have pursued bandits into deep forest (Hex 44) and have begun to seize supplies from locals