A Week of Sword Dreamed OSR

I joined DreamJam the other day, and it's my first official Itch jam, so I am nervous but also excited. My RPG preferences have gone old school in the last couple of years, and it has been influencing my writing style for Meilakanjan. But the "engine" behind Meilakanjan remains to be 5th Edition, so this is the first time I'd be doing something with a completely old school theme.

An OSR Heavy Independence Day

Jammi was one of the first people online to get excited over the #sworddream hashtag. But her game design has been geared for PbtA for the most part, so she was asking around for help with getting into the OSR. I offered to run a sample game for her, and as it happened, a Philippine holiday was coming up. I also haven't played an RPG with Jammi in seven years, so it was an interesting opportunity to catch up. She requested a setting that was not the usual dantasy world in most games, so I decided to have the group be natives of the slugfolk-ruled Yellow City.

To deal with the thousand, thousand gods of the Yellow City, I decided that Whitehack's Wise character class could allow for varied magics. So Whitehack by extension became our default system. I made just one thematic tweaks - I swapped out the word "hit" and replaced it with the word "story." So HD became SD (story dice) and hp became sp (story points.) That way the Wise character's miracles didn't drain health per se, but rather manipulated the story at the cost of the safety from the chaos of the plot. I also dispensed with dealing with coins, as it was a one-shot anyway. I figured, if they overspent, I can just represent that as "story damage."

And finally, I brought Mun Kao and Zedeck Siew's zines for A Thousand Thousand Islands. Malay and Filipino cultures are pretty similar, so it was a nice way to ground ideas in some familiarity while still avoiding the standard Western fantasy setting. We got to use the zines by having one PC be a Mr-Kr-Gr crocodile, and by setting the actual session on the cat town of Kraching. 

Oh, and we turned the Yellow City from a fantasy setting to a cyberpunk one, and styled the miracles to be tech-based. 

It worked well, I think! Jammi tweeted about the game, as did Erwin. To me, mixing and matching different products is the hallmark of old school games - they run off similar mechanics so that they can all work with each other with little fuss.

More OSR goodness followed, as Bim in turn is trying her hand at creating her own system. It's called Arc, and she uses approaches as the abilities that will help decide the success or failure of an action. I think she's running the game at Lacuna Con this coming Saturday, so that's bound to be interesting!

Cyber Macchiato

Sunday was the scheduled time for our continuing Out of the Abyss game, but real life happened, and we were short three players again. Now to be fair, I have been losing interest in the game, myself, (And I'm the DM!) Once they finally got to the surface, the whole story turned into this giant fetch quest and I was just glazing over it. Which is a shame, because the endgame of interacting with demon lords was something I was really excited about. I even had minis ready!

But alas. With a 50% dropoff in players, it's time to put the campaign on ice.

We decided to play another game instead. As it happened, I just bought Macchiato Monsters as part of my research for DreamJam, and I was quite keen on taking it for a spin. We quickly brainstormed a preferred setting:

• Non-western Fantasy
• Cybertech elements
• Meilakanjan influence
• Domains, fighters getting armies at high level
• "20HD" threats rule an oppressive world
• Freedom to swap characters
• Wilderness and Mushrooms

The three players then rolled their characters, and we ended up with The Datu's Beloved Granddaughter, The Gilded Fist (a merc company), and Half-Fae for their defining traits. I did a short scenario about grandmother Balete trees and how their aerial roots transmit data to the cloud, and how they were being protected by dryadi. 

I think I'm in love with Macchiato Monsters. I especially like the usage of risk dice for money bags, and how short, concrete goals govern their level up. And as it uses both Whitehack and Blackhack ideas, it hits a very nice, sweet spot for me. 

I hope this new campaign lasts for years. Maybe a fourth player will help.

Dreaming my Jam

With the start of a new week, I can go back to brainstorming for my contribution to the DramJam. It helps that I had a bunch of old school games this week, but it is also good that I don't have a scheduled game for the next two weeks, and can focus on creation, in turn. I have several ideas for what I can do:

• Clean up COCKAMANIA and have it be a viable mini-location, and make it system-neutral.
• Look into the idea of Story Dice (SD) replacing Hit Dice, and how that affects damage. What if vicious mockeries can drop you to 0 hp? What are other types of deaths outside of the traditional "your innards were stabbed real bad?"
• A few days ago I had a random idea of adding a Save versus Capitalism stat, in the same vein as Save versus Death or Save versus Magic. Is this worth exploring?
• While I am of the opinion that games are, by nature, political, am I comfortable with being this heavy-handed with it?

But how about for #sworddream? Random, could-be-horrible idea - what if I include a Save versus Capitalism stat? 🤔

Money is abstracted. It is assumed that you have some to spare. But when you encounter a shortfall, (or spend like mad) BAM! Save versus Capitalism or take damage.

— Nosfecatu (@bjrecio) June 14, 2019