Shrine of the Turtle Priest
The Noodle Hack - TTRPG thoughts - Part 3
Continued from Part 2
First, a Quick Addendum
One more problem I want to solve is resilience to people calling out sick. A common cause of death for RPG groups is one player bailing out, which leads to another player using it as an excuse to also bail, and then the session is canceled. If this happens often enough, the meetings feel less consistent and "important", leading to more people bailing, in a positive feedback loop. In one group, I declared "I am not agreeing to another session until we can commit to finish; we are only a couple sessions away anyway." We did eventually finish.
But it is very hard to stop people from needing to bail. (Well, it's not even desirable to mandate 100% attendance every single week!). So whatever solution we come up with needs to be resilient to people dropping; or to ensure scheduling occurs in a way that bailing is not necessary.
I think there is no solution which will prevent people from bailing. But I do think game sessions can be structured to be less reliant on a consistent cast of players always being present. For example, sessions which are structured to both start and finish an expedition - i.e. the soft expectation is that the night ends with adventurers returning to a safe place, or at least somewhere stable. Ending a session in the middle of the evil fortress makes it hard to continue if, a week later, 2 of the players bail out. Where did their characters go? Often times the answer is "we'll just skip this week and wait till next week." And the problem returns.
But if a game session must end with the characters somewhere safe (or else, assumed they beat a hasty retreat when the game ends), then each game session is simply a new expedition, another dungeon delve, etc. This does have limits and downsides, and it may not be the actual answer, just an idea. This solution feels more artificial for game pacing, but allows for a more stable play style.
One other benefit to this is, it makes it easier to control time in the game world for the GM. If they players are ALWAYS back in town between sessions, it's easier to set a cadence "every session we have x amount of downtime", which makes it easier to maintain momentum for things like domain play, simulating villainous actions, etc.
The other option is to not rely on a set schedule, and instead schedule each session individually. This allows for the game time to feel more natural, but at the cost of the headache of syncing the schedules of adults every time you play.
Ok, for the main topic of today...
Lessons I've Learned So Far
I have been experimenting with various games, play styles, and play structures. I will be posting my thoughts in the form of Lessons Learned. I hope to compile a list of lessons to go along with my list of problems, to make this whole endeavor productive!
Mausritter
I have played (as of this writing) two OSR/NuSR sessions with my group so far, plus one solo session. (I'm going to use the term NuSR from now on, to avoid any arguments about what is and is not OSR.)
The first was Mausritter, a game of mouse adventurers in a big scary world. I knew very little about NuSR, but was looking for an easy system - perhaps, the easiest possible system - for an emergency one shot. I love Mausritter's inventory system (your items are slips of paper that you have to fit onto your backpack in a very physical way). Now, like most modern groups, we don't typically bother with encumbrance beyond "just be reasonable". I wasnt sure whether it would be annoying to track, or else, because Mausritter abstracts it so much, if it would feel too simplistic (like, if you're going to track encumbrance, might as well do it realistically, right?). Well, in practice, we enjoyed it a lot.
Lesson learned 1: A system doesn't need to be strictly simulationist if it results in having to make interesting decisions.
I was warned that Mausritter is deadly, that the NuSR is deadly. (I have later come to realize that's a bit of an oversimplification - it CAN be deadly, but that's not inherent. But I digress.)
In our experience, this wasn't the case. Mausritter emphasizes "only roll for saves". This means that many basic tasks - lockpicking, climbing, attacking, etc - automatically succeed. Now, you can call for rolls for some of these; for example, if there's a good reason to expect that you'd fail to climb - but the default is to let players succeed at the task they set forth to do. The intention, then, is for the difficulty to come with prioritizing actions with limited time and resources. That setbacks occur when you make the wrong decisions.
This sounds nice in theory, but... I found this very difficult to work in practice. For example, the introductory dungeon has a cheese trap at the entrance. Earlier in the book, they give this "best practice":
So, when they saw the cheese, and the rat skull, they immediately asked "Does it look like a trap?" (Note, there are no "Perception" rolls, no "Find Traps" skill). I said "Yes." So they poked the trap with a stick, it went off, and they got the cheese. This was... not very satisfying.
I have since learned that I did not quite do this right, that there's more to the process of running "NuSR-style play". Without any elaboration as to "how" they want to interact with the trap, they maybe could have rolled a Dex save to make sure they didn't screw up poking the cheese, with some unexpected consequence. Even better, though, it may be preferable for them to explain in better detail how they want to poke the cheese... Have they considered whether the trap could shatter the stick and give them a big splinter? Perhaps poking the cheese works just fine, but it results in a loud snap that attracts the nearby drunken rats? Perhaps the trap smushes the cheese and half of it goes flying into the mud, rendering it inedible. These are all possibilities, and NuSR-style play encourages you to consider these.
Or maybe they should have been required to study the trap more, given only the information they can physically see (or smell, or whatever), and not told that "yes, it looks like a trap". And if they can figure out how the trap works, and what a safe way to dispose of it was, then they wouldn't need to roll, or consider those weird side effects at all.
I still don't think I quite understand what the most fun way to handle this is.
Much of the session went like this - they saw a scenario, they decided on the most obvious solution, the rules say that they automatically succeed if the action itself isnt dangerous, so they spent most of the game just... unchallenged. What was weird to me is, at multiple points the game rules inform you that it is a dangerous world, that you should not pull punches. But in the actual rules, there are no real systems that make it so. The exception being combat - monsters hit automatically, and they hit hard. But it seemed very easy to avoid combat entirely.
Again, some of this I have since learned how to handle differently. But I forsee it continuing to be a challenge in the future.
Compare this to 5e; using the trap as an example, you roll perception (or use passive perception). If you fail, or if you fail the subsequent disarm trap roll, the trap goes off, roll a save, take damage. You encounter hostile monsters, roll initiative, follow the procedure. It's a bit boring in structure, by comparison, but it's explicit and unambiguous.
Despite this, Mausritter formally systemizes many things - time passes, encounter rolls are made, monsters have reaction rolls. If you waste time, you will be ambushed by a hungry spider. If you dont kill the spider quickly, it will automatically bite. So, there is danger here, but it feels very different.
Lesson learned 2: Some games are both more and less procedural than you might be used to. This can be a strength, but it requires practice and thought and trust.
Lesson learned 3: I don't like games where automatic success is common... at least, not when it's unclear when to apply this rule and when to roll. I want the game to be clear about when you do and do not roll... at least, until I am more experienced.
The players did have one very fun clever plan, to use a snake attack a rat squad, which eliminated their two big obstacles.
This was very satisfying! One of my players loved this game and the creativity it allowed him without being constrained. The other player said, "It's a good game... for 6-year olds." I hope this opinion will change as I get better at OSR-style play.
One last lesson which I dont really have anything to say about:
Lesson learned 4: I love, love, using a formalized time tracking system, to give weight and purpose to random encounters and many other effects. It completely changes the rhythm of play in a good way. Regardless of where I end up, this will certainly be part of my gaming moving forward.
After Mausritter, I am not yet sure if OSR-style play is the right style for me. It requires further testing.
Stay tuned for Part 4: Fleaux!