The Pillars of the OSR, Part II: Dungeons

In my last post, I started a project of breaking down what I see as the "pillars," the fundamental gameplay modes, of your typical OSR game, like how 5e claims its three pillars are exploration, socialization, and combat while only providing mechanical support for the last one. My goal is to identify:

• What are or should be the most common pillars of OSR?
• What core activities is each pillar founded on?
• What factors, in the fiction and at the table, usually do or should play into how these activities are resolved?

By breaking all this down, I hope to develop a clearer understanding of what a good OSR game should model through its mechanics and how different activities should function in the rules.

Last time, I talked about the first of my five pillars (or six, I'll get to that): journeys, a.k.a. overland travel, wilderness exploration, whatever. Today I'm talking about the next pillar:

Dungeons

Obviously.

I think 5e makes a big mistake in folding journey play and dungeon play under the same umbrella of "exploration." They're completely different. Where journey play is heavily abstracted, with days of travel often glossed over in a minute or two of play time, dungeon play is extremely concrete. With rare exception, every room is described in detail, every object in it is accounted for, and that level of detail is often critical to how the players will engage with the dungeon environment. Time can be somewhat abstracted--I've never been a fan of tracking turns by real time--but when minutes are glossed over, it's generally still pretty clear where exactly every character is and what they're doing during those minutes. All of this, I think, makes for huge differences in how activities should be resolved.

So what are we doing in here? I suspect this list will be very unsurprising.

Navigation and Mapping

When I broke down journey play, the first core activity I identified was hiking and riding, the most basic process of traversing the environment. In dungeon play, I don't think that same activity presents a meaningful challenge in the same way. A miles-long cross-country trek with a heavy pack is a difficult, dramatic process, something that'll grind you down and deplete your resources; the same can't be said of walking down a hallway. I know some games go hard on tracking exact movement speeds per dungeon turn, but I've never found that added anything to my games; I'm a lot more comfortable just estimating when the characters have been exploring for about ten minutes, however many rooms and corridors they get through in that time. So, for me, the basic process of moving through a dungeon, assuming no specific obstacles, doesn't really need an established procedure. Your taste, as always, might vary.

However, navigating a dungeon and remembering the way out is far more complicated. Every group needs a mapper. Here, we start to see the massive difference in how resolution can work between journey and dungeon play: because dungeons are described in such concrete detail, with the players aware of every room, exit, and passage, they can easily be expected to navigate using their own player situational awareness. They have all the same information as their characters; there's no need for character competence to matter here. Of course, that's assuming the characters have the equipment to make maps and are doing so. I generally assume whichever player is drawing the map, their character is doing the same, and I communicate that expectation to my players from the start.

Supply Management

This is one dungeons have in common with journeys, though usually the resources that matter are different. I rarely run the kind of game where the party will be trapped within a dungeon for days or weeks at a time, so food and water usually aren't as much of an issue. The big one that matters is light--running out of torches or lantern oil is one of the main time pressure risks.

Regardless, like with supply management in journeys, this is mainly a function of player foresight. The limiting factor within the fiction will be how much equipment the party can afford and how much they can physically carry into the dungeon (while hopefully leaving room in their packs for treasure). Like in journey play, scavenging might be able to make up for some planning mistakes, but here, I think this is more likely to implicate player creativity than character knowledge or skill--again, because the players have much more concrete information about what's around them, they're better positioned to come up with clever ideas. Character knowledge might help sometimes, though ("hey, I know that fungus--if you pour water on it, it glows like a torch!").

Terrain Obstacles

Bottomless chasms, crumbled passages, things that make traversal a challenge where it wouldn't be otherwise. I see equipment as probably the main factor in most of these cases--did you bring rope to scale the wall? Shovels to dig out the rubble? Lacking the right tools, again, we go to player creativity: how can you improvise a solution from what's available? Here, though, I see character skill becoming more relevant again. If you don't have the right gear to safely scale that wall, maybe the thief can free solo it.

Doors

This is really just a type of terrain obstacle, but it's so common and gets so much procedural attention in so many games that I think it deserves some special analysis. Here's another one where I see equipment being the number one question: if it's locked, do you have picks? If it's barred or stuck, do you have a crowbar to pry it open or an axe or a pick to break it down? Player creativity matters too, for the same reasons as above. When it comes to locks in particular, character skill can become relevant again, but otherwise, I usually don't see much specialized character training being relevant in getting through a door.

Mechanisms, Locks, and Traps

Now this one's interesting. You start with the most basic: a lock, as above. How is this solved? Usually you need lockpicks, of course, so that's equipment, and unless the game establishes that all adventurers can pick locks, you also need character skill. Can player skill come into it? In most games, I don't think so, because locks are usually one of the places where dungeon play gets more abstract again. I barely know anything about how locks work in real life, I don't have the energy to describe a locking mechanism in detail in a game. But what if that's not the case? What if the ref actually gives the players detailed information about how the mechanism works, all its moving parts, everything they can manipulate? Then it becomes about player problem-solving again--the lock becomes basically a puzzle. You can apply this to all kinds of mechanisms, traps, whatever.

But go back to that lock: all that assumes the lock is of a kind that's known and understood by people in the game world. The way a conventional, mechanical lock works isn't actually that complicated, it's just a question of having taken the time to practice fucking with them. But in some settings, you have more esoteric tech--what about an electronic lock? How many people in your milieu even understand the principles of how that works? If that's the kind of tech you're working with, I think it becomes less about character skill and more about character knowledge (see my previous post for discussion about the key difference between those). To put it one way, a thief can pick a mechanical lock, but in my mind, to deal with an electronic lock, you probably need a wizard, someone who's studied the lost technology of the ancients. So that creates an important difference between what I'm gonna call conventional mechanisms, which bring in character skill, and esoteric mechanisms, which bring in character knowledge. Both can implicate player problem-solving instead, if they're given sufficient detail for the players to engage with themselves, but I see this as less common in either case.

Where player creativity really comes into play is especially with traps. Mechanisms that are like puzzles or barriers usually require engaging with them in anticipated ways--slide the tiles into place to unlock the door, etc.--but traps are there to be bypassed by whatever dirty tricks the players can come up with. Equipment will often be highly relevant for these innovations.

Interpreting Records

This is a pretty niche thing, but I think it deserves consideration. You crack open a dusty tomb and find an ancient inscription in a dead tongue--what does it say? Is it warning of a terrible curse ready to strike down robbers? You probably want someone in the party with the character knowledge to figure it out, in case it's important. This also applies to more directly magical writings, spell scrolls and stuff.

Stealth and Pursuit

Probably more often important here than in journey play, and for once in this comparison, similar in how it plays out. Player creativity can get a foot in the door, if the environment doesn't present an obvious way of hiding or deterring pursuit, but once that's established, character skill usually becomes the main issue. Equipment is relevant mainly in the negative, in that the more shit you're carrying around, the slower and more conspicuous you're likely to be--although certain tools might be helpful.

The Factors

So, putting all this together, we find that what matters consistently in dungeon play is:

• Player situational awareness. Skill at maintaining a mental map of the dungeon environment, tracking where things are and what's useful to them.
• Player problem-solving. Interacting with presented obstacles on the obstacles' terms, like when solving a puzzle in the way the puzzle is designed to be solved.
• Player creativity. Solving problems in unexpected ways--looking at the environment and what's available to use and coming up with innovative ways to apply those tools.
• Player foresight. Knowing what tools to bring based on provided information about the obstacles to be expected.
• Equipment. What tools and supplies the characters have available to them thanks to their players' foresight.
• Character skill. Important for those activities that are more abstracted than most dungeon play--picking locks, disabling traps, sneaking, and the like.
• Character knowledge. Probably the least often important in this breakdown--useful if the milieu includes esoteric tech that requires more knowledge than skill to interact with, important for translating old texts, and maybe a component in some supply management challenges.

Notably absent this time is character endurance. I see dungeon play, outside of combat, as much less physically draining on PCs most of the time; there will be exceptions, of course, but again, in a long journey, you're expending a ton of effort from a limited pool just to haul your ass to your destination, while that doesn't tend to be nearly as much the case in dungeon play. The main endurance drain in dungeons tends to be combat, but I see the game shifting into a whole different mode when a fight starts, just one that then has significant implications for dungeon play once the focus shifts back.

Still, we can see that a system that handles dungeon play well should model the characters' relevant skills (picking locks and fucking with conventional technology, sneaking, traversing difficult terrain with minimal tools) and knowledge (ancient languages, esoteric tech, possibly edible or otherwise useful dungeon life).

Next time, I want to talk about social play.

The Pillars of the OSR, Part I: Journeys

 why am I doing this now I just completely rewrote my rules Goddammit fuck

D&D 5e talks a lot about its "three pillars" of exploration, socialization, and combat. A big part of the problem with 5e is that it only provides real mechanical support for one of those supposedly foundational gameplay modes, combat. The exploration and socialization are pretty much left to the DM to figure shit out.

I think 5e is a pretty shit game. But I've been thinking lately about the value of defining similar "pillars" when designing other RPGs. I think it's good, when making a game, to think about what kinds of things you want the players and PCs to be doing regularly and design around those activities. That probably sounds obvious, but a lot of games don't do this. The big problem with "core mechanic" systems in my experience, where everything is resolved with the same dice mechanic, is that they often start by thinking about their core mechanic in abstract, as dice and numbers without fictional context, and then try to bend it to apply to all sorts of different fictional situations. At the same time, I think a lot of OSR does the opposite. OSR tends to be very anti-core mechanic, we like having unique procedures for every activity that reflect how we want that specific activity to work. But sometimes, at least for me, it can feel like some of those procedures easily could work on a more consistent set of mechanics, but don't, largely out of respect for tradition (or just wanting to roll all the dice). I don't think that's always a good thing--I think having consistency in mechanics is useful, it helps make the game intuitive and rules easier to remember--just as long as the pursuit of mechanical consistency doesn't compromise the important distinctions between fictional activities.

So what are the core activities, the "pillars," of OSR? I think they're pretty consistent. I see the game usually breaking down into five main modes, which I'm going to call journeys, dungeons, socialization, combat, and magic. You could have downtime in place of magic; I'll talk about why I say this when I get there. Further, I think each pillar is usually supported by a pretty consistent set of core activities, stuff adventurers will end up doing regularly in the vast majority of games. I think by breaking these down, and by considering what factors--in the fiction and at the table--usually do or should play into how they turn out, we can make our procedures better.

It's also an important OSR principle that a game shouldn't substitute character competence for things that can be simulated well by player competence. We all hate the idea of players magicking their way through a negotiation with an NPC by rolling diplomacy when talking is perfectly practical; conversely, we're generally more okay with characters' fighting skills mattering in combat, because most of us aren't about to break out the boffer weapons whenever initiative happens. And even if we were, I personally like the idea of players being able to play character who are much better (or worse) martial artists than they are in real life. OSR should require players to be good at some things to do well, like memory and lateral thinking, but many things, I think, can and should be left to character competence--otherwise we'd LARP. I think one benefit of breaking down the core activities of the game this way, and what factors they should rely on, is that it can help us hone in on what properties of a player should matter to the game versus what properties of a character, and thus avoid having mechanics hanging awkwardly off our characters that either don't really do anything or require us to invent extraneous procedures to justify their presence.

Journeys

You might call this overland travel, wilderness exploration, or whatever. I like to think of it in terms of journeys because the main thing I want it to evoke is the long treks of Tolkien's fellowship. They were journeying toward a known goal, not exploring an unknown place, but it's all similar enough for our purposes.

Journey play is relatively abstracted. You can often cover one or more days of travel in a couple minutes of real time. Some games go so far as to basically ignore journeys--you say the party travels for X days and then they arrive where they want to be. I like journeys to be important. I usually see them as what adventurers spend most of their time doing, even if little of it is played out. Getting to the dungeon is usually just as big a part of the adventure as the dungeon itself--after all, if the dungeon were easy to reach, someone else probably would've gotten there first. If a game doesn't have good journey procedures, I think it's weaker for it.

The core activities I see as part of journeys are:

Hiking and Riding

The heart of it, move your ass from point A to point B. Usually pretty simple, but if you've ever backpacked anywhere, you know it's not easy. Fantasy heroes battling exhaustion during a harrowing trek is something I love to see, and I find it exciting to face in play. Things I think usually do or should matter to this include character endurance (asking a player to do jumping jacks every time their character has to hike somewhere feels awkward, and I don't think a player's own physical fitness should matter to the game anyway) and equipment (how much are you carrying? If you're scrambling across mountains, do you have suitable climbing gear? Do you need snowshoes? Machetes for hacking through a jungle? What about your mounts and vehicles, are they going to be an issue?).

Navigation

To move your ass to point B, you have to know where point B is. If you have a clear road to follow, I don't see any need to make this a challenge. Likewise f you know the area well, which, given the abstracted nature of journey play--we don't usually describe anything but the most important landmarks at the table, if that--I think is better left to character knowledge than player knowledge. Failing both, you're left to rely dangerously on your navigational skills (again, more of a character than a player thing, I think, for the same reasons as area knowledge) and your equipment (maps, compasses, and the like).

Supply Management

Do you have enough food to make it from point A to point B? Enough firewood if you need it? Portable shelter? This is easily resolved through player planning, since the players should be well aware of what their characters have with them, and whether they thought to bring the equipment they'd need. Mistakes can be corrected through hunting and foraging, which rely on character skill (how would you simulate that situation for the player to use their own competence?) and again equipment (bows, slings, and snares for hunting, fishing gear, etc.). Knowledge could also be a factor--do you know what plants are good to eat around here? Depending on how much detail the local flora gets, that could be player knowledge (if you're willing to describe specific plants and fungi to a player, they can learn what's safe and what isn't) or character knowledge (if you leave things more vague, the player can't make the call for themselves).

Dangerous Terrain and Weather

This is when the landscape between point A and point B present a more concrete, active danger rather than just grinding you down through attrition. Deep chasms, crumbling cliffside paths, flash floods, blizzards. These are probably the moments when journey play zooms in to a less abstract perspective, maybe involving more concrete scene details for players to respond to--but I think in general, they should still be fairly abstracted, or else you're better off approaching them as a different play mode entirely. When a blizzard blows in, you probably ask "how are you gonna get through/survive the blizzard?" not "which exact cave are you taking shelter in?"

Depending on how foreseeable the hazards were, player planning might be relevant again. If the problem is a surprise, it's probably better left to character knowledge and skill--again, because of how abstract these scenes will probably be, it's harder for players to bring in what they know about actual wilderness survival, and even if a player knows how to build an igloo to hide from a snowstorm, their character might not. In either case, equipment matters again--you'll fare a lot better if you brought the stuff you need to deal with the situation.

Stealth and Pursuit

The Nazgûl are hunting you from Rivendell; can you evade them? Depends possibly on player creativity (what cunning ruses can you come up with to hide from, delay, or mislead your pursuers?), possibly character endurance (can you outlast them in a death march?), character skill (how good are you at covering ground unseen?), and maybe equipment (are your mounts faster than theirs? Do you have weapons or traps to deter pursuit?).

What Matters?

So, putting all this together, what factors of the player and of the character have we identified that matter consistently in journey play?

• Player foresight. The ability to predict what you'll face on your journey and prepare accordingly. This is definitely better determined by the players than the characters--they can easily be given all the information they need about the area and the obstacles that await them to make informed decisions about what to bring. The alternative would be some kind of "foresight roll" to see if the characters thought to bring cold-weather bedrolls, which is just unnecessary.
• Equipment. Your supplies and tools are gonna be relevant for pretty much every part of journey play. This, I predict, will be a running theme throughout much of this analysis.
• Character endurance. The heroes' ability to withstand the rigors of the journey will be a big limiting factor, potentially the main source of time/resource pressure. As discussed, this should definitely be a function of the characters more than the players.
• Character knowledge. Of the land they're traveling through, its dangers, its resources. Some functions of this seem like they could be served by player knowledge, which in theory I think is better, but in practice, at least for me, journey play is usually gonna be so abstract that players won't have much opportunity to apply their own knowledge concretely. Your taste might vary.
• Character skill. At navigating, hunting, dealing with various terrain and weather hazards, stealthy travel. Again, tasks that will be hard for players to apply their actual skills to, either because they're too abstracted, or because they just don't simulate well at the table.
• Player creativity. Generally hard to apply with situations being so abstracted, but might be important sometimes. This will definitely be much more important in other modes of play.

A thing I should probably talk about at this point is the important distinction I see between knowledge and skill. Knowledge is binary, you have it or you don't. If it's established in the fiction that your character has studied wolf ecology for years and knows everything there is to know about them, and then a situation comes up where you need to know how wolves hunt, it's bullshit to have to roll for that--there's nothing you can fuck up in that situation. Skill, meanwhile, is what counts when you can do something wrong. You can know, in theory, how a sword is used and still be a shitty swordsman, and you can be a great swordsman but get unlucky and fumble a strike. Wolf ecology is knowledge, swordsmanship is a skill. Taming a wild wolf would probably be a skill, and you might be able to glean something about a fighter from watching her technique if you're knowledgeable about swordplay.

Anyway, from all this, it looks to me like a game that handles journey play well should probably have some way of representing a character's endurance, applicable knowledge, and relevant skills. I think that's useful to know.

I wasn't sure how long this whole thing would be; it ended up being pretty long. I'll break it down by the pillars I've identified and go through them in subsequent posts.

Orcs

The beings known as elementals have long perplexed scholars. What drives soulless matter to rise in such imitation of life? Particularly baffling are those elementals that seem to defy the categories of matter discerned by the great sages. A being all of earth or fire may be strange to behold, but its nature is at least clear--but what of a creature of ice, or lightning, or salt?

For as long as humans have lived, they have fought with each other. Philosophers and poets have dreamed of worlds without war, yet no matter how many such dreams they spin, those worlds scarcely seem any closer. Jesters and jaded minds say that as earth and water are basic building blocks of matter, so is war a basic building block of humanity. If you need proof, they say, just look at an orc.

Sometimes, when a great battle has ended, the hatred, rage, and pain of the fallen does not pass from the world. From blood-soaked mud, mangled flesh, sundered arms and armor, it crafts new bodies. They have no eyes--they need none but their helmet-slits. They have no tongues--no words are left to them, only howls of hate for all that is not an orc. Their wrists end in blades, barbs, and bludgeons--they no longer have any other use for hands.

They know neither pain nor fear. They do not tire. Though they hunger, they never starve. The warband marches, unceasing, ever in search of the enemy--and to an orc, everything that isn't an orc is the enemy. Bloodthirsty army or defenseless village, it matters not as long as there is killing to do. Their bodies, though awful to behold, are ideal for the task, stronger than all but the mightiest warriors. With every "victory," they grow stronger, carnage and metal rising to replenish the ranks. Unchecked, the warband becomes a horde, villages becoming cities and empires.

The most terrifying thing about them, though, is that they can be used. Soldiers follow orders. With the proper magics, or sometimes just the charisma and bloodthirst of a sufficiently cruel warlord, they transform from an untamed force of destruction into a weapon of horrifying power. They become capable of scouting, retreat, ambush, and siege. Their hatred will not be checked, though, carrying out all orders in the most brutal way possible, sparing none unless commanded to take prisoners by name. A warlord who tries too hard to bring them to heel may suddenly find themselves the target of their own "loyal" troops.

They are best fought with a small, elite force. Attrition is ever on their side--the horde always hungers.