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.