Classic Timekeeping

[Airk]

I’m always a little bit mystified by the whole “cult of Gary” in terms of advice and processes. Not only is his advice often contradictory, but it feels vaguely like trying to improve your baseball team by rummaging through archives looking for advice from Jimmy Collins or trying to build an airplane by reading interviews with the Wright brothers. Anything you might find is very much a product of its time, at best, with an added layer, in Gary’s case, of not even necessarily reflecting how he did things at the time.

It’s just odd to me that so much importance should be placed on the opinions of someone from so early in the hobby, as if being the first person to do something necessarily makes you good at it.

All that said, I think the biggest problem with timekeeping in RPGs (and, come to that, with a lot of things in RPGs) is that no explanation of why it is useful is ever provided, which is even more strange and baffling to me considering how many RPGs not just allow but encourage the GM to change the rules to “fit their style” or the like. Timekeeping is critical for certain applications and utterly useless to the point of being detrimental in others, but somehow, game designers expect GMs not only to pick and choose the rules for their games, but to do so without any explanation of what the purpose of those rules is. This is especially visible with things like wandering monsters and encumbrance, which have often become vestigial (as mentioned above) but are retained anyway, or which are perceived as vestigial, but which should actually be used for certain types of play. But rather than be able to find that out by reading the game, people have to scour the internet for “GM advice” and then sift through the reams of it in an effort to discover what’s relevant and/or helpful.

So basically: If we’re going to continue to use this whole “It’s really up to the GM!” approach to “game design” then we need to provide the GM with the information they need to make informed decisions about things like this. And Gary never did.

[Gus.L]

I’ve heard Muster mentioned a bit lately, and need to check it out. I agree with you and Radmad both, D&D doesn’t have the level of clarity about it’s intent that many current games, especially in the story scene, do and there’s plenty of advice about playstyle and technique from very early on.

I do think there’s a core goal in old D&D to simulate (and really I shouldn’t use that word - DAMN YOU FORGE picking words with multiple meanings as terms of art!) a fictional world, and that does lead to a desire fore everything to be modeled - an impractical desire, a glorious one. Absurd really, but that’s the goal, that’s what’s trying to “tick away behind the scenes” - I don’t think it works and I think this sort of universe modelling is where AD&D starts getting kludgey. One can debate about that, given that very kludge starts conjuring possibilities from the text with random dungeon generators complex universal encounter tables and voluminous magic item lists and all sorts of stuff that builds the world of D&D and I think really helped its growth and the creativity of people picking up the books. Of course from a game design standpoint a huge messy open system does lack intention, and a 1,000 odd finicky mechanics are frustrating.

In the last 20 years maybe there’s been a concerted effort to build an intentional game out of early D&D’s fecundity though, and I think it’s been successful multiple times. Rather then Finch and Cone’s stuff (which I think is great) I look to Milton, Perry and Lumpkin’s Principia Apocrypha as an example of the later evolution and consensus (it was a community project) about one way of playing (neo)classical dungeon robber games. Still plenty of room to think about classic games and what they do though, partially because the community of play back in the 70’s and 80’s was so fractured compared to today’s where the internet allows a lot more discussion. My suspicion is that in the 80’s there was no one style of play or set of rules. The fruitful voids in OD&D and the overabundance in AD&D naturally lend themselves to house rules while the eccentric (as in varied and not universalized or systematized) mechanics of early D&D, themselves a product of evolution through play - check out those early Strategic Reviews or the Blackmoor supplement - make modification very easy.

[Johann]

I’ve seen the Principia Apocrypha mentioned before but never checked them out until now. Boy, did I miss out! An excellent primer: slick layout and great art (evoking those orange/black antique vases), carefully worded (I don’t get how this ruffled some people’s feathers), well structured (PbtA), great advice. I devoured it immediately and am now checking out a few more things I hadn’t heard about at the linked resources page. Thank you, Gus!

I suspect Eero is going to drill down to procedures (“from loot management to taming dragons”, as he teases in his video at IndieGoGo), while also staying clear of specific mechanics. Even though I’ve been running a successful and deliberately lethal campaign since 2014 (150+ sessions, 80+ casualties), I still can’t get enough of this topic.

Eero’s characterization of his D&D campaigns speaks deeply to me (and I can attest from countless discussions that these are no empty words):

• very challenge-focused , with real wins and losses front and center. Glory and disappointment abound in a way similar to sports or other challenging activities.
• very wargamey in the simulative sense: the game is about maneuvering in the fictional world rather than manipulating formal game mechanics like in a boardgame; the latter exists boldly, as it does in D&D, but in service to fun and powerful simulation rather than independent of it.
• egalitarian, with the campaign conceived as a joint operation more than the GM’s personal power-trip. The referee is a functionary of the process; maybe primus inter pares, but nevertheless fundamentally equal.
• creative rather than consumerist; we are the authors of our own activity, perhaps informed by others via various books, but never beholden to the Official Rules from distant masters.
• authentic rather than ritualistic; the grand purpose of a D&D campaign is to game out the implications of the campaign set-up rather than replicate the GM’s expectations of what D&D adventuring is “supposed to be”. We discover the truth via play.

[Gus.L]

Glad the Principia scratched an itch, I think it’s a very good piece, and it was written with an appeal to PBTA and other indie/story communities in mind. One of the first works I know of that’s pointing out similarities rather then emphisizing play style differences - which is good. The art is of course the work of the accomplished Evlyn Moreau, and is a direct reference to a series of incidental art in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. If you’re interested in classic game theory I would humbly suggest my own Prison of the Hated Pretender, recently released through Hydra Co-Op on Drivethru, a teaching dungeon version of a thing I did back in 2012 that’s about 1/2 notes on play largely aimed at explaining the distinctions between classic and 5E play related to encounters.

I read the Muster Kickstarter page, and it’s going to be interesting to see where it ends up - I like what Eero has written, but obviously his background theory language is different, derived from indie/story spaces rather then classic ones. I don’t think it’s as much a leap as many people in both spaces would sometimes claim, but it’ll be interesting to see where Muster ends up. I note that some of the goals there “authentic” and “challenge-focused” read almost like push back against dungeon crawl genre emulations games like Dungeon World or Torchbearer. Again very interesting.

I also don’t see mention of a base system so I suspect this won’t be a retro-clone either.

What system are you running your lethal game in btw?

[Johann]

Hot diggity! You’re Gus from the Tenfootpole comments! Prison of the Hated Pretender is an awesome title, which has stuck with me despite never having read your adventure. I’ve got lots of stuff from Bryce’s list of favorites but not yours. Yet.

@Gus.L

I like what Eero has written, but obviously his background theory language is different, derived from indie/story spaces rather then classic ones. I don’t think it’s as much a leap as many people in both spaces would sometimes claim, but it’ll be interesting to see where Muster ends up. I note that some of the goals there “authentic” and “challenge-focused” read almost like push back against dungeon crawl genre emulations games like Dungeon World or Torchbearer.

Given my interactions with Eero and his narrativist design work (e.g. Solar System, based on Clinton R. Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday), I’m not worried on that score, but I do understand your concern: There certainly are people out there with a “I’m more enlightened / hardcore / old school / whatever than thou” attitude.

(Eero has a fascinating take on the Forge’s Simulationism which is positive and constructive about approaches often frowned upon, such as railroading. And yeah, I don’t like the term Simulationism either.)

I’m running a heavily modified version of Dungeon Crawl Classics. I chose the rules for their D&D chassis, the deadly critical hit tables and most of all its magic system: The occasionally extreme spell results were an excellent protection against my then-lingering illusionist tendencies. When a sleep spell puts the entire dungeon to sleep you can kiss your adventure good-bye. I love this.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with illusionism if the players are okay with it. I and my friends sometimes miss dramatic reveals (Luke, I am your father!), complex set piece combats, NPCs with their own theme songs etc. It’s just that our tastes have changed.)

But seeing as we’ve gone increasingly off-topic, let me add something regarding the original issue:

I treat campaign time along the lines you suggest: in weeks, which are really turns. I cross off one week of campaign time for just about anything: ordering magic potions (which will arrive in 3d6 weeks), replacing dead henchmen, making inquires about black unicorns, going on a hunt with a neigboring lord etc.

Many of these activities would arguably take less time (particularly as I’ll cross off a week for the entire party), but then again, the PCs should really pay visits to friends, repair weapons, arbitrate between henchmen, go on wild goose chases, enterain visitors, catch a cold etc. etc.

I think cutting the process into manageable and gameable chunks is key.

Also, that way more time passes which makes things feel more real - and epic to boot! In our old D&D 3e campaigns, characters leveled up from 1 to 20 in the span of one or two years of in-game time. Demigods at 19!