Przygody w Dziczy - uniwersalna mechanika OSR

Wiele współczesnych OSRów idzie tak daleko w upraszczaniu zasad rozgrywki, że zapomina o tak fundamentalnych regułach jak te rządzące poruszaniem się w Dziczy. Całe szczęście jest jeszcze Wuj Wolf, który coś tam pamięta z oryginalnej edycji D&D. A że nie jest przy tym fanatykiem stosowania starych zasady tylko dlatego, że są stare, lecz ceni sobie komfort rozgrywki - opracował te zasady dostosowując je do dzisiejszych czasów, dodając sporo od siebie. Jak zatem radzę sobie z tematem poruszania się po Dziczy (ang. Wilderness) w OSRach, które nie zawierają odpowiednich zasad? Ano tak jak wyłożyłem w poniższym dokumencie (do znalezienia również w pasku bocznym).

(Nearly) complete OD&D Hack

So some time ago I posted a bunch of my houserules. Now it's time for the real deal that is the complete set of rules I use in my campaigns in lieu of the standard 3LBB stuff. It's heavily Chainmail 2ed inspired, and fuelled by long discussions with my fellow retrogamer Roberd (supposedly his blog is quite readable after machine translation so you can give it a shot) who happens to be playing in my campaign as well (and the other way around - I play at his table from time to time). 

OD&D: minor supplements and houserules

So without any particular introductions: we all know that Original Dungeons & Dragons (especially if we consider only the three basic booklets) is a game which needs quite a lot of rule supplementation if we want to cover most of typical in-game situations. And the rules which are present are not always that useful and you don’t need to be a genius designer to replace them.

The result is that after each campaing the referee ends up with a bunch of houserules. After few iterations, dozens of games played and few campaigns one may find that surprisingly the volume of houserules qualifies for a completely new game system.

Drafting a hexcrawl module. Case study.

Miris Dor, a Polish blogger shared his methodology of preparing a hexcrawl module (however it’s not that hexcrawley as you may hoped for as he reveals his philosophy in the second episode). It’s in Polish so if you’re not lucky enough to understand it you can run it through an automatic translation, it works quite fine.

What staggered me a bit is that it seems like a heckin lot of work. I believe I’ve been there at some point in my hexcrawl experiences but now I allow myself a lot of freedom and improvising. And I don’t think it’s a matter of being a good or bad  DM but of grasping the concept that you actually don’t need a lot of prep to run a game which will be fun for all participants and you don’t need any particular set of skills acquired during a very long career to try it. It’s perfectly fine to stop the game for a minute or two to render another part of the setting. RPG adventures (please pay attention – not every RPG falls into that category) are all about participation and agency so it does not suck the fun from your game if you make up things on the fly. At least – that’s my philosophy and I’ll try to show you how it works on an example of a campaign which I prepared few days ago. It's not intended to be a guide but merely a collection of musings.