What can hobbyist gaming and the Old School Renaissance do for you?

What we need now is a new game. Seriously, a new game. I think that all of the world building guys out there working away in their basements, crafting their kingdoms of excellence is a good thing. I think the greatest thing about hobbyist gaming is the sheer creative urge to build worlds, share visions, and just get stuff out there. Is all of it good? Perhaps not. But then again, how many movies need to be made? How many books need to be written? How many video games need to be created? Aren’t there plenty of excellent movies out there? How about books, there are probably more books written that are absolutely incredible and more than anyone can read in a lifetime. There are a ton of new games coming out all of the time. What I really want to see in these new adventures, rules compilations, addendums, add-ons, etc is some variety. I’d like to break the dungeon mold. It seems folks get stuck in a rut of building a marble run over and over and over, when it might be fun to build a robot out of legos instead. I don’t mind delving, it’s great fun. But I want to see more creativity than kill orc and take pie. I think that is more than possible with the existing rule sets available (such as Swords and Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, etc). What kinds of things would you like to see? What kind of innovations are still to be had? Instead of making the next tower of the crazy wizard, I’d like to see the totally warped geometry of the bat-shit crazy cosmomancer. I’ve got some ideas, what kind of crazy stuff is there to be had? What about sentient fractals, magic based upon random interactions of people, atomic conjunctions that create special resonances that in turn feed alchemical processes that create quantum effects on the material world? I’d like to see some more fantastic, crazy, mind warping stuff in my fantasy. My campaign world will contain similar ideas and other crazy things. Like Prince sang, “Let’s go crazy!”

Comments

  1. PontifexJanuary 3, 2011 at 9:39 AM

    Have you read Errant?

    ReplyDelete
  2. XyanthonJanuary 3, 2011 at 9:46 AM

    I have not. Who is it by?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 3, 2011 at 10:16 AM

    ..but...but I like pie... :(

    Its all a matter of scale & scope. Everything has been done, but its up to how the referee puts elements together to make it seem new.

    Actually, one idea I employed when things needed a bit of shaking up was to employ adventures in the multiverse. World upon world was experiencing their own individual apocalyptic events which eventually led the adventurers into the planes.

    What better place to start introducing new "laws of physics"? Anything goes. Sure, D&D had Planescape, but I don't really think it went far enough as a campaign realm. I could be wrong, it's been years since I've had the boxed sets.

    Rivers flow uphill, winter follows springtime, morning ends the day... the choice is yours.

    Ciao!

    ReplyDelete
  4. XyanthonJanuary 3, 2011 at 10:43 AM

    @Grendelwulf - I like pie too, but sometimes I want gellato. I think one of the things that really attracts me to the Old School Renaissance is the open ended possibilities that are presented. However, so far, the past four years have seen much aping of the tropes of the mid to late 70's through early 80's. That is good but I think we're getting to the point where we've scratched that itch. To be sure there are guys out there like Raggi, Gefforey McKinney, Zak S, etc that are doing some things that are different from the norm. I think (and hope) this year will be a year of new horizons for the OSR. That doesn't mean I don't think there isn't room for more old school dungeon crawls, but I'd like to see some stuff akin to Agak and Gagak from Moocock's Sailor on the Sea of Fate.

    Ciao e buon anno!

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJanuary 3, 2011 at 11:07 AM

    Hmm, Agak and Gagak, who suck who universes dry, along with the Gestalt Black Blade wielded by The Four Who Are One.

    I ran an eight year campaign using Moorcock's cosmology. I combined rpg rules from AD&D, Marvel Super Heroes, & Star Trek (FASA). Big showdown was with Arioch, the Phoenix Force & other superheroes, a wielder of Mournblade & Excalibur, a Federation starship taking on a spaceborn Ancient One. It was Earth shattering!

    Now, to put that in a box...? Can you? I made it work by balancing all elements between game systems (not an easy process initially). There were unique magics dependant upon player interaction. Again, houseruled. Great stuff for epic games, but for the average?

    I suppose one could, for the fantastical angle. Would you make randomized tables for effects and what constitutes the standard laws of reality for a realm? Did the ol' Elric rpg ever handle dimensional planes in such a fashion?

    It's a great idea, I am just not sure how one could contain it in a box.

    I will be looking for
    Multiverse[tm] the Roleplaying Game,
    coming to a FLGS shelf near you!

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownJanuary 3, 2011 at 11:46 AM

    Hey, we can integrate some new thinking where we emphasize the tactical aspects of the game, adding abilities that let a character move their opponents around the battlefield and allow the players to participate even when its not their turn to keep them involved more. We could abstract character abilities and put it on the shoulders of the players to depict the game effects instead of the game system. We could...naw, it would never work. In fact, it sounds like a slippery slope to a new edition.

    ReplyDelete
  7. XyanthonJanuary 3, 2011 at 11:53 AM

    I think it is possible within the existing rule sets, you'd just need to use more randomized tables to generate effects and the like. I'm going to attempt something similar for Basalt Keep of Wilven the Yellow. Essentially the keep is a dimensional hopping structure that was sort of dispaced from the fabric of reality by a mad experiment with randomized magic. I want to use randomized tables to generate the effects. Hm, I have some more ideas and it'll take a bit of work, but I'll try to work them in. Overall, I just want a little different adventure. Not that there is anything wrong with the standard fantasy fare that is being offered, but I think it'd be cool to at least attempt to use the basic rule set from say Labyrinth Lord/Holmes/Moldivay/BECMI/whatever, to create a fantasy adventure. So, I'm not necessarily thinking of creating a whole new rule set from the ground up, more like creating a new campaign world that uses the basics but has a different set of physics so to speak.

    ReplyDelete
  8. PorkyJanuary 3, 2011 at 12:06 PM

    We're watching the right space, that's clear - I like your thinking, Johnathan. As a working title I prefer 'Polycosmos: The Game'.

    ReplyDelete
  9. XyanthonJanuary 3, 2011 at 10:01 PM

    Thanks Porky. It's fun to develop these ideas. Finding the time and energy to execute is another matter. Being able to put things out there through this blog does help though.

    ReplyDelete

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