Old Skulling

Art by Bradley K. McDevitt It’s really hard to define a foolproof formula for creating good adventures, but some elements certainly help make it more interesting and exciting for everyone playing it. Like everything else, however, a single group may not be interested in all of these elements, but it’s usually a good idea to try to insert them in the adventures first to see how they respond. Choices that Matter RPGs are first and foremost about making choices--choices that matter,not simply mechanical choices during character creation, or whether to attack one bandit or another,. Choices can  dramatically alter the events in the story, so these choices need to be informed choices too. It makes no difference to choose between two paths in the forest with absolutely nothing to tell them apart from each other. Give them information, feed their senses. Think about what you can tell them about the choices they have to help them make a judgment call, and let their choices really ...

Artwork by Rafael Balbi I was asked by a friend of mine to include a little more guidance on how to run Social Encounters in my games, since they advocate for not rolling dice in these situations. I already have written something in SB&CS but I decided to try to improve that text a little bit to make things a little clearer. Let's see if it works. Let me know what you all thing! Social and Intellectual Challenges There are rules governing many aspects of the game, but for some of them, we left blanks (such is the way of Old School gaming). You roll dice to see if you hit your enemy with your sword, if you managed to dodge the scythe trap, or to see if you find the right scrolls on the Overlord’s library, but  we suggest you don’t roll dice for every challenge, especially social and intellectual ones. When the player characters decide to interact with someone, the Referee asks them what they are saying. What are they hoping to get out this interaction?  How ...

Let's get back with the previews of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells second edition, shall we? It's been a few months, but I am back with something I wrote about Sword and Sorcery genre and how to explore this in the game. Sword and Sorcery Adventures This is a sword and sorcery RPG, inspired by pulp literature and comics. Although this falls into the fantasy games category, there are a few key differences that might be worth mentioning between generic or high fantasy and sword and sorcery. This section will briefly outline some of the core themes of sword and sorcery stories and how to apply them to the game. Ancient Worlds The settings of sword and sorcery adventures are usually very old, with dozens of ancient civilizations, hundreds of ruins and many mysteries lost to history. Cities are built above the ruins of previous cities. Crumbling monuments can be found in the wilderness, signaling that there was once something in that location. Broken statues can be fo...

Now for the last part of this preview of Good Referee Principles that will be part of the Running the Game chapter of the revised edition of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells to be published in the near future! For the first post go here , and for the second here . Surprise Them We all have expectations in our games. The majority of people who will sit down to play SS&SS with you have probably already played other fantasy roleplaying games, read fantasy books, watched dozens of fictional movies or even played hours and hours of fantasy games in their consoles or computers. And that means they have preconceived notions of what magic is, what a monster do, what powers a magic sword has and things like this. Surprise them. Make monsters do things they don’t usually do in the fiction. Makes what initially seems to be bad actually be good in the end. Make the magic sword actually work as a vehicle somehow. Take their expectations and turn them around. Adventuring is Perilous ...

Continuing with the previews of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells second edtion, now the second part of the Good Referee Practices I began sharing on this post. Set Them Free Let the players explore the game and the world as they please. Don’t force them into any path you think it's more appropriate or that you have prepared in advance. If you need to improvise something due to their choices, look into the practice above this one. Use random tables or use one of the thousands of ready made material that’s available either for free or for very reasonable price all around (look for the One Page Dungeon entries). Doing this will not only allow players to have fun as they prefer, but will make the game exciting and surprising for you too. Reward Exploration and Ingenuity This game has many ways to reward player characters, such as points of Luck, Coins, Daring and even the accomplishment of goals that are necessary to advance Levels of experience. Find a way to reward expl...

Artwork by Diogo Nogueira This section on the new edition of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells is intended to function as a quick guidance reference for Referees that are unfamiliar with the Old School style of play, or even more experienced Referees that like to keep these practices in their immediate mind. This was inspired by many resources such as the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matt Finch, the Principia Apocrypha by David Perry and the Referee Book for Lamentations of the Flame Princess by James Raggi IV. These principles outlined below are not absolute however. As the first principles outlines, this game is yours now, and you should play it the way you feel more comfortable and have more fun with it. If you don’t like one or some of them, just ignore them. Take what you want and leave the rest. Make the Game Your Own This game has almost everything you need to play adventures inspired by the pulp literature of sword and sorcery. However, your vision of how th...

I recently listened to an episode of Gaming and BS and the hosts were talking about Loot in the game. They got into the subject of how Loot was the main venue to differentiate character in Old School D&D and whether they preferred this or the current method of using many different character customization options in the rules. I want to say that although they touched some good points, they forgot the main way to differentiate characters in any RPG, especially Old School RPGs: Through playing the game . In a game where you literally take the whole of this completely different person, the way you play them is what really differentiates them. So, for me, the major ways to make your character different is through these following things: Personality and Mannerisms: A brash and cocky fighter is very differently than an centered and calm one. The same character can be very different if he is always sharpening his weapons obsessively or if he likes to talk to his weapons as if t...

I know I am not the most successful RPG author out there. Far from it. But I’ve learned a lot (at least in my point of view) and I want to share whatever knowledge I may have. I might not have all the answers, but sharing this might help someone, and may even help me if someone points out my mistakes and where can I get better. Sharing helps everyone, so it’s a win/win thing! 1. Don’t wait for inspiration or a great idea. Just write! The real difference isn’t between the people who write bad stuff and the people who write great material. It’s between the ones who do and the ones who doesn’t (assuming they want to write, obviously). Don’t wait for a magical moment to arrive or the greatest idea ever (it’s very likely that idea isn’t that great either), just sit and write. Create stuff, even boring stuff. After you’ve started, you can get better. You will get better, as long as you do it. Inspiration can help sometimes, but ask anyone doing good work and they will tell you it onl...

Image from Freaks & Geeks TV Show I don't really remember when or where I read this, but I once saw a list of 10 commandments of good game mastering that was all about telling a story in a way that the GM had all the power to ignore rules, results and even what the player's managed to choose to tell "his story". I immediately wanted to write my own commandments. I thought that was a complete disaster, but I know some people enjoy that style of play (I have to freaking idea why though). So I made one, I published in my Brazilian RPG blog and I thought I could share it too. I sometimes reread them to remember what I truly think it's important for my games. As it's implied in the post title, these are MY 10 COMMANDMENTS OF GOOD REFEREEING , and it's completely natural and understandable that other people might see it differently. But I thought this could be useful to somebody as a reminder or for simple food for thought. Any way, here are my 10 comm...

"You! You just died!" - Photo by Douglas Fóis When I first started playing RPGs, I would try to prepare for every possibility I could think of. I almost tried to write "Gamebooks" to run as adventures, with numbered index cards and sayings like "if players try to do this, go to card 15" or something. It was exhausting, and mostly useless. Players will do things can't ever imagine ourselves. And that's awesome! So I needed to come up with a method that could provide me with enough information so that I could run a game, but not so much that I would lose more than half of it because it never really appeared in the game. Preferably something that could take as little time as possible. So, taking inspirations from many sources (which I can only remember now as Tome of Adventure Design, The Lazy Dungeon Master and Fiasco), I came up with what I call the Adventure Structure method, and it works as follows.

I am a huge fan of the Old School philosophy of "let the dice fall where they may" . If this means the PCs die falling into a pit trap in the first room of the dungeon, so be it. Being an adventurer ain't easy. It's a shitty life, really. On the other hand, if it means they scored a critical hit and killed a very important NPC, getting awesome loot early on, so be it too. Adventurers sometimes get lucky! That's my usual and default drill when playing any RPG. However, I also like to put tough choices in front of the PCs and see what happens. Do they risk carrying all that gold, being slowed, and giving a chance for the terrible thing that is following them catch up with the party, or do they drop the gold and just get the hell out of there? Do they take the fastest but dangerous path to their objective, or do they take the safe but slower one, knowing a rival party is on the way there too? This does not seem immediately correlated, right? But something happen...

These tiles can generate some pretty hectic streets! This one is going to be a really quick post. I just wanted to share something I found while I was thinking about how to generate street maps for my Urbancrawl campaign. Suddenly browsing through my Board Games, I saw my Tsuro of the Seas and thought it might be pretty cool to use the tiles as templates for actual streets on the game. I could simple draw a tile and place it on the table. Once the PCs ventured outside of it, I could just draw another one, and keep going. But since I wanted to publish my City Toolbox someday, I had to research how to do that, how many combinations are possible and etc. And I found some pretty cool thing. You can generate your own tiles, and even a board for them here . There are only 35 possible tiles apparently. So to make a 36 table (with a d66 roll) I would still need another one, that I decided it's going to be a big plaza that all paths lead to. So that's it. Need some street maps? ...

"Wereleopard" by Luigi Castellani One of the things I like the most about OSR games is that they usually don't waste much of your time on character creation , letting you get to fun of the game as quickly as possible. However, one of the complaints I hear from people outside of the OSR (and even some of the people playing its games) is that there isn't many mechanical options during character creation. Accustomed with newer games where you can choose between 900 classes, 5000 skills, and 3 million talents, they look on OSR games and their less than 10 classes, no skills, talents and other stuff as not "flexible" as their usual games. But I believe this is not true. OSR games just focus on a different kind of flexibility and prefer to focus on it during play, and not outside of it with hundreds of mechanical options that, in the end, just limit your choices inside the game itself. The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG thought me a great lesson about it that...

Some of my victims, I mean, players, and my Survival Kit on the table. It has been a while since I had players come over to play RPGs at my own home. Two years ago I got a son, and that made playing at home a bit complicated. He sleeps early and requires all the attention we can give him. So most of my gaming is done outside now. Usually on conventions and small informal gamers gatherings (we do that a lot here in Brazil, since conventions are rare). This means I gotta carry my gaming gear around. The problem is: I love judging Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG ! And that book is huge, not to mention heavy! Carrying it around with all the stuff I like to use (dice, props, character sheets, dice tray, erasable board) ain’t easy. So I had to create a RPG Survival Kit (and now I use it for all other games I run, including Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells ). First, I gotta tell you something. I like to call attention to my games. I mean, to the games I ran. I like to spread the love I ...

Artwork by Luigi Castellani I've heard it a thousand times. You probably heard it too. Some people , I don't know why, say that dungeons , especially large ones, are boring . The endless repetitions of rooms and corridors and having to choose to go left, right, north or south depresses them. I don't know why. Actually, I do know why. Because they don't really know how to run a dungeon in play. It seems easy, effortless. Just say what's in the room the PCs are in and where the passages going out of it go. But it's not. They get bored with the "you get to a intersection and there is a door to the north and two passages, one going east and one going west" because that's a terrible way of describing a dungeon environment and gives nothing really useful to the players to choose from. You never describe a dungeon like that . There's a lot more going on that we can initially see. A good referee will take all the context of what the dungeon w...