Examples of things that support Foreground Growth

November 28, 2021January 10, 2022 ~ robdalexander ~ 1 Comment

I’m currently into Chris McDowell’s idea of “Foreground Growth” — character change and advancement because of specific things that happened in play, with no metagame rules invovled. Partly this is because I’m running Electric Bastionland and thinking about running Cairn, and neither has traditional advancement rules. The problem is that it’s not always obvious how to make it happen — while XP and level and skill point and advancement systems guide you to use them, foreground growth is something that the GM has to support.

So I’ve started a list below of foreground growth opportunities, along with sources that say how to do this or that glisten with examples:

Provide treasure that is worth money, and thus lets the PCs buy equipment and property and favours and titles
- Some examples of exotic treasures, things more interesting than coins and gems while still not having great non-monetary use — https://www.bastionland.com/2016/05/odd-treasures.html
Provide items that have interesting power and capabilities
- Oddity examples from McDowall —
- Joseph Manola’s list of magic items with effects that work well in OSR play — https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-enhancing-powers-game-ruining.html (note the links within to his further lists, including of “double-edged potions” and useful mundane items)
- (Don’t forget that you can tune an item’s usefulness in lots of ways, e.g. by making them single-use, fuelled by something rare, only usable in sunlight/above ground/by an ordained priest etc)
Threaten them with monsters that can change them if they wound them, kill them, or get them to swear fealty to them
- Some from McDowall — https://www.bastionland.com/2016/11/messy-characters.html and https://www.bastionland.com/2017/04/imprints-foreground-growth-in-context.html
Threaten them with monsters from which interesting treasures can be extracted
Use a “scars” system that’s triggered by certain mechanical situation
- An early verison is at https://www.bastionland.com/2016/05/active-survival-scars-and-afflictions.html
- A revised version is in Electric Bastionland (including the free version)
Provide pets and hirelings with useful abilities but challenging instincts or personal goals
Give them access to organisations who can, if membership criteria are met and/or suitable service is rendered, provide training or services
- McDowall’s early thoughts on Unions — https://www.bastionland.com/2016/05/unions-and-strength-in-numbers.html
- Electric Bastionland text on Unions (in paid version)
Let them worship at the shrines of dubious gods and receive blessings and punishments and strictures thereby
Let them hear rumours of locations with strange properties — stone circles, ancient temples, swamps with weird moulds (thanks to Adam Hensley for pointing this one out)
Use any of the above to give them distinctive personal properties
- McDowall’s examples of “behavioural oddities” — https://www.bastionland.com/2020/06/behavioural-oddities.html

Here are, also, some examples of foreground growth that don’t fit into the above categories (thanks to Yochai Gal for pointing these out):

If you have more categories, or can point me to more good examples, please let me know in the comments and I will expand the above.

A new page — Collected resources for interesting encounters

August 10, 2020 ~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

Much as with magic items, I often find encounter ideas online or in books. I quite often want encounter ideas when running or prepping games. I often can’t find those encounter ideas at the point when I want them.

So I am going to keep lists of them on a special page here.

An rpg prep checklist needs goals and techniques

May 1, 2020June 6, 2020 ~ robdalexander ~ 2 Comments

Conjecture — A good handy guide to GM prep moves needs to have, for each move:

A goal, desire, or applicable situation — when should you use this? When is it worthwhile?
A name of the move/technique — as a reminder for moves you know well
A brief summary/prompt set — so you can do it there and then, from the aforementioned handy guide, if you’re moderately familiar with the technique

For example:

Goal — Make some interesting NPCs
McDowall’s Mash-up Technique
1. 3x archetype/cliche
2. 3x e.g. animal
3. (mix up)
4. looks, voice, place-in-world, goal

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Some notes on fixing BX D&D

March 6, 2020March 7, 2020 ~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

As Patrick Stuart notes, BX D&D is core to the OSR. It has clarity, it has concision, and it is very clearly “D&D”. It has a clear modern presentation in Old School Essentials. Sadly, it has some serious problems. Here are some fixes. Maybe later there will be more.

First, up the amount of gold needed to advance in level is absurd, unless you want advancement to be ponderous. I’ve mostly concerned myself with how to meet that demand, but if you read my articles about it you’ll find links that suggest other solutions. (the comments on those links are often good).

Specifically, look at the intro to Tomb of the Serpent Kings — “Treasure amounts are balanced around the idea that 200gp is enough to level a single character”. That’s likely to be my model going forwards.

If you’re not writing adventures for others, I’d suggest you (a) give more than one xp per gp or (b) rescale all the level charts so they give the pace you want.

It’s not clear at all, in OSE or otherwise, how thief skills relate to the (obvious) ability of non-thieves to do those same things. James V West has about twelve ways to fix that — start reading at http://doomslakers.blogspot.com/2019/01/once-again-with-thieves.html.

Requiring “Read Magic” to use scrolls is excessive. Give Read Magic as an unlimited-use ability to all Magic Users — http://doomslakers.blogspot.com/2020/03/read-that-magic.html.

Three things, Christmas Eve 2019

December 24, 2019December 23, 2019 ~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

Landmark, hidden, secret — a classification scheme for information in game situations that might help us better decide what to tell players, and when — https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/landmark-hidden-secret.html

Michael Prescott explains why you probably don’t need to use the OGL, and probably would be unwise to use the DM’s Guild or similar DriveThruRPG programs. “… That last one is so mind-bendingly overreaching that it’s comical. You’re giving them permission to negotiate for you, with themselves. It’s like the devil wrote it.” — http://blog.trilemma.com/2019/10/compatible-with-dungeons-dragons.html

It looks like real-world archery is much harder at range than typical rpg archery. Given that long-range missile fire is hard to make fun, it might be worth trying some harsher range modifiers — https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/03/basic-d-on-archery.html

Three things, mid-December 2019

December 23, 2019January 19, 2020 ~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

Justin Alexander has a good article on why GMs shouldn’t fudge rules and die rolls — https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43708/roleplaying-games/gm-dont-list-9-fudging. He doesn’t mention that fudging subtly corrupts you, giving you a sordid aura and making you more likely to do murders, but I presume we all know that by now.

Alexander also has a has a plausible conjecture for why most realm/business/tavern management etc subsystems fail — because they tend to be closed systems, rather than integrating naturally with the main loop of the game — https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1185260871062183936?s=09

Finally, Patrick Stuart has been looking at the OSR-space and has concluded that BX/Moldvay D&D is the common language that makes most of it work — http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-bx-commons.html. This aligns with my experience — I see reddit and blog posts by people playing OD&D, but they’re rarely the people who are writing things I’m interested in. And I don’t see much about Holmes, Mentzer or AD&D at all.

Collected advice on adventure design

December 22, 2019October 1, 2022 ~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

I am writing some OSR-type D&D adventures that I intend to publish, so I have gone looking for advice on doing that. Below, I have collected links. I have also included some summaries, but honestly in the eyes of posterity they are more for my benefit in writing them than for you in reading them.

How I Write an Adventure, by Arnold K

https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-i-write-adventure.html

That’s prosaic, principled, but realistic — I can believe he actually works like that. My summary:

Write ten adventures at once, gathering and filing ideas as they come to you
Run them early — that will give you ideas and show you problems
Have a (short) list of themes, be strict about cutting stuff that doesn’t fit
Don’t commit to anything until late on, especially not to a specific map
Focus on making interesting snippets – you can integrate them later
Iterate your design, culling weak (or unthematic) bits ruthlessly
- As part of that, use his dungeon checklist

How I Make an Adventure by Patrick Stuart

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