I recently talked with Robert S. Conley about design and the Old School Renaissance.
He also discussed his latest project, Scourge of the Demon Wolf. Rob is a game
designer, veteran GM, and the man behind Bat in the Attic Games. For more
information on his products you can visit his blog or his company website at:
About himself
BD: You just released
a new module for Majestic Wilderlands called Scourge of the Demon Wolf. What is it about and how has it been
received?
Robert S. Conley
(RC): It is about the village of Kensla supposedly being terrorized by a
demon-possessed wolf and his pack. However there are complications and red
herrings that the players will have to overcome to find the out the true
threat. It represents the type of adventure I typically run.
Initial sales are doing well about 2/3rd of the Majestic
Wilderlands at a similar point. About 100 total copies versus 150 copies of
Majestic Wilderlands at the same point in time. The reviews have been positive
so far, including yours, for which I am thankful. We will see how we are at the
end of the year.
BD: What is the
Majestic Wilderlands all about?
RC: It is my fantasy campaign of thirty years. I started it
around 1982 and ran it for the last thirty years with at least a dozen distinct
groups with a major campaign about every two years or so. I also used a variety
of systems. The main games being AD&D 1st Edition, Fantasy Hero 1st
Edition, GURPS 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and Swords & Wizardry. Right now I am running
a weekly GURPS 4th edition campaign and a bi-weekly Swords & Wizardry
campaign at the Gold Star Anime in Edinboro.
Initially it was just the Wilderlands of High Fantasy by
Judges Guild. What made my campaigns different from other referees in my hometown
is my willingness to let my players “trash” the setting. I then used what they
did as the background for the next campaign. I liked it and the players seemed
to like it so it went on from there.
Around 1988, I redrew the maps by hand as my original JG
maps were getting too tattered to use for regular play. At that point I expanded the scale and wrote
some ret-cons about the campaign background but preserved everything that the
players did in the previous campaigns. That when my Wilderlands of High Fantasy
became the Majestic Wilderlands.
Since then I would say that my campaigns are mostly about
the adventure created from the clash of culture, religions and society. The
players pretty much get to pick where they want to start at both in locale and
in the background of their characters. I work with them to fit what they want
to do within the background and off we go with the campaign.
BD: How long have you
been involved in table top RPGs?
RC: Since 1978, I was in sixth grade. Ironically I first learned about Dungeons
& Dragons from a jerk my age who teased me for NOT playing Dungeons &
Dragons. I had a friend, John, who I played a lot of wargames with. One of us
got the Holmes Bluebook and we ran each other through the Portown dungeon.
I was the first to play. I rolled up a magic-user, went down
the stairs, took a right, and ran into the skeletons in the room beyond. I
fired my one magic-missile, took one of them out and then they hit me leaving
me with one hit point. I tried using the parry rule but then realize that I
couldn’t attack. I fled and they cut me down. My reaction was “Holy crap that
was cool, let’s roll up some more characters and try it again.
BD: How was your
first gamemastering experience?
RC: To tell you the truth I can’t remember my first
experience refereeing. It was probably with my wargame buddy John. But I do
remember a light bulb going off in my head when I realized that I could create
my own worlds using this game. I was a huge Tolkien and loved the appendices
and the Silmarillion.
My only gaming regret from my initial days of refereeing is
that all I have is one crudely drawn map of the original setting I created. My
mom had a stack of letter sized graph paper that used 1 inch squares. I used
about two dozen sheets to detail each area. I think each square was five miles.
BD: Aside from
writing RPGs, what other interests do you have?
RC: Outside of gaming? My family, and scouting; both of my
boys have various activities I participate with them in. I have been a software
developer since the mid 80s. Gaming wise, I created simulations of historical
spacecraft, notably the Mercury Space capsule. It is accurate and detailed
enough to use the original flight plan. The program I wrote them for is Orbiter
Space Simulator and I highly recommend it for anybody who wants to get a taste
of what real space flight is like. It is free to download and use. Orbiter has
fictional spacecraft that are automated enough so that a novice can fly them.
I was involved in live-action roleplaying for over ten
years. Mainly boffer LARPs, i.e. D&D in the woods. From 1999 to 2003 I owned a successful LARP
chapter. I made a lot of good friends, and the physical activity was good for
me. The limitations and strength of LARPS really helped me with my tabletop
refereeing. Being exposed to alternate forms of roleplaying helped me focus on
what makes tabletop unique and to craft a better game for my players.
BD: Based on these
experiences, what are your conclusions about the strengths and limitations of
LARPS and of tabletop roleplaying games?
RC: Tabletop is the most flexible form of roleplaying games
due to the ability of the human referee to improvise at need in response to
what the players are doing. While a strength, keep in mind that everything at
the table is filtered through one person, the referee. There are limits to how much a single
individual can remember and manage.
Live-Action has a limitation in that the event directors are
limited in manpower and to what people can do during the day. More than once
while running events, I and others have misjudged how much effort was needed
and were left with an exhausted crew by the middle of the event. Also it takes time to physically setup and
tear down encounters and modules. And
there can be a suspension of disbelief required because the LARP could have a
limited budget for costume and props. Finally
Live-action require coordination of a large group of people, both players and
the event staff some with personal issues from time to time.
However boffer Live-Action is highly immersive even for
players that are not otherwise into roleplaying. For non-roleplayers the physical action can
be hugely fun. For roleplayers it is easier to slip into character as you are
really there talking and interacting with a group of people instead of a single
referee.
BD: How did you first
get into the RPG industry?
RC: Around 1999, I found Bob Bledsaw Jr. and contacted him.
He gave me his father’s email and that led me to becoming involved with the
Wilderlands Boxed Set by Necromancer Games. There were a lot of people involved
with that product. My main contribution was three maps worth of villages and
the overall format. Much of the Rorystone Road PDF (at Necromancergames)
was taken from my proposal for how to write up the boxed set.
That project led me to working on some Judges Guild projects
with Eostros Games. They worked with Goodman Games on several updates of
classic Judges Guild modules. My personal break came shortly afterwards when Dwayne,
Tim (two of my oldest friends) and I successfully pitched Points of Light to
Joseph Goodman. I developed the overall concept, Dwayne helped with the details
including writing 90% of two of the settings.
And Tim helped with the editing and getting the product into shape. Then
finally the combination of Print on Demand, a licensing agreement with Bob
Bledsaw Jr., and the rise of the OSR allowed me to start up Bat in the Attic
Games.
Joseph Goodman and the Goodman Games team are outstanding to
work with and I owe my professional start to them. However it is two of my
oldest friends, Tim and Dwayne, who I owe the most to. Half the material in the
Majestic Wilderlands Supplement comes from me refereeing their antics in the
Wilderlands. Dwayne is a top notch rules guy and great at creating details for
adventures and settings. Tim has written professionally before in other writing
genres and was a great help in getting me to write better and often took the
thankless job of editing. He also is killer at creating memorable character and
has unique mapping style. And we still play together today thanks to Virtual
Tabletops.
BD: What were you
primary goals when you started Bat in the Attic Games?
RC: To publish my sandbox/hexcrawl material and to publish
the Majestic Wilderlands. The first because I feel I can contribute a lot of
original material on the subject, the second because I think people will enjoy
what I created for the past thirty years and I would like to present it in as
polished form as a I can.
On the Old School
Renaissance
BD: What is the Old
School Renaissance (OSR)? How do you define old school?
RC: The Old School Renaissance is a group of gamers focused
on playing older edition Dungeons &
Dragons and publishing materials for older edition D&D. Because of the work
of the group who created OSRIC it became obvious that if you omitted the newer
rules from the d20 SRD what was left allowed you to publish for the older
edition D&D of your choice. The only limitation is that you can’t cite
compatibility with the D&D trademark.
As for old school, it is highly subjective. In 1979, I was
more interested in what my players were trying to do to build up power in my
setting than any dungeon crawl. I guess the fact I ran, and still run, my
campaigns in what now called a sandbox style would count as Old School.
But honestly just about everything you see today was done
back in the day. Sure the term “storytelling” wasn’t in use until White Wolf,
but you had the hard core roleplayers who acted as their characters while
playing. In my area a lot of Runequest 2 games had those types of players.
Fourth Edition (D&D)-style gaming was known as being a munchkin, rule
lawyers, or were the gamers who liked crazy-ass complicated games like any of
the FGU RPGs.
But I didn’t answer the question. What do I consider Old
School? I guess to me Old School is living with the consequences of your dice
rolls and your choices. You make a mistake you live with the consequences with
no take backs. The reason I feel that way is that when I do succeed I feel like
I earned it and victory is all together sweeter.
Back then there was nothing like a roleplaying game. The
closest anybody came was make-believe and by sixth grade all of us knew the
problems with that. The old “Bang your dead, no I’m not”- problem. But with
tabletop the dice were impartial and to fudge their result was viewed as
cheating. We might as well go back outside and try to shoot each other with our
fingers. With D&D, we had a way to pretend to be somewhere else or be
somebody else but also have it be a challenge, with no idea what was going to
happen because of what the referee had planned or what the dice may roll. There
was nothing else like it.
BD: What mechanics or
kinds of design do you associate with OSR?
RC: The OSR is about the playing of older edition of
D&D. Pretty everything from the original 1974 rules to 2nd edition
AD&D.
Old School Gaming in contrast is about gamers who figured
out that older games work just as well today (or not in the case of some) as
they did back in the day. Traveller, Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls, didn’t
become obsolete with the passage of time.
Now some of these games or editions could have been better written or
presented. And with a few, like OD&D, it is impossible to say definitely
that X is the way to play them. With the renewed interest in Old School Gaming,
people have figured out how to make the older games work. Now we not only got
the new but the old as well as choices for our campaigns.
BD: Some of the OSR
material out there has incorporated mechanics associated with newer games or
later editions of D&D (ascending AC for instance). Beyond these do you
think there is a place for modern approaches to design in the OSR?
RC: Certainly, for me it’s Ascending AC, mathematically it
works out the same and it lot easier to use on the fly. However I think Swords
& Wizardry did the right thing by including both systems of AC. But it is a
personal preference. Gamers should go with what they like.
BD: Switching it
around, what can the OSR offer proponents of modern design?
RC: That the human referee is paramount and central to the
experience of playing tabletop RPGs. It is the one thing that the other forms
of roleplaying do not have and can’t replicate. One of the main design points
of a modern system is to minimize the work the referee has to do prepare, and
manage a campaign using that system. Note this doesn’t always mean simplicity
or abstract is the way to go, especially if the design of the game is meant to
be detailed in certain areas.
BD: What has the OSR
done for the gaming community? How has the OSR changed the way people view
earlier editions of D&D and other games
RC: It proved that older games don’t go obsolete, that the
upgrade mentality that treated RPGs like computer software is baloney. While
the term OSR got attached to the group playing older edition D&D, older
editions of other games benefited as well as people realized that if an older
edition of one game is still fun to play then it applies to older editions of
other games as well.
BD: In this age of
edition wars and online tribalism, there is no shortage of criticism of the
OSR. When people accuse the OSR of being too orthodox or reactionary what is
your reaction? How do you feel about the term “Grognard”?
RC: Yes there are groups that are reactionary. And they are
rightly considered part of the OSR as they play an older edition of D&D.
But what gets missed is that they are not gatekeepers. There are no gatekeepers,
every single individual that has raised a complaint can go out and publish
their own retro-clone, adventure, or supplement.
As of May 2012 there are over 700 products made specifically
to work with one of the older editions of D&D. This is not including any of
the other very similar old school products like Mutant Future, Stars without
Number, or Hackmaster. What it means in the end is that a person’s view of the
OSR depends on where they look. Even I can’t keep up with all that is going on.
BD: You recently
posted images of your gaming library on the Bat in the Attic Blog. While you do
have a large amount of old school material on the shelves, there were also some
newer games like D&D 4E. When you game at home, how much of what you do
would characterize as old school? What are your feelings toward newer games?
RC: I have run the following in the past five years,
Harnmaster, Classic Traveller, Champions (Hero System), Swords & Wizardry
w/Majestic Wilderlands, GURPS 4e, D&D Next, and D&D 4e. Right now the
only other systems I would seriously consider running is FASA Star Trek. Also I
would run Pathfinder, or D&D Next if the circumstances called for it, like
a game store event.
How Old School am I? I had some say I am pretty Old School. Mainly
I just try to do my own thing. Pretty much everything I do today is refined
from two things. Players are free to trash my settings under one condition,
they roleplay as if their characters are really there. And everybody, including
me, has to live with the consequences of the dice rolls and their choices. Is
that Old School? To me it sounds like fun and makes good sense.
As for newer games, I am not as excited about mechanics as I
used to be. So I find myself really not caring about the rules unless they
bring something new to the table. I will get something like the Dresden Files
so I can read about how they interpret the novels into an RPG. Another example is
Green Ronin’s Fire and Ice RPG. It has a nice subsystem for generating a noble
house for your character and integrating it into play.
Understand it’s not that I think newer games are bad, it
just my thinking at this point is that RPG Design mechanics now largely a
matter of taste. For me this
crystallized when my friends and I tried to run Hackmaster 4e. We were doing
character creation and we realized that we just didn’t care to do all the
fiddly things they were asking us to do. We agreed it well put together for a
class and level system but if we are going to go that detailed we might as well
be using GURPS.
BD: You recently
pointed out that over 350 products have been released for older editions of
D&D between 2010 and 2012. Is this good or bad in your opinion?
RC: It great and exactly how it should be. Seriously does
anybody want to be under the thumbs of gatekeepers again, however well meaning?
Granted it just a form of entertainment, but what it represents is the
difference between being a subject and being a citizen. Being a citizen is more
complicated and everything messier. But it beats the alternative.
On Adventure Design
BD: How would you
characterize your approach to adventure design?
RC: Setup an initial situation, see how the players deal
with it and ad-lib the consequences hopefully picking ones that make sense and
are interesting.
BD: In Scourge of the Demon Wolf you place a
lot of emphasis on characters and situations. In a module, what are the
qualities of good character design?
RC: Believable personality and motivations based on their
circumstances.
BD: Do you have a
process for writing modules?
RC: For a standalone or commercial module, I figure out an
initial situation that can apply to a wide variety of campaigns for that
genre/setting. For Demon Wolf, there is a wolf terrorizing a village, why
should the player care? Well there we get into multiple choices. The one I
focus on is the Baron empowering the players to act as his agent. I emphasize
that having the favor of a Baron is very useful. And I give other
possibilities.
During a campaign, I look at the setting notes, look at
where the players are in the campaign, craft a initial situation that fits the
circumstances, figure out which NPCs would be involved, and then detail the
needed physical locales.
BD: You are seen as a
champion of the sandbox. Do you embrace this label? What is a sandbox adventure
to you?
RC: I embrace it. I think it is a neglected technique that
got lost in the focus on settings in the travelogue format and tournament style
dungeons. However realize Sandbox is just a technique, just one of many that
work for tabletop roleplaying games.
One problem with the current perception of the sandbox is
that it’s really several techniques that can be used together. First it is a
way of presenting a setting (i.e. the Hexcrawl map), second it is a way of
managing a campaign (i.e. Sandbox play), and finally it is a particular style
of campaign: the Hexcrawl (wandering and exploring the landscape).
To me a sandbox adventure is part of a campaign embracing
sandbox play. The adventure itself has an initial situation that the players
encounter. The players act or react, the referee judges the consequences, and then
repeat the cycle.
The creativity of the referee comes not from writing a
preordained set of events but rather in picking which consequences are probable
and interesting. To me interesting means that which leads to the possibility of
more adventure. I figure that is a fair way of doing it as adventure is the
main point of playing tabletop in the first place.
The key thing is to let go of any preconceived notion of how
things ought to go. If you judge several consequences to be equally probable
then let the dice determine the result if they are all equally interesting. In
short you have to be willing to let the players trash your setting.
The sandbox campaign is run the same way but with a larger
scope. There are a couple of additional techniques that help with the larger
scope but it run pretty much the same way as the sandbox adventure.
BD: There are a lot
of different definitions of sandbox being used online. What are some of the
major misconceptions about this style of play?
RC: The major one is where the players are placed at
starting point and told to “go explore”. This has resulted in a lot of failed
sandbox campaigns from reading the blog and forum posts. The problem is that
“go explore” without any prior information only appeals to a very limited set
of players. The rest feel like they are drawing darts at a board in the dark
for all the meaning their choices have. The solution to this is to provide the
players with the context needed to make their initial decisions. In the form of
rumors or initial background, then they can make a meaningful choice.
Also I think we need to start distinguishing between a sand
box campaign and a hexcrawl setting. The hexcrawl is a just a way of presenting
a setting. I think it happens to be most useful for a campaign centered on the
character wandering the landscape. But it can be easily used for other types of
campaign just as a setting written in a travelogue style can be used for a
sandbox campaign.
To me a sandbox campaign is simply a campaign where the
referee will let the players trash his setting. Being willing to detail what
the players want to see rather than what the referee wants the game to be
about.
BD: There have been a
lot of trends in adventure design over the years. If you had to examine the
major periods in RPG history, and identify two adventure design trends from
each, one that was good and one that was bad, what would they be?
RC: The 1970s saw the advent of the tournament style module.
The good thing is it was a practical and understandable format that resulted in
an expansion of published RPG material. The downside? Well I think it put adventure design in a straight
jacket that the industry is still trying to get out from under.
The main problem is that it doesn’t scale. Which is why we
never saw original Greyhawk, Blackmoor or El Raja Key published, at best we get
tournament style re-writes. The problem isn’t the format. It works great for
its original purpose; presenting an
adventure to be run the same way by multiple referees for multiple groups in a fair
way at a D&D tournament at a game convention. It works great for the organized play system
we have now. But try to push it to create adventures of a larger scope, or
adventures that involve more than the details of physical locales it doesn’t
scale or adapt well.
I don’t know what the alternative is. My instinct tells me
that at the least it will involve the author teaching the reader how to run the
adventure. My theory is that if I can sit down and teach you how to run the
adventure, then I can write it down so you could learn how to do it from
reading.
The 1980s saw the first adventure paths namely the
Dragonlance Chronicles. The good side was that it extended tournament style
format to truly epic plots. And unlike the Tournament style modules alone the
adventure path scales. The downside is we got the railroad. It takes careful
design to create an adventure path where the logical choices allow the
subsequent modules to remain useful. Bad design meant the referee is forced to
railroad his PCs down the plot.
The 1990s was really more about the settings and the NPCs.
Largely because of White Wolf and the World of Darkness. More emphasis was
giving to the web of NPCs that made up an adventure than detailed descriptions
of locales. The downside is that it went
overboard on the detailing of NPCs at the expense of location details. It also
made these adventures less approachable. D&D refereeing adventurers
exploring a dungeon maze is far easier to grasp than trying to adventure among
the plots of the vampires of Chicago.
The 2000s saw everything and anything tried but mostly what
stood out was the refinement of adventure paths by Paizo and the people
actually managing to write mega-adventures using the tournament style format.
But rather proving that it could done, even the successful mega-adventure
showed how difficult it was to scale the format and to affordably publish it.
BD: Where do you tend
to get your inspiration from?
RC: Everything, books, films, television, non-fiction is all
grist for the mill. I learned to appreciate just about anything.
I do have preferences. For books I love the Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien was a master craftsman in all his works. I love the Deed of
Paksenarrion by Elisabeth Moon. It absolutely hands down the best fantasy
depiction of a D&D style setting ever. Plus you will never look at Paladins
the same way again. Her sequel series is every bit as good and has the virtue
of not retreading the same grounds by focusing on the impact of the first series
on the original minor characters.
For Film/TV I liked Jackson’s Lord of the Ring Trilogy,
Excalibur, Robin of Sherwood, Game of Thrones, Babylon 5, and Firefly.
I am impressed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Series),
Angel, Supernatural, and Dresden Files (books).
BD: Modules get a lot
of criticism from gamers, particularly online. Many complain about their
quality or even state they are unnecessary. Why are modules important? Why do
you think people are so quick to criticize them as a category?
RC: A well designed module can give the referee the most
precious of things, time, by making prep easier for a session. If a module
doesn’t save a referee time then it can be rightly criticized. Look at the
shelf of modules you own. Which of them you know saved you time during a
campaign, and which didn’t? The ones that did are the good ones.
BD: What are some of
the biggest pitfalls you see module writers fall into?
RC: They use too many words. Say what you need and no more. It
is something you have to practice at to get good at. I still have much to learn
about writing terse prose.
BD: How does having
too many words impact the quality of a module in your opinion?
RC: Because what is probably happening is that you are
writing about too many details and this makes more work for the referee as he
needs to figure out which is important to the adventure and which is not.
Sometimes excessive verbiage is written to make the module as flexible as
possible and/or because it’s considered professional.
GURPS adventures do this a lot. They are well written and well
organized but they come off more as sourcebooks than something I can pick up,
study in an evening, and run for my group. Adventure modules are meant to be
used. If you want the material to be useful after the adventure then segregate
it into its own section and label it as the supplement half. Harn adventures do
this a lot.
BD: One of the
biggest challenges of designing a module is translating what works at your own
table into a written product that anyone can use in their own game. Because
every group has its own style and idiosyncrasies, and because most GMs work off
of their own system of notes and preparation, this can be especially difficult
to do. What types of adventure structures, presentation and organization work
in the module format in your opinion (even ones you may not use yourself) and
which ones do not?
RC: I will go out on a limb and say flat out that ANY
adventure that can be run with a tabletop roleplaying game can be described as
a set of locales, a set of NPCs and their motivations, and a plot describing
what would happen if the players were not involved.
The problem is how to juggle the details of those three
areas to best teach the reader how to run the adventure. It something we are
still learning as a hobby. Much of the criticism stems from an over reliance on
the tournament style dungeon and the more modern encounter system.
BD: Can you talk a bit
about tournament style play? Like a lot of gamers, most of my experience with
RPGs was with my friends or with local gaming groups and tournament play is not
something I have really tried.
RC: I only participated in two tournaments myself, one in
1984, and another in 1985 when I went to college. AD&D Tournaments
basically were setup so that each group was run through the same module and then
scored based on a list. The item on the list were stuff easily judged as being
completed like solving a puzzle, defeating the monsters in X room, or finding
X. The groups with the highest score went on to the next round and ran through
another adventure, usually a sequel to the one just concluded. This went one until
the final round where the group with the highest score in the final round was
judged the winner.
To be fair all the referee had to run the same adventure. So
hence the keyed map with all the room fully described and filled with monsters,
content, and treasure.
Today it evolved into organized play where the focus is not
on the winning of points but rather on continuity of character. Organized play
is about starting at 1st level and playing successive adventures over the year
(or multiple years) to gain higher levels. You generally get to keep the
treasure you find as part of your character. You can go to any convention or
store with sponsored events and use that character. This is the way tabletop
RPGs gets to use some of what makes MMORPGs and LARPS so compelling to people.
Of course you have to be fair and set standards for the
referees of sponsored events to follow. The choices available to the players
need to be balanced so there is a mix of character types to keep the events interesting.
This is fine except when it impacts the design of your
rulebooks and supplemental products. If you only listen to the concerns of your
organized play customers, the resulting products became bland and unexciting to
use for the home campaigns. The solution is to have a special version of your
game just to use for organized play. The main line should be expansive as possible
to cater to different types and styles of campaigns.
Posts
BC: A Lesser Adventure Coach (or Type V Demon, as I like to
call them) would say that loot and XP are the hallmarks of a successful D&D
game. WRONG. Loot and XP are firmly in the purview of the DM, and in my
experience, that guy’s a JERK. A stingy, stingy jerk. If you’re settling for
loot and XP, you’re just licking tablescraps off the salad bar in the Old
Country Buffet of Imagination. The REAL sign of success: GLORY. Killing a troll
is easy. BEHEADING a troll with your battleaxe, with one hit point, bathed in
alchemist’s fire and ochre jelly… THAT’S what a D&D victory looks like. NOW
you’re not only EATING from the Buffet of Imagination, you’re cooking your own
sirloin steaks and guzzling fro-yo directly from the nozzle! The game is great
when YOU MAKE IT GREAT! Just make sure to get a fresh plate every time.
