When running OSR games, be it megadungeon delving, hexcrawling, or pick-up games, you’re typically going to run some version of the old Lake Geneva open table, where either explicitly or just because of how life works every session is typically with different players. Sometimes if it’s a small group, the DM will just keep the XP spread consistent for all players, making everyone the same level (or XP-level in B/X-likes) despite the flexible roster. Running a West Marches with an explicitly open table and a roster of over two dozen players, I don’t have that as an option, so I have players with up to a six-level range between the highest and the lowest. It’s been a real opportunity to see an aspect of old-school play that I haven’t seen discussed as much.
First of all, new players to the campaign coming in at level 1 and partying up with “big brothers” at level 4, 5, or even 6 tend to learn a very interesting playstyle. Most OSR systems will have the initial party playing very cautiously…sneaking around, stacking the deck, and negotiating. A complaint is often that eventually as power goes up, players will often lose those tendencies when traveling and going through the initial levels of the dungeon(s), but when you have someone following along with 2 whole hit points, that instills some good caution still. The new players also tend to be on a bit of an accelerated leveling curve, getting an equal share of treasure will give them XP very fast, but they still have to be careful and use their brains trying to help contribute despite the power disparity. It also helps everyone to think about overcoming obstacles with more than just “press my pile of hit points against the other piles of hit points”. New players also get to see the more advanced spells, nifty gear, and game knowledge of the older players and that tends to be something that the new players really get excited about acquiring. Secondly, being willing to run parties with disparate levels helps enforce the fear of character death. We’ve all had characters we really enjoyed playing, that we’d be sad to lose…but if there’s a “trad game” adventure path being played, then if you die, you get a new character you roll up with the same levels as everyone else, equipped with Wealth By Level, all fat and happy. Not so if there are parties setting out with level disparities, a player who lost his nice fifth level fighter is going to have to embrace the suck of having to worry about a single bugbear hit again. It actually makes resurrection magic far more valuable, just like it used to be. Finally, preparing a campaign for multiple-level parties will often help prevent you as the writer from making “level zones” strictly and artificially gradated. When I wrote my West Marches hexcrawl, I had to account for the fact that a first-level wizard might be venturing out a hundred miles from home…and I also have threats on the random encounter table of the nearby lands that even a tenth level fighter will want to work to avoid fighting. All the design goals of the OSR emerge naturally when you allow a wide disparity of character power in your parties. And it turns out that’s actually a blast to play.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|