Delving Wolf

A while ago I was watching  this video  about Sword World, the TTRPG that was created in Japan when TSR refused to let them publish Replays (basically their version of Session Reports) with their official names - specifically for the campaign that then became known as Record of Lodoss War, a fascinating story - but one thing that stood out to me of the system was the concept of Fellows, which is what this post is about. But what are Fellows? To learn more about them I found the unofficial English translation of the game (easily found on Reddit,  here ). I'll use that as a reference, but I'll modify it a bit to make it work with OSR games. In short, to quote the Rulebook: Fellows are characters who assist the PCs in their adventures. Fellows are available on social media and in fan magazines. Players select those they wish to take with them on their adventures and have them travel along. So they are basically NPC versions of PCs that people make available online, so t...

This week I want to write about my first experience creating a Cairn 2e character and my opinions on how interesting a character can be in this system from the very beginning. I decided to make it as random as possible, rolling for everything, name and physical traits included. The first thing to roll is the background, on a d20: 7, Fletchwind. A ranger-like character. I like it. Next, choosing a name. There are 10 options for each background, so I roll a d10: 4, Thunder. A bit anime, but evocative. Can be a name given by the sound his bow makes when shooting arrows or something. Starting items: we get 3d6 gold pieces (rolling a 9, pretty average), rations (3 uses), torch (3 uses), a bow (for which we'll get details in a moment), a serrated knife that does d6 damage, boiled leather armor (which gives 1 armor, pretty light, it makes sense for this type of character) and 1 use of Heartroot Salve, an item which restores 1d4 STR. This one can be  very  useful. Let's put it in the...

This week I want to talk about a way of playing TTRPGs that I learned to appreciate recently: duet games. Technically it's also how I started playing role-playing games. When I started it was just me and a friend, we didn't have anyone else and knew almost nothing about the hobby (by then I had only watched a bit of VLDL's Adventures in Azerim campaign), so we made a character each (mine being a DMPC, the Dwarf Fighter Zodd Khazad), added a sidekick and started the Icespire Peak campaign that way, as I briefly mentioned  in my first ever blog post . But we immediately started looking for another player, because  obviously that wasn't the way games are meant to be played . That's what we thought.   And in a way that is  true, that's how the hobby started, with massive campaigns with many players, even more than the standard 4 players + DM that is famous now. But that's not the only way to play. Solo games are a thing, a beautiful thing that I'm discoveri...

This week's post is directly inspired by  this post  from Prismatic Wasteland, one of the best TTRPG blogs I know. Go give it a read, it's worth it. In short, that post wonders why D&D (and most TTRPGs derived from it) have a "Common tongue" that everyone seems to know - even though in 1974's OD&D non-human NPCs only had a 20% chance of knowing Common, but let's not nitpick - and most non-human species have their own language, shared between all members, no matter how far in the world (or multiverse, in some cases) they are spread, when that was not usually the case in the real world's Middle Age, which D&D is obviously inspired by. It then gives 3 possible solutions for this discrepancy: Ignoring it altogether, to avoid adding complications to the game, but they don't like this solution and neither do I;  Gamifying it, making it so that PCs don't start with a list of known languages, but every time they encounter a new one an...

This week's post is a solo session recap, once again with my Labyrinth Lord character, Darien the Elf. It is the same adventure I used in my first attempt at solo OSR , where I used Basic Fantasy RPG as the system, and it's contained in Chris Gonnerman's The Role-playing Game Primer and Old School Playbook, and uses Black Streams: Solo Heroe s to play ann adventure as a single, stronger character to keep it easier but balanced. This is the recap of the first session of this adventure, because completing it took me six sessions, the first being on February 28th and the last just a few days ago, on May 28th - being an adult with multiple hobbies and a wedding and honeymoon to arrange apparently doesn't go well with setting time aside for solo gaming. Anyway, enjoy!   THE ABANDONED TOWER   Part 1    Some time after rescuing Fei-lan, Darien hears while on his journey about an abandoned tower which is rumored to hold treasure in the dungeons beneath. A Dwarf priest recen...

It's a common thing in OSR games (and also mentioned in multiple TSR rulebooks, if I'm not mistaken) to have churches in major towns always having a cleric/priest with the Raise Dead spell, ready to bring back to life adventurers that passed away while "working", for a price obviously. It helps to lower the lethality of old-school games and is also a chance to give story hooks, because if the party doesn't have the money to immediately get the resurrection, the church might ask them to complete a service for them in exchange (immediately or in the future, as in "When we'll need you, we'll call you"). But why not expand on this? The inspiration for this post comes from a comment on a Reddit post I ran into a while ago. Sadly I didn't save the post, but the idea is that in a world where all of that is true, why would the priests themselves not take more advantage of it? Think about it: the clerics are supposed to send part of their loot to thei...