Xenoblade Chronicles' OSR ideas

This week's post will be about one of my favorite videogames, Xenoblade Chronicles, which I played years ago on the Nintendo new3DS (it's originally on the Wii, then also ported to the Switch).

Initially, this was supposed to be exclusively about this game's method of giving XP for exploring (something that shares with other games, for example MMORPG à la Guild Wars 2), but while thinking about it I found a few more connections to TTRPGs in general - and OSR in particular.

You see, that game features a big, massive world; I'm tempted to call it open world, but it is separated into a few areas (although they are so big this can almost be considered nitpicking), and one thing that incentivizes you to explore that world is that you are rewarded for doing so with XP.
Sure, you also get XP for combat and for completing quests (more on that later), but the fact that you get something every time you go out of your way to explore little corners of the world you find landmarks and areas you couldn't see before, and get progress out of it, is something I think OSR Referees, in particular the ones that love to create big, immersive worlds and weep if their players ignore all of it and just look for enemies to fight and dungeons to loot.
 

Another method of gaining XP is from quests, especially side quests, many of which become available only after completing others. Some are mutually exclusive, based on whether you completed a previous one, or force you to make a choice between 2 NPCs to help and that affects subsequent quests. This is not something new to TTRPGs, especially OSR-style campaigns, but it can give you ideas to flesh out your world and make it feel more alive. For example, at one point you might meet a man being ambushed by enemies: if the party chooses to save him, later on that man will appear again and have new requests for them, while if they keep going they might run into his family looking for their missing father.

Another aspect of the game that helps the world feel more alive independently from the party's presence is the presence, all over the world, of enemies which are of varying levels: the PCs might enter an area at level 12 and see, not far from where the main quest is taking them, level 60 enemies wandering around.
These enemies are clearly marked and telegraphed as dangerous, but nothing stops the party from trying to confront them (and getting annihilated in half a second); this feels like a very OSR thing, although it is probably more easily achieved when death just means respawning at the last landmark (a discussion about death and deadliness in OSR games? Maybe in the future!)
 

There might be more to gather from this game to use in your TTRPG games, but for now my analysis stops here; I hope I've given you enough food for thought already.

Friendly reminder that this post is planned to go out while I am on my honeymoon, so I won't be able to immediately reply to comments here or on Bluesky/Threads, but I will as soon as I return.

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon


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