In Praise of Prep

Weird Writer's prep post has started a bandwagon. I have enjoyed reading people's various modes of prep.

As I am preparing a campaign right now (running the Yellow Book of Brechewold using His Majesty the Worm), it feels interesting to me to explain my own approach.

Reflections on extremes

My understanding of the games I like to run is based on my matrices of blorbiness theorem. 

Read this post first to understand my silly vocabulary

In my RPG history, I have experienced both underprepping and overprepping.

Underprepping (improvisation)

I have never felt confident in my improvisational abilities, so have never tried to sincerely improvise large swaths of a campaign (of course, some improvisation is part of the gig). However, I have played in such games.

I have been at games that were mostly planned by the GM on the drive to the game. Some of my fellow players loved those games. But, to me, it always felt like the GM was just making stuff up--in a bad way. I didn't feel like I was exploring a realistic world; it felt like I was interacting with cardboard scenery that fell over when I touched it.

Put another way, when I've sat at a table where the GM created content mostly through improv, I could always tell. I never thought "Wow, when did they have time to plan such an amazing story!" I was always mildly disappointed.

Put a more charitable way, blorb-style games are a preference not just when I am running games, but also playing them.

Overprepping (set piece encounters)

In a past life, I would work all week to prepare for game night, like homework before a class. Because I was in school (high school, then college) during this period, I suppose this felt natural. 

• I would fill out a Word doc with all the beats of the next session: monster stats, villain monologues, scenery descriptions. 
• I'd meticulously build "balanced" fights. Lucky Sven had power X, but was weak towards Y. Hairo would want a chance to show off their Z power, but I couldn't let them beat the encounter too fast, so let me give the boss a 1x/encounter perfect defense. Etc.
• I'd read forums and discuss techniques for monsters and combat encounters. I'd buy the new books. Everything was an arms race.
• The players would make a mess of it. They zig instead of zag. They'd roll luckily and one-shot my monster. They'd have unforeseen stratagem I hadn't balanced the fight against.
• My prep was often wasted, and everyone had a blast. They ruined my plans and I chuckled ruefully and did the same thing next week.

It was an ouroboros merry-go-round.

The Golden Mean 

Today, I have an approach to prep that feels better than either of the two extremes mentioned above. It works for me based on my own preferences. 

I like to prepare for a campaign with a healthy stretch of "lonely fun" where I set up all the dominos.  Then, the campaign consists of the players knocking them down. Between campaign prep and the end of the game, I do very little preparation weekly, instead relying on my initial work.

This requires a bit of prep. 

What is important for me regarding prep:

• Doing the "right size" of prep
• Collecting and collating tools to use
• Frontloading my work and completing everything I need, more or less

Right size of prep

Hearing "Don't prep plots, prep situations" might sound like old hat at this point in blog theory, but it meant the world to me in 2009. 

Instead of writing scene descriptions and balanced fights, I need to write interesting things. Write interesting locations. Write interesting NPCs with terrible powers. Write interesting things these NPCs want. Make sure these things are wired together, so players are pushed and pulled into different directions and can explore all the stuff I did prep. 

A corollary to this is: Don't hide your prep. 

Collecting tools to use

An important part of "right sizing" prep is collating a series of tools: things that will always be useful during the entire run of the campaign. Nick at PapersAndPencils said it best: Don't prep adventures, prep tools. 

I start almost every campaign by reading my entire run of Knock! magazines. I know the basic themes I want to explore (magical school! Zelda-esque campaign! fairy tales!), and I build those themes out with the cool stuff other people have made: NPC names, equipment packs, themed monsters, house rules, weird tables. 

Frontloading and completing the work

When I first have an idea for a new game, I'm pretty excited. Hooray! A new game! I'm bursting with ideas! 

I have learned that this excitement dulls over time. Things that I put off tend not to get done. 

It's important for me to prep most of the game before we start playing. If I'm making a campaign where the players collect the five body parts of the Sun Princess from five dungeons, I need to have all five dungeons written before we start. I need to create the hub city. I need to have the NPCs of the city written out. I need the bridge trolls statted. 

Then, the players can go anywhere they want. I'm not concerned about staying "one step ahead of them." I know what's there. They just get to explore and discover it.

Is it a lot of work? Practically speaking, I do do a lot of writing. But at this stage of the campaign creation process, it's also easy and fun work. I need to strike while the fire is hot.

Reflections on the Golden Mean

His Majesty the Worm's default campaign style, where you create a megadungeon (5 dungeons in a trenchcoat) and then restock it only during a City Phase, is reflective of this approach to prep. You need to spend a couple weekends setting it up, but then it runs itself.

Do the work! Spend a few weekends getting your maps ready, your encounter tables stocked, your treasure budget spent. Then, press "Go." Let your players loose in your weird little world. You can play for months on just a few weekends of honest prep. It's not that hard! (Especially if you embrace the copy and paste manifesto.)

I think this prep is valuable and (importantly) fun! It is worth doing. I am pro-prep.

Guest post: His Majesty the Worm monster threats

User castella on the Worm discord did a great write up of the different ways a monster can inflict harm and setbacks to adventurers in His Majesty the Worm. Because this essay isn't published anywhere else, they gave me permission to link to it from here.

Click the image to see the essay.

There's a good mix of examples from the book and novel implementations that help you attack every part of the character sheet. GMs running Worm might find this examination useful for their devious purposes! I know I'm going to revisit it when I stat out some new creatures for my next campaign.

Cockroachatrice

The cockroachatrice is, like all animals with a stupid name, the result of a wizard's bad sense of humor. Goddamn, those idiots ruin everything.

These 1' cockroaches have a glossy, rainbow-esque carapace. Now that they've escaped containment (seriously, wizards ruin everything), they swarm in dark, damp environments. 

art by tori-otto

Armour Class 9 [10]

Hit Dice 1/2 (2 hp)

Attacks 1 × bite (1d6 + petrification)

THAC0 19 [0]

Movement 90’ (30’) / 180’ (60’) flying

Saving Throws D14 W15 P16 B17 S18 (NH)

Morale 7

Alignment Neutral

XP 200

Number Appearing 2d4 (1d8)

Treasure Type None

Petrification: Anyone bitten is turned to stone (save versus petrify).

Slush Pile: Phases of the Character Lifecycle

I had this "aha" moment a few weeks ago, sketched it out, and shared it. Unfortunately, that drained all the endorphins out of it, and I never got around to really exploring the idea fully. I still think it has merit, though, so I'm going to post it here in hopes that either a) blog dialectics will transfer the idea to someone more productive or b) I will return to it in time.

My goals with listing this out is to make explicit what is implied by the rules of OD&D. I think there's fertile ground there (still). 

Worldbuilding through Saving Throws

I don't think I'm the first person to make this observation (as an OSR blogger, I almost never am), but it occurred to me today how useful the saving throw names are for communicating the kinds of challenges your character will face in the game. 

Death. Wands. Paralysis. Breath Attacks. Spells.

By looking at your character sheet, you have a glimpse into a life of adventure: struggling against the zaps and enchantments of evil sorcerers, the fiery breath of dragons, and the mummy's curse of instant death. 

And when you change them, you change the feeling of the game. The texture and tone. Look, here's the saving throws from Dolmenwood.

Doom. Ray. Hold. Blast. Spell.

Are these the same? Well, yes, in a practical way - you can see how these map directly to the original ones from OSE. But they also are telling you something different. You can dodge Blasts--not just dragon breath. Use this mechanic to avoid all sorts of area attacks. 

For what it's worth, I rather preferred the recasting of the saving throws that Brian Yaksha used for their Dolmenwood-adjacent Wildwood Manuscript:

Enchantment. Substance. Geas. Dragon Spume (my fave). Ensorcellment.

My colleague Mars at Save vs. Worms recently said "Save vs." is one of the most useful phrases to come out of old-school games. How right she is! It's like the implications of the cleric being able to turn undead. These are the things you're up against in this game. These are the tools you have to avoid them.

When making your beloved retroclone on your blog, naming your saving throws is a tool that you can use to say what your game and your world is all about.

The Copy and Paste Manifesto

I have gone on record as saying that making a megadungeon is fun and easy. I wrote a book about it. 

But I have good news. It's even easier than I made it out to be. 

I want to introduce to you an ethos for your gaming called...

The Copy and Paste Manifesto

In the introduction to That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis acknowledges science-fiction writer Olaf Stapledon and his work: "Mr. Stapledon is so rich in invention that he can well afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow."

I have liked this quote ever since I read it and have borrowed it frequently. Indeed, anytime I ever steal and riff on other people's work, I usually quote it in whole or in part. I think it is enormously self-satisfying for me to have stolen the caveat of "Hey, I'm stealing this from someone else."

You might also have heard the frequently misattributed quote: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

I am here to tell you that this is absolutely how you should go about running your games.

Loving the manifesto

There is no one perfect dungeon. When you run The Yellow Book of Brechewold, you think the elven ship sublevel is a little too much science fiction for your fantasy and you cut it. (Cut, Copy, Pate Manifesto doesn't have the same ring, but cutting is part of this.) 

There is no one perfect campaign. When you run Dolmenwood, you want to start the players in Brandonsford (from Black Wyrm of Brandsonford) to give the players some immediate fairy tale hooks and quests from those NPCs. You take Brandsonford and place it into hex 1205. 

There is no one perfect megadungeon. There is only the assemblage of dungeons hand-stitched together.  You take two dungeons from Silent Titans, Sersa Victory's Lost Caves of the Worm Witch, and the Nexus of the Ix (from Knock! #3). You connect them together thematically and with a map. 

There is no one perfect game. You run OSE but you borrow the lockpicking mechanics from Errant, the starting equipment packages from Cairn, and the XP procedures from a blog post you read once. 

There is so much good content out there. The Copy and Paste Manifesto tells you to use all of it. Create the perfect game for you by combining all of your preferences together and cut the stuff you don't like. 

No more bemoaning that you're never going to get a game book to the table. "When do I have time to run yet another adventure? Who will possibly play this new system with me?" No, shut up. That's not why you buy books. You buy from them to steal from them. 

Living the manifesto

When I playtested His Majesty the Worm, my megadungeon was a vast array of content copied and pasted together. (That's why I've never shown it to anybody.) 

I want you to do what I did. Here's how:

Step 1: Get some maps

These can be maps you make, a map you randomly generate through something like watabou, a map from a professional cartographer, or any combination thereof. 

Step 2: Number the rooms

Number the rooms in three-number codes (like His Majesty the Worm recommends). Level 1 has rooms 101, 102, 103, etc. Level 2 has rooms 201, 202, etc.

Step 3: Start your dungeon reference sheet

Use a Google Doc. Label your different dungeons as Header 1. Label your rooms as Header 2. Make your header styles look nice. 

Step 4: Grab dungeons

Go into your ever-growing folder of RPG supplements, adventures, and dungeons and begin opening the PDFs. 

Step 5: Copy and paste

Grab the content that's the best and start copying it into your Google Doc. Find themes that make it all work together. Cut out stuff that you think doesn't fit your style. Level 1 might be mostly from the same source, but shifted around to fit your new map and create connections to Level 2. You decide to put an NPC from Level 3 into Level 1, to create a throughline between the entrance and a deeper section of the dungeon. 

Step 6. Repeat, infinitely

Buy more games. Add more sections to your world. Let your players travel from Dolmenwood to the Valley of the Flowers. When they fall asleep, they wake up in Zyan. 

Copy, paste, mash up, remix, and make the perfect game for you and your table.

While I have you: The Knock! #5 campaign is almost complete

One of the main places to copy and paste from is Knock!. Whenever I start a new campaign, I always reread all of my old issues. There are so many good ideas, so many stealable rules, so many cool tables, so many neat gimmicks. It always gets my brain going and makes me excited.

As of this writing, there are less than two days left on the Kickstarter campaign. Make sure you don't miss out! 

Banish your FOMO by grabbing your copy! 

Knock! #5 - one week to go!

I assume the Venn diagram of "people who read my blog" and "people who have already backed the Knock! Kickstarter" is a perfect circle, but if not, I wanted to say (shout! scream!) that the campaign for Knock! #5 campaign is one week from completion!

What is Knock!?

If you have taken a strange road to get here, Knock! is one of the most well-known publications in the OSR space. Since 2021, it has collected and curated important ideas from the scene's game designers, theorists, and fans. It bills itself as: 

An Adventure Gaming Bric-a-Brac. A Compendium of Miscellanea for Old-School RPGs. For OSR weirdos and curious D&D heads alike.

Blogs are the bedrock of the OSR community. They are the place where its ideas are invented, traded, and iterated on. Knock! is inspired by (and inspires!) this creative energy. Recognizing the importance of blogs to this game-design space, the magazine has brought the "canon" of OSR theory into print, allowing for a wider audience.  

It's latest issue, Knock! #5, is currently fundraising on Kickstarter. There is one week left until the end of the campaign!

The book funded in a wink (merci!). It's already laid out. It's currently being copyedited. Soon, the only thing that will be left to do is collect your pledge and ship you the book. So don't miss out! 

What's in this issue?

This issue contains a diverse group of contributors and contributions: a mix of OSR mainstays and new blood, a blend of old favourites and hitherto unpublished essays. Each page is a sigil that’s trapped some strange idea or gameable spark. This issue contains: 

• Monsters! (The hydra knight sprouts riotous limbs each time they’re hit! Scary!)
• Essays! (Ever wonder why kobolds are sometimes depicted as lizards and sometimes as dog people?)
• New rules! (Put some strange weather in your dungeon.)
• Random tables! (100s of names and quirks for your next familiar.)
• Magic items! (What will you get from the dungeon vending machine?)
• New classes! (Ever wanted to absorb a monster’s powers by eating them? Now you can!)
• Adventures! (What happens when a goblin gets a hold of a ray gun?)

There’s even a short section in the back where we indulge in a bit of navel gazing, thinking about the state of the scene itself.

The book is 212 pages (A5 format: 5.9’ x 8.25’, slightly bigger than digest size) in beautiful full colour, printed on quality paper (coated 130 gr, with a cover on coated 300 gr).

Hey what's up with shipping?

The shipping is two tiered - France and The Rest of the World - for a simple reason: it is being shipped by Le Poste from France, where the Layout Lord Olivier lives. That is the system that Le Poste uses. The rates are Le Poste's rates. They aren't something the Mushmen have set. 

Let me assure you: shipping prices are my enemy too! But the world is falling down around my ears, and I cannot improve global commerce by myself. So let us drink and read funny RPG books and eek out what little joy we can in the world we have left. 

Don't split the party

Unique to this campaign, there's a pledge tier that gets you every single issue of Knock! magazine, 1-5. That's over a thousand pages of rules ideas, game design essays, random tables both serious and silly, adventures, character classes, monsters, and multifarious goblins. 

If you haven't yet taken the deep dive, I really think this is the best bang for your buck. I don't use any product more than my issues of Knock!. Whenever I start a new RPG game, I go there first for inspiration. I return again, and again, and again.

Reflections on my first Kickstarter campaign

It is strange and thrilling and humbling to be editing a magazine that I loved from the second I picked up the first issue. 

Something that has struck me as I have joined the Mushmen is that this is quite literally a cottage industry. From the outside, there was such a level of polish to everything the Mushmen did, it was easy to imagine that there was a large company behind the craft. But no, it was just two guys (now three!). 

I really respect the Mushmen's ethos in not having weirdo physical add-ons. They add a level of complexity (and failure) to Kickstarters that isn't necessary and contributes to a weird culture in the crowdfunding space. 

But! I also respect their ability to just add value to each campaign. For example, in this campaign, we're adding a searchable index of all Knock! articles, past and present. This will help you track down that article you were thinking of and let you put your hand on the issue and page number. This is free!

Also, if you're missing a back issue that you want to add to your order? At the end of this campaign, you'll receive a 10% discount code usable for your next order on our website, themerrymushmen.com.  

I'll probably have more to say about participating in my first crowdfunding campaign later, but I definitely learned a lot. My biggest takeaway is probably "I can do this." 

Call to action

OK but seriously. I am holding your head in my hands so gently right now and staring into your eyes and saying so sincerely: You don't want to miss this.

More than just trapping a blog post in amber, Knock! is a community of contributors who revel in the spirit of weird ideas, quick iteration, and messy creativity. It contains everything I love about the RPG space. And it's good. There's so much good stuff in here!

Interested? Head over to the campaign page before May 21st and get the new issue at a discounted rate! For those newly curious about the OSR scene and those who have vociferous opinions about what that mysterious acronym actually means, Knock! represents a fun addition to your gaming bookshelf.

Come join us!