Influences on His Majesty the Worm: House of Orr

His Majesty the Worm didn't fall out of a coconut tree. It is a manifestation of the OSR scene. As such, it carries on the long and proud tradition of the Appendix N. 

One of the comics that influenced the development of the game was called House of Orr. At the time of the game's publishing, the website that hosted it was dark. 

When the game was published, it found its way into the hands of the comic's author, Nolan T. Jones. And friends? He put it back online! The House of Orr can now be read and enjoyed again!

https://houseoforr.com/

To celebrate this serendipity, I'm going to talk through specific ways that the comic influenced my thinking and goals for His Majesty the Worm. 

Mild spoilers for the first plot arc are below.

The Guild

Each guild should feel different. Don't just be "adventurers."

The titular House of Orr is a guild. In the story, a guild isn't just a collection of adventurers, its a political body in its own right. 

Each guild has its own traditions, quirks, and goals. For example, the House of Orr has each member choose a new name that begins with the syllable "Orr-". 

In His Majesty the Worm, the players are also members of a guild. This is a legal entity in the City. A guild charter is like a writ of mark, that allows them to legally plunder the Underworld (and provide 50% taxes to the crown, for the privilege). Each guild has a name, heraldry, and looting rights. Adventurers sign the guild charter and self-declare their role in the guild: cartographer, cook, ranger, keymaster, etc.

Bounties and OSR problem solving

The House of Orr does quests to convince people to support their cause, which allows them to remain a political force in the council of guilds. 

It's a livin'

In His Majesty the Worm, each individual character has a quest -- some reason for them to brave the terrible Underworld. But that doesn't pay the bills. To actually pay for the upkeep of adventuring, guilds pick up bounties from job boards in the City.

Many important questions are being asked

To that point, there's great examples of open-ended OSR problem solving in House of Orr. If you're looking for some bounties to pepper into your game, read the comic and get inspired!

Moments of Whimsy and Delight

I think there's lots of gross stuff in His Majesty the Worm. It's not a grimdark game though. 

Although the art style of House of Orr and His Majesty the Worm are different, I do think they both have a sense of fun.

There are no "bards" as a class in His Majesty the Worm, but just playing an instrument should have the ability to soothe a savage beast, in my opinion.

My friends are funny. They do funny things when they play. I wanted to embrace that side of the hobby. The default Bond is "Ally." The Ally Bond is charged when you say something in character and it makes your ally laugh in and out of character.

There should be moments of delight in the game. 

Inventory management is important

I briefly considered using item cards, like Last Gasp Grimoire/Mausritter, but ultimately cut it as an unnecessary expense.

When I first saw this panel in House of Orr, I stared at it forever. I loved it. The detail! The way it thought through what different characters had. It didn't look like my character sheets playing Pathfinder. How could I make a game where "spare jewelry" and "dank herb" was a fun choice to make? 

In His Majesty the Worm, every item carried is an important choice. But the game centers the human experience: you're not a grizzled, emotionless, methodical mercenary. You're a person. And you represent that with the things you carry.

Are you an aesthete sorcerer? Then represent that by carrying spare jewelry and dank herb. That's how you practically create that sort of character.

And with OSR problem solving at the core of gameplay, the most unlikely items can be used in the most unlikely ways.

The Guild as a Character

To reiterate, I feel as if the guild is a character in His Majesty the Worm in the same way that the ship Serenity was a character in Firefly. That's why the guild charter essentially operates like a character sheet. 

The guild persists longer than any individual adventurer. As players complete their quests, they retire their adventurers -- but the guild continues. 

The guild is a political entity

The guild is also fellowship

His Majesty the Worm - Available Now

His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities: the classic megadungeon experience given fresh life through a focus on the mundanities and small moments of daily life inside the dungeon.

Click here to get the game!

(The physical editions from Exalted Funeral are currently out of stock. I anticipate them being back in stock before the end of summer, and will announce when they are.)

His Majesty the Worm Bursts Forth from the Underworld!

For the last nine years, I've been writing and playtesting a game called His Majesty the Worm. It is now available in both physical and digital forms. I would love for you to check it out. 

Click here to get the game!

What is His Majesty the Worm about?

His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities: the classic megadungeon experience given fresh life through a focus on the mundanities and small moments of daily life inside the dungeon.

• Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.
• Tarot cards are used to create an action-packed combat system that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime!
• The game has robust procedures. Adventure in the Underworld, rest in roleplaying-driven camping scenes, and plot long-term schemes in the City at the center of the Wide World.
• The relationships between companions, called Bonds, powers the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. 

The game is intended for a traditional setup between a single GM and 3-6 players. It emphasizes long-term, Metroidvania-like play. The book is 404 pages long, split up over 10 chapters and 5 appendices. The print edition is silver foil stamped and has a ribbon bookmark. The digital edition is thoroughly cross-linked, with a robust index. It is a complete game with everything you need in one tome (just add a tarot deck).

Interested in a preview?

His Majesty the Worm was Itchfunded! That means that people generously contributed to the development of the game, donating to view early drafts of the chapters. As thanks, these sample chapters are now free.

• Appendix A: Sorcery - This chapter provides a magic system with versatile, level-less spells designed specifically for the dungeon crawling milieu.
• Appendix B: Alchemy - This chapter details the alchemical subsystem that lets adventurers steal the powers of monsters. 
• Appendix D: City Creation - This chapter details the procedural generation of the ur-city at the center of the game's anticanon.
• Appendix E: Underworld Creation - This chapter provides procedures and examples that simplify the daunting task of creating a mythic megadungeon. It also includes a tutorial dungeon, The Tomb of Golden Ghosts, with designer commentary!

Let me at that Worm!

Get the physical edition at Exalted Funeral

 

Get the digital edition at Itch

Get the digital edition at DriveThruRPG

Everybody wants to be initiated, nobody wants to be tricked

This is a post about three storytelling techniques I've seen in media - and at the RPG table. 

Initiation

In initiation stories, the audience is brought into some conspiracy or made privy to an essential secret of the universe. This initiation turns them into one of the elect. 

In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo (and the audience) that the real world isn't the real world. Humans are being farmed by machines. The world we know is a shared mass hallucination. There is a prophesy that one human will be the One who can fully overcome the machine world and rescue humankind from their captivity.

There are games like Vampire: The Masquerade that tell their secrets in the opening pages of their introductory narrative. This isn't exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the feeling of giving the players a "Oh. That's what's going on" moment. 

In my experience, conspiracy games like Delta Green's Control Group module can elicit this effect. One or two sessions of the game are played with both the players and player character's in the "out" group. Then, they receive initiation and are told the secrets of the game world. 

It's fun to be initiated. To be in the know. To be told secrets. 

(This feeling is what keeps Q Anon morons coming back for more conspiracy slop. They're one of the smart ones! They followed the clues and did their own research and now they know that Joe Biden is doing the plot of Henson's The Dark Crystal.) 

Revelation

In revelation stories, the audience is told a seemingly normal narrative. At the very end of the narrative, there is a moment of revelation that changes the context of the entire story.

At the end of Fight Club, you realize that Tyler Durden was a figment of the narrator's imagination.

At the end of The Sixth Sense, you realize the bald guy was Bruce Willis the entire time.

This is a difficult type of story to tell in an RPG format. The fun of revelation stories is in the rewatch. You don't read Gene Wolf, you reread Gene Wolf. Still, I wanted to include this storytelling technique because it felt so close in theme to "initiation." If you have any good examples of this from a mainstream game, let me know.

Apostasy 

In apostasy stories, the audience is initiated and later told that their first initiation was false - an apostasy. They're then inducted into the true initiation.

In The Matrix Reloaded, the Architect tells Neo (and the audience) that the story of the One is a false narrative. The cycle of the One is all part of the machine's plan. There have been many Ones. Each One has collapsed the current Matrix, rescued a handful of humans, and restarts the cycle. 

Apostasy is not fun. The audience only has the text with which to understand the narrative world. We know only what the filmmaker/GM is telling us. If they're lying to us, we don't have a way to know that. The revelation-after-the-revelation isn't satisfying. We feel tricked. 

This is all to say:

Everybody wants to be initiated. Nobody wants to be tricked.