KNOCK!-off #1.4

"I don’t like blogs. They're pompous, self-indulgent,
and irritating... and no one reads them."

Further research has yielded a reddit post on r/OSR that actually provides an excellent link tree for the various contributions to KNOCK! #1, so just go look at that instead of my section headers. 

NAMING MY GAME by Ben Milton

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

- (Stolen by Shakespeare from Team Rocket, if you didn't know)

There's a certain prestige that comes with popularizing the term by which we call a category or phenomena, and everyone is going to have an opinion on why their answer is best. I recently read a good chunk of Brian Murphy's Flame and Crimson: A history of sword-and-sorcery wherein the first six or so pages of chapter 5 are dedicated to the witherto's and whyfor's of naming of the literary subgenre. There were many arguments offered as to why it came about and it was all very researched on the part of the author, but as a reader, it frankly did little to keep me engaged.

As long as we all generally know what we're talking about, we can call it whatever. It may even help to wait for the dust to settle before declaring it as anything definitive. Spoiler alert: KNOCK! editors may very well be in the same boat; Marcia B's the OSR Should Die is featured in K!5 with an affirmative editor's note.

EXPOSE YOUR PREP by Chris McDowall

Alright, Chris cooked with this one. This piece is a few crisp bullet points of what to show your players for being good, attentive noodles, and I agree with practically all of it.

EXPOSE THE MAP - I hate having to draw rooms as they are discovered, and I detest the idea of trusting a player to accurately draw it out as described. There are some online tools that help with this, but that defeats the reason for having the maps conveniently drawn out for you by many modules ahead of time. I am very lazy when it comes to giving my players eye candy because I am quite busy as it is doing my NPC voices and answering the same question several times when it comes to descriptions. If the players are emotionally dependent on a grid (or NPC portrait for that matter), let them have it. They'll come crawling back to you anyway to learn what each of the rooms actually look like.

EXPOSE THE NPCS - My subtle cue for whether or not I want my players to engage further with an NPC to learn their motives, abilities, relationships, etc. is doing a voice for them. I make it distinct from my normal speaking tone so that they are clued into the fact that I am putting extra effort into this particular character. My NPCs also generally stray into George Lucas dialogue territory so nothing gets lost in translation. The more they talk, the more I rat out to the players. I'll be damned before I let anyone roll an Insight check (or equivalent) to figure out if someone is lying to them.

EXPOSE THE FUTURE - Communicate consequences. It's out of your hands after that.

EXPOSE THE TABLES - I had never thought about this one before, honestly. It may actually be even more fun to let the players roll on it since they already see the odds (and they have no one to blame but themselves). Now, this may only apply to tables that serve as resource taxes as opposed to storytelling ones (see previous post on Bryce Lynch's thoughts on random tables) as to not over-divulge, but I think the point is still salient for communicating the likelihood of any given encounter.

EXPOSE THE MECHANICS - While the advice is specifically tied to one of Chris' games, it is still entirely applicable to other... adventure games. The purpose of the flexible rule structures in old-school systems is to cater towards the eventuality that both the players and GM will stray into uncharted rule-waters. As such, your players may feel strongly about the perceived fairness or applicability of your rulings, so if you are genuinely just making stuff up, might as well be honest about it. If you've given it some thought about how to rule it, demonstrate to the players that you made an honest attempt to gameify the process.

ENCOURAGE SCHEMING by Chris McDowall

"PLOTS FOR THE PLOT GOD! SCHEMES FOR THE SCHEME THRONE!" as the kids say.

Chris enumerates some flavorful examples of how to enable the players to create a plan to solve a problem aside from brute forcing their way through it; players need time, tools, and reliable information to make the decisions required to solve a problem.

Granted, I believe I heard this from Ben Milton at some point, but something that is unspoken here is the fact that the way you would solve a problem isn't the way the players might try to do the same. Relinquish the pride you have in your clearly superior intellect for a moment and explain the consequences to players should their version of the plan fail, but assume that there is still a solid chance of it succeeding if they make an attempt to account for a wide number of variables. It's even alright for you to create problems that you wouldn't even know how to start solving yourself and letting players surprise you with an answer. Affording PCs the opportunity to be cool and tell a good story is more or less the point of the experience, right?

Why Setting HIGH STAKES Matters by Sean McCoy

Sean delineates a perception issue that I have been trying to highlight as a throughline in my writing this whole time: the players are accountable for the type of game they want to experience. Attachment to characters is earned as opposed to given, and fail states (including death) ensure that consequences for that attachment is genuine.

If the basis of stories is conflict/resolution and TTRPGS are a medium to try more or less anything in the pursuit of telling a story, it is both cheap and purposeless to handwave away additional ramifications arising from decisions made in its telling. Let stuff that happens matter, because otherwise the "happening" doesn't. The power and allure of these games diminish in the absence of repercussions. There is a difference between challenging/inviting someone to participate in the story and making them straight up uncomfortable, but to truly live vicariously through our hallucinated avatars, we must accept their mortal foibles and capabilities in equal measure.

---

I got all of those responses to my gygaxian-democratized table of d20 Pixie Tribes, and it doesn't get accepted to KNOCK! itself, I'll publish it here with credits.

The Children Yearn for the Old-School: Friendslop Games as an Extension of OSR Game Design

Screenshot from an upcoming co-op horror game,
YAPYAP. I'm excited for this one.

I have a small cadre of friends that meets on Wednesdays over Discord, ostensibly to play whatever TTRPG suits our fancy (currently Star Borg), but also to play video games if someone doesn't show or if no one is prepped. What I find interesting about the latter activity is that it typically feels like a natural extension of the first most of the time. We play games like Phasmophobia, R.E.P.O, PEAK, and Lethal Company, mostly because they are easy to pick up and encourage us to work together instead of against one another. However, I think the why actually runs a little deeper than that.

Perhaps because I drifted into the OSR rather than being steeped in it for many years, I can't help but notice that these community-styled "friendslop" games offer a deliberate experience that is similar in many ways to their analogue counterparts. The core gameplay loop is effectively the same, and how players engage with it is conceptually identical. Setting aside ever-popular shooters, MOBAs, and MMOs, I think the increased visibility of this genre points to a broader convergence of design priorities rather than a simple trend: a shared interest in player-driven problem solving, improvisation, and social play that the Old-School style has emphasized for decades.

Some of the subheadings below are lifted straight from the preface of TMM published adventures such as Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow and The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, but they stem conceptually from foundational OSR texts like the Principia Apocrypha. The intent here is not to claim direct influence, but to show how similar assumptions about play recur across media.

Decision making as the core player experience

When you join a lobby of Lethal Company, your crew selects a moon to visit in order to recover items, with the option to purchase supplies from a terminal beforehand. Once you have arrived, there is no set path to reach the target facility, and there are multiple entrances. Someone can also stay aboard the ship to monitor player positions, identify hostiles, or open doors.

At each of these stages, there are a plethora of interesting decisions to make. Do we buy everyone flashlights, or save our money for better gear later? Should we go in through the front, or try the back door first? Do we need more people inside to help carry loot, or can someone stay on the ship to guide us?

While there are clear objectives in this style of game like overcoming a discrete obstacle or recovering a certain amount of loot, how players approach the problem is intentionally vague, informed by group decision making and available resources. There is practically no difference between this method and old-school dungeon crawling. If gold is equal to XP, players must gear up and devise a plan to recover as much as possible while still getting out alive. In both cases, player skill is expressed through judgment, coordination, and "the gear they carry" (Ben Milton, Knave 2e) rather than mechanical optimization.

Open, dynamic environments / Absence The opacity of 'game balance'

Procedural or randomized generation is a favorite feature of many of these games, making them more interesting to replay and presenting a fresh challenge on each run. The unpredictability and variety of environments make them engaging in a way that scratches the itch of improvised strategy. In PEAK, for example, there are expected aspects of each biome, but it cannot be predicted which biomes will appear on a given run, nor what quantity or quality of supplies will be found along the way. Players are forced to operate with imperfect information, reinforcing decision-centric play while making the world feel genuinely dangerous.

The game may become more difficult as players progress, much in the same way that classic dungeons become more perilous as PCs descend to deeper levels, but very few interactions (if any) are scripted to occur in a fixed way. While these systems like spawn rates or behaviors are certainly tuned under the hood, danger is not calibrated to player capability at that moment; obstacles and enemies do not meaningfully "scale." They are capable of dealing out setbacks and death regardless of when they are encountered, but they also can be defeated by prudent assessment and recall. Areas are not gated by level requirements, but a lack of resources, information, or imagination can still prevent ill-prepared players from accessing them. This attitude of “sure, you can try that, it just might not go well” aligns closely with how OSR systems expect adventuring parties to engage with the group hallucination.

Quick character creation

Gather a group, establish a plan, grab the basics, and head into the adventure zone. Am I describing Shadowdark or R.E.P.O.? Both, really. There are no opening cutscenes or elaborate backstories to sit through. You might change the color of your shirt or the combination of simple starting equipment you bring, but getting into the game itself is a cinch.

As with many OSR systems, the stories that matter are not written beforehand. They emerge through play, while the party is in the dungeon, reacting to threats, making bad decisions, and occasionally surviving them. Character is revealed through action, not exposition or explicit lore.

The golden rule of play

Regardless of the title or medium, the point of "friendslop" is to spend time with people and enjoy a shared experience together. The fact that this experience is mediated through digital assets rather than a collective imagination does not cheapen the memories produced through play. These games largely reject leaderboards, KDA ratios, and other forms of external validation in favor of moments that are meaningful primarily or even entirely to the people present.

When asked why these games feel different from a AAA battle royale or a certain heavily authored RPG sold across multiple console generations, you can bet that players will give answers that mirror those of tabletop gamers, especially those operating in the OSR tradition. The appeal lies not in spectacle or progression, but in shared problem solving and the stories that emerge from it.

 ---

Much in the same way that dialogue between literature and TTRPGs is ongoing, games across media are constantly iterating on one another’s ideas, consciously or not. Developers are strengthened by broadening their horizons and translating successful principles across formats. Whatever overlap already exists between OSR design and indie co-op darlings, that overlap is not accidental. Both come from a desire for flexible, player-driven experiences that respect time, intelligence, and social play; in my opinion, this Venn diagram becoming a circle shows that this style of play has enduring, meaningful qualities... and I want to see more. At their best, both OSR games and their digital cousins are not about power fantasies, but about shepherding funny little guys through hostile spaces and seeing what stories get shaken loose.

KNOCK!-off #1.3

A recently acquired Peter Mullen original,
Caravansary (yippie!)

What Kids’ RPGs are Missing by Ben Milton

What are TTRPGs but make-believe with dice? Slipping into the role of a character as a kid (as I recall) was pretty easy, be it Batman or Ash Ketchum or whoever. I mean, this is really dumb, but during our school aftercare program, a bunch of us would recreate episodes of Total Drama Island (bascially a cartoon Survivor parody) by deciding on a competitive game to play as teams, and then we'd vote someone off of the island (they became the next game host).

Kids are imitative; they don't want to pretend to be kids pretending to do something, they want to pretend to do something. They might not have the emotional tools or experience to fully inhabit the mindset of character, but they can remember what they have seen that character doing or saying, and when in doubt, they'll just do that. It usually works, actually.

As Ben puts it, "kids... can smell condescension a mile away," so why sugarcoat games for them? I mean, don't be weird and include stuff they don't need to be thinking about, but don't make it a walk in the park either.

Wandering Monsters should have a purpose in wandering around by Bryce Lynch

This piece was originally posted on RPG Geek in 2014 under a different title on my birthday of all days. Spooky. Anyway, I'm going to break this down paragraph by paragraph since each one contains a worthy nugget worth exploring. 

Firstly, Bryce starts with the thesis that a wandering monster table should inspire or be cut. He's right in that one as simple as the included example can be pulled from basically anywhere if the monsters are simply a mechanism to tax the party. It's no different than a trap with a timer, really. I think this taxing element is important for impressing a sense of time passing upon players, but considering that players need to be able to make decisions based on what information is presented to them, it's a missed opportunity that they are to be assailed by an enemy that seems to have no other purpose than being a nonce.

Secondly, Bryce asserts that monsters should be doing something rather than waiting to attack. Correct. The ecology of a dungeon doesn't need to be realistic, but it needs to be logical. Monsters aren't in a dungeon because they don't want players to get the loot... that's too meta to admit. They have a goal or purpose outside of the PCs on a spectrum of complexity. Being hungry is fine as a baseline.

Thirdly, as hinted at earlier, these encounters are a chance to reveal information about the adventure that players can act upon. Even if they are docked some hit points for their trouble, players have an opportunity to make a better decision on how to risk their remaining ones if they learn something new from the encounter.

Finally, don't mistake detail for purpose. If what they are doing and why they might be doing it are not immediately apparent or able to be pieced together, there's not a lot of point in describing it. If we establish that monsters have goals, we don't need to write a book about what they are, just seat them so that they are in a position to accomplish them in whatever area they are rolled up in.

A scratchy unnamed random encounter table by Nobboc serves as an apparent expansion to this piece, demonstrating an application of activities that monsters might be engaged in with short, punchy descriptions. Now, if I were a gelatinous cube, I might be (1) attempting to mate with spilled jelly rations (2) trying to squeeze through a grate to shed undigestible treasure (3) slowly pulling in another dungeon denizen (roll another encounter) or (4) internally puppeteering a partly digested skeleton.

Hit Dice ARE MEANT TO BE ROLLED by Eric Nieudan

Unfortunately, Eric's original blogpost has been lost in the waters of Oblivion, but he did make a take two which is still available. I'll stick to evaluating the contents of this piece since, well, it's in KNOCK!, and the other one decidedly isn't.

Eric basically postulates that if PCs used a number of hit dice equal to their level (with the size of the dice corresponding to their class) instead of hit points, there's a number of ways that we could incorporate rolling into the mechanics of the game other than for HP maximums.

Hit Dice as a Soak Mechanic - Roll a hit die to try beating incoming damage with the result to negate it. Failure results in losing the die, and no remaining dice means death/dying. This changes up the math of PC survivability significantly. For instance, all level one characters can take one hit that goes through before biffing it, which isn't too far off-base, but martial classes have a much higher chance of simply not going down when taking a hit because of their higher die. If a character uses a d4, rule as written, 4 damage will automatically down you. You have no higher chance of potentially beating the damage at higher levels either, you can just take more hits. That said, this mechanic can basically be read as "you can take a number of hits equal to your level with a chance of ignoring smaller hits according to your hit die size." At that point there isn't even really a need to roll for monster damage, just players rolling a die to see if they ignore damage. I'd phrase it like "if you roll higher than a 3 on your hit die, you do not lose a hit die" if that's what we're doing. It's not a bad system, but I think it dramatically shifts high-volume monster attacks to being more dangerous than high-damage single attacks which might unintentionally nerf some beasties.

Hit Dice as a Free Pool - This is a refinement of the above system by allowing players to contribute additional dice to prevent damage. However, these dice are discarded anyway, and if you run out, any damage taken at zero hit dice is lethal. Additionally, if a roll is failed, subtract the hit dice roll result from the damage total and cross-reference with a table to indicate the type of injury sustained. This fixes my previous critique on high-volume vs high-damage attacks by factoring in the damage taken, but the system overall just kind of sucks for players to track overall, I think. Sacrificing hit dice is a real catch 22, and does nothing to streamline something they already know: don't take damage, it's bad for you. The fixed damage rate is also just kind of lame, in my opinion. I thought the whole point of this exercise was to roll more dice.

Hit Dice as Stamina - Now we're drifting into heroic fantasy by allowing players to alter checks/saves with hit dice, with a smart caveat that only the highest result of one of any rolled counts. Additionally, "fighty" classes can expend hit dice to increase damage. This latter point makes more sense than the rest of the rule to me if it applies to melee or non-bow missile attacks (javelins, throwing daggers, slings, etc.). I would be tempted to tinker with this one, perhaps refining it so that they take disadvantage on d20 rolls if they run out of hit dice since this isn't specified in the rule here. I don't mind meta currency if it doesn't break immersion, so this one isn't too bad.

Hit Dice as Risk Dice - This is just modded usage dice from The Black Hack. It's a good option. I'd rather have characters use this die as a tweaked doom die from The Black Sword Hack instead of damage, similar to the previous stamina mechanic.

Death, Dying and Healing: a Sliding Scale - A logical extension of the above systems and how to recover hit dice. Works well enough if incorporated.

I think I'm most impressed by the stamina mechanic as a class-agnostic way of reincorporating the act of rolling hit die as physical labor, giving a little extra firepower to our poor, unfortunate non-spellcaster/non-stealy characters without necessarily depriving the sneaky, smarty wimps of the backline. I think I'll try using this with 1 hit die recovered per rest next time I'm running a B/X-esque game.

20 Gunpowders by Eric Nieudan, et al.

It doesn't seem like there's a formal (or at least accessible) origin for the term "Gygaxian democracy," and searches keep pointing me towards an unrelated yet interesting piece by Prismatic Wasteland on incorporating democracy into fantasy settings. If I had to define it in a way more substantial than KNOCK!'s footnote, it'd be:

A collaborative design effort to produce gameable material for TTRPGs.

I think the keyword here is "gameable" since that is what makes it Gygaxian as opposed to generically collaborative. To this end, the gunpowders included here have unique usages and consequences if it happens to suit your table to both (a) use gunpowder at all and (b) make it slightly more complicated to use. Throwing my hat in the ring, I'd suggest "Glowpowder" which causes muzzles and anything struck to glow with the intensity of a candle for 1d4 turns after firing due to the residue. Firing again during this period has a cumulative 2-in-6 chance of causing the glow to intensify to the level of a torch for the remaining time.

I started fishing for responses to my own d20 table of Pixie Tribes in the KNOCK! discord to keep the tradition alive. I hope the contributors would agree to submitting the final table to a future issue.

I'm Gonna Go Loot the Dream Lands

Melzenger Stein by Albert H. Leindecker (c.1935)

I've been listening to the Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft Audiobook by the HPLHS--excellent performances from the narrators, by the way--and I have noticed that there were several stories spliced throughout with a very different tone from the expected "cosmic horrors beyond our mortal comprehension." Several of them revolve around a kind of lush, decadent dreamscape otherworld which I have come to find out is actually recognized as an official cycle, and it has even received an official series of modules for Call of Cthulhu.

I haven't read very much of either, but I had an epiphany listening to Celephaïs by HPL that this cycle of stories is remarkably similar to some of the writings of Dunsany and Poe. Lovecraft and his critics regard these romantic, dreamlike stories as more of an apprentice venture compared to his later writings, but I do think the ennui and longing evident in these tales and their inspirations are the necessary stepping stones for the creation of the types of game worlds we play in today.

The mythic, romantic approach to a fantastic dream world is all well and good to observe passively, but they are inspiring enough to make others want to know more. Writers of sword & sorcery like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith take the surreal circumstances and ethereal strangeness of these kinds stories and reimagine them with a protagonist that, for lack of a better reduction, isn't a coward and carries something sharp. Even Dunsany dabbles in this this kind of reflection with The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth wherein the hero just kind of cuts through a wizard's dream castle with a cool sword.

Much like I don't like listening to other people talk about their dreams, I think the audience wants to experience wonder and fantasy while also feeling like they have a choice in the matter, especially when they stand to gain something from prodding at it. When we stop fully understanding the high-minded conceptual framework of layered meanings and metaphors that these visuals represent, seeing as it is presented as a physical place, we start experimenting.

--

GM: "You enter the gilded hall of the Elf-king, the high arches of the ceiling bleeding into a haze of twinkling stars that illuminates the long chamber with a delicate twilight. The table is set with every morsel imaginable: sumptuous meats, fruit glistening with dew, and rivers of rainbow wine flowing from gem-studded pitchers. The living wood of the furniture perches beneath the revelers sat around the feast seems like it had been grown for the forms now sat upon them with perfect intention, and the beaming smiles of the fey lords and ladies are gracefully enraptured in the wonderous merriment of a never-ending banquet."

Player: "You said the hall was gilded? Like gold? I have a pickaxe; when no one is looking, I wanna kinda start, like, chipping away at the walls with it."

--

The romantic stories of these writers, as far as I can tell, were the inspiration for later fiction that forms the throughline of the requisite otherworld that we utilize as settings of our adventures, but we've rejected the focus on interpreting fatalistic and sublime beauty in favor of poking things to see what happens. When it comes to OSR TTRPGs, these ephemeral places are not beyond our reach; we are supposed to touch and speak and fight through them, imposing our will to the extent that we feel like we are most benefitted. We tow the line between escapism and cutthroat roguishness with our characters as a medium, not as a rejection of meaning, but because it's fun.

Likely a topic for another time, but hard worldbuilding seems like its the natural outgrowth of not simply experiencing a story about a place, but feeling like you can actually visit it and achieve consistent, expected results from interactions. I should take a look at the less logical programming, more vibe-based inspirations of games like Mythic Bastionland to see how games outside of the OSR are able to achieve an interactive otherworld that doesn't revolve around a gritty, rules-oriented play space.

KNOCK!-off #1.2

A sufficiently badass paperback
cover of a W. H. H. classic

Some of these entries below are the reason I fell in love with OSR theory, design, and the curation thereof by the Merry Mushmen; the streamlining of rules and raw creativity required to populate large random tables is probably what lured me into the space more than anything.

Does Energy Drain Suck? by Gabor Lux

Perhaps it's my neo-trad roots informing my sensibilities, but yes, I think it does. I'm not one to shy away from straight-up killing PCs if the situation calls for it, but there is something really sinister about taking away hard-fought progress and significantly desynchronizing the party's capabilities for future expeditions. Many players would rather have characters die with the potential of resurrection than see their precious good noodle points erased.

Modifying the rules so that energy is drained from attributes instead is a great idea simply because it takes away the butthurt factor while retaining the lethality of encounters with the undead. Personally, I think it also makes more sense in the fiction and for PC metrics management. No one wants to have to reroll max HP or recalculate ability percentages in the negative direction.

Wizard Weaknesses by Daniel Sell

Wizards are weirdos. Anything that reinforces this idea is essential in my book. Some of the entries on this table may be hard to communicate or discover without environmental context clues or deeply embedded NPCs, but I think the strongest aspect of the table isn't necessarily the weaknesses themselves so much as how they inform the image and roleplaying of the weirdo they are tied to. "Direct sunlight causes the warlock’s crystallised plasmic crown to evaporate. It is otherwise invulnerable and irremovable." This goober is a pale, dark-dwelling creep with delusions of royal grandeur. "The wizard is careful to surround himself with mirrors at all times. While in the presence of a reflective surface he maintains his elevated state." The second coming of Narcissus, he's easy on the eyes but hopelessly aloof. There's immediate fodder in each of these in terms of tropes and characterization that paint a picture of who this person is.

My least favorite of these is table entries is "The wizard has an agreement with a dark(er) lord to boost his powers." Sorry Daniel, but that's kind of lame. I feel like most of them basically do that already. My personal replacement for this entry would be "The sorcerer is actually identical twins that share their pact-made magical power remotely on the condition that they remain unseen to one another. Never in the same place at the same time, if they are brought together their power diminishes significantly."

Get your gear! by Nobboc

A table for randomized starting gear. I think these entries are fun, but it seems like it may only work for classes that can suffer a wide variety of armor and weapons like fighters and (sometimes) clerics. Not to be a drag, but I would not be excited to roll on this table as a spellcaster class. This table feels Knave-coded in that it wants to get you up and dungeoneering without a lot of fuss, irrespective of your intended party role. I personally would use this to equip new PCs in a classless system or spur-of-the-moment companions with the chops for combat.

Consider the following as an additional entry: vibrant gambeson (2-in-6 mistaken for nobility), plumed cap, flamberge rapier, decoy coin pouch (any pebbles placed inside appear as coins), a provisioned charcuterie board.

The village's local retired adventurer... by Daniel Sell

A Daniel double-feature day. In lieu of an alternative entry or pithy remark, I'll leave you with a poignant, abbreviated quote from an underappreciated Appendix N contemporary:

"Yet that, after such age, if a youth desired greatly to make the adventure, he should receive… a strict account of the mutilatings and horrid deeds done to those who had so adventured.”

William Hope Hodgson — The Night Land

Dungeon Checklist by Arnold K.

A certified GLOG banger: a shortlist of things to include in your dungeon-to-be to maximize playability and cover your design variety bases. What interests me the most about this list is that it serves as the old-school foil to the lauded (and loathed) 5 room dungeon of the contemporary dragon game and friends. Rather than structuring a dungeon around premeditated narrative beats, the checklist insists on design elements to be included without a presumption of where and when. This sandbox approach provides the necessary constraints to defeat blank canvas syndrome while opening the door to jaquaysing the layout. Player choice and interactivity are central to OSR gameplay, and each part of this list is critical for providing a manifestation of this in a dungeon.

Pairing this list with a more structured layout creator (such as Sersa Victory's cyclic dungeon generation) basically does all of the work for you in terms of prep, leaving a GM the opportunity to flavor the dungeon however they want. My personal pick for tying together the theme of the dungeon is Map Crow's wedding aphorism approach since it has practically no overlap with the mechanical application of the items prescribed by Arnold, focusing instead on set dressing.

It's probably worth investigating the dungeon design course by Rise Up Comus to see how well the advice laid out here is integrated/endorsed by the now editor-in-chief of KNOCK!

KNOCK!-off #1.1

Lich King by Peter Mullen (2020)

I ended up only submitting to the Appx. N Jam since I frankly haven't been in a mechanically-minded mood as of late. Let's see if I can remedy that with the first real installment of this series. I'll tackle the first 4 or so entries from KNOCK! #1 in this post.

d12 PAMPHLETS FOUND IN A DUNGEON

Just a little goofy random "table" here that doesn't really serve anything other than a quick giggle. If I had to throw something out to populate it, it'd probably be something akin to "Warlocks & Weirdos: Recognizing an Enemy Spellcaster Before Being Turned Into Goo."

A Note on the Foreword

As a doom-scrolling, brain-rotted Zoomer, I resent the lack of recognition in this particular prologue, but considering how young myself and others in my generation would have been during the first stirrings of the OSR and a general assurance that none of us actively used Google+, I suppose it's understandable. That said, the OSR is assured to see an influx of Gen Z creators and ideas seep in with enough time, if indeed we are still referring to it as the OSR. As we become more atomized in our interests and more willing to accept processing longform content with age, I think rediscovering seminal blogs of this space will be a real treat for many. It's also interesting to note what I perceive to be a lack of confidence in this foreword, as if the creators were unsure that this kind of project would actually materialize. I cannot help but notice how far it has come.

WHAT I WANT IN AN OSR GAME by Brooks Dailey

Alright, here we go, the meat and potatoes. This article discusses some of the maxims and aims of the OSR as compared with a more generalized, modern TTRPG experience. Essentially, Brooks asserts that the OSR is a distinct experience because it actively eschews the need for narrative continuance and cohesion in favor of, well, a game. The GM presents a game world, the players describe what they do, and the GM tells them what happens. Something something tactical infinity, something something rulings over rules. The OSR is a challenge or puzzle that requires players to be skilled in order to "solve" the problems presented.

I think Brooks hits the nail on the head when name-dropping pulp fiction stories and characters: we're not lounging on who's and why's so much as exploding into the when's and how's. The conceit of OSR play is that it is a challenge-based experience where the story unfolds not according to narrative arcs but logical results of interaction with a weird, unpredictable world. I think 5e players have a hard time adjusting to this style of play because the culture of play it's associated with is almost diametrically opposed to players as agents of change in the world. Yes, you did save the world and find closure on your tragic ten-page backstory, but all of that was intentionally facilitated by the GM's plotlines. In the OSR, your achievements are exactly that: achievements. Your characters earned them because you as a player won at playing, and the GM was just there to tell you what the world does in response to your actions. This doesn't (necessarily) mean that the GM was playing against you, but the world sure as shit was, and you beat it anyway.

This was a smart first piece on the part of the editors since it functions as a distillation of the ideas of the oft cited Principia Apocrypha lightly juxtaposed with features of other modern games. This helps orient neophytes to the OSR mindset without abandoning what might have been a psychological anchor for some people's understanding of roleplaying.

A comparison of old and new D&D by Gavin Norman

Man, this article originated in the shrouded annals of anno domini 2011, and Gavin asserts in the original digital version that this was his first "OSR philosophy" post. That's bananas to me considering the first OSR system I became familiar with was OSE, and I'm pretty sure that game is the de facto system for old-school play today. Anyways, the bottom line of the text is in a similar vein to the one before it, but this one hones in on what I see as two important concepts: reactionary rulings (over rules) and table individualization.

The more amorphous nature of procedure and character metrics in the older games make it hard for players not to settle into the idea that rather than playing a piece of paper, they need to play like they are actually trying to fight a monster or disarm a trap by torchlight. This echoes the challenge-based focus of Brooks' piece from a slightly different angle: the fiction of what is happening is not centered in narrative motivations, and characters are not centered in ability quantification. You have to play like you are trying to win, and your character is a cool vehicle in the game to impose your will and die horribly in your stead when you screw up. A lack of rules (that players can see) means that a GM is empowered and encouraged to negotiate the creative actions of players into a rules framework that is stretchy enough to accommodate quite a bit of tomfoolery.

A corollary to this is the recognition that different GMs will likely rule things differently because of how they have structured their internal rulings process in conjunction with the written rules. Gavin asserts that this creates a dialogue between players and GMs seeking to reach consensus on what is appropriate for what crops up during play, avoiding the need to process or memorize extensive situational rules. I can't help but agree that this works better for me in many ways because I find needing to digest or even look up rules to be much less fun than just going with whatever sounds cool (as long as it doesn't irreparably damage the game's logic). 

Monster Design from Classics - The Lich by Chris McDowall

Chris talks about how to vary the stats of a lich in a way to create new monsters in a variety of flavors while retaining the balance/essence of the original. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of the writing in this one, despite the fact that I utilize the concept regularly. I think Chris doesn't do a great job of actually retaining the essence of his example monster as a throughline for all of the variations he arrives at and presents. 

It would have been better if he established some archetypes and shown how a lich might have functioned within them, or shown how creatures within the same archetype might differ because of flavor. Whether it's the "Big and Dumb" or "Small and Smart" categorization, or something outside of these, there's a way to make a monster feel like a lich if you nail the tone and abilities. Likewise, there are tons of ways to make a physically weak but magically adept enemy not make people think "oh, like a lich." It doesn't seem fruitful to just name a bunch of creatures that could be any other monster with a unique theme and say "ah yes, this is obviously an extremely warped variation of a lich."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this piece is kind of a stinker in my opinion when it comes to the writing and presentation. There are better ways to illustrate this concept. I'm not even really a fan, but Pointy Hat knocked this idea out of the park in my opinion by comparison, and he's firmly rooted in solely the 5e ecosystem. As good of a writer and designer Chris is, it's very strange that this is one of the things representing him in KNOCK!

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That's all for now. As I was writing this, Questing Beast uploaded a video on what the OSR playstyle is, and I'm glad that I detected a significant degree of continuity with how I define it.

Appendix N and Roleplaying's Ongoing Dialogue with Fiction

From one of my personal bookshelves

Since I took the time to write it out in the community posts section of the Appx. N Game Jam, I might as well post it here for posterity (with minor alterations for the consideration of the intended audience).

I had actually done a lot of personal research on Appendix N for a different project, and I wanted to share some resources and knowledge in case anyone was interested in exploring the topic further.

Where did it come from and who is on the list?

The original Appendix N comes from the tail end of the Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide developed by Gary Gygax. An earlier version of this list actually appeared in Dragon Magazine #4, but it was expanded by the time of the official release in the DMG into the list we refer to today. Gygax states both in the DMG and in Dragon Magazine #95 the works of Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, A. Merritt, and H. P. Lovecraft were the primary fictional influences on the development of the game. He actually goes out of his way to downplay the influence of fantasy genre titans like J. R. R. Tolkien and Michael Moorcock as "minimal" in that latter magazine article despite their now historic legacy, but he does give them a nod in the original list anyway. The underdiscussed "little brother" of the appendix (though perhaps more comprehensive) is the Inspirational Source Material list featured at the back of Tom Moldvay's Basic D&D that was first published only a few years later. However, even in the OSR space where B/X is the lingua franca of game design, this list barely holds a candle to Gygax's brainchild in terms of the level of recognition and popularity.

What is the list's influence on roleplaying games and literature today?

Many people continue to reference works from the original list as part of their inspiration for fantastic game ideas, and the concept of including an appendix of influential works still endures. Appendix N was reissued as Appendix E with the release of D&D's fifth edition Player's Handbook, now updated to include seminal works of speculative fiction published since the release of AD&D, best-fit titles for authors only mentioned by name in the original list, and some of the game designers' personal picks for major influences on the game's development. Other games, like The Electrum Archive and Vaults of Vaarn, include their own unique appendices of influences like books and other media, and some games like Hyperborea and Black Sword Hack are stylized as homages to specific works and subgenres featured in Appendix N. Goodman Games, the publisher of Dungeon Crawl Classics and many old-school 5e modules, maintains an active blog talking about the writings and ideas of the list's authors. As D&D and roleplaying have become cultural titans in their own right, some authors have flipped the script and used games as inspiration for their own writings.

TTRPGs and speculative fiction are basically in constant conversation, and Appendix N is a touchstone for this exchange. For example, after playing D&D with Gygax, Andre Norton (of Appendix N fame) wrote a novel inspired by the session: Quag Keep. Decades later, this book is listed as inspirational reading in the aforementioned 5e Appendix E. Another case is the influence of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which not only inspired the early tone and structure of D&D, but also led to the1980s Conan films, which in turn were adapted into official D&D adventure modules. Circle of life, baby.

Man, that's a lot of books, but I want to try reading some. Where should I start?

Start wherever you like, but I also recommend perhaps reading a short story anthology to see which authors you might like to read more from. One of the latest and greatest in my opinion is the aptly named Appendix N, Revised and Expanded Edition: Weird Tales from the Roots of Dungeons & Dragons, featuring works by authors from the original list and their contemporaries. It was originally titled with the word "Eldritch" instead of "Weird" so it's a little confusing now that it shares a name with the long-running Weird Tales magazine, the very same where many of Appendix N's authors got their publishing start. Speaking of which, I personally like Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird for its inclusion of a variety of swords-and-sorcery and horror stories from both classic and new authors. If you wanted to look a little bit deeper into the history of the literature itself as a cultural movement, I've heard good things about Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery. Lots of research has been done on the history of this subsection of literature and of the history of TTRPGs themselves, and a quick search yields a ton of rabbit holes, I promise.

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Hopefully some of you find this topic interesting, and I hope it helps you discover something inspiring for yourself!