Rethinking XP for Gold And Why You Should Too (or not)

I love XP for gold. I especially love the effects this rule has on game play, game design, and theory behind much of what we know of the OSR. I am a firm believer that the way the game rewards play seriously influences the way we play the game (yeah, we play to have fun too, but it’s still there, nudging us in the right direction). Basically, earning XP is like “winning” in an RPG that uses them.

However, I’ve been reading a superb book on Game Design called Theory of Fun by Raph Koster (y’all should totally get it), and one of the insights I had, and one of the big lessons in the book, is that games teach us stuff in a controlled space. That’s mostly its main function. Most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happening, but that’s where the “fun” comes from in games, from learning and figuring out solutions to problems/challenges. And game designers can purposefully create games to change specific things. And that’s what I would like to do.

*Spot art I made for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea*

XP for gold is great because it teaches us to find better solutions to tough problems. PCs won’t always resort to violence. Violence might very well become the last resort, as we all know our style of play isn’t big on balancing encounters perfectly.

April 28, 2022April 28, 2022

Primal Quest – The Winged People’s Problem – Session Report #01

This week I was back at our friendly local game store, Game of Boards, and was ready to either continue our campaign with the full group venturing into The Tower That Fell, or finish our dreamcrawl at The Cave Our People. Alas, that didn’t happen and only two players showed up (and only one of them was playing on the cave adventure).

So after a quick debate over our options, we decided to make another set of characters and do something else. That way we keep playtesting the game, and develop the campaign in another direction, like those old-school RPG campaigns of yore.

April 24, 2022April 24, 2022

The Primal World of Thaia – OSE – Equipment

We are back with more previews of rules adaptations to play Old-School Essentials in The Primal World of Thaia. We already talked about the core classes in the Rules Tome (here, here, and here), and about Resources and XP here. Today we will take a look at Equipment and Durability.

Equipment

In the mythical stone age of Thaia, characters have access to fewer items and none of them will be made with metal.

April 21, 2022April 21, 2022

The Primal World of Thaia – Resources and XP for Gold

Resources

One of the main themes of The Primal World of Thaia setting is survival, and to emphasize that, we use two Resources: Food and Water.

Food and Water are necessary for any character’s survival, and are used as a form of currency in the sense that almost everything is evaluated in terms of how many units of these resources they are worth.

April 18, 2022April 21, 2022

Primal Quest – The Cave of Our People – Session Report #01

This last Thursday I went to Game of Boards (our FLGS) again, and was ready to continue our Primal Quest campaign and test the stuff I am making for The Tower That Fell adventure for the second issue of The Primal World of Thaia zine (I have the first 5 issues planned). The adventure will also be available in an early release format for Old Skull Publishing newsletter subscribers, and for those who choose to pay the asking price for Primal Quest – Essentials, the game rules that will be released as a PWYW product in a couple of weeks.

However, various Random Encounters and the heavy rain prevented half the group from showing up, so we decided to playtest The Cave Of Our People, a Dreamcrawl introductory adventure (and character creation funnel in the future) with the 3 folks that showed up just for fun. It wouldn’t directly affect what’s going in the game, and the new characters could become allies and future replacements when their main characters (or if) they die.

So I handed them each a blank Primal Quest character sheet made by @LicopeoArt and began explaining what we were doing and what the adventure is about (and will do the same with you, dear reader).