Through some channels I’m in I often hear a boasting of people how they are lucky they are playing OSR and despise anything that has to do with D&D5e. I’m glad they’re feeling lucky and happy with the games they are playing, but I feel no need to kick other games down. I’m writing this article from a perspective of someone having ran many D&D5e games and having played and ran in many sessions that fit within the OSR. I love both mindsets of gameplay, and they are very different from each other, but they can still co-exist.
I see D&D5e much as a game that revolves around the character sheet, more than about the personality of the character. The 5e character has a lot of abilities and there is a lot of choice in what you want to do and can achieve during encounters. The pure range of all these possibilities is what attracts me to D&D5e, but, mostly during combat encounters, the games I’ve played in devolve into ability uses. The storytelling halts there; only the DM that recounts what happens is still interested in weaving all together and creating a single story out of it. Most players are just happy to roll the dice and say what attack they will use.
In the OSR games I’ve played [Low Fantasy Gaming, Maze Rats, Mörk Borg] you often lack abilities (and health) and are encouraged to use more of the environment and all the little things that can grant you advantage in combat. The players always look for other options, whether talking, shoving, grappling or stealthing, instead of engaging directly with a weapon. The storytelling is often done by players and DM alike during their turn.
I like the many abilities and choices that 5e gives and I think they could add a lot to the story. Meanwhile, I also like the searching for other means of engagement in OSR. In this article I want to see if the two can be brought closer together and what happens if you take the story-heavy progression of OSR and put that in 5e, and what happens if you take the many abilities and try to fit those in Mörk Borg.
I would like more story-heavy progression in D&D5e
This is true for me. A D&D5e character often takes a rest in a safe space and would find them self leveled up, full of new abilities and spells to use. With that last monster they killed, they has enough experience to gain those new powers. I’m not sure how they do it, but it’s a magic world. I’m going to suggest some things to make a character progression in 5e more believable, suggestions that would be found in the OSR community. After that I want to look at the character progression of one class and see how that fits.
– First of all, I think most characters would need a mentor of some kind. Someone to learn them the skills and tricks of the trade. You wouldn’t be able to progress if you don’t take the time to learn. The positive of this is that a mentor would teach you (in return for something?), but could also pose as a villain or ally later on as they already have a bond with the character. Negatives of the mentor are that it can cost a lot of focus on one particular character, while the rest sits idly by. Also it can take a long time for the players to reach the mentor if they are out in the Wilderness. The first negative can be caught by doing it in a personal downtime session, should you have time for that. I don;t think the second negative can be countered, it’s just how the story could be.
– The mentors can send characters on quests to retrieve items for them, as payment for their teachings, or could ask for a large sum of money (as economy in 5e is awful). They could also send you to places where you could learn more skills: think about pointing you towards a spellbook with great powers.
– I would keep the mentors around from 1st to 5th level. After that the players are mostly on their own. The mentor could come back later, after around level 14, to aid or destroy the acolyte they raised.
– Between 5th level and level 14, the players should be auto-didactic and should come across places and items that teaches them new skills. I would suggest making some spells and abilities only available in certain places and cultures. This encourages travel and seeing more of the world and also limits the abilities a small bit and adds story to them when they finally learn the power.
– I think between 5th and 14th level, the players should settle somewhere: a place called home. Even though they wouldn’t stay there often, it could attract people that want to serve as teachers and it could serve as a place for experimentation. I’m a big fan of the idea of a stronghold, whether a keep or a temple or a wizard’s tower. That should help them increase their powers too.
– When reaching High Level, their powers must come from a powerful enemy to beat. A nemesis. Or maybe as a gift from a God if you helped him. It should become much more rare to gain a new ability.
That’s what I propose for character progression in 5e, which will slow it down by a lot, but also make it, in my view, more interesting. It still doesn’t solve the combat problem though. For that, I have other ideas, which I will explain in a later blog post. It’s about terrain and environment to use within the 5e mindset, and I’m planning to write a whole book about the matter.
How to add more (combat) abilities to the OSR
I would like to see now how I could add more abilities to use in combat, to a game like Mörk Borg. I think the most important thing here is to start from the premise of ‘story is most important’. I think the Unheroic Feats in the Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory zine, is a good example of how you add more interesting powers to the characters by strengthening the story. I would like to propose a different, but similar form of progression for Mörk Borg.
Every class and character has it’s own weird habits like cursing to everyone, or collecting teeth, or doing other possibly detrimental things. I think it would be fun to explore that concept, which is written in the backstory, and really build on that.
A person collecting teeth could become an artisan of teeth. He now has enough (after an event) and wants to craft something out of it. Or the person could be really good at seeing how much a tooth or fang would be worth. In both cases, they could now gain a small benefit that is based on their story progression.
The person who is cursing, could become famous for the curses that no one heard before, and invited to a party to be entertainer. Now they have a contact, which is story progression and helpful.
Anyway, I think the Unheroic Feats of Feretory are great and do most of this already. Take a look at them, make more of them and make lists of small story progression steps players can gather during their games. I think that will increase the range of possibilities for OSR games.
Conclusion:
I like the mindsets of both OSR and 5e and I’ve tried to come up with some ideas to apply to the other side. I hope you liked this post. I’m looking forward to telling more about my ideas for making 5e combat more story engaging to players and DMs. I might add another post on this topic later though.
