OSR and Adjacent Systems Comparison Chart

For a while now I’ve been wanting to run a casual megadungeon game, just to get a better sense of the old school style of fantasy ttrpg play. In order to do that, I needed a system. And there are a lot of systems.

So I began to read through them, the most commonly recommended ones. And then I decided to write down my findings to keep track of what game did what differently. And then… well. By the time I realized what I had committed to I was already knees-deep in it. You can find the monstrosity down below. Hopefully it benefits someone.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1logY0LCPchtM5unsE2oof87H8B0mME_DylRMqaNAMY0/edit?usp=sharing

I tried to choose the systems I see thrown around most often on the various osr interwebs, plus a few of my personal favorites (creator’s privilege).

While I was at it, I also decided to do a quick write-up, no more than 200 words each, of my thoughts on some of the systems. That will be in another, coming soon, blogpost. As soon as I can manage to get this blasted cloak untangled.

Masks Review, and lessons from intentional game design

I won’t even lie. When I first heard of Masks, a hyper-specialized game for running teenage superheroes in a fairly generic DCarvel-ish setting, I thought, ‘Well that’s an idea. Not a good one, but certainly an idea.’

And sure, I’m biased. My ideal superhero setting/story is Worm, my gaming preferences tend towards the hardcore, grueling survival, and if there’s not a TPK the first session I’m probably not having fun. Masks is explicitly not that. I watched some playthroughs, I read the playbooks, and it just didn’t pique my interest.

So I don’t know what changed.

I read through the playbooks again recently. I don’t even remember why. But it just clicked. I think it was paying attention to some of the more interesting narrative-driving mechanics that make the playbooks come alive.

I bought the book a week later, and ran a session a week after that. Mixed group of experienced and inexperienced roleplayers, played over discord. Here are my thoughts.

I’ll start with a rating.

…Is it bad if I give it a perfect 10? I promise I’m not a Kotaku reviewer passing out 10s like magic items in a 3.5 game.

And ok, the Rulebook isn’t perfect, there’s some additional things that could’ve been in there, some organization and index issues. But Masks isn’t arguably the most popular Powered by the Apocalypse game out there for no reason. The author understood what the original Apocalypse World did that made it worth copying, understood the genre he was trying to actualize, and leveraged the above into a game that achieves his design goals. The vast vast majority of PbtA games out there fail to do one, if not all three, of the above.

The Playbooks

read: Character Sheets. One thing I love about PbtA games in general are the character sheets. It’s all there. Everything the player needs, presented in a multiple choice format. They just go down the sheet, circling the option they want, no cross-referencing books, barely any GM instruction needed, and they have a perfectly built character. The hands-down best system I’ve come across for introducing new players to the hobby. The key things here are the options for how your character looks, the leading background questions, and the way even the mechanical choices help define the character.

Look, I know it’s hard to remember back to your bright-eyed, innocent days of cracking open your first roleplaying book, filled with boundless excitement but lacking a clue. If you can remember that feeling of excited energy stifled by the paralysis of having no clue what you’re doing, just know that these days, new roleplayers probably have it worse. If you got into roleplaying over 10 years ago, you were probably already a huuuuge neeeerd. You didn’t know the rules but you probably knew enough to know you wanted to be a brooding half-elf with a bow sitting in the corner of a bar. You could picture your character’s fine elven locks and grey-tinged skin from their edgy Drow parentage.

These days trpgs are quickly becoming mainstream, and not everyone who tries one out is going to know the genre staples enough to begin picturing what their character looks like in their head. That’s even if they’re playing a fantasy game. Obviously, there’s a lot more out there.

Long-winded rant to say, those silly suggestions for how your character looks? The ‘forced’ backstory and relationship questions? Those matter. They’re important. And why I think even the PbtA games that aren't as good as this one are some of the best games to use to introduce new players to the hobby.

Getting back to Masks, I linked my players the Playbooks and they all, including the new one, blitzed through character creation, barely any questions asked.

With the Masks Playbook sheets, you’ve got a good 45% of everything you need to play the game. The design is sleek and clean, makes good use of space, and includes the excellently done comic-inspired art that’s found throughout the book. I could make a whole new blog post discussing and rating the different playbooks. But they’re all well-done in that they exemplify the different character archetypes commonly found in superhero, and more broadly, any fiction featuring young protagonists with heavy responsibility. Taking that a step further they, the playbooks by design guide interesting narratives and character development. The player chooses certain actions that bring The Doomed playbook, evocative of Raven from Teen Titans, closer to their demise  in exchange for power. The Delinquent skirts the line between on the team and off the team, hero and antihero, until, during their Moment of Truth, they decide who they are and face the consequences.

The Moves

PbtA games frame everything through the concept of ‘Moves,’ and it’s a great mechanic for what PbtA games attempt to accomplish for a lot of reasons. With just the moves alone, you’ve got another 45% of everything you need to play the game.

From the player’s side, you have a list of moves that pretty much account for all the rolling mechanics a player will have to worry about. New players can look to the moves and find direction in the possible avenues they can take, while experienced players can do what they’ve always done, that is, say what their characters do, and the GM will say when they need to roll for a move. I think this helps reinforce a concept that a lot of rpgs out there don’t do enough to emphasize: not every action a player takes requires a roll. Some things they can just do. You don’t need to roll to walk in a straight line nor check to see if your character can see the thing right in front of them. But when a player does something that meets the requirements of a move, they roll.

The player moves also help reinforce the type of game and narrative you’re playing through. In a game about teen superheroes, you roll to Unleash your Powers in a major way, hopefully without catching civilians in the crossfire, and to effectively Comfort or Support a teammate after a tough battle. But a speedster doesn’t have to roll to see if they can run fast. In Apocalypse World, a Mad Maxy game about survivors in the apocalypse, you’ll find moves to Do Something Under Fire and Go Aggro.

From the GM’s side moves make the whole ‘GM’ thing make sense. See, GM’s get moves too, moves that naturally create interesting superhero stories (like, of course, Put Innocents in Danger) and the creation of GM moves in PbtA games might just be the best example of a rulebook teaching you how to GM in existence. A lot of traditional (read: fantasy) rpgs out there will give you a hundred rules about how hard you fall from different heights, how fast you can swim, how much damage you do when you’re standing next to an ally unless your ally is blind and charmed and oh yeah your foe is invisible so- And in all that they forget to teach you how to run a game. A fun game.

Masks gives the GM tools to fun a fun superhero game, and if you’re playing Masks that’s what you’re here for. Header because we’re segueing into

Rules

The rulebook teaches the GM how to run a fun, satisfying game, and there’s not much better that can be said about a rulebook. From the suggestion that you frame scenes like a comic book strip (my players commented that they loved this) to the agenda and principles that guide play. Not only do you get GM moves, which are basically the answer to, ohmygodmyplayersarealllookingatmewhatdoIdonow, but, almost as important, you get how and when to use them. There’s also detailed guidance on how to challenge player characters (beyond how strong do I make the next monster) by playbook, so that they face interesting decisions in a way that engages their character.

Now as much as I want to give a perfect 10 rating (for the memes) because of the excellent guide to GMing, the rulebook has its problems. Organization is decent, but I had trouble finding some pretty key mechanics in the middle of play, even using the handy cheat sheets you can check out for free. There’s an implied, unduly generic setting city, and the few pages description of it isn’t even enough to make the default superhero city we’ve all seen depicted in movies 20 times in past 10 years come alive. Suffice to say, it doesn’t come remotely close to the levels of at-table usability that modern game books coming out of the indie scene display. I would’ve liked tools to help me make the city feel like a living city to the players. Random tables, pictures, even the boorishly long info dumps utilized by the more mainstream developers would’ve been better than nothing.

Conclusion

Alright, I started ranting. Everything I said aside, I guess here’s what I’m trying to get across.

When I sit down to run a session of most other games, I panic beforehand, overprepare, run the session well enough (players are rarely as critical of you as you are of yourself), maybe with a few panic points. And then after comes the anxiety as I go back over every single thing I did wrong in my head and what I should’ve done better and why I didn’t prepare more and

Maybe I’m the only slightly neurotic GM that does this.

With Masks, I barely planned anything beforehand, ran the session well and had fun doing it, and basked afterwords in a sea of contentment. Running the game was fun. I enjoyed doing it, and want to do it again. Heck, right now if I had the players. Want to play? And I really believe it’s because Masks gives you not only the tools, but also the guidance to run a fun game.

I mentioned before that a lot of the fantasy rpgs on the market give you hundreds of rules but no direction how to use them. Rules by themselves are like building blocks without guidance how to put them together in a shape that doesn’t look like an eldritch horror. Experienced GMs can weather this. They know the tools and common building patterns to put together a game that looks good. 

But new players? They’re left surrounded by a mess of pieces that barely make sense and told to, in addition to reading a giant rulebook, go spend hours seeking out advice online on how to actually run the game. And maybe then they can put together something decent. But you know what happens then? Everyone’s building the same thing, the barest variations. When someone proposes something truly novel, they often get shutdown. The assortment of rules are supposed to inspire people to build their unique own stories, but everyone ends up doing the same thing.

A group of random flops sitting in an inn then someone tells them to go do something and they do it. They kill some stuff, get stronger, save the local ruler from some nefarious plot, there’s a prophecy somewhere in there, all the way until they (save the cheerleader) save the world. Wooo.

Masks doesn’t give you an assortment of tools to do anything with. It’s laser-focused and clear about what it’s for. But despite that, no two Masks games will start the same. The team’s origin story is created organically at the table by the players. The presence of one playbook in one game and a different playbook in another game sends the emerging narrative off in separate directions like pool ball collisions as different playbooks pursue different drives. And you end up with stories as distinctive as the various superhero media that’s come out in the last decade. Of varying quality, sure. But how many series and movies is that? At least a few good ones? And consider, if you’re just counting DCarvel shows you’ve barely scratched the surface of superhero media. There’s an iceberg underneath. And that whole iceberg is Masks's storytelling potential. 

If you've seen The Incredibles, I think Edna's already got it covered on the dangers of getting those superhero cloaks tangled.

The Frenzy Wilds: Running Games in the Beastlands

give the awesome artist a follow for more amazing art: instagram.com/thatohora

Don’t let the apparent beauty fool you. The Beastlands is not the verdant green forests that race for the horizon like the sea. It is not the plains that stretch like fields of gold beneath a blue sky, nor the towering ice-capped mountains, the rushing rapids of the jungle, the swampy mires or the barren deserts.

No. The Beastlands is struggle. 

A sun-kissed glade explodes in a frenzy of swirling leaves, scattered dirt, paws moving, heart pounding, lungs pumping, the tooth, the nail,

Silence.

The hunted gasps a dying breath as bones break and blood is spilled. The hunter slinks back to its den to close its eyes for the last time, lulled to sleep by the rumble of its empty belly. One struggles and lives, one struggles and dies. The heart of the Beastland is in life or death. 

Skip down to Running the Beastlands and Player Characters in the Beastlands for actual rules stuff.

 

The Beastlands

Take nature in all its unadultured glory, now dial it up to 11. It's wild, it's untamed, it actively resists being tamed. Of course we tried. Let me tell you of our attempts.

In the ancient days, three siblings, esteemed hunters and trappers all, set out into the woods in search of the endless forest where the trees grew tall and the beasts were plenty. Unbeknownst to them, they would find themselves hunted before they could lay a single trap. They never returned.

In the distant days, the last King of Mallowacre charged the realm’s heroes with investigating the rumors of the Night Huntsmen who haunted the ‘swamplands within the swamp.’ The heroes never returned. The next season, the first were-people ravaged the lands.

In the days past, members of the enterprising Cartogropher’s Guild set out to map the lands beyond the anomaly in the Northern Plains. But their maps were always missing something. A landscape that should’ve been impossible to miss, or an entire section there when it wasn’t before. They spent years drawing and redrawing maps of an area as small as 5 miles a side. And perhaps it was paradise to them. To the outside world, however, the Cartogropher’s Guild never returned. 

Time in the Beastlands
No hunter finds the iris fox twice, so when it came across my path midday, I left everything in frenized pursuit, knowing that if I could not succeed before night fell, all would be lost. For hours, and hours, I chased, though the sun never left its position at the peak of the sky. Perhaps the lands themselves blessed me that day. Night finally came the moment I held my quarry in my grasp.

-Nujalik, Huntress

In the Beastlands, the sun rises then falls, and the moon does the same. Morning into Noon, Noon to Dusk, Dusk to Night, and back again. But whether time passes evenly between them is a mystery. Some say that each discreet time of day is actually a separate plane within the Beastlands, and one may wander between them as easily as stepping through a door-shaped opening between trees. But then, why does it always flow in the same pattern? Others say time passes slow some days, fast other days, but if two travelers to the realm were to count the nights they’d spent there, they might find they have different answers.

Natives to the Beastlands would merely explain it thus. The sun flees across the sky by day, and the moon hunts her by night. Some days the sun gains a lengthy lead, and tarries as she goes. But then there are days when the moon pounces from the cover of night, sending the sun’s light scattering as she retreats beneath the earth.

 

Running the Beastlands

 
Making Difficulty Checks 
In a d20 system where the challenge difficulty is 10, the base difficulty for any action taken in the Beastlands is 15. Base difficulty for checks is then modified by the region the players are in.

Time
Time in the Beastlands is measured in 6-hour Watches. Each Watch contains 2 Turns, the amount of time it takes player characters to accomplish any wilderness actions, including traveling a stretch of land roughly equal to 4 miles at a normal pace, foraging for supplies, exploring an area, or tracking/hunting prey.

At the beginning of each Turn, the GM rolls on the Encounter Table to determine an encounter or effect that will take place sometime during the Turn.

At the end of each Watch during which characters took any Wilderness Actions, each character must consume one ration. Any character that does not consume a ration must spend an hour resting or suffer negative effects from exhaustion. If the party chooses to rest for an hour, the GM rolls on the Encounter Table, ignoring even rolls.

Encounter Table

1. Encounter

2. Traces

3. Hunted

4. Discovery

5. Weather

6. Time Advances

1. Encounter

Newcomers to the Beastlands see the endless rolling hills as homogenous, lifeless, unaware that over each hill a creature lies in wait, or a rare flower blooms, worth more than anything they carry. On a 1, the GM rolls on a region specific encounter table to determine what the party encounters. Example tables for Savannas, Deserts, and Jungles will be linked here in the near future.

2. Traces

On a 2, the party comes across traces of a creature. This could be spoor or an empty nest or lair. The GM rolls on the region’s creature table to determine what creature left the traces. The next Encounter Roll is done with a -3 penalty. Results below 1 are counted as 1.

3. Hunted

Everything in the Beastlands is hunted by something. It’s only a matter of time. On a 2, the party becomes hunted. When the party becomes Hunted, they gain a Pursuer(s). The Pursuer beings far away, then grows near, until their attack is imminent. Each time the party rests, or when another 2 is rolled while the party is being Pursued, the Pursuer grows one hunting range closer. 

When a Pursuer is near, detectable signs that they are being hunted may become apparent to the party. These signs should be communicated to the party by the GM as part of the natural scene description. When the Pursuer is near and grows closer again, the Pursuer catches up to the party and an attack is imminent. Another sign should be given, but by then it is likely too late. The Pursuer will attack according to the creature’s type at any moment. Choose or roll for a Predator that is active at the current time of day. If the party ever takes a long rest while being Hunted, the Pursuer attacks during the rest. The only way to gain distance from a stalker is to successfully travel at double-pace, which sets the stalker back one hunting range. An imminent attack cannot be escaped from in this way. If the party outpaces a far away Pursuer, the Pursuer is lost.

1d4 Signs a Pursuer is Near

1. This section of the forest seems quieter than others.

2. A large hare bursts out of a nearby tuft of grass, leaving a trail of trampled stalks as it runs into the distance.

3. You notice what looks like territorial markings on a nearby tree.
4. The faint scent of death wafts past the tip of your nose. You come across an old carcass stripped of its meat.

4. Discovery

On a 4, the party comes across something unusual, typically an interesting location. A good Discovery location will have an unusual geographical feature that can’t be found on the Material Plane, loot or potential resources like notable flora or water, and possibly an encounter. Example Discoveries include an Oasis in the Desert where the water glows blue at night, or a clearing in the forest where some artifact landed, radiating a sense of purpose, fallen from the neighboring plane of Arborea.

5. Weather

On a 5, the weather changes. If you are using a weather roll chart, begin rolling on it every Watch until another 5 is rolled. If not, choose a type of weather for each region or hex, determine at least one negative effect or challenge the weather will present, and have it activate on a roll of 5, and revert to normal conditions when the next 5 is rolled.

6. Time Advances

On a 6, time advances for the party. Roll another d6. On a 1-5, time advances normally by 1 stage. On a 6, however, night suddenly sneaks up on the party, and the time track advances instantly to night.

 

Player Characters in the Beastlands

Travel

There are no roads in the Beastlands. Traveling through the plane involves hacking through brush, fjording rapid rivers, and wading through slopes of sand that slip with every step. For each Turn that players spend traveling, they choose a travel speed and gain its benefits and penalties.

Slow: Travel 4 miles per Turn. Advantage to stay hidden. Advantage to notice danger.

Normal: Travel 6 miles per Turn.

Fast: Travel 8 miles per Turn. Disadvantage to stealth. Disadvantage to notice danger. Must consume ration AND make a Constitution-based check to avoid having to rest or taking exhaustion penalties at Watch’s end.

Hunting

Even people with low appetites find themselves eating more than usual in the Beastlands. When rations run out and foraging is sparse, the players may choose to hunt. Players may hunt using any methods they can think of, but in general, hunts will be divided into three phases: the Seek, the Stalk, and the Kill.

Seek

To hunt, players must find prey or signs of the prey they wish to hunt. This could be as easy as getting the right encounter roll at the right time. Whether they’re moving, lying in wait, or performing some other wilderness action, the encounter tables contain chances of encountering prey, prey lairs, and prey spoor.

If the players are not so lucky, they may attempt to spend a turn searching for prey or signs of prey. The players make a survival check modified by the region’s difficulty modifier. On a success, players have a 1-in-6 chance of encountering the creature itself, otherwise they find traces. Players may search for specific prey at a one-step difficulty increase. They still find something if they exceed the original difficulty.

Stalk

Once traces of a creature have been found, players can use it to find the creature. Based on their travel speed, players can gain ground on their quarry. They keep pace, neither gaining nor losing ground at Slow speed, gain ground at Normal speek, and gain double ground when traveling Fast. Players start at a distance of far off, then progress to near, then progress to a distance where their attack is imminent, at which point they move to the Kill.

Players may also choose to lie in wait, potentially setting up traps and hoping a creature wanders into them. For each thing they do that might increase their chances of a creature wandering into their trap, increase the chance of the creature appearing by 1-in-6. For example, if players find traces of a creature and lie in wait there, there is a 1-in-6 chance each turn the creature will return. If players also set some sort of bait or lure, the chance increases to 2-in-6 each turn.

Kill

The Kill is executed as a standard combat or chase sequence, oftentime times switching between both.

Beastland Mutations
Those who spend much time in the Beastlands are inevitably affected by its primal nature. Beastland mutations tend to disappear with time spent away from the plane, but mutations that persist for a year become permanent.

When you hunt or kill within the Beastlands, roll a d6. On a 1, gain a random Predator mutation.

When you flee or hide within the Beastlands, roll a d6. On a 1, gain a random Prey mutation.

Predator Mutations
1. Your pupils become slits. See in dim light as day light.

2. Your teeth sharpen and nails elongate. Gain d6 natural weapons, and advantage to grapple when using them.

3. Your nose is perpetually wet. Sense of smell increases.

4. You occasionally find yourself walking on four limbs. When you charge a target, make a free attack or grapple. Your target must save or fall prone.

Prey Mutations

1. You develop prey instincts, jumping at the slightest noises. 2-in-6 chance to sense when a stalker grows closer. 

2. Your eyes grow almost imperceptibly wider apart. When an attack is imminent, you immediately know.

3. Your skin changes faintly to match your surroundings. When staying still, gain advantage to hide.

4. A great prey spirit descends on you, and your companions find it hard to look you in the eye. Once per day, conjure psychic vision to try to scare away predators. Creatures your level or lower always flee.

___________

Coming up next will be two related posts to help you run your adventures in untamed lands; one, example material from a session I ran featuring encounters and creatures for an adventure spanning Deserts, Savannas, and Jungles, and two, a ruleset for running epic hunts against a region's Apex Predator. Watch those cloaks, there are a lot of creatures out there who would love to get 'em all tangled.