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thank you!

bendutter(at)gmail

There are a few "classics:"

• Caverns of Thracia
• Barrowmaze
• Caves of Chaos
• Many more that I'm forgetting

Ten Foot Pole is one of the deepest repositories of reviews for OSR stuff (my own "Stjernheim" got absolutely obliterated by the critic, it was great!). Personally I like large toolkits rather than more linear adventures or situations. A lot of Michael Prescott's Trilemma Adventures are fantastic; Ben Milton's Patreon in a similar vein. Skerples' Tomb of the Serpent Kings is a great "starter" OSR adventure that teaches you how to play that style of adventure game.

The way I prefer to run OSR-style modules is more so introduce the characters to a problem with several obvious paths but no obvious solution. In other words, stick them into a chaotic or complex encounter with no "right" answer and let them figure it out. The classic of these are procedurally generated settings with random encounters or inspiration / mashup tables, hex crawls / point crawls, lots of factions, etc. 

Ha fair enough! I'll noodle how to convert some of these more psychological terms into marketable terms. 

I don't have anything particularly clever to contribute, but I think this is fascinating stuff Levi. What do you think is the best way for a designer to express their design's fun priorities? Especially in a marketing blurb (say the intro of a KS pitch) to make it clear to a prospective customer what the game is all about? This relates somewhat to an rpg.net thread currently discussing a unified set of terms to define rpgs.  

Morning! 

Ben Dutter, he/him, one half of Sigil Stone Publishing. Played D&D with my older brother around 24 years ago, played RPGs pretty consistently ever since. 

I’m a bit of a meandering designer; GMless story games, PbtA hacks, OSR stuff, big crunchy universals, card games, you name it. My wife and I just wrapped up the Vagabond’s Cyclopedia, waiting on proofs. Working on half a dozen things but our next “real” project is Five Torches Deep, a 5e + OSR mashup. 

I don’t really have a strong philosophy or theme as a designer, which I think shows in my weirdly broad scope of work. I guess I’m still looking for something that makes sense to me and for me, y’know? 

Happy to be here on itch!