This campaign is made using the conventions commonly associated with the Old School Renaissance (OSR), and has roots in the 0E and B/X versions of Dungeons and Dragons. This campaign’s strengths are found in exploration, emergent plot and character progression. Featuring survival horror gameplay, simple character creation, and quick tense combat. This campaign uses a homebrewed setting detailed in a further section. This game is planned to take place entirely online through Voice and/or Video Chat and last in perpetuity with no defined end.    

Ruling Policy

Because this is a new System, we will likely be referencing rulebooks often. The referee will prioritize the rules as written, but may opt for a quick ruling to keep the pace up. The nature of Old School gaming may also necessitate rulings by the referee over applicable rules as written.  

Player Roster

This campaign features a single GM (so far) and a large roster of around 20+ players. The sessions of this campaign are irregularly scheduled with shifting players. It is based on one of the original methods of TTRPG play that is also known as a “West Marches”.  If you want to understand this method in more detail, you can find the original breakdown of the “West Marches” style of play on the blog Ars Ludi. As a result of the perpetual nature of the game, there are no commitments a player needs to make when they join this game, other than to have fun and be respectful. A player can play when they want, as many times as they want, and ultimately; leave when they want.

Session Scheduling

Sessions are scheduled by a conversation between the Referee and a number of players. Sessions are not regularly scheduled weekly games. Instead, the Referee and the Players use the discord channels to communicate when they’re available. As part of scheduling your next session, you should communicate with the Referee what you and your party would like to do during your session. If you’re planning on visiting the Red Keep of the South, informing your Referee ensures that he has the content prepared for your session. There is no limit to the affiliation of players, it can be a new party, old party, etc. The Referee may insist that a player with a high level character create a new character at level 1 if they wish to participate in a session with a part of low level player characters. of the players. Sessions will only be scheduled for a minimum of 3 players barring special circumstances.  

Session cancelation 

It is considered good etiquette to arrive at a session you scheduled on time or give advance notice that you will be late or absent. Barring special circumstances, advance notice should be around 1 day before the session, giving the Referee a chance to schedule someone else in your place. If a player is absent or must leave during the session, the Referee will present options to the attending players that may include; Finding a replacement player online, hiring a retainer, continuing as planned, or canceling the session. A canceled session may be an opportunity to play board games or participate in a separate activity. 

Player Attention

Players are expected to maintain a minimum level of engagement while participating in a session. If a player is constantly looking at their phone or engaging in other activities to the point that it is disruptive towards the other players, then disciplinary action may be expected. It is considered extremely rude if your constant inattention leads to other players having to wait. 

Secrecy

Players are allowed to keep character secrets from other players, including alignment, backstory, intentions, or magic items. However, these secrets cannot be kept from the Referee, doing so may invalidate the secret in question and cause suspicions of cheating.

Player Expectations

Each player enjoys different aspects of the game in different amounts. It is considered good etiquette for players to share the spotlight in good faith. It is important that when you come to the table to understand that when some players are enjoying one aspect, it is unacceptable to knowingly ruin another player’s fun just to get to the part you enjoy. 

Dice Rolling

Dice rolling during sessions will almost always be handled with Online Dice Rollers. Mostly the Avrae Discord Bot, but Roll20 also may be used. Physical dice will not be considered legitimate during play by any player other than the Referee. 

Old School vs. Modern Conventions

Every tabletop roleplaying game tends to fall on a spectrum between Virtual Environment vs. Collaborative Storytelling. Broadly, Virtual Environment games (the side OSE leans towards) means that the vital question and outcome is “Does your character succeed?”,  “Do they earn their success?”. Whereas in Collaborative Storytelling success is assumed and the question becomes “How does your character succeed?”. Enjoying one does not mean you won’t enjoy another. 

Emergent Storytelling vs. Planned Plot

Most modern games are run with an outline of a story made by the Referee with the players creating the “main cast”. But the storytelling in OSE is about character progression not necessarily character arcs. You start out as relative nobodies, and those that survive will have many stories to tell from their experiences. You can find similarities between the kind of storytelling OSE excels and the stories that emerge from MMOs about clan battles and vendettas. You will have more fun going into this game by working with the type of emergent storytelling that will come about as a result of your character’s storytelling as opposed to going into the game with the wrong kind of expectations.

World Vs. Narrative

In most modern games, the players expect to be participating in a grand story like the Odyssey or Lord of the Rings, part of the fun is watching the adventure unfold before you. But Old School Adventures will kill characters that act like the main cast of a planned story. Old School Adventures feature the world it takes place in as a living, breathing, ever changing thing rather than set dressing or plot inspiration. 

Struggle vs. Sport

Old school adventures often present deadly encounters that, to the eye of a modern gamer, may seem like you’re expected to beat them. Modern games have encounters that are perfectly planned and balanced for the power level of the players. Don’t expect encounters to be “balanced”. surprises: it’s not a “game setting” which somehow always produces challenges of just the right difficulty for the party’s level of experience. The party has no “right” only to encounter monsters they can defeat, no “right” only to encounter traps they can disarm,

no “right” to invoke a particular rule from the books, and no “right” to a die roll in every particular circumstance. This sort of situation isn’t a mistake in the rules. Game balance just isn’t terribly important in old-style gaming. If you're determined to go through with a combat, you can make sure it's on your terms by:

• Gathering as much information on your opponent as possible, ensuring you aren't underestimating them.

• Gain the numerical advantage by isolating a target, or dividing large groups, while ensuring you have as many allies as possible.

• Seize the initiative by striking first or from a position where the opponent cannot easily fight back.

• Focus on the actual objective of the combat. Are you just trying to drive a target away, steal something from them, or do they absolutely have to die? Once that objective is complete, you might be best off withdrawing.

Approach combat with as much trepidation and preparation as you might in real life. Learn to dig into the fiction to see the relative power of what you’re facing, and don’t be afraid to cut your losses. A party that drags away one dead body is a party on their way to a cleric, instead of on their way through a monster’s digestive system. Nor are encounters self-contained, encounters might follow you out of the dungeon, through the dungeon halls, out the entrance, and up a tree. Think outside the box, outside the encounter area, outside the dungeon, think laterally or die.  

Don’t be Limited to your Character Sheet

Rules and mechanics are only triggered by what happens as established in the conversational fiction of play. More often than not, the solution will not be written on your character sheet. When presented with a problem, don’t expect to use your character’s skills or abilities on it; investigate it by asking the referee questions and describing what your character tries. To do something, describe your character doing it; if you need to roll dice, the referee will let you know. Ability scores are secondary to your choices. A good player with an awful character will succeed more often than a poor player with a great character. Your character will have certain things to work with. They might not even appear as obvious strengths, but they're your tools to make the most of. 

Don’t worry much about low stats, or even trying to match them with roleplay. If they’re low, it just means you’ll have to be clever, gather information, and plan ahead to avoid dangerous rolls! Or forge ahead foolhardy, and look forward to rolling up a new character. Just try not to drag down your party with you, it's only polite. 

This game employs a type of character creation that has some similarity with character generation, each character will be unique based on early steps in the process that may not necessarily match up with your personal character idea. 

"It's important to keep in mind that a lot of play in these games is more predicated on Teamwork and addressing challenges as a Party rather than every Class being able to do the same things as everyone else. What one Class gets, the entire Party benefits from, and there is seldom only a single way to address well-designed challenges. Parties without access to particular abilities might have to get creative sometimes, but some kinds of specialized knowledges are what gives the Classes their own distinctive ways of shining."

Live Your Backstory

Don’t put too much work into a backstory or put too much emphasis on an ideal character. Your character’s experiences in play will be more real to you and your friends than anything you write. An early death won’t sting quite so much, and a survivor will have real tales to tell, and experience to take pride in.

Earned Heroism 

Unlike many RPGs, your character starts with little power. Your meager means and abilities at first level encourage lateral thinking to get you out of trouble. Rising to or fleeing from a challenge means more when your character’s life is on the line. If you wish to play a true hero, don’t expect anyone to salute you when you first arrive in town. Much like in reality, your heroism is proven by your actions not words. 

Heroic, Not Superheroic

Old-style games have a human-sized scale, not a super-powered scale. At first level, adventurers are barely more capable than a regular person. They live by their wits. Even as characters rise to the heights of power, they aren’t picking up super-abilities or high ability scores.

 Truly high-level characters have precious items accumulated over a career of adventuring; they usually have some measure of political power, at least a stronghold. They are deadly when facing normal opponents ... but they aren’t invincible. 

Old school gaming (and again, this is a matter of taste) is the fantasy of taking a guy without tremendous powers – a guy much like yourself but somewhat stronger, or with slight magic powers – and becoming a king or a feared sorcerer over time. It’s not about a guy who can, at the start of the game, take on ten club-wielding peasants at once. 

It’s got a real-world, gritty starting point. And your character isn’t personally ever going to become stronger than a dragon. At higher levels, he may be able to kill a dragon with his sword or with spells, but never by grabbing its throat and strangling it in a one-on-one test of strength.

 To make a comic-book analogy, characters don’t become Superman; they become Batman. And they don’t start as Batman – Batman is the pinnacle. He’s a bit faster than normal, a bit stronger than normal, he’s got a lot of cash, a Bat Cave, a butler, a henchman (Robin) and cool gadgets. But he can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. 

If you don’t get a feeling of achievement with Batman instead of Superman as the goal, the old school gaming style probably isn’t right for your vision of what makes good and exciting fantasy. Old school gaming is about the triumph of the little guy into an epic hero, not the development of an epic hero into a superhuman being. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, it’s just that old-style fantasy matches up with the former.

Scrutinize the World & Interrogate the Fiction

Discard any assumptions about other fantasy worlds, and be curious about the one you’re playing in. Pay attention to details about characters, environments, social situations, and more. Take notes on them! Make maps of them! Information is leverage, it is an advantage to the crafty. Those details may save your character’s life. 

Real Actions

If you were in a room with a heavy vase in one corner, and you wanted to know what was behind it, what would you do? Probably drag it to the side, right? Looking for an air current? Lick a finger and hold it up. Judging the slope of a floor? Spill a little water on the ground. Engage the fiction of the game world as real. Describe the REAL actions you take to achieve the effect you’re looking for. Remember, other games will have dice rolls to do this for you, but old school essentials don't, so engage! 

The Only Dead End is Death 

That dead-end hallway may hide a secret door, or maybe there’s another passage to investigate. The gargantuan monstrosity in the courtyard? Maybe you can sneak around it, or negotiate with it. A vindictive noble? Maybe someone knows how to get some leverage. Couldn’t pick that iron door? Maybe one of those unidentified potions will help. Old school games will have lots of road blocks, but when your first attempt fails, change tactics. The dead end is just the beginning of a solution. Often, digging into the fiction and engaging with the world as real will open up new and unexpected options. 

Play to Win, Savor Loss

Everyone wants to succeed, and certainly everyone wants to play with friends they feel are aiming to succeed, but that may not always happen. Your characters may turn into toads, lose limbs, be stricken with disease, eaten by a giant crocodile, petrified, cursed, entombed, or get disemboweled by a grumpy farmer with a rusty pitchfork. Learn to love the disgusting, horrifying, shocking, surprising, and even disappointing ways your characters are set back. 

Remember, through play, a story emerges larger than any one character. You will make your mark on the world, be it an unknowingly misleading arrow scratched into a dungeon wall, or a crater where a city once stood.  

Rulings, not Rules

Most of the time in old-style gaming, you don’t use a rule; you make a ruling. It’s easy to understand that sentence, but it takes a flash of insight to really “get it.” The players can describe any action, without needing to look at a character sheet to see if they “can” do it. The referee, in turn, uses common sense to decide what happens or rolls a die if he thinks there’s some random element involved, and then the game moves on. This is why characters have so few numbers on the character sheet, and why they have so few detailed abilities. Many of the things that are “die roll” challenges in modern gaming (disarming a trap, for example) are handled by observation, thinking, and experimentation in old-style games. Getting through obstacles is more “hands-on” than you’re probably used to. Rules are a resource for the referee, not for the players. Players use observation and description as their tools and resources: rules are for the referee only. 

Remember that there is a three-part sequence at the heart of the game. 

• INFORMATION: Gather as much of it as you can. Always be asking questions.

• CHOICE: Remember there are always more options than are immediately apparent.

• CONSEQUENCES: After you've made your choice, make the most of the consequences.

Example: the pit trap. 

By tradition, many pit traps in OSE are treated as follows. They can be detected easily, by probing ahead with a 10ft pole. If you step onto one, there is a 1 in 6 chance that the pit trap will open. And that’s all there is to it. By contrast, modern games usually contain character classes with specific abilities to detect and disarm traps. Let’s take a look at how a pit trap might be handled according to OSE  and the modern approaches.

Note: The modern-style referee in these examples is a pretty boring guy when it comes to adding flavor into his game. This isn’t done to make modern-style gaming look bad: Most people reading this booklet regularly play modern-style games and know that they aren’t this boring. It’s done to highlight when and how rules are used in modern gaming, as opposed to when and how they aren’t used in old style gaming. So the modern-style referee talks his way through all the rules he’s using, which isn’t how a good modern-style referee usually runs his game.

The Pit Trap (Modern Style)

Referee: “A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.”

John the Rogue: “I check for traps.”

Referee: “Okay, roll an investigation check?”

John the Rogue: “15.”

Referee: Decides that the pit trap in front of the party is “standard,” so all John had to do is roll a 15 or better. “Probing ahead of you, you find a thin crack in the floor – it looks like there’s a pit trap.”

John the Rogue: “Can I disarm it?”

Referee: “Roll a sleight of hand check?”

John the Rogue: “I rolled a 14.”

Referee: “Okay, moving carefully, you’re able to jam the mechanism so the trap won’t open.”

John the Rogue: “We walk across. I'll go first.”

The Pit Trap (Old Style)

Referee: “A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.”

John the Roguish: “We move forward, poking the floor ahead with our ten foot pole.”

Referee: Is about to say that the pole pushes open a pit trap, when he remembers something. “Wait, you don’t have the ten foot pole any more. You fed it to the stone idol.” [if the party still had the pole, John would have detected the trap automatically]

John the Roguish: “I didn’t feed it to the idol, the idol ate it when I poked its head.”

Referee: “That doesn’t mean you have the pole back. Do you go into the corridor?” 

John the Roguish: “No. I’m suspicious. Can I see any cracks in the floor, maybe shaped in a square?”

Referee: Mulls this over, because there’s a pit trap right where John is looking. But it’s dark, so “No, there are about a million cracks in the floor. You wouldn’t see a pit trap that easily, anyway.” [A different referee might absolutely decide that John sees the trap, since he’s looking in the right place for the right thing].

John the Roguish: “Okay. I take out my waterskin from my backpack. And I’m going to pour some water onto the floor. Does it trickle through the floor anywhere, or reveal some kind of pattern?”

Referee: “Yeah, the water seems to be puddling a little bit around a square shape in the floor where the square is a little higher than the rest of the floor.”

John the Roguish: “Like there’s a covered pit trap?”

Referee: “Could be.”

John the Roguish: “Can I disarm it?”

Referee: “How?”

John the Roguish: “I don’t know, maybe make a die roll to jam the mechanism?”

Referee: “You can’t see a mechanism. You step on it, there’s a hinge, you fall. What are you going to jam?”

John the Roguish: “I don’t know. Okay, let’s just walk around it.”

Referee: “You walk around it, then. There’s about a two-foot clearance on each side.

Tips for Players

1. View the entire area you’ve mapped out as the battleground; don’t plan on taking on monsters in a single room. They may try to outflank you by running down corridors. Establish rendezvous points where the party can fall back to a secure defensive position.

2. Scout ahead, and try to avoid wandering monsters which don’t carry much treasure. You’re in the dungeon to find the treasure-rich lairs. Trying to kill every monster you meet will weaken the party before you find the rich monsters.

3. Don’t assume you can defeat any monster you encounter.

4. Keep some sort of map, even if it’s just a flow chart. If you get lost, you can end up in real trouble – especially in a dungeon where wandering monster rolls are made frequently.

5. Ask lots of questions about what you see. Look up. Ask about unusual stonework. Test floors before stepping.

6. Protect the magic-user. He’s your nuke.

7. Hire some retainers. Don’t let the retainers start to view you as a weak source of treasure.

8. Check in with a couple interesting NPCs before each foray; they may have relevant details to share.

Aside from adventures hosted in the Voice Chat Channel, players can engage in character role play with other player characters in the dedicated role play channels under the Role Play Category. These role play channels are based on the safe and law-abiding hub town known as Martello. In these role play channels you can talk to other characters, share information in character, or have a fun time talking to NPCs run by DMs. On occasion, some Dungeon Masters may host RP events, which are mostly trivial and fun occasions where player characters can role play with interesting, exotic, and fun NPCs, as well as participate in mini-games and skill challenges. Some RP Events may even have a prize of special information for use in adventuring. All role play in these channels are done through Play By Post. 

On occasion, there will be players that cannot participate in Voice Chat games for various reasons. These players can request a special role known as "RP Exclusives". This role may also be given to players if the server is over player capacity. "RP Exclusives" must create a 1st level character following the rules of Sidhranor, but their responsibility is lessened as they cannot gain experience points needed to level up. But they have several benefits, such as simpler play style, and DM priority in RP events.

PBP Formatting

While technically we do not require absolute adherence to these following guidelines, we highly suggest it as a courtesy to other players and game masters.

• Actions should be in italics, using *the following format.*

• Dialogue should be included in quotations, using "the following format."

• Alternate languages should be noted with some marking of what language they are, often in simple bold as in **the following format.**

• Some players rather alternate languages to be tagged as spoilers in bars, as in ||the following format||.

• Include first-person thoughts in slashes, such as //the following format.//

• Out of character comments must be in brackets, like [the following format.]

Player formatting, when done right, might appear as:

Kane sighs in response to the Goliath woman's question, his chest heaves heavy with thought as his brow furrows. Clutching his saber in anxiety, Kane bites his lips before speaking. \\Is it wrong to enjoy the suffering of evil beings? This scares me for I do not remember always being like this..\\

In Giant: ||"Fools that prey on the innocent are too low for my mercies."||

Players sharing information is a critical part of Sidhranor game design. Because there is a large pool of players, the average person is in about a third or less of the games run — or to look it the other way, each player misses two-thirds of the games. Add in that each player will be in a random combination of sessions (not even playing with a consistent subset of players) and pretty quickly each player is seeing a unique fraction of the game. No one will be having the same game experience, which while interesting in multiple ways has difficulty translating into a good D&D campaign. Sharing info is essential to keeping everyone on the same page and in the same game. 

Players are strongly encouraged to chat about their adventures between games. This discussion can theoretically mirrors chatter between characters who had made it safely back to the town. Did you stumble into the wight crypts in the purple hills and barely escape with your life? Warn other adventurers so they can steer clear. Did you slay a beholder in the crystal caves until the caves were red with blood? Brag about it so everyone else knows how tough you are. 

There are a few ways of doing this:

• Interacting with other players in the Play by Post channels, sharing information through textual role play. 

• Writing game summaries or creating maps and posting them in #🔥campfire-highlight to share your experiences after an adventure.

Map Making

Creating and sharing maps of the world as you explore, ruins you delve, and places you discover can be very helpful for the career of your current character, the progress of your future characters, and the players around you as well. Creating and sharing maps helps other player characters know where they can explore later, or where not to go at lower levels. It can help people figure out what rooms in a dungeon remain unexplored for various reasons. However, it can be harder to create & share maps online, so I've created a few potential methods of doing so. 

• Scrap paper & a cellphone (or scanner). Simply jot down your notes, some relative distances (like how far from town or x/y/z/ landmark) and in what cardinal direction. 

• Mipui. An online mapping tool using grids. You could have each grid represent 5 or so miles or feet when mapping a dungeon, other players can draw on it, or you can simply export the final image as a jpeg!

• DungeonScrawl. A great tool to create dungeon maps and share them with friends. 

• Roll20. A great way to get the community to create simple notes on locations within a shared map. Open the existing campaign or create a private one to draw in notes for discoveries, landmarks, and areas that you can share and allow editable access from other people. 

The spoils of an adventure may be divided between surviving characters in whatever way the players agree on. Non-magical treasure: Is typically divided evenly between player characters.
For Magic items, players must decide which character keeps each item. One method for doing this is for each player to roll a die and compare the results. The highest rolling player gets to pick a magic item first, the second highest rolling player gets the next pick, and so on.

The Dungeon Master will almost NEVER mandate how a party splits their loot, just remember that the last challenge is how you are going to transport the treasure back to town safely.  

Forced March

The Travel Pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in day. They can push on beyond that limit, at the risk of exhaustion. If characters need to travel further in a day, they may engage in a forced march.

• Speed increase: The distance travelled is increased by 50%. For example, a character that can normally travel 24 miles in a day could travel 36 miles.

• Rest: After a forced march, characters must rest for a full day.