So, to give some context on what I’m playing currently, this blog belongs to my DM and these are the house rules he’s using for our Old School Essentials game. There’s a lot I could say about the interactions around a table, but instead of staring out a window for six hours thinking about the deep dark intricacies of the gaming void, I’ll just say that every table has a different dynamic between players, and every table should be using its own ruleset. I wanted to take each bullet and write a little someone on each. It quickly blossomed out of control. So, I’m going to go in order and write each of them into articles about my own little fantasy rule system. This is the most “the Discourse” and “the Tea” series of articles I expect to write.
Aging
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how old you were when you start or how old you are when you end: this is bull riding. The only time that matters is the seconds between when you cowboy up and get on the bull and when you meet the dirt. It doesn’t matter how old you are when you stop: if you retire early, you’re old beyond your time, your eyes have that thousand-yard stare. A character should be ground down to dust, or retire. A five-year stent is impressive, a fifteen-year stint is unheard of, the death penalty is expected.
Torchbearer probably does this best: an adventure a season, three to a year, winter you take off and drink and tell stories and prepare for next campaign season. Mark a year older and a year wiser… or slower.
The first part of this for my own game system is a long and elaborate wound table for both physical and mental injuries, the second is semi-forced retirement. When a character loses all of the points in a pool and it hits zero, they roll on the wounds table. There are two, one for physical, one for mental, exactly the same way the character sheet is divided. Steal liberally from Dark Heresy 2nd Edition (especially the insanity table), Dungeon Crawl Classics, Call of Cthulhu, other blogs, real-life injuries, and movies. Smash fingers, start twitching, break ribs, get a compulsion, snap spines, start hearing voices, lose an eye, jump at loud noises, start dying… These are adventurers, entering damned tombs for blood money to pay back past wrongs. Make them suffer…
…but not too much, mind. This is just a game, and there are people that if their character loses too much, they don’t want to play anymore. I remember a story from another DM who had a player whose character lost an arm. He didn’t want to play them anymore, not because of any story reason, but because they wouldn’t be able to take any feats requiring two hands. It’s dumb, but there should be a built-in escape hatch. Likewise, this isn’t a race. Lots of fun and horrible things on the table, but only have one or two dominate a character’s session. Draw it out slowly, and give players ample chances to retire characters. If the central idea of this system is “you are your weapon“, then there has to be a chance to put the weapon down.
The rough draft rules would probably something like this:
At any time, you can have a character declare that this is it, the last job, the final foray into the dungeon. (“There’s got to be a safer way to pay off this debt than this!”) Immediately level up or refresh them, but when the chance arises to settle down, the character retires, kaput. They won’t venture out into the Long Rim again. This might also fire during a fight: if your character would die, roll an Extreme (20) Luck check. On a success, as above. The Luck check runs against my gut how Luck should work, but more on that another day.
Maybe something like Fiasco (which is not a game) or Apocalypse World where depending on how much of your Debt you’ve paid off, the better your post adventuring life is. You get that little tavern or that penthouse suite and the job with the Company. The former player of that character can’t access it, of course, but let the party treat them as an asset: someone to watch the investments back in the City.
They know they’re not welcome in the Long Rim again.