The Old School Orcs, Part 2

This is a continuation of my write-up of the fantastically made-up game system and one-shot campaign that my group ran.  Looking for Part 1?  Click Here.

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The orcs struggled to their feet, dumbstruck by the fight their quarry had in them.  Yes, they preferred a struggle before their meal - it awakened the appetite.  But, blood mages?  With luck they numbered two, and old at that.  Better than seven.  Orcs seldom can count very high, but seven was a number all knew.  It had power as ancient as any of the laws in the world.

Gruum hoisted his bulk from the ground.  A swift kick brought an unconscious Olga back to the waking world; the last gruesome strike from the female mage had brought her nearly to the brink of death.  No pity within orcish-kind.  The strong survive, the weak perish.  The kick was a rare gesture.

The marauders moved now with the precision of practiced routine after the skirmish.  Bodies were stacked ready for the cooking fire, their belongings tossed into a haphazard pile that Kashyyk rooted through with zeal.  Good fight, good loot.  Simple logic.  And true to this, the was treasure to be found: a curious collection of golden lockets, all the same, stored in the toe of a boot.

The shaman of the group puzzled over the curious symbols.  A touch of a blood-smeared hand was all it took.  The gold shimmered unnatural bright in the dark.  Blood magic and blood mages.  How curious.


"We must have more," cried Kashyyk.

Gruum nodded, thoughts of sugared fairies dancing in his head; how many would be needed to start the restaurant he'd always dreamed of?  Ten.  Maybe twenty.  Too much to count.

In the fading light and dying embers, the orcs worked.  And as the camp was righted to some semblance of orcish standards, a quite whinny brought three orcish heads to attention.  Another hunt.

Silent stalking rewarded a tantalizing view of the fresh travelers.  Halflings.  Two of them, stopping for the night at a nearby pond unaware of the massacre mere yards away.  No.  Watering their horses before returning to the camp where their companions lay strewn like slaughterhouse meat.  Gruum's eyes narrowed.

Halflings.  He hated halflings.

With a roar he bounded from covering brush, howling his favourite recipe for braised whole halfling.

"Fool, we need them alive," hissed the shaman, "they know where other treasure may lie."

Olga nodded in assent.  But Gruum paid them no heed, such was his blood lust.  The two halflings bolted like rabbits, fleeing in opposite directions from the ton of orcish muscle bearing down upon them.  One was quickly snared by a line of dark tendrils snaking from Kashyyk's shadow.  A more fortunate outcome.

Tearing through the brush, the remaining halfling led a dogged pursuer deep into the dark of the forest.  Minutes stretched on, punctuated by the brittle crash of destroyed foliage.  Then, a meaty smack whose repetitions reverberated through the now-still forest.

A dark figure returned from the brush, the remains of a smaller humanoid slung over his shoulder.

"We can save this one for dessert".

Now three pairs of gleaming, orcish eyes loomed over a quivering, halfling form.

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The rule of cool.

The end result of our two-hour session was a wild narrative ride that kept the focus on story and the rule of cool.  Here was the general breakdown of our loose "rules":

• d20s were rolled to decide all things other than damage.
• Roll thresholds were similar to Dungeon World; for the most part, high teens were overwhelming successes, with anything past a ten representing a pass but with either reduced efficacy or some sort of consequence.
• Numerology was whimsically important.  Once, the blood mages rolled double fours to their attack rolls.  Four being an unlucky number in Asian cultures for death, S couldn't pass up the chance to make these attacks hit regardless.  And it just so happened that the damage roll was a four, too.
• Skills were discovered and developed on the fly.  Kashyyk didn't have a spell book, nor did Olga have a feat taken to be able to shoot four arrows at once.  Things were made up, with the DM as a voice of reason.

In essence, the game evolved into a fantasy roll play driven version of Calvinball; both sides made up rules and rulings.  For instance, I played Gruum as an orc driven by bloodlust and battle fury.  What then, when I wanted to disengage the elf guards I was fighting to attack the mages?  We agreed on the roll: above a ten and Gruum would be able to control his lust enough to see battlefield tactics - anything less would force him to continue swinging at the closest enemy.

I can't help but think that this could have been what D&D looked like in its earliest form.

As one could suspect from any off-the-cuff rule system, there was plenty of room for improvement.  Room, I believe, that is also indicative of many narrative-driven systems (from my experience: Dungeon World).

Initiative

We played with a roll-for-initiative combat system, but with the ability to interject with counters, or additional actions.  Short-term, this worked just fine because of our "just go with it" attitude.  But in the long-run, if we were to continue refining the system, having a set of rules for interjection limits and counters is a must; DM's heads everywhere would explode from needing to rule consistently on inconsistent moves.

This combination of turns and responses is interesting.  As much as I love the flow of narrative combat, it misses out one one primary consideration: inclusiveness.  Games that require players to speak-up to make moves are inherently biased against the shy or introverted.  Yes, it is a good DM's responsibility to run the game in a way that includes everyone, and to provide prompts when necessary; that only goes so far, though.  Blame the system before you blame the user.  A game that can incorporate both must be possible - and are certainly necessary.

Mapping

Our digital player made playing mapless a near-essential.  While virtual tabletops, such as Roll20, do exist, you can put me firmly in the camp that believes in the power of theater-of-the-mind.  This is perfectly fine for exploration, but what about combat tactics?  For lovers of wargaming and later versions of D&D, piece placement is an intricate and satisfying art.  For fantasy nerds and roleplayers, so is cinema-quality action.

We played closer to cinema than "crunch", with distances roughly approximating to close, near, far whenever placement was called into question.  This method is flexible and allows for a free-form beer and talk game: something I prefer.  Gridlines instantly transform a game into a game of chess.  Not that chess is bad, but it certainly creates an atmosphere where turns are slowed by overthinking and tactics reigns over the imagination.

All this to say, the game was good enough to get me thinking about how to keep the system around.

D&D and Dungeon World will remain permanent fixtures in our gaming repetoire.  But for pick-up games of old school imagination and fun, this won't be the last you hear of our homebrew system.