A Staging Post for Adventure

Sometimes, you don't need an entire base town.

I recently started running one of the adventures from the OSE Adventure Anthology 2 for my young nephew (and others, but the game is primarily to show him the tabletop ropes). Neither of the anthologies come with a town of any kind. Most of the dungeons within are the kinds of low-level affairs where you can roll up new PCs and start them right at the entrance without issue. However, there is enough content here that a trip or two back to a haven to rest and restock seem likely. (Note: The same is even more true for other town-less low-level OSE adventures like A Hole in the Oak or The Incandescent Grottoes).

Given my nephew's unfamiliarity with the expectations of pen-and-paper RPGs, introducing a full base town in the middle of his first real delve could prove distracting. "Hey, there is the inn, and next door is a tavern, and over there is the smithy, and that's the thieves' guild ..." etc. etc. So, I sought an alternative.

One common and entirely valid alternative is to abstract the return to town. You don't need to go into detail regarding the people and places around town, just get in, get some gear, sleep, and get out.

My approach, though, is to offer a taste of town without too much distraction: a small staging post / coaching inn along the road, about half a day from town. Give it some personality so that he can experience a respite from the dungeon without so much to do that he loses momentum.

While I decided upon this approach to cater to a novice player, it could be useful for more experienced players as well. Maybe you want to run an adventure but the referee hasn't come up with a whole town yet. Maybe you aren't sure that you want to turn this adventure into a campaign that even needs a town. Maybe you haven't decided if you'll be going to Illmire or Brandonsford next and you aren't ready to commit.

If you fit into any of the categories above, check out the "A Staging Post" PDF for a small but detailed waypoint with an inn, a store, a few personalities, and some fun secrets. And, if you're interested in my "author's notes," keep reading after the download!

A Staging Post for Adventure

The premise of this point of interest is that it sits near a crossroads with a once-great trade route (in my game with my nephew, I called it the Royal Spice Road). Though there is a town "four leagues" away, any travelers just passing through could spot the buildings from the crossroads, rest for the evening, and continue along the trade route without delay in the morning.

However, I insinuate that trade has fallen on harder times, and that fewer travelers pass through this particular crossroads anymore. Perhaps this is because of whatever rumor or incident that your party is in the area investigating. Whatever the case, the waypoint isn't depicted as bustling with people. It's quiet and neither the innkeeper or the shopkeeper expect much traffic.

But, as I fleshed things out, the lack of site-based action gave me space to let the NPCs breathe a bit. They don't have anything to explain, any exposition to deliver, nor any fetch quests to offer. They can be people living their lives as opposed to people waiting around for PCs to show up. I enjoyed that freedom.

There are some secrets here to discover, if the players wish. But, I try to keep it passive. For example, I specifically say that the innkeeper will never ask you to take his wannabe-adventurer daughter along. He will let you if you ask, but the PCs have to initiate it. Later, if someone frees the whiskey-slurping Shadow, I suggest having it flee. The players may pursue if they wish, but not because they have to "protect the NPCs."

Finally, I need to shout out a few influences. The name for the "Shut Eye Inn" was inspired by Miranda Elkins' blog post The DM is a Shut Eye (which I heard about on the excellent Into the Megadungeon podcast). Herman's shield came from the treasure in one of Ktrey Parker's Dolmenwood Dozen. The "glamboge glim" and the magic dog whistle are from Sarah Grove's Sixty Pointless Items in Knock #2. And the "threshold putty" is roughly based on one of Chris McDowall's arcana from Into the Odd.

Bringing a Base Town to Life

A few months ago, I shared my Between Adventures procedures from my ongoing Old-School Essentials campaign. It has worked well for my table. Like all good turn procedures, the time between adventures has a "ticking clock" that I called Scheming Factions.

These schemes take the place of random encounters or wandering monsters. Unlike wandering monsters, a scheme doesn't usually lead to an immediate encounter. Instead, schemes model the plots and machinations of various NPCs in the region, as well as random happenstance. Here are the current schemes from my town notes:

For every stay in town of a week or less, I roll a d6 for each ongoing scheme. Some schemes have multiple stages (like The Blood King in my example). If I roll a 1, the scheme advances sometime during the course of that stay. Schemes that have been on the list for a while might have a higher chance to advance (most of them do in my example above).

You don't need more than one ongoing scheme. In my example, I added every entry except for The Blood King to the list as a reaction to actions previously taken by the players. I like to use this to show the players that the world around them will react to their escapades, without arbitrarily dropping "plot" in front of them.

The best example of schemes in action in my current campaign comes from another multistage scheme no longer on the list, inspired by the adventure The Waking of Willowby Hall.

First, the rival party from that adventure made their way through town, boasting about the goose who lays golden eggs. Then, when it advanced again, they had stolen the goose and run back into town chased by Bonebreaker Tom.

The second bit happened as my party approached town. They heard the battle in the distance and then hurried into town to see that Tom had smashed up the inn and stolen the tower bell. He then chased the goose thieves to a manor house (Willowby Hall) outside of town.

Two town NPCs offered a combined 4,000 gp for the return of the bell, which enticed my party to go check things out. Unfortunately, they tried to talk to Tom instead of sneaking past him. The conversation did not go well and Tom smashed a PC with a boulder. My party ultimately retreated and decided not to engage with the adventure.

The rest played out "off-screen" while my party did other things. The next week, Helmut Halfsword of the rival party returned with the bell and collected the 4,000 gp for himself. I thought my players would be ticked off that someone else got their gold, but they didn't really seem to mind.

So far, this small table of schemes has been a low maintenance way to make my base town feel alive without overwhelming my players with quests and quest-givers. Show the world in motion around them and leave it up to them whether or not they decide to engage with it.

Attending the Old School, Part 4

Base towns are a staple of old school play: Hommlet, the eponymous Keep on the Borderlands, or Helix from Barrowmaze. They provide necessary elements in the old school gameplay loop, serving as a place to sell treasure, level up and heal up, gather rumors, and obtain goods and services. 

However, despite having clear procedures for the other core game modes (combat, dungeon adventuring, and wilderness adventuring), the OSE (and therefore B/X) rules curiously omit procedures for spending time in a base town despite specifically calling out designing a base town in the Referee's Tome:

When do you use the base town that you designed? (screenshot from the OSE SRD)

Last week, my players finished up their first adventure and returned to town. While running their time in town went fairly well, I felt the absence of the game structures that I had enjoyed during my previous sessions. I wanted a procedure for returning to town. So, I made one!

But, before I get to that, a quick recap of my last session:

Dramatis Personae

Flynn Four-Fingers, Level 2 Thief

Russell, Level 2 Fighter

Ancin, Level 1 Magic-User

Chadwick, Level 2 Cleric

Notable Events

• Back in the mortal world, the party returned to Chyde's tomb to pilfer a few more things now that his ghost was in the Fairy Realm. However, still suffering from the floating effects of the green slime, Russell decided to go ask the dancing skeletons if they knew how to end them.
• Amaranda and Brigforwith had no idea how to end the effects, but they did implore Russell to help them find whoever had violated their son's tomb! Russell promptly excused himself to go "find the perpetrators," and the party quickly made their escape back out through the wormhole.
• As the only party member not floating, Chadwick tied a rope around the others and pulled them back to town like balloons, clearly enjoying his time in control of their movement.
• Upon returning to the town of Fourtower Bridge, the party divided up their treasure and paid the local sorceress (Mistress Hecuba) to dispel the floating effects. After resting, they introduced themselves to a few more townsfolk, including the thief Silar and Moira the Holy.
• Moira told them of a rumored relic lost in the "crystal caves" to the west - the gold teeth of St. Orlo - that she would love to have as a part of the shrine she's building. They decided that it sounded like a good lead on more treasure and that they would set off in search of these caves next week!

Referee Insights

As mentioned above, we wrapped up Winter's Daughter during the first 30-45 minutes of the session. You can read more about my thoughts on that adventure overall in my collaborative blog post with Wandering Wombat. I used the dancing skellies as a bit of pressure to keep the party moving, though I allowed them to go back and get more loot from Chyde's tomb - they had earned it!

Since Winter's Daughter does not include a base town, I had to find my own. I ended up mashing together the town of Fourtower Bridge from the blog Paths Peculiar with bits of Lankshorn from the second issue of the Dolmenwood zine Wormskin as well as a few tweaks of my own. I seeded the town with rumors for the adventures The Hole in the Oak, The Incandescent Grottoes, and The Waking of Willowby Hall. The party seized on the rumor for the Grottoes, so that's where we'll be heading next.

As the party returned to town and began all of the typical things that one does in a fantasy town, I couldn't help but notice how the OSE rules lacked a procedure for this part of the game. I missed having that to fall back on, so I created my own:

Between Adventures (PDF)

I had a very specific goal here: to outline a procedure for time spent in town that looked like it belonged in Old-School Essentials or B/X. 

I didn't aim to create an exhaustive list of downtime activities or to define all of the possible actions a faction could take. That's not really the spirit of the system. OSE provides a simple foundation that gives the referee plenty of room to make it their own. That's the charm of it.

These procedures do assume a pretty specific type of game, one where adventure rarely happens in town. You gather rumors, travel into the wilderness, find an adventure site, explore it, and then return to town with loot. Rinse and repeat.

However, the concept of "scheming factions" does give the referee the option to add some ticking clocks like approaching armies or impending disasters. For instance, one of my schemes is that of the rival party from Willowby Hall, who will eventually bring Bonebreaker Tom smashing through town. I plan to elaborate on scheming factions more in a future post (edit: HERE).

I will use this procedure as my party moves on to their next adventure. It mirrors what they did naturally, so I expect it to be pretty seamless. But, it will help to give me some structure to fall back on as I run the game.