Your Gameworld: Reboots and Retcons

I was very fortunate as a kid, early on in my gaming, to have started a game world and kept with it for decades. It was really just a dungeon and a tavern to go to between games. That really only lasted a couple of sessions, as supply shops and residences besides the tavern became necessary. And that's how my setting Acheron grew. As things were needed. Often locations would be created by players as backgrounds for their characters, and that added to my world. So it was a growing thing, created out of shared experiences.

I always tried to maintain a consistency in my world. If something happened, then the world was forever affected by it. The Isle of Dread visited for the first time? OK, now it was no longer virgin territory. The Caves of Chaos battled through and the evil temple destroyed? Guess I'm never using that location again. At least not the way it was. 

But I softened on that consistency in the last decade or so as I found myself wanting to reuse certain adventures that I loved. Mostly notably the old White Dwarf Magazine dungeon The Lichway. Also, I have had a lifelong love for the Runequest Glorantha town of Apple Lane, a module I also adapted for use in D&D. In the Lichway you very likely release a hoard of undead in the complex. In Apple Lane you will defend a pawnshop from an evening attack (in the Runequest material its a tribe of baboons), and eventually explore The Rainbow Mounds and fight the forces of the Dark Troll White Eye (an orc in my D&D setting). 

Apple Lane I could reuse a couple of times because the first time (and maybe second and third) I used it for Runequest. Decades ago. For D&D I changed some names; Gringle became Gengle. Apple Lane became Lemon Tree. But most details stayed the same. Lichway was sort of "one and done" because, well, hundreds of undead at large in the place. 

But there came a time when I realized the only person I was fooling with a sort of enforced purity of continuity in the world was myself. Every few years I found myself with a brand new group. In every case nobody had ever heard of Apple Lane or The Lichway. This was a fantasy world with no real value outside my games. Why was I so worried about continuity. Did it really matter? 

But in a way I have found, for me at least, a happy compromise. A location reboot. I decided that some locations might be in sort of a dimensional loop (or whatever). Perhaps a curse or will of some godling that no matter what happens it returns the location, all its inhabitants, back to a zero setting. When one group of players is out of my life, I can refresh these old favorites to use again if I so choose. The undead of The Lichway return to their crypts. Dark Odo and her followers rewind back to their old positions. The local fishing village forgets the adventurers who came that time and unleashed the undead hoards who would keep them awake at night howling within the necropolis. Apple Lane itself is also in a continuity loop. Gringle will always need brave souls to protect his pawn shop. White Eye the orc always returns to life and haunts the Rainbow Mounds. 

These are out of the way locations, so its easy to just reset and reuse.

There is a new wrinkle though. One of my old players from my home town is involved in my online Roll20 games. I want to use Apple Lane and its environs once more (maybe for the 5th time, in two worlds). But the thing is she had a character experience this 20 years ago. The entire adventure was a major point in her characters life. Back then she ended up falling in love with the pawn shop owners assistant "Hobbit John" (a duck in the Runequest version) and marrying him (yes, she was a hobbit as well, a cleric and local sheriff). So she would surely remember all this. 

But its cool. She is a trusted old player. She has played in several different groups of mine over the decades. So I can go ahead and jerk the curtain a bit in her case. Let her know what I am doing. Tell her about the reboot concept. It would be a rerun for her, but its been long enough where she won't remember every detail so it can still be fun for her. And of course there will be differences. Hobbit John is gone, having married a players character and being released from whatever curse maintains the retcon in Apple Lane. My last go at the Lichway was different as well (she was not involved in that campaign as it was face to face before the pandemic) as noted in my previous posts about The Lichway. 

So things can and should be changed up. But there is no negative side to reusing beloved modules and disrupting the continuity of your world. And modules aren't the only changes I've embraced. Hell, back in the day I let a friend run a campaign in my world where he promptly affected things on a continental level. For the longest time I just kept all his messing with the world as part of its history. But it got to the point where I said "why?" and just dismissed those things. Wiped them from the history. He certainly would never know. He died in the 90's.

Nobody really knows but me. And as I get older I just don't care any more. I'm not writing The Silmarillion here. Its just a D&D setting. When I'm gone it comes with me.  Its just about having fun and is no more serious than that. 

“15 minute adventuring day”

Grognardia James blogged this week about the “15 minute adventuring day.” In a nutshell, it’s a term that refers to a party of dungeon delvers who leave the confines of the labyrinth very regularly (every day it seems in Dwimmermount) to purchase supplies, heal, and regain used spells.

James is running an old school style game, with a megadungeon as the focus, and a town and city somewhat close by for said supply runs. Dungeon, supply shop, temple, and tavern. There you have it. You don’t need much more than that for the characters world in this type of O.G. game. Not a knock at Grognardia, of course (my occasional attempts at humorous pokes at James usually fall flat). James is an important blogger of the old school, and he should be involved in running something similar to the ideas he writes about.

Personally, I abandoned frequent dungeon crawls in my decades-old game world sometime in the 80’s. Growing up on comics probably had a lot to do with my coming up with lots of outdoor and city situations. A fight in a crowded city street, or back alley of temple row, or even a rooftop just seems so much more fun and cool than a claw-sword-shield slugfest in a corridor underground.

I started my current campaign planning for the party to travel with a merchant caravan for awhile, until they reached a certain dungeon. I do want that old school dungeon experience again. But the players have found so much to do on the trip, and I had so many ideas for outdoor encounters and events, it has been around 16 games and they are still a couple of sesson away from the dungeon. I originally planned to have them at the dungeon doors in 3 or 4 games.

Micromanaging supplies has not really come up. The party is travelling with a merchant caravan through mostly populated areas. I just tell the players to throw some coin at meals and drinks here and there. The closest we have come to equipment management was a player asking me at the last game if he should be keeping track of arrows or not. I just told him he had about half a dozen left, and to buy a new quiver at the next town. There’s yer supply management right there. It’s also good to remind players that it is no fun getting money if you don’t track it and spend it. Small potatoes should be in the players hand. I’ll do some of the financial analysis when they want to buy a ship or a house or something.

Now the issue of regaining spells has come up in the last few games. A player important to the main quest has been missing for three games, so I just did a bunch of little outdoor/abandoned mine combat and exploration encounters to eat up those games until she came back. By the end of the second game, the spellcaster had used up all her good spells. The player complained a lot about needing to rest and regain, but the party was in a mine under an unstable hill (with an earth elemental going berserk in a cavern there) and had to keep moving. It was nice to have a game where the spellcaster (also a fighter) could do something besides cast the same three spells as she does every fight.

Getting low on spells and resources should not be a bad thing. Parties running off every few hours of game time and travelling two or three days to get a bed to heal and pray in is just tedious and monotonous to me. I don’t want that for my precious game time.

If it is a “mega-dungeon,” why not have some resources in there? Empty rooms to rest in, a nearby water source (the most important of resources, but probably the least kept track of or worried about), and maybe a non-hostile mini-temple with a cleric for healing (for a modest fee, of course). Anything but this constant cycle of dungeon – town – dungeon – repeat. To me that just seems to either have a weird flow, or no flow at all.

In a campaign I ran years ago, I had the party shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread. Talk about supply management challenges! Sure, there were natives to trade with, but the guys with non-magical armor and weapons had to face the fact that arms maintenance was a no-go. A couple of fights with some unfriendly cat-people and the odd T. Rex, and the paladin had his plate mail hanging in parts. Chainmail and leather quickly got tore up, and in a matter of weeks characters were starting to look like they had “gone native.” I loved that so much I want to do it again.

I don’t want to say how somebody should run their game, but I just don’t think any game should rely too much on players constantly having to retreat to a safe zone. Some great games have players at the end of their resources, and at their wits end. That is one way dramatic, memorable adventures can be mademade.