Myths of the OSR Part 3: Level Cap Cap

Yes, people enjoy high-level play

There’s a conversation I had with an OSR creator about a year ago that continues to live rent-free in my head. After describing their concept for a set of medieval fantasy rules, as if we don’t have several dozen available already, I asked them a follow-up question that led to a little bit of a heated exchange. I will paraphrase that exchange for you here:

Me: “What do you plan on doing for high-level play? Do you have domain rules?”

Creator: “No, we’re gonna cap it at level 10. Nobody likes high-level play.”

Me: “Nobody supports high-level play. Doing so would certainly help you stand out from the other games on the market.”

Creator: “Look, there’s been market research that says campaigns tend to stop around 10th level. Most people don’t go beyond that. There’s really no point in adding that stuff because nobody’s ever gonna use it.”

Me: “I know several people who play that way. The only reason why nobody plays that way is most of the high-level stuff that’s out there is really bad. If someone put in the effort, you could turn that perception around and really set your game apart from all the others that are doing exactly the same thing.

Creator: “This is really just a system to use with our adventures. We’re not particularly interested in that style of play and we’re not really trying to disrupt the market. This is just our house system for the people who enjoy our adventures. That’s all we want.”

I’m reminded of a story told by 3-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion Diamond Dallas Page about fellow wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes. DDP is an unusual case of a wrestler who didn’t get started until his mid-30’s. On a phone call with Rhodes, who served as his mentor, Page said that he didn’t know if he would be champ, but he thought he would do alright in the wrestling business. Rhodes took great umbridge with this statement and responded with a quote that has never left my mind since the first time I heard it:

“Baby, if you ain’t in to be the champ, you need to get the hell out of this business!”

“The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes

Not only does this serve as an indictment of the mindset most OSR creators bring to the table, but it’s an indictment of their play style which creates characters who never truly grow up. In games that ignore the higher echelons of play, your players will never be the champ. They will never leave the tutorials, never control the board, and never have the experience of being the kingpin. Nobody offers this power to them because they’re afraid to do so and because it removes an element of power from the hands of the GM. Having a low level cap is not a surefire way to success, but an inhibitor placed on the potential of your game. High-level play is desirable, marketable, and essential to a complete campaign.

I have written and spoken about this topic repeatedly. However, for the sake of completeness, I will summarize my basic thesis on high-level play. When you examine the character sheet, level titles, and rules for hirelings and henchmen in Chainmail, White Box Dungeons & Dragons, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, you’ll find that characters who attain name level (usually level 8-10) are supposed to become masters of their own domain. A Fighter becomes a nobleman, but every other class has some kind of similar domain. Ignoring this is ignoring a critical portion of the game, literally half of it in fact, and any movement that purports to revere the old ways ought to include these elements that predate RPGs and informed their creation. Of course, these games are not informed by the actual rules but by recollections of them from when they were young. That’s for part 4 though. Still, there are a number of reasons the OSR crowd will bring up when you ask them about domain play and high-levels. The most common one directed at domain play in particular is that it fundamentally changes the game. Once you become a lord, it no longer makes sense for you to go rooting around in caves for treasure. That’s a good point. A lord is too valuable to enter a dangerous dungeon looking for treasure. However, lords do have an obligation to their subjects though, so their conflicts can and will become larger in scale. If there’s a dragon, a warband of orcs, a gang of bandits or an invading army in the region, it is the lord who must deal with it. This is a place where multiple groups of players can come together or players with high-level characters can take on new characters of lower levels to carry out related tasks.

Here’s an example of what this looks like; a mighty warrior is granted a fief and sends out a patrol to survey his holdings. At the border of his fief, his scouts discover a dark tower and, during their patrol, they hear from villagers and serfs near the region that there’s been heavy monster activity. The scouts decide to stay near one of the villages and find that there’s a band of orcs preparing a raid. They decide to engage since they seem to be a small band. The fight goes well, but one of the orcs gets away and flees in the direction of the tower. A ranger from the scouting party follows the fleeing orc back to a much larger camp of orcs. The orc is flayed by the War Chief for his failure and cowardice, but a black-robed man pulls the orc aside, whispers something to him and hands him a large bag overflowing with gold. The War Chief calls his people together and declares open war against the bordering fief. The ranger returns to his party and they book it back to their liege lord, alerting every garrison they pass that there’s an invasion on the way and sending a raven with a message in advance of their arrival. The lord receives the raven and begins mobilizing troops to reinforce the borderland. He even enlists a mercenary company from his old adventuring days to come and help him with the problem. He calls upon an old wizard friend to help him counter any magic from the mysterious man at the border. He goes to the cathedral and petitions the priestess for prayer and sacrifices to be offered on his behalf as he sets out for war. Then he makes a visit to the local Thieves Guild, his presence entirely unexpected, and meets with the Master Thief. He offers full clemency for past crimes in exchange for assistance in taking down the man in the dark tower.

Now, imagine that scenario, but the warrior is a 10th level Fighter player. His scouts are another adventuring party made up of new players who are being shepherded by a more experienced player running his 10th level Ranger PC. After hearing the report from his old Ranger friend, the Fighter hires another adventuring party, goes to his old friends the 10th level Cleric, Wizard and Thief and gets their assistance. Now we have at least three different parties all operating within this fiefdom to assist with a looming disaster. You have a mix of old and new players, but you can also just have the same five players from your old campaign roll up new characters to occupy those roles. The game continues and has grown in scale, fleshing out the world organically through the inclusion of new party members and characters. Nothing has to end, in fact it’s the beginning of something new. The OSR objectors don’t see it this way though because it ends the loop that they’re used to. It takes things to a different place because this was meant to lead into war gaming. That’s why it’s called a campaign after all. It gets back to a fundamental misunderstanding of the thing that’s supposed to lie at the heart of the movement. It’s harsh to call it a cargo cult, but it often feels that way.

I think one of the reasons why this is so heavily resisted is that publishers only know how to publish crawls. Whether it’s hex or dungeon, they only seem to know how to publish those and even the hex crawls just terminate in dungeons. These are the most basic units of the game, but that’s all they are, basic units. How do you create products that support the kind of play I just described. Some will correctly point out that you don’t have to and they’re correct. If you just let your players run wild in an open world with autonomy, they will create these conflicts with each other. The wizard in the dark tower could be another player, not an NPC. However, if you’re like me and you want to release products that push people towards a better class of play then you need to flesh out the factions who hold power. Yes, it’s faction play again. It’s always faction play. The more you level, the more powerful you become and the more powerful you become the more attention you attract from the powerful who see you as a threat or an asset. If you’re pushing past the dungeon and into domain play, you need fleshed out factions and descriptions of what they hold power over. That’s what I try to do with Nighthaven because the idea of Nighthaven is that the players will eventually be running the factions I outline or some kind of similar competing faction. The focus moves away from the biggest, baddest monsters imaginable guarding treasure to the biggest, badest power brokers guarding power and influence. It becomes more social and strategic and less brute force, but the aspect of brute force never goes away. These factions have armies at their disposal and you will likely have to face them down. It’s a matter of being able to shift perspective and that’s a struggle for a lot of people.

Another thing standing in the way of high-level play in many minds is the load placed on the GM. The GM now has to keep track of nations and factions and it all just seems like a lot. It definitely can be…unless you outsource it to the players. Giving control of major factions to players is a cornerstone of what people in the BrOSR have been talking about with patron play. It’s the idea I floated in my play example. If you, the GM don’t want to worry about what every single faction does in your ever-expending world, you can hand them off to other players. You are giving up control of your world when you do this though and many OSR GMs are unwilling to do this. The idea of the god GM is hard to shake in these circles, but the reality is that you aren’t a god of your table. All you are is a referee and that’s all you need to be.

Unfortunately, many in the OSR will scoff at the ideas presented here even though they have old-school pedigree, present exciting options, and break up the endless loop of crawls that are the likely culprit of short campaigns. Instead, they’ll continue to make bigger dungeons with stronger monsters because “that’s what everyone prefers.” The truth though is that low level caps encourage a game that is easily dropped after a couple of sessions. Why grow a character, or multiple characters, if all it leads to is another hole in the ground? I’m glad to be a part of a movement of people rediscovering these ideas and I truly believe that this playstyle is the future.