The pen-and-paper side of our hobby could really learn something from video games (see previous post).

I don’t mean in an off-putting, game-y, 4th edition way, either. The competitive pressure in the video game space is huge, leading to all sorts of interesting experiments. Because the pressure is more intense—and perhaps also because there are more consumer dollars supporting game makers—this experimentation happens much more quickly than the pen-and-paper side of the hobby.

One of my favorite minor innovations is Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid (pictured, right). When I picked FFX up around my 14th birthday, I was fascinated by the it. To briefly summarize, the Grid was the best sort of metagame: You would gain Spheres, then spend those Spheres to advance your characters along a winding system of tracks. At various points the tracks would split, and you’d be forced to choose how your character would advance.

Leveling up was no longer a mechanical process, or just a choice of whether to learn a new move. Instead, I was moving around a map, I could take my characters wherever I wanted.

Like most RPG aficionados, I’m working on my own game. It’s not ready (of course), nor do I anticipate it being ready for some time. Still, I’d like to share something of the game, the setting, and one of my favorite bits I’ve finished so far.

The Game is called Proper Motion: A Fantasy of Ptolemaic Space. That’s quite a mouthful, so let’s unpack it a little bit.

Proper Motion is a space fantasy game inspired by Spelljammer. Or at least by what I thought Spelljammer was when I read the elevator pitch: wooden ships sailing thru a boundless, infinitely-varied fantasy universe.¹ Proper Motion is also the child of Mario Galaxy, whose universe of micro-planets uninhibited by ordinary physics still enchants me every time I think about it.

Happy Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day! Although I haven’t played much of it, S&W strikes me as a great system—clearly written, it retains the spark of the Original rules while smoothing out some of the more incomprehensible quirks. Best of all, it’s eminently hackable; indeed, the S&W creators go farther than almost anyone in enabling you to hack your own system onto S&W.

Today, 137 other bloggers are all blogging about their love of the system. The S&W creators are also running a nice 25% off sale in appreciation; use the code SWApprDay at checkout.

I didn’t know how much value I could add as a system-critic. But I still wanted to pay the system the pretty compliment I think it deserves, so I’ve written a module for it! I’ve never written a S&W module before, and found it a pleasingly simple process: S&W is not fussy about the details of armor class asignment or XP values, allowing me to focus on writing.

The Compendium of Creepier Creeps

Starting a new feature! These are creatures I’m creating and drawing in an awesome silver PaperBlanks notebook. Kudos to the Random Esoteric Creature Generator for helping make these possible.

First up: The Hollyshade. That this is possibly the best drawing I’ve ever done may show the limits of my artistic talent (other artistic output). This monster is statted for Basic Fantasy, but should be pretty easy to drop into other OSR games. Image and monster text are both CC BY 3.0, so feel free to repost/use in your own books.

Basic Fantasy remains my favorite of the OSR games. For one thing, it hews to the Basic version of D&D, rather than OD&D or AD&D. As someone who came to the OSR without experience of any edition prior to 3e, I had no dog in the edition wars; but as a matter of style and game design, BD&D seems to strike the best balance.

But while Basic Fantasy looks to Moldvay et al. for inspiration, it is not as slavish as many other OSR games (they’re called retroclones for a reason). Armor Class ascends, as God intended. Race and class are largely divorced (to my players’ eternal relief) but not entirely.

This is mostly good, but occasionally Basic Fantasy pitches a feature from BD&D I liked. So it is with GP-as-XP.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (at least the preview PDF I’ve read) never quite gelled for me, somehow. Full props to Goodman for trying to take the OSR in new directions, but many of the directions they chose—odd dice, fiddly spellcasting mechanics, and so on—feel too much like being different for different’s sake. Meanwhile they kept some of the most annoying bits of OSR games, like race as class. Your mileage may vary.

But one bit of DCCRPG really captured my imagination: The character funnel, which turns four sad-sack level-0 characters into one level 1 PC by the power of dice and almost-certain death.

The character funnel brings a very OSR approach to a very OSR problem. The problem is that most retro-styled games have very swingy character creation. The beloved Iron Man stat generation system (roll 3d6 in order for each ability) is particularly bad in this regard.

Short and sweet: Tweet awesome OSR blogposts using hashtag #OSRblogroll. I’ve already started; check that out @InfiniteDragons.

For me, the hardest thing about running a sandbox game is making interesting decisions on the fly. What’s over that hill? What’s this plant do if I eat it? What’s that ugly orc thinking?

I can make something up, of course. But my made-up answers tend to be same-y, or simply not believable. It’s a tricky nut to crack.

Infinite Dragons Games is Austin Schaefer. I’m a 23-year-old tech writer currently living in Prague, Czech Republic (but originally from Portland, Oregon). I’ve loved games since Pokemon Red, loved role-playing games since a much-loved but little-played GURPS 3e manual, and loved old RPGs since I first picked up a dusty Monstrous Compendium at a Lincoln City bookshop.

On this site, I’ll chronicle my gaming projects, which are mostly small rules tweaks for OSR games. I’m currently working on Proper Motion, an OSR-inspired game I’m calling a “science fantasy of Ptolemaic space”. I also encourage you to post cool OSR blog posts to Twitter using #OSRblogroll to help build the OSR community on Twitter.

Find me on Twitter @InfiniteDragons¹, or email me at austin@{this site}. Cheers, and happy gaming.