Mailbag Catchup Q2 2024

Between Two Cairns

Yochai & Brad answer a whole mess of of mailbag questions!

Thanks to Bobby McElver for the show's music, and directsun for the deep dive bumper.
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Find more Between Two Cairns here.

Chapters

1. How do you deal with currency, price lists and other "mundane" elements in your games? This seems to be an important element in a lot of OSR discourse (Skerples' blog comes to mind, or the frequent proposal of using silver standards in lieu of gold pieces (00:00:00)

2. Are there any aspects of gameplay, or types of procedures you are interested in, or currently attempting to implement more in your games? (00:07:00)

3. What is your threshold for too much gonzo stuff in an adventure? At what point do you say, this is too dumb, even for me? (00:11:00)

4. What are your favorite ways modules work lore into the adventure? Random tables? NPC motivations? Art? (00:15:15)

5. I’m curious if you can think of a good adventure (or other resource) for a beginner learning how to run Factions. I’d never heard of Factions in rpgs before I started following the OSR. Looking back, I’d run them in some form or another, but not neatly or (00:17:46)

6. What's the weirdest place you've played an RPG? (00:19:12)

7. What is something you haven't seen "done right" in a game yet? Do you think it is possible? (00:21:30)

8. There is a lot of theory about what makes a good dungeon or adventure, but I see considerably less theory about what makes a good setting. What, in your opinion, are the fundamentals for a good setting? Are they just adventure writing principles on a larg (00:23:19)

9. Does OSR lend itself uniquely to a kind of player nihilism about character lives and how do you work against that, if you do at all? (00:30:35)

10. What genre of games to you like to dip into if you’re not doing old school exploration/dungeon crawling? Or do you mix it up at all? (00:34:30)

11. Do you have any tips for understanding how an adventure would play at your tables without prepping for it? Your conclusions in this regard are a big portion of your reviews, but do you have any specific processes or techniques you em (00:42:30)

12. Do you have any tips for creating interactive factions and faction relationships? Or do you have any favorites? I'm always chasing the high I felt when I first read Symbaroum and saw how cool the factions and their relationships were and h (00:43:40)

13. Outside of actually running adventures, do you have any table rituals or procedues you go through each and every session? Do you do "roses and thorns" (00:50:24)

14. As a GM I really need to convince myself of the "reality" of the shared world in order to run a good game. If the world feels real to me, then I can make up rulings and new stuff on the fly far easier. What stuff helps a game world feel more real to you? (00:54:40)

15. Since you've been involved in the OSR scene, what's the biggest shift or change you've observed in the way adventures are designed, written, or run? (00:56:12)

16. Do you have any advice about playing by post? This is probably my best option for getting a group together, and I was curious about any challenges that could pop up. W (01:08:10)