Campaign Report: OSR, Quickly (A West Marches Campaign using Whitehack 3e)

 

WHAT IS THIS?

    In my OSRIC campaign we have a small break of two weeks and since I am up to date with the session reports of that campaign, I will say a few things about other games that I participated in. This one in particular is one that I hold dear in my heart because it was my first OSR campaign that I' ve played and the first OSR sessions that I was a part in! I joined this games discord server on 2021 and played in this game for more than a year! So, I will describe what we did and how it went!

THE RULESET

    As you can see from the title (and the image at the top of the post), we used Whitehack 3e for this campaign. I have already said that my ruleset of choice is OSRIC/ ADnD 1e but I am open to try other games, just like I like playing games other than DnD from time to time. What I want is to have rules that are consistent, help you understand the spirit of the game and provide you a specific goal.

    Whitehack does that amazingly well! It's a ruleset created by Christian Mehrstam (you can find it here) and as the name suggests, it's a hack of the white box that the designer created. It's basically the ruleset that he was using as a kid when he was trying to decipher the cryptic oDnD rules and in result he ended up creating his own version of them. You can see that it is a game that is very well tested (I can't say that for most of the OSR games today) as many of the rules address problems that you will face sooner or later in your table. It's really close to the spirit of oDnD and I like the fact that the classes there (Strong, Deft and Wise) are actually archetypes, while what we know as classes (fighter, wizard, cleric etc) are professions. Which means that if you play a Strong character, you will not be necessarily a fighter, you can even be a wizard, but you will approach most of your problems relying on your physical strength.

    Anyway, I am not planning to make a full analysis on the whitehack ruleset but it is a really great game. In this campaign, we were playing by using only Gold as XP for leveling up without training. Also we were creating characters by rolling 3d6 in order. 

HOW THE GAME WAS RUN

     The game was run by a group of DMs who in a big hexmap have chosen some hexes and put there a dungeon of their choice. When one of them was available to run a game, they posted the date and the destinations we could pick to go and play their modules.

    To keep everything under control, the admin of the server created a big list of google docs. One of them was the Master Timeline. In there, every DM noted what days in the game world their group adventured and what they did. As it happens on west marches campaigns, at the end of the session you had to go back to Town, the adventurers base that is completely safe. The next adventuring party will begin its actions a day after the previous returned to Town.

    Every module or adventure that the DMs have put in the world, had its own google doc where they noted the progress and the knowledge that the party has acquired. Again, as in every west marches campaign, what one party learns becomes common knowledge when they are back in Town. A clever add was the fact that every player that added notes in the doc regarding what the party learned, gained a small XP bonus. That was the only other way to get XP and while it was extremely small, it pushed as to add every little detail in the notes making them rich and detailed.

    There was also a google doc for every different NPC. It contained its name, its ability scores and the share that they demanded to accompany us on an expedition.

    The platform that every DM used varied. The first DM that I played with was using foundry, others used roll20 or owlbear rodeo. We were always using discord for the voice calls however, with one exception when discord completely failed us and used another platform, I don't remember exactly what however.

ADVENTURING IN THIS WORLD

    As I said, this was my first experience with old school adventuring. I was reading ruleset after ruleset and blog post after blog post when I finally decided to actually participate in a session. I had the disadvantage of playing my first game (and as it turned out, the majority of them) in English that is not my native language. However, this was not a problem at all! The guys in this server really liked what they were doing, they were patient and everything was great!

    First of all, I rolled moderate stats so I decided to create a semi-troll character that was a duck (like Donald, a humanoid duck) that was Wise and I was thinking that he was something like Yoda. The world was gonzo so that was ok with everyone. The spells that I could do were more about telekinisis and curing. I thought that curing would be my primary job but it turned out that in osr games where thinking out of the box was very rewarding, telekinisis was extremely helpful. 

    Travelling was dangerous, there were rolls for random encounters every day, something I was new to. It was a nice change for me, it was the first time in my adventuring experience that actually mattered who is staying awake at night to keep watch, who is wearing his armor etc.

    There was not a metaplot or an overaching story, most of the modules were not connected, which was nice because there many people that were joining for one or two sessions and it would be hard to do so in a more story-driven campaign. 

    The first dungeon that I visited was one that was a part of an ancient dwarven kingdom. Many of these dwarves were coming back as zombies that turned to ash after one hit and gave you some of their memories when they did. We visited it about 4 times but never found out the complete reason of the collapse of this kingdom. The dungeon was dangerous, it had mainly monsters like giant snakes, orcs etc and we also had to crawl through very narrow passages. It was one of the first times that being a duck helped me because I swam faster than the rest and I using this abilities to scout ahead when we encountered a small lake inside the dungeon.

    Another place of adventure for us that was run by another DM was a moving colosseum. It was upon the back of a big turtle if I remember correctly and if you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to find it, you could participate in melees and earn big prices. We could also pay a good amount of money and make sure that the event holders will ressurect us if we die but I think that this was happening only in our first visit. We faced some tough opponents there but we earned a lot of money!

    A more dark module that we discovered was an old cemetery, hidden in the wilderness. We followed some will o'wisps that led us there. My character experienced some visions and there we met some of the main opponents that one of the DMs had in mind. They were a group of insects that were highly intelligent and hated us because we were expanding civilisation and as a result we were destroying nature. I think that there I saw the first PC death and we had to retreat back to safety.

    The same DM ran as another adventure, the witch's hut. As you can guess it was about a witch that was residing on a hut. She was controlling a group of kobolds, however we easily overpowered her and forced them to submission. With that done, we started thinking about creating our own base. Soon enough, our hope will get a better chance of becoming a reality.

    On the road we met a group of ogres. These ogres however were using more delicate weapons and when we started negotiating with them we realised that they were very civilised. We discovered that a commet has fallen near their tribe and the more they stayed around it, the more intelligent they became. Eventually they rejected the barbaric ways of the other ogres and while it had its benefits, this made every other tribe to turn against them. We allied ourselves with them hoping to build our base around their comet.

    Besides these adventures, another DM ran a naval adventure were we led to believe that we were helping our patron when in reality he send us in a trap. We managed to survive however and realise that this guy was sending people on a beach, promising great loot but in there was a group of bandits that were using gunfire to enslave us.

    These are the adventures that I remember, it's possible some details are mistaken but generally it was a well put gonzo world with clear rules about leveling up, character creation, character death etc, which was one of the most important parts of its success. That and the really good behavior of everyone involved!

HIGHLIGHTS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN

    While I am mostly an ADnD guy, I would gladly play again in this discord server. The games were of high quality and the fact that everything was detailed on google docs helped to keep everything together.

    My character had its moments and for a while it was the highest level PC of the campaign, proving my prediction of an early death for little Willie to be unfounded. If I remember correctly I reached 4th level and many other characters reached the 4th or maybe 5th level as well! I used my telekinitic powers for many actions, like stealing the treasure of our enemies without confronting them, throwing sand or poison on enemies etc. 

    Other strange characters that participated was a clown that could do crazy feats for as long as he could keep his breath. Unfortunately he died but its player created a performer that was using smoke and mirror tricks to get his way. There were also typical soldiers/fighters that you can find in any other campaign.

    I loved the guys that I met there, my first DM who was called Frustrated Rocka, the main DM and admin of the server who kept it all together name Slunchery, the innovative Patrick that we played most of my sessions together and was also a great DM, the enthusiastic Calm who ran us our naval adventure and his passion for the game added a lot to the group and many more that most probably I forget. We had a great time, I played in about 14 sessions before I had to drop out but I would gladly rejoin if the schedule permits it. The server is relatively active right now and the guys are also active in the whitehack server.

    So, for my final thoughts, I consider myself lucky to start my old school adventures in that server and if you want something different to try besides DnD, whitehack is a great choice, allowing you to run whatever you want if you put the appropriate amount of work!

    My next post most probably will be the next session report of my campaign but in the future I will post other experiences that I had regarding classic adventure gaming! See you in the next one!