OSR October is Coming

Return of the Mediocre Writer

October is almost upon us and with it the return of OSR October. I say return, but really what I mean is what is OSR October? #OSRtober? I think I’m gonna go with #OSRtober. Based on my incredibly powerful research and sleuthing skills it looks like this might have kicked off back in 2017 due to a Matt Finch post / video talking about promoting things we liked within the OSR.

Whether I’m right or not, I’m going to roll with that, because that’s the kind of narcissist I am. Having just come off RPGaDay2023 (ok, I took an entire month off) and going through a series of prompts I think this time I’m going to take a more free-form approach to this series. I’m not much of a photographer or visual kind of guy with much to share in that dimension, so I think I’m going to go through something a little bit different but one I’ve been wanting to take the time to dig into for a while now.

A few months back my brother-in-law, nephew, and I went to NTRPG. We’d already been in a long-term Dungeon / Mutant Crawl Classics campaign I was running, but the trip reignited a flame for 1st edition AD&D within them. We started up a shared Co-DM world and worked through unpacking the clunky rules and our own flawed recollection of how they’ve evolved over the past forty years. I’m not trying to say that every change that has occurred within the past four decades has been for the better, and we certainly know that is not the case, but the original source material is just so poorly edited and in such a miserable (to look at) font. I say that with all due respect for what AD&D has been for me personally and the gaming space at large.

It’s been a brutal experiment with several false starts and abrupt shifts in rules. A lot of this was just being overly eager to start with something big without first knowing that we knew what we wanted to do and were all on the same page. Even though they remain enthusiastic and perhaps somewhat delusional about being able to grow an in-person open table, I’ve certainly felt that my enthusiasm about the project has been dampened. It’s still a great campaign, and has an absolute ton of potential, seriously some of my most fun sessions have been in person with ‘em. However, for me and I want to be entirely clear that this is just a me thing, the focus on in-person gaming and wrestling with the AD&D ruleset just doesn’t spark my interest and feels like it is running at cross purposes to the original grand campaign / open table concept we’d started off with.

I considered deleting the above, as it gets a bit into the weeds with some of my frustrations about the current shared campaign, but decided against it as I do think it is important to be real about both the successes and challenges faced as part of the process. Too much of our online / social media presence is shaped to show the best or most flattering version of events and I really don’t want to play that game. The reason I wanted to include it was that at one point while my brother was getting ready to start up his region he had considered running Autarch’s Adventurer, Conqueror, King system (ACKS) for it, despite the project’s shared ruleset being a vital part of ensuring compatibility for players in all games to move between DMs & regions. He ended up going back to AD&D, completely raw from the original sacred texts, but I do think he was on to something with exploring that system.

It is a strange fate we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.

We’ve been looking into domain & patron level play and I have been somewhat let down by the lack of hard rules for domain management and mass combat within AD&D itself (let’s not talk about the Battlesystem yet but I’m sure they’ll get there eventually) as they are very much trying to capture a pre-1980 feeling and there’s a lot of implied Chainmail / OD&D Swords & Spells in there that isn’t explicitly within the rules themselves (by design some might say) which does make it very difficult to extend a claim of playing rules as written when the rules themselves do not exist. This has led me to looking into other sources available, such as the excellent Third Kingdom Games books such as Into the Wild & Filling in the Blanks in order to have a foundation for domain level play which is sorely lacking within the core AD&D books.

Which brings me back around to the earlier point about my brother’s consideration of ACKS. I am intrigued by the possibility of a modern take on B/X with a good bit of crunch around the higher-tier levels of play. With Macris indicating that ACKS II is on the way and it being the Rules Cyclopedia of ACKS I think we’ve both been very interested in giving the system its due to see how it would work with our group.

Finally getting to the actual purpose of the post, my project for OSR October will be to do a deep dive into the system. Attempt to digest and analyze the rules, then go through a short solo evaluation campaign to get a feel for how it would work in play. I’m not sure how likely I am to stick to as rigid of a schedule as I did for RPGaDay, but I’m hoping to be able to make it through the main book and maybe Domains at War to get an idea of just how in over my head I’m going to be if and when we adopt the system for use for a new home campaign in the future. Assuming I can ever get the lads out of their new cult, or at least accept that ACKS is every bit as functional for that style of play without being as arcane as the sacred historical texts.

Either way, that’s where I am and what I’m intending to spend the next month on. Hope you’ll come along on the ride, but even if you don’t get out there and enjoy some time gaming with your friends.