Blog Carnival: Histories in OSR Play
This is a quick post is to jump in on this month’s Blog Carnival hosted by Illusory Sensorium. The theme this month is going ”over the garden wall” to pull in elements from non-OSR games into OSR play.
The thing that immediately came to mind to me is what’s called “Histories” in Monster of the Week. I know this has other names in other PBTA games where it shows up, but I was introduced to it through MOTW, so that’s the name I’ll use. Funnily enough, while there’s this firewall between the two playstyles in a lot of retellings, I started playing both OSR games and story games at the same time four years ago in two play-by-post games. I joined an existing server for a west marches Black Hack 2e game and liked it so much I started my own similar server to run Monster of the Week in an alternate setting in 1816 London during the “Year Without Summer.” While neither lasted very long, and I realized play-by-post wasn’t really for me, the ideas swirling at that time have stuck with me. I know that OSR/Storygames schism isn’t real, but plenty of people do still talk as if it is, and I thought my personal story of coming into the two simultaneously was interesting.
That personal digression out of the way, the point of Histories as that each player defines a backstory connection to each other player during the first session. In Monster of the Week each playbook has its own set of possible connections including questions to ask the other person, but the specifics of how it works varies from game to game.
An example from The Chosen:
- You saved their life, back when they didn’t know monsters were real. Tell them what you saved them from.
This is an absolutely fantastic way to cohere a party because it gives everyone something specific to latch onto when roleplaying with the other characters. You’ll naturally build more complex relationships from there, but having that seed makes such a big difference.
I love bringing this concept into OSR games. I feel it works particularly well there since character backstories are already so minimal. So, having that one point of connection to work with really makes everyone mesh together in play better. I try to ask some kind of question to everyone about how their character relates to each other character before any one-shot or new campaign and it never fails to create some immediately interesting roleplay once the game starts.
One example that follows what I usually do is what I put in my adventure Hotel Dracula for the character creation process.
Go around the table and ask each player to briefly describe their Investigator and what they are doing in the bar. Then ask each player to describe one positive impression and one negative impression their investigator has of another investigator and why based on events at the hotel prior to this night (this should not include anything that would make another player uncomfortable).
I usually do something along those lines of trying to create both positive and mildly negative connections between different players. At the start of my last Mothership campaign I asked what they respected about one character and what annoyed them about the other. This led very quickly to the android character knowing how to mildly annoy the teamster to great comedic effect.
So, I recommend you try it out too. Spend just a little more time creating connections in your OSR games before starting play and see what happens!