The State of ONEZERO Games: Part One

A little over three years ago, I was constantly switching between OSR/NSR systems for my home campaigns, and I realised that in spite of really enjoying many individual elements from different games, none of them truly felt like the game I wanted to run or play. And that’s when I pulled the trigger on designing my first full-fledged fantasy heartbreaker. 

Back then, I was reading blog posts from the TTRPG space daily, and they were instrumental in giving me the knowledge and the verve to embark on my game design journey. So yeah, here’s a big shoutout to Fail Forward, Mindstorm, Prismatic Wasteland, Rise Up Comus and Dice Goblin, but also to Explorers Design, whose template got me into Affinity Publisher, and to Fari RPGs, whose tutorials for the aforementioned software helped me learn my way around it.

Three years later, however, I have yet to release a game, despite having started work on a whole bunch of ‘em. We're here to find out why, but also to examine the design process of every ONEZERO project that is currently on hold. Spoiler alert: a lot of it comes down to inexperience and insisting on being a solo developer.

 

THE WYVERN HACK

✦ The Game

It’s right there in the name, really. TWH was my first serious attempt at making a bespoke NSR fantasy game, with all the baggage that brings. I had opinions on procedures, combat, class design and even on resolution rules, and those opinions found a home inside that game. It’s a weird little gremlin of a game, with a magic system that’s closer to Mage: The Ascension than B/X, a core resolution mechanic that is 50% resource management, 30% PbtA and 20% d20, procedures that attempt to streamline prep and a character creation process that relies way too much on random tables. I won’t call it cohesive, but it’s certainly quirky.

✦ The Process

To be completely frank, I don’t think there was much of a process to The Wyvern Hack. I knew what I wanted to design, yes, and I knew what my priorities should be, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. So I just wrote what I was most interested in at any given time, such as a few of the game’s classes, some of the core procedures and the complete magic system. I was having a lot of fun with the layout, which was built on top of the Classic Explorers Starter Template, so I started posting WIPs as a way of getting feedback and more eyes on the game. As it turns out, that wasn’t such a great idea after all.

I once described TWH's take on the Fighter as "as someone deeply damaged, carrying visible scars and having little else to offer other than violence, as it's all that remains of who they were". I've riffed on that archetype for at least two different games since then, but this isn't half bad for a first attempt.

✦ The Setbacks

I wish I could blame TWH’s lack of progress on any one thing, but I can’t. This was my first serious project, so I was still finding my way around layout, scoping, game design and my own limits as a burgeoning game designer. I enjoyed the attention I got from every WIP I posted on Twitter (this was back in 2024, mind, and it wasn’t a total hellhole yet, mostly). I didn’t have the discipline to write consistently, nor the knowledge to avoid some common layout pitfalls (have I mentioned that, to this day, I insist on writing directly on layout?). 

At some point, The Wyvern Hack’s afpub document got so messy that I was genuinely reluctant to add anything new or edit what was already written, because every time I did so, I somehow managed to break something else. 

Eventually, my personal interests just shifted back to urban fantasy, and I started working on another game, taking the lessons learned from TWH’s development process and trying to avoid the same mistakes. Turns out I just traded them for brand new ones, lmao, but we’ll talk about that in due time.

✦ The Result

I’m proud of some of the things I achieved with The Wyvern Hack, even if I haven’t touched it in a long time. Even after all this time, the magic system keeps getting Saves and Likes on Twitter (or at least it did when I still used the platform), for instance, so people still stumble upon it and probably find it interesting enough to read the whole thing or Save it for later. The same goes for the build-your-own-heritages mechanic; I only ever posted a very early version of it on BlueSky, but it also gets a ping or two every once in a while.

This was only the first draft for TWH's heritage rules, and I eventually changed some elements to be even more modular, but it really seemed to resonate with the good folk from TTRPG twitter (RIP)

The combat system is also fun, if a bit unwieldy (the Momentum Initiative rules I initially planned to use led to more micromanagement than I’m comfortable with), and the core procedures remain some of my best work, to this day. 

So, the question is, will this Wyvern ever be roused from its lair, stronger, leaner and wiser than before? I’d like to think so. This game will always have a special place in my heart, and I haven’t stopped believing in its potential. It may not be my current priority, but I’m a mercurial creature. Who knows when the old school fantasy bug will bite me again?

 

SURVIVING MONSTERLAND

✦ The Game

Listen, I know the name ain’t great, but I swear it fits the game’s themes of segregation, exploitation and othering of “Paranormal Citizens” (id est, vampires, werewolves, fae, ghosts and so on). It was intended both as a vehicle for my dissatisfaction with how society treats immigrants, queers, neurodivergent people and other minorities, and as a hyperviolent, NSR answer to the World of Darkness. 

The central premise introduces a world in which urban fantasy “monsters” have been exposed by mankind, and the authorities have taken measures to contain most of them inside what amount to lawless enclaves where might makes right. The gameplay loop, then, revolves around surviving inside those spaces (the titular Monsterlands) and working dangerous gigs to increase your influence and earn enough money to potentially bribe your way out, while maintaining a low profile to avoid the administration’s cruel reprimands.

✦ The Process

Rather than learning to scale back my games, I somehow took The Wyvern Hack’s setbacks as a sign that I should switch to Börg-like maximalism, using the core rules of Mörk Börg and CY_BÖRG as the “skeleton” for Surviving Monsterland and focusing instead on making it as pretty as I possibly could. I know, I know, rookie mistake, but this was my second-ever serious project.

I love this character sheet with all my heart.

✦ The Setbacks

I got burnt out on layout, and that’s that. My first attempts at making some Börg-like spreads were decent, I guess, but I just didn’t (and still don’t!) have the know-how or the artistic prowess to keep it up. By the time I got done making the fourth Paranormal Type’s “cover” (which was already a scaled-back version of what I originally intended), I was also done with the game itself.

✦ The Result

Well, I can’t say I hate the Paranormal Type “covers”, but I’m not a graphic designer, so I wouldn’t want to put graphic design front and center in a project ever again if I can help it. Recently, I’ve flirted with retooling Surviving Monsterland into a much less ambitious game, both visually and mechanically (I went way too big with the powers and weaknesses, since the core rules were already “done”), so we’ll see how that goes. I like this game’s concept way too much to just let it die.

PROJECT DAYBREAK

✦ The Game

By this point, you’d think I would’ve learned my lesson already regarding scope, right? Hell, I thought so too, but oh boy, was I wrong. This one was initially called Vampire Hunting Weekly, and was meant to be a simple Cairn 1e hack for vampire hunters, designed for Halloween 2024. When I missed the deadline due to some serious IRL issues, I dropped all pretenses of making a simple game, and decided to turn this into the best damn vampire hunting game I could possibly make. And honestly? I got pretty close. Project Daybreak contains my cleanest writing and design work, and I really should get back to it.

✦ The Process

Structurally, this one was meticulously planned from the get-go, both in its original form and in the “expanded” version. In fact, most of the writing for it is pretty much done, and the layout is so functional that there isn’t much of a challenge in implementing what’s written. But the game hasn’t found its way into anyone’s hands, so something must’ve happened, right?

✦ The Setbacks

Shit did, indeed, happen. My health got progressively worse, and my life was all out of whack for several reasons that don’t actually matter here. Suffice to say that real life just got in the way, and by the time things cleared up, I no longer had the impetus to keep working on this one. I’ve been meaning to finish it ever since, but every time I open its afpub file, I just zone out, and I wish I knew why. Is my heart just not in it anymore? Am I just out of touch with what I was making way back then? I don’t know. I really don’t.

✦ The Result

I still regularly use the character creation tables I made for Project Daybreak whenever I run a modern-day game. I think they’re pretty cool. The game’s cover is one of my personal favourites, too, and I think the combat rules are so neat, and the special maneuvers will probably be the blueprint for any combat-heavy game I'll ever make. From a technical perspective, I cannot complain about this game at all. I want to finish it. I need to. I just don’t know when I’ll have the energy or motivation to do so.

 

WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED

I believe this brings us to the end of 2024, and since this is getting way too long, I’m going to split this thing into at least two parts (maybe three, who knows). For Part Two, we’re gonna discuss games like BREACH, Drakönis and The Dauntless & Destined. Stay tuned!

Three kinds of wealth abstraction rules

I don't always have the time or the energy to track currency in my elfgames, and although I see the merit in doing so when you're aiming for a specific kind of gamefeel, it's not a great fit for every game. So why is this so often treated as the standard? I mean, it can't be pure nostalgia or blind adherence to the old ways; a lot of the games that still stick with this have traded inventory weight for inventory slots, for instance. Gold for XP could be a plausible reason, but then again, there's no reason you can't implement this with abstracted wealth rules. 

Now, while I can't give you a definitive answer to this conundrum (if there even is one), I have spent some time trying to come up with interesting rules for wealth abstraction, just for fun. If nothing else, perhaps these will inspire some game designers to question why they're still sticking with the ol' Copper/Silver/Gold standard rather than experimenting with fun and less disruptive ways of handling wealth in their games.

WEALTH POINTS

You can spend your wealth points (WP) to add positive modifiers to negotiation checks.

When the party finds treasure, tell them how many wealth points they acquired. A small amount of coins would be worth a single WP for the whole party, while a golden statuette with emerald eyes could earn them as many as 5 WPs.

When you want to buy something, you can make a negotiation check by rolling a d20 vs a Difficulty Rating of...  

• 10 (mundane/cheap items)
• 14 (uncommon/expensive items)
• 18 (rare/exclusive) 

You can bypass a negotiation check entirely by spending a fixed amount of wealth points for each item tier, as seen below: 

• Common/cheap: 10 WPs
• Uncommon/expensive: 15 WPs
• Rare/exclusive: 20 WPs

If you still want to brute force your way through a purchase after a failed negotiation attempt, add +5 to the WP cost. Any wealth points spent on the roll are subtracted from the total cost.

✦ Design notes

So, these rules intentionally put a big emphasis on negotiations over fixed prices. This is meant to represent haggling, rather than how much each item is actually worth. Prices normally fluctuate between stores and different regions IRL, so I thought this was a nice way to incorporate that in a game. And since you always have the option of caving in and paying an exorbitant price even if someone is overcharging you for their wares, I added that bit about bypassing negotiations.

Finally, if I were to implement this mechanic in a game, I'd definitely want to prepare a reference list for treasure and another for typical items, just to keep things fair and easy to run.

WEALTH USAGE DIE

If you want to keep the Copper/Silver/Gold standard but don't want to bother tracking individual coins, you can simply assign an usage die for each. Then, make three item lists: one for things that can be bought with copper, another for items that can be bought with silver, and one for the truly expensive things that only gold can buy.

• Copper can only buy from the copper list.
• Silver can buy from the copper and silver lists.
• Gold can buy from all three lists.

When you want to buy something, roll a copper, silver or gold usage die, as determined by what you're buying. If you roll a 1 or 2, drop the die by a step (d12 > d10 > d8 > d6 > d4 > nil). If you don't have at least a d4, you simply can't afford to buy the things you want.

After completing a quest or exploring a dungeon, the party can potentially increase their wealth usage dice by a step, depending on how much they earned or pillaged. The standard odds for wealth improvement are...

• Copper: 4-in-6
• Silver: 2-in-6
• Gold 1-in-6

The odds above are subject to both positive and negative changes, per the fiction. If the party was promised a fortune in gold, they might have higher odds of improving their gold usage die. If they were simply out in the sewers killing rats, maybe they only get to try to improve copper or silver (not both), with gold being out of the picture entirely. Such is the life of an adventurer.

✦ Design notes

The biggest hurdle to implementing these rules in a game is deciding the starting wealth of PCs. Do you just give them a d4 in copper, in which case they're flat out broke? Are some classes (if you're using those) wealthier from the get go? Are some even poorer? Balancing this out can be fun, but it's the sort of thing that will directly inform how your game feels in play, at least until the party gets some experience under their belts.

GMs can play around with positive and negative modifiers to UD checks, by the way: depending on what you're buying (and from whom), the GM may assign you a positive or negative modifier. This is a good way to represent how cheap or expensive something is, as well as the seller's negotiation skills and their disposition towards the buyer.

WEALTH LEVELS

No rolls, no checks, just a simple Wealth Level (WL).

• At WL1, you can afford common gear, travel rations, simple accommodations, basic services
• At WL2, you can afford quality gear, specialized services, components, luxurious accommodations, weapons, armor, daily wages
• At WL3, you can afford property installments, magic items, monthly wages, horses, livestock

Characters increase their Wealth Level by getting paid for their services, plundering dungeons and undertaking financial ventures. There's no need for hard rules and parameters, either: if it makes fictional sense for a character to be on WL2, then that's their Wealth Level. If they go on a buying spree and overspend, they may drop down to WL1. Easy, clean, simple.

OPTIONAL RULE: if you want to mix gold for XP with these rules, characters can only level up when they reach WL3. Afterwards, they must invest most of their funds into training under a competent tutor, dropping back to WL1.

✦ Design notes

There's no denying that this is an incredibly high trust approach to wealth, bordering on FKR, and that's intentional. If you're completely burned out on currency tracking, this will probably be your favourite take on wealth abstraction in this post. Similarly, this is a great fit for games where wealth doesn't matter all that much, although the optional rule can give it a bit more heft, if that's what you're looking for.

ALL ABOUT THAT CASH

A funny thing happened while I was writing this post: I no longer know how I want to handle wealth in most of the games I'm currently developing. A few of these could be a great fit for some of my games, and indeed, they were built on ideas I initially had for the aforementioned games, but dropped for one reason or another. In a way, I guess this means I succeeded at what I set out to do with this post; I just didn't expect to be on the receiving end of it!

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go have a design-induced existential crisis. Those are always a lot of fun!

PLANTS!! Or, how to enrich your setting's flora

One of the things that impressed me the most about Avowed was how much care was given to the flora of the Living Lands. It's often vibrant, awe-inspiring and, most important of all, gameable. Want to upgrade your gear? Go harvest some plants. Need a way to deal with large groups of enemies, but don't want to invest in magic? Well, some plants are basically grenades, molotovs or acid bombs. Oh, and you know the cool looking ruins you've spotted on the horizon? They're probably overgrown by giant roots, or if you're lucky, something even cooler!

The way Obsidian managed to seamlessly integrate flora into so many aspects of Avowed made me think of how some of my favourite fantasy writers usually pay a lot of attention to the flora of their own worlds, and how important those details are to making an immersive setting.

In my experience, however, most GMs overlook this aspect of world building completely, myself included. Sure, some of us pay lip service to it, dropping a few references to coniferous trees, berries and stuff like that when prompted by the players, but that's usually as far as it goes.

And honestly? That's totally fine by me. We're just nerds facilitating a game, we can't all be expected to be master world builders who spend hours and hours researching what sort of flora would make the most sense for each region of our settings. Simply put, this is the type of effort that rarely pays off, like developing intricate economies for every city or kingdom.

Still, the reason behind my enthusiasm for Avowed's flora wasn't related to realism or research at all, but how fantastic and unique it felt. And that, my friends, is much more achievable for us lowly GMs. Achievable and gameable.

TABLES ARE ALWAYS THE ANSWER

Well, maybe not always, but that's what I usually default to whenever I want to generate interesting things fast. I quickly settled into six different categories:

• Appearance: Usually the first thing the PCs will notice about a plant, and surprisingly useful for setting the mood, too. Drop some fleshy, writhing plants in the woods and your players are probably going to be immediately wary of the area.
• Biome: The sort of region your weird plants are located in. Try generating at least a couple of plants for each major area in your setting, but don't be afraid of reusing a plant in multiple regions.
• Interactions: Plants don't exist in a vacuum. Defining a few key ways they interact with their environment and the fauna that inhabits it is essential (and a lot of fun, too!).
• Smell: Never underestimate the impact of describing a smell. Our olfactory memory is unreasonably powerful, and you should wield it responsibly.
• Useful properties: I did mention this would be gameable, right?
• Rarity: While most of the categories above are player-facing, this one is more relevant to GMs. You can outright tell your players how rare or common a plant is, but isn't it more interesting to let them work for that knowledge?

Now that we've established what each table will explore, let's dig in!

Appearance	Biome	Interactions
1. Glowing tendrils	1. Rainforest	1. Calms nearby creatures
2. Umbrella-like leaves	2. Desert	2. Makes observers hallucinate
3. Gem-like flowers	3. Tundra	3. Attracts and feeds wildlife (prey)
4. Thorny, enormous vines	4. Swamp	4. Burrows when it rains
5. Fuzzy, humming moss	5. Mountains	5. Shrieks when approached
6. Spiral petals	6. Grasslands	6. Protected by predators
7. Color-changing fronds	7. Volcanic	7. Attracts lightning
8. Knotted roots	8. Coastal	8. Unroots itself and migrates
9. Maw-like blossoms	9. Swamps	9. Trips travelers
10. Skin-mimicking bark	10. Rocky hills	10. Changes color near magic
11. Feather-like leaves	11. Fjords	11. Hosts friendly insects
12. Stained glass bark	12. Lakes	12. Attracts fairies
13. Skeleton-like branch	13. Graveyards	13. Worshipped by undead
14. Sparkling stems	14. Savannas	14. Boosts plant growth
15. Fur-like shrubs	15. Prairies	15. Houses prey animals
16. Covered in red sap	16. Riverlands	16. Contaminates water
17. Crescent moon flowers	17. Islands	17. Darkens surroundings
18. Iridescent spores	18. Wastelands	18. Taints the soil
19. Bioluminescent patterns	19. Overgrown ruins	19. Repairs structures
20. Pulsing, organic growths	20. Underground	20. Infested with spiders

Smells	Properties	Rarity
1. Rotting meat	1. Healing salve	1. Common
2. Sweet honey	2. Disinfectant	2. Uncommon
3. Fresh rain	3. Stamina potion	3. Rare
4. Burnt sugar	4. Strong adhesive	4. Very Rare
5. Spiced wine	5. Powerful antidote	5. Legendary
6. Crushed metal	6. Alchemical marvel	6. Seasonal
7. Bone dust	7. Armor-like bark	7. Endangered
8. Vanilla	8. Highly nutritious	8. Abundant
9. Cinnamon	9. Fire-starting oil	9. Cultivated
10. Wet fur	10. Insect repellent	10. Regional
11. Lavender	11. Poison enhancer	11. Corrupted
12. Dragon's breath	12. Dye-making flowers	12. Ancient
13. Sea salt	13. Paralyzing sap	13. Interdimensional
14. Goblin sweat	14. Fermented alcohol	14. Sentient
15. Blood	15. Magic enhancer	15. Transient
16. Sulphur	16. Demon bait	16. Infernal
17. Arcane fire	17. Charming fragrance	17. Artificial
18. Fairy dust	18. Rust removal	18. Sacred
19. Wet stone	19. Highly explosive	19. Cursed
20. Phoenix feathers	20. Water purifier	20. Mythical

WEIRD GREEN WONDERS

Yeah, that should do it. I'm excited to start making some truly bizarre plants and dropping them in my campaigns, and if y'all end up doing the same, I'd love to know how it goes!

An exercise in dice pool-based game design

I love rolling large dice pools. Hearing all those shiny math rocks clink, eagerly hoping for a good roll and dreading those pesky 1s is way too satisfying. Sure, rolling lots of dice can be unwieldy and lead to dice clog, but years of playing Vampire: The Masquerade have conditioned me to enjoy the simple pleasures offered by dice pools.

Here's a quick V.V. fact: I write when I'm stressed, and I've had a pretty stressful couple of days. Stressful enough for me to write a pretty solid foundation for a dice pool-based system. Right now, this is just an exercise in game design, but I could definitely see myself using this for a game someday. You can check it out below!

CHARACTER CREATION

One of your Attributes is great (d10), one is good (d8), one is average (d6) and one is poor (d4). Roll four d20s, then assign each result to a different Attribute, forming your Attribute Pools. If no result is higher than 10, discard all results and roll again.

TASK RESOLUTION

Every Attribute has a dice pool, and you can choose how many dice to invest in any given Attribute Check. After investing your dice, roll them. You always keep any dice that rolls at or above 4. When you're out of dice, you can't succeed with that Attribute anymore. 

Degrees of success are determined by how many dice were invested in the check.

• 1 die: you succeed at a cost, such as spending resources or facing complications
• 2 dice: you succeed by doing the bare minimum
• 3 dice: you solve the matter at hand cleanly and competently
• 4+ dice: you go above and beyond, succeeding with gusto. For each die above 3, add a flourish to your success: elegance, quickness, subtlety, precision, substance, surprise

COMBAT: VITALITY

When entering a fight, invest as many dice from your Attribute Pools as you want, forming your Vitality Pool for the combat. 

Every enemy attack has a matching Condition with a Resistance Cost. To avoid suffering a Condition, roll a number of Vitality dice equal to the Resistance Cost. Keep any dice that rolls at 4 or higher, and discard the rest.

If you can't or don't want to match the Condition's Resistance Cost, you suffer its effects.

When combat ends, any remaining Vitality dice can be freely reassigned to your Attribute Pools.

COMBAT: ATTACKING

To deal damage in combat, you need to spend <melee attribute> dice for melee attacks, <ranged attribute> dice for ranged attacks, and <magic attribute> for offensive spellcasting. Roll them normally, and keep any dice resulting in a number equal to 4 or above. Any dice spent this way can be used to assign Conditions to an enemy. Once you reach an enemy's Condition Threshold, you decide whether they're dead or simply defeated.

CONDITIONS

Optimally, a game using these rules would have a full list of interesting conditions, each with a matching Resistance Cost (or, in the case of PC attacks, Damage Costs) and some interesting mechanical flair to differentiate them. As is, this is just the skeleton of a system, and not a game at all. No harm in giving some examples, though!

• Vulnerable (5): -1 Damage Cost to all Conditions
• Weakened (4): Can't cause any Conditions above RC 3
• Wounded (3): Can be inflicted multiple times
• Dizzy (2): Can't attack for a turn (doesn't stack)

POTENTIAL SHENANIGANS

Designing powers for this system would be a blast, as there's so much room to play with dice pools and degrees of success. Hell, I almost bolted a skill system to this thing just for fun, but it felt like too much (skill points would allow rerolls on relevant Attribute Checks, furthering the system's dice clog problem).

At the present time, though, I have no plans on expanding this any further, as I'm already working on way too many games. Still, I'm curious to know whether this is as interesting as my stress-addled brain thinks it is, or just an excuse to roll a lot of dice at once.

Lemme know what you think!

On encounter design, combat and incentives

After writing the third Hexember post, I couldn't stop thinking about two blog posts regarding incentivized behavior, the first by Luke Gearing, and the second by Zedeck Siew. Did I unintentionally incentivize players to act diplomatically rather than violently through how I designed the hex's points of interest? And if so, is that really such a bad thing?

COMBAT & MODERN ELFGAMES

It's no secret that 5e has more rules and guidelines for combat than anything else, and while I'm not trying to start a discourse on "eliding", it's my personal opinion that if most of the tools bestowed by a system are related to violence, then you shouldn't be surprised when violence becomes the players' default approach to every problem or situation. That incentive is baked into the game, and while most OSR games are better about this, there's still a prevalence of combat-related rules in them.

Paradoxically, OSR combat has been frequently touted as a fail state, particularly when it's fought fairly. The maxim "combat as war, not sport" is also a mainstay in these discussions, even if the rules don't always reflect it. One could argue that the high lethality found in the majority of OSR games supports those points, but that lethality usually ceases to be a problem once characters have enough experience under their belts. Some games have done their part to mitigate that power creep (shoutout to Into the Odd, Cairn and CY_BORG!), but when it comes to older games, well, character advancement tended to lead to HP bloat and/or disparity, as seen with the good ol' linear fighters vs. quadratic wizards conundrum.

If combat is the baked-in solution to most problems, then rewarding it would only worsen the issue at hand. This leads us to the crux of my encounter design philosophy: if the players want to maim and kill everything in their way, they are free to do so. The world, on the other hand, won't reward them for committing senseless violence. Most of the time, they'll only be wasting their resources and risking their lives by acting that way — just like in real life.

STICK VS. CARROT

Let's face it: if rewarding violence is the carrot, and if most of the rules are combat-oriented, there's an argument to be made that not rewarding it is akin to punishing the players for playing the game as written, or as it was intended to be played — hence, the stick. This could lead us to an entire discussion about setting expectations, the importance of a session zero and so on, but that's one rabbit hole I'm not willing to dive into today, lest this post completely loses its original purpose: discussing incentives in play.

So what's the solution here? Should you just play a different game if you don't want to reward violence?

Well, not necessarily, no. As mentioned above, setting expectations before play is an important part of literally any game, and unlike 5e, a lot of OSR/NSR games have plenty of rules for approaching the world in many different ways. But then again, rewarding players for engaging with those rules could be seen as just as bad as rewarding violence; you're just signaling that diplomacy, careful exploration and scheming are the optimal ways to play the game. 

While there's nothing wrong with that playstyle (some would go as far as saying that the ideal OSR playstyle looks a lot like what I just described), it can become stale. Once the characters start doing what's optimal rather than what their backgrounds and personalities dictate, are the players still roleplaying them, or are they just gaming? Going too far in the opposite direction is just as bad, mind! "It's what my character would do" has traumatized countless GMs, including yours truly.

Me, I advocate for balance in all things. Naturally, that goes for encounters and their rewards, too.

BALANCING INCENTIVES

Balancing what you incentivize with your rewards is simpler than you might expect. When you're writing any situation, encounter or location, consider what's logical. Sometimes, violence is the best answer, one that may wield the best rewards. Oftentimes, it isn't. The secret here is letting whatever makes the most sense happen, rather than trying to direct your players and their characters towards being kind and diplomatic or bloodthirsty murderers through in-game rewards. Let them do what's natural for them and reap the consequences, good or bad.

The first three Hexember posts actually have relevant examples of logical consequences, rather than incentivized behaviors:

• Fighting (and killing) the sickly giant from the Stinging-Tree Canyon won't lead the party to a tomb full of gold, and it may even lead to a few PCs getting sick, too. On the other hand, they'll have put an end to the poor giant's suffering, and that counts for something. A party that sneakily avoids the encounter entirely won't risk contracting the disease, but the giant may still be a problem for anyone who passes through the canyon in the future. No obvious rewards here.
  
• Combat isn't really much of a concern in the Chronal Wastes, but if the party does end up in a fight while trapped in the war zone, they'll actually benefit from defeating the enemy squad, gaining access to firearms that won't be invented anytime soon. Violence would be rewarded, but only because looting a superior force's advanced weapons is a logical conclusion to fighting them.
• The Crimson Crystarium is what brought us here in the first place, so it's a little more ambiguous than the examples above. The vampire packs encountered in that hex can be approached in several different ways, and one pack actually initiates combat in a "honorable" manner (sport and war, yadda, yadda). Outright murdering that pack turns the others hostile, yes, but only because it makes sense. Hell, murdering any pack would have that result, even if I didn't outright spell that. Meanwhile, there's another pack that won't even directly engage the party, and if attacked, will leave combat as soon as they've gotten their share of blood. Finally, killing the "diplomatic" pack could potentially lead to an even better reward (as many weird healing crystals as the party can carry), with the consequence of making every other pack hostile. But would ridding the lands of bloodsucking monsters be such a bad thing? No easy answers here. No simple solution.
  

And that, I guess, is what I've been trying to get at: when designing a situation, encounter or location, consider the logical consequences of its likely outcomes. It shouldn't matter whether those consequences would be beneficial or prejudicial to the players and their characters, as long as they're organic. 

The world is your character, and playing it straight can do wonders for your campaign's verisimilitude.

HEXEMBER: Crimson Crystarium

Before we begin, here's a recap: Hexember is a month-long series of posts, each of which presents a hex and its points of interest, tailored for OSR hexcrawls (but compatible with most games). If you need a simple procedure for exploring hexes, I included one in the first entry!

CRIMSON CRYSTARIUM

✦ At first glance

Sharp, ferrous, perilous and yet strangely magnificent, this region is covered in blood-red crystals, tended for and fed by a ravenous vampire clan, the Sanguine Grievers. Long ago, these vampires were known for their nobility and influence, but after a hunter destroyed their progenitor, they left all of that behind, seizing these lands as their territory and starting a centuries-long ritual to bring him back. 

By sacrificing the blood of travelers and trespassers, the Grievers have grown a garden of crystals — or, as they call it, a crystarium — that stretches as far as the eye can see. These crystals are slowly taking the form of the clan's former estate, but its completion is still centuries away. Still, their effects can already be felt, as the Grievers are completely immune to the sun's baleful reckoning in these lands.

1-3. The Hunting Grounds

Anyone unlucky (or incautiously brave) enough to travel through the Crimson Crystarium will probably find themselves right in the middle of the Sanguine Grievers' hunting grounds. Surrounded by their gruesome creations, the travelers will immediately be approached by one of three hunting packs; roll a d4 to determine which.

• 1-2, the commanding, proud and honorable Heirs will openly approach the party and challenge them to a fight. If their challenge is accepted, there are d4x2 Heirs in the pack; stat most of them as regular vampires in your system of choice, but give their leader +2 HD. If half of them are defeated, or if their leader loses over half of their HP, they will humbly recognize the party's valor and propose an end to the battle. If the party accepts, they shall henceforth be under the pack's protection, and will be granted free passage through the hunting grounds now and forever. If, however, they decide to fight to the death, all three packs will be permanently hostile and will attack on sight the next time the party enters their territory.
  

• 3, the savvy Growers will send a delegation of d4+1 blood servants to intercept the party. These servants are pale humans dressed in ruined clothes that may have once been worn by nobility, but hasn't been in use for centuries. They come with an offer: if the party agrees to accompany them back to the pack's den, no harm will come to them (proceed to the next point of interest). If not, they will be at the mercy of the other packs (roll again!).
  

• 4, the sadistic Stalkers will pursue the party for hours, but won't engage them directly unless any character looks sick, weak or wounded. The torments doled by the pack tend to take the form of hideous laughter in the distance, exsanguinated corpses dropped in the party's path, tempting promises of immortality whispered directly into each character's mind, copious, graphic descriptions of what they're going to do to the party once they catch them, and finally, as the hunting grounds are departed, an invitation to "come play with us again". In the event of a fight, the Stalkers are to be statted with -1 HD, and there are 2d6x2 of them. They won't fight to the death, however, and once they make at least two characters bleed, the whole pack will skulk back into the shadows, laughing all the way.

 

4. The Scarlet Chapel

The section of the Crystarium claimed by the Growers is slowly taking the shape of a chapel, though it is very far from finished. In any case, a party that decides to parlay with the pack will be welcomed with pomp, circumstance and a strange proposal: they may take a crimson shard with them, but in exchange, they must willingly feed the Crystarium, sacrificing d6 HP in the process. As long as it's fed with blood once a week, a crimson shard will recover d4 HP for every party member on a daily basis. If the characters refuse the bargain, they will be allowed to leave unharmed... this time. If combat is engaged, treat the Growers like the Heirs, but with d4x4 members, no leader and an inclination towards surrendering and bargaining if defeat seems inevitable.

INSPIRATIONS

Vampire: The Masquerade was the obvious inspiration here; this is basically what The Eldest (as the Tzimisce Antediluvian is commonly known) became beneath New York, but as a crystalline sprawl instead. Innistrad was also conceptually important for the Crimson Crystarium, even if the Sanguine Grievers have more in common with Ravnica's vampires than with Innistrad's vampiric families.

USING THE GRIEVERS AS A FACTION

Factions are one of the best parts of any hexcrawl, and the Sanguine Grievers could easily be expanded into a full-fledged faction (although a regional one, at best). If you decide to do so, I recommend creating at least one important NPC for each pack. Give them one or two extravagant personality traits (a seductive, flirty and sadistic Stalker will immediately leave an impression on the party, especially if they're Astarion fans), and let them act as the pack's "face" when interacting with other factions and the party. 

You should also consider giving each pack a clear goal for the future, and at least one way of achieving that goal. The Heirs could be recruiting valiant warriors from neighboring hexes in order to expand their ranks, while the obvious route with the Growers is proselytizing their progenitor's word throughout the land, slowly building an insidious cult. And when the Stalkers start hunting outside the Crystarium, well, that's the perfect excuse to set up some inter-faction conflicts!

HEXEMBER: Chronal Wastes

Here's a quick recap: Hexember is a series of semi-daily blogposts where I detail a hex and its points of interest, tailored for OSR hexcrawls (but compatible with most games). If you need a simple procedure for exploring hexes, I included one in the first entry!

CHRONAL WASTES

✦ At first glance

A magical catastrophe has befallen these lands, causing the landscape to constantly flicker between different eras, ranging from an Ice Age, a post-industrial nightmarish wasteland or a barren battlefield filled with trenches and corpses. Sometimes, it stays in an era for hours. Other times, it changes several times in the span of a minute. The only predictable things about the Chronal Wastes are its unpredictability, and the fact that any living things trapped in its many eras normally can't interact with travelers, for they are stuck in an unbreakable loop.

1-2. The Disaster

The vast majority of the Chronal Wastes is comprised of an area known simply as the Disaster. For every hour spent in this area, roll a d20.

• 1-5, the wastes manifest as idyllic fields of prismatic flowers, constantly changing shapes and colors. Those flowers can be picked and sold, though they'll become normal flowers in d4 days. Herbalists, druids and mages will pay at least 20 copper coins per flower. 
• 6-12, the wastes are undergoing an Ice Age. Unless they are appropriately dressed for the freezing cold, the party will suffer d6 damage for every hour spent braving the elements.
• 13-16, a time-storm will be raging through the area, violently mixing traits from every conceivable era and preventing any progress from being made in a journey until it settles. When a traveler survives a time-storm, they emerge a few years younger or older from it. Roll 3d6: the first determines whether a character becomes younger (odds) or older (evens), the second determines how many years they gain or lose, and the third determines how many days it takes for them to get back to normal.
• 17-19, the party finds itself in the middle of every war that's ever been or ever will be fought in these lands. Although the combatants will usually ignore them, the party has a 2-in-6 chance of being perceived as enemies by a squad of d8+2 soldiers wearing elegant uniforms and carrying 18th century firearms. If the characters fight and defeat those soldiers, they can keep the firearms and enough ammo for three encounters.
  
• 20, roll 2d20 and combine the results.
  

3. The Royal Academy of Chronomancy

The very source of the Chronal Wastes and the former authority on time magic, the Royal Academy of Chronomancy fell victim to its own hubris. Whatever caused the Disaster, it's too late to fix it, but the Academy may still offer knowledge for those willing to risk repeating their mistakes. When the party visits the Academy, roll a d6 to determine the state they find it in:

• 1-2, the Academy has yet to be built, and all the party finds are its foundations, rich in chronal energy. A sufficiently powerful mage will be capable of detecting these energies, which can be used to immediately replenish all of their spells and any spent scrolls.
  
• 3-5, the party finds the Academy in the middle of the incident that brought its downfall. Students are disintegrating and the walls are rapidly crumbling, while professors are valiantly yet uselessly trying to counteract what triggered the disaster. The party can try to uncover the mystery behind this catastrophe, but they've arrived too late to find much more than the following clues: the fuming, blindingly white shell of a divine egg, a professor exclaiming that "the divine one is free", and another pleading for everyone not to hurt it, because "it's just a child, it doesn't know what it's doing".
• 6, visiting the Royal Academy of Chronomancy in its heyday is a rare privilege, even if it's eerily ethereal. The student body, the faculty and the staff are mere after-images, incapable of seeing the party or interacting with them, and busily living out their daily lives with not a care in the world. The Academy is flourishing in every way, its ivory walls standing tall. Though nothing can be taken from here without disappearing, the Library of Eons still offers the world's largest selection of books, some of which haven't even been written yet. Alas, the party can't stay here forever, and the Academy will shift to another era in d4 hours.

4. The Cave of Epochs

Scintillating with the promise of safety, the Cave of Epochs offers a refuge from the chaos outside, yet it was here that most chronomancers mined one of the most valuable resources of their craft: the omen stones. When a character gazes deep into the cave's glittering walls, they have a 2-in-6 chance of finding an omen stone and experiencing an omen. Roll a d4 to determine which kind of omen they receive.

• 1-2, they sense that someone they trust will betray them in the future.
  
• 3, they get a glimpse of an impending (yet preventable) disaster.
  
• 4, they don't see anything, but what does that say about their future?
  

These omens would be more aptly described as intuitive feelings than as precise visions, but they are rarely wrong. The GM is free to plan a way to incorporate them in a future session or to ignore them completely. Rarely doesn't mean never, after all.

 

Omen stones can be mined, and weapons infused with them have an infamous ability: anything hit by one will age d10 years. After rolling a 1, the weapon will lose its charge, but it can be restored by bringing it to the Chronal Wastes. Most merchants won't pay anything for an omen stone out of superstition, but a crazy, ambitious or driven blacksmith may be willing to craft something with one.

 

INSPIRATIONS

The concept for the Chronal Wastes came from a Twitter thread I wrote last year, back when I was experimenting with using MtG cards as oracles. The execution, however, owes a lot to the film Synchronic (by Benson and Moorhead, two of my favorite directors) and the comic DIE, by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans. Can't say much more than that, though, lest we head into spoiler territory!