Thoughts on Pathfinder, WFRP and Minimalism

 

Yesterday I remembered that a few years ago I purchased a huge collection of Pathfinder PDFs. I recall it being a humble bundle (or something similar) and that I acquired approximately $350 worth of product for around $20. Always on the hunt for inspiration (and new monsters) I dusted off my Paizo account and downloaded a few.

After skimming about half a dozen products from this collection, I have determined that Pathfinder is of no interest to me.

Interestingly, I found a very good blog that feels the same way. He takes the objectively railroady, overwritten and heavily-padded Pathfinder adventures and turns them into OSR gold (or at least silver). Plus, he usually reduces the word count by about 95%. I'm not kidding, he made the 600 page Kingmaker module into a 3-page hex crawl. I'm impressed with the result, because if he wasn't doing this, I would have no reason to even think about Pathfinder.

This comes back to another issue I've been grappling with for about a decade; this issue is what led me into the open arms of the OSR; the issue that story-forward adventures seem incompatible with high player-agency adventures. In my experience, it's one or the other, but thanks to the blog I found above, he's helped me reconcile these differences. He explains it like this: Space versus Time. 

 

"Modern" or "New School" adventures are written in Time, meaning that events are arranged in order. You start at A, move to B, and move to C. You are rarely able to skip a step. OSR adventures are Space: Events A B and C are happening simultaneously in different parts of the world, and the players can visit them in any order. The main reason modern adventures use Time is because the challenge level has to be very specific or the players risk unfair and annoying deaths at the hands of too-powerful enemies. The OSR doesn't have that kind of problem; it's designed to feel more like a real world, with various but usually knowable dangers in reasonable places.

Here's my issue: I would really like to run Warhammer Fantasy RPG. I ran two sessions in the early summer of 2020, but it fell flat. My main campaign is a pure OSR romp in a megadungeon; the players have complete control over where they go and who they talk to. I don't even prep adventures beyond answering players' questions. WFRP is necessarily more story-driven by its design; players must talk with NPCs and engage with the plot to make anything happen. My issue is that I find this entire idea exhausting. Yes, the players would have a more engaging roleplaying experience, but I, the GM, don't usually have the time or the interest to prep such a game, especially one I was writing myself. There have been a handful of times in the last year of playing my main campaign when I considered cancelling a session, but was able to play anyway, lacking my normal interest and enthusiasm. We still had a good time. This is simply not possible in a story-focused game; if I was too tired one week, we'd either play a board game, or more likely, cancel.

I've been pondering this issue, as I said, for as long as I've been playing roleplaying games. As mentioned above, that helpful blogger has helped elucidate my issue and shed some light on a possible solutions; prep situations, not plots. The WFRP starter set has an adventure (that I've run) which I found to be a mostly-frustrating railroad. My players generally agreed. The structure of the story is as follows: 

 

** SPOILERS FOR THE WFRP 4E STARTER SET**

1. The players are out shopping at a market one day, and a riot breaks out. There is a brief fight scene, and the players are arrested.
2. They are put on trial, but a helpful lawyer volunteers her services and gets the judge to give them a lenient sentence: Instead of execution, they have to serve as part-time city guards for three years (oof).
3. The rest of the adventure is a series of micro-adventures, basically scenarios that can be mixed, matched and played in any order.
4. During this time, the GM can sprinkle in any number of other plot hooks while the players are continuing their parole as guards. Each adventure is standalone. There is no overarching plot.
5. They can investigate missing people, eventually learning there is a troll in the river.
6. They learn of a merchant conducting a scam on some other merchants, and they can intervene in a variety of ways.
7. After completing enough of these micro adventures, they have enough experience to finish the adventure; they are approached by the ex-captain of the guard asking for an escort for an important prisoner. He's apparently cursed and the other guards refuse to help. I didn't realize guards were able to refuse an assignment, but anyway.
8. The players can refuse to help, which means chaos cultists kill the small escort and capture the prisoner. Otherwise, the players have a chance to fight them off and successfully lead the man to his execution.
9. That's the end of the "official" plot in the beginner box. There are also 10 other small, unconnected adventures the GM can include in the main thread of the adventure as side quests, or ignore completely. 
    
   **END SPOILERS**
   

The quests presented her are generally well-written and creative. But how could we take these unconnected adventures and make them into a more cohesive whole? How can we provide a default action and default goal to players who are patrolling around the city for multiple sessions?

One idea has the party acting as road wardens, keeping 100 miles of road safe from the forces of evil. They have a little home base and a constant influx of travelers, plus a fairly open area to investigate mischief. Obviously there are chaos cultists, mutants and beastmen lurking in the (totally unmapped) woods. This structure would provide a default goal (secure the road) and default action (do the adventure of the week).