The OSR and Dungeon Synth, Part 1

The OSR and Dungeon Synth, Part 1: A Brief History, The Elephant In The Room, and What To Do About It

I see crossover more and more between two of my main interests in life (music and table-top games), so I feel it’s ideal to talk about them together, as the overlap is real, and there’s some education about both I feel is pertinent. 

Heavy Metal and D&D grew up together, both in their formative years from the 70s and 80s and into the modern era. Metal drew heavily from fantasy, and D&D was a game set in a fantastic world. Eventually, the second wave of black metal formed in the mid to late 80s and early 90s, and with it came artists who drew upon the work of electronic musicians such as Tangerine Dream as well as Industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle to form a further sub-genre that would be known as Dungeon Synth. Not that the creation of the genre is or was a straight line, artists now considered foundational, like Jim Kirkwood, didn’t come from that scene. Largely, the genre and scene has seen a revival/boom since 2010 onwards. The music was dark, beautiful, and (in both senses of the word) fantastic.

It was shortly before 2010 when I was first introduced to the OSR. The Old School Renaissance was largely seen as a response to 4th edition and the rules bloat that had accompanied 3e, and was largely driven on blogs and the now defunct G+ social media platform. It was, and still is, grassroots and anti-corporate. This is pertinent: metal, especially underground metal such as death and black metal, was largely influenced by the hardcore and punk scenes. DIY ethos and hearty helping of fuckin’ attitude have always accompanied these spaces. One does not simply walk into Mordor, and one does not wear khakis and a polo to see Glacial Tomb or Spectral Wound. 

This is where things get interesting. Both of these things/places/scenes/genres/arts/whatever are steeped in fantasy and DIY ethos, separated by mediums and time, and seem to be meeting up again. WARPLAND and Mörk Borg both announced Dungeon Synth Soundtracks to go with their games. The dungeon synth label Heimat Der Katastrophe puts the OSR logo on their cassette tapes, which each come with a short adventure. Northeast Dungeon Siege (a live DS music event) had a space where people played Dungeon Crawl Classics a few years back.   It’s like long-lost twins finding each other after so long: one’s grim, frost-bitten mood matching the other’s harsh, torch-lit atmosphere. Paired swords, raised in moon-light. 

Alas, like cursed twins, both scenes aren’t without significant problems, mostly in the creators of some of their content. Early and influential dungeon synth artists like Burzum and Lamentations are literal Nazis, the latter of which makes hate music and the former is a convicted murderer. Prominent OSR creator of the Adventurer, Conqueror, King system worked for alt-reich political puppets and openly supported Gamergate dogshit. The creator of Castle Xintillain made transphobic comments. Old Tower, prominently featured DS artist, has made Nazi music in the past. One of my favorite OSR publishers (the guy behind Lamentations of The Flame Princess) has had photos of himself with alt-reich-darling philosophers. 

The point is: there’s a lot of people in both scenes casually comfortable with hate, or actively trying to poison either scene with it. 

You may be positing to yourself, why I’m bringing this up. A lot of this is old-news, a lot of this revolves around funky D&D nobody gives a fuck about compared to 5e. 

A lot of reasons. Firstly, cross-pollination means you as an OSR reader may go looking for Dungeon Synth music (or vice-versa) , and may get the recommendation to give your money to people who actively wish you were dead, or encourage people to commit violent crimes against you. That’s not fucking cool. I, and now we, have a responsibility to make sure others are informed about that shit. That isn’t to say that all artists within the scene are bigots or scum, but you should definitely do some research on an artist before you buy from them.

Secondly, because I believe that diversity is strength, and that we’re stronger as a species together. No man is an island, and everybody needs somebody. we’re all deserving of equality, equity, and compassion. Those who would see it taken from us are detrimental to humanity as a whole. We have a responsibility to make that space at our table for our brothers and sisters who would be so marginalized.

Thirdly, because hate-group knucklefucking scum actively sees both these scenes as overwhelmingly white, straight, and being willing to entertain their ideals. We have a responsibility to prove them wrong, to uphold and defend our friends and family against those who would try to do us harm from within. 

And lastly, because at some point in time, one of your favorite authors or artists is gonna be outed as scum. It’s happened to me a lot over the years. A lot of metalheads and punks and table-top nerds just shrug their shoulders and say, “well, I separate the art from the artist.” and then vomit forth a stream of thoughts that Lindsay Ellis voiced (and refuted) better in her videos on Death of the Author. I’ve struggled with the love of a piece of art knowing the artist is a shitty person. I’ve read a lot about it. And here is what I have to say about the subject:

When you consume art made by a shitty person, what you say is that the product they make is more valuable than those people they have or would hurt. 

So what do we do when art we love is made by bad people? What do we do with our books and tapes by bad people? Well, as for the physical media, I don’t know. I’m a firm believer that where books burn, bodies follow. So I don’t advocate for the destruction of such items. As for the influence itself, or your love for the piece, allow me to suggest this: we have a responsibility as creators to make better art. If that means making newer, better OSR elf-games and dungeon synth, then so be it.

Adventure Gear Packages for OSE

 So I have recently done three things: made a character for OSE, made three characters for 5e, and held a session zero for my latest group using OSE. I can definitively say this: making a character in 5e is not fun. It’s quite literally an ordeal where you labor over minutiae of choices for feats and application of allotment of small numbers. Old School Essentials, on the other hand, is damn near perfect. You roll and assign, choose a class and you’re off to the races just about. 

That is, until you have to buy your adventuring gear. 

5e’s take on adventuring gear with starter packet options is brilliant, and I love it. It’s damn near the only thing it does right. I watched six newbie players share my one OSE book for three hours at a session zero where they insisted on spending every damn coin they rolled for. It was horrendous, mostly because I hate shopping in books almost as much as I hate shopping in malls. The tedium eats me alive. Nobody should get into a thirty minute convo about whether or not they should choose a mace or a Warhammer: they’re both d6 blunt. 

So, long story short is, I took the average roll of OSE’s starting gold and “bought” a few starter set options for my players to expedite this process in the future.  

Adventuring Packs for OSE

Basic Pack

Backpack

Rope

Water skin

Rations 7

Torches 6

10 foot pole

Tinderbox 

Total cost ~20 gold

In addition, take the following supplies for your class:

Fighter 

Chainmail

Shield

Sword

Handaxe 

Javelins x5

Or

Chainmail

Shortbow

Two handed sword

Quiver of 20 arrows 

Or

Leather Armor

Longbow

Quiver of 20 arrows

Polearm 

Dagger

~75 to 80 gold

Cleric

Chainmail

Warhammer

Holy symbol

Wolfsbane

Sling

Or

Plate Armor

Mace

Garlic

Holywater 

Stakes and a mallet 

Or

Leather armor

Holy Symbol

Oil Flask x2 

Wolfsbane

Staff 

Sling

~ 80 gold

Thief

Leather Armor

Thieves’ Tools

Grappling Hook

Iron spikes

Small hammer

Steel mirror

Dagger

Sling

Or

Leather Armor

Thieves’ Tools

Short Sword

Sling

Lantern 

Oil x2

Large sack

Small sack

Crowbar

Or

Leather armor

Thieves’ Tools

Shortbow 

Quiver of 20 arrows

~70 to 80 gold

Magic User

A Spellbook 

A staff

A scroll of Detect Magic

Long, flowy robes 

Or

A small animal possessed by a Familiar Spirit (acts as Spellbook)

A dagger

A potion of Sleep

A tall pointy hat

Or

A Spellbook 

Oil Flask x2

A potion of Fire Breathing

A velvet cloak

~ ?

* * *

Obviously this isn’t perfect nor is it exhaustive, but it will get your level ones into the dungeon faster rather than slower.  I couldn’t calculate the final price on wizard gear, and I realize that part of this is because magic users aren’t as gear intensive as fighter or thieves, but also because there aren’t prices for magical items. Also, yes, I know wizards aren’t proficient with staves, but wizards with staffs look cool and make great airbrush artwork on the side of vans, so there. 

The Three Questions

Crypt-Thing is Back from the grave!!! A very busy time at school and then crushing work has kept me away, but I’ve resolved not to let my blog become a dead one. Enough about my personal life, let’s get down to brass tacks.

The greatest element I’ve ever added to my D&D game is Feedback. Some of you in the workforce may eschew this, as you feel it reminds you too much of your corporate job, or adds something un-fun into the game. I’d rather like to think that although we have feedback loops within the system of the game to speak to as if we’re having fun or not, somethings things go awry just as much as they go horrifically wrong. You’ll give a player an open plate, and then railroad them. You’ll let a player talk you into adjusting a die-roll. Things will eventually go wrong. You’ll also go into a game weary and unprepared and improv a session so great  you’ll never see again. You’ll invent a rule on the fly that will change your games forever. Things will eventually go very right. 

But how do you know your players enjoyed the game? How do you know they had fun? Some people are bombastic personalities, who shout and laugh and jump up when they score a critical. Some people are much more reserved, and enjoy RPGs but don’t display such open emotion.  Sometimes both of these people aren’t having fun, even when they do those things that keen you in that they are. 

Well, frankly, I’m no expert at reading people (despite it being a skill you need as a referee). So I decided to just flat-out ask my players. 

At the end of every session, I ask The Three Questions: 

What are some things you thought I did well? 

What are some things you thought I did poorly?

Did you have fun?

This may seem a little obvious and is frankly blunt, but I think blunt can be good sometimes. The last question in particular has often gotten me “yes” but occasionally a “no” from people trying the game the first time or if I made a gratuitous error. 

Still, knowing where and how you messed up or areas you need to improve are pertinent. It gives you a goal you can focus in on, especially if you write down the errors and positives if you make notes. And it lets you see those good/bad elements in material you run written by others, which helps to either bolster your confidence or show examples of how to shore up those weak points. It makes you aware of your strengths and your foibles and allows you to see repeated patterns of behavior in your games from you as the game master. 

It’s because of these questions I know that: 

• I am good at describing things. 
• I am bad at moving the spotlight around the room.
• I am good at educating new players 
• I am bad at including puzzle design during my initial drafts
• I am good at mediating between players out of game
• I am bad at mediating at the table
• My max table size is six players
• My players should switch seats often
• I am forgetful
• I am good at improv
• I am
• Bad at writing that improv down for later

So, this is just an example of some of the stuff I’ve learned. Clearly this may not be for everyone. Indeed, people who aren’t the self-reflective types may just toss this out the window. But I find that, for me, this works well. 

Thoughts On Making A Big Artsy Fartsy Megadungeon

So, I think I mentioned during my fantasy heartbreaker post I’ve been working on my Megadungeon for some time now. It feels like three years. Although more likely just over one. I take a long time to brainstorm, and then write stuff down. 

I initially told my friends in private about my idea in 2018 (I’m hoping to do initial play through this year), after having played a few sessions of another megadungeon, a big artsy-fartsy one. It was my first time playing both an OSR system and also first time playing in a dungeon in years. When WebDM says Megadungeon play is Mainlining D&D heroin directly into your eyeballs, I wanna let you know that’s exactly what it is. I’m gonna be chasing that dragon till I’m mouldering in my own crypt. It firmly solidified my love of old-school play and also dungeons. 

Since then I’ve constantly read about dungeons, watched videos, looked at crazy places for ideas. Copious research. All the while tinkering with this thing I decided I wanted to build. An epic, bloated, monstrous thing that cannot be wrangled or handled in one go. I’ve stuck world-ending monsters, primordial giants, celestial gods, and the foulest nightmares in the deepest parts of this thing. All the while learning, plotting, whetting my blades in anticipation of adventurers to devour.

Also it’s a giant pile of bullshit, and I cannot draw a map to save my ass.

So, I have done and added in all kinds of weird shit into this thing/place and invented levels and had “good ideas” left and right. Example: making one level a giant worm-god, who’s organs are the rooms of the dungeon, be speared in two by a fallen space ship, and thus wrapped around it like a needle/fishing-hook. 

That does not map well, at all. Nor does it, like, lend itself to super traditional treasures/etc. This makes it hard to steal liberally from other authors and borrow the usual kinda of things like coins and magic weapons from them. To say the least of things like the sheer availability of maps and such online. 

Don’t get me wrong: it’s beautiful, it’s different, it’s weird-ass shit man, but that has to be tempered with ease of playability. And I think that, when I make my next Megadungeon, that might take precedence. I might run with something pre-made like Barrowmaze, Arden Vul, or Castle Whiterock. Something that’s a little more forgiving in its design so that I can like... just grab a map pack and work on inventing monsters. 

Clearly, a cartographer, I am not. 

I wasn’t kidding about the world-ending monsters either. My players could intentionally or inadvertently let them loose. So much for my homebrew world. That being said, the danger being very real is a clear OSR concept I love to death, and I welcome having my homebrew wrecked. Others, like Cavegirl with her especially fantastic “Gardens of Ynn” have certainly brave enough to include some Horrific monsters. 

After I get through with this, I’m gonna be working on figuring out the various challenges and puzzles to perplex my parties that play through this place. Unlike combat, which has been a codified and mainstay focus of D&D and other TTRPGs for years, the design and application of puzzles is mostly anecdotal, limited to blogs and one book (which I’m not currently enjoying as it has too many combat encounters).

And and after that I get to make up all the treasure. Did I mention the map again? 

The point is that my last blog about holistic design in a dungeon and Megadungeon is taxing and can make your head fell like your brain is mostly runny eggs. It’s at this point in time (where I’m at now) that I’m mostly feeling a “Thanks, I hate it” element to my monstrosity as it wheezes in the various notes of my slush pile. I’m reminded of the advice of one of my favorite mini painters in that, as you work on a creative piece, you’ll eventually get to a point where you hate it, and you can’t stand the sight of it, and you think it’s garbage. But the answer is to keep working on it.

So in an effort to shirk my work on this thing, and also in the interest of writing just to see my words on screen, lemme tell you how I have made and/or am making this thing: 

1. I brainstormed up a bunch of different levels with various “themes” or elements I loved, like giant psychic bees, or mixing Saturday morning cartoons with classic modules from ages past. 
2. Completely fuck everything up by not knowing what direction to go in next. I’ve made dungeons before, but not nine levels of a Megadungeon with 30+ rooms a level.
3. Decide that one level should be a 60+ hex grid crawl full of elves you have to write your own elf names for, which is weird cause you don’t even like elves. 
4. Recycle old content from something you wrote years ago that’s only slightly incongruous to your current play style. Write some major NPCs for each level.
5. Keep recycling. Use that slush pile, this is why it exists. Start naming rooms and figuring out what is weird and special about each level, things like magical forges and cosmic torture racks, etc.
6. After idly and unfocused working on bits and bobs here and there, get yourself together and make this list: 

1) Map Each Section

2) Populate the areas afterwards, including cross pollinating from other areas

3) Take Each Area Through the Rule of 3

4) Go through Goblin Punch’s Dungeon Checklist

5) Playtest

This is actually where I’m currently at. I’m not even done with step one of part six, but obviously I’m gonna be including magic items and other loot for my players. I also need to revisit some blog articles to try and steal some better ideas to restate for my stuff. 

Some of you may be asking, “Crypt Thing, what’s the Rule of 3?” Well, it’s this:

Per 10 rooms Your dungeon should have:

3 should have NPCs

3 Should Have Interesting Things

3 Puzzles/Traps (all should have multiple ways of being solved)

3 Secrets/Knowledge

3 Treasure (2 mundane 1 magical, keep magic feeling like magic)

3 Combat (2 Potential and 1 direct, more if your party is especially warlike)

1 Empty

And I know what you’re thinking “What?! That’s way more than 3! That’s way more than the ten rooms! Your math is whack!” Well, duh. The idea is that... too many empty rooms makes for a dull dungeon. And all rooms become empty when you kill everything else inside. The concept is you want to keep dramatic tension and narrative flow happening. This can be done many ways, but NPCs are the primary means of exposition. Beyond that, it encourages good social role-play in the dungeon. And there’s nothing that says you can’t lump multiple of these things in the same room. Or that you can’t have the treasure or the monster be the interesting thing. Or that the NPC is the combat, or the Monster itself is the treasure. It’s kind of mix and match and loosey-goosey that way. It’s really just a guideline that I use to remind myself of how “busy” the dungeon should feel.

I think the most pertinent element of all this is: a Megadungeon doesn’t get built unless you’re working on it. Do the work. And my current method of building it wholly now ahead of time isn’t the easiest way of doing things. But I am working on it, and I think that my method is gonna pay off, it just doesn’t feel like it right now.

Dungeon Design For Beginners 102

So, this blog post is gonna get a bit heady and we’re gonna move into some deep-think spaces. I’m also gonna reference several blog posts, YouTube videos, and books you may or not be familiar with. That’s ok, I promise to give the title and author, and trust that you are capable of searching out this info if so desired for a more rounded and complete understanding of my thought processes. 

So, like most of the things that provoke me to scream into the void, someone in one of my various social-media groups made a complaint the other day. It was about dungeons, and specifically about megadungeons, which are a personal favorite. 

So, their complaint was on megadungeons effectively being... procedurally generated or non-sensical in nature. I disagree with them heavily based off my own experiences with dungeon play, which is my favorite kind of D&D adventure. Not to say that I cannot or do not see where they are coming from. I think that for those who have taken the barest steps into dungeon creation (filling an underground labyrinth with monsters and traps before turning the party loose upon it) it can leave certain players perplexed. Asking not the usual questions of “what do they eat?” or “where do they poop?” or “how did these owlbears eat so much gold and +1 swords?”, but rather “why?”. Why the dungeon? Why are the monsters in this room? Why are goblins green (or orange)? And most likely “why doesn’t this make sense? What is missing?”

Now you may certainly be saying “Oh CryptThing! This is a simple matter is dungeon-ecology! And giving your dungeon and monsters an appropriate backstory!” But I think it is far from that. It is a matter of dungeon-ecology from a narrative viewpoint, but also a matter to be handled from a Game Board view, and also a matter of (likely) boring numerical combat for room after room with rolling dice to find and eliminate traps and search empty rooms rather than using descriptions to achieve the appropriate details to get adventurers to investigate.

A lot, and I mean a LOT of stuff has been written and said about Dungeon Ecology. Ben at Questing Beast on YouTube has a lovely series of videos he’s working on now and goes into detail on the subject, and it’s been outlined in the dungeon and Megadungeon videos by WebDM and Nerdarchy as well, all available for free online.

From a narrative standpoint, a room full of goblins has to have at least three, if not four other rooms. This goblins have to eat, sleep, shit, and occupy their time somehow. Not every monster is comfortable living in its own droppings, like a penned in rat. Not every monster just kills and eats adventurers (ok, maybe some dragons do, but only some!) all day with no vegetables. And beyond undead monsters don’t just sit waiting for adventurers for eternity. Monsters, like NPCs, should have wants, needs, loves, and hates. For a lot of NPCs, I improv it. For some though (even minor ones) I write down at least what my monsters want and love, so that I know what to do if Characters interact with them. So a good example is like this: 

“Fartfang the Goblin

Imagine the two smelliest people you know and imagine they ate runny eggs and raw garlic for lunch and are the size of a toddler, but skinny, green, and cranky.

Loves: stinky cheese, picked eggs, colorful bugs and trinkets, little knives, raw meat, limericks, secret doors, friends, sugary foods, the color red

Wants: To find his way out of the lair of the Weeping Minotaur, to make new friends, to play pranks on adults, red paint, to play hide and seek, to prank adults”

And like, this is just a random NPC. He’s not a leader of a group, who may or may not be concerned with their group as a whole. But you should think of them that way. Also, this isn’t new advice, but if your referee struggles here, I suggest asking leading questions to try to garner more information out of them. 

The next bit is trickier. We’ve talked about traps before, and how I think they should be treated as puzzles, for the variance in challenge that they provide for the players at your table. For more information on that, see my blog post “Your Puzzles Need A Bypass” and for examples see my post “Three Traps”. If every trap you have is a poison needle in a door or a tripwire that requires perception to notice, I’d say you’re handling traps wrong. 

I’ve also written about combat encounters before, and how to keep them fresh and interesting. But the big take-away there was from (the most excellent and recommended) The Tome of Adventure Design by Frog God Games: combat encounters are only ever as fun as they are game-boards. This doesn’t have to be done with minis, it can be done with theater of the mind. My prior examples of “ten goblins in an empty room” and “ten goblins riding giant wasps as you have to climb a lattice-work wall” still stands. 

Here’s the kicker where things get complex: you have to combine those ideas for some (at least your core) rooms. Meaning that, for a good, interesting dungeon, a regular number of rooms must be filled with weird terrain and interesting combat. I’d even go so far as to say, “the more you give your players to interact with, the more likely they are to get creative, and thus have fun.” 

The real trick here is that this requires you to have a little improv flexibility, sound referee calls, and the ability to encourage and reward off-character sheet thinking. This can lead to a dilemma I call “The Feast Hall Fight”, where every time I set up a feasting hall for my players to fight in, it immediately goes to swords and spells and players running around the tables instead of jumping on them or under them, or kicking food into the face of enemies. It never turns into a damned food fight with the barbarian kicking plates into hobgoblin faces like a 90s high-school show. These are basically two sides of the same coin: one being a lack of things to interact with within the world, the other being a lack of interacting with the world and just interacting with the system.

This is further complicated in that these combined skills must and will be tested more as you add in other elements to the dungeon. Dungeons and megadungeons will feel more real and more alive if you include factions and NPCs and include traps/puzzles and fully flesh out the inside of the area you’re planning. 

“But Crypt Thing!” You cry, “That’s literally just one extra step and then the rest of usual world-building!” Yes. Exactly. I think that’s the problem is that people don’t too often view the dungeon as it’s own world, or a microcosm. And the crux of the matter is that a lot of dungeons are just caves with giant rats rather than separate fantastic realities. 

I think that dungeons should have a holistic approach to their design. Goblin Punch’s “Dungeon Checklist” is mandatory for dungeons. I also think the design approaches in Patrick Stuart’s “Silent Titans” is another damn fine example of holistic dungeon design. 

Here’s what I really think is the root cause of boring games for other players: people design the games the way they play them. And I don’t think this is good or works well. I think part of that holistic design process is stepping out of your shell and making things in a way that thinks differently than you do. 

Firm Opinion: Good games are designed so that players that have fun or interact with the game in a different way than the designer are capable of having fun. You need to make your games fun for everyone. 

That goes for dungeons too. 

When I’m working on my current megadungeon, as I design encounters, I already have a step on my list of “make sure to include tactical engagement” because I have a friend who thinks tactically. I have a friend who loves to solve puzzles, so including those is pertinent to my design. I asked my friends what they wanted to see in my Megadungeon, and one told me “a love story” so I have one of those in there. Another said “a true friend” and there’s definitely the potential for those in there. 

The idea of the above examples is that, as a referee, I’m thinking of my players wants and how they choose to interact with the game first. And I think this is the key element to being a good Dungeon Master, or referee, or whatever you call yourself.