Beyond Sanctuary: Old School Mythic Adventures in Risus

As I previously mentioned, I am currently using the Mythic Game Master Emulator to experiment with playing Risus in the style of Old School D&D. Unlike my two previous Mythic GME/Risus adventures (Moon Goddess Is A Harsh Mistress and Lair of the Frog King), I do not expect this one to have a definite end.  The game is specifically designed to be an open-ended Sandbox/Western Marches-style game. There may be natural lulls in the action where I put it aside to focus on other stories, but I expect the game to continue for quite some time. Since this is an experiment, I expect that I'll be tinkering with rules and assumptions as I go.

My goal is to define only the information that I need to progress with the story. That means that the game world will be constructed on-the-fly (in a manner similar to Uncle Bear's post on Adventure Guided World-Building). Going into character generation, the only thing I know about the world is that it is an Old School Western Marches-style game. With each successive player character (I'll define six), the world will begin to take shape.

Character Generation

I will begin with standard 10-dice Risus characters. I struggled with this choice since beginning Risus characters seem to have have more depth than your typical D&D first-level character. In the end, I am opting for the full allotment of dice because it is the Risus standard. The whole point of this experiment is to see how Risus can be used to model Old School play. If I need to start veering off into house rule territory before I create my first character, then it wouldn't be a very successful experiment.

The following Advanced Options are in affect: Pumping, Double-Pumps (I presume for Vancian Magic cliches), Lucky Shots, and Sidekicks & Shieldmates. I suspect that Funky Dice will make an appearance at some point (most likely for monsters), but there doesn't seem to be any call for it right now.

Up next: the first character!