Into the Odd, old school with some indie ideas

I want to like Into the Odd so much more than I do. True to its name, it's an odd combination of indie mechanical sensibilities and serious old school theme. And that's something that should work but, in this case, it came out feeling half-baked. 

At its heart, Into the Odd is an old school dungeon crawl. And I mean 1974 Darkmoore old school, before dungeon crawls were codified into medieval European sword and sorcery. 

Character creation and mechanics are dirt simple. You make a character by rolling 3d6 three times for strength, dexterity and will plus a d6 for hit points. You then cross reference your highest stat and your hit points to get your starting pack. Which doesn't just include equipment. You also get things like supernatural powers or disfigurements. The chart is the great equalizer. If you have lousy stats, you get great equipment and powers.

If you're trying to do something that doesn't involve hurting folks, you need to roll under the appropriate stat on a d20. 

For combat, you don't need to roll to hit. You just roll for damage and subtract the other guy's armor from it. Hit points are really just ablative. After you work through them, you start damaging strength with a chance at doing critical damage. Some things, like poison, do extra nasty stuff with critical damage.

That's pretty much the rules in a nutshell. It takes about a minute to explain the rules and another minute to roll up a character. Of course, quick character creation and simple rules aren't that hard to find.

What actually makes Into the Odd interesting and ultimately, heartbreaking for me is the setting. It owes more to Jack Vance's Dying Earth than it does to Tolkien or Howard or Leiber. Although it's never actually explicitly stated, it sure feels like a post-apocalyptic world where the good times are so far gone that they are just vague myths. Not quite to the point of the Dying Earth but working its way there.

It's clearly not medieval since there are things like guns and factories and steam engines. On the other hand, most of the world seems to be nothing ruins and wilderness with city states being the biggest form of government.

Adventuring in the world of Into the Odd consists of going out into the wilderness and ruins and forgotten catacombs to find the lost wonders of the ancient world. So scavenging and grave robbing is clearly a major economic force.

What really gives the setting a distinctive flavor is the Arcana, the lost wonders and treasures of a forgotten age of miracles. These are not your generic magic items. They range from tchotchkes that can fit in your pocket to pieces of architecture. 

And they do very specific, ridiculously specific things. Think the mini-series The Lost Room things. Figuring out what Arcana can do and then how to make that useful is definitely a distinct part of the game.

I do have to say that the book doesn't just include the standard starter dungeon but a good-sized wilderness area around it, complete with a wandering encounter table and  encounters and story books on different hexes. As long as you're willing to wander around the Fallen Marshes, there's a decent amount of adventuring a GM can run in the fly.

Here's the rub. Into the Odd has simple rules and will make for a good quick and dirty dungeon crawl. But neither of those things are that hard to find. There are a lot of options out there for either one of them.

It's the setting, which is so old school that it touches the primordial roots of D&D that is the selling point for Into the Odd. And while the city of Hopesend Port and the Fallen Marshes do give you enough to run a short campaign, I wanted to see so much more of the setting. Yes, minimalism fits the old school feel but I could have easily enjoyed more than twice as much setting material.

Simple rules are nice but the flavor and setting was what I took away from the game and I wanted so much more.

Into the Odd is a quirky game that is three quarters Old School Revival with one quarter indie sensibilities about simple, intuitive rules. If it wasn't for that being a such extreme juxtaposition, I don't know if I'd consider it a indie game at all.

It's really not a game that I'd suggest. These days, my interests are in narrative driven games. But if someone else wanted to play it, I'm sure I have fun.

http://lostpages.storenvy.com/products/10964031-into-the-odd-print-pdf

 

My old school roots in RPGs

While I know that it probably sounds like I am only interested in avant-garde role-playing games, the truth is that my basic grounding was very traditional games. The three games that really helped me get into role playing games were second edition Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and the original Marvel Superheroes Role-Playing Game.

Of course, I had played role playing games before then, like first edition Dungeons and Dragons. However, those three games were the first really serious campaigns I was in and really made role playing games a serious hobby for me. Of course, the groups I played with get the real credit but the systems still help.

Dungeons and Dragons is the bedrock of role playing games. It's the game that got the industry started and I don't think role playing games would have inevitably, spontaneously come to life. They needed a spark and it turns out that a dragon is a pretty good spark.

I do know some gamers who actively dislike D&D. I think it's because D&D is the Man of role playing games and it's hip to hate the Man. And, as litigious as TSR would be, sometimes they really did act like the Man.

However, decades of development and changes and ideas has given Dungeons and Dragons one of the richest and most genuinely diverse contents out there. It has so much to offer. For a game that isn't designed to be a generic system that you can apply any theme to, it has a wealth of sandboxes to play in.

If I could only play one game for the rest of my life, it would be a tussle between Dungeons and Dragons and Go. Mind you, I'd argue I could play every edition and make a monk who plays Go and insist on playing Go, just in character.

I have to admit that reading the second edition of Call of Cthulhu's rules in middle school was my introduction to H. P. Lovecraft and I have been reading his works and the works he inspired. It's been a lifelong enjoyment and not a year goes by without me rereading some of his stories.

If you somehow don't know what Call of Cthulhu is about, it is a horror game inspired by the guy who helped define cosmic horror. You play relatively ordinary people trying to make it to the end without dying horribly or going insane.

Call of Cthulhu, particularly when it first came out, was really the role player.s role playing game. An investigator with a Bowie knife, a tommy guns and some dynamite will probably take out some deep ones. But against anything real monsters, let alone Great Old Ones, you will just die horribly. So you have to focus on playing the character, not fighting.

Back in the day, I was a little sheepish about playing Marvel Super Heroes, since it was such a simple system where one chart did most of the work. But I have had years of fun with it and even occasionally play it now.

And with such a simple system, it was easy to hack the system and play with the mechanics. (My primary GM didn't use the Marvel setting, just the rules, so we populated it with all of our own heroes and villains) I didn't really do that seriously until the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons but Marvel Super Heroes gave me a good start.

And, frankly, it was all such comic book silly fun :)

I've played and researched a lot of indie games in the last few years. But I really owe my grounding in the hobby and my love of the hobby to these old school games.