Dungeons: Bottom-Up Balance...

Balancing encounters is an ever-present concern for GMs not wishing to slaughter the party before gameplay even gets started. Danger abounds, whether at the hands (or claws) of monsters and/or poorly avoided traps in the dark, assuring that someone will eventually die in the course of their adventures. Old-school campaigns are famously life-taking, and to hear people talk, you'd think its progenitors were wholly unconcerned with the calculated fairness characterizing modern gameplay. Challenge demands an unfair universe.

But is this actually true? In a word, of course not. Make no mistake, old-school games were unforgiving even to otherwise powerful and well-prepared adventurers, especially given random chance's unsteady hand. The answer was a deliberate paranoia and making sure to avoid even a fair fight to escape an unfortunate "1" on the dice. And really, isn't this more realistic? Why exactly would (or should) every wilderness encounter coincidentally match the wandering party's current abilities? Avoidance is a fair strategy...

Which is to say, the players were expected to bring balance upon themselves by treading cautiously while picking their battles. But gaming's creators built a way to apply some much-needed balance into their creation with the concept of level(s). This is self-explanatory to a point, with higher character/monster/spell levels denoting correspondingly greater proficiency around which to assess and assign risk. But so-called dungeon levels remain the singular brilliance of the hobby's creators, for they safeguard that sense of balance.

While dungeons may have dotted the campaign map, these early games envisioned a single underground, descending many levels and under constant renovation, where adventurers sought their fortunes. Castle Blackmoor. Or Greyhawk. These were continuous subterranean destinations, self-contained and ever-changing. And each level corresponded to the levels, where applicable, of its inhabitants, allowing players to assess the risks and balance desired rewards in a sprawling place with endless interconnected strata...

A third-level party could explore the 3rd level of the dungeon for a balanced experience or delve deeper, facing ever-increasing dangers for greater rewards in a perilous lottery, gambling everything in heroic style. Alternately, they could stick to shallower depths, living easy for sure but getting far less for their troubles. The game rewarded the former while penalizing the latter, encouraging balanced encounters but leaving this strategic option open to parties having different priorities and access to many interconnected levels.

Vertical cross sections weren't just visually cool. They laid out access to different levels for just this purpose. Maybe a secret staircase connects the first level to the third, bypassing the second and allowing a different (and undoubtably critical) order of events. Imagine finding that flaming sword before those hobgoblins. This applied horizontally as well, and good GMs avoided railroading. In any event, the dungeon formed a bounded sandbox allowing heroic adventures in a carefully balanced setting that felt completely natural...

Now all of this is doubtless "no-shit" territory for many, but it's worth noting that while game balance, ultimately the province of the GM, remains a largely top-down affair, old-school conceptions of the singular dungeon and its far-flung levels made for a bottom-up approach that was realistic, empowering, and ultimately fair. Traditional megadungeons weren't for spectacle's sake alone but serviced a complex and interconnected system made to provide a fair and balanced experience with endless options tied up in a concise package.

Epoch and the Mother of Invention...

In a prehistoric game like Epoch, it's inevitable that players will want to invent certain things, whether domesticating animals for mounts or inventing the wheel, among other historical innovations. And it's not at all hard to see why. Aside from the prestige of reinventing history's vital advancements, modern players understand plenty, hard-won knowledge that forever shaped the arc of human history. From simple gardening (which changed everything) to the idea of riding tamed animals, contemporary people know their stuff...

Which presents a challenge. How to balance fun and innovative gameplay with the risk of breaking the immersion of a prehistoric milieu. This is subjective, of course. Maybe inventing a primitive black-powder cannon (Star Trek: Arena springs immediately to mind) works in a game's best interest. Even so, the following INVENTION RULES can help by enabling these innovations while preserving a suitably prehistoric atmosphere:

1) The (player) character must first witness some inspirational event, such as a boulder tumbling downhill to suggest the wheel or something equally comparative...

2) Next, the player must roll 18+ for Crafting to turn this inspiration into an idea, noting that failed results can be rerolled once per game month up to six months.

3) Successful characters can fashion a prototype, which might include implementing a useful idea, by rolling for whatever skill applies per conditions and/or the referee...

Now it's just a matter of using the new invention, subject to circumstance and/or whatever governing rules the referee imposes. It's old-fashioned roleplay now.

These rules are simple and conservative. Ideas flow naturally from in-game events and only manifest if the player thinks to try and good luck prevails. Of course, characters can learn from others, be it helpful time travelers or Clan-tooth tribesman providing the example of their specialized beasts. Using these simple rules, it's possible to allow creativity while keeping things primitive in the spirit of Epoch's universe. Any changes are small and incremental, but no less consequential if roleplayed well, much like our own history's advancement...

Mainstreaming's Trade-Off World...

There's never been a better time to be a gamer. It's our golden age. The mainstreaming of the hobby means we're no longer dismissed as nerds (not a pejorative in these better enlightened, media-saturated times), while the Satanic Panic, safely relegated to the dustbin of cringe history, is an amusing footnote to better days. If we want a new game, we can probably find what we're looking for, sometimes free. No niche is overlooked; and should we seek to publish original stuff, there's no keeping a good creative down...

But it's a trade-off world, and we pay for this abundance with other concessions, although it's entirely subjective. It probably depends on when someone was born, their influences, and whatever cryptic reasoning drew them to the pastime. Regular readers probably know where this is going, but stick around. The earliest hobby was an obscure subculture with an air of exclusivity, very much like a secret club; and with fewer games, its variety was largely down to individual campaigns, fostering an amateur, more player-focused atmosphere.

The scene today is vastly more crowded. Anything new is a needle tossed into an Olympic sized swimming pool filled to the top with still more needles. This is great for consumers, presumably, who can only benefit from the maximum possible choices, and perhaps even for a certain (amateur) breed of creative who delights in their process and is content to share, never asking for more than that. But the sheer volume of new stuff tends to obscure that not immediately rising to the top, becoming commercial and product-driven...

Is this Good? Bad? Neutral? Options are always good, and those who only want to flex their creative muscles and get their stuff out there benefit from doing so, which is their absolute prerogative. But mainstreaming also means too many choices to easily absorb by those with lives beyond roleplaying. And there's a tendency to approach these things as some higher authority, although this is far from a universal. Even the so-called GM is subject to a product's formal dictates because today's rules are complete, leaving less to interpretation.         

Alternately, while exclusive clubs promising endless potential offer fun, exclusive clubs can also be self-isolating. And ultimately self-limiting. And it's not like there aren't still endless horizons to seek and explore. New releases, once an exciting rarity, are regular occurrences in these abundant times, allowing us to pick and choose. We can play the way we prefer, ignoring any unwanted current trends. The old days were imposed by circumstance, but now we can choose our experience, be it mechanics, approach, or anything else...

Exclusive communities, including the OSR and assorted forums, still exist within the hobby; and with so many looking for new games, it's likely everything gets its share of attention, especially from appreciative players boosting a signal. There's literally nothing that can't be had, meaning we're wrong about the trade-off conundrum. This dichotomy only happens when we allow it. The earliest gaming scene was accidentally intimate, imposed by its early environmental conditions. Now it's a conscious choice, which is the ultimate outcome.