Helping a Friend convert a setting.

So Ive recently agreed to help a friend convert their 3rd party Gonzo 5e D&D setting to Swords and Wizardry, which might be a bit of an undertaking given the 11 playable race options (mutants are my favourite i briefly played a mutant that dissolved in water during a one-shot, we started in a swamp...) dozens of monster stat blocks (probably not too hard but might be time consuming) and a bunch of weird magic items, but I have a fair amount of free time at the moment that's unsuited to running or playing games.

Oblivium as i said earlier is a Gonzo science fantasy setting set on a chaotic demi plane with a multitude of weird factions, currently available for 5e D&D from drive thru rpg: Oblivium - Avenesse | DriveThruRPG.com, it recently got a rather favourable review from possibly one of the most critical reviewers in the OSR [Review] Oblivium (5e); Sons of Satanis – Age of Dusk (wordpress.com). So this setting has quite a bit to offer and i can attest from personal experience its a lot of fun to explore.

First thing to work through will of course be character race options which work somewhat differently in S&W than 5e D&D for an idea of what's on offer the race list is as follows.

1. Apeling; self explanatory
2. Chaedran; humanoid weasels that giant insects as cattle and work animals
3. Chimera; mix between several humanoid races
4. Fallen ember; living humanoid leftovers of dead gods 
5. hollow; artificial people without souls
6. Ilmite; red skinned hairy humans that lay eggs? 
7. KoraaRa; catlike humanoids that are all heavily androgynous and skilled sailors
8. Middenian; Europeans from the Victorian age
9. Mutoid; mutants that live in a big desert self explanatory main trait is their mutations 
10. Reptilians; pretty typical pulp reptilians lots of Howard and Lovecraft inspiration here
11. Vethari; plant people with wooden bones

Im properly going to break up this list and do one or two races per post to keep things fairly slow but steady, after the races equipment will be the next thing since several of the races have access to different equipment than your standard fantasy hero, then on to the monsters and magic items that will take a fair amount of time but shouldn't be too heavy on mechanics (usually to convert 5e to OSR you simply make a monster 1 HD per CR with some fiddling per special abilitys, S&W is particularly good with explaining its power level system)

Expect future posts soon (Hopefully) 

Player behaviour: path of least resistance

Been kicking myself to post something but have generally been on a bit of a hiatus so i don't have much to write about, thought it might be worth discussing something thats quite easy to observe and talk about how it relates to adventure/dungeon design.

Simply place a normal 10ft wide corridor in front of your players next to a 5ft wide crawlspace and see which one they go for, its pretty likely that they will go for the normal 10ft wide corridor, awhile ago i had a similar situation in a dungeon i ran, part of it was accessible either through crawling through giant rat tunnels or via a locked and trapped door, unsurprisingly the players didn't choose this option and explored other areas of the dungeon even going to the second floor of the dungeon, there are obvious disadvantages to picking the harder path and no obvious benefit most players want to win after all.

This somewhat relates to a conversation i had with another DM about the dungeon design where he said that he often makes use of such path options and usually has easier encounters on the harder(in the sense of navigation) and harder encounters on the more normal path, this gives a very important risk vs reward situation, i can say that in the dungeon example i mentioned above nothing in that unexplored area was particularly difficult nor lacking in treasure.

I think if players had some hint that the harder path was just as or more profitable than the easy one it would change the way they consider such obstacles and may encourage more daring feats, an idea I've had linked to another dungeon I've been spit balling is a heavy gold idol at the bottom of a deep pit filled with water, the idol will sparkle in the torch light and have no hazards apart from its weight and the water, though not something the players might retrieve on a first delve it could encourage future delves of the same site with a clear payoff and maby even lead to additional submerged areas nearby to explore, 

This has largely been rambling but i don't want to fall too far behind on blog posting as its just going to get harder to get back into the longer i wait, i hope theres something you've found useful in this post and I'll try to write again soon 

MC