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Explaining RPGs: Old-School, Hexcrawl, and Dungeoncrawl narrative styles
This text presents some narrative genres to beginner masters. Understanding these genres can help guide the adventures and create a more fun session for everyone.
By Leandro, 03/29/22, translated by Humberto - 0 comments
Versions:
Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival or OSR.
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(note: I could be wrong, but Tolkien didn't like hippies and still had to deal with pirated publications of his work by counterculture adherents)
The result of this nostalgia was the release of RPG titles such as “Old Dragon”, “Forbidden Lands”, “Old-School Essentials” and “Dungeon Crawl Classics”. In narrative terms, these games present the possibility of collectively creating stories and scenarios that do not necessarily have an extensive canon like D&D scenarios, which favors the homemade creation of campaigns and the climate of mystery and constant danger for the players.

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Hexcrawl / Dungeoncrawl

hexcrawl
. The whole scene takes place in a specific area of a map that is most likely delimited by a hexagon and has the premise that players will scour everything they can to find their objective. Remember “Lord of the Rings”? Do you remember that at various times the entourage of heroes scours a wild environment to find a safe way to Mordor, including identifying safe spots to set up camps and gathering resources to continue their journey? This would also be a hexcrawl-based adventure.
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Dungeoncrawl
is the good old-fashioned theme of early D&D adventures. Players enter some artificial or natural structure, they have to search all the space for an item or something that allows them to fight against the great villain of the campaign. Here the miniatures and tactical combat shine. It is quite common for the GM to leave enemies in countless rooms, and traps scattered throughout the structure. The “Dungeon World” RPG reminded us very well that enemies shouldn't be stuck in some rooms, they circulate, hunt, have their nests, in some cases take care of their treasures and mainly have motivations. “While searching one of the company computers that the group has just broken into, the hacker discovers that someone else is breaking into that building's systems. Is there anyone else wanting to extract the same things and information as the group of players? What's the chance of this other group of intruders triggering something they shouldn't and having the security search for unwanted people on the perimeter?” We have to consider that sometimes the use of miniatures and tactical combat can make the game locked and a little monotonous for some players. An alternative would be to use imagination in place of thumbnails and cinematic-style descriptions of player and NPC's actions. The use of the so-called “Mind Theater”, which is nothing more than the use of imagination in place in the miniatures, can be very fruitful, as it allows and encourages players to describe as much detail as possible of their actions, and not just move a miniature on the board and say that you are going to attack something or someone. “After the discovery of the unwanted company by the hacker, a defense program was activated by the system and started chasing the invaders. At the same time, the hacker heard gunshots in the room he is in. While the hacker has to make do with the security system, the rest of the adventurers were surprised by a thug wearing the armor of a polyclub constantly associated with a white supremacist group. Will the group be able to hold the brute while the hacker safely unplugs the system? Won't hiding behind tables and columns, leaving the hacker exposed, make the situation worse? One of the players suggests that the others give him cover as he advances on the neo-Nazi brute to immobilize him and perhaps gain information about why he is there. Was he acting as security? Could the brute be a member of the other group that is invading the building?”Ad

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