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At my local nerd convention, I had the opportunity to run one of the many games that I prepped for that convention weekend. That game was Mazes, which as a modern Old School Renaissance (OSR) game that has a wonderful mix between modern games and older games. I am not sponsored, but it was a wonderful game: you can get the physical games from here, and a PDF from here.

I prepped the game with the handy quickstart that they have available, because I love minimizing my prep. The dungeon that I ran was the Noctis Labryinth which was made for World of Dungeons, but I figured to wing it–most OSR seems to support that, anyway.

And, away we went! Me, an improviser, roleplaying, and storygame lover…and my players who were down to try a dunge–excuse me, Maze exploration.

How I ran it

I ran the game in a style that was very different from my own. Based on a blogpost on The Retired Adventurer, it noted that the culture of play of an OSR game was a little different than other categories of play. It focuses on problem solving and loose rules that allow for the expression of player ingenuity and skill rather than relying and leaning on game mechanics to solve these problems. So, it was purely a player’s imagination that allowed them to solve problems that were presented to them.

Mazes allows for this in a few wonderful ways. There is a metacurrency in Treasure that allows for the party to not worry about carrying every obscure object for the job–they can spend a Treasure (which is just a number of Treasures that they brought with them or discovered) to create an object that can help them in the maze.

The quickstart doesn’t have a few other rules, which I mentioned to the players at the start of the session, as they were relatively experienced with TTRPGs. One of them was Stars–a currency that can be used to accomplish great things without a roll. The other was access to the magic system in Mazes, which I think is beautifully created.

And from there, we went off! I presented the maze in a faithful way, using the notes provided to represent the world faithfully. The adventurers were to find a way to the Singing Stone, and they just had to map the way there. So, I engaged in another idea that isn’t purely Mazes–I described the world as best as I could, and they drew the map. It was another way to represent player skill, which I really wanted to lean into to represent OSR as a style of play.

There was mention of people who killed the folks at the camp, so I took some liberties to tease that they were still around. I made them roam the upper levels of the maze, where the players recognized the sounds of being followed, and they addressed it in a creative way–they lured the monsters to them!

They did a lot of exploring, dealing with monsters, running away from demons, mapping…and that was it. That was the game.

What I would change

There are a few things that I would immediately change about the way that I ran Mazes. And hell, I guess that’s why it’s good to playtest stuff before you run it, especially if you’re not familiar with the game or the style of game.

In terms of my handling of Treasure, and the pre-maze shenanigans, I’m not super pleased. I am regretful that I let them start scheming before throwing them in the maze, rather than relying on this wonderful mechanic–I made the same mistake when I first ran Blades in the Dark, which should allow for play that begins right in the maze, or the heist.

I wish that I remembered the Flashback mechanic! There’s a Flashback mechanic that allows players to add context into the world, for the cost of making the maze a little more dangerous. They can add facts about their characters, my characters, the world…anything! It gives a lot of player agency to what the world can be, and it is a direct bridge to the roleplay and story aspects of a game that aren’t inherently supported by some OSR games. I was so focused on presenting the problem solving that I had completely forgotten a rule that could have allowed the players to choose how much story they wanted to make–either about the world, or their characters.

And thirdly…maybe the abstraction of the maze and the dungeon is fine. It got a little confusing trying to faithfully describe the maze. It can be fun, I suppose, but I think is a lot more easily done when the corridors are straight with right angles, and not a…well, not a canyon. That’s a little too complex to represent with just narration.

I have more than a few opinions about what I should maintain with these games, and hell, games in general…but that’s a conversation for another time.