FLAILSNAILS reborn

[calithena]

The first iteration was big on Google Plus which doesn't even exist any more. But I heard a rumor that some people were going to try to revise it. Fight On! supports that 100% and will contribute whatever it can to coordinate people who want to adventure across shared worlds in a shared internet multiverse. Send your heroes to defend Mistigar from Arduin!

I thought of this because I found this cool blog post tonight: maziriansgarden.blogspot.com/2019/01/

[Alex Schroeder]

I'm currently trying to get a multi-referee campaign going: there's a starting village, and nearby we have Stonehell, Barrowmaze, and some Wilderlands, each controlled by a different referee, all using the same rules (more or less), and sharing a player character pool.

I guess that's a bit more controlled than Flailsnails…

[calithena]

Still awesome though!

[tombowings]

I would love to find a way to make this work. I really enjoyed running FLAILSNAILS games.

[Alex Schroeder]

It would be nice to read some blog posts about the FLAILSNAILS times. I have so many questions… Maybe I just lack some sort of bold confidence.

• Was there a sort of overarching plot shared between the participating referees?
• When you joined a session as a player, who where the other people sitting at the table: where they the regulars and you were a guest, or was it basically all guests and chances were high you did not play together again?
• Where there referees handing out game breaking stuff that you had to veto when players came back to your campaign? I assume such discussions were taxing? Or was it a breeze? An example of how this was handled would be nice.
• Where there difficult players and how did you handle it? I'm afraid of both every referee and other playing having a bad time for that session and being unable to warn the next group, and I'm afraid of an informal list of undesirable players being passed around. Neither solution is cool. An example of how this was handled would be nice.

I guess right now I'm trying to control for all of that by first playing with people so that they know the general style I like, basically using a friends-of-friends approach, them using the same or very similar B/X inspired rules, all our "campaigns" taking place in the vicinity of the same starting village, discussion on Discord to float ideas.

[tombowings]

I'll give it a go.

1. Generally the plot was limited to a particular DMs world, but we all enjoyed making references to other games via side jokes and Easter eggs. What really linked the games were the characters, who were brought from one game to another. Often, characters had known each other from previous games with different DMs.

2. I typically had a core group of 3-4 players with guests coming in and out. One of the other DMs (whose name cannot be mentioned on these boards without starting a ruckus) used to recommend my game to new players. I'm quite comfortable running games with large parties. I rarely said no to interested players.

3. There were certainly a fair share of wacky magic items. Dealing with magic items was my least favorite part of the FLAILSNAILS concept.

4. Everyone I met was a blast to play with.

[jrients]

I was asked to poke my head in this thread. Howdy, all!

Apr 1, 2022 3:20:33 GMT -6 Alex Schroeder said:

It would be nice to read some blog posts about the FLAILSNAILS times. I have so many questions… Maybe I just lack some sort of bold confidence.

That's mostly what we started with. Audacity and a little trust that no one was going to try to wreck the thing on purpose.

• Was there a sort of overarching plot shared between the participating referees?
• When you joined a session as a player, who where the other people sitting at the table: where they the regulars and you were a guest, or was it basically all guests and chances were high you did not play together again?
• Where there referees handing out game breaking stuff that you had to veto when players came back to your campaign? I assume such discussions were taxing? Or was it a breeze? An example of how this was handled would be nice.
• Where there difficult players and how did you handle it? I'm afraid of both every referee and other playing having a bad time for that session and being unable to warn the next group, and I'm afraid of an informal list of undesirable players being passed around. Neither solution is cool. An example of how this was handled would be nice.

1. I floated the notion of hiding the Rod of Seven Parts in seven different campaigns, but not much ever came of that. Each DM just did their own thing, except for the occasional two-DM operation, where some menace would follow a PC into another campaign, for example. That was worked out on an ad hoc basis. There were never any official meetings of the DMs or anything like that.
2. Some DMs had more regular players than others. I had a lot people in and out of my game. Some people played multiple sessions, but I never had a core group that played together regularly. It is my understanding that it was not uncommon for characters to meet once in one campaign and then to be reunited months later in totally different setting.
3. I never encountered anything game breaking from another campaign nor did I ever get complaints that anything found in my game was wrecking someone else's fun. That being said, there was a lot of wild and wooly stuff out there. But I found it delightful when the players would surprise me with something new and crazy.
4. Never had any trouble players that I recall. If someone had been a boor, I would simply not invite them to another session. The level of bad behavior would have to be pretty high for me to consider warning other DMs. After all, people can act differently in different social situations and different folks have different levels of tolerance for bad behavior.

I guess right now I'm trying to control for all of that by first playing with people so that they know the general style I like, basically using a friends-of-friends approach, them using the same or very similar B/X inspired rules, all our "campaigns" taking place in the vicinity of the same starting village, discussion on Discord to float ideas.

Honestly, that sounds like a lot of unnecessary precaution to me. I recommend just getting to the game and working things out on the fly. One of the advantages of the FLAILSNAILS approach is that, given a sufficient pool of players, you don't have treat the game group like a persistent social unit. You're not a band on the road, just some people holding a single jam session. If someone's style doesn't fit the groove, don't invite them to the next sesh. That's all it takes, really.

[calithena]

An informal tool that is sometimes used to deal with the overpowered magic items issue is just to have the DM vet characters that come into their world and nix items that don't work. But that doesn't have to mean the character lost the item permanently; rather they left it with family, a lover, another adventurer, etc. in the realm they left, and they can take it back on the conclusion of their adventuring in the current DMs campaign world.

Thanks Jeff! Your input is much appreciated and comes from experience!

[settembrini]

Elwood, the BAND!

During the last two years, we created a german language FLAILSNAILS with orbitting campaigns but a multi-referee joined campaign at the heart of things. We got 80 players, and 5 referees, mostly 1e.

We call it ADDCON (AD&D compatible organizing network)

In my part, Badwall, we went through a lot of DIY modules so far, as well as the whole of Castle Xyntillan.

jeff : Melan and me still have a comp hardcopy of the Fanzine with the Wessex-level ready for you, should you want one.

Check out our player map:

[calithena]

Well look what the cat dragged in! What a totally awesome campaign!

[calithena]

Hey prehistory of the OSR people! This thread on rpg.net had some influence, I think, once upon a time.

forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/necro-something-that-was-lost.181356/

[derv]

Apr 1, 2022 13:04:36 GMT -6 calithena said:

Hey prehistory of the OSR people! This thread on rpg.net had some influence, I think, once upon a time.

forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/necro-something-that-was-lost.181356/

Oh wow, the beginning of that thread really sets up the contextual mood of the conversation 🥴

Don’t know who Lee Gold is. Funny. Maybe I need to skip ahead.

[settembrini]

Ah, the old thread, the RQ-people like Balbinus come right in and wage the "sophistication" war all over again...

Lee Gold is a West Coast early D&D adopter, who founded the oldest Fanzine, Alarum's & Excursions. A legend in D&D history.

[Alex Schroeder]

That ADDCON map is amazing. Wow!

So in this setup, all the referees are running their games in the same setting, but in different areas. How does interaction work? Questions that immediately popped into my mind: what if the Badwall players decide to travel to Narwell, do you need to look for new players as your former players move into the regions of other referees? Or is character movement between campaigns super rare and the idea of the common setting is simply a wonderful thing in common without actually influencing day to day gaming?

[settembrini]

We have a unified calendar, so if a game is run on Date X, you cannot play with the same persona in another's game.
Otherwise interaction is free. That is to say you might play tuesday with me and on saturday in Narkwoll.
Groups form ad-hoc on the announcement channel:

A DM fixes a date, and makes an announcement, players who have available personas sign up.

Sometimes personas get stuck within the dungeon or the situation. DMs will then state the next one is a "continuation" session.

If you cannot make part 2, your persona is free to play somewhere else.

In reality it is very easy: DMs announce sessions, players enroll, fun is being had.

In regards to actual interaction, there is a ton of that happening: players are changing governments, stealing city-state artefacts and smuggling it to other campaign areas, conquering castles, setting up corporations, founding crime syndicates and so on. The DMs have also some overarching riddles and puzzles. For the players the most obvious overarching themes are the Wild Coast druids and the Coast-Wide lotus-drug-trade Feel free to join to dip your toe, if you do not mind playing in german language!
There is a good mix between player driven missions, delves of the day (I did Xyntillan in that manner) and intrigue.

[settembrini]

Apr 9, 2022 5:24:02 GMT -6 Alex Schroeder said:

That ADDCON map is amazing. Wow!

BTW, this is the players map, with errors and so on. THe DMs have a hexmap, upon which the players's map is based upon. We created and populated the hexmaps in our regions with the DMG tools.

Next game is on Tuesday, some slots still open.

We also have a podcast episode, where we explain some of the process.
pesa-nexus.de/2020/06/03/episode-1-wir-spielen-add-dmg/

[eldrad]

The FLAINSNAILS thing so needs to come back!

[cadriel]

Would FLAILSNAILS work as a Discord server where everyone hosted pop-up games with the expectation that PCs could go to any referee's game? I'd like such a thing as I'd enjoy running periodic online games without necessarily having it be a solid group / time.

[Starbeard]

Jun 19, 2023 12:53:46 GMT -6 cadriel said:

Would FLAILSNAILS work as a Discord server where everyone hosted pop-up games with the expectation that PCs could go to any referee's game? I'd like such a thing as I'd enjoy running periodic online games without necessarily having it be a solid group / time.

I think so. I've seen a number of Discord servers over the past couple of years that were attempting more or less the same structure. All were pretty NuOSR (if I'm using that term correctly), even the one I vaguely recall being an OD&D server. These all also seemed to settle down quickly into something like what you describe: a themed LFP lounge where refs would post a game and interested players would hop on.

I do feel like the appeal of Flailsnails specifically may be past its moment in the OSR Discord era, which is more interested in boutique "hacks" and splatbooking the Old School Essentials line, rather than playing actual TSR D&D with an eye toward inter-table cohesion. Which is a shame because the idea feels made for Discord.

[tombowings]

The original FLAILSNAILS was pretty chaotic. But in a fun away.

In my Vats of Mazirian game, a character brought a magic sword he'd acquired during another DM's game. This sword would automatically absorb anything it struck. But whenever it struck a creature, there was a 1% chance that the sword would shatter and ever creature it had ever absorbed would be released instantaneously.

Well, that happened one session. Caused some fun, but it certainly wasn't TSR D&D.

We also had OD&D characters playing next to AD&D, B/X D&D, and even Traveler or Tunnels and Trolls characters.

I had a high level AD&D illusionist whose class was changed into a berserker, as a result of a curse. That was...something.

In the end, we made it work and all had a good time.

[Starbeard]

The thing about Traveller characters and D&D characters playing together is maybe closer to what I'm talking about, not necessarily just the use of unique items or classes, or different editions playing together.

The different OSR communities these days seem to prefer divergent systems over cohesive ones, in the sense that the less it looks like traditional D&D the better. I think part of that stems from a shift in thinking, away from the mentality of a singular global community toward one of individualized expression and almost anti-community.

I could be wrong, but I see the flailsnails days as something that worked because the OSR group at large was subconsciously sympathetic to that type of play where everyone voluntarily accepted that all games are part of one big game. The idea of one big homogenous community of old school, anti-establishment gamers who all jammed to the same tune was appealing, especially since the way the original TSR games hinted about that sort of inter table camaraderie was at the time seen as one of the golden old school approaches lost to time.

These days I don't think that same latent desire is still there—otherwise the various metacampaign groups would have survived Google+. For instance, Reddit was already there and already more popular and maybe even better suited to organizing things, but its wider user group clearly hadn't the same interest.

[tombowings]

FLAILSNAILS, in a real sense, died long before G+. By the time I left for the Peace Corps in 2013, the idea that characters could easily move from one game to another was already on the way out. Mine was one of the last games that held to that original concept, but honestly, the entire FLAILSNAILS experiment had become too big and imploded under its own weight. In order to functions, FLAILSNAILS required a community of players that knew and trusted one another. As the community expanded, connection and trust decreased. And, in many cases, for good reason.

It worked with 60 players, but not with 260.

[Starbeard]

On reflection I think you just nailed it. The only way something like this could exist perpetually beyond a single game club of 3-5 tables is for a holistic change in how gamers even approach what an RPG campaign is. For most people, the only way it could work is through strict regimentation like a Living Greyhawk or Adventurers League.

I wonder what would be the more satisfying balance of creativity vs longevity, a single small Flailsnails club or a larger Living LBBs Adventurers League.

[tombowings]

I have zero interest in a highly regulated structure.

A FLAILSNAILS type club could probably support 10-12 games running simultaneously. I would probably choose one base system, then allow individual referees to tweak the game with certain limits.

[Starbeard]

I don't think I'd like a highly structured approach either. I might have enjoyed side-gaming in the Living Greyhawk stuff, but not in running games for it, ever.

I think I could be happy with a club convention where a base system was agreed upon, and any characters & items conforming to that system could be brought over without question, while anything specific to one game could be brought over or altered by agreement. Any ref who plays around with core stuff like classes, XP, HD, etc., is responsible for figuring out the necessary conversions, and players can take it or leave it. A medium sized crowd of players that can work that pretty smoothly without having to get more specific.

[Starbeard]

Jun 27, 2023 13:27:13 GMT -6 tombowings said:

I would probably choose one base system, then allow individual referees to tweak the game with certain limits.

So as far as I know, I never played in a game that was directly part of the Flailsnails network, some some did cite it.

Having participated directly, what would you or others be looking for in a latter day gaming club? What should the one base system be? The white box, Greyhawk, a thoroughly organized retroclone like S&W or Delving Deeper? What do you see as reasonable limits on the house rules?

[tombowings]

Jun 27, 2023 20:49:20 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

So as far as I know, I never played in a game that was directly part of the Flailsnails network, some some did cite it.

Having participated directly, what would you or others be looking for in a latter day gaming club? What should the one base system be? The white box, Greyhawk, a thoroughly organized retroclone like S&W or Delving Deeper? What do you see as reasonable limits on the house rules?

Back in the day, most FLAILSNAILS games were run with BX. Today, I would recommend Swords & Wizardry Complete. It strikes a nice balance between OD&D and AD&D. The rules are also very light on the DM's side of the screen, given each referee a bit more freedom.

Needed Standardization
* Ability score generation (as well as bonuses and penalties)
* Magic-user spell acquisition spells.
* All character sheets should be put on Google Docs and compiled into a database.

Areas of Customization
* Combat procedures (order of actions, etc.)
* Outdoor adventures procedures (hex crawls, etc.)
* Weapon damage (all d6 vs. variable weapon damage)
* New classes, monsters, spells, magic items (again, put on Google Docs)
* Some procedures for other referees to veto or modify classes, spells, or magic items

[Morandir]

I never got to play in any FLAILSNAILS games way back when, but it seems to me that agreeing on one system run completely RAW would be easiest. That plus a shared calendar and you’d have something awesome with very little work needed.

[tombowings]

Jun 28, 2023 19:30:22 GMT -6 Morandir said:

I never got to play in any FLAILSNAILS games way back when, but it seems to me that agreeing on one system run completely RAW would be easiest. That plus a shared calendar and you’d have something awesome with very little work needed.

Getting a group of old school DMs to run system as per the RAW sounds even less possible than teaching my cat calculus.