The One Hour Pariah Sandbox: City of Ghosts Session 2 Play Report

Due to time constraints and inspired by Luke Gearing's one-hour megadungeon sessions, I'm running a weekly PARIAH sandbox during my Friday lunch break. This is the second play report: track down all related posts at this link  

Between sessions, I posted on the r/osr subreddit (and also on the NSR Cauldron), seeking advice regarding this undertaking. There were some valuable responses which I'll summarise below, before getting into what happened in session 2...

Summary of One Hour Sandbox r/OSR Advice Thread

1. Use a simple system to expidite task resolution, noting Luke's use of Inhuman Violence for combat [NB: I'm not sure if this is what Luke uses for his OD&D campaign, think it's for Delta Green but who knows] u/OffenderDefender
2. Ensure player buy-in by diving into the action quickly, in turn encouraging the party to resolve tasks quickly is key. u/OffenderDefender
3. Brevity over granularity, abstract things like returning to previously visited locales (knock off x turns, maybe make an encounter roll) u/OffenderDefender
4. Inclusion over realism, especially with regard to character death u/OffenderDefender. This was espoused by Gearing in the Megadungeon podcast with Ben L.
5. Use a sandbox with discrete locations i.e. dungeon rooms, hexes, points on a point crawl u/OffenderDefender OP actually said "modular spaces" but I think discrete is more accurate. To add: OP also mentioned 3 rooms in a one hour session as being a reasonable metric
6. Host notes online. OP suggests a “character keeper” Google Sheets file, accessible to all players with character sheets and important notes from the session (NPCs, locations, etc). u/OffenderDefender 
7. 5 minutes at the start and end to reiterate what was done in the last session, what was achieved in the session and then plan an "actionable goal" for next session. OP suggested "make a plan for how we're going to eventually infiltrate the castle" or "find a master weapon smith to make us a greatsword" as examples. u/plutonium743
8. Circa 2 hour session GM: can work very well, exemplifies how old modules were designed for much, much longer sessions! u/spiderqueengm - see also their blog post on time-rich mid 70s Americans!
9. "Running without dungeon restocking leads to the '15minute workday' problem" u/spiderqueengm
10. "Running with strict dungeon restocking can be punitive, as the players clear a small area, finish for the evening, and come back next week to find their progress erased." u/spiderqueengm
11. "Pausing the action and resuming next session puts pressure on the drop in/open table aspect of it. I’ve found a way to deal with this is a mix of flexibility on the gm’s part, and demanding a certain amount of focus from your players, eg getting them to come up with a plan ahead of the session if possible." u/spiderqueengm
12. "1hr sounds a bit ambitious tbh, but best of luck with it" u/spiderqueengm
13. Don't prep what you improvise well doing. Prep the stuff you're bad at [improvising] u/ericvulgaris
14. The aforementioned EricVulgaris previously played in Luke Gearing's megadungeon, and added: "I always felt like Luke never felt responsible for making the game punchy or nothing. There was never any pressure if that makes sense. It felt entirely like it was on the players to do shit in an hour. Not him." u/ericvulgaris

Exploring the City

Picking up where we left off, it was decided that Ugly Evening would remain by the raft with Terrible Lake while Nimble Goat, Wandering Jackal and Wandering Jackal's dog continued to explore. They were joined by Brave Hyena, a former potter and herder who "is often bouncing around and enjoys climbing on things". She decided to bring one of the feral dogs with her, to see if it might be at least partially tamed. 

The area of the site espied last week, with further elaboration. Pariahs appeared on the left by the arch. One square = 10 feet

The Pariahs noted a "street", paved with terracotta tiles, flanked on the right side by an area of dense undergrowth, including trees, and two the left by a raised platform containing two statues. The street split upon arriving at a much lower [than the 30' perimeter] wall of about 10', made in brick. A gap in the wall was boarded up (or could be a door). Four 10' tall cylinders, glinting in the sunlight, were scattered between the entry point and the door.

The raised platform was surrounded by a couple of steps, with a short, shallow ramp in the centre. Overall, the tiles were mostly in good shape, only occasional cracks and patches of moss suggesting it wasn't being maintained.

Statue 1 was about 7-8' in height, sandstone, humanoid. The figure held a set of drafting tools the pariahs would not recognise, but to expedite description would be recognisable to the players as a large pair of compasses and a square-edge. The statue was clearly used as an altar, as a ceramic dish had been left out containing some rotten food and a wilted flower (suggesting the offering was made relatively recently).

Statue 2 was much larger, and slightly scarier. At nearly 18' in height, including a similar plinth, the humanoid figure was less well-proportioned, being excessively long-limbed and slender. It was described to the players as "demonic", but precise details were elusive. The face held an air of judgement and disdain, and initially seemed to shift and look away, but further examination revealed this to be a trick of the light. Also carved from vernacular sandstone, the figure had a mane of tightly cooled hair that cascade over its shoulders. Its posture was as though it was stretching to its fullest, as though in a yoga pose or a ballet movement (again, not concepts the pariahs would be familiar with but employed to grant the players the opportunity to visualise it).

Like the first statue, a similar votive offering had been left at the second statue's feet: "Like a god..." Wandering Jackal said aloud.

Brave Hyena elected to climb up the statue while the other two stood guard. Brave Hyena's player, J2, asked for further information regarding the viability of hooking a rope around the neck and Brave Hyena hoisting herself up. While a course of action was discussed, I made an encounter check and a crawling insect swarm was generated at a relatively close distance, so I had them emerge from the undergrowth while Brave Hyena began her ascent.

Ability score modifiers have been greatly reduced, and I'm working on an opposed roll method of checking: players roll a D6 (or a larger die if they have a relevant skill), adding any modifiers. I roll a die based on perceived difficulty (starting at D4). If the player rolls higher, they get to do what they want. If the rolls are equal, there's either some success at cost or a no, but... scenario, depending on context. Pariahs can also expend HP to modify this if desired, or if the roll fails (if they don't roll higher than the GM). 

In this case Brave Hyena had climbing (D8) based on her DEX (+1) and the challenge (D6) was overcome: however, Nimble Goat had already spotted a terrifying mass of army ants emerging as previously described and head towards them. Nonetheless, Brave Hyena was granted a pretty impressive view of the site, and understood that the city was mostly comprised of what appeared to be octagonal walled gardens.

Brave Hyena's rapid descent necessitated another check, but no problems arose and the pariahs retreated to the first statue in time to witness the offering overcome by the ant-swarm: a line broke away and began to head towards them, they retreated as a second swarm began to swell u around the first statue's altar, eventually forming a continuous loop back to the undergrowth.

Note: I based this behaviour on a reaction roll of "4" and the pariahs retreating in all instances to points with meagre food scraps between them and the swarm.

First Contact 

Hurrying along to the first "walled garden", the pariahs initially deliberated over whether to noisily knock through the crude "door" or give Brave Hyena a "boost" up the brick wall. They went for the later, here's what she saw:

Rough layout of first "garden", trees not pictured

Brave Hyena described a collection of between 6 and 14 interconnected dwellings, with a statue lined avenue bisecting the "garden". A small child disappeared into the dwelling furthest from them. After sharing this knowledge with the group, Brave Hyena received approval from Nimble Goat and Wandering Jackal to call out a greeting.

"Hello..?"

There was a lengthy pause, before a woman emerged from the building, gave Brave Hyena an quizzical look before responding:

"Hi....?"

And there the session ended!

Behind the Screen 

This might seem as though not a lot was really achieved, even for a one hour session and this.... this would probably be a fair assessment. Responsibility for that rests with me, the GM, for the following reasons:

1. It took a good 10 mins for me to resolve an audio issue with discord. This was really frustrating as we were already online and ready to go at 1300 UTC sharp, and it wasn't the first time it's happened. In the end it was resolved by rebooting, changing the audio settings, then changing them back to what they had been previously...
2. So, shoe on the wrong foot, grateful that my players were able to make idle chit-chat for a period of time, it then took another ten minutes for me to apologise/recap/say hello....
3. ....once we got going, it was probably twenty minutes in. However, I further slowed things down but not having all the browser tabs and PDFs open as I had before I rebooted the laptop!
4. Furthermore, there were a few occasions where I ground play to a halt while I randomly generated a few features, which probably could have been done in advance

So, some lessons there:

1. Discord audio I'll just have to chance it, but I at least think I can reboot the settings without rebooting the laptop, so that should save time if it happens again. 
2. Five minutes at the beginning is all that is needed!
3. Save browser tab group to speed-up re-opening, keep all necessary PDFs in same folder so can be opened all at once.
4. Generate as many random components ahead of time as possible

Otherwise, this felt really good: there was a good amount of interrogation of the environment, and while nothing very dramatic there was a suggestion of threat and also confirmation that the city is in fact inhabited. No more strange roars though.

Player wise, we had C from last week and a new (to this particular campaign, at least) player in J2, with J1 otherwise disposed. Should be no problem bringing their character back into play given their proximity.

Really looking forward to next Friday's session!

Links

Luke Gearing's blog:
https://lukegearing.blot.im/

All posts labelled "one-hour sandbox":
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/search/label/1%20hour%20game

The r/osr thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/18kdjvm/running_very_short_online_voicebased_sandbox/
...and The RPG Cauldron discourse
https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/18kdjvm/running_very_short_online_voicebased_sandbox/

Old-School Campaigns and the Assumption of Time Richness
https://spiderqueengaming.blogspot.com/2023/09/old-school-campaigns-and-time-richness.html