Exploring the Barrow Mounds: Overland Exploration in Barrowmaze

Note: If you like the maps provided in this article, I have also made cleaned-up digital versions in a follow-up post here!

Barrowmaze is a great adventure. It drips with old-school flavor, undead, and a labyrinthine dungeon rivaled by few other products. I love Barrowmaze, and I love running it. Those of you who read my revisions of the Village of Hommlet will remember that I used Barrowmaze as the Temple of Elemental Evil in that module.

However, as much as I love Barrowmaze, it provides amorphous procedures for the players to explore the surface of the barrow mounds. Its lackadaisical attitude towards exploring the surface of the barrow mounds is a missed opportunity, I think. 

Last year at the Alexandrian, Justin Alexander made a post about the importance of clear structures and procedures when running games. Therefore, I thought I would parse through the information available and offer some resources to provide better structure and make life easier for my fellow referees running Barrowmaze.

First, a survey of the resources available.

In the section titled “Running Barrowmaze,” Greg Gillespie mostly focuses on underground exploration. For above-ground exploration, there are high- and low-level random encounter tables for the barrow mounds, divided again into day and night. Greg says the mounds are “ancient, damp, and obscured by mist.” He also provides an overland map of the mounds divided into 50ft. hexes and a description of the different kinds of entrances to the mounds themselves.

That is all.

Second, we will look at the rules system. Because Barrowmaze is written for compatibility with Labyrinth Lord, I will focus on Labyrinth Lord. The same rules still apply for Old School Essentials, however, as both Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials are B/X compatible. According to the rules:

·         Player characters have a “turn movement” from 30’ to 120’ (depending on encumbrance), representing how far they can carefully explore in ten minutes.

·         This movement speed accounts for exploring, watching their footing, mapping, and taking care to avoid obstacles.

·         This movement rate is equal to feet when in a dungeon (underground) and equal to yards during overland (above ground) exploration.

·         The speed of the adventuring party is equal to the speed of its slowest member.

·         When moving through previously explored areas, the referee may allow player characters to move at a rate equal to three times their movement speed.

·         The referee should check for random encounters once every twenty minutes of in-game time. A random encounter occurs with a 1-in-6 chance. (Fun fact: Greg Gillespie himself chimed in on the nature of random encounters in Barrowmaze in this forum post).

All these rules mean, when the party is exploring the surface of the barrow mounds, the referee should measure time in ten-minute turns. An adventuring party can move between 30 and 120 yards per turn when exploring new hexes and between 90 and 360 yards per turn when traversing previously explored hexes. The referee should check for random encounters every other turn, and again when the player characters do something to attract monsters (such as opening a sealed mound entrance).

Given what I’ve described above, I think most referees who run Barrowmaze attempt to use the 50ft. hex overland map and the overland exploration rules of Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials. I did the same when I first began running Barrowmaze However, this approach results in several problems.

First, the overland travel rules of Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials don’t divide evenly into 50ft, making it difficult to track how far and fast the party has moved.

Furthermore, tracking time in 50ft. hexes is overly granular when the party can move 90-360ft. per ten-minute turn. Asking the party which hex they go to over and over again is boring – a problem exacerbated when the players are making a map for themselves, as the greater quantity of hexes increases the likelihood of a mistake in transcription.

The rules-as-written also don’t specify how far the party can see, either. And the irregular distances between the barrow mounds stymies running overland exploration of the barrow mounds as a point crawl.

After one session of trying to track distance in 50ft. hexes and use Roll20’s fog of war tool to reveal terrain as the players explored, I knew I needed to try something else.

The solution I arrived at was to make a new map with 30 yard hexes. Because of the units LL and OSE use track overland travel speed, the smallest measurement you would use during overland exploration would be 30 yards, or 90 feet. This means 30-yard (or 90ft.) hexes would be far more useful than 50ft hexes, in my opinion.

One hex is thirty yards across. The number of the barrow is included in relevant hexes, next to "P" for plundered, "S" for sealed, "COV" for covered, and "COL" for collapsed. The green represents the moor, while the gray-brown denotes the bona fide swampland.

  So I took the Barrowmaze 50ft. hex map and converted it into 90ft. hexes. There are several cool results from doing this:

·         Because no two barrow entrances are immediately adjacent to one another on Greg Gillespie’s map, a single barrow entrance fits into each hex nicely

·         When printed on a letter-sized sheet of paper, the larger hexes give me room to label the type of entrance (plundered, sealed, etc.) with the number of the mound. When running Barrowmaze in the past, I often had to spend unnecessary time staring at my referee map to ensure I read the correct entrance number (and have even made some mistakes, with adverse consequences).

·         I’m also able to number the hexes themselves, which will aid in player mapping of the barrow mounds. I can clearly communicate to the players which hex their characters are in, and they can tell me which they plan on traveling to.

Given the fog in the barrow mounds, I think it’s fair to say the player characters can see clearly into each other 30-yard hex around them, but no further. This means player characters can see barrow mound entrances from one hex away. 

For example, players emerging from mound #17 might ask me what they see when they look around. "You see a mound to the north," I would say. "It looks like it's still sealed. There's another to the south, as well, but the open entrance and tracks around it indicate it's been plundered."

Furthermore, the Pathfinder RPG (which is the system I used to run, back in the day) lists the maximum encounter distance in a swamp as being 2d8x10ft. On average, this is equal to… 90ft! Exactly the distance from the center of one 30-yard hex to the center of another.

Some might argue that player characters should have to devote extra time to search for the mound entrances, or perhaps have a chance to not find them. I object to this approach for three reasons:

·         The slow travel speed for traversing new hexes assumes the player characters are exploring and searching.

·         This forum post makes a case that experienced adventurers would be able to know a barrow mound when they see one.

·         It is a lot more fun to find adventure than to miss it.

This is a blank version of the Barrowmaze map above. You can give this to your players to complete as they explore.

In summary, here are the rules and procedures I recommend for running overland exploration of the barrow mounds from Barrowmaze.

·         Give the players a blank numbered hex map (pictured above). One or more mappers can track what they find and where.

·         Player characters can explore 1-4 new hexes or traverse 3-12 explored hexes per 10-minute turn, depending on the encumbrance of the party’s slowest member.

·         Track explored hexes with tally marks. New hexes count as three, explored hexes count as one, and advance turns when the party has exceeded their allotted amount (3 for a movement speed of 30 and 12 for a movement speed of 120).

·         Check for a random encounter every other turn. On a result of 1-in-6, roll using the barrow mound random encounter table (accounting for the time of day).

·         If players ask, describe to them what they can see in adjacent hexes – including mound entrances.

·         You as the referee may wish to add random occurrences, discoveries, or set dressing to the barrow mounds and fill in “empty” hexes.

And that is all! I hope this helps any referees out there running Barrowmaze.

Old-School Revival or Renaissance?

The OSR Wikipedia page lists OSR as standing for either Old-School Revival or Old-School Renaissance. I’m not sure if a preference exists within the OSR community or if a consensus on what OSR “stands for” could ever be achieved. And it may not matter – the difference between “revival” and “renaissance” may simply be a matter of semantics or personal preference. However, it occurred to me the other day that the distinction between these two initialisms could perhaps speak to a greater distinction in the OSR community.

First, a discussion of what these two terms mean to me.

 “Revival” conjures images of a dead thing come back to life. In other words, reanimating a (previously) dead corpse, like Lazarus up and walking about. For all intents and purposes, the “revived” thing is the same as it was before it died, unchanged.

Pictured at right: The rules of early D&D, reconstructed. Pictured at left: revivalist OSR players, eager to play.

 “Renaissance,” however, conjures images of the Italian Renaissance. During this period, artists gave “rebirth” to Greco-Roman artistic influences. However, the artwork created during this time did not perfectly re-create ancient Greco-Roman artwork. Instead, Renaissance art distinctly comes from the 15^th and 16^th century. You can tell the difference between ancient Greco-Roman art and Renaissance art if you know what to look for. Renaissance art drew inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome but did not emulate it with perfect fidelity.

The ancient Greeks and Romans never did anything like this.

 To me, this speaks to a greater division in the OSR community between faithfully re-creating the rulesets of early D&D and adding innovation to make something new.

Of course, when I say “conflict,” I do not mean an open debate or “opinion war” actively being waged. I think the OSR community is the OSR community, and many more things divide it than the conflict I present here.

However, a person or product can identify themselves as “OSR” if they seek to emulate or integrate something from early D&D into the games they presently play. And, once that person seeks to emulate something from early D&D, the question arises: to what extent do they want to re-create (what they perceive as) early D&D? Do they see an element or two they wish to capture, or do they wish to recreate the entire play experience?

To me, Old School “Renaissance” speaks to the former. A member of the “Renaissance” finds some value in early D&D and scraps the rest in favor of crafting their own ideal, personalized play experience. On the other hand, Old School “Revival” speaks to the latter. A member of the Old School Revival seeks to emulate early D&D as closely as possible, because emulating early D&D is their ideal play experience.

Again, this distinction is purely arbitrary and not grounded in actual divisions of the OSR community. I don’t believe people go around labelling themselves as “Renaissance” or “Revival” based on their gaming preferences. However, this spectrum helps me better visualize the content and products I see coming out of the OSR scene.

For a moment, let’s imagine a caricature of someone on the extreme end of the “revival” movement. This person would seek to emulate the play experience of early D&D as much as possible because that is the play experience they desire. They would study the notes of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax to determine how they ran the game and try to mimic them in their own. They would use only notebook paper for character sheets, and perhaps buy sets of dice on which the numbers need to be colored-in with crayon.

Of course, this individual would need to choose exactly which game to emulate. First edition or B/X? Greyhawk or Blackmoor? Published modules or homebrew? This decision rests on the play experience they desire. However, for this hypothetical person, their desired play experience rests in their conception of the past.

Contrast this with a hypothetical member of the “Renaissance,” who instead studies early D&D and looks for elements of it to bring into a game firmly rooted in the present. They would pull more from modern “innovations” in gaming and take from early D&D only what they find value in. Theirs would be a game that captures the“feel” they want from early D&D, but the actual game they play may be substantially different.

This distinction is helpful for thinking about the gaming systems from the OSR scene. For example, I would place rules systems like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Castles & Crusades, and Knave firmly in the “Renaissance” category. They capture certain elements of early D&D while injecting significant elements of change to create a different play experience (which, in the minds of their creators, improves the game in some way). These publishers would not make their games if they didn't think there was a reason someone, somewhere would want to play their game instead of the 1st edition or B/X ruleset.

On the other hand, rules systems like the OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, and (most recently) Old School Essentials take comparatively less liberties with their source material– and this is a point of advertising for them. These rules systems are geared towards members of the “Revival,” who seek to emulate early D&D for its own sake.

A game like the Basic Fantasy RPG perhaps rests somewhere in-between, re-creating many elements of the early D&D rules while simultaneously touting itself as its “own game.” Arguably, D&D 5^th edition may edge in on the far end of the “Renaissance” side. Compared to fourth edition, it includes many more “old-school” elements than its predecessor. Wizards of the Coast, at least in part, published 5^th edition in an appeal to bring wayward OSR players back into the fold.

Interestingly, even “revival” rules systems do not (and cannot) perfectly reproduce the play experience of early D&D, even by keeping the text of the rules, as early D&D is full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and differing interpretations. On his blog, Jason Alexander called early D&D the “Ur-Game” because it was a primordial soup of rules and rulings played in so many different ways. Every table – in fact, every session – was unique.

Furthermore, even those relatively “revivalist” rules systems include changes made by the authors/publishers. For example, Labyrinth Lord adds first-level spells for clerics. Old School Essentials “balances” the classes in the Advanced Genre rules. So, even those rulesets intended to faithfully reproduce early D&D include value judgments made by their authors/publishers. Even with these changes, however, they still more closely recreate the rules systems of early D&D than those that only take it as inspiration.

In sum, when thinking of the OSR scene, I imagine it on a spectrum with “revivalist” culture on one side and “renaissance” culture on the other. “Revivalist” artists attempt to re-create the play experience of early D&D as much as possible (though it is a Sisyphean task), while “Renaissance” creators take inspiration from early D&D and “run with it.”

To be clear, I’m not inherently in favor of one or the other. I see value in both. However, I think identifying this distinction helps me see and articulate what I see happening in the OSR scene more clearly.

A Few Closing Thoughts

So, what have the last thousand words brought me?

First, it helps me recognize the OSR movement as an artistically reactionary one. In response to the changes that arose from third (and especially fourth) editions, the OSR movement began to look for value in past versions of the game and capitalize on that value in the present.

This division between “renaissance” and “revival” also helps me think about my own gaming attitudes and preferences. I recognize that a lot of the value I find in “old-school” gaming is pragmatic (ex. more streamlined gameplay, greater reliance on player creativity, etc.). However, I also recognize that at least part of the value I see in old-school gaming is nostalgic. I admit that, when I see the squad on Stranger Things playing D&D in their basement, there’s part of me that longs for that experience myself. And faithfully recreating the play experience of early D&D, aside from its pragmatic benefits, taps into that emotional desire to re-create a past experience I never personally shared.

Stranger Things is pretty masterful in the way it taps into a viewer's nostalgia for the past. What D&D player sees a scene like this and doesn't want to join in?

 Furthermore, I think I’ve recognized that early D&D’s “do-it-yourself” attitude means that “cleaving closely as possible to early D&D,” by definition, means deviating from the established rules - which is an impossible conflict to navigate.

How can you simultaneously emulate early D&D and ad-lib from it? You can’t. And I think that contradiction– its malleability – is what allows D&D to be so many things to so many people. This helps explain its widespread popularity, but also the inherently fractious nature of its gaming community. From the very start – due to the creative, spontaneous, and imaginative nature of the game - D&D was destined to have its gaming base doing a host of different things and calling it all “D&D.”

I realize how this post might come across as a rambling exercise in navel-gazing, a debate about semantics, or – in general – just a fruitless and futile discussion. For myself, however, I find it personally helpful to see this distinction and articulate it.  And hopefully, you have found it at least somewhat helpful (or interesting), too.