I'm Running Hole in the Oak for the First Time on Friday

EDIT: Unfortunately, due to scheduling issues, we didn’t end up running this on the 10^th^. Fortunately, we could reschedule to the 17^th^!

Next Friday, I’ll be running Hole in the Oak over FoundryVTT. I’ve tested out running OSE before, using Tomb of the Serpent Kings but that was only a short test of the system. I’ve also used FoundryVTT extensively in hosting Abomination Vaults for a group, which also includes two of the players who will be joining Hole in the Oak. So, this will be a first real test of running an OSR adventure!

Aside from reading through the Principia Apocrypha and A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, I’ve also been scrounging through blogs to prepare. I liked Yochai Gal’s post over on New School Revolution for laying out some core principles really simply. Reading these things really hit home to me. A lot of what I’ve run over the past years has been pretty darned crunchy. Particularly running Pathfinder 2nd Edition has been really rough, because it’s so mechanically bogged down. Everything I read about the OSR, however, comes down to “play to find out”. Decide things randomly and move on. Don’t know how to work things out? Good news: that’s the players’ job. My big job as referee will be to be clear, complete, and descriptive for my players. That feels like such a weight off my shoulders, really.

To prepare, I read through the adventure cover to cover, so I know what’s going on. I recognised the advice on how to run OSR games in the way the adventure is structured. There’s no plot written out in the adventure. There’s no goal to achieve here, nor a story to uncover. There’s just people who live in a hole under the oak, and they want things in their daily life. I recognise “Develop situations, not plots” here from Yochai Gal’s post.

There’s some incredibly lethal traps in the adventure (“Death should be on the table”), but I also see clear hints in the room about those traps (“Telegraph danger”). For example, a swinging blade trap is hinted at because there’s a corpse with a big slash in its side right where the trap is. I love that there’s entries for rooms like “There’s a 2-in-6 chance of one of the gnomes fishing here” (“Randomness is a beautiful thing”). It’s clear in all the writing that the dungeon will do fine without the players (“The PCs are not invited”), so it feels alive on its own.

Just reading this module already shows a lot about OSR sensibilities. I hope that running it will help me practice some of these basic tenets together with my players!