Hi all,
Building off of Paxx’s post here: 4 rounds of combat
I’m sharing this little booklet I put together for my table and also would like to say a bit about why I found Into the Odd so inspirational.
You can download the booklet here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/16i_uxNFI7b19-vGseUeAaTT8QLQ9OfzF/view?usp=sharing
My central thesis is this: Into the Odd is worth checking out because like Dungeon World or ICRPG, simply playing Into the Odd will teach you how to play D&D “a little more better than you used to”. Specifically, Into the Odd has much to teach about decision making, information, making rolls, and narrative.
Let’s start with decision making, information, and making rolls. In Into the Odd, there are no “to hit” or ATTEMPT rolls. If you attack, you simply roll damage. The same goes for the monsters. Certainly, this has the benefit of making combat lightning fast, chaotic, and dangerous. But it has interesting ramifications for how players approach combat.
If you know that entering the fray will result in a damage roll that may knock you out in one shot, what will you do with that information? Every single Into the Odd combat is an exercise in risk/reward calculation that feels more visceral than other systems I’ve played.
This theme of information and decision making can be found throughout the system. The only d20 ability rolls are Saves, and it is explicitly stated that these should be reserved for situations in which the players are in danger because of a choice they made or an action they have taken. With regard to traps, GMs are encouraged to point them out to players with no rolls. A trap is another decision point. How will you get around this trap, and how much time are you willing to dedicate to it in this dark and dangerous place?
As for narrative, Into the Odd really opened my eyes, though your mileage may vary. Perhaps unlike most of the folks here, I’m a relative newcomer to tabletop RPGs. I wet my toes with D&D 5e in the time of Critical Role and Chris Perkins live plays. In the way D&D was presented to me, the cooperative story telling was always emphasized. The result of this, is that as a GM I always felt that it was my job to create a consistent narrative foundation for the game.
What I mean by this is that I always felt that encounters, locations, NPCs and the like should nearly always have some kind of narrative tie in. But when I ran the hex crawl and dungeon included with Into the Odd I realized that these things are not strictly necessary.
There is absolutely no explanation for what the strange coral dungeon rising out of the sea actually is. The GM is not told who is inside, why, or how they came to be there. In the hex crawl, players might run into a crashed alien space craft or a strange creature in a huge mechanical suit. There are no reasons or justifications provided for any of it.
I was worried that it would all feel arbitrary and boring to my players, but the opposite was true. It felt mysterious and scary to be out in this strange world, and I as the GM was right there with them experiencing the world with each roll on a random table.
Before I wrap up, let me say a few more things about the booklet. Primarily, the content is drawn from the Into the Odd SRD: https://www.bastionland.com/2020/11/mark-of-odd-licence-and-srd.html.
As requested, I created my own set of Arcana and starting equipment. I added a few additional rules for firearms and spellcasting, and changed or added things here and there.
The advancements come from the version of Maze Rats found in the pay what you want Odditional Materials. This version of Maze Rats is a direct hack of Into the Odd.
The distribution of this booklet is in line with the licenses for both these games. It has everything you need to jump in and play a session from a rules/equipment perspective. If you have any questions about rules or anything like that please do send them my way. Cheers!