Thoughts on Into the Odd

Yesterday I was out for an afternoon on the town and also visited my favorite local-ish gaming store (shoutout to All the Problems in this World!). Once there, I was torn between getting the Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Set (given that I am currently running an OSE game) and Into The Odd. Ultimately, I went for Into the Odd as I was more in the mood for a new game than just an expansion. So, here are my thoughts after reading it. I have not brought it to the table yet, but would love to do so in the coming weeks.

Basics

ItO was originally written by Chris McDowall in 2014. I got the remastered edition which released in 2021 and has mostly the same rules, but adds some content like new items and an expanded starter adventure. The main attraction of the remaster is the artwork by Johan Nohr (whom you might know from the equally stylish Mörk Borg). The book is a digest format hardcover and a joy to look at and read. This starts with the cover which is half fabric texture and half regular paper. The artowrk inside the book is a treat as well: You get full pages of collages made from old photographs or paintings overlaid with what looks like scientific diagrams or scrawled notes with the occasional piece of similarly styled spot art thrown in. The layout is generally sparse and easily skimmable. Often, you have a two-column layout with bolded keywords on the left and explanations/rules text on the right. I would wager that this layout makes it very easy to find a specific rule at the table - if you need to.

In terms of rules, ItO is extremely stripped down. Your character has three stats (Strength, Dexterity and Willpower), HP (which in this game stands for Hit Protection, but does exactly what you would expect) and an inventory. Creating a character is as simple as rolling 3d6 for each stat, 1d6 for HP and looking up your starting equipment in a table using your highest stat and starting HP as an index. In this way, it reminds me a lot of Troika!, although that game uses its randomly rolled backgrounds to flesh out the setting. While I have only seen excerpts of Electric Bastionland, Chris McDowall's other game set in the same world, it appears that its failed careers fill a similar role. I would have liked something similar for ItO, but you could probably hack something like that together yourself if you wanted to. The other rules are similar to character creation in their simplicity. In general, the game seems to follow a principle of "Assume the logical (or simple) answer". Some examples include:

• Initiative: The Player Characters always go first. If your character is surprised, they don't get an action in the first round.
• Attacks: There are no to-hit rolls. When you attack, you immediately roll damage.
• NPC stats: If in doubt, NPCs have stats at a value of 10. As the OSR has known for a long time, the average NPC is a bear.
• Experience: You don't track experience points. There is a list of diegetic steps (e.g. successfully completing a certain number of adventures) after which you level up.

I really enjoy this simplicity. It sounds like defaulting to the simplest option should make it easy to resolve most situations that arise in play, even if they are not directly covered by the rules. The only disadvantage to the terse and simple style is that I had to return to some of the (arguably few) more specific rules after reading through the book in order to make sense of them. Especially for the relation between HP loss, stat loss and critical damage, a flow chart or something similar would have been nice. There is an example of play, but a) as someone with years of RPG experience I skipped over it on my initial read and b) it doesn't contain an example of the rule I was unclear on. However, all that is high-level criticism, as a second reading of the combat rules cleared up my confusion.

Apart from rules for general actions and encounters, ItO specifically includes rules for running a business and running a militia. This is an interesting take on domain-level play that encourages players to quickly invest their (ill-gotten) gains back into the world with high-risk, high-reward schemes. It provides a nice gameplay loop of "go on expeditions to grow your enterprise" with many opportunities for drama.

The World

ItO comes with a vaguely described setting. In a total of three pages, it explains that:

• the city of Bastion lies at the center of the world
• there are effectively endless dungeons beneath Bastion
• anything outside Bastion is basically uncivilized and/or irrelevant

You get some more idea of the world through the game's lists of Arcana, strange magic items. They remind me of Numenera's ciphers, technology from long dead civilizations so advanced it may as well be magic. The back of the book also has some random tables for quickly generating NPCs or filling in details of areas. I'm not sure I could run a game in this world based on just that information, but luckily there is an introductory adventure included! At first I thought the Iron Coral was just a three-level dungeon (which is already plenty for an introduction). The dungeon descriptions continue the trend of extreme terseness, but remain easy to parse. I especially love the bullet points used for exits: Arrows designate the directions of room exits, making them easy to find on the map. After the third level of the dungeon, there were still about fifty pages of book left. As it turns out, these are filled with a decently sized hex crawl! The Iron Coral (i.e. the dungeon) is just one hex on an island of 24 hexes in total with four single-level dungeons and a town that acts as a safe haven or starting point. With generous random encounter and rumour tables and a small cast of colorful NPCs in the town, I feel like I could probably run this adventure with just an afternoon or so of prep. I am really excited to bring this adventure to the table.

My Verdict

I already knew that Into the Odd was an important game for the OSR. Just take a look at Marcia B.'s classification of OSR rulessets which includes a whole family of games derived from Into the Odd. Upon reading it for myself, I understand its significance. The rules are easy enough to explain them to a beginner in a span of minutes, but complete enough to cover conventional dungeon adventuring. To me, it feels like ItO could fill a similar niche in my repertoire to Troika! - it's a book I can just throw in my backpack if I suspect there'll be a chance to play an adventure and I would guess the included starter adventure could easily last you ten sessions. As I got deeper into the OSR and indie RPG scene, I have learned to appreciate simple, flavorful rulesets. ItO is not as laser-focused on its flavor as the aforementioned Troika! or Mörk Borg, but it still makes me very excited to create and run content for it. I hope I'll get to try it out soon and will report back once I do.

Comments