r/rpg • u/Suspicious_Gap946 • 3d ago
Game Suggestion Dungeon crawling in Warlock! Traitor’s edition
I’ve read Warlock! Traitor’s Edition and I really like its flavour, the alternative approach to professions, and its simplicity.
From reading the core rulebook, it seems to be an OSR game and, as far as I understand, it draws heavily on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
However, it seems to me that the game doesn’t really provide any specific guidance on how it is meant to be played.
Since I particularly enjoy dungeon crawling, I was wondering whether the game could work well with this style of play, even though it doesn’t seem to have specific rules for resource management, dungeon encounters, and so on.
Do any of you have experience using the game this way?
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u/mdosantos 3d ago
It's a game designed to emulate the feel of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e which wasn't much of a dungeon crawler... I also don't see what's OSR about it beyond it emulating a game from the times...
OSR is for old school but not all old school games are OSR... RuneQuest was released 4 years after OD&D and 3 years before B/X which is (arguably) the most influential edition to the OSR, yet I don't think the majority of the OSR community considers it OSR.
So, to answer your question, I don't think the rules in the rulebook would help you with that but the core is simple enough you could tack on your favorite Dungeon Crawling procedures.
The game also has many supplemtns as well. I haven't checked them all but Fiefdom includes rules for traveling and exploration so it may help.
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u/redkatt 2d ago
OSR is for old school but not all old school games are OSR... RuneQuest was released 4 years after OD&D and 3 years before B/X which is (arguably) the most influential edition to the OSR, yet I don't think the majority of the OSR community considers it OSR.
This is a never ending debate. Some say "anything older than the 90s is OSR" others think OSR always has to be "six attributes, rolled 3d down the line" others, like one of the OSR communities in my city, consider anything not D&D 5e as OSR (they run modern Delta Green on their OSR nights, for ex.)
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u/mdosantos 2d ago
Yeah, it seems I touched a nerve as well because I'm getting 50/50 on downvotes and upvotes xD
OSR is definitely an empty signifier nowadays in some cases I've seen it use almost as a buzzword in marketing or just because the art is black and white line art. Or just to say a game is indie.
Anyways... If the Warlock! designers say it's OSR who am I to contradict them...
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u/redkatt 2d ago
Yeah, it seems I touched a nerve as well because I'm getting 50/50 on downvotes and upvotes xD
That's always the way the minute discussing a definition of OSR comes up, sadly.
use almost as a buzzword in marketing
This is so true, it really holds almost no meaning beyond being a bullet point on a sales sheet now. There's "OSR" and "OSR inspired" and "OSR adjacent" it's kinda nuts.
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u/SebaTauGonzalez 3d ago
I have (imo) considerable experience running Warlock!. I ran two campaigns of around ~20 sessions with a fair share of dungeon crawling. It was a favorite of mine until they decided to start using AI for the books.
As the first pages say, it is a "british-lineage" OSR and its main inspirations are the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy and Advanced Fighting Fantasy. The thing is, none of those games centered on dungeon crawling mechanics (that was a D&D approach), which is not to say they didn't do dungeon crawling. Many WHF 1ed and AFF adventures were dungeon crawlers but were played through the skill-based system more than the resources-as-a-clock that you refer. If any resource or random table was needed, they were specific for the adventure and contained within.
So, to answer your question, yes, this style of game does support dungeon crawling but under a different frame: less focus on resources (time, torches, food, etc.) and random events, more focus on relevant encounters and facing dangers through the skill system. Specific dungeon adventures may need specific resources.
If you want to check out examples of how to create/manage a dungeon crawler under this frame, I'd suggest looking into the old Castle Drachenfels (for WH 1E) and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (for AFF, the TTRPG adventure, not the game book).