Grognardling: 20 Questions Setting Creation Series

Jeff Rients wrote this list a while back. It's a list of questions your players will probably ask you if you run a campaign for them and, therefore, a list of questions you should have answers to if you intend to run a campaign for your friends. I'm currently doing a series working up multiple answers to these questions both as an exercise for myself and as a tool for refs who need quick answers to these problems.

What is the deal with my cleric's religion?
Where can we go to buy standard equipment?
Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?
Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?
Who is the greatest warrior in the land?
Who is the richest person in the land?
Where can we go to get some magical healing?
Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?
Is there a guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to gain more spells?
Where can I find an alchemist, sage, or other expert NPC?
Where can I hire mercenaries?
Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johhny Law?
Which way to the nearest tavern?
What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?
Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?
How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?
Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?
What is there to eat around here?
Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?
Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?

Words of Wisdom from the OSR

When we encountered a trap or a puzzle, we had to work them out for ourselves; we couldn't just "make a Spot check at DC 15" to find what we needed. The longer I am involved in old school gaming, the more convinced I am that that is the crux of the difference between older games and newer ones…[R]olling dice should never be a substitute for individual cleverness and creative thinking. -James Malezewski

OD&D is not and never has been about who is most powerful; it is about teamwork and having fun by overcoming obstacles together. -David Bowman

The point isn't to make role-playing some sort of masochistic experience where it's all suffering and death and pain and failure. The point is, if all these things are real and present dangers, then success means more. -James Edward Raggi IV

OSR cliche: "We don't explore characters, we explore dungeons". Not exactly. I think the idea is more: what thing do you use as rocket fuel until the campaign gets into orbit and goes where it wants to go? I use a dungeon to get there. Freak monsters and puzzle traps are the selling point--but once the campaign gets into orbit it goes where it goes. Different gamers may all end up in the same kind of campaigns but they were sold on getting into that rocket ship for the same reason. -Zak Smith

Referees/DMs/Labyrinth Lords (or whatever you want to call them) are indeed the final arbiter of the rules and have the final word on what happens inside their world; however, each and every one of us who run an RPG have made the choice to cede that control to our players by the very nature of playing the game. If we wanted total control, we would write short stories, novellas and novels, not play RPGs. The dice are the mechanism by which we cede that control – they are the means by which player choices are validated every time they choose to do something dangerous. -FrDave

Enforcing the written rules is a small part of being a good DM. In my experience the players will respect that you want to keep the game moving as long as they are convinced that you are not an adversarial DM. I can smile while giving my players all sorts of bad news. And they don't blink when I run roughshod over their notions of how D&D works. How can I get away with this? Because they trust that I'm there to have a good time with them, not against them. Show that you will call things down the middle, but will give them every chance when you're in a grey area. Let them use and abuse the tricks on their character sheets and the crazy plans they come up with. Then when you kill them they'll understand that it wasn't anything personal. -Jeff Rients