COSR Design Summary 5

This is a Rough Draft (capital-R, capital-D for just how rough it is) of the Cosier play guidelines. This is the final rough draft element I currently have planned. I'm leaving this rough for the time being, and moving on to phase 2: editing, organizing, and finalizing elements starting back at the beginning!

Cozy Guidelines for GMs and Players

This game is about playing OSR-style adventures with a cosier set of conventions.

Cosier, but Not Cozy

This game is not going to be fully cozy. The characters will leave the comfort of their home and the safety of the village to seek out adventures. Those adventures will see the characters facing challenges beyond their comfort zone and expose them to some degree of danger.

However, the characters will not be harmed. Despite the challenges they face and whether or not their adventure meets with success, they will all return home without suffering major injury or emotional trauma.

If their adventure was a success, they will return home with treasure!

If their adventure was a failure, they will return home with a renewed sense of gratitude for the comforts they enjoy, no more desire to adventure, and retire to enjoy a long and comfortable village life.

This is the Cosier convention.

It is the responsibility of the GM and every player to remember to keep the character’s safety a priority. Don’t subject characters to harm or trauma. The action should be exciting. The dangers should be worth telling a story about. But, remember, these characters lead small lives and are capable of only small heroics. Keep them safe.

It is also everyone’s responsibility to keep each other’s safety and comfort a priority during play. Discuss and revisit Lines & Veils as needed. Pause, rewind, and change what happened as needed. This game is intended to provide challenges to creative problem solving, not challenges to anyone’s emotional well-being.

Proceed with Caution, Boldly

As previously mentioned, this game will be cosier, but not entirely cozy. It will mix other genres together to achieve a full adventure game. Bring in elements from slice-of-life, children’s adventure, high fantasy, your favorite cozy stories, and appropriate parts of your preferred fantasy adventure games.

Avoid violence, horror, and the grotesque. Characters may be startled or even frightened, but never brought to a state of terror. Character may suffer torn garments, lost treasures, minor scrapes and bruises, but never lose something personal significance or suffer any injury that requiring medical care.

There will be monsters and dangers that could conceivably harm the characters. They won’t. The characters may need to jump across a narrow ravine. They will make it. The characters may be chased by a bear. They will escape. Look to your favorite TV-Y7 shows for examples.

This game uses a mechanic called “Mettle” to measure how much exposure to risk a character is willing to endure before they pack it in and head home. At a certain point, they’ll have had enough of adventuring.

The player portraying them is responsible for getting them to the treasure or the personal goal before the character gets fed up with the whole business.

This won’t be easy.

To that end, characters are extremely susceptible to bother in this game. Players will need to be cautious when guiding the characters through an adventure. The game rules are designed with a focus on player creativity. Without exerting that creativity, characters will retire from the adventure early, without ever catching a hint of treasure, and return home without any interesting stories to tell.

These characters are not exceptionally fast, strong, coordinated, or brave. They are curious, but that curiosity is tempered by caution.

Indulge their curiosity. Help them safety navigate the adventure to collect the treasures and stories worth bringing back to the village.

More than just adventure

The rules of this game focus on the excitement and danger a character will encounter on their adventures. But this game is not only about adventuring. Give some time and thought to the characters home life and day-to-day events. Though they may have different reasons for adventuring, they’re all primarily concerned with enjoying a long, safe life in the village, surrounded by friends, loved ones, neighbors, and even low-intensity rivals.

Consider playing out a slice-of-life episode between adventures. Do the people closest to the characters know they went on their previous adventure? Do they approve? What have the characters done with their treasure? If a character retired during the adventure, how have they been enjoying their life?

What follows are some suggested best practices for Game Ministers (GMs) and Players. They are curated and remixed from Jason Tocci’s 2400 and Yochai Gal’s Cairn.

GM Advice

The Players should be able trust what you say. Earn their trust. Be worthy of their trust.

Describe events, scenery, characters, behaviors, dangers and possibilities.

Give everyone time in the spotlight.

Incorporate player-driven worldbuilding elements into the story.

Provide additional clues to any predetermined mystery.

Introduce a retired character’s replacement ASAP. Favor inclusion over realism.

Provide useful information about the game world as the Characters explore.

Be helpful and direct when answering questions.

Respond honestly, describe consistently, and encourage questions.

Characters cannot take actions beyond their limitations.

Reward players with success for cleverly and sensibly leveraging a situation.

The game world should be organic, malleable and unpredictable.

Craft situations, not stories or plots.

NPCs should remember the characters’ words, actions, and what resulted from them.

Infuse NPCs their own self-interest and personalities, and have them act accordingly.

Provide opportunities for Players to fulfill the needs and wants of their Characters.

Telegraph Trouble to Players when it is present. The more dangerous, the more obvious.

Give Players opportunities to solve problems and interact with the world.

A Treasure is specific to its origin. The best Treasures tell a story.

Seek clarification "so, A or B?" when Player intentions are vague.

Keep the conversation going and ask prompting questions if it stalls.

The characters’ actions should leave their mark on the game world.

Establish Lines and Veils to ensure everyone can adventure safely.

Invite players to pause, skip or redo as needed.

Player Advice

Rules do not define your character. They are just tools for play.

What your character would do and what you would do are equally relevant.

Be creative with your intuition, items, and connections.

Seek consensus from the other players before barreling forward.

Stay on the same page about goals and limits.

You’ll accomplish more as a group than alone.

Ask questions and pay careful attention to the details.

Trust the GM's descriptions, but freely seek more information.

There is no single correct way forward.

Treat NPCs like real people.

Be curious to safely gain information and solve problems.

Most NPCs are interesting and willing to talk things through.

Try to stack the odds in your favor.

Retreat when you suspect the situation is too much.

Use reconnaissance and subtlety to avoid Trouble and minimize risk.

Research and ask around about your objectives.

Keep things moving forward and play to see what happens. 

Thank you for being awesome and good luck in all things!