Mountain Missive Nr. 12

The Inventory

Soft snow trickles downwards. Hansisop’s face upwards, looking at the distant hold. Left arm swinging downwards, letting blood back in. Mild cramps in his right leg rising up. Deep breaths, inwards, outwards. With every breath, body heat outwards. Ropes cutting inwards, heavy gear, so heavy gear. All out dyno time. One brave jump. Mid air sudden rope restraint. Entanglement with that small talisman. One family heirloom too many. Enough to fall.

The constraints and capacity of a blog on game design.

OSR matters. Equipment management matters. Normal humans versus herculean tasks. To each their own. In Mountain Resonance there are Large Things and Small Things. Real life but different. You can carry 10 of each. To each their own. Different than real life. Rules require consequences, a rule itself. Abstraction requires reduction. I require the number 10 to solve it all. The Panic Engine rule, everything to solve with 10s apart the Panic. The eponymous choice. Double the 10 for Panic, stress the meaning, stress is the meaning. Rules are authoritarian. What does that make of OSR?

How do you breach a rule? A step too far. An item too many hiders the step. Forwards is upwards. Consequences are antagonists. Attrition made rules, made to hinder. Too many Large Things disadvantage [-] Might. Too heavy. Too many Small Things advantage [+] Agility. Back and forth. The elegance of a dance.

What will you leave behind next?

Gabriel Loppé - Matterhorn from Riffelalp, 1879

Get Mountain Resonance and its supplements for free on itch.io or RPG-Trader and sign up for the upcoming print run of the expanded version on Kickstarter.