[book] What-Comes-Next

What-Comes-Next is a novel based on an OSR campaign set in a mostly peaceful world, with magic present but relatively weak; a shop might be lit by (expensive) magic crystals but there's no such thing as a fireball spell, just for example. The shared touchstone for the players was 'Dragonlance but just the parts where it's a bunch of friends having adventures together'. It's largely slice of life (though sometimes that life involves dealing with an owlbear or the aftermath of a wild elf girl overindulging with alcohol) and more about travelling to various places and the relationships between the characters than dungeon-crawling or amassing piles of treasure and magic items. The characters aren't 'adventurers' as such, not the typical fighters, mages, rogues, or clerics. They're a halfling who wants to be a trader, a dwarf far from home with an interest in cooking, an orphan human who was formerly the village witch's apprentice and who is now searching for what-comes-next, and a chaotic neutral elf on her century walk (and oh what a journey she took us on).

As with most OSR campaigns the system/mechanics ended up being an amalgam of bits and pieces from various games glued together with homebrew, often created on the fly to fit whatever situation the characters found themselves in. With that said the original game was Beyond The Wall, with Basic Fantasy Roleplaying and Dungeon Crawl Classic also involved to a greater degree than others (or at least to the point where they were mentioned by name in the campaign notes I used as the basis for this novel). I think one of the strengths of OSR is that it provides a solid basic framework to build on, and over the course of playing you quite naturally create your own custom system to run it with. By the end of this one we had detailed rules for foraging, hunting, cooking, trading, cantrips and minor magic—everything we were interested in exploring or expanding.

This novel follows the events of the campaign with reasonable closeness and accuracy, with no differences in outcome to stat or skill checks or combat; if a character succeeded or failed in the campaign, they succeed or fail in this story; if they got hurt in the campaign, they get hurt in this story. Critical successes and failures were also a part of the campaign and can perhaps be spotted throughout the novel. With that said events are presented as the characters experienced them and so there aren't any stats or levels or such in the novel itself.

By this point you probably know whether or not you're interested in this odd thing. If you are then I hope you enjoy this tale of four wayward souls who were lucky enough to travel together. We certainly had an adventure.