How to approach an OSR game like Brennan Lee Mulligan

Recently I watched a video about all of Brennan Lee Mulligan's house rules for Critical Role Campaign 4. Brennan Lee Mulligan is taking a West-march like approach. Already some old school heads are curious. I was immediately interested when Brennan said "I am employing a very different strategy with the big bad to honor the things I admire the most about this table which is I don't know who the PCs will determine to be their big bad.". Mr Trad went up on stage and said prep situations not plots to thousands. 

Brennan Lee Mulligan
Death and Dying Actions

Already the campaign is different from most with a few major house rules. First there are death actions. if you are rolling death saves, you can get a different action based on if you got a success or failure and how many success and fails you have. (For example if you succeed a death save you can give another player heroic inspiration) Now, for an OSR scenario, this isn't viable. But I would twist it into if you die, you get one last thing to do. I am currently making a blog game (Think Random Access Memory from To Be Resolved or Dredge Quick and Drown from The Garden Below) about giants. There will be 36 classes and here is one of them. 

The Plagued Prophet

You suffer from practically every disease known to mortal kind. But you have something special worth sharing. You have a giant's disease. You could be the next Red Plague! Soon, your disease will rise from the ashes and take over the world!

Rarity: Common (every settlement has at least one)

Endurance: Lowest Reflexes: Middle Will: Highest (your stat spread is decided by the Giant you serve under)

Abilities

Passive: immune to all poisons and diseases as you already caught it. 

Active: You can spray an acidic goo can dissolve wood up to 15m3 (yes the system is in metric)

On Death: Designate a nearby creature as your carrier. You carrier gets infected with a disease you know the symptoms of. 

The on death action is a nod to Brennan's house rule as it can make characters go out in a blaze of glory before the next character is created. 

Leveling Up and Heroic Moments

The second known house rule is how leveling up works. When the party hits a particular milestone, each member plans what spells and abilities to take. The twist is the level up only takes effect when the player feels like it fits the narrative. Now in OSR games with less of a focus on build craft may feel confused on how to apply it. Instead of planning abilities, the GM can give each player a place that has an opportunity for horizontal or vertical growth in the world so that each level up encourages the characters to interact with the main character, the world. The players can decide when to go to these places of growth so that the player's have full agency on how they want their character to develop. 

Cairn by Yochai Gal is a great example of this

Informed Rolls

The last "house rule" (it's more of how Brennan GMs) is that the DC and the consequences of the check are told to the players before dice is rolled. I like this as OSR play is all about informed choices. Dungeons are scary as you know nothing about it and the creatures that are just outside your torchlight. OSR games often care about resource management so letting the player's know what's at stake can make a player use their inventory in a creative way to make the check easier or to flat out skip the check. 

Clickables

Elmcat posted the biggest map of the blogosphere I have ever seen 

 

Behind The Helm shows you how to use illness in your games

Forlorn Encystment asks who gets to rule a stronghold? 

where I got the Brennan quote: https://www.youtube.com/live/zR91U4WKw0c?si=PySjTgpIiU5soujz 

 

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