Welcome to this week’s blog club. This week we are looking at “Party like it’s 999” by Jeff Rients (Jeff’s Gameblog), our last post from 2008.
Next week we’ll take a look at “The Ages of D&D” from 2009 by James Maliszewski (Grognardia).
You can see a list of previous blog club posts here.
I found this blog post from 2016 helpful additional reading for this one. Titled “Debauchery & Dragons: Carousing for XP, 1977 to 2015”, it’s a brief history of carousing rules up to that point. The author lists:
Two similar systems both published in 1977: The First Fantasy Campaign by David Arneson, and “Orgies, Inc.” from Dragon #10 by Jon Pickens.
Chris Kutalik’s rules in Fever Dreaming Marlinko (2015)
A quick look at the osr subreddit has people linking to either Jeff’s post, Claytonian’s one, or - and this one seems very popular - Luka Rejec’s system in Ultraviolet Grasslands.
I don’t recall using carousing for xp at my table. It doesn’t fit with my view on what counts as experience for character development. The usual “xp for treasure extracted” worked well enough.
I can think of only one instance of it at somebody else’s table, and that was a simple “spend money on a party and get xp” without anything else attached. The only way to get xp for gold at that table was to spend the money once back in town.
I’m at a loss as to how drunken debauchery is linked to improving a character.
As I see it, there are two motivations driving these kind of carousing rules: genre emulation and dealing with excessive wealth.
Genre emulation: The swords & sorcery stories that form part of the DNA of D&D typically have heroes who gain wealth only to freely spend it on “wine, women and song” and start each adventure broke and in need of funds. They are not stories about slowly becoming the establishment as the heroes gain wealth - they are perpetual adolescents, revelling in glorious excess, both of adventure and pleasure.
A side note: I suggested over on Mastodon a way to intensify this genre-feel, which people seemed to like.
Instead of “you get XP for gold spent carousing” the rule is:
You must accumulate treasure equal in value to the next level (e.g. 1000gp). Then, you must spend everything you have in feasting and excess, leaving you only with arms & armour that you can carry on your person.
Next session starts when you find yourself broke in a tavern a month later in another town (levelled up).
Secondly excessive wealth. There is a (perceived?) problem in AD&D of adventurers quickly accumulating vast amounts of money given the numbers needed to level up - e.g. a level 5 fighter in 2E needs 16,000 XP, and hence that much value in treasure. Gygax suggests various ways to “bleeding off” this ridiculous wealth level with irritating things like taxes, theft, etc. I think the carousing rules are an attempt to find a way to get the players to waste their money but enjoy doing so more.
That’s a cool way to do it. So no training fees and training time requiring living expenses?
We used the training fees to drain excess money. It would stand to reason that a goodly portion of the fees were actually spent on carousing and other living expenses. Cool.
I always like the idea of carousing, with the idea that level is also tied to fame and so-forth. You brag, you spread your legend.
To me, it ties not only into Conan and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but to Beowulf arriving in a land and needing to brag about how great he is before they’ll trust him as a champion.
This especially works when higher levels are tied to lands and titles.
That said, without other related options, I find it doesn’t play well. The “Orgies, Inc.” version from the second blog post does largely what I find more tempting by offering, “Sacrifices, Philanthropy, Research, Clan Hoards, and Orgies.” So many people don’t like wild parties, and they should be able to play characters that are of that sort.
I do think they should all be refocused on bragging. “Research" is mostly correspondence with other learned people. “Philanthropy" is giving community respect and renown. “Sacrifices" and “Clan Hoards" are about taking part in a social structure.
Basically, you get levels by using the fruits of your adventuring to expand your legend.