3/28/2025
For the March 2025 Blog Carnival, “Over the Garden Wall” hosted Illusory Sensorium
I’ve actually been wanting to write this topic for a while, but not now that Illusory Sensorium has challenged the community to write about how we can take things from beyond the OSR and use them in the OSR, this seems like a perfect chance! For that I thank you.
What am I talking about?
I’m specifically talking about three open world games and a different idea from each that can be taken and applied to an OSR open world/West Marches-style campain. They are:
- Vantage Outposts, in Mad Max (2015)
- Most Wanted, in Batman Arkham Knight (2015)
- Collect-a-thons, in Far Cry 5 (2018)
One of the key points of each of these games is traversal, getting around the world is fun. In Batman, you grapple-and-glide or drive the batmobile, in Mad Max you drive your suped up war-car, in Far Cry 5 you essentially also drive your suped up war-car (I’m sensing a common theme here).
The designers want you to wander because wandering and coming across things is fun. To encourage this, they make travel fun through mechanics but they also want to make sure it isn’t wasting the players time. To make it so travel is worth doing (and fast traveling isn’t always worth it) they make discovering new areas reliant on travel!
That sounds like a lot of OSR campaigns right?
What tricks do they use to encourage wandering and what can we steal for our games? This is the key question.
Vantage Outposts in Mad Max
There’s a running joke in Ubisoft games (mostly Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry) that they always use the same mechanic: to expand the character’s mini-map they need to climb to the top of a high-tower, maybe an old radio tower or a church spire, something, and look out on the world.
Usually this doesn’t make a lot of sense in practice. It ends up revealing icons and sites your character couldn’t possibly see from their position.
But how does Mad Max do it?
In Mad Max, you have to ride hot air balloons attached to watch towers to get a high view of your surroundings. They’re mini-dungeons, you have to fight a few goons, maybe there’s a simple puzzle to solve, maybe a mini-boss, but it’s nothing extreme, just something to get the blood flowing.
Once you ride to the top your character pulls out binoculars and you, the player, physically look around and spot what you can see from that position. And you’ll see a lot! Guzzoline refineries have huge smokestacks, enemy vehicle patrols kick up dust, the landscape is mostly sand so if you see things breaking the ridgelines those are probably scrap sites.
How can we steal that?
In my games, I call them vistas, and they can be anything from old church spires, ruined watchtowers, or broken windmills. They’re short dungeons, 1-3 rooms max, usually with an inhuman enemy that the characters will feel no remorse for and is not too complicated (animated items, helmed horrors, undead, etc) and if I’m feeling cheeky, a little puzzle to get to the top.
Once they’re at the top I give them descriptions of all the major sites in the hex they’re in and neighboring hexes. Have you ever been to the top of a hill in the middle of a forest? You can see most clusters of buildings for miles around, and if they’re big or on neighboring hills (like castles, abandoned temples, or similar things) you can see them very well. I usually let them see:
- If there are any flying predators (dragons, griffons, pteradyctals, etc) in the hex
- If there’s any major surface ruins
- If there’s any settlements (they’ll see the smoke if its cold outside and settlements break the foiliage)
- If there’s any camps (bandits, raiders, orcs, etc, they’ll see the smoke)
- If there’s other vistas within 6-10 miles (usually the range of their vision)
It’s up to them to take notes, but they usually do. Just make sure you can give directions (to anyone) and distances (only for trained Rangers or Scouts).
Most Wanted in Batman: Arkham Knight
In a lot of games, when the game wants you to go somewhere it’ll simply say, “I’m adding this location to your Heads-Up Display (or HUD).” This just adds an Icon to your screen, usually your overhead compass, giving the distance and direction of a place to go. Very straight forward.
Some games will take this a step forward and create a button you can press to reveal a GPS-esque path to your destination. No getting lost! Just follow the dotted blue road to the Emerald City!
But how does Batman: Arkham Knight do it?
In Batman: Arkham Knight, there are sidequests called “Most Wanted” missions where you play out the worlds-greatest-detective catching minor villains from his rogue’s gallery that are running amok across the map. These are not given to you in HUD updates, instead the only way for you to find them (or the next step in completing them) is for your to explore the world at stumble across them. Here are some examples:
- The Perfect Crime: A serial killer, Professor Pyg, seemingly obsessed with surgery and bodily perfection, is hanging up dead “imperfects” around the city. After finding a few, you use your detective skills to triangulate the only place they could have all gone missing. The way you find the bodies is through the loud, eerie opera music played on the speakers nearby each body (the killer wants the world to know their victim’s imperfections).
- Creature of the Night: Manbat, the half-bat, half-man enemy of Batman, is on the loose. This is the first time Batman has encountered the creature and is seeking to cure it, which will take investigation of its original laboratory to create a cure (sounds like a dungeon to me), and three to four instances of wrestling Manbat in mid-air to administer it. The way you find manbat is through jumpscares (which it quickly runs away from) and through unearthly screeches into the night.
- Gotham on Fire: A serial arsonist, Firefly, is burning down all of Gotham’s fire departments while the teams are struggling to keep the rest of Gotham from burning down. Batman’s gotta stop him of course. The way you find each fire station is from the huge smokestacks that can be spotted from around the city.
- Gunrunner: During the chaos of the game, Penguin is running a massive gun-smuggling operation. The way you find these if you have an NPC ally, Nightwing, let you know when he’s got a lead and will wait for your move on when you want to initiate. This usually takes you back to an area you’ve already explored, and uses one of the buildings you’ve driven past a hundred times, exposing it as a front.
- Heir to the Cowl: A masked crusader-warrior, Azrael, wants to inherit Batman’s role as protector of Gotham. To do so, he must swear off killing, and prove his abilities through several combat challenges. The way he gets batman’s attention is by lighting a gas-fire on a rooftop in the shape of the bat symbol and waiting in prayer for the hero to arrive.
How can we steal that?
No where does Batman have a “detect side-quest” gadget. All of these are detected by travelling around and interacting with the world naturally, using the tools he already has.
In my games, side quests are revealed through the players doing things they would already do with tools they already use. Here’s some examples:
- The next time a player uses Scry or something similar, they get interference: a cry for help on a loop. What is that? Idk, but they’ll have to use a whole Scry spell to investigate it further, which will put it on the backburner for most players.
- The next time the players camp out in a new area, have them hear alien screeches, roars, or calls all throughout the night with no actual encounters. If they ask the locals, it’s a creature called the Shrieker (a drake or something) and can be hunted for its valuable hide or some other treasure, although it is avoidant of humans.
- The next time the NPCs meet a thief contact, have them say that there’s an open guild contract that the players might be interested in. Considering it’s been outstanding for a while, it looks like its not going anywhere if the players want to try their hand at it.
The important things to keep in mind with these are:
- Don’t make it time sensitive. The player’s don’t have to do it if they don’t want to, and can come back to it when they want to (and usually they will want to).
- Do make it a one-off or episodic. This should either be a one-off mission, or a short series. Maybe the first cry for help they scry is only the beginning, and a few weeks later they get another (maybe its the same voice from another location?) or maybe the first guild contract they do leads to another, then another. In both cases, there should be an end-game. Usually 2-4 episodes in, each separated by some time, they’ll fight a meaningful boss or complete the final puzzle and get a great reward. No more contracts or cries for help after that.
- Use it to expand the world. If there aren’t major thief guilds in your world, don’t use the guild contracts idea. If magic isn’t common, don’t use the scrying one. Use this as an opportunity to expand what is already there. If you want the players to fight mind flayers and your campaign just doesn’t have a lot of mind flayers in it, make a string of side quests that leads to a confrontation with a mind flayer. Why not? Mind flayers are cool!
- Keep it short and simple. This should take no more than a session, two at max, to explore and complete. If you have multiple episodes planned, leave some sessions in-between. Do not get the players bogged down an 8-room dungeon because they will lose the plot and get stuck in there forever. See The Art of the Side Quest.
- Finally, make sure that this happens naturally. The players shouldn’t have to go out of their way to encounter this quest hook, it should happen as a result of using their cool contacts, spells, abilities, or just by interacting with the cool mechanics of the system. If they have to go out of their way to encounter it, it will never be encountered. It’s as simple as that.
Collect-a-thons in Far Cry 5
Ubisoft is infamous for creating collect-a-thons. These are games where the world map is absolutely littered with icons for random crap. Fights, patrols, bad guy strongholds, collectables, side quests, cool places to look at, lookout towers (in games like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed there are absolutely lookout towers).
A lot of people say this annoys them due to the clutter. Or, if you’re like me, annoys them because you now feel an overwhelming compulsion to collect everything! But, I think there’s something we can take from this:
How does Far Cry 5 do it?
Like any good Ubisoft game, there are a million little tasks to do and things to collect in Far Cry 5. Here’s a few (for those who haven’t played, the game is about you taking down a cult that has taken over a county in rural Montana, USA):
- Cult Outposts (basically strongholds, think of them as patrolled castles that can be hit from any angle, usually with secret entrances and passages, with potential for reinforcements if the alarms aren’t cut)
- Cult Property (shrines, silos, and beacons that you can blow up, usually loosely defended and can be done on the way to other missions)
- Collectables (baseball cards, bobbleheads, comic books, Vietnam-war-era lighters, vinyl records, and whiskey crates, each with a little music, visual, or lore piece for finding them)
- Perk Magazines (essentially free experience points if you can find them)
- Clutch Nixon Tracks (fake famous stuntman’s tracks you can go on because driving crazily is fun, each gets you a cool item/vehicle)
- Side Missions (missions totally unrelated to main story, pretty unique, each gets you a cool item/unique or vehicle)
- Specialist Missions (each is unique and gets you a new sidekick you can call in like a Final Fantasy summon to help you out in times of need or just to wander around with you)
- Prepper Stashes (puzzles, sometimes cerebral, sometimes traversal, but always short and fun and with a reward of a unique item/vehicle)
- Safes (to crack, money inside)
- Hunting Areas (where you can find particular game, like bears or deers or wolverines)
- Fishing Areas (where you can find particular fish, like bass or salmon)
And these are only some of them. They’re everywhere! And for everything! And these aren’t even including the main story mission beats!
They’re can only be found in one of three ways:
- Wandering around (there are no towers in Far Cry 5)
- Asking NPCs about what’s in the area
- Completing one of these tasks and finding a note leading you to another area (there is always at least one note)
How can we steal that?
What this is is a reservoir of ideas for your own open world content. Each of these are supposed to be fast to play, about 15min, maybe the cult outposts or side/specialist missions can take a little longer. They’re essentially a single combat encounter, a 1-2 room dungeon, or a single puzzle, nothing special.
Mine them for ideas! Convert those ideas to medieval fantasy!
If you don’t feel good about giving your players cool equipment (such as magic items or a lot of gold) from these side adventures, I’d like to bring this to your attention: When Bilbo and the boys in the Hobbit found their magic swords was it in the bowels of a dungeon or was it in a random troll cave they didn’t even half to attack? A random troll cave they could have come back to if they wanted, and one they detected by doing the things they were already doing? That’s all I have to say.
And you don’t have to make the rewards in game, maybe they’re meta-rewards! If you’re an artist, tie a piece of art to it. If you’re a musician, tie a piece of music to it. If you’re a writer, tie a piece of a lore write-up to it. Not too much, but just a small reward for the players investigating your world and checking every corner.
Even then, maybe they can get an in-game reward if they collect all of one thing! Find every (or almost every, 100% completion without minimaps, HUDs, and icons is rare and often tedious) mural of elf history in the hex/hexflower? Great! They combine to spell a word in elfen that translates to “stone garden on the hilltop” and shows an image of an elf under a full moon surrounded by standing stones. Wasn’t there standing stones we found that didn’t do anything? Now the players can go there at a full moon and boom, a spiral staircase unlocks to a treasure room, no combat needed. A reward for exploration!
And that’s all collectables are anyway, rewards for exploration.
In conclusion…
If you’re struggling to “find the fun” in exploration in your game, you’re looking too hard. You’ve already found the fun. Combat is fun, dungeon crawling is fun, puzzles are fun, investigations are fun. Make THAT exploration. That’ what video games do!
Not everything they find in the wilderness needs to be a 20-session six-floor dungeon. Add it some bite-sized content between major beats to build on, and video games know how to do this very well.
Thank you for reading!
Until we meet again,
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ADVENTURES
Ward Against Evil 
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