Ideas to patch into OSR play (RPG Blog Carnival)

This months blog carnival from Illusory Sensorium has the topic of Over the Garden Wall where they want to hear about what is are things usually held as outside the domain of fantastic medieval adventure games which you think actually fits in quite well? They elaborate on seeking ideas to mix into the OSR from outside the culture of play, outside tabletop gaming and outside of gaming entirely.

I had a couple of ideas mostly things that are present in tabletop gaming just not really main-line OSR -
1. Career based character generation / progression
2. Testing things other than hit-points to face down challenges
3. Contacts as a rewards

For the first - career-based character generation and progress - I came to this in WHFRP and I think it is great; your shiny new character has some dents and dings already to explain how they are the adventurer they are today. One could say that this is very old-school in that it also turns up in Traveller back in the day but I think that just speaks to its legitimate claim to be incorporated into OSR play.

We see this partly realised in the Delta-GLoG character templates - each with four 'advances' that you choose, then potentially do another template.

I like how overall it gives more of a palette to generate a character and how people from a shared start point can evolve off in different directions. We see it a bit in kits, sub-classes and the like but not to the same granularity.

Second is the idea of more things to attack than hit points. This is kind of present in ability drains and level drains and so on but your primary thing that you are getting hit on is your hit points and those are also your primary thing at risk when you go into challenges. The alternative is something like Spire where you have multiple abilities and when you are proactively engaging with something you choose which you are going to test against.

The glimmer of this idea is present in ability and level drains but what is missing is some mechanic to let you choose what to stake for a given challenge - slowly taking damage or stress against all your abilities, impairing your capability to go on but betting that the stat damage you just took has gotten you far enough that what you have left on other stats will get you to the end.

Thirdly, I think something like the contacts stat like I recall from Shadowrun and World of Darkness would be helpful as a non-gold, non-magic item treasure that could be handed out. It meshes nicely with the faction-interaction aspect of old school gaming while expanding on that to broaden the scope of play from just treasure raiding into more - giving a class of rewards that can be handed out beyond just gold.

I would also like to work in some contacts stat or mechanic to interlock with old school hirelings and followers - build connections with factions and tap pools of potential recruits for further adventures. It gives the world a bit more texture. You can of course do all that narratively but I liked contacts from World of Darkness, it might be handy at old school tables too.