They seem like the worst of both worlds: A rules-heavy game's mountains of weirdly specific, nitty gritty rules and disjointed subsystems. A rules-lite game's ambiguous and noncommittal rules, and the onus it places on the GM to "figure out how this works yourself and make rulings" veiled under a naïve ideal of "Play/run the game however you like!"
I can hardly imagine an inexperienced GM picking up a game like Godbound or Stars Without Number and not being daunted by both the mass of rules and how ambiguously those rules are written. Even experienced GMs might find themselves confused by how differently OSR games are written.
Why bother? OSR gaming seems like a vehicle for either rose-tinted nostalgia from players reminiscing on their younger days when they had lower standards, or players wanting to be cool and "old school." Either way, it comes across as ludditism in RPG form, just as bizarre as someone who would prefer flintlocks and leeches to modern weaponry and medicine.
It's 100% nostalgia. The point of those games is to use a lot of words to say absolutely nothing, to provide complex mechanics that most people won't use or will haphazardly apply from memory because that's how thing worked in the fictional good old days.
Anthony King
>Stars Without Number Is that the one with the awful 'phase level' ship combat system?
They just seem like 'lazy RPGs' that people latch on to because they want something other than D&D.
Don't these games also have the kind of silly GM tool of "now I'mma do something BAD to you in return, mmkay?" It's just not fluid.
Jeremiah Ward
The appeal is that I can get players to it that aren't neckbeards only interested in "builds" or hipsters only interested in "the narrative". The rules are easy to understand for players (and might be a bit trickier for DMs depending on what system is used), and the thing then that makes players stick out from other players is their ability to imagine and to problem solve. This leads to better game sessions with less arguing about rules, less trouble finding interesting players and less bullshit that doesn't pertain to the game being played. Go to /osrg/ and see how many more gameable ideas are written about per thread compared to any other general.
Grayson Carter
>Go to /osrg/ and see how many more gameable ideas are written about per thread compared to any other general. You mean they use the thread as "mini-Veeky Forums, talk about campaigns and character fluff and stuff." No biggie, /pfg/ does that too. It doesn't suddenly mean the games are good.
Luis Cook
How is any of that a trait of the systems themselves, though? Most of that seems really vague and ephemeral.
Brandon Smith
Why are imagination and problem-solving limited to OSR games?
Why is it only OSR that shuts away the "build" people and the "narrative" people?
Liam Walker
>Why are imagination and problem-solving limited to OSR games? It's not limited to, but it's easier to hone with OSR than say, Pathfinder.
>Why is it only OSR that shuts away the "build" people and the "narrative" people? I'm sure there are other games that do that as well, but where are their communities?
What do you mean? Are you saying that, for example, "easy to understand rules" isn't a trait to the system itself?
No, that's not what I mean. There's a difference between "campaign/character fluff" and "gameable ideas".
Brody Roberts
>What do you mean? Are you saying that, for example, "easy to understand rules" isn't a trait to the system itself?
Not in the OSR context, as far as I've seen. The rules when you actually read them always seem pretty complex, with the simplicity coming from how the GM explains them to the players, often simplifying them on the fly and doing most of the system work under the hood.
Nathan Butler
You have to give me an example here, because this does absolutely not sound like any OSR game I've been in or seen.
Jackson Lewis
Because 'build' and 'narrative' people HAVE games that suit their needs.
OSR is a mix of nostalgia, and wanting something that isn't quite a storygame, and isn't quite a buildgame.
That's fine, and there's room for lots of innovation and improvement in the OSR genre, when people aren't busy making cashgrab rehashes of ancient versions of D&D that should die.
Nolan Bell
You're basing your points on the community of the games rather than any intrinsic quality of the games themselves.
And that's irrelevant for discussing how good a game is, because "the community" won't matter if you want to try to bring an OSR game to your friends.
There's basically nothing about the games themselves that attract this kind of community other than nostalgia.
Kevin Sanchez
Flame Princess is a pretty easy sell to most groups, dude.
And it's also generally easy to convince older groups to play OSR games, too.
You have to understand the era when OSR was at its most vibrant: It was at a time when oldfag Gen X types who'd put their lives on hold to raise families and focus on careers were getting their free time back.
Luis Evans
>rules-heavy game's mountains of weirdly specific, nitty gritty rules and disjointed subsystems.
On what fucking planet?
Ayden Morgan
To be fair, that -is- sort of the sore sticking point of AD&D that people don't like: different resolution systems for different things, charts, and subsystems.
But it wasn't ever really that bad unless you used all the optional skill rules and supplements.
Brandon Murphy
We were talking about appeal, right? Not about the intrinsic quality of OSR games. Also just because I'm interested, which OSR games have you been exposed to? I can also tell you that I don't use OSR because of nostalgia, I started D&D with 3e and mostly played BRP when I was younger.
Mason Cook
>Don't these games also have the kind of silly GM tool of "now I'mma do something BAD to you in return, mmkay?" It's just not fluid.
That's PbtA, if I'm understanding you correctly.
Angel Wright
"Your character is now gay against his will! Now you're forced to roleplay out your shameful thoughts of why you'd let another man cum inside your ass!"
This is the authentic PbtA experience as intended by its creator.
Ryan Flores
Almost nobody in the OSR scene uses AD&D, and I'm pretty sure that nobody has ever actually played AD&D with RAW anyway.
Bentley Cook
There are quite a lot of people (including me) who are fans of OSR games without having played the originals. So... no?
Joshua Adams
I'm not sure. There's these 'narrativist'-style games where it's like "you can do that, but it'll have a consequence that were gonna talk about and agree too, but it's up to YOU player".
Maybe Stars Without Number and Blades in the Dark? Other stuff, perhaps. It just seems really... awkward, you know. Like you're stopping the game every little bit to negotiate something, where the GM is some wet noodle.
Loose simulation is much preferable, with some cool build paths.
Adam Adams
>t. Virt
Nathaniel Gomez
Well, it's definitely not core to OSR.
Jaxson Wilson
Nostalgia. Also, it's like the (il)logical conclusion of the grognard mindset. Everything new is worse -> everything old is better -> oldest is bestest. People who weren't even alive for 1st edition D&D but turned grognard because of 4th edition, for example, will often go the OSR route.
Benjamin Perry
It's due to the dark ages, and the fantasy based on it. During the dark ages, everything older WAS better, because they had destroyed classic civilization and technology.
During the classics however, older was shitty tribal stuff, so they worked on the future. Modern times is just transition to that mood now.
Ian Watson
>They seem like the worst of both worlds:
Alternatively, the best of both worlds.
You call it rules-heavy, but ambiguous about the things that matter.
The exact same criticism can be levied against 3rd, 4th and 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons (Henceforth: D20).
D20 has, if anything, MORE rules than OSR but they're irrelevant bullshit rules like "how far can you jump with a standing start? What if you start running?" and the jumping distance is demarcated in feet while the game otherwise takes place almost exclusively in 5-foot increments.
And yet it has NO RULES WHATSOEVER about how much your jumping distance changes if you carry extra weight unless you happen to break the across an arbitrary weight barrier that, for some god damn reason, is more affected by your size and nr.# legs than whether your strenght is two points higher - the only part of the jumping rules that would actually matter, namely "how they are affected by loot gathering."
Jace Lewis
>And yet it has NO RULES WHATSOEVER about how much your jumping distance changes if you carry extra weight unless you happen to break the across an arbitrary weight barrier that, for some god damn reason, is more affected by your size and nr.# legs than whether your strenght is two points higher - the only part of the jumping rules that would actually matter, namely "how they are affected by loot gathering."
Are you seriously saying this is on the same level of ambiguity as OSR games' thick rules that still manage to be ridiculously vague?
Jonathan Watson
>OSR >thick rules Do you even know what OSR games are? Since that other user gave a great example of weird rule focus in D20, how about you do the same for an OSR game?
Asher Howard
Godbound, the whole faction ruleset. It looks plausible on the surface, but it's full of stupid shit like farming hamlets being only slightly weaker than major empires' capital cities.
There's, like, half a chapter on that shit.
Owen Hall
There's the old argument about elves and the chance of spotting ambush, which some people consider to be weird (if not bad) ruling since it exists in such a "legal vacuum". Elves have a 3-in-6 chance of spotting an ambush but you never know what anyone else' chance is, so the choice is between ruling nobody else CAN in the first place or that there's some sort of hidden mechanic in place OR that the GMs just making shit up as they go along, in which case rules are pointless anyway (in fact, you could argue that the elves are in a disadvantage in this scenario because absurdly, in any other situation the ambush would be detected or not based on the GMs whim, but it's not like they'd change that just because a dice was rolled - elves have a chance to FAIL whereas none existed before).
Or the whole argument about Thief skills and whether or not (and how, if so) other characters can try sneaking into places.
Nathan Garcia
I'll take your word for it that it's bad since I haven't read Godbound. Just be aware that Godbound is generally considered to be on the fringe of OSR and is never discussed in /osrg/.
> Elves have a 3-in-6 chance of spotting an ambush but you never know what anyone else' chance is This is not true in most retroclones. Which version of D&D had this oversight?
>Or the whole argument about Thief skills and whether or not (and how, if so) other characters can try sneaking into places. In most retroclones, all classes have a chance to successfully sneak but the thief has a higher chance of successfully sneaking. What is the problem here?
Adrian White
>There's the old argument about elves and the chance of spotting ambush, which some people consider to be weird (if not bad) ruling since it exists in such a "legal vacuum". Elves have a 3-in-6 chance of spotting an ambush but you never know what anyone else' chance is, so the choice is between ruling nobody else CAN in the first place or that there's some sort of hidden mechanic in place OR that the GMs just making shit up as they go along, in which case rules are pointless anyway (in fact, you could argue that the elves are in a disadvantage in this scenario because absurdly, in any other situation the ambush would be detected or not based on the GMs whim, but it's not like they'd change that just because a dice was rolled - elves have a chance to FAIL whereas none existed before).
I have no clue what you're talking about.
>Or the whole argument about Thief skills and whether or not (and how, if so) other characters can try sneaking into places.
Depends on the system of course, but with LotFP, yes they can.
Jace Reyes
>Just be aware that Godbound is generally considered to be on the fringe of OSR and is never discussed in /osrg/. How fast the goalposts move.
It explicitly uses OSR rules, to the point where in any godbound general, when we try and talk about rules, we get a horde of faggots screaming about how the rules don't matter, its OSR, you can just change it.
Daniel Long
It's just 2hu shitting up the Godbound threads, isn't it?
Jeremiah Powell
Well shit, I don't know what to tell you. OSR games are made every day, of course some will be shit. Doesn't mean OSR or all OSR games are shit.
Luis Gonzalez
>Actively try to talk about the rules >Get screamed down by faggots who can't stand it when you talk about their precious system in the 'wrong way'.
No, he doesn't shit it up. Faggots like you do.
Jonathan Perry
It's a combination of Colette being an autist and some anons being fags bringing the discussion to the lowest possible level within 15 posts of Colette's first post. There are valid points on both sides in that beginning part, but then it's just shitflinging for the rest of the thread.
Jason Bennett
>Actively try to talk about the rules You mean >Actively try to shit up the thread with munchkin powergaming and going against the game's purpose
You know Kevin Crawford, the game's author, BTFO him for being a munchkin earlier, right?
>The games purpose isn't to be a good, well designed game
OSR in a nutshell
Blake Mitchell
Thank you for proving my point about why the OSR fanbase is such a sack of shit so succinctly.
Adam Myers
Why would you tolerate powergaming in ANY game?
Hunter White
This is like saying all D20 games are inherently shit, and then point to some edgelords homebrew as proof, and when people contest your proof you go "WELL WELL WELL look at those goalposts move".
Liam Johnson
>Talking about the rules >Finding their break-points and explaining the issues to others >Faggots scream and throw a fit about this >Somehow the first guy is meant to be the one in the wrong To change the rules, first you really should have a grounding in understanding them, but I can understand how that's utterly beyond you.
Nathaniel Morales
>Edna >With regards to #1, how much "mechanical weight" does being in a lineage have? Is the entire Fact dedicated to having the lineage, or does the Fact still have plenty of room to support other abilities? >In other words, can I write, "My character is a Kalay knight of X order," and receive the perks of the Kalay lineage and all of the benefits of X knightly order?
>Kevin Crawford >Edna, you're trying to deduce the most mechanically optimal ways to achieve the values you've selected as most important for your PCs, whatever the grounding for that selection. I don;t agree that you've got the values right in the absolute, but hey, it's your PC in your imagined campaign, so you're right for all the values that matter. >Unfortunately, Godbound will not work for you. If you're trying to get absolute Word of God rulings indicating that your GM must or must not permit you to do X in chargen via a complex series of Fact choices, attribute assignment sequences, and tacit assumptions, it's not going to happen. There is too much that is objectively contingent on specific campaigns, groups, and players to give blanket assertions about these things. You cannot run a demigod-level campaign with world-shaking protagonists without having a healthy relationship between the PCs and the GM, one where they're on the same approximate page as to what fits the game they're sharing. The rules as written provide the basic framework for this and answer the questions that are most likely to come up for most campaigns. Everything else is and must be supplied by the group. >I would encourage you to look up Exalted 3e, as it has a much more rigorous mechanical framework that a lot of people are enjoying greatly.
>Edna >That is a terrible dismissive answer to someone interested in your game (and to someone who has already set aside Exalted 3e in favor of Godbound)
>Edna >Also, I do not even have a GM to ask in this case. I am inquiring to settle an argument in a thread
Why this?
Gavin Barnes
But who was in the right?
Jonathan Peterson
>2hu goes around bothering the dev to prove himself right in an argument on a Mongolian Horse-Riding board This is some comedy gold right here.
Andrew Bailey
Wow, that's pathetic on the devs part. Even if it's something to be worked out between a group the rules should still have some kind of solid guideline. Otherwise what's the point in the system?
Wyatt Peterson
It's a disrespectfully presumptuous answer. 1. Kevin assumes the guy hasn't already looked into Exalted 3e. 2. Kevin assumes the guy wants to use Kevin's answers to bully GMs (he doesn't, he's just trying to settle arguments in threads).
It's ridiculous if the culture of the OSR crowd and authors is to dismiss any analysis of rules (thick and heavy OSR rules with tons of ambiguities!) with "Fuck that, let the GM decise."
Jose Sullivan
My feelings as well, and that's why I'm rolling my eyes so hard at all of this.
David Kelly
I think this proves more that Godbound isn't (or at least can't handle) being part of the OSR scene. I haven't read it but I'm going to guess that a lot that is in it goes against the OSR spirit. Even the art style clashes with it. Just so you guys know, there's more to OSR than just sometimes being laissez-faire with rulings.
Charles Richardson
>thread complaining about OSR >focus exclusively on Sine Nomine As someone who enjoys playing Sine Nomine games, I'll admit they're not exactly the pinnacles of good game design, even among OSR games. I mostly stick to them because they're extremely lightweight and because my group refuses to go back to Traveller after the last time, so if I want my space opera it's SWN or nothing.
Aiden Torres
Yeah! It's not TRUE OSR!
Brody Wood
It might be "OSR" but it's also "Shit OSR" so I don't place it in my "Pristine OSR" folder, thank you very much.
William Ross
Sine Nomine is one of the bigger OSR publishers.
Quit moving goalposts.
Levi Powell
A publisher can be big and low-quality. See: Wizards of the Coast and Paizo.
Cooper Long
Doesn't this mean we can dismiss all arguments against OSR games with a smug, "Well, that doesn't apply to REAL OSR games"?
Camden Reed
I'd suggest instead of complaining about a nebulous and disparate collection of games that share only the trait "inspired by pre-3e D&D", you complain about either traits of specific games or mechanical trends throughout all systems that you believe to be most prevalent in OSR.
Gabriel Brown
I'm not moving goalposts. I have clearly stated that I concede that Godbound is a bad OSR game, because of its thick rules and vagueness. Now what you have to do is show me why OSR overall is shit.
Joshua Martinez
>A rules-heavy game's mountains of weirdly specific, nitty gritty rules and disjointed subsystems.
The fuck are you talking about?
Robert Gomez
He thinks that Godbound is the standard for OSR games.
Jonathan Foster
Sine Nomine in general.
Sine Nomine is pretty big in OSR sales.
Grayson Wood
>Sine Nomine is pretty big in OSR sales. How compatible is it with other OSR games? Can I run B2 Keep on the Borderlands with Godbound without much problem?
Levi Stewart
Sine Nomine is Godbound, Stars Without Number, and a bunch of other games.
It's all OSR compatible.
Kevin Crawford has a god-tier work ethic, but he's kinda dickish whenever someone comes in wanting balanced rulings.
James Hall
I thought the standard was D&D B/X and that any further retroclone acted more as a plugin/re-format of the system rather than adding senseless rules
Joshua Garcia
This is correct. I meant that OP doesn't know what he's talking about since his complaints are about Godbound/Sine Nomine rather than OSR.
If I'm to believe what some other have written here, Godbound a very thick work that also has a lot of vague rules. This doesn't exactly scream OSR to me. What's your stance?
Angel Russell
>Godbound a very thick work that also has a lot of vague rules There are a fair number of vague rules, which is probably Kevin's most consistent flaw. It's not really that thick (unless I'm somehow amazing at dealing with rulesets). Most of the space is either abilities for the PCs (which take up a fair bit of space) and tools for the GM. The core's slightly heavier than most OSR games, but it's not really heavy in comparison to most games. If you do think it's too far, it's pretty easy to steal the parts you like and staple them onto another system.
Evan Murphy
>rose-tinted nostalgia
>100% nostalgia
>mix of nostalgia
>other than nostalgia
>Nostalgia
Maybe for some, yeah, but a significant number in the OSR never had any experience with pre-3E D&D before. It's not nostalgia for us, since this is our first experience with it.
Also Philotomy makes some good points:
>ROSE COLORED GLASSES
>For some reason, when I tell other gamers I'm playing OD&D (or AD&D, or B/X, et cetera), I often hear comments about my "nostalgia" or my "rose colored glasses." I find this both odd and annoying. The idea behind "rose colored glasses" is that your perception is being altered, and that you aren't seeing things as they truly are. If you're "looking back through rose colored glasses," it means that you're not seeing clearly, with the implication that time has tricked your memory, making the past seem better than it actually was. You only see the good stuff through the rose colored glasses. So this is a neat turn of phrase, a flippant dismissal of any fond feelings for older editions like OD&D. Nevertheless, while glib, the phrase doesn't apply to me and my enthusiam for OD&D.
>Rose colored glasses only "work" when you're looking back on an experience. Once you actually go back and experience it, again, the glasses stop working. At that point, the experience must stand or fall on its own merits (or lack thereof). I'm not looking back fondly on OD&D, I'm currently playing it. When I say I like it, it's not because rose colored glasses have skewed my perception of the past; it's because I like the experience I'm currently having. Rose colored glasses? Nope.
Grayson Ward
You will find that has actually further detailed about why people who haven't played OD&D like it.
Ayden Jenkins
That rebuttal ignores the fact that past experiences or expectations can and do have a real impact on current experiences. No human being evaluates something purely on its own merits, it's always couched in our biases and predispositions.
Bentley Lopez
I know this is a troll thread, and there's so much stupid shit in here, but 10/10, you got me to reply anyway.
I ran a Godbound game for three players. Two of them were experienced D&D fans, and picked it up immediately. The third was a girl who came to sessions for her boyfriend, not out of any interest, and only chargenned because he urged her. I sat down with them, with the Godbound PDFs on my big screen, and they chargenned. It took them about half an hour, because they all had to keep reading the options on a single screen and writing stuff down.
By the time it was done, the girlfriend fully understood everything, jumped into the game eagerly, and was being more creative and active with the rulespace she was given than either of the other two guys, who had built relatively cool concepts but hadn't really latched onto the freedom and flexibility.
It's a balance, OP. It's not "the worst of rulesheavy" and "the worst of ruleslite." It's "rules to provide a guideline, the GM to guide." It gives new players less to deal with while still providing them with everything they need to get on the table and going inside a half-hour (a truly ponderous task for anyone playing Pathfinder), and then enough rules to keep them on task and limit them from being overwhelmed by options bloat (a common problem with ruleslite).
There's also the fact that all of the games are interchangeable and hackable with very little effort. I rarely run games straight from the book with OSR, because I frequently find systems that are smoother or cleaner or more fiddly depending on what my group wants in that area of the game, cut them out, and frankenstein them onto the B/X core.
"A solid system that provides everything you want, is easy to homebrew for, and is not over-ponderous nor over-fluffy" is not "RPG luddism," and it's kind of insulting that a potentially honest question was drowned in pretentious assholery and assuming the worst of people who like the DIY spirit.
Gavin Howard
>Why is it only OSR that shuts away the "build" people and the "narrative" people? Well, "only" aside, the increased randomness and lethality discourage those attitudes of play.
Having a wide range of possibilities with rolled stats is bad for builders because it means they can't reliably manipulate what stats they'll have at character creation: "builds" in effect become nothing more than making the best of limited choices, as opposed to building to a framework from the start. Increased lethality as enforced by RAW throws a wrench into plans of "narrative" types because it means that their own character's Hero's Journey might get killed on the doorstep at the hands of some dickish kobolds.
Disclaimer: I've only ever played AD&D when I was in high school, and it's been a long time since then.
Grayson Russell
OSR uses a easily understood framework that can be easily manipulated to suit a game. You can essentially mechanize your game's tone and narrative, without having to introduce weird fiddly plot point mechanics. It's also the heart of DIY D&D, which is really the place where the most original D&D content comes from. It's actually a beautiful thing, when your encounter and loot tables tell a story, and the path ahead is unpredictable even for you as a DM because players are fickle and there are many options on the tables. Very little is fluff, it's all gameable ideas, with a mechanical representation. That's what I think the appeal of OSR is.
Christopher Perez
i find them simple and to the point, also character growth seems more deep
Jaxon Parker
>OSR babbies
Honestly, I've found that all the shittiest hipster games come from this "OSR" camp. I imagine that it's because OSR gamers are retardedly easy to market to, being functionally iliterate when it comes to game design, so pretty much any hack can shit out an "old school" game as long as they dress it up with enough crappy ad&d nomanclature.
And I absolutely mean it when I say these people are functionally iliterate. OSR babbies literally pride themselves on their games being such vague, hard to rule pieces of shit that essentially no two GMs are going to make the same call.
Cameron Mitchell
Honestly, everything about OSR seems to be people wanting systems they can ignore, which doesn't make any sense to me. Why have rules or mechanics at all if you're going to handwave and half remember most of them anyway, running the game as it exists in your mind rather than as it exists in any book?
Then again, 5e is kinda based on the same principles and that's selling like hotcakes, so who the fuck knows?
Adam Jackson
Rulings, not rules. Highly modular rules with lots of space for tweaking and houseruling.
Old school gaming needs a completely different kind of philosophy compared to what modern games assume. The games are not about character building or even the characters themselves, but rather the campaign the referee has created. Player skill plays a huge role. Elaborate skill systems are a big no-no.
They're not "just another game". They're a different kind of game altogether.
Aiden Phillips
>And I absolutely mean it when I say these people are functionally iliterate. OSR babbies literally pride themselves on their games being such vague, hard to rule pieces of shit that essentially no two GMs are going to make the same call. I've found this same thing, and it just boggles me. Yes, my DM can change the rules. Having a fucking baseline to work from that doesn't make her put in more fucking work would be nice.
Anthony Cox
What player skill is there without enough depth of mechanics to make the rules themselves a challenge?
'Player skill' in the OSR context just seems to mean the ability to predict and outthink the GM?
Eli Scott
>Player skill plays a huge role.
This stuck out to me because it is such a massively retarded statement when you yourself admit in your post how loosey goosey OSR """""mechanics""""" are.
You can't *have* "player skill" when the rules of the game are so fucking muddled that they exist purely in the referee's mind, because players have zero basis on which to judge the rules of reality. It's like saying player skill plays a huge role in fucking Calvin Ball.
Alexander Roberts
Player skill as in do smart things with your character(s). There are mechanics and some of them are pretty detailed. For example the dungeon exploration rules are pretty robust. What old school games most often don't have is skill systems. When you can't resolve most situations with a simple skill check, you as the player need to be smart and think how to solve problems.
Play smart and you survive. Do stupid stuff and you die. Also the game is not supposed to be "balanced" around the party. There's nothing to guarantee you only encounter level-appropriate monsters or whatever like in modern games. You as the player have to make the decision to fall back if things get hairy.
William Clark
So it's more about metagaming than roleplaying?
Ryder Hughes
>You can't *have* "player skill" when the rules of the game are so fucking muddled that they exist purely in the referee's mind Nah. It's nothing like this. Like I said, for example the so called dungeon exploration cycle is pretty much codified and players know how things work. They can make educated decisions. There's nothing muddled about how old school games work.
Can you give me a specific example of a rule that is muddled in old school D&D?
Brody Torres
The GM sets up a situation and the players find a way to get through the situation. It shouldn't be them predicting and out-thinking the GM, but they should try to predict and out-think the challenges and dangers. Basically, the players are supposed to *play* and *do well* in the *game*. Have you ever played an OSR game?
Ian Robinson
This whole thread is just awful. It stinks of bait right from the OP.
Ryder Johnson
What OSR communities have you been reading?
OSR is all about mechanization and rules rigidity. They take gameable ideas and mechanize them. Loots tables, encounter tables, dungeon maps, hex maps, meaningful statistical representation, the distillation of creating enemies and monsters into easy to understand and build parts. The creation of races, or jobs, or whatever character options that suit the genre and game you're playing without having to break things to do it. Ultimately, nearly all content made in the OSR is compatible with other OSR content, with interchangeable pieces that doesn't break things either. Switch the ship combat of MotSP with the scalable combat of SWN and nothing breaks, but now ship combat is just like regular combat, but bigger.
They also understand that not EVERYTHING needs rules They're the tools in which to run your game, and like tools you use the right ones for the job.
What you're describing sounds like the indie rpg scene, which has roots in the OSR are DIY D&D community, but they're not OSR.
Colton Ramirez
To some extent, yes. Player skill assumes some experience and knowledge of how these types of games work.
But most of all it's smart roleplaying. Like doing investigation to know what's ahead, actually doing some scouting, using the environment, using diplomacy, utilising items in clever ways etc.
And one of the biggest traits of old school D&D is that experience is gained from treasure, not by killing monsters.
Austin Lopez
It's more that OSR isn't afraid to admit that there is always some kind of metagaming going on at the table. The players become aware of systems and mechanics and need to understand them to survive, why hide that? That doesn't mean that there's always metagaming going on during OSR play. Well, maybe if you're a boring person and play with boring people, but in that case you might as well play a board game.
Jaxon Price
This thread is confusing me. People on both 'sides', pro and against OSR, are presenting wildly different accounts of what it is and what its strengths and weaknesses are. Is it even a single consistent thing, or is it just a broad, vague category with a huge amount of different stuff beneath it?
Leo Richardson
This, it's a game first and foremost. You're usually around a table playing a game. You are aware of this fact. The game is the medium in which story emerges.
Logan Morgan
OSR can almost always be simplified into old school D&D and its direct derivatives.
Like someone already pointed out, modern indie games by and large have nothing to do with OSR.
Juan Torres
OSR is a broad community built around the revival of early D&D and its associated playstyles, which had been replaced by very different ones in new D&D and its competitors. People come to OSR from different angles and with different ideas, so it's a pretty diverse field, and opinions vary about what bits are the important ones. Also a number of the people in this thread are full of shit and probably trying to troll.
This guy has a good take on it, though. Also see the followups on "Player Agendas" and "Referee Agendas" for OSR gaming.
You're right, actually. Go to /osrg/ and ask them to define OSR and you will find many different ideas. Don't know what the anti-osr people got their ideas from though.
I think the usually described components of OSR are: >Based on OD&D, Basic D&D and rarely but sometimes AD&D >Focus on quick and random character generation and high lethality >Fast paced play. Focus on the game going smoothly and having fun and interesting things happen >Laissez-faire view on rules, as in that rules can be rulings if it keeps the flow of the game intact. Taking time to look things up is discouraged since it is boring >More "weird fantasy" rather than "high fantasy" or "low fantasy" >DIY-attitude. DMs should do a lot by themselves, like changing rules that they don't like or change things in modules to suit them and their group >Intercompatibility, most OSR should work for most OSR games, whether or not they're made for them. The DM shouldn't have to fiddle too much to make it work.
Keep in mind that if I post this in /osrg/ then I will probably be contested at all points.
Kayden Bailey
>most OSR *modules* should work for most OSR games Accidentally a word there.
Christian Gutierrez
With Basic and its derivatives you have a very specific playstyle focused on resource management and creative problem solving, and simple enough rules that it plays without too much trouble. One thing I like is that you can run it like a board game so newbies can get into the whole thing much easier. Newer versions of D&D don't really do that and put emphasis on other things, and give players much more agency and tools which creates different kinds of campaigns.
And there are modern takes on that playstyle, see retroclones, so it isn't wholly a thing where we wish we lived in the 70's and such. You have some really cool content like a lot of the LotFP adventures which unlike many premade adventures for games are very open ended and really do tension well.
It's just my five cents. If I wanted to play anything outside that super specific style I would of course choose some other RPG.
Anthony Garcia
Are there seriously people on this board that are such hardcore ruleslawyers that they care about having every rule followed? Jesus fuck
Ethan Edwards
Severe false dichotomy.
I don't want a system I can ignore. I want a system which provides a useful and intuitive framework for actions that makes my job as a GM easier.
William Jackson
This is literally what OSR games are.
William Ward
Isn't this exactly what OSR is?
Jaxon Reed
systems works here too
>More "weird fantasy" rather than "high fantasy" or "low fantasy"
That's more a LotFP thing.
Isaiah Sanchez
It's what every well designed RPG is ever made, so if that's part of your definition then it isn't a useful one.
