Quote from: Chris24601 on May 25, 2024, 10:48:07 AMUh huh. You go right on believing what your ego needs to; that your products are relevant enough for me to give the slightest thought to.

You can't hate something you don't even think about most days and when you do it's only because someone else brought it up and is pretending they're some defining voice of a movement instead of someone who flexes the definition of OSR every bit as much to suit their needs.

Ex. Invisible College is marketed as an OSR-ruleset, but is a modern world setting with significant rules differences from D&D... you can't just plug-and-play it into a B/X or AD&D campaign. It's not compatible out of the box. But you market it as OSR anyway.

So if even the guy who wants the term to be taken seriously doesn't treat the term seriously, why should anyone else?

So by your logic White Box FMAG isn't OSR either since it has several differences with D&D.

OSR = Compatible with 1974-1983 D&D with little to no conversion needed.

Now, what are those "significant rules differences from D&D"?

So, OSR as I understand it...

The short version is that an OSR product is compatible with early versions of D&D.  This came about, to my memory, starting in the early 2000s.

A more detailed explanation:

OD&D, AD&D 1e, AD&D 2e, B/X, BECMI, and D&D Rules Cyclopedia were all different rules sets but could all use the same adventure modules.  (In my memory, B/X, BECMI, and Rules Cyclopedia were all the same rules with larger volumes containing more options but I've been informed there are differences.)

An adventure is OSR if it can be used with the above listed rules sets. 

OSR systems fall into three separate categories.  First are the clones; these are recreations of one of the above rules sets so that new players can play the original out-of-print game by simply getting a clone of the rules set they want.

The second are the "New Wave" OSR games.  These use the same core rules of one of the originals but use a different genre or some other element.  That makes it a different game play experience while maintaining the familiar mechanics.  Some of these are blended rules sets where rules and mechanics are cherry picked from the different versions of early D&D.  Some may include some original rules but should stay fairly faithful to the originals.

The third are what I've heard referred to as "designer" or "experimental" OSR systems.  These are games that has significant mechanical differences from any of the original games but are still fully compatible with the old TSR modules. 

I have heard some people try to put other games into the category.  The two I see most commonly are Tunnels and Trolls and Traveller.  These are old school games but they don't seem to fit the actual OSR groups were trying to do when I first encountered them about 2008 or so.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 26, 2024, 12:32:33 PMI don't play them. I don't run them. I don't see any offerings for them on the boards at my FLGS or their associated website.

I don't think about the OSR at all on my own. It only enters my brain when someone else brings it up and when they do I mostly just laugh to myself because it's invariably someone trying to make OneTrueWayist claims about a term practically defined by having no one with enough authority to define it.

I don't hate or love the OSR in the same way I don't hate or love what's living in the Deep Ocean. I do broadly get annoyed by OneTrueWayism, particularly when it insists on throwing away people who might agree with all of the problems in the modern RPG scene (that the Woke are intent on dividing and conquering and driving those who don't abide their insanity out entirely), but because they don't like random-stat generation or similar OSR-isms get decried as Woke puppets who want to destroy the hobby.

If you don't play what they say is the OSR way you're a garbage person who shouldn't even be in the hobby.

Never mind that their OneTrueWayist bullshit looks nothing like how I saw D&D actually played back in the day by the 12-15 year olds who actually played it. Random rolls only? Please. Outside of the retard who practically drove me from the hobby the norm in my area was arrange 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 in whatever order you wanted and get max hit points and gold. If you got spells just put up to your limit for the level into your spellbook. Done.

That's because it was fun and you didn't have to waste any time making a new PC or have to worry about fudged dice or rolling multiple sets until you got something you wanted; put your six numbers in the order you wanted, pick a race/class (AD&D1e was the norm in these parts when I actually played), figure out your class stuff... back in the game.

Anyway, there's a whole chunk of players out there who, at least online, feel pretty homeless because we're not welcome at other places for not being Woke and aren't welcome here because we have no interest in bowing down to the self-proclaimed OSR high priests.

It's not healthy to hate though; hate is poison for the soul; which is why I just don't think of the OSR unless it's brought up here. Then I bring up the ridiculousness of the people who treat it as anything more than a marketing gimmick and get on with my day.

And most of the reason it is ridiculous is, again, OSR OneTrueWayists who lump anyone who doesn't worship their idol as belonging to the same group who are defined by their undying devotion to The Revolution and hatred for all that lives/exists... even as they insist on pushing their own Old School Revolution and hating on and ostracizing the unbelievers.

That's a whole lot of words to say "Yep, guilty as charged."

Thank goodness we have someone who doesn't like or play OSR games here to police the language we use to talk about them...

I'd prefer to have OSR just mean "based on TSR-era D&D". Much broader and the definition stops being useful. Much narrower, and it risks throttling innovation rather than encouraging it.

I think Pundit and others might have actually shot themselves in the foot by framing the OSR as a movement or scene, setting itself in opposition to other gaming scenes, rather than as just a rules framework. A movement/scene carries with it a certain social cachet which inevitably encourages entryists to try and widen the definition in order to fit themselves in and reap the social or commercial benefits.

I think Tenbones had the right idea above. Let "old school gaming" be the scene, and OSR be the rules framework, and try to keep the two distinct in usage. That way classic Runequest or whatever players can say they like old school gaming, but not OSR games, and everyone knows what they mean.

QuoteThe reason why the core mechanics are so important is compatibility. Compatibility is a central feature of the OSR's success; where you can take any two OSR books, by different authors, even in different genres, and you can with the absolute minimum of effort plug stuff from one book into the other totally different book.

If people get to start claiming their D6 dicepool game is OSR, that compatibility is lost

Sure, but that's the thing, I can still easily imagine a d6 dice pool OSR game based on B/X D&D and which is entirely compatible with TSR era modules and content with maybe some mild on the fly tweaks needed to be made by GMs.

Even your RPGs are not 1-to-1 TSR Equivalents, they handle a number of procedures different, I cannot for example drop any TSR-era class into lion & dragon and accept it to run perfectly smoothly, it would work I guess but the way they level and progress and the scale of that would be entirely off with the rest of the game, they'd have different saves, magic, etc.

so again I find this argument poppycock.

Look ma, it's the No True OSR fallacy!

Quote from: tenbones on May 26, 2024, 12:35:28 PMSo there should be a new marketing term - OSG (Old School Game) which comprises all non-d20 based games from that era?

I'd rather use OSG (Old School Gaming) for the people that play the original D&D games (OD&D, B/X, BECMI and 1E) as opposed to OSR games.

I'm not much into early D&D anymore, but I prefer the more narrow, useful version of OSR that assumes it is both old school in spirit and compatible mechanically with those games. Narrow definitions are useful to people inside and out.  When I describe my preferred game as old school in spirit but not compatible mechanically (i.e. not OSR but near it in spirit) then that says something fairly clear.  Or it would if people didn't latch onto descriptions as a branding technique instead of description.

It boils down to some people want clarity and some people want to deliberately muddy the waters and some people don't care if the waters are clear or muddy as long as they can be in the clique.  I never much saw the point of watering down something just so that I could say that I belonged to it.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on May 26, 2024, 03:34:59 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 26, 2024, 12:32:33 PMI don't play them. I don't run them. I don't see any offerings for them on the boards at my FLGS or their associated website.

I don't think about the OSR at all on my own. It only enters my brain when someone else brings it up and when they do I mostly just laugh to myself because it's invariably someone trying to make OneTrueWayist claims about a term practically defined by having no one with enough authority to define it.

I don't hate or love the OSR in the same way I don't hate or love what's living in the Deep Ocean. I do broadly get annoyed by OneTrueWayism, particularly when it insists on throwing away people who might agree with all of the problems in the modern RPG scene (that the Woke are intent on dividing and conquering and driving those who don't abide their insanity out entirely), but because they don't like random-stat generation or similar OSR-isms get decried as Woke puppets who want to destroy the hobby.

If you don't play what they say is the OSR way you're a garbage person who shouldn't even be in the hobby.

Never mind that their OneTrueWayist bullshit looks nothing like how I saw D&D actually played back in the day by the 12-15 year olds who actually played it. Random rolls only? Please. Outside of the retard who practically drove me from the hobby the norm in my area was arrange 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 in whatever order you wanted and get max hit points and gold. If you got spells just put up to your limit for the level into your spellbook. Done.

That's because it was fun and you didn't have to waste any time making a new PC or have to worry about fudged dice or rolling multiple sets until you got something you wanted; put your six numbers in the order you wanted, pick a race/class (AD&D1e was the norm in these parts when I actually played), figure out your class stuff... back in the game.

Anyway, there's a whole chunk of players out there who, at least online, feel pretty homeless because we're not welcome at other places for not being Woke and aren't welcome here because we have no interest in bowing down to the self-proclaimed OSR high priests.

It's not healthy to hate though; hate is poison for the soul; which is why I just don't think of the OSR unless it's brought up here. Then I bring up the ridiculousness of the people who treat it as anything more than a marketing gimmick and get on with my day.

And most of the reason it is ridiculous is, again, OSR OneTrueWayists who lump anyone who doesn't worship their idol as belonging to the same group who are defined by their undying devotion to The Revolution and hatred for all that lives/exists... even as they insist on pushing their own Old School Revolution and hating on and ostracizing the unbelievers.

That's a whole lot of words to say "Yep, guilty as charged."

Thank goodness we have someone who doesn't like or play OSR games here to police the language we use to talk about them...

Show me where it says you have to like or play something to be able to comment... or are you going to stop shitting all over, say, 4E every time something from it comes up?

You're so far up your own ass you don't actually see you've just become the mirror image of the Woke; hating on anything that doesn't align with your worldview and assigning malign motives to any who disagree.

Which, again, is why the OSR as a movement/scene is and will always be ridiculous. The movement/scene is everything it professes to hate.

No one would feel this way if it was just being treated as a ruleset. People can like or dislike rulesets for a wide variety of valid reasons, but when you make something a movement, then you need your gatekeeping and exclusion and any who dissent can't have different preferences... they're actually having BadWrongFun if they don't embrace the movement... just like the Woke from the other direction.

Pathetic.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 26, 2024, 08:44:05 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on May 26, 2024, 03:34:59 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 26, 2024, 12:32:33 PMI don't play them. I don't run them. I don't see any offerings for them on the boards at my FLGS or their associated website.

I don't think about the OSR at all on my own. It only enters my brain when someone else brings it up and when they do I mostly just laugh to myself because it's invariably someone trying to make OneTrueWayist claims about a term practically defined by having no one with enough authority to define it.

I don't hate or love the OSR in the same way I don't hate or love what's living in the Deep Ocean. I do broadly get annoyed by OneTrueWayism, particularly when it insists on throwing away people who might agree with all of the problems in the modern RPG scene (that the Woke are intent on dividing and conquering and driving those who don't abide their insanity out entirely), but because they don't like random-stat generation or similar OSR-isms get decried as Woke puppets who want to destroy the hobby.

If you don't play what they say is the OSR way you're a garbage person who shouldn't even be in the hobby.

Never mind that their OneTrueWayist bullshit looks nothing like how I saw D&D actually played back in the day by the 12-15 year olds who actually played it. Random rolls only? Please. Outside of the retard who practically drove me from the hobby the norm in my area was arrange 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 in whatever order you wanted and get max hit points and gold. If you got spells just put up to your limit for the level into your spellbook. Done.

That's because it was fun and you didn't have to waste any time making a new PC or have to worry about fudged dice or rolling multiple sets until you got something you wanted; put your six numbers in the order you wanted, pick a race/class (AD&D1e was the norm in these parts when I actually played), figure out your class stuff... back in the game.

Anyway, there's a whole chunk of players out there who, at least online, feel pretty homeless because we're not welcome at other places for not being Woke and aren't welcome here because we have no interest in bowing down to the self-proclaimed OSR high priests.

It's not healthy to hate though; hate is poison for the soul; which is why I just don't think of the OSR unless it's brought up here. Then I bring up the ridiculousness of the people who treat it as anything more than a marketing gimmick and get on with my day.

And most of the reason it is ridiculous is, again, OSR OneTrueWayists who lump anyone who doesn't worship their idol as belonging to the same group who are defined by their undying devotion to The Revolution and hatred for all that lives/exists... even as they insist on pushing their own Old School Revolution and hating on and ostracizing the unbelievers.

That's a whole lot of words to say "Yep, guilty as charged."

Thank goodness we have someone who doesn't like or play OSR games here to police the language we use to talk about them...

Show me where it says you have to like or play something to be able to comment... or are you going to stop shitting all over, say, 4E every time something from it comes up?

You're so far up your own ass you don't actually see you've just become the mirror image of the Woke; hating on anything that doesn't align with your worldview and assigning malign motives to any who disagree.

Which, again, is why the OSR as a movement/scene is and will always be ridiculous. The movement/scene is everything it professes to hate.

No one would feel this way if it was just being treated as a ruleset. People can like or dislike rulesets for a wide variety of valid reasons, but when you make something a movement, then you need your gatekeeping and exclusion and any who dissent can't have different preferences... they're actually having BadWrongFun if they don't embrace the movement... just like the Woke from the other direction.

Pathetic.

Be careful.  IMAX is liable to sue you for violating their patents on massive projection.  No one has told anyone here that they are "playing it wrong."  You're doing exactly what you are accusing others of doing, hating on anything that doesn't fit your narrow worldview and opinions.

Pathetic

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 26, 2024, 03:47:59 AMBecause point-buy leads to extreme min-maxing and "charbuild optimization", which turns out to be contrary to compatibiilty. Having randomly-rolled ability scores, and not being able to "purchase" skills or feat to taste, means that compatibility is maintained.

How does min-maxing and optimization break OSR compatibility? OSR games have never been finely balanced like the 4e style wargames. Having a character with optimized stats isn't going to break the game any more than rolling an extraordinarily strong character would. I agree that it breaks with the spirit of OSR to some degree, but I don't see where it breaks mechanical compatibility.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 26, 2024, 03:49:22 AM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on May 25, 2024, 10:31:21 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on May 25, 2024, 09:59:54 AMI can't speak for the OP but I don't think point buy (or skills, or feats, or combat maneuvers) is in any way incompatible to the OSR.

When I say "compatibility with TSR" I do not mean theoretically, I'm actually running classic TSR modules and I don't want to do much conversion during the game. I also use old school monster manuals and encounter tables. This all despite of not running any TSR game (I use my own retroclone, Dark Fantasy Basic).

Of course, there are few "hard lines", since TSR contains many variations: roll high, roll low, 1d20, 2d6, 1d100, additional abilities (comeliness), race as class or separated, sci-fi aspects and entire games, NWP, WP, etc.

But the more conversion you need the farther you are.

Here is a curious example from Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/1d06tya/can_anyone_weigh_in_on_whether_our_game_is_osr_or/

Old school is comprised of more than just older TSR games. A tweaked clone of Traveler qualifies as old school IMHO.

Old School, definitely. OSR, no. OSR is based on D&D. As I pointed out, Traveller has its own third-party old-school movement these days, and that's great. But it is its own separate thing.

Why?

I know you feel obligated to repeat this often, but what benefit is there in isolating the OSR from any other game system that came out during that time? Why does it have to be D&D based only? is this some kind of One True Wayism for you? I ask, because this honestly looks like you are trying to protect some kind of marketing brand recognition you find in the acronym OSR.

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 27, 2024, 01:01:00 AMWhy?

I know you feel obligated to repeat this often, but what benefit is there in isolating the OSR from any other game system that came out during that time? Why does it have to be D&D based only? is this some kind of One True Wayism for you? I ask, because this honestly looks like you are trying to protect some kind of marketing brand recognition you find in the acronym OSR.

OSR just means "based on and broadly compatible with TSR era D&D". If I buy an OSR product, and it's actually basically Warhammer Fantasy, I'm not going to be happy because that's not what OSR means. It's not just a marketing term, its informative.

And yes, I know people call Zweihander OSR, they're wrong.

OSR, as a product descriptor, should tell me something about the product being described.  If I am browsing through DTRPG and come across a product labeled OSR, that should tell me something substantive and useful about what the product is.  If it refers to one of several different, not compatible games that fall under the nebulous category of old school games, then it utterly fails to fulfill its basic function.  It doesn't actually tell me anything about the product it is being used to describe.  There needs to be some way to determine what is and, more importantly, is not an OSR product.  Otherwise, OSR as a category is meaningless and OSR as a product descriptor is completely worthless.     

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 27, 2024, 05:47:38 AMIf it refers to one of several different, not compatible games that fall under the nebulous category of old school games, then it utterly fails to fulfill its basic function.  It doesn't actually tell me anything about the product it is being used to describe.

Well, it tells us at least one thing: that the author of the game is concerned with whether or not their game fits into a category. Which itself might be enough information.