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Why do those of us who appreciate the old ways, like that style of gaming better?

How can it be well explained, in 100 words or less?

Because everyone has an opinion.

Quote from: HappyDaze on December 10, 2024, 01:28:52 AMBecause everyone has an opinion.

But your opinions are objectively wrong.  All of them.

Yes, the OSR is better to me.

I prefer rules light.  I don't need rules on how fast it takes to draw a sword, at night, in the rain, left handed.

Also, no, it's not better.  I don't like THAC-0 or descending armor class, and I do like weapon and armor traits from 5E.

My games tend to be hybrids.  They're games made out of the best ideas that have survived to today, without any bloat. There are lots of games to pick from.  None of my favorites are truly D&D anymore. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 10, 2024, 06:41:15 AMYes, the OSR is better to me.

I prefer rules light.  I don't need rules on how fast it takes to draw a sword, at night, in the rain, left handed.

Also, no, it's not better.  I don't like THAC-0 or descending armor class, and I do like weapon and armor traits from 5E.

My games tend to be hybrids.  They're games made out of the best ideas that have survived to today, without any bloat. There are lots of games to pick from.  None of my favorites are truly D&D anymore. 

I'll second that. Lighter base engines allow me to select the chrome [additional rules or features] that I want to add. That's why I don't get excited about the continual/latest WotC fiasco/scandal. My table rules are customized for the type of setting and campaign that as a GM I want to run.

The real question is better for whom? I have enjoyed the classic OSR style game since 1980. Even so, in my younger days I was always trying new systems, and looking for the perfect amount of crunch that would handle everything. Now that I am older, I appreciate the rules light approach even more than ever. So personally, the OSR style game is better for me. Others have their own journey to discover what works best for them.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 10, 2024, 07:38:13 AMThe real question is better for whom? I have enjoyed the classic OSR style game since 1980. Even so, in my younger days I was always trying new systems, and looking for the perfect amount of crunch that would handle everything. Now that I am older, I appreciate the rules light approach even more than ever. So personally, the OSR style game is better for me. Others have their own journey to discover what works best for them.

My answer is similar. My stopping point for "official" D&D is 3.x, nothing afterwards interests me. Even then, I mostly use 3.x for inspiration towards OSR and solo play.

Of course, that's only for D&D type games. Traveller still rocks my worlds in all its myriad ways, as does Mekton and Cyberpunk. The only Star Wars that does it for me is d6 Star Wars, I can't stand other versions.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 10, 2024, 06:33:01 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on December 10, 2024, 01:28:52 AMBecause everyone has an opinion.

But your opinions are objectively wrong.  All of them.

(https://cdn.imgpile.com/f/UsajfKT_md.gif)

Quote from: Man at Arms on December 10, 2024, 01:11:34 AMWhy do those of us who appreciate the old ways, like that style of gaming better?

How can it be well explained, in 100 words or less?

Better than what? This question seems to imply that there are only two ways to play - the OSR and (presumably) current-edition D&D.

But there were tons of different ways to play when I was a kid in the 1980s -- including different rule sets like Champions, Call of Cthulhu, Ghostbusters, Ars Magica, etc. that ranged from rules-lite to rules-heavy with lots of variations -- and also different styles of playing each game.

There are also hundreds of non-D&D, non-OSR games being published today, including a huge range.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 10, 2024, 07:38:13 AMThe real question is better for whom?

Also, better than what? Given the choice, I'm probably going to play an OSR game before I play contemporary D&D/Pathfinder, but there's other games I'd play before I picked an OSR game.

At any rate, it's not nostalgia for me for the very simple reason that I wasn't playing D&D back in the TSR days. That actually seems to be pretty common in the OSR outside of this specific forum, so clearly it's offering something other than nostalgia. That said, I do find there is a lot of mythmaking about the how the game used to be played, by both old hands and new converts.

EDIT: JHKim posted his response while I was typing mine.

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 10, 2024, 07:45:36 AM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 10, 2024, 07:38:13 AMThe real question is better for whom? I have enjoyed the classic OSR style game since 1980. Even so, in my younger days I was always trying new systems, and looking for the perfect amount of crunch that would handle everything. Now that I am older, I appreciate the rules light approach even more than ever. So personally, the OSR style game is better for me. Others have their own journey to discover what works best for them.

My answer is similar. My stopping point for "official" D&D is 3.x, nothing afterwards interests me. Even then, I mostly use 3.x for inspiration towards OSR and solo play.

Of course, that's only for D&D type games. Traveller still rocks my worlds in all its myriad ways, as does Mekton and Cyberpunk. The only Star Wars that does it for me is d6 Star Wars, I can't stand other versions.

I don't know where you are, but if you're in the NE Ohio area, you're welcome to my gaming table any time.

I do you one better: official D&D stopped for me at AD&D 2e. I was originally excited about 3.0 when it hit the stores...then I saw the 20+ page conversion book, and I was like "WTF? REALLY?"

3e was designed to not be backward compatible and force you to buy all new product. From where I was, people were unloading their older stuff so they could buy the new shiny. I couldn't bear the thought of parting with my older editions, let alone buying all new stuff just so I can play with the cool kids.

I was lucky that Hackmaster 4E came out not too long afterwards. The simple fact that even if I buy just the core rule books, EVERYTHING from 1st and 2nd ed AD&D is 100% compatible with HM 4E. You don't even need to buy the Hacklopedias if you didn't. Just add the 20 hp kicker to the monster after rolling hp and you're done.

But yeah, I dig most of the OSR stuff. I'm sure nostalgia plays a part, but there is a practical side for me. Just recently I stopped playing HM 4E. I do love the game, but for what I want to do, combat bogs down to a grind. Way too crunchy in that regard. PLus, it tends to play into the power gamer side of things. I wanted something at least comparably that was rules light.  So I shopped around and I liked what I saw in Labyrinth Lord. It was like the best of Basic D&D and AD&D. So far, I'm really liking it.

Star War d6: my best bud had a long running campaign using the REUP d6 rules. They're a fan driven project where they revised, expanded, and updated the old West End d6 system. Hence REUP. Campaign was literality just before Order 66 dropped. Crazy fun campaign. 

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 10, 2024, 08:30:53 AMThat said, I do find there is a lot of mythmaking about the how the game used to be played, by both old hands and new converts.

As someone who's been playing since 1981, I'd like to hear what "myths" have developed in your opinion.

Quote from: blackstone on December 10, 2024, 08:35:26 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 10, 2024, 07:45:36 AM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 10, 2024, 07:38:13 AMThe real question is better for whom? I have enjoyed the classic OSR style game since 1980. Even so, in my younger days I was always trying new systems, and looking for the perfect amount of crunch that would handle everything. Now that I am older, I appreciate the rules light approach even more than ever. So personally, the OSR style game is better for me. Others have their own journey to discover what works best for them.

My answer is similar. My stopping point for "official" D&D is 3.x, nothing afterwards interests me. Even then, I mostly use 3.x for inspiration towards OSR and solo play.

Of course, that's only for D&D type games. Traveller still rocks my worlds in all its myriad ways, as does Mekton and Cyberpunk. The only Star Wars that does it for me is d6 Star Wars, I can't stand other versions.

I don't know where you are, but if you're in the NE Ohio area, you're welcome to my gaming table any time.

I do you one better: official D&D stopped for me at AD&D 2e. I was originally excited about 3.0 when it hit the stores...then I saw the 20+ page conversion book, and I was like "WTF? REALLY?"

3e was designed to not be backward compatible and force you to buy all new product. From where I was, people were unloading their older stuff so they could buy the new shiny. I couldn't bear the thought of parting with my older editions, let alone buying all new stuff just so I can play with the cool kids.

I was lucky that Hackmaster 4E came out not too long afterwards. The simple fact that even if I buy just the core rule books, EVERYTHING from 1st and 2nd ed AD&D is 100% compatible with HM 4E. You don't even need to buy the Hacklopedias if you didn't. Just add the 20 hp kicker to the monster after rolling hp and you're done.

But yeah, I dig most of the OSR stuff. I'm sure nostalgia plays a part, but there is a practical side for me. Just recently I stopped playing HM 4E. I do love the game, but for what I want to do, combat bogs down to a grind. Way too crunchy in that regard. PLus, it tends to play into the power gamer side of things. I wanted something at least comparably that was rules light.  So I shopped around and I liked what I saw in Labyrinth Lord. It was like the best of Basic D&D and AD&D. So far, I'm really liking it.

Star War d6: my best bud had a long running campaign using the REUP d6 rules. They're a fan driven project where they revised, expanded, and updated the old West End d6 system. Hence REUP. Campaign was literality just before Order 66 dropped. Crazy fun campaign. 

If I'm ever in NE Ohio, I'll be in touch. Be good to wander the world and play games.

The thing I like about 3.x the most is the OGL revolution. Nobody had done an OGL before and it helped to allow for an imagination explosion when it came to RPGs. Yeah, there was some shit, but the good stuff was absolute gold.

I think the sandbox/living world playstyle makes for a better game than scripted linked encounters. The latter was popular in 2e AD&D of course. 4e D&D is the best ruleset if you want that style. I think 2014 D&D has a lot going for it mechanically and supports an OSR play style, I'm not sure if I'd call it better than pre-3e but it has advantages and disadvantages.

For me, yes it's better.  I don't have time for over complicated systems like Champions of 2d20 anymore.  My gaming time is limited and I want to spend more time playing and less time having to stop so the GM has to check the book to figure out a complicated rule.

YMMV.

Quote from: blackstone on December 10, 2024, 08:35:26 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 10, 2024, 07:45:36 AM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 10, 2024, 07:38:13 AMThe real question is better for whom? I have enjoyed the classic OSR style game since 1980. Even so, in my younger days I was always trying new systems, and looking for the perfect amount of crunch that would handle everything. Now that I am older, I appreciate the rules light approach even more than ever. So personally, the OSR style game is better for me. Others have their own journey to discover what works best for them.

My answer is similar. My stopping point for "official" D&D is 3.x, nothing afterwards interests me. Even then, I mostly use 3.x for inspiration towards OSR and solo play.

Of course, that's only for D&D type games. Traveller still rocks my worlds in all its myriad ways, as does Mekton and Cyberpunk. The only Star Wars that does it for me is d6 Star Wars, I can't stand other versions.

3e was designed to not be backward compatible and force you to buy all new product. From where I was, people were unloading their older stuff so they could buy the new shiny. I couldn't bear the thought of parting with my older editions, let alone buying all new stuff just so I can play with the cool kids.
 

For me, it was to make a simple codified mechanic that allowed you to take it and spin it off into new directions. You had non-3.X games out there using d20; however, they were overshadowed by other products that were more Dungeon & Dragons but extra. I created many mini-games using the core d20 mechanics without feats and created flexible games in other genres.

You are right; however, for those who only played D&D, it did force you to play Pokemon and have to get them all. When you toss in the 3PP releases, it becomes nearly impossible to stay current.

5E vs OSR as a metaphor

5E is finishing a Crossword puzzle by rolling a d20 for each word. A 12+ you are given the correct word. If you roll under you can roll again after a 10 minute rest. Yeah, finished the puzzle adn leveled-up in record time!

OSR is actually figuring out each word in the crossword puzzle.

As far as the OSR I think it's a bit of both, but IMHO a huge swathe of "OSR" is fanciful and based on forum posts, not how people actually played "back in the day" so it comes off more like rose-tinted goggles from people who never actually played in the old days trying to tell everyone how they "should" be playing.

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 10, 2024, 11:43:57 AMAs far as the OSR I think it's a bit of both, but IMHO a huge swathe of "OSR" is fanciful and based on forum posts, not how people actually played "back in the day" so it comes off more like rose-tinted goggles from people who never actually played in the old days trying to tell everyone how they "should" be playing.

On the other hand, there are plentiful numbers on social media now that were either not alive or not playing then, telling long time players that played "back in the day" that it wasn't that way at all.

Quote from: Lynn on December 10, 2024, 12:20:57 PM

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 10, 2024, 11:43:57 AMAs far as the OSR I think it's a bit of both, but IMHO a huge swathe of "OSR" is fanciful and based on forum posts, not how people actually played "back in the day" so it comes off more like rose-tinted goggles from people who never actually played in the old days trying to tell everyone how they "should" be playing.

On the other hand, there are plentiful numbers on social media now that were either not alive or not playing then, telling long time players that played "back in the day" that it wasn't that way at all.

I've seen a lot more of the former than the latter, especially with the more vehement members of the OSR community...

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 10, 2024, 06:41:15 AMYes, the OSR is better to me.

I prefer rules light.  I don't need rules on how fast it takes to draw a sword, at night, in the rain, left handed.

Also, no, it's not better.  I don't like THAC-0 or descending armor class, and I do like weapon and armor traits from 5E.

My games tend to be hybrids.  They're games made out of the best ideas that have survived to today, without any bloat. There are lots of games to pick from.  None of my favorites are truly D&D anymore. 

haha, yep THIS. But there's never a perfect system is there. I've been searching for that for 40 years.

Quote from: Lynn on December 10, 2024, 12:20:57 PM

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 10, 2024, 11:43:57 AMAs far as the OSR I think it's a bit of both, but IMHO a huge swathe of "OSR" is fanciful and based on forum posts, not how people actually played "back in the day" so it comes off more like rose-tinted goggles from people who never actually played in the old days trying to tell everyone how they "should" be playing.

On the other hand, there are plentiful numbers on social media now that were either not alive or not playing then, telling long time players that played "back in the day" that it wasn't that way at all.

Not sure who these people are. Names?

I think the desire for simplicity is a big part of it.
Ive played 5e for 6 years & still not fluent with 1/2 of it & I only used PHB & XGE

With OSR DMs get an easier & more fun ride & therefore so do players.

A lot of OSR people are not old enough for the Nostalgia, so its not that.
Ive witnessed brand new RPG players play 5e & then drop it for OSR after a year.

I played D&D in 1983. But I never really had a desire to go back.
OSR is using modern lessons learned & rules elegance to make something simple & challenging.

The game challenge is being drained from modern games through power-creep & bloat.
Its an essential aspect of games to Pick A at the expense of B.
You can be fast & weak, or slow & strong.
5e is fast & strong & magic & more & extra & bonus.

Greetings!

Oh yes, I much prefer the OSR. I like 5E to a point--original or basic 5E, until WOTC started getting stupid. Tasha's? Mordenkainen? I forgot. There was one last decent supplement full of options, and then 5E started this rapid decline into the sewer.

So, politically, ideologically, with WOTC going full Woke, the system became hopelessly corrupted and disgusting. However, even in the early days of 5E, there were some mechanical, dynamics and philosophical base problems, such as the "Superhero" dynamic presented for the Player Characters; the multiple safety nets to prevent Player Character Death; Gimped Monsters; ubiquitous pushing of spells and ever more uber-magic in everything, and probably a few more that I can't think of right now.

All of that could be dealt with by a strong DM; using various "Optional Rules"--that are actually, yes, in the 5E DM's Guide, and having the capacity to SAY NO to various game elements; and, be willing to do the work of creating some tailored subsystems unique to your campaign, that pushed against the prevailing 5E meta-dynamic. Going through that work, and 5E was a solid game. *Laughing*

Long-time members here know that I have been a strong fan of 5E D&D, sincerely. 5E is a strong system, and very fun, but having said that, if you have a campaign world that stands against a solid section of 5E dynamics, then there is definitely work required of the DM to make 5E fit properly. 5E has always had some flaws and problems.

When I, personally, took stock of that needed work to make 5E run properly for my campaign world, and THEN got smashed again and again by WOTC with the stupid Woke BS, it simply became too much. Too much mechanical and dynamic flaws; and far too much Woke politics; then all that served up with even more gross, insulting marketing and executive interviews provided by WOTC, scandals, and more. I became reconnected to my OSR roots through Shadowdark, and have never looked back.

Simplicity, modularity, a system that doesn't have half a dozen hardwired dynamics that fight against you every step of the way, quick, simple rules, quick, simple, and brutal mechanics. SPEED. Shadowdark is easy and fun to create characters, as well as being easy and FUN to DM. Other OSR games embrace some similar philosophies and mechanics structure. The OSR is refreshing, quick, brutal, and fun, all without huge amounts of mechanical work, and definitely not front-loaded and swimming in Woke BS.

Think about this key, campaign-changing dynamic: Player Characters are vulnerable at Level 1. At 5th Level, Player Characters are still vulnerable. Even at HIGHER levels, the Player Characters remain fundamentally vulnerable, possess weaknesses, and are definitely not near-immortal superheroes. That built-in fragility, that built-in weakness of normal mortality, echoes and ripples throughout the entire game system and campaign game play like a sub-surface tidal wave of epic strength and scope. It powerfully influences character creation, everyday adventuring, character development, encounter design, stocking dungeons and creating adventures entirely. The scope of influence is genuinely vast, and game-changing.

Finally, simply, I prefer using a OSR system that I don't have to constantly fight against, kicking and dragging, to make the whole thing work in my campaign world of Thandor.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on December 10, 2024, 01:58:32 PMToo much mechanical and dynamic flaws

Did these "mechanical and dynamic flaws" exist from the early days of 5e, or were they pushed into being through later products? Can you give examples?

Quote from: Man at Arms on December 10, 2024, 01:11:34 AMWhy do those of us who appreciate the old ways, like that style of gaming better?

How can it be well explained, in 100 words or less?

I do appreciate those old ways, and incorporate many of them into my own games, even though OSR games are not my very first choice in systems. (I would certainly enjoy running an RC or ACKS game, given the right players.)

You can't fully explain it, in any amount of words, because a great deal of it is simply magic.  It's when the chemistry of the group and setting come together in ways that are surprising and evocative all outside reason of what the rules would suggest is possible. Now, that can happen with any game, but it is much more likely to happen in relatively simple rules run in an old-school manner.  It's easy to recognize in avoiding its opposite, which is when players are looking at character sheets for buttons to push and GMs are looking up sage advice instead of both groups envisioning the world and the GM making a judgment call.

The rules are a tool for the GM to run the game, not the game. Naturally, every GM has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, preference, setting ideals, etc. such that some rules will be a better fit than others.  And don't discount simple but strong personal tastes. 

As for nostalgia, that's the weak dismissal of the ignorant. I have yet to meet a single person that plays any game out of nostalgia.  Not one.  I've met people that were nostalgic for a feeling from a game, or for the joy of playing a game with a group of people.  I've met people that said playing game Z reminded them favorably of what it was like to play game X back in the day.  But that's just it, people have nostalgia for experiences, not tools.  If a tool provide that experience, they'll keep using it.  If it doesn't, they'll drop it in a heartbeat.  That's not to be confused with inertia in using something, which is very real. 

If by OSR you mean games that emulate a style before, say, Vampire was released, then yes they're better. I think it's because they were designed (DESIGNED!) to be actual games, not exercises in puffery and wankery. You play AD&D with your buddies to kill orcs, steal their stuff, and fuck the king's daughter, Conan style. Once you start down the path of adding things that make it not a game anymore, it becomes tiresome bullshit. Also, older games used to be DESIGNED to fit a specific genre or license or whatever. WEG Star Wars is the prototypical example of a game that was made so you can play SW characters. Newer versions of SW games shoehorn the lore into an existing framework, and it doesn't always make sense or enable play that resembles the movies. I'm not interested in playing gay sith lord wannabees, I want to play smugglers and pirates and bounty hunters and jedi. Amber is another good example: just how in the royal fuck would you even play Amber with a different system? I mean, I supposed you could use GURPS and quantify every thing into points and whatever, but it's just a hell of a lot easier to use the diceless system created specifically for Corwin's saga and get around to shadow walking and backstabbing siblings.

Rant over. It's better. "Nostalgia" is just an insult jealous people use because their games aren't even games anymore.

Quote from: Brad on December 10, 2024, 03:23:55 PMWEG Star Wars is the prototypical example of a game that was made so you can play SW characters. Newer versions of SW games shoehorn the lore into an existing framework

Wasn't the WEG D6 system designed to play Ghostbusters and then Star Wars was showhorned into that existing framework?

Quote from: blackstone on December 10, 2024, 08:37:37 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 10, 2024, 08:30:53 AMThat said, I do find there is a lot of mythmaking about the how the game used to be played, by both old hands and new converts.

As someone who's been playing since 1981, I'd like to hear what "myths" have developed in your opinion.

A few I have seen trotted about by the OSR, Monard and a few others...

HUGE one is "Older editions were ONLY about combat because there arent any social rules!" and variants thereof. Storygamers, Forgeites and so one loved to toss that one around.

Another huge one is "Players have to kill everything to advance!" This was not true even in OD&D and has gotten less true as each edition came out.

"AD&D statted out HITLER!!!" False too. The book just used him as a good example of how charisma is not appearance.

"AD&D is SEXIST because women cant reach the same stats as men!!!" also false. The stat cap on humans only effected Fighter and think Paladins and Rangers, and the cap was for exceptional STR and fairly generous. And through various means anyone could exceed that cap. Dont have the books handy but pretty sure some of the demi-human races had some stat caps too.

"Orcs in D&D are ALL evil!" False right out the gate. OD&D clearly notes orcs could be neutral or chaotic and AD&D notes that alignment listed is not an absolute. Merely the most common outlook.

And depressingly more. The latest bit of OSR retardation is "Gary meant the game to be played 1:1 time!!!"

Of course it's better. Because it uses rulings not rules, it's based on player skill not character skill, it's heroic not superheroic, and there is no game balance.

https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf

Quote from: blackstone on December 10, 2024, 12:25:30 PM

Quote from: Lynn on December 10, 2024, 12:20:57 PM

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 10, 2024, 11:43:57 AMAs far as the OSR I think it's a bit of both, but IMHO a huge swathe of "OSR" is fanciful and based on forum posts, not how people actually played "back in the day" so it comes off more like rose-tinted goggles from people who never actually played in the old days trying to tell everyone how they "should" be playing.

On the other hand, there are plentiful numbers on social media now that were either not alive or not playing then, telling long time players that played "back in the day" that it wasn't that way at all.

Not sure who these people are. Names?

Scroll up, that's why I responded.

I don't bother taking names. I used to engage now and then over on Enworld but dialed it back significantly in part because of it.

No it's not objectively better, although there's been a lot of crap published in later years.

I don't really agree with those who think newer games are generally more complicated though; 1st edition AD&D is actually a bit of a Byzantine mess for a first-time reader.

In AD&D you got incrementally better at your core (more spells, better to hit, etc). In 5E you get little abilities each level that make things more and more complex. I found 5E okay for levels 1-5, after that I found it tedious as the PCs became super-heroes.

Quote from: Man at Arms on December 10, 2024, 01:11:34 AMIs it Nostalgia, or is the OSR genuinely better?

Why do those of us who appreciate the old ways, like that style of gaming better?

How can it be well explained, in 100 words or less?

The OSR was never about a particular style of gaming. What it was about was what one can do with classic edition mechanics and themes. Gonzo, Sandbox campaigns, and Gygaxian Fantasy were already distinct creative visions for what one can do with the material that pre-existed the release of OSRIC and Basic Fantasy.

The OSR is what it is because of the old military adage that while soldiers win battles, logistics win wars. Many excellent RPGs, including various editions of D&D, succeed because of the creative brilliance of their authors or the company writing them. The OSR got a foothold because of the quality of the classic edition mechanics and nostalgia. But that was the starting point. The key to the OSR's success was the logistics behind it.

This starts with the legal "hack" that resulted in OSRIC and Basic Fantasy. It was easily reproducible using existing open content under open licenses resulting in a multitude of creative visions and creative agendas.

Next because of the extensive use of open content under open licenses meant that people could pursue creative visions at whatever level of involvement they had the time and resources for. If all an author was interested in was making adventures or setting that was a doable goal.

The above two meant the creative cost to realize one's vision dropped significantly.

All of this occurred with the rise of print-on-demand and digital distribution using the internet. This meant the cost of distribution and sales drastically dropped.

All three factors means very quickly anything that could be done with classic edition mechanics and themes could be tried and released. Moreover, multiple attempts could and did occur, resulting in at least one succeeding commercially and/or creatively.

The OSR is unique in that it is one of the few RPG niches not dominated by a single individual or company's creative vision. For example, after a few years, Goblinoid Games wasn't doing much with Labyrinth Lord, a retro-clone of B/X D&D. Then the Necrotic Gnome team started doing their thing with Old School Essentials, which enjoyed creative and commercial success.

The OSR is in a constant creative ferment, with people dropping in and out and sometimes back in again. This has resulted in the OSR as a whole carving out a solid niche of it own in the industry and the hobby and why it is still going strong after nearly 20 years.

It occurred to me that the current run of classic D&D under the OSR umbrella (2006 to present) is poised to match the initial run of classic D&D (1974 to 1999)

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 11, 2024, 12:38:01 AMOf course it's better. Because it uses rulings not rules, it's based on player skill not character skill, it's heroic not superheroic, and there is no game balance.

https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf

I'd add one thing to this: it also naturally incentivizes players to ACTUALLY DO THINGS. Modern D&D doesn't because everything is regulated by some rule or abstraction. Advancement in OSR (up to 2e) rewards you for actually going out and doing stuff rather than being spoon fed content passively.

Quote from: tenbones on December 11, 2024, 12:17:37 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 11, 2024, 12:38:01 AMOf course it's better. Because it uses rulings not rules, it's based on player skill not character skill, it's heroic not superheroic, and there is no game balance.

https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf

I'd add one thing to this: it also naturally incentivizes players to ACTUALLY DO THINGS. Modern D&D doesn't because everything is regulated by some rule or abstraction. Advancement in OSR (up to 2e) rewards you for actually going out and doing stuff rather than being spoon fed content passively.

This is part of the schizo nature of storygamers and even regular players. They bitch incessantly about "too many rules!" and then bitch incessantly that the game "Needs more rules!"

Quote from: tenbones on December 11, 2024, 12:17:37 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 11, 2024, 12:38:01 AMOf course it's better. Because it uses rulings not rules, it's based on player skill not character skill, it's heroic not superheroic, and there is no game balance.

https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf

I'd add one thing to this: it also naturally incentivizes players to ACTUALLY DO THINGS. Modern D&D doesn't because everything is regulated by some rule or abstraction. Advancement in OSR (up to 2e) rewards you for actually going out and doing stuff rather than being spoon fed content passively.

Yep. You see a lot of WOTC D&D players on their phones, or spacing out until prompted to make a roll for something. This is the result of game design that puts all possible activity behind the gate of some target number that teaches players to just throw enough dice at until they win. Old school play is more naturally engaging.

I don't care about keeping old school mechanics in every place but I do want the old school playstyle.

Things like:
1.  Sandboxes
2.  Detailed Settings
3.  Skilled play by the players inside the dungeon
4.  Preparation and planning

None of those things precludes character development or any thing else rather to me it adds to that mix well.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 11, 2024, 01:09:10 PM

Quote from: tenbones on December 11, 2024, 12:17:37 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 11, 2024, 12:38:01 AMOf course it's better. Because it uses rulings not rules, it's based on player skill not character skill, it's heroic not superheroic, and there is no game balance.

https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf

I'd add one thing to this: it also naturally incentivizes players to ACTUALLY DO THINGS. Modern D&D doesn't because everything is regulated by some rule or abstraction. Advancement in OSR (up to 2e) rewards you for actually going out and doing stuff rather than being spoon fed content passively.

Yep. You see a lot of WOTC D&D players on their phones, or spacing out until prompted to make a roll for something. This is the result of game design that puts all possible activity behind the gate of some target number that teaches players to just throw enough dice at until they win. Old school play is more naturally engaging.

one reason they are on their phones, or spacing out, is because of the 5E mechanics

I did a lot of play testing when it came out, and gave the system a "F". Some of the reasons were

1. Combat took, on average 3-4 times longer than any other TTRPG on the market (that I had played and tested).
2. The larger the player number, the longer it took between dice rolls, interactive input, or involvement for a given player. It was not uncommon for 20-30 minutes between player actions/dice rolls with a group of 6 or more players. That is unacceptable.
3. Too many player options within a given round (delays the game)
4. Complexity of combat (free actions, bonus actions, special actions, attacks of opportunity, rule changes based on positioning, etc.).

In short, the game is just boring. However, other games suffer from some of these issues as well.

There are games like Masterbook which have mechanics to overcome many of these issues--I will put the details in another post. It is pretty interesting what that game does to remediate this stuff

OSR is not "better" however most players who have been around the RPG scene for any decent length of time will find OSR easier because games tend to use a lot of shared DNA which they are already familiar with. There's less to learn, which means that the performance to learning time is actually pretty good*.

* For an experienced player or GM.

The problem is that most of these advantages don't really apply to inexperienced players. From a beginner point of view, OSR is somewhat easier than something like using the classic GURPS ecosystem, but not by a huge amount. Another problem is that essentially all OSR games I am familiar with make some mechanical tradeoff which compromises the game's potential to make the game easier to design. D20 design is practically all about this tradeoff. I don't view OSR games as particularly ambitious or innovative, and I suspect that the volume of OSR games out there make them ripe for AI generation. Which is both good and bad.

The rose tinted glasses are getting thick. There was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM. There was no escaping it. A lot of people just didn't have the mental capability to do it. As a DM, you are the players eyes and ears to this created world. You have to be fair and reasonable. It was easy to be too easy and too easy to be too hard. "The magic ring you are looking for? It's lying right there on the floor." "What do you mean you can't find the ring? It was only hidden in a lead tube in the leg of one of the two hundred chairs in this hall..." You could either be easily bored or get tired of pixel humping the DM's imagination.

Quote from: tenbones on December 11, 2024, 12:17:37 PMI'd add one thing to this: it also naturally incentivizes players to ACTUALLY DO THINGS. Modern D&D doesn't because everything is regulated by some rule or abstraction.

That's an emergent property from "rulings, not rules" and "player skill, not character skill." If at least one of those two things is granted, then players are incentivised to do things, rather than look at the drop-down menu of their character sheet to apply skill X to situation Y.

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMThere was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM. There was no escaping it.

No, it's dependent on the skill of all participants. RPGs are a team sport - the better the players, the more interesting and fun the game.

It's mostly nostalgia. I think the golden age of TTRPGs was from about 1984 to 1990. Pre metaplots & splats, post D&D being a pop culture fad. Most of us are Gen X, and started playing during this time, (or slightly earlier).

I do think something like B/X does D&D very well, however it's hard to find people who are at all interested in that kind of play. I personally love hex crawls, but I'm lucky to get my players to give one a go once a decade. Most modern players, even those who have been playing for 30+ years just don't have nostalgia for the old ways.

Quote from: Riquez on December 10, 2024, 12:24:20 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 10, 2024, 06:41:15 AMYes, the OSR is better to me.

I prefer rules light.  I don't need rules on how fast it takes to draw a sword, at night, in the rain, left handed.

Also, no, it's not better.  I don't like THAC-0 or descending armor class, and I do like weapon and armor traits from 5E.

My games tend to be hybrids.  They're games made out of the best ideas that have survived to today, without any bloat. There are lots of games to pick from.  None of my favorites are truly D&D anymore. 

haha, yep THIS. But there's never a perfect system is there. I've been searching for that for 40 years.

I'm glad I could help out.

I gave up on finding a perfect game for me.  Instead, I'm more interested in a list of features I prefer, and play games that have those.  In my case I like building a character from points instead of randomly rolling stats, lots of classes, armor is a saving throw, weapons have traits so each kind has a niche, warriors can customize their abilities, and magic is a skill check.

So far, I'm close or spot on.  Pocket Fantasy, Mini-six:Bare Bones, True-D6/Kogarashi, and TinyD6 series are all games I play now.  Pocket Fantasy and Mini-Six are both free, while True-D6 barely cost anything. 

I'm happy enough with those.

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMThe rose tinted glasses are getting thick. There was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM. There was no escaping it. A lot of people just didn't have the mental capability to do it. As a DM, you are the players eyes and ears to this created world. You have to be fair and reasonable. It was easy to be too easy and too easy to be too hard. "The magic ring you are looking for? It's lying right there on the floor." "What do you mean you can't find the ring? It was only hidden in a lead tube in the leg of one of the two hundred chairs in this hall..." You could either be easily bored or get tired of pixel humping the DM's imagination.

I think all RPGs are dependent on the quality of the GM. Trying to avoid this just ends up with something that's not actually an RPG. Eg it turns into a skirmish wargame or a story-creation game.

Quote from: S'mon on December 12, 2024, 03:56:45 AM

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMThe rose tinted glasses are getting thick. There was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM. There was no escaping it. A lot of people just didn't have the mental capability to do it. As a DM, you are the players eyes and ears to this created world. You have to be fair and reasonable. It was easy to be too easy and too easy to be too hard. "The magic ring you are looking for? It's lying right there on the floor." "What do you mean you can't find the ring? It was only hidden in a lead tube in the leg of one of the two hundred chairs in this hall..." You could either be easily bored or get tired of pixel humping the DM's imagination.

I think all RPGs are dependent on the quality of the GM. Trying to avoid this just ends up with something that's not actually an RPG. Eg it turns into a skirmish wargame or a story-creation game.

Greetings!

Yeah, S'mon!

I agree. A DM is really what sets our hobby apart from, well, all the others. Wargames, storygames, whatever, they all don't need a DM. RPG's having a DM is an essential cornerstone.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMThe rose tinted glasses are getting thick. There was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM.

Pro Tip: When it comes to tabletop roleplaying campaigns it always depends on the quality of the human referee. It doesn't matter what the system is whether it Microlite20 or GURPS with all the supplements. If it doesn't then you are playing something else like a character focused boardgame like Shadowrun Crossfire not tabletop roleplaying.

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMAs a DM, you are the players eyes and ears to this created world. You have to be fair and reasonable. It was easy to be too easy and too easy to be too hard. "The magic ring you are looking for? It's lying right there on the floor." "What do you mean you can't find the ring? It was only hidden in a lead tube in the leg of one of the two hundred chairs in this hall..." You could either be easily bored or get tired of pixel humping the DM's imagination.

The trick is for someone to do their homework on the setting of the campaign. You can rely on a well-researched and well presented RPG product like of the GURPS setting books or a system that has that research baked in.

In the case of system with minimal mechanics or generic systems, you do the research or work for yourself. That is what becomes the basis for your rulings and allows the referee to be consistent. And the campaign not to devolve into a game of twenty questions.

This is not rocket science, but it is work, and systems won't help the lazy, the disinterested, or individuals not willing to improve themselves.

Exactly. If it were solely dependent on "Good GM's" we'd never have evolved from being shitty GM's. It certainly wasn't *just* the old-school systems that made it so either.

Almost five-decades later, we can see all the permutations of system-design and GMing put to the test in real-time. Systems come and go, GM's that are humble and self-aware enough to process their mistakes and observe their players in direct reaction to how they themselves (the GM) conduct their games, only get better. And the emergent qualities of that dynamic are:

You start realizing you can do a LOT more with you games with less. By having fewer rules for everything, you learn how to adjudicate outlier issues with confidence and consistency. This goes directly against RAW where those rules will cause weird inconsistencies or even break verisimilitude.

This is why OSR (which I don't even use) thrives. GM's have long realized (at least since 3e) that you don't need all the extra rules of later editions to get what they want out of their fantasy elf-games.

For people like me that don't run OSR specific games, the *aesthetic* of the OSR permeates my games. It informs whatever systems I use because it makes my players more engaged rather than rewarding them simply for showing up.

The reward for Players just showing up for the game is that they have a living, breathing GM there willing to run a game for them to play. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Quote from: tenbones on December 12, 2024, 01:13:45 PMYou start realizing you can do a LOT more with you games with less. By having fewer rules for everything, you learn how to adjudicate outlier issues with confidence and consistency. This goes directly against RAW where those rules will cause weird inconsistencies or even break verisimilitude.

This is why OSR (which I don't even use) thrives. GM's have long realized (at least since 3e) that you don't need all the extra rules of later editions to get what they want out of their fantasy elf-games.

For people like me that don't run OSR specific games, the *aesthetic* of the OSR permeates my games. It informs whatever systems I use because it makes my players more engaged rather than rewarding them simply for showing up.

There's a sense in which a system with more involved rules is better as an example of a system than it is as a system. Assuming, however, that the more complex system evolved out of a simpler system to help some GM run a better game. Not so much if it was some ideas that a designer had to solve problems that other GM's supposedly had running their games.

When an experienced GM runs different systems with an open but skeptical mind, they are essentially running it through a trial. Now, I'm in the group that thinks the best way to do that trial is to try to run it as much as possible the way the designer intended. Then if it appears promising, start tweaking it to fit your game, not the designer's game, as needed. But whether the trial is all in or with reservations, sooner or later a system that gets used for any time is going to have the reservations creep in. 

The OSR is potentially more approachable now than it was when it first emerged. Because there's a lot of advice on how it works, some of it conflicting, and the GM that puts in any honest effort can rather easily gets a sense of the range of ways that it might work.  Whereas even with all the great AD&D GM text and reading between the lines in Dragon magazine articles, and then the stuff people explained when the OSR first ramped up, before there was still a bit of deconstruction that had to happen before you could productively change the game.

I'm not even running a Lion and Dragon game or an ACKS game or a BEMCI/RC game, but those games are certainly influencing how I run my games--maybe in ways that might surprise the authors in some cases.

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMThe rose tinted glasses are getting thick. There was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM. There was no escaping it. A lot of people just didn't have the mental capability to do it. As a DM, you are the players eyes and ears to this created world. You have to be fair and reasonable. It was easy to be too easy and too easy to be too hard. "The magic ring you are looking for? It's lying right there on the floor." "What do you mean you can't find the ring? It was only hidden in a lead tube in the leg of one of the two hundred chairs in this hall..." You could either be easily bored or get tired of pixel humping the DM's imagination.

Any game where the DM doesn't make a difference is essentially a video game and doesn't require a human DM in the first place. A DM who is not fair and reasonable will tend to keep losing players so the situation will balance itself out. It is a game after all and no one is going to waste hours of their time on a leisure activity that isn't fun.

Quote from: Omega on December 11, 2024, 12:25:45 AMAnd depressingly more. The latest bit of OSR retardation is "Gary meant the game to be played 1:1 time!!!"

That is NOT an OSR idea. It is the idea of an ANTI-OSR CULT deceptively calling themselves the "brosr". They are ANTI-OSR because they literally believe that not one single OSR game should exist. They would, if they could, ban every single OSR game and only allow people to play AD&D1e.

They are the RPG equivalent of ISIS. Including the rampant anti-semitism.

I'm not old enough to have lived the first generation of RPG. So I don't believe in the nostalgia argument. I started the hobby at the age of 10 in '96, with AD&D 2e. I played everything since then. In 2020 I used the covid years to 'research' OSR and bought a lot of pdfs to try the old ways. OSRs became my go-to RPGs because it is that much fun. The proximity to wargaming, dm ruling and player dependency (non infinite character sheet 'a power for every situation' mmorpg style) made me believe this is what I think is the best style to play.

Quote from: S'mon on December 12, 2024, 03:56:45 AM

Quote from: zend0g on December 11, 2024, 08:31:58 PMThe rose tinted glasses are getting thick. There was one big downside of the old school play style. It totally was dependent on the quality of the DM. There was no escaping it. A lot of people just didn't have the mental capability to do it. As a DM, you are the players eyes and ears to this created world. You have to be fair and reasonable. It was easy to be too easy and too easy to be too hard. "The magic ring you are looking for? It's lying right there on the floor." "What do you mean you can't find the ring? It was only hidden in a lead tube in the leg of one of the two hundred chairs in this hall..." You could either be easily bored or get tired of pixel humping the DM's imagination.

I think all RPGs are dependent on the quality of the GM. Trying to avoid this just ends up with something that's not actually an RPG. Eg it turns into a skirmish wargame or a story-creation game.

I think the closest I have seen to a GM-less "roleplaying game" is Arkham Horror (particularly the latest edition).

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 10, 2024, 07:38:13 AMThe real question is better for whom? I have enjoyed the classic OSR style game since 1980. Even so, in my younger days I was always trying new systems, and looking for the perfect amount of crunch that would handle everything. Now that I am older, I appreciate the rules light approach even more than ever. So personally, the OSR style game is better for me. Others have their own journey to discover what works best for them.

Same for me. I started playing in 1990 and at the time my friends and I had way more time to discover new systems and mechanics, but after a couple of decades and many games later I reached the conclusion that for my way of playing OSR works definitely better, expecially because of its modularity.

Quote from: tenbones on December 12, 2024, 01:13:45 PMAlmost five-decades later, we can see all the permutations of system-design and GMing put to the test in real-time. Systems come and go, GM's that are humble and self-aware enough to process their mistakes and observe their players in direct reaction to how they themselves (the GM) conduct their games, only get better. And the emergent qualities of that dynamic are:

You start realizing you can do a LOT more with you games with less. By having fewer rules for everything, you learn how to adjudicate outlier issues with confidence and consistency. This goes directly against RAW where those rules will cause weird inconsistencies or even break verisimilitude.

This is why OSR (which I don't even use) thrives. GM's have long realized (at least since 3e) that you don't need all the extra rules of later editions to get what they want out of their fantasy elf-games.

There have been tons of rules-heavy games and rules-light games long before 3E D&D or the OSR. In my early teens in the 1980s, I played many rules-heavy games like Champions, Aftermath, Rolemaster, GURPS, and plenty of others. I had a ton of fun playing those.

I also played a bunch of more rules-light games both then and now - like Fudge, FATE, Dungeon World, and plenty more. I had a ton of fun playing those too.

All games don't have to conform to one way of playing, whether that's OSR or anything else.

Quote from: RPGPundit on December 12, 2024, 04:10:42 PM

Quote from: Omega on December 11, 2024, 12:25:45 AMAnd depressingly more. The latest bit of OSR retardation is "Gary meant the game to be played 1:1 time!!!"

That is NOT an OSR idea. It is the idea of an ANTI-OSR CULT deceptively calling themselves the "brosr". They are ANTI-OSR because they literally believe that not one single OSR game should exist. They would, if they could, ban every single OSR game and only allow people to play AD&D1e.

They are the RPG equivalent of ISIS. Including the rampant anti-semitism.

It's wild how insane those tools are.

So, I'm thinking about the OP question over lunch and I have an answer which is itself a question.

Is it nostalgia if an older way or game is a more effective tool to achieve fun?

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 12, 2024, 08:31:00 PMSo, I'm thinking about the OP question over lunch and I have an answer which is itself a question.

Is it nostalgia if an older way or game is a more effective tool to achieve fun?

No, that would be evidence that the OSR may truly be better.

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 12, 2024, 08:31:00 PMSo, I'm thinking about the OP question over lunch and I have an answer which is itself a question.

Is it nostalgia if an older way or game is a more effective tool to achieve fun?

You're right in that good tools to have fun is the key.

Obviously your question lets me know, that you know, its not nostalgia.

Let just all forget about the word Nostalgia. That's absolutely not relevant.
If it were then everyone playing & publishing OSR would need to be over 50 & have been playing D&D in the 70s/80s, & thats just not the case.
 

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 12, 2024, 08:31:00 PMIs it nostalgia if an older way or game is a more effective tool to achieve fun?

That is the wrong question to ask.

The right question is, "What makes the systems and techniques lumped under the OSR label effective tools?"

Given that we are well into the second decade of its existence, I think any debate over whether the OSR is nostalgia-driven or not is a moot point. It has outlasted many newer RPG systems by an order of magnitude.

As to the question I poised. My observation from playing RPG systems over the decades is that most are "good enough" as far as design and presentation goes. If I find something highly effective it is generally because it resonates with me but for my friends it is often just "That fun but it is just OK."

A few times we find something that is a hit for all of us but it is rarely part of some larger trend. For example there was a few years where we played a lot of Fantasy AGE and played around with making our own variants.

I have been involved in enough organized gaming to see that for most, "good enough" describes their attitude toward many RPGs.

Classic D&D in its various permutations is also a "good enough" system. What set it use by the OSR apart from nearly all but a few other RPGs is the fact its development today is propelled by many creative visions with new ones popping up all the time. It not dominated by a few or one creative vision.

What this means that if classic D&D for you falls short in one area or another there likely somebody out there that ran into the same problem and figured out a way of dealing with it without moving on to a completely new system. For example,  if you are looking for more grounded combat my Majestic Fantasy rules for OD&D covers that.  If you wished classic D&D covered science Fiction there is Stars without Number or White Star that covers that.

When it comes to creativity, any system that only has one creative vision behind it is a crippled setup compared to any system that has a multitude of creative visions behind it.

That is the secret to the OSR success.

Finally, if a system has a multitude of creative visions working with it, it is at the very least a "good enough" system as far its design goes. Any presentation issues tend to be fixed over time.

OK, it's that time of year to check if the jhkimAIbot is still functioning as intended.  So, step one, did it object to a generalized statement as if the statement was absolute?

Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2024, 06:08:36 PMThere have been tons of rules-heavy games and rules-light games long before 3E D&D or the OSR. In my early teens in the 1980s, I played many rules-heavy games like Champions, Aftermath, Rolemaster, GURPS, and plenty of others. I had a ton of fun playing those.

OK.  That checks out.  Now, the next step in it's programming is to argue from "his" experiences, as if the plural of "anecdote" was "data."

Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2024, 06:08:36 PMI also played a bunch of more rules-light games both then and now - like Fudge, FATE, Dungeon World, and plenty more. I had a ton of fun playing those too.

OK, it's working as intended there.  Now for the primary argument being against something no one has asserted (the good ol' strawman):

Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2024, 06:08:36 PMAll games don't have to conform to one way of playing, whether that's OSR or anything else.

Well, I'm pleased to announce that the jhkimAIbot is working as intended.  It should be good for another year of random objections and slightly off-topic posting...

I think for me there is a big nostalgia associated with OD&D because of the era in which I played. The 1970's for me were middle school and early high school, where I had homework and a few chores and then a LOT of time to play OD&D with my friends. It's hard for me to separate my freedom of lifestyle from my freedom in gaming, and I look back on old school games as being those where I had little to prep and lots of time to game.

My family has embraced the 5E rules and loves the detail of skills, the way 5E handles magic, the background choices, and generally making characters with full motivation and backstory before even rolling their first die. I try to pull them back into a style matching old school and they resist. It really makes me wonder if it's the rules that I liked back then or the feeling.

Games made by passionate writers are always better than corporate slop. I was too young to have played any of the classic TSR IPs before they got dissolved by WotC, but I feel a sense of anemoia for that period I missed.

I've checked out clones like Mutant Future, Frontier Space, Alternity 2018, etc. but they're never good enough. The original scifi games never got SRDs so nobody can use the same alien races and stuff like they can use the D&D races and monsters. Indie games also have much tinier budgets and rarely have particularly interesting or detailed settings to work with.

There are neat indie games with great production values from time to time, like StokerVerse, but in general the rpg landscape looks grey, lifeless, derivative, and shallow. All the new, innovative, and interesting ideas are locked behind copyright, so nobody can use them until we're all dead of old age.

Quote from: finarvyn on December 13, 2024, 09:45:13 AMMy family has embraced the 5E rules and loves the detail of skills, the way 5E handles magic, the background choices, and generally making characters with full motivation and backstory before even rolling their first die. I try to pull them back into a style matching old school and they resist. It really makes me wonder if it's the rules that I liked back then or the feeling.

I run into that with some of my friends who would rather play D&D 5e than my Majestic Fantasy rules (based on OD&D). So two years ago, I said fuck it, and made my own take on 5e, focusing on character classes.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 13, 2024, 09:34:56 AMOK, it's that time of year to check if the jhkimAIbot is still functioning as intended.  So, step one, did it object to a generalized statement as if the statement was absolute?

Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2024, 06:08:36 PMThere have been tons of rules-heavy games and rules-light games long before 3E D&D or the OSR. In my early teens in the 1980s, I played many rules-heavy games like Champions, Aftermath, Rolemaster, GURPS, and plenty of others. I had a ton of fun playing those.

OK.  That checks out.  Now, the next step in it's programming is to argue from "his" experiences, as if the plural of "anecdote" was "data."

Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2024, 06:08:36 PMI also played a bunch of more rules-light games both then and now - like Fudge, FATE, Dungeon World, and plenty more. I had a ton of fun playing those too.

OK, it's working as intended there.  Now for the primary argument being against something no one has asserted (the good ol' strawman):

Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2024, 06:08:36 PMAll games don't have to conform to one way of playing, whether that's OSR or anything else.

Well, I'm pleased to announce that the jhkimAIbot is working as intended.  It should be good for another year of random objections and slightly off-topic posting...

Hahahaha.

Solid post.

Quote from: finarvyn on December 13, 2024, 09:45:13 AMI think for me there is a big nostalgia associated with OD&D because of the era in which I played. The 1970's for me were middle school and early high school, where I had homework and a few chores and then a LOT of time to play OD&D with my friends. It's hard for me to separate my freedom of lifestyle from my freedom in gaming, and I look back on old school games as being those where I had little to prep and lots of time to game.

My family has embraced the 5E rules and loves the detail of skills, the way 5E handles magic, the background choices, and generally making characters with full motivation and backstory before even rolling their first die. I try to pull them back into a style matching old school and they resist. It really makes me wonder if it's the rules that I liked back then or the feeling.

Sir, how do you like 5E yourself?

Its not nostalgia for me. I started with AD&D 2nd edition. I managed to have fun in spite of the massive amount of rules. When I finally got around to playing 1e or the Black Hack, I understood that I wanted to get to the story part faster, and not the endless "hold on let me look that up" stuff. I think Rules light is best. Call that OSR if you like.

I have no particular love for old D&D, I moved from Holmes through AD&D to RuneQuest to heavily modified RuneQuest pretty fast in the old days but we still had the OSR playstyle and the lethality.

Yes, I am of believing that the older editions, or rather their "retroclones," are better to play.  I am having no strong opinion of specific older editions, as I did not play them - I was starting playing D&D during 3rd edition.  I was been enjoying it.  Then 4th edition came out and I was being uninterested in it after just a single game.  With 5th edition, I was being tired of what I and some of my friends called "rules bloat."  On a whim, we were trying Swords & Wizardry (because the book was being cheap), and I am decided that the fewer rules, are of making me happier playing the games. 

I found a lot of the OSR supporting mechanics and best practices to be really helpful on how to GM. Further I found the rapidity of processing in practice helped keep the game tempo refreshing. The rules seem complex upon reading, but once applied and internalized it's way faster than most WotC versions.

My biggest noticeable chokepoint in WotC is Individual Initiative and Individual Modifiers, what would be in AD&D 2e the third initiative option versus the original Group Initiative and Group Modifier. I think the insistence on GM NPC Planning followed by Players Declarations considerably cuts down on time loss. It requires people to be on top of the moment, answer or be stuck doing nothing, and then resolves without further re-processing. It also allows the unexpected to occur, which is exciting.

There's other stuff but that's a good start on how OSR feels better to play for me. :)

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on December 11, 2024, 03:04:12 PM1. Combat took, on average 3-4 times longer than any other TTRPG on the market (that I had played and tested).

This is a complaint saw on Reddit too.

How the hell are people dragging out 5e D&D combat into freaking hours? When I DMed it combats were done in about the same time as BX or D&D. Bit longer on average. But not by a huge amount.

And I've heard the same complaints lobbied at every other edition and other RPGs too. gurps, Call of Cthulhu, etc.

People. What the fuck are you doing to take that god awful long?

Quote from: Omega on December 14, 2024, 02:26:43 AM

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on December 11, 2024, 03:04:12 PM1. Combat took, on average 3-4 times longer than any other TTRPG on the market (that I had played and tested).

This is a complaint saw on Reddit too.

How the hell are people dragging out 5e D&D combat into freaking hours? When I DMed it combats were done in about the same time as BX or D&D. Bit longer on average. But not by a huge amount.

And I've heard the same complaints lobbied at every other edition and other RPGs too. gurps, Call of Cthulhu, etc.

People. What the fuck are you doing to take that god awful long?

Perhaps it's decision paralysis?  Perhaps it's looking up spells and rules to try to make the most optimized decision possible? 

Quote from: Man at Arms on December 13, 2024, 03:41:48 PM

Quote from: finarvyn on December 13, 2024, 09:45:13 AMI think for me there is a big nostalgia associated with OD&D because of the era in which I played. The 1970's for me were middle school and early high school, where I had homework and a few chores and then a LOT of time to play OD&D with my friends. It's hard for me to separate my freedom of lifestyle from my freedom in gaming, and I look back on old school games as being those where I had little to prep and lots of time to game.

My family has embraced the 5E rules and loves the detail of skills, the way 5E handles magic, the background choices, and generally making characters with full motivation and backstory before even rolling their first die. I try to pull them back into a style matching old school and they resist. It really makes me wonder if it's the rules that I liked back then or the feeling.

Sir, how do you like 5E yourself?

Well, I don't mind playing it but a lot of the time I don't bother to fill out all of the parts on the character sheet. (Don't always update skill bonuses, pick a few spells and don't update as I advance, etc.) I'm sure that's a character flaw for me personally, but I'm more into the fun than the minutia.

Where I dislike 5E is mostly on the DM side of the screen. Monsters have these long and absurd writeups that I only half read, so many types of damage to deal with, NPCs are as detailed as PCs ... again, the details are more of a bug than a feature when I DM the game and I feel like they slow down the action.

Quote from: Omega on December 14, 2024, 02:26:43 AM

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on December 11, 2024, 03:04:12 PM1. Combat took, on average 3-4 times longer than any other TTRPG on the market (that I had played and tested).

This is a complaint saw on Reddit too.

How the hell are people dragging out 5e D&D combat into freaking hours? When I DMed it combats were done in about the same time as BX or D&D. Bit longer on average. But not by a huge amount.

And I've heard the same complaints lobbied at every other edition and other RPGs too. gurps, Call of Cthulhu, etc.

People. What the fuck are you doing to take that god awful long?

From what I have observed, especially with the younger generation, the individual turns perpetuate the long combat as the no attention span players zone out when it isn't their turn, then need to figure out everything that has happened since their last turn and dedcide what to do. Then they take their turn and go back to instagram or whatever......repeat.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 14, 2024, 08:30:12 AMFrom what I have observed, especially with the younger generation, the individual turns perpetuate the long combat as the no attention span players zone out when it isn't their turn, then need to figure out everything that has happened since their last turn and decide what to do. Then they take their turn and go back to instagram or whatever......repeat.

I actually measured this with a group of mostly casual players over multiple systems.  Recorded times for combats, running as near the same style as could be done over multiple systems.  Now, granted, it might have been something about those particular players. However, I've since run with other players and gotten even faster results.  Most of these results were using 5 to 10 players, usually 7 to 8.

3E with RAW initiative versus 3E with house rules similar to RC side initiative, character levels mostly in the 5 to 9 range (lower levels mostly before experiment started, and not as sharply divided when tried with Arcana Unearthed):  On average, 35% to 40% faster with sides. Diverges sharply with number of players over 7, where it is not uncommon for a standard fight to balloon into 2 hours with RAW and barely change at all with sides.

4E with RAW initiative versus 4E with house rules similar to RC side initiative, character levels 1 to 7.  (Can't say past that, because we stopped.)  On average, 35% to 40% faster with sides. Yep, diverges when you go over 7 players.

5E with RAW initiative versus 5E with custom side initiative changing as little as possible to get to sides: Despite individuals rolling every round to see what "phase" they act in, still get around 40% improvement with sides, scales pretty flat running even 12 mid-level players at once, where as RAW only holds its own with 4 to 5 players (depending on the players) but is still 25% to 30% slower. In the 5 to 6 player range we are back to around 40% average faster, and then 5E simply falls off a cliff after that.  I suppose it would be possible to keep it under control with 7 to 8 really dedicated, non-ADHD players, but I never had that group.

Home system designed with all of the results above in mind, similar to D&D in some ways, but with sides initiative as the default.  Think a hybrid of BEMCI/RC, AD&D 1E, and a few 3E/5E initiative influences, with some of it ripped out and replaced to make players rolling every round on a d20 for initiative but otherwise phased sides.  8 to 10 players typical, sometimes dropping into the 4 to 5 range (but playing henchmen when they do).  Don't have a comparison any longer, because why would I run something I know doesn't work well?  However, it's typical for some of the same casual players, known for analysis paralysis issues, who sometimes took 2 hours to get through a 3E fight--to do 3 to 5 fights in under 3 hours, some of them major, and the fights only taking about half the time.  We've had 10 players versus 30 monsters done in 20 minutes with no area affect abilities.

In fairness, the system is also even more aggressive than early D&D at restraining hit point bloat and providing early damage boosts.  So something like a goblin nearly always goes down in 1 hit.  So some of that speed has nothing to do with initiative.  However, the biggest thing that sides initiative does is exactly what you said.  It keeps the combat under the threshold where players start to lose attention.  The more players you have, and the more casual ones you have in the mix, the more important this is--but the threshold sits somewhere for every group.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 14, 2024, 08:30:12 AMFrom what I have observed, especially with the younger generation, the individual turns perpetuate the long combat as the no attention span players zone out when it isn't their turn, then need to figure out everything that has happened since their last turn and dedcide what to do. Then they take their turn and go back to instagram or whatever......repeat.

I must be admitting that this seems problematic in a very different way which is of no consequence to the system.  Perhaps being in place of some table rules, such as "Do not being on your phone," etc would be more useful to your group?

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 14, 2024, 08:30:12 AM

Quote from: Omega on December 14, 2024, 02:26:43 AM

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on December 11, 2024, 03:04:12 PM1. Combat took, on average 3-4 times longer than any other TTRPG on the market (that I had played and tested).

This is a complaint saw on Reddit too.

How the hell are people dragging out 5e D&D combat into freaking hours? When I DMed it combats were done in about the same time as BX or D&D. Bit longer on average. But not by a huge amount.

And I've heard the same complaints lobbied at every other edition and other RPGs too. gurps, Call of Cthulhu, etc.

People. What the fuck are you doing to take that god awful long?

From what I have observed, especially with the younger generation, the individual turns perpetuate the long combat as the no attention span players zone out when it isn't their turn, then need to figure out everything that has happened since their last turn and dedcide what to do.

In this here modern age, I don't fight players who get distracted by their devices. I'm guilty of it myself occasionally. But this here is where I get irate. Someone plays on their phone when it's not their turn, ok. Whatev. But if they completely zone out from the game, that's disrespectful and a waste of the other player's time.

In addition to the 'action bloat' for every character (and many monsters), I found that, by 3e, when the importance of exact placement on the map grid (of both characters/creatures and spell AoEs) and areas of 'threatened zones' became an absolute thing, combat started to really crawl. Most TotM games don't suffer this, but they do carry over some of the action bloat others have mentioned, but I also saw this years earlier in Twilight 2000 2.2 where autofire and area effect (or, good lord, an automatic AoE weapon like a Mk-19 AGL) could take a long time to resolve what is essentially one action.

I have every player roll Initiative each round. This isn't so bad in a VTT. I roll once for the Foes.
Also we began having players make a statement of intent at the start of battle. You've got 6 seconds, you can't really react to what the other folks did in that time. If they kill the beast you were gonna attack you can't just run 30 feet and attack another. This was pushed by two players that wanted more realism (Army Veteran and a retired San Diego Sheriff, both of whom have been in numerous firefights). This was the way we did it in RuneQuest back in the day so I adopted it.
The result is it speeds things up a bit because the statements don't take long and the players are reacting to a set situation and not to the moving situation that occurs as all the other players take their turns.

Quote from: Man at Arms on December 10, 2024, 01:11:34 AMWhy do those of us who appreciate the old ways, like that style of gaming better?

How can it be well explained, in 100 words or less?

For me, yes and no. Yes in the sense that it reinvigorated my passion for D&D-esque games (and fantasy in general) after a very long hiatus, and I will forever cherish it for it. That said, I don't like the majority of OSR games, so aside of a handful of games I've just simply reverted back to pre-3ed edition D&D instead. That is where my heart truly is.

So, I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction.  Not a "What is OSR and why does it feel better in play?" but "Why was pre-3rd edition D&D different than modern trends in RPGs, and how it informs the OSR?"

I think the fundamental misunderstanding by folks who didn't play back then is the kind of game that D&D was for many of us.  It was not a "table-top roleplaying game" as defined by many today.  What we played was far better described as a game of "What if?" in a fantasy setting.  That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but I think the distinction is huge.  It's why so many descriptions of old AD&D games seem like they are contests of logistics instead of heroic adventures.  For us, the rules existed as a method of enforcing consistency, not as patterns of play.  I think modern rules design, in a quest to make games easier to understand, have given the rules too much emphasis.  You roll a d20 + stat + mod for whatever you are trying to do, which enforces the probability of the dice on the world, and not the other way around.  We used dice as arbiters of randomness, not as a structure to define the way randomness existed in-game.

To explain it a little differently, we came up with rules to make sure that we, as players, could get an idea how the universe would react to an action we had previously attempted... not define how a new idea would manifest itself in play.  It's one of the reasons that I think skills have been a fundamentally negative influence on D&D (note: I'm not against skill-based games, especially those defined for them, but D&D was not designed for them).  We would come up with some crazy idea ("I'm going to shoot an arrow at the rope holding up the candle-chandelier and try and drop it on the bunch of them!") and the DM would set a probability, either using some system that made sense ("That's like hitting AC 1, roll to hit" or "Roll under your Dex, with a plus five penalty for the size of the rope") or using a raw probability ("You've got a 15% chance of hitting that, roll percentiles").  The fiction drove the roll.  After a while, some of these patterns got "formalized" as house-rules, but they were always subject to change.  If the probabilities lent themselves to a bell curve, you'd switch the roll to a 2d6 or 3d6 without hesitation.  If I asked a modern 5e player to roll 3d6 plus bonus for a skill check ... (sound of head exploding)...

So, I think one reason that you hear "rulings, not rules" is because people who played back then were attempting to explain the consequences of player choices using dice and probabilities; they weren't playing a game with dice.  As far as the OSR has captured that mentality, it has spawned better play experiences (for the folks who want that experience).

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 10:12:55 AMI must be admitting that this seems problematic in a very different way which is of no consequence to the system.  Perhaps being in place of some table rules, such as "Do not being on your phone," etc would be more useful to your group?

That's a reasonable rule. But it'd also be reasonable for the player to retort that if the game is interesting enough, they won't be on their phones. It's like when the family is watching Netflix and you have to go to the toilet - sometimes you ask them to stop the movie so you don't miss anything, sometimes you say, "that's fine, just let it play."

Ideally a GM and their players will create a game session where people are engaged the whole time. In a game session - or in my professional area of the gym, for that matter - if someone's on their phone most of the time, I feel it's my fault for failing to engage them with the game, the training process, or other players or gym members. I could ban their phones, or I could get better.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 14, 2024, 08:49:27 PM

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 10:12:55 AMI must be admitting that this seems problematic in a very different way which is of no consequence to the system.  Perhaps being in place of some table rules, such as "Do not being on your phone," etc would be more useful to your group?

That's a reasonable rule. But it'd also be reasonable for the player to retort that if the game is interesting enough, they won't be on their phones. It's like when the family is watching Netflix and you have to go to the toilet - sometimes you ask them to stop the movie so you don't miss anything, sometimes you say, "that's fine, just let it play."

Ideally a GM and their players will create a game session where people are engaged the whole time. In a game session - or in my professional area of the gym, for that matter - if someone's on their phone most of the time, I feel it's my fault for failing to engage them with the game, the training process, or other players or gym members. I could ban their phones, or I could get better.

Ah yes, that is being fair.  I am not of knowing all the details of your games.  I am personally being anti technology at the table - we are not using tablets, computers, digital displays, or any other such being accessories, and it is an understanding all players and GM are having with each other.

I am hoping you are able to work this situation out to your favor and your players favors!

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 09:45:22 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 14, 2024, 08:49:27 PM

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 10:12:55 AMI must be admitting that this seems problematic in a very different way which is of no consequence to the system.  Perhaps being in place of some table rules, such as "Do not being on your phone," etc would be more useful to your group?

That's a reasonable rule. But it'd also be reasonable for the player to retort that if the game is interesting enough, they won't be on their phones. It's like when the family is watching Netflix and you have to go to the toilet - sometimes you ask them to stop the movie so you don't miss anything, sometimes you say, "that's fine, just let it play."

Ideally a GM and their players will create a game session where people are engaged the whole time. In a game session - or in my professional area of the gym, for that matter - if someone's on their phone most of the time, I feel it's my fault for failing to engage them with the game, the training process, or other players or gym members. I could ban their phones, or I could get better.

Ah yes, that is being fair.  I am not of knowing all the details of your games.  I am personally being anti technology at the table - we are not using tablets, computers, digital displays, or any other such being accessories, and it is an understanding all players and GM are having with each other.

I am hoping you are able to work this situation out to your favor and your players favors!

It's HARD to separate people from their cell phones, for 30 minutes.  Now try to do so, for 3 or 4 hours.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 14, 2024, 10:23:28 AMIn this here modern age, I don't fight players who get distracted by their devices. I'm guilty of it myself occasionally. But this here is where I get irate. Someone plays on their phone when it's not their turn, ok. Whatev. But if they completely zone out from the game, that's disrespectful and a waste of the other player's time.

Sounds borderline like the Social "players" wotc wants to force DMs to put up with. They aren't really there to play, they more just want to hang out.

Quote from: Man at Arms on December 14, 2024, 09:49:45 PM

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 09:45:22 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 14, 2024, 08:49:27 PM

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 10:12:55 AMI must be admitting that this seems problematic in a very different way which is of no consequence to the system.  Perhaps being in place of some table rules, such as "Do not being on your phone," etc would be more useful to your group?

That's a reasonable rule. But it'd also be reasonable for the player to retort that if the game is interesting enough, they won't be on their phones. It's like when the family is watching Netflix and you have to go to the toilet - sometimes you ask them to stop the movie so you don't miss anything, sometimes you say, "that's fine, just let it play."

Ideally a GM and their players will create a game session where people are engaged the whole time. In a game session - or in my professional area of the gym, for that matter - if someone's on their phone most of the time, I feel it's my fault for failing to engage them with the game, the training process, or other players or gym members. I could ban their phones, or I could get better.

Ah yes, that is being fair.  I am not of knowing all the details of your games.  I am personally being anti technology at the table - we are not using tablets, computers, digital displays, or any other such being accessories, and it is an understanding all players and GM are having with each other.

I am hoping you are able to work this situation out to your favor and your players favors!

It's HARD to separate people from their cell phones, for 30 minutes.  Now try to do so, for 3 or 4 hours.

I do the opposite. Players can use their phones in my Traveller games. I get to use anything from the Traveller Map and the Traveller Wiki in an adventure that they then must look up during a game.

Oh, and the Traveller Wiki has some false entries in it......

I'm not one of those grognards who say everything about the old way was best, but when you move on to new editions and new ways of doing things, it's sometimes difficult to see the value of what was left behind. We didn't just wake up one day and d&d is better, like a software update. Someone looked at the way we were playing and said, "More like this, less like that," and they cobbled together something that they thought was best. But this hobby has always had a lot of creative people making different rules for their table to make it fun the way they want to play it, and it's going to keep going that way as far as I can see.

Greetings!

I get people that have younger children and may need to check in, what have you. That's fine. Generally, however, I tend towards being somewhat anti-technology, and simply tell my friends to turn their fucking phones off, or keep them off to the side of the table. Essentially, don't be fucking playing with your phone while we are gaming at the table.

It isn't that harsh, really. I had college professors that had a constant policy of "Turn Your Phone Off In Class". If not, he would bounce you from the class for the day, and your grade for the day would be an "F". Get three "F's" and he would kick from the class for the entire semester. He argued that being on your phone, being late to class, etc, was rude, unprofessional, and disrespectful to the professor, and the fellow students.

I follow a similar policy with my group at the gaming table. I don't get any flack for it, because my friends all know what I'm about, and why, and they agree. They enjoy being cut off from the fucking phone for a few hours at a time. My policy encourages them and allows them to enjoy being immersed in the game, and not tethered to their fucking phone like they usually are throughout the given day.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 14, 2024, 08:49:27 PM

Quote from: SeveredFane on December 14, 2024, 10:12:55 AMI must be admitting that this seems problematic in a very different way which is of no consequence to the system.  Perhaps being in place of some table rules, such as "Do not being on your phone," etc would be more useful to your group?

That's a reasonable rule. But it'd also be reasonable for the player to retort that if the game is interesting enough, they won't be on their phones. It's like when the family is watching Netflix and you have to go to the toilet - sometimes you ask them to stop the movie so you don't miss anything, sometimes you say, "that's fine, just let it play."

Ideally a GM and their players will create a game session where people are engaged the whole time. In a game session - or in my professional area of the gym, for that matter - if someone's on their phone most of the time, I feel it's my fault for failing to engage them with the game, the training process, or other players or gym members. I could ban their phones, or I could get better.

The way to do that is to ditch systems that create this disengagement to begin with. Of course then you have players who won't play if it isn't their preferred system. The harsh reality is the need to ditch shit players.

I think part of the issue is that the "OSR" approach has some good, and some bad. Rulings over rules, for example, is good, IMHO infinitely better than having two dozen "skills" that describe what their use cases are. The high lethality I think is a double-edged sword. Having character lives meaningless is IMHO bad, and doesn't at all gel with the literary sources of D&D (e.g. pulp sword-and-sorcery novels), but characters who are virtually demigods is the opposite end of that spectrum and equally as bad.

Similarly, the "wing it" sandbox/hexcrawl approach is IMHO incredibly lame and you might as well just play a videogam at that point, but the completely linear "Here are 13 adventures that you will play in order" adventure path is equally bad.

It's my view, and why I don't use "OSR" but "Classic Gaming" to describe my approach, there's a middle point where you get the best of everything: PCs should be a solid cut above the average dirt farmer who picked up a sword, but not superheroes. They are lucky enough to not be randomly killed (in D&D terms this means at least not permanently) by a stray arrow, but not invincible like Conan where he rarely, if ever, faces any challenge that's remotely close to being equal to him; they are the protagonists but not necessarily the main characters. There should be adventure hooks such as the PCs being hired to perform a task or finding a treasure map and deciding ("forced", although a bad term, is apt here since you are playing a game at the end of the day, and IMHO if players constantly ignore plot hooks they're just being assholes) to explore it, but the world shouldn't be static and there should also be rumors/quest boards/events/etc. that can provide direction (in other words, the default should be "The DM comes up with an adventure hook and the players, knowing that's the adventure hook, accept the bait" but it's perfectly reasonable that the players might mention at the end of one session how they want to investigate some rumor, which the DM then fleshes out; the end result is the same, but the players are driving this instead of being presented a "job").

The biggest problem I have is that modern gamers feel the old-school games are too much of a step back, and are reluctant to "go backwards" to things like THAC0, race limitations for class and (especially) levels, lack of "kewl powers" (which I like "kewl powers" too but I also don't NEED them).

Yours is an awesome post, Eirikrautha! I thought I would highlight my favorite part:

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 08:19:56 PMWe would come up with some crazy idea ("I'm going to shoot an arrow at the rope holding up the candle-chandelier and try and drop it on the bunch of them!") and the DM would set a probability, either using some system that made sense ("That's like hitting AC 1, roll to hit" or "Roll under your Dex, with a plus five penalty for the size of the rope") or using a raw probability ("You've got a 15% chance of hitting that, roll percentiles").  The fiction drove the roll.

Springboarding off of this, instead of just having a general chance of success now we have character "builds" where a clever player can stack all sorts of bonuses together so that some dice rolls essentially become irrelevant since they are automatically successful. To me, that's not "fun" but a lot of my players seem to enjoy building characters which are designed to be gamebreakers. The craft of designing a character to beat the rules appears to be what modern players see as "role playing," as opposed to actually playing a role.

The virtue of focusing on "Rulings not rules" is not that it enables the use of rule-lite system. But rather is creates a process where the resulting system is better suited for how you and your group think how things ought to be handled. And better suited for the setting of the campaign.

When using "Rulings not rules" Referees and the group are not pulling random rulings out of their asses. There is a metric against which a ruling is weighed. That metric is "How things ought to be given the premise of the campaign." That premise is a mix of genre and setting conventions.

This is especially obvious when you stick with the same base system across multiple campaigns using the same setting. It rarely thought of in this way but when you look at a given referee and their campaigns it leaps out at me. Given time the resulting system turns out to be something of medium complexity.

And incidently it also mirrors partially the process that gamers of the late 60s and early 70s had  undergo in order to run a wargaming scenario or campaign. There wasn't a ready source of published rules so they had to do primary research, then combine that about what they knew of mechanics and probabilities and come up with a series of ruling to run things. The more ambitious would take the time to write it up formally and publish the result.

The OSR by encouraging "ruling not rules" that ethos and ramps it up across hundred of creative types and thousands of gamers.

Quote from: finarvyn on December 15, 2024, 09:58:37 AMYours is an awesome post, Eirikrautha! I thought I would highlight my favorite part:

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 08:19:56 PMWe would come up with some crazy idea ("I'm going to shoot an arrow at the rope holding up the candle-chandelier and try and drop it on the bunch of them!") and the DM would set a probability, either using some system that made sense ("That's like hitting AC 1, roll to hit" or "Roll under your Dex, with a plus five penalty for the size of the rope") or using a raw probability ("You've got a 15% chance of hitting that, roll percentiles").  The fiction drove the roll.

Springboarding off of this, instead of just having a general chance of success now we have character "builds" where a clever player can stack all sorts of bonuses together so that some dice rolls essentially become irrelevant since they are automatically successful. To me, that's not "fun" but a lot of my players seem to enjoy building characters which are designed to be gamebreakers. The craft of designing a character to beat the rules appears to be what modern players see as "role playing," as opposed to actually playing a role.

That is the "ultimate build" crap, that I don't like about modern D&D.  It's the direct opposite, of early D&D.

Quote from: finarvyn on December 15, 2024, 09:58:37 AMYours is an awesome post, Eirikrautha! I thought I would highlight my favorite part:

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 08:19:56 PMWe would come up with some crazy idea ("I'm going to shoot an arrow at the rope holding up the candle-chandelier and try and drop it on the bunch of them!") and the DM would set a probability, either using some system that made sense ("That's like hitting AC 1, roll to hit" or "Roll under your Dex, with a plus five penalty for the size of the rope") or using a raw probability ("You've got a 15% chance of hitting that, roll percentiles").  The fiction drove the roll.

Springboarding off of this, instead of just having a general chance of success now we have character "builds" where a clever player can stack all sorts of bonuses together so that some dice rolls essentially become irrelevant since they are automatically successful. To me, that's not "fun" but a lot of my players seem to enjoy building characters which are designed to be gamebreakers. The craft of designing a character to beat the rules appears to be what modern players see as "role playing," as opposed to actually playing a role.

Indeed. :) Which is why I long ago called this orthogonal engagement with TTRPGs (see my signature echoing others' same lament) a solo mini-game. It also explains why players and corporations became more dismissive of the fiction's setting. If the setting's contextual teeth takes a backseat to the RAW mechanical override then why bother paying attention to the powerless?

I think it's both, it only depends on the people. Some of them are clearly coming there for nostalgia and the fact that some OOP product suddenly became available; other discovered that there was something else beyond the global trend of the successive DnD editions which added options over options and rules over rules to keep a market alive.
And, in the middle of this, some guys created some pearls that are genuinely better than the original.

Quote from: colombus1592 on December 24, 2024, 11:37:18 AMAnd, in the middle of this, some guys created some pearls that are genuinely better than the original.

This has been the thing that draws me to it the most, is sometimes you get these great games that tap into the nostalgia vein, but are simply ... better games.

It's good because it's genuinely competitive. Big ttrpg publishers are still recycling IPs from the 80s without change. Nothing original made since then has been able to establish a niche. A huge part of this is copyright. SRDs allow indie devs to piggyback on past work, on fads and compatibility with related works. If you have to work from scratch each time, then it's a lot harder. There's a huge hole in the market for non-fantasy that postdates the 80s. Copyright holders try to "protect" their intellectual property by locking it away, but this only makes everything less creative as time goes on.

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 15, 2024, 08:50:29 AMThe biggest problem I have is that modern gamers feel the old-school games are too much of a step back, and are reluctant to "go backwards" to things like THAC0, race limitations for class and (especially) levels, lack of "kewl powers" (which I like "kewl powers" too but I also don't NEED them).

This is why Nu-School OSR-Style games like Shadow Dark have hit big.

They generally deliver on the "old-School" gaming style, but have less quirky system bits like THACO: i.e. Like  a suit of +2 Chainmail that reduces your AC, but makes your to-hit number go up...

Yes, yes, math so basic. But more straightforward is easier for the normies.

Shadow Dark could also just have been a rules hack supplement for OSE-B/X. But people like complete games.

It will be interesting to see if the "OSR style" gradually evolves away from recognizable AD&D-B/X variants, into more ground-up re-imagining of "old school" games in the style of ShadowDark.

The blogosphere OSR in its heyday really had something going on. Good theory posts about the structure of game play, dungeons, and sessions. Good original ideas for spells and monsters. I haven't seen an equivalent body of good and useful theory for modern D&D, and only flashes of it for games like Savage Worlds. Traveller does have some, but that's an exception that proves the rule since Trav is OSR without the R, it never got away from its roots and had to rediscover them like D&D did.

Just playing old games for the sake of playing old games is no better or worse than new games though. I've certainly encountered railroads, GMPCs, and "I'm just playing my character" in TSR D&D.

I'll say it.  I don't like AD&D 1e or 2e.  I think it's a janky, disorganized, overly complicated mess of ad-hoc systems all bolted on to each other.  I think it placed way too much of an emphasis on tournament play which I didn't like then and have no desire to do now.  I played a lot of AD&D back in the day but as soon as 3e came out I dropped it like a hot rock and I haven't looked back.  If I were going to go back to an older edition, it wouldn't be either one of those.  It would be something like the Rules Cyclopedia.  I would sooner run 4e than AD&D and I'm not a big fan of 4e.  I have no interest in an OSR game that seeks to emulate AD&D either.  I would rather runfor something like Dark Fantasy Basic.       

It all depends on what you're trying to do.

I have friends for whom the real "game" of D&D is building the perfect character. The session is just the test of how good their build is. The OSR probably isn't for them.

I have friends who really like coming up with a character concept and then using the rules to quantify that character. The OSR may not be for them.

Personally, I like to explore worlds, encounter challenging situations, and deal with them creatively, with the mechanics serving to make that endeavor truly a challenge because the dice are outside of everyone's hands. The OSR is for me.

If any nostalgia is involved, it must be borrowed nostalgia for a lot of people (myself included) who literally weren't born when the original games were first published and played - but still enjoy the OSR style of game.

Quote from: mekhawretch on January 03, 2025, 08:34:52 AMIf any nostalgia is involved, it must be borrowed nostalgia for a lot of people (myself included) who literally weren't born when the original games were first published and played - but still enjoy the OSR style of game.

My first introduction to the rpg sphere; was 1E AD&D, during the mid 2E era.  The only thing that matters nostalgia wise to me, is looking back on that experience during that time period.  How that felt.  How every decision mattered.  There were consequences.

But any of the early editions, could have created that experience, with that playstyle.

I would love to see OSR movements for other TSR games and other genres. Postapoc, planetary romance, urban fantasy, space opera, paranormal alien conspiracy technothriller...