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.