Not that it would come anywhere near making the sweeping case, but I'd be curious to see even one instance of anyone claiming that everyone back in the 1970s played according to any one ideology.

Brady's claim looks like the real cryptozoic 'boogeyman' as far as I've seen.

It's not at all clear just what manner of game he's talking about in the first place, but many things that in my experience were fairly common in the 1970s and early 1980s seem quite extraordinary today.

"Fairly common" relative to present near-extinction is not the same as "universal adoption." Hex-and-counter historical games were vastly more visible as recently as 1990 than they are today, as were video game arcades in 1985 -- both well past their peak.

QuoteAt the end of the day, to me, you're One of Us.  A gamer and that's good enough for me.

The reality is that when I write something

So rock on you crazy squirrel, enjoy playing your way!  Because I will enjoy playing mine.  Be yourself, I say.

Oh for fuck sake, your whole outrage is due to the fact that you are a non-conformist and a individualist. You can't give specifics because your problem with the fact there is a large group with shared interests in the first place.

The OSR is the wrong target for that sentiment. It is as libertarian of a movement can be and still be a definable group. Why? Because the whole thing was a ignited by hacks of the d20 System Reference Document. Because the d20 System Reference Document is under the Open Game License anybody else who had a bright idea could go "Hey will I do it this way and publish it". And if anybody tries to acts as a gatekeeper the immediate reaction is "Fuck off." Seriously you have to have failed multiple saves against delusion not to release just how diverse the OSR is.

The way you talk it obvious you haven't actually read any OSR products. Also it obvious you haven't have a clue about how the OSR actually operates.

The Pundit suffered similar delusions to yours. He stood on his soapbox shouted to the heavens that the OSR was in the clutches of gatekeepers and that we were all sheeps following the likes of Knights and Knaves and Grognardia blindly.

You know what finally shut him up? Because a bunch of us repeatably told him "Publish your own damn OSR product." Show the rest of us how it done. And he did and guess what? He found out there were no gatekeepers that it worked pretty much how we said it worked. And Arrows of Indra did well enough for him that he did it again a second time with Dark Albion which also looks like it selling well for him.

So that the challenge I give you. If the OSR is that bad then make a product that shows us how to it right. Make something that is better.

Quote from: Phillip;856157Brady's claim looks like the real cryptozoic 'boogeyman' as far as I've seen.

It's not at all clear just what manner of game he's talking about in the first place, but many things that in my experience were fairly common in the 1970s and early 1980s seem quite extraordinary today.[/QUOTEHis problem is not with the game but with the OSR as a group. I ran into this more than a few times when I ran a game convention or a LARP event. There are non-conformists that absolutely despise any type of group or group labels.

Given the fact that the OSR is so decentralized the only effective way I found to deal with this attitude is to tell them to publish something that show how the rest of us are wrong. When they throw up various objections about publishing a product, you explain how to accomplish it with the resources at hand. Reduce the issue to the point where the only thing left is whether they are willing to do the work of writing or not.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;856117Ah, I always ask, do you have any personal recommendations (for or against)?

I mostly like the Quest for the Book of Sorrows, but some episodes are better than others (which should be expected).

http://rfipodcast.com/show/actual-play-podcast/

Quote from: Christopher Brady;856152The game is built with certain expectations, the various blurbs on how to play in the books/PDFs are meant to evoke this certain style of gaming, which they have dubbed OSR.  Which again, is supposedly how people played uniformly back in the 70's.

Emphasis added. This is the part that people feel you have not backed up.

QuoteAnd frankly I know I'm going to offend someone here, each and every single gamer's play style is unique anyway that labeling it in any way is both laughably pretentious and just plain sad.  It's caused me to roll my eyes, metaphorically pat people on the head and wish them Happy Gaming, because frankly, this OSR bullshit is just another tribe of Gamers usually trying to look special to everyone else for playing a way that others say they may have.

I've found it fruitless and self indulgent to go around calling people pretentious, claiming others want to look special, and doing things like rolling ones eyes and metaphorically patting others on the head. It makes you look bad, not them.

QuoteEvery time someone buys OSRIC or LL or S&W, they do so with the expectation of an OSR experience, because that's how the game system has been billed.  And each copy of each book (or PDF as the case may be) is identical and thus 'uniform', and a lot of gamers do not have Gronan's or Chirine's experiences with the devs, and humans in general don't like to think 'outside the box'...

This is a shift in your usage of the term uniform. Was our style of play back in the 70s uniform (or supposedly so), or is it the OSR books?

QuoteHumans don't group and label something that doesn't have similarities to something else for shits and giggles.  C'mon man, don't pretend to be obtuse.

No one is pretending to be obtuse, they are pointing out valid gaps in your argument.

QuoteYou know what?  I'm done.  This is a silly, silly, silly, pointless topic because the beliefs in here are built on mostly erroneous assumptions.

Have fun being done.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;856238Emphasis added. This is the part that people feel you have not backed up.

I know I said I was done with this, but:
 
What part of the word 'supposedly' did you miss?

I'm not saying it was uniform, just that the OSR movement claims it is by putting out books that are meant to be run in a certain play style.  Each of them (and I own all of the ones I've mentioned, OSRIC, LL and S&W) and to my untrained eye, they're not even alike.  Not to mention that the style of game they espoused is nothing like I used to play with my original DMs.

May argument has always been that OSR is a bullshit term made up by people who either want to push a specific play style onto others, or want to feel special because they think their play style was popular way back when.

Look, go buy/play all the 'OSR' games, they're pretty fun in and of themselves.  It's this 'movement' I think that's misguided, simply because I don't think that people should segregate themselves, intentionally or not, into small tribes because of something as silly as how we play our elf games.

Simply because of all the political backlash we're getting from our own hobby (See the OBS thread), we need all the allies we can get to stand up for us.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;856376I know I said I was done with this, but:
 
What part of the word 'supposedly' did you miss?

I'm not saying it was uniform, just that the OSR movement claims it is by putting out books that are meant to be run in a certain play style.  

That has got to be one of the stupidest arguments I have ever seen.

Yeah, I'm not sure what to say after reading that.  And this idea that people joining together to explore their common interest is some sort of negative segregation is just ridiculous.  If someone likes something and has found others with similar interests and they come up with an easily identifiable term and logo for what they are doing that's not becoming a separate tribe.  It's just a way to easily identify content of interest.

And there's still nothing backing up his charge that the OSR is about pushing it on other people or that people are using the term to feel special about how their approach to play was more widespread than it was.  If someone points back to some early examples of free wheeling play by Gary, Dave, Mike, Tim, etc., they tend to just be saying that the approach these guys took was fun.  The OSR was born out of that approach being the road less traveled, so this charge of universal adoption of it in the past just makes no sense.  And it's still completely unsubstantiated.  Not a single link to anyone of note claiming that the free wheeling approach was more wide spread than it really was.

The most I've ever seen was an appeal to the fact that the founders of the hobby played that way.  I've never actually seen anyone go further and say "and so did everyone else!". And now the thing that's backing up this claim of uniformity is that game rules work as the designer intended them and don't intentionally support other styles?  Really?  That's the proof of some sort of uniformity?  Worst argument ever.

--

Quote from: estar;856189The OSR is the wrong target for that sentiment. It is as libertarian of a movement can be and still be a definable group. Why? Because the whole thing was a ignited by hacks of the d20 System Reference Document. Because the d20 System Reference Document is under the Open Game License anybody else who had a bright idea could go "Hey will I do it this way and publish it". And if anybody tries to acts as a gatekeeper the immediate reaction is "Fuck off." Seriously you have to have failed multiple saves against delusion not to release just how diverse the OSR is.

This.  And it goes so far beyond the OGL.  The tools of publication have never been more accessible.  All you need is computer access that many people can get for free at a local library.  You can write up your document, do simple layout and produce a PDF all for free using online tools.  And then you can sell it or even get print on demand copies sent almost anywhere in the world for no cash up front.

Another thread is discussing the building of a 'dungeon' in sync with the ethos of recent D&D editions, which dovetails with the builder's video game referents.

The builder may have overlooked a signal feature of those video games: replay.

If a Super Metroid player gets Samus killed, she can reboot and start again. The gamebook format is similar: The very titles of Tunnels & Trolls solos such as "Naked Doom", "Deathtrap Equalizer" and "Overkill" bespeak the importance of failure and reset in getting full mileage from their pages.

Replays usually don't fit campaign continuity, and the trivial challenge that ensures a script unfolds does not fit the ethos of the pioneering RPGs.

As many have observed -- whether they like or dislike it -- this is in old D&D not just a high-level matter of scenario and campaign structure. Many lower-level 'mechanics' are geared to generating uncertainty (including ample opportunities for sudden death).

A linear model works for tournament rounds, but that's an 'abnormal' mode of play in the old context. Clearly many people took the 'modules' spun off from this as prescriptive, and TSR's entry into the field coincided with the publication of the AD&D books that brought a huge influx of new players -- as did the Basic/Expert lines a few years later.

That's close enough to primeval to the majority of players today. Indeed, one would hope that most came in at least as recently as the 1990s (AD&D 2nd Ed.), because otherwise we're talking a quarter-century of even greater stagnation and decline than should warm the cockles of curmudgeonly hearts.

Quote from: Phillip;856434Another thread is discussing the building of a 'dungeon' in sync with the ethos of recent D&D editions, which dovetails with the builder's video game referents.

The builder may have overlooked a signal feature of those video games: replay.

If a Super Metroid player gets Samus killed, she can reboot and start again. The gamebook format is similar: The very titles of Tunnels & Trolls solos such as "Naked Doom", "Deathtrap Equalizer" and "Overkill" bespeak the importance of failure and reset in getting full mileage from their pages.

Replays usually don't fit campaign continuity, and the trivial challenge that ensures a script unfolds does not fit the ethos of the pioneering RPGs.

As many have observed -- whether they like or dislike it -- this is in old D&D not just a high-level matter of scenario and campaign structure. Many lower-level 'mechanics' are geared to generating uncertainty (including ample opportunities for sudden death).

A linear model works for tournament rounds, but that's an 'abnormal' mode of play in the old context. Clearly many people took the 'modules' spun off from this as prescriptive, and TSR's entry into the field coincided with the publication of the AD&D books that brought a huge influx of new players -- as did the Basic/Expert lines a few years later.

That's close enough to primeval to the majority of players today. Indeed, one would hope that most came in at least as recently as the 1990s (AD&D 2nd Ed.), because otherwise we're talking a half-century of even greater stagnation and decline than should warm the cockles of curmudgeonly hearts.

Wait, those old modules like Mines of Madness are built for replaying? But the players who previously went through it would know where the previous traps killed them are, even though their characters wouldn't. What do they do, just walk into them to maintain character RP?

Also I don't understand what you mean about replays, in general. Because in that dungeon Angry is building, the entire point is to structure everything so the party doesn't get killed. So unlike a video game where you die over and over, it won't happen here.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;856376I'm not saying it was uniform, just that the OSR movement claims it is by putting out books that are meant to be run in a certain play style.  Each of them (and I own all of the ones I've mentioned, OSRIC, LL and S&W) and to my untrained eye, they're not even alike.  Not to mention that the style of game they espoused is nothing like I used to play with my original DMs.

Not true at all. My Microlite74/78/81 games are designed to be played in many different styles just like TSR versions were. Here's the "Notes on Old School Play" I use in my Microlite74 games (and in Mircolite78 and Microlite81 with game names changed). It is quite different than Matt Finch's "A Quick Primer for Old School Play" and mentions multiple styles of play. Yes, it is all about the the D-N-D game but doesn't directly mention it because of OGL requirements. Speaking of which, the text quoted below is open game content under the OGL except for game names like "Microlite20" and "Microlite74".

QuoteNotes on "Old School" Play
While Microlite74 is designed using tried and true "D20" systems filtered through the Microlite20 rules, it is designed for a completely different style of play than many players who started to play in the last 20 years or so may be used to. This section will give a brief overview of "old school" play.

What is "Old School" Play?
There are two major styles of roleplaying games. The first (and older) style says "Here is the situation. Pretend you are there as your character, what do you want to do?" This style has been superseded over the years with a style that says "Here is the situation. Based on your character's stats, abilities, skills, etc. as listed on his character sheet and your knowledge of the many detailed rules of the game, what is the best way to use your character's skills and abilities and the rules to solve the situation?" Old school play strongly favors the first style and frowns on too much of the second.

Here are some major points where old school play is different:

Heroic, not Superheroic: Old school play, especially at low to mid levels, is about fairly normal people put in situations where they can be heroes, not about extraordinary people doing things that would make a four-color comic book superhero proud – and at first level yet. Just like in the real world, the more a character improves his abilities, the harder it is to improve them further, while new characters may advance rapidly, the higher their level the more effort and time (and XP) it takes to advance to the next level.

Achievement, not Advancement: Many modern games are often all about what special feats, extra classes and special game mechanics the players wish to obtain for their characters as they increase in level. In old school games, a character's abilities are generally predetermined by his character class, so old school games focus on the things that the characters wish to accomplish in the game world rather than on what game mechanics they want to acquire. Level advancement is often much slower than in modern fantasy RPGs which makes in campaign achievements even more important as a measure of character success.

No Skills: Unlike in most modern RPGs, there aren't any skills in Microlite74 -- not even the streamlined four skills of Microlite20. Players are intended to have their characters act like adventurers. So don't search your character sheet or the rules for the perfect solution in Microlite74. Instead, you just tell the GM what your character is trying to do. Note that you are assumed to be competent with all common activities associated with your class and background. If you need to keep a door open or shut, you might tell the GM your character is using a spike to keep the door open or closed. A ten foot pole is your friend for checking for traps. Searching a room means looking in and under objects, not rolling a skill check. While this may seem strange at first, you will quickly learn to appreciate the freedom it gives you. No longer are you limited to the skills and feats on your character sheet, you can try anything your character should be capable of trying. You might not succeed, but the rules generally will not stop you from trying.

Limited Magic Items: Modern fantasy RPGs often assume that magic items are easy to buy and/or to create. In most old school campaigns, magic items are relatively rare and hard to create. Only potions and scrolls are generally relatively easy to create or purchase. Other magic items are seldom found for sale (and are very high priced when they are found for sale) and are usually very expensive in money and time to try to create – often requiring rare ingredients that the characters must quest to find. Therefore characters are usually limited to the magic items they find in treasures or take from defeated enemies on adventures.

No Assumption of "Game Balance": Old style game sessions aren't about carefully balanced characters (who are all able to shine equally at all times) who only run into situations carefully designed by the GM to be beatable by the characters presently in the party and to provide treasure that fits their current level. Instead, part of player skill is learning to evaluate situations so situations well over the party's current abilities or which will waste the party's resources for little gain can be avoided. Don't assume that you can beat every monster that you encounter, running away from monsters too tough to handle can mean the difference between character survival and character death. You can also get creative in how you defeat monsters. Perhaps those goblins you bypassed could be talked into (or tricked into) attacking that giant you know you can't beat, perhaps killing it for you or at least softening it up so your party has a chance of defeating it and living to tell the tale. Also remember that treasure can be turned into XP, even if you can't kill the monsters, perhaps you can still acquire some of their treasure. Part of the skill of playing "old school" style is coming up with creative solutions when a direct attack is likely to fail.

It's Not All About Combat: Many modern fantasy RPGs have made combat the star of the system, combats in these systems are time-consuming and very crunchy with rules for everything. Microlite20 avoids this by having a fast-playing abstract combat system. Microlite74 takes this one step further, combat isn't intended to be the main source of fun in the game. The game is as much about exploration and treasuring finding as it is about combat. Sure, you are going to have to fight things to explore and find treasure, but always remember that combat may not be the best or safest way to handle every situation. Think before you rush into combat. After all, it's not the only way to earn a good pile of experience – and monsters don't have to be killed to be defeated (and get XP for them).

Reality/Common Sense Trumps Rules: Old-school games use loose and simple rules that cover average cases and the GM and players are supposed to apply common sense and their knowledge of how reality works to cover the unusual and edge cases. "Reality/Common Sense" as interpreted by the GM always trumps the written rules if they conflict. For example, a character has a magic weapon and the rules for that weapon say it always causes its target to fall prone if hit. The character hits a gelatinous cube moving down the corridor toward them with the weapon. The rules say that the target should fall and be in a prone position. Reality, however, says otherwise. Gelatinous cubes don't have a top and bottom (so prone penalties make no sense) and a 10 foot cube can't fall when it is moving through a 10 foot corridor. In some modern games, the rules would be applied anyway and the cube would suffer the effects of falling prone no matter how little sense that makes. In an old school game, the GM ignores the rule because it makes no sense in the specific situation.

Forget "Rules Mastery": As some of the above differences have hinted, player skill in "old school" style games isn't about mastering the game rules so you can solve any problem by knowing the right combination of rules from 20 different rule books. Microlite20 is designed to be rules light and Microlite74 tries to stress this even more by encouraging GMs to make rulings on the spot taking into account specific circumstances instead of trying to hunt up special cases in the SRD or a stack of optional rule books. This is faster and helps players immerse themselves in their character and the game world instead of in rule books. GM rulings will be based on specific circumstances and common sense, not just on the written rules and prior rulings. Just because it requires a certain roll to jump one 10 foot pit does not mean all 10 foot wide pits will require the same roll. After all, all sorts of variables can affect the roll (terrain, weather, lighting, pressure to jump quickly, etc.). Players need to remember that these rules are merely a tool for the GM. They are just guidelines for the GM, not something written in stone that the GM must obey. If something herein does not work right in your campaign (or the GM just does not like a rule), the GM is well within his right to change it.  Microlite74 is not a game for rules lawyers or for those who believe that the game designer always knows what is best.

No Script Immunity: In most old school games, player characters do not have any form of script immunity. Player characters can die, lose equipment, suffer strange magical effects and other often unpleasant consequences if they are not careful or are just very unlucky. On the other hand, there are no rules limiting their success. If they take on an adult red dragon as first level characters and miraculously manage to win, there are no rules about level appropriate wealth or level appropriate magic items to interfere with their becoming rich and probably flush with magic items from the dragon's hoard.

Not Mentioned does not mean Prohibited: Many people seem to read RPG rules and come away with the idea that anything not specifically mentioned in the rules as allowed is prohibited. While this really doesn't make much sense given that no set of rules could ever cover everything that characters might attempt to do in an adventure, it seems to be a very common way to view RPG rules. In an old school game like Microlite74, this is specifically not true: the millions of possible activities not mentioned in the rules are not prohibited, they are up to the GM to allow or disallow based on his knowledge of how reality works and how his specific campaign world differs from reality. Unless the rules specifically prohibit some action, players should ask their GM instead of simply assuming it is prohibited because the rules do not mention it.

Styles of "Old School" Play

If you read some "old school" blogs, forums, and web sites, you might get the impression that there is only one "old school'" style of play: a style with expendable player characters who spend all their time in dungeons designed in the style of the old "Tomb of Horrors" module where an adventuring party is only one slipup away from death. This style of play is often shown in early modules.

What most people forget is that these early modules were designed for tournament play where the party that lasted longest and make it deepest into the dungeon was the winner. While a few gaming groups did run their regular campaigns like this and enjoy it, most people did not enjoy such games and the GMs who ran them were often referred to as "Killer GMs" (who often found themselves without players). Instead most home campaigns were a mixture of the following four styles – some campaigns stressing one or two styles over the others.

Power-Gaming: Many players start out playing in this style. Most soon get bored with it and add more and more of other styles. A power-gaming campaign is all about character power. Characters are known by their class, level, special items, and amazing powers and deeds. ("I killed the Demon King with my 15th Level Fighter/Magic-User/Druid. It only took two hits from Thor's Hammer to knock him out. Then I cut off his head with my vorpal blade.") There is often a lot of player competition for the most powerful character in campaigns that stress power-gaming. A lot of people look down on this style, but it can be a lot of fun to play a pure power-game in a group of players who all like the style.

Wargaming: This is probably the style old school rules were originally written for. The wargaming style of play is a competition between the player group and the GM. The GM sets up tactical battles, puzzles, and the like and the players solve them for treasure and experience. Fudging die rolls and ignoring rules (either for or against the players) is frowned upon as it detracts from the challenge and fun of the adventure. Characters in pure wargaming campaigns often were expendable and had little personality or goals (beyond staying live and getting rich) as a character with such might be tempted to do things dysfunctional to survival. Published tournament dungeons like Tomb of Horrors could be considered examples of extreme forms of this style. Once the RPG hobby became known outside of the minis and board wargaming community, pure forms of the wargaming style quickly became uncommon.

Role-Playing: A pure role-playing campaign is almost the opposite of a pure wargaming campaign. Player skill, tactics, and rules aren't really important. What is important is the player's character and that character's life in the game. In a pure role-playing campaign, players create the personality of their characters in great detail and players generally have a large emotional investments made in them and do not consider their characters expendable. Players tend to have their characters act within their personalities and within the beliefs they're supposed to hold – even when doing so is not the best thing to do at the time within the game. The object is to live your character's life in the campaign world. You "win" be having your character achieve his goals, goals which may or may not have anything to do with the game's goals of exploring and accumulating treasure and experience points. The modern computer game The Sims is an example of this style of play.

Story-Telling: While all campaigns tell a story after-the-fact (that is, you can tell a story based on the characters actions in the game), in a story-telling campaign, the GM has worked out a story in advance and the player characters are the protagonists. The campaign world usually has a detailed background and back story behind it. Knowing this background may be more important than knowing the rules. Some pure story telling campaigns are little more that single-line railroads where the characters play their almost pre-scripted parts in the story. In other cases, things are more free-form with story flow and events created by interactions between the GM's basic outline of story events and the actions of individual characters during the campaign. Some people consider the more pure forms of story-telling campaigns boring straight-jackets while others love the idea of being a major part of a real story.

These four major styles of play appeared early in the history of role-playing games. They were first mentioned in a general circulation publication in Glenn Blacow's article "Aspects of Adventure Gaming" in Different Worlds #10 (the October 1980 issue).

The important thing to take from this section isn't the four styles or their labels (as there are other systems for describing this with their own labels), but the idea that there were many different styles of "old school" play back in the "old school" days – not just the single style stressed in some "old school" blogs, forums, and web sites. Don't let those sites make you believe that you aren't playing old school right if your campaign isn't strongly in the wargaming camp. Most successful campaigns back in "old school" days were a mixture of all four major styles – and a heaping helping of minor styles.

Quote from: NathanIW;856079One thing I've noticed about lots of AD&D/OSRIC GMs is that they have largely abandoned the idea of rules as binding law that AD&D was originally marketed with as a means of unifying the player base and cutting Arneson out of royalties.

I listen to a ton of actual play podcasts and noticed most GMs very quickly adopt an off the top of their head approach rather than going with the described method in the rules.  Many times you can't immediately tell whether they are playing OD&D, B/X or AD&D.

People who take minute mechanical trivia as the point of conformity seem to me to be ignoring what Mr. Gygax actually wrote. If you get a look at Dave Hargrave's Arduin Grimoire volumes, that's a taste of the kind of radical variance that was rampant.

The Chaosium project that ultimately yielded RuneQuest started with a Gloranthan adaptation of the Arduin framework. The RQ-ish "Perrin Conventions" were created for a "D&D" game -- which was just as legitimate as one using the system in Eldritch Wizardry. Backhaus and Simbalist's Chivalry & Sorcery and Kevin Siembieda's Palladium show their roots more clearly than RQ. The Phoenix Cosmic Circle called their game "Dungeons & Dragons" until they decided to publish it, when it was renamed Tunnels & Trolls.

EVERYTHING in the original booklets and 'official' Supplements and Strategic Review/Dragon -- all the material revised and collated in the AD&D books -- originated as somebody's personal variant. From the 'Alternate' (quickly become usual) combat system to different-sized Hit Dice, lower XP value for monsters to Half-elves and Thieves, all that material is just the tip of the iceberg of variation that made the "non-game game" of 1970s D&D.

Quote from: Phillip;856434The builder may have overlooked a signal feature of those video games: replay.

Great insight.  Definitely an element that hasn't been explicitly identified or discussed in the thread so far.  It seems related to the "no safety rails" or "no systematized level appropriate encounter design" ideas, but I think it goes a little further.

I recently read an old campaign log from a game store in the late 70s.  There was so many instances of repeat delving into the same sort of areas and changing people present at the open table at the store.

QuoteMany lower-level 'mechanics' are geared to generating uncertainty (including ample opportunities for sudden death).

Also for many people campaigns end and restart and reboot and lots and lots of time is spent on low level play.  

In my own game the level cap for mortals of all kinds is level 5.  To go any higher they need to do something to become a mythic hero but there's no such limit to the monsters.  And with a d6 hit die for everyone and only getting a CON modifier once, it's quite possible for a simple threat to do enough damage to kill anyone.  Only one of the original characters is left and they've gone back and pushed through areas where they suffered previous deaths and defeats many times.

One thing I'm not great at is restocking "cleared" areas.  I have lots of dungeon factions going on and I tend to have them fill power vacuums as my means of restocking, but the players have made peace with enough of them that progress through previously explored areas is way, way safer than the unknown.  I suppose that all goes away if key party members who have relationships with these factions eventually bite it, but I think I need to amp up the replay-ability of these areas.

Quote from: RandallS;856436Speaking of which, the text quoted below is open game content under the OGL except for game names like "Microlite20" and "Microlite74".

If I ever hammer my practical notes (for my classless system behind the screen M74 game) into a format for other people to read I'll definitely be including that text.

I definitely ended up with a hybrid of the styles you identified.  There's a definite wargaming sensibility, but the attempt to concentrate things on natural language has definitely amped up the roleplaying and storytelling elements.  One player really loves resource management and is firmly in the powergaming camp.  He's also the only one still with his original character as he is quite cautious.  

We've had no issues with different people at the table having different styles as their own priority.  I think it's because the game is exploration based and the players get to chase their interests, so the guy who's really into RPing and dialogue and developing a town/community/kingdom can do so while still enjoying the delves deeper into the underworld for treasure to fund his ambitions.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;856376I'm not saying it was uniform, just that the OSR movement claims it is by putting out books that are meant to be run in a certain play style.

They put out books that, with minor variations, duplicate the algorithms of the originals. How are those supposed to be any more binding than the originals?

When Chris Gonnerman intentionally changes some things in his Basic Fantasy, or Matt Finch in his Swords & Wizardry, it's an expression of his personal style.

That's the really prevalent ethos here, a do it yourself ethos in line with what Gygax and Arneson said in the conclusion of their seminal text:

"... everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you?"

EDIT to add: The OSR works are largely issued under license terms that give you freedom to make your own derivative works without asking permission, and some are published in formats such as RTF that make direct editing easy.