I'm just getting into OSR related stuff after nearly 15 years playing Pen and Paper RPGs and Wargames. I'm really into a lot of the OSR mentality. Specifically I love that the GM should be the final arbiter of the rules. Great. I've had so much bullshit in the past 5 years from the Critical Role lot whenever they worm their way into my games.

I've recently got into several arguments online and IRL. And it always starts the same way. I've always believed that stories come OUT of whatever game you are playing. And that story is exclusive to and can ONLY happen in the group you are in. I say what I have said above. That I am really starting to like the OSR and I think that's how I want to run my games. Players shouldn't come in with this pre-determined epic adventure they want to play. And I'm not a fan of the Mercer style of fudging dice and pretending to play something resembling DnD in a much more scripted and theatrical way. It doesn't matter where I am, /tg/, Reddit, etc. People seem to get really personally offended when I just mention the OSR in passing as something I'm starting to like. I never say my way is the best way, just that it's my way and I prefer it for my games. I'm not trying to change anyone else's minds. But they always go back to several shouted out assertions. Especially after they died to a goblin at level 1 and have to make a new character.  I didn't make the goblin OP. I just enforced the rules fairly and you had some crappy roles. I am not fudging the dice for you.

"You're just a fucking grognard. DnD is much better now than that old stuff."

"omg you're demanding DnD change to meet your narrow expectations."

"You just want to be an edgy try hard making it hard for no reason. DnD should be fun. Not hard."

I don't think I'm anything special as a GM. I just really want to go back to the idea of DnD as a game of chance. It doesn't always go like you expect. But you have fun and laugh about the dumb rolls afterwards.

The tactical, operational, and strategic aspects of old-school style gaming is both a personal taste and a skill.  Some people have no taste for it.  Some have no skill for it.  Some are fine with it, but not "today, in this game".  So accept that running in that style automatically excludes some from your pool of potential players for any given game--including a host of perfectly fine, reasonable people with whom you might enjoy playing a different style game some other time.

Maturity in dealing with losing a character is all over the map.  It's always been this way.  At the very least, though, there should be a firm set of expectations established.  Even people that can laugh off losing a character don't want to be blindsided in a game billed as a lark.  You put a different slant on the character when they might croak any time.

Maturity in dealing with other people having fun playing a pretend elf different than you has generally gotten worse.  People have always argued about it, but there are more people than ever where their own self image is contradicted if someone else is having fun in a way that they think is impossible.  Maybe it is just the internet that lets us see how bad it always was, but in any case it is worse in the sense of being more in our faces. 

Finally, the subset of people that are out to control others don't really see any difference between pretend elves and more serious subjects.  For them, it's all grist for the mill, or at least practice.  What was said of the puritans is entirely true of them--horrified at the thought that out there somewhere people were having fun in a way they don't like.  To such people, you are either an infidel or a heretic (depending on their dogma and their "understanding" of their own dogma).  They are really worried that someone might try what you are talking about and discover that they do have a taste and skill and even interest in playing an old-school style game.   Or maybe someone merely might have enough interest in seeing if they have the taste and want to acquire the skill. 

Notice that the two previous paragraphs are about very different motivations, though some particularly nasty people have both. 

Most of my players in old-school style games had neither taste nor skill when we started, but were at least willing to give it a shot. And you don't have to have a whole table full of those with the skills as long as least a couple of players are trying to develop it and the others will sort of listen to them sometimes. 

Also, in passing and related to this topic:  I've generally found it easier to find friends that I like and turn them into gamers that enjoy the kind of game that I want to run, than to find gamers and turn them into friends.  You just have to be willing to teach the game and deal with the learning curve while accepting that not all of your friends will care for it.  Along the way, you'll occasionally run into like-minded people who are already gamers and will fit in, but it is a lot easier to find them if you have an established, working game running already.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 25, 2021, 09:18:02 AM
Also, in passing and related to this topic:  I've generally found it easier to find friends that I like and turn them into gamers that enjoy the kind of game that I want to run, than to find gamers and turn them into friends.  You just have to be willing to teach the game and deal with the learning curve while accepting that not all of your friends will care for it.  Along the way, you'll occasionally run into like-minded people who are already gamers and will fit in, but it is a lot easier to find them if you have an established, working game running already.

Ah, see this is my first issue. I don't have any "like minded friends". I have some RPG friends, people who I've met whilst playing RPGs at my LGS but they don't really interact with me in a meaningful way beyond that despite my best efforts. And they all seem afraid of any RPG that wasn't played by a group of e-celebs. I'm mostly at the mercy of PUGs and online games. My LGS is just a hive of bad habits I don't agree with and no one there was interested in anything other than 5e. I'm very lucky in that I found one group who seem willing to try Lamentations of the Flame Princess based solely on the fact the book had nice art that drew them in. That's the sort of person I have to work with or I just get no games at all.

I am planning to run some of the World of the Lost Lands adventures by Frog God Games using OSE once my current Cyberpunk RED game concludes.  As someone who recently started getting into the OSR, my experience with it has been that most RPG gamers aren't aware of it.  The response to it has been neutral to positive.  Many people are curious about what the early editions of DnD were like so the "blast from the past" has a certain appeal.

I have gotten a little static from people who started researching the OSR and quickly ran across the work of James Raggi and Venger Satanis.  They don't exactly paint the movement in the best light, but with Swords and Wizardry and Old School Essentials coming into prominence we have better examples to point newcomers towards.

Online you will run into a certain subset of bitter ex OSR fans.  These people seem to feel burned by the movement in one way or another so they have decided that "the OSR is dead" and have made in their personal crusade to dissuade as many people from looking into the OSR as possible.  It's from these types that you get "The OSR died with Google+," "the OSR is full of bigots and jerks," "the OSR is old, bitter grognards" posts on social media.

It's not the OSR, it's the people who play it. You have two sides; old school fantasy (basic, light rules, DIY-attitude, figuring things out and coming up with stuff on the run, sword & sorcery, "politically incorrect", grognards, hand-drawn art, gritty, free market/conservatism, sandboxing and exploring dungeons)

new school fantasy (complex rules, buying the new module, playing by the book, freakshitting fantasy and anime, diversity, "consent" and session zero, teens and young adults, digital art, violence is not allowed, marxism and "progress", "telling a story"). OSR is a reaction to being dissatisfied with the current state of affairs which naturally draws people with this kind of mindset.

Most new school are idiots who don't know any better; they were surrounded by the new school and didn't have anything to contrast; see the Allegory of the Cave. Others are willful dummies who can't wait to buy the next module so they're told what to think, how to play and to diversify everything in their marxist, anti-white cult.

A few pictures say it best

The problem is not the OSR.

It's just that some people have a preferred style and no capability of understanding criticism.

Try to say 4e is better than 5e and vice-versa, and I'll sure you''l get lots of people complaining either way. and neither is OSR.

Also, the OSR is not a single thing, and I see a chasm between the "everything goes" of OD&D and the "play it this way or else!" in AD&D.

And as always everything is full of misconceptions (for example, fighting 4 goblins at level 1 might be slightly harder in 5e than AD&D - IIRC, but people would think it is the opposite).

People triggered by the OSR were waiting for their next thing to be triggered by, particularly in those mediums you identified. I don't think there is anything specific to the OSR, they are just unhappy fucks looking for their next outrage opportunity.

As for your situation, I am sort of there now. I play in a 5e group with a DM who I KNOW will not kill my character no matter what I do. I won't disrupt the game for others by intentionally pushing him, but my wife and friend who are also in the game chuckle about it with me weekly. I could list the ways he does this, but we have all seen it.

His style is not the game I run. In my friends and family game, I run one close to what you are describing. I told them the type of game I enjoy offering, which makes me more effective. I know they will have more fun because I am more effective.

Back to that first group. The DM has asked me to run a mid-campaign one-shot/mini-series. I explained this same thing to the group, and they have all said they are excited. So perhaps something like that could be your opportunity.

It is quite an old thing by now - 18-20 years or so. Old-school gaming draws reflexive dismissal and hostility because it challenges the central idea of the game industry - that game design progresses and gets better with time. Accordingly, if you play a game from the 1990s, you are playing a better game than the people who play a game from the 1980s, and if you play a game from the 2010s, you are playing a better game than those 1990s troglodytes (even if they were, say, White Wolf fans looking down on AD&Ders).

For a long time, "AD&D" (and it was specifically AD&D) was dismissed as an outdated game for children and people who did not know better. It had no prestige in the hobby mainstream. Then all of a sudden, a bunch of people appeared claiming that it was not only legit, it was actually a very well made "evergreen" system, and had much to offer that modern games could not.

By merely existing, old-school gaming challenges some peoples' self-image as smarter, more discerning, modern gamers. It causes no small amount of cognitive dissonance, hence the furore.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 25, 2021, 12:45:00 PM
...
It's just that some people have a preferred style and no capability of understanding criticism.
...

This is huge...

People also seem to take critiques of something they like as a personal insult.

I have literally seen the following on other forums: "You said that game X was stupid. Well, I like game X, so you're saying I must be stupid!"

There is also the subset that can't let anything go - Even if you say: "Hey lets agree to disagre then..." They still have to get in the last word on why you are wrong.

Why must people argue about everything in life?

I've gone around the world, digging into D&D 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e, 5e, PF 1e, PF 2e play test, Dungeon World, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Lion & Dragon; only to realize that I'd rather play a reorganization of the Original pre-1e D&D "White Box" ruleset, with the additions of Ascending AC and a Single Saving Throw.  A $5 softcover ruleset on Amazon; "White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game".

I have a huge library of books, but I can run a whole game out of a $5 book and my imagination.  That, is the beauty of the OSR.

I don't feel the need to criticize the rest of the OSR / RPG market.  Let people design what they want, buy what they want, and play what they want.  Freedom!!!

Quote from: Jaeger on August 25, 2021, 01:45:54 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 25, 2021, 12:45:00 PM
...
It's just that some people have a preferred style and no capability of understanding criticism.
...

This is huge...

People also seem to take critiques of something they like as a personal insult.

I have literally seen the following on other forums: "You said that game X was stupid. Well, I like game X, so you're saying I must be stupid!"

There is also the subset that can't let anything go - Even if you say: "Hey lets agree to disagre then..." They still have to get in the last word on why you are wrong.

This is I think the heart of the problems I've faced. All these people have incorporated 5E and the consensus around 5E into their IRL identity. It goes hand in hand with this very SJW idea of characters just being a representation of themselves and the world as they want it to be. Fiction itself exists to service their ego. When they get some bad rolls and die in a humiliating fashion I might as well be pushing them into the spike pit myself. I am denying them the epic adventure they saw on Critical Role. I am denying them the epic story in their head. They don't understand that DnD is fundamentally a game of chance, and when you take that away it ceases to be a game. And your victories are just hollow. You didn't kill the dragon. I fudged the rolls to give you godmode and noclip and you cheated. Because if I did anything less I'd get cancelled. You didn't struggle or sacrifice with the constant risk of a grizzly end that you fought through with grit, wit and luck. Marveling that you finally beat that dragon after several challenges and armed with a story to tell others.  I just led you by the nose through my fantasy novel. Participants optional. When I say

"You do you. But I prefer the old school mentality. No hard feelings, I'm not going to tell you how to run your game I just don't want to participate, thank you very much."

I am somehow degrading them as a person even though I've taken great care to be as polite as possible in explaining why I'm not into that sort of thing. It's a very narcissistic mentality to see someone disagreeing with the way you have fun and demanding they stop having it or somehow denigrating them and their fun.

Now to be fair, I will when proded start taking the piss out of Critical Role kids, 5e and the like. If I'm being honest, Matt Mercer's way of DnD that has become the consensus is as close to a WRONG way to "play" DnD as there can be. Sometimes at my most autistic I want to shout that from a rooftop. But I do understand that those people are having fun in their paddling pool. So when asked I mostly keep my opinion on it to myself because I don't want to make someone else feel shitty just for disagreeing with me.  I just wish they could give me the same courtesy or at least keep an open mind and try something different that maybe doesn't just exist to become a scripted reality television show. 

"Matt Mercer said everyone plays DnD in their own way"

Up until I play it in a way certain people don't like. Such as even mentioning the OSR. Then I'm just being a gatekeeping grognard who needs to stop being so heckin mean.

I doubt that OSR triggers people any more or any less than any other form of rpg. Some people like a thing. Others don't. It's more likely that you notice the occasions when others dislike the things you like than the occasions when they dislike the things you dislike. Such is life, especially on the internet.

Critical Role? 

That show that puts me to sleep whenever I tried to watch it?

That Critical Role?

Quote from: Jaeger on August 25, 2021, 01:45:54 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 25, 2021, 12:45:00 PM
...
It's just that some people have a preferred style and no capability of understanding criticism.
...

This is huge...

People also seem to take critiques of something they like as a personal insult.

I have literally seen the following on other forums: "You said that game X was stupid. Well, I like game X, so you're saying I must be stupid!"

There is also the subset that can't let anything go - Even if you say: "Hey lets agree to disagre then..." They still have to get in the last word on why you are wrong.

Many people adopt this attitude as a defensive measure because it's become fashionable to weaponize criticism of  [Thing] to lob veiled insults and feel morally/intellectually superior to [People who like Thing].

"Oh, you like X do you?   X is Problematic. Only Corpo apologists/Nazis/Misogynists like X!"