Quote from: Mistwell on August 27, 2021, 10:51:49 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 27, 2021, 02:56:09 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on August 27, 2021, 02:15:07 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 25, 2021, 08:33:13 AM
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.

To be fair, you do sound a bit like an edgelord.  Particularly in your constant characterization of 5e as Mercer's type of game, when really Mercer's type of game isn't necessarily a good representation of 5e which does put the power back in the hands of the DM.  We've never fudged dice with 5e, I've never seen the designers of 5e encourage people to fudge dice, and fudging dice isn't some core concept of 5e.

As for OSR, have at it. It's a fine style of D&D. But you making it some chip on your shoulder and daring people to try and knock it off? Yeah, again, just you being a bit of an edgelord it seems. Play the game you want to play.

Here we go. Wanting to actually play DnD and not fudge dice is now "edgelord" behavior. Really showed me up here. Not liking 5E is edgelord behaviour.  I would've preferred nuance and not the exact strawman I made coming alive to prove me right.

The dice fudging part in no way, shape or form is one of the reasons I called you an edgelord. Not liking 5e is in no way shape or form a reason I gave for calling you an edgelord. You including those in your response however when I made it damn fucking clear I don't fudge dice, 5e doesn't fudge dice, the OSR is a fine style of play and you should play what you like does however further your rep as an edgelord. Stop trying so hard. You have our attention without begging for it.

And you calling my response a strawman when all you just did is strawman my response is even more evidence. Do you think people think you're cool if you're a dick to your peers?

It really does seem as though being a dick to peers is a big part of theRPGsite's "this is Sparta" appeal.

I didn't come here to "be a dick to my peers". IRL I am too quiet and I never voice my opinion for fear of causing a confrontation

I'm really not comfortable with the way this thread is going. I just wanted to see what people's opinions of the OSR are and how to combat people being aggressively offended that I have a philosophical disagreement with the way they play the game.

This is becoming more about me and how I run my games than I would like. I can't defend against personal attacks from strangers on the internet because none of you know me. But what really grinds me gears is when I give an opinion and you start assigning negative traits to me to justify your own arguments. That makes me defensive when what I should've done is not respond. For 6 months I've been in a game as a GM where I've had to be a "storygamer" because that group was very new and that was what they expected of DnD. I knew that if I voiced my opinion to them or tried to enforce my way of doing things they would leave. So I played the long game. Didn't say a word about how I liked my games. Never voiced my opinion or tried to be obnoxious. Did the best I could as a GM to make them feel comfortable and welcome. Gave them as fun a game as I could manage under the restrictions. Then they got bored. I got the opportunity to do things my way and they liked it. I don't run the games I like as if they are hardcore tactical simulations or "try hard edgelord" stuff. Again, that's an assumption certain members here made about me and my style of GMing. I've said my style of GMing several times to justify myself to people who are probably still going to take offense and project negative traits onto me. I do not want to be a hostile or confrontational GM. I do not intentionally provoke or railroad my group. But when I've designed a dungeon full of traps and monsters and one player decides to run through the whole thing by themselves they will inevitably bump into the monsters I had already placed there or a trap. And they will have to figure out a way out of that situation. I find just telling the players what they want to hear to be condescending. I find that 5E and 5E culture encourages that playstyle. Feel free to disagree. But it's why I don't like 5E or the expectations of playing 5E I get from other players. And the whole point of my original topic was to discuss what to do when people get offended that I even mention that I like OSR and the Old school mentality.

I like OSR style play. Old school mentality where foolish actions are punished by the consequences of your actions. I don't see that as try hard or edgy. It's not, actually. I refuse to justify that. I just had a game with a group who enjoyed it. They didn't see it as particularly "hardcore". They just liked having choices and consequences both mechanically and in the story that mattered. 

I feel like I'm waffling on trying to justify myself to complete strangers. I'm just going to stop doing that.

  Happydaze regularly trolls (honestly mostly in jest) and routinely name calls people (probably in jest, but I prefer not to say anything like he says except face to face) as a form of greeting.  I do not think I would worry myself too much about it.

Quote from: oggsmash on August 28, 2021, 10:09:21 AM
  Happydaze regularly trolls (honestly mostly in jest) and routinely name calls people (probably in jest, but I prefer not to say anything like he says except face to face) as a form of greeting.  I do not think I would worry myself too much about it.

I certainly wasn't trying to piss on the guy. But if the wind shifted, it's not my fault..

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 28, 2021, 10:06:03 AMBunch of stuff

Look KT, let's just focus on the essentials of you position:

1) Dice Fudging: Where are you getting that Critical Role's dice fudging is representative of how people play 5e? Critical Role started as a Pathfinder game when 5e didn't even exist. No 5e designers that I know of ever encouraged dice fudging. No adventures for 5e encourage dice fudging. 5e brought back lots more random charts, and random encounters, over more recent prior editions. It has rolling for stats as the primary method of generating ability scores.

2) Story Gaming: Where are you getting that 5e is more focused on storygaming? It's not. 5e has more of a return to old school gaming built into it than most modern versions of D&D which game before it. They hired guys like Pundit for a reason to consult on it. 5e adventures have trended to more sandbox and less railroad than other modern versions of D&D. 5e out out a "Basic" edition with 4 classes and 4 races stripped down to essentials for free, for a reason. 5e's arguably most "storygamer" element of inspiration dice is almost entirely ignored by 5e gamers at most games. What gave you the impression that Critical Role represents 5e in terms of storygaming? It doesn't.

3) OSR: Nobody here is bothered you like the OSR or don't like 5e. The only people on your case are focusing on your apparent insulting of those who do like 5e and repeated claims that Critical Role is a fair representation of how people play 5e when there is zero evidence to support that. 5e was being played by guys like me who started in 1978 with D&D well before Critical Role touched it, and will continue to play it their way long after Critical Role moves on to something else. Critical Role isn't 5e. It's its own thing which is, temporarily, using some 5e rules.

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 28, 2021, 08:15:19 AM
As an aside, I just ran my first b/x game with the same group I was forced to do storygaming with. They said they were getting bored of that. So I offered the change up of OSR style rules. I'm no scientist so don't take this as data but that same group that insisted on no death and "just having fun" just had fun with my first session. They all actually went out of their way to tell me how much fun the dungeon was. Which has never happened to me before. I'm not actually that confident in my skills as a GM so that was really nice to hear. Someone even died and they just rolled up a new character in 10 minutes. No big deal.

Good job on that bit.  Getting people to try new stuff can be challenging at best.  I hope you can keep this group going

Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 28, 2021, 08:15:19 AM
I am not stopping anyone from playing DnD how they want so taking it so personally that I insulted the way you play DnD shouldn't affect you. If your problem with my posts is that I just don't like Critical Role then I am sorry but my opinion on that is not changing. I would be happy to live and let live if their bullshit didn't affect nearly every campaign I've tried to run for 5 years. To the point I had to capitulate to these bastards or just not play DnD due to lack of choice in groups. I'll admit I'm bitter but wouldn't you be if every group just played in the ways you didn't like and you were either forced to do it their way or just not play in the vain hope this fad will pass and you'll find groups in 5 to 10 years time?

King Tyranno - I sympathize with you, really. I've had times in my life when I really wanted to do something different in gaming and the groups I had available were into something else. For me, it was often that people only wanted to play D&D and at the time I wanted to play something else. Still, fundamentally your choices come down to simply:

1) Leave them and either find other ways to play - like online games - or just don't game.
2) Find some way to compromise and play with them.

It seems to me that you're frustrated and you're lashing out - but it will just make both you and them miserable to fight over taste in games - with you calling them bastards and then keeping playing with them. If playing with them isn't and can't be fun for you, just don't do it and go with #1. There are a lot more online games these days over Zoom and other platforms. As another possibility, you could try suggesting other activities, like board games, miniatures, etc. My weekly RPG group switched to playing the board game Gloomhaven for nearly two years.

As for #2, I don't know you or these people, but maybe there is some compromise that would be both fun for you and fun for them. One thought that comes to mind is switching genres from high fantasy to a genre where protagonist death is more expected, like Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu often has a lot of story focus to it, but it also has terrible consequences for bad choices (or sometimes randomly from good choices). There are a lot of other possibilities, though, like a game where the is competition with non-deadly consequences - for me, superheroes and pulp action did this. For example, Champions had a lot of very tactical combat and we let the dice rolls stand, but the end result of failure was unconsciousness rather than death.

Whichever way, I hope you can find a way to have fun.

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 29, 2021, 07:00:37 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

And thus, the implementation of WOTC's One True Way.

It's 2021 and all comics are Squirrel Girl.

Mmm, the Demolition Man shells. Thats some old school reference there.

OSR for me means mechanics that are enjoyable and supposed to make sense to the players, making the ''narrative'' handwaving aproach thats so prevalent these days less interesting. Old School Roleplaying also implies its back to the basics, at least imho.

I think the moment i realised what was up with the ''destroy the old, usher in a new golden age'' mentality was in the last book of Glen Cooks Black Company. It was there the protag saves a young girl with her hear full of this ideology from her old bastich masters. She then proceeds to betray the ''good guis'' and as her reward she gets reduced to breeding stock. She gets saved, but the main thing i took from the story is her revelation that the ideology promised that same ''out with the old, in with the new'' dreck. Also Girl Genious webcomic has one moment where particulary bloodthirsty omnicidal maniac gets through accelerated aging, yet stays alive. He finds himself no longer omnicidal that much; ,,But ive done such horrible things!''(paraphrased). Another guy tells him ''Kid. We all did. And then we grew up.''

Quote from: jhkim on August 29, 2021, 12:19:23 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 28, 2021, 08:15:19 AM
I am not stopping anyone from playing DnD how they want so taking it so personally that I insulted the way you play DnD shouldn't affect you. If your problem with my posts is that I just don't like Critical Role then I am sorry but my opinion on that is not changing. I would be happy to live and let live if their bullshit didn't affect nearly every campaign I've tried to run for 5 years. To the point I had to capitulate to these bastards or just not play DnD due to lack of choice in groups. I'll admit I'm bitter but wouldn't you be if every group just played in the ways you didn't like and you were either forced to do it their way or just not play in the vain hope this fad will pass and you'll find groups in 5 to 10 years time?

King Tyranno - I sympathize with you, really. I've had times in my life when I really wanted to do something different in gaming and the groups I had available were into something else. For me, it was often that people only wanted to play D&D and at the time I wanted to play something else. Still, fundamentally your choices come down to simply:

1) Leave them and either find other ways to play - like online games - or just don't game.
2) Find some way to compromise and play with them.

It seems to me that you're frustrated and you're lashing out - but it will just make both you and them miserable to fight over taste in games - with you calling them bastards and then keeping playing with them. If playing with them isn't and can't be fun for you, just don't do it and go with #1. There are a lot more online games these days over Zoom and other platforms. As another possibility, you could try suggesting other activities, like board games, miniatures, etc. My weekly RPG group switched to playing the board game Gloomhaven for nearly two years.

As for #2, I don't know you or these people, but maybe there is some compromise that would be both fun for you and fun for them. One thought that comes to mind is switching genres from high fantasy to a genre where protagonist death is more expected, like Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu often has a lot of story focus to it, but it also has terrible consequences for bad choices (or sometimes randomly from good choices). There are a lot of other possibilities, though, like a game where the is competition with non-deadly consequences - for me, superheroes and pulp action did this. For example, Champions had a lot of very tactical combat and we let the dice rolls stand, but the end result of failure was unconsciousness rather than death.

Whichever way, I hope you can find a way to have fun.

There are reasons that I took a decades-long hiatus from TTRPGs and got my RPG fix from CRPGs. I want to only play with people that I enjoy being around and I want to play the kind of games that I want to play. Some might see it as a strident position. I see it as good management of my time and energy. And I do have some flexibility in terms of game-play; not so much regarding the people that I play with.

YMMV.

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 29, 2021, 07:00:37 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

My biggest nightmare for DnD is what happened with Warhammer Age of Shitmar. The very first boxed release had a two page leaflet. That was the rule book. No rules on army composition, point values or anything like that. "just do whatever" The rules were essentially "roll dice, move wee men. Have fun. Buy more."

I can foresee a similar thing for DnD. I like the simplicity of b/x. But I can foresee WotC "simplifying" the rules so much that they forget to mention you roll dice. There are no stats because DnD is a party game now bigot! You use a Jenga Tower or tokens to resolve challenges but if you don't like it tell the Dungeon Friend (changed from Master you fucking fascist) what you'd like to do instead and the Frienderino has to do it. Because your consent is the most important part of DnD.  But you also have to buy the 200 page Player's Conduct Handbook. Which explains proper pronoun usage. Who is allowed to game and who is not and how to make your theater of the mind games wheelchair accessible. Along with some links to friendly anti fascist groups and Porn Stars you can donate to. The final page is an advert for the monster manual.

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 30, 2021, 08:53:53 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 29, 2021, 07:00:37 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

My biggest nightmare for DnD is what happened with Warhammer Age of Shitmar. The very first boxed release had a two page leaflet. That was the rule book. No rules on army composition, point values or anything like that. "just do whatever" The rules were essentially "roll dice, move wee men. Have fun. Buy more."

I can foresee a similar thing for DnD. I like the simplicity of b/x. But I can foresee WotC "simplifying" the rules so much that they forget to mention you roll dice. There are no stats because DnD is a party game now bigot! You use a Jenga Tower or tokens to resolve challenges but if you don't like it tell the Dungeon Friend (changed from Master you fucking fascist) what you'd like to do instead and the Frienderino has to do it. Because your consent is the most important part of DnD.  But you also have to buy the 200 page Player's Conduct Handbook. Which explains proper pronoun usage. Who is allowed to game and who is not and how to make your theater of the mind games wheelchair accessible. Along with some links to friendly anti fascist groups and Porn Stars you can donate to. The final page is an advert for the monster manual.

4e is a better comparison with Age of Sigmar as it was a radical redesign. Also, both continued to be refined over time, but it doesn't help them to be accepted by old players that liked what came before and refuse to take up something new.