OSR What Has Caused the OSR Revival?

Lack of understanding of DMs need at the table by the "current" generation of games, including poor adventure design with walls of text, rules that coddle and codify things rather than enhance creativity, and filler crap that impinge on creativity and agency (for both player and GMs). The OSR movement is also a lot more innovative and experimental when it comes to game design than anything put out by any of the "big" publishers.

Check out Deep Carbon Observatory, Veins of the Earth, Hubris, Frostbitten & Mutilated, any of the Fight On! magazines, Hot Springs Island....all of these and more makes me engaged, excited, and creative in the games I run, and want to run. (there is a reason why these are also some of the best selling products on Drivethrough)

OSR being compared to a classic car is both arbitrary, hilarious, and wrong. RPGs are modular chasis, not a technology driven creation; OSR has also evolved and innovated (DCC, LoFP, ASSH etc. are much different beasts than ADD/ODD).
 
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My response is really no different than it was in 2013. Though nostalgia is a factor, it's not the underlying reason. People are nostalgic for the days of past games and past rules editions because the newer editions aren't giving them the game they want. The current games don't give them what they used to have. Whether that's because ideas of what the game IS have changed, or how it should be played have changed, or something else is really beyond my ability to pin down. When a new rules edition like 5E tries to at least in part to dress itself in 1E clothes it's clear that somebody, somewhere saw that they wanted and needed to get back something that had been lost, and thus the players that went with it.
 

Ancalagon

Dusty Dragon
(did my post disappear?)

Deep Carbon Observatory is a masterpiece... but a rather flawed one. I should write a proper review, I think some of the praise has been... overly positive.
 

If anything, 1e vastly disempowers the creativity of the players compared to 3e.

How so? 1E is a bit needlessly complex. I prefer Moldvay basic for OSR gaming but I don't see how 1E disempowers creativity. If anything, OSR systems empower creativity by having fewer cut & dried options. AD&D as written is a bit too fiddly for my tastes though.
 

Celebrim

Legend
How so? 1E is a bit needlessly complex. I prefer Moldvay basic for OSR gaming but I don't see how 1E disempowers creativity. If anything, OSR systems empower creativity by having fewer cut & dried options. AD&D as written is a bit too fiddly for my tastes though.

Typically, if a system doesn't explicitly call out that something is possible, it effectively forbids it. First, the players don't know or have any reason to believe that it is a valid proposition of play. Secondly, if it's not supported by the rules typically the GM has no real options but to answer "No" to any proposition for which he has no mechanism to resolve. Even if the GM tries to imagine a resolution, it's highly unlikely that a GM - especially a novice GM - will on the spur of the moment smith out any sort of interesting, fair and rewarding resolution system. Thus, even if the GM says, "Yes", to a creative proposition, the result is that his resolution or the resolution system of the engine will end up saying "No" to the proposition.

For example, in 15 years of playing old school D&D, I never saw players attempt anything other than attacks that resolved to 'to hit' rolls and 'damage' with weapons. That's because old school D&D did not call out that they could push, trip, grapple, clinch, circle, or really pull off any sort of combat stunt or maneuver at all. Even where optional rules systems existed, they were buried out of sight of the players and were frequently clunky, questionably balanced, and unrewarding to use in play (except in the case of grappling, where the DM wanted to be a complete rat bastard). As a result, the entire system was basically screaming "No" through its silence on the subject for even this basic level of creativity. With no reason to suspect that the outcome of a proposition is positive, players will not offer the proposition: they likely won't ever even think to offer the proposition.

Moldvay basic in the RAW will never produce a game where a player plays a sumo wrestler inspired fighter or a zorro inspired duelist that uses the terrain and improvised weapons. If it does produce that, it's only because the DM is so skilled that he's able to smith out all the fiddly bits as rulings that the rules themselves by their silence disallow. Frankly, I consider Moldvay basic one of the least creativity inspiring games ever. Not only is it silent, but unlike other games of its time, it does actually explain the procedures of play but in doing so encourages further silence. No one reading Moldvay basic ever imagines playing it except as it says it should be played. Heck, they don't even realize how limited their game is because the frame they are stuck in so well tightly constructed. Yes, the rules are well constructed. Yes, it has a clear idea of the game that it wants to create. All of that is really nice. But OMG is it uncreative unless someone merely uses it as a kernel to build on.

Where I think you are confused is that Moldvay basic by its silence on how to explore the game world (as opposed to how to engage in combat or any of its other subsystems) and by its silence on that requires player engagement with the imagined universe as a standard procedure of play in a way that a system with say 'search checks' or 'diplomacy checks' does not require. Now, that does potentially encourage creativity in a sense, in that a player trained with that procedure of play offers up very different propositions about how to interact with a room in which there is a painting on the wall than a player used to 'search checks', or how to negotiate with an NPC compared to one used to 'bluff checks' or 'diplomacy checks'.

However, that's only true if the tables procedures of play treat, "I make a bluff check..." or "I make a search check..." as a valid proposition. 3e doesn't really call out it's procedures of play, so granted it allows some tables to play in that way if they prefer. On the other hand, those mechanics don't actually invalidate older procedures of play, and in my opinion I think that they can be used to support them. After all, the root of a "search check" in 3e D&D is only a "find secret doors" check "check for traps" check in 1e D&D, and has the same difficulties for the table. I think the problem there is the writers of 3e were so familiar with "D&D" that they don't even realize that they needed to actually explain how to play. Instead, they think it's enough to describe how propositions are resolved, even if they don't explicitly state very often how propositions are created or validated. This is one of the things I'm trying to explain when I say that two tables that are both playing by the RAW can be playing very different games.
 

Typically, if a system doesn't explicitly call out that something is possible, it effectively forbids it. First, the players don't know or have any reason to believe that it is a valid proposition of play. Secondly, if it's not supported by the rules typically the GM has no real options but to answer "No" to any proposition for which he has no mechanism to resolve. Even if the GM tries to imagine a resolution, it's highly unlikely that a GM - especially a novice GM - will on the spur of the moment smith out any sort of interesting, fair and rewarding resolution system. Thus, even if the GM says, "Yes", to a creative proposition, the result is that his resolution or the resolution system of the engine will end up saying "No" to the proposition.

The paradigm of play in the original game was: " If the system doesn't specifically forbid something, then it is possible." If this were not the case then OD&D play would be practically impossible. As rules were added to the game and more codification took place, there was a paradigm shift to the opposite spectrum: " If the system doesn't specifically cover something then it is forbidden". That shift in the approach, especially by newer gamers who never knew any other way, did more to kill creativity than anything else.

Before there was a thief class, being sneaky was still a part of the game. OD&D combat is very brutal and unforgiving and avoiding unwanted combat encounters is important to the survival of fledgling adventurers. If being stealthy were "impossible" due to there being no rules for it, no adventurer would have ever seen 2nd level. Therefore, regardless of the absence of formal rules, the game allowed something that, while not defined, was not forbidden.

For example, in 15 years of playing old school D&D, I never saw players attempt anything other than attacks that resolved to 'to hit' rolls and 'damage' with weapons. That's because old school D&D did not call out that they could push, trip, grapple, clinch, circle, or really pull off any sort of combat stunt or maneuver at all. Even where optional rules systems existed, they were buried out of sight of the players and were frequently clunky, questionably balanced, and unrewarding to use in play (except in the case of grappling, where the DM wanted to be a complete rat bastard). As a result, the entire system was basically screaming "No" through its silence on the subject for even this basic level of creativity. With no reason to suspect that the outcome of a proposition is positive, players will not offer the proposition: they likely won't ever even think to offer the proposition.

Perhaps your players were not that creative? The game was written as a way to unlock YOUR (the player's) imagination. D&D isn't much good at doing that if your imagination is limited to that which the authors have already imagined. The system being silent on some matters isn't stifling creativity, it is encouraging it. If the system isn't saying no, then it is saying possibly yes.

Moldvay basic in the RAW will never produce a game where a player plays a sumo wrestler inspired fighter or a zorro inspired duelist that uses the terrain and improvised weapons. If it does produce that, it's only because the DM is so skilled that he's able to smith out all the fiddly bits as rulings that the rules themselves by their silence disallow. Frankly, I consider Moldvay basic one of the least creativity inspiring games ever. Not only is it silent, but unlike other games of its time, it does actually explain the procedures of play but in doing so encourages further silence. No one reading Moldvay basic ever imagines playing it except as it says it should be played. Heck, they don't even realize how limited their game is because the frame they are stuck in so well tightly constructed. Yes, the rules are well constructed. Yes, it has a clear idea of the game that it wants to create. All of that is really nice. But OMG is it uncreative unless someone merely uses it as a kernel to build on.

Not my experience at all. The silence on certain matters is what opens up creativity. One has little need to be creative when detailed procedures for everything are all laid out and ready to follow. Necessity is the mother of invention.


Where I think you are confused is that Moldvay basic by its silence on how to explore the game world (as opposed to how to engage in combat or any of its other subsystems) and by its silence on that requires player engagement with the imagined universe as a standard procedure of play in a way that a system with say 'search checks' or 'diplomacy checks' does not require. Now, that does potentially encourage creativity in a sense, in that a player trained with that procedure of play offers up very different propositions about how to interact with a room in which there is a painting on the wall than a player used to 'search checks', or how to negotiate with an NPC compared to one used to 'bluff checks' or 'diplomacy checks'.

I disagree that Moldvay basic is silent on how to explore the game world. Reading the example of play included gives a fair bit of insight into how play takes place. The DM describes the environment and the players interact with it. As exploration takes place, the DM answers queries, and based on that feedback the players make decisions or ask further questions. Not exactly something that takes hundreds of pages to explain.
 

Celebrim

Legend
When I'm engaged in a debate, there are several markers I'm looking for to determine whether I'm debating a matter of reason or a matter of faith. If I'm debating a matter of faith, there is no point in debating, because faith beliefs are based on personal experience and only personal experience can change those beliefs.

The paradigm of play in the original game was: " If the system doesn't specifically forbid something, then it is possible."

Great. It's been a while since I engaged with the text, but maybe the text actually explicitly said that. But that in no fashion whatsoever engages my complaint. I didn't say that this was a problem caused by hidebound unimaginative players, or DMs making false assumptions about the paradigm of play that they should use. The problem isn't caused by DMs just saying no. The problem is inherent in not having provision for creativity within the rules, and it will effect every group, and in particular it will effect every inexperienced group in a particularly strong way. And to the extent that some DM out there smithed out solutions to the limits of the rules through house rules or rulings, if that was actually a solution then that table was no longer playing "Moldvay Basic" and was likely playing a game unrecognizable to other groups ostensibly playing by the same rules.

If this were not the case then OD&D play would be practically impossible.

Cow patties. OD&D play was developed from wargaming by wargamers. The OD&D game and the later related BECMI and 1e AD&D games were built within that framework and described a game that was largely engaged through wargame rules. Those game rules were sufficient for the early years of the game, when the very act of going down into a dungeon, killing some goblins, and taking some loot was in and of itself novel. You can play that game just fine, and none of the player empowerment issues even gets touched on because playing a 'man-at-arms' is novel in and of itself.

But it's equally obvious that no one was satisfied with that game for very long. Those rules like rangers, druids, and thieves were added to the game at the demand of players who wanted new and novel experiences that they could not get through the existing rules. If in fact prior to codification, "anything not forbidden by the rules" was in fact actually possible, there would have been no demand for rules extension. But as a point of fact, nothing that is not codified in some way is actually possible. Every act you are thinking of as "creative" actually involves codification. Rulings are codification. If some creative OD&D player proposes to strip off his boots and armor in order to become more stealthy, then the DM has to resolve that proposition in some fashion, and however the DM resolves it becomes a house rule (even if it is never written down!) because part of that tables expectations of play becomes, "Naked guys are stealthier." That is codification! The problem is, 99.99% of 'old school' tables never would have had the "Naked guys are stealthier" rule, nor would it have ever been proposed no matter how creative the players because it would have been very obvious that being naked had concrete down sides while being stealthy had no obvious upside.

As rules were added to the game and more codification took place, there was a paradigm shift to the opposite spectrum: " If the system doesn't specifically cover something then it is forbidden". That shift in the approach, especially by newer gamers who never knew any other way, did more to kill creativity than anything else.

This may have happened at some tables. But this is not my experience nor is it obvious why such a paradigm shift should happen. It's not like later editions started including the text, "Anything not covered in the rules isn't permitted." In fact, I'm fairly sure such a paradigm shift did not happen, at least not very early on, because it doesn't correspond to my experience of play through the 80's or the 90's that people were by and large playing very different than they did "back in the day" (granted, I wasn't playing in 1976, but I am familiar with the artifacts of play in that era and people who did). I don't know what evidence you have for some widespread change in paradigm, but in my experience that paradigm shift is associated with players who came to table top from video games as video games became more and more people's first (and lengthy) introduction to role-playing. I've never seen an association between codification of the rules and lack of creativity, except in rule sets that define all valid propositions of play in terms of a limited set of declared valid propositions of play. (That is, regardless of how creative your proposition, mechanically it is represented from a limited set of valid propositions and all the verbage is just window dressing.) Not even 3e did this, and its even questionable that 4e - which went hardest in this direction - actually did that. Again, maybe some 4e DMs did in fact adopt standards of, "whatever is not permitted is forbidden", but if they did, it wasn't because the rules are codified but because of their own gaming background. Plenty of 4e DMs did not fall into that trap.

But perhaps more to the point, "whatever is not forbidden is permitted" is so vague as to be meaningless horse hockey. Falling back to that group that discovered a rule, "Naked guys are stealthier", the same creativity could be used to plea that "Naked guys are dodgier.", yet this application of creativity probably never resulted in any table adopting the house rule that you gained 4 AC for taking your armor off even if the rules did not actually forbid that. And to the extent that there were tables out there that had gotten that creative, they were certainly playing Moldvay Basic only in the kernel, as the prenumbra of rulings around that kernel that had been codified had become vastly more important than the game itself. And this only happens when in fact those rulings are codified. The truth of the matter is that it has nothing to do with what a game forbids or permits, what really matters is what the rules encourage and how they empower the participants to make decisions.

Before there was a thief class, being sneaky was still a part of the game.

Sure, but before there was a thief class, there was no way for a player to empower his character as especially sneaky. And at no point could a player validate inside the game as opposed to in the metagame that his stealth had some predictable chance of success. Sure, maybe and rarely some group said, "We put out all our torches, take off all our armor, take off our boots, and stealthily sneak up on the beast.", and maybe and even more rarely some OD&D DM thought to himself, "That's cool and creative. What should I do about that.... Let's give them an automatic round of surprise!", and maybe even more rarely that OD&D didn't regret that decision because his game was taken over by naked dwarves with battle axes and players with the expectation that "If I take off my armor and boots, all things being equal, I should get to attack first." But I first argue that before the thief came around that isn't actually the way most groups played, and even if it was no one had a way to say that they were more stealthy than anyone else.

If being stealthy were "impossible" due to there being no rules for it, no adventurer would have ever seen 2nd level.

Cow patties. Other than not making "excessive noise" and thus ruining the chance for surprise, the vast majority of tables did not play that way. There is no artifact of play suggesting that that was the way the game was normally played. Gygax's table doesn't seem to have played that way. All the artifacts of play from that era suggest the vast majority of tables approached the game through there background, which was as tactical wargamers. So what you would actually see is war dogs, hirelings, torch bearers, and the application of weapons and terrain to achieve tactical advantage - all the things that became codified in the early rules of the game and which were called out as important to play. There is nothing suggesting that beyond the most perfunctory, "We try not to make a lot of noise", that stealth was a huge portion of play.

Therefore, regardless of the absence of formal rules, the game allowed something that, while not defined, was not forbidden.

So? That doesn't mean it empowered the players.

Even if something isn't forbidden and even if the game says do whatever you imagine, if it is not called out as possible and if it is not validated as the way to play, it's almost certainly not going to happen. If a new player playing OD&D kits out his fighting man with sword and shield, and he sees the hobgoblin and says, "Ok, now I want to stab that thing with my sword, how do I do that?", he's going to get immediate positive feedback and basically every table he plays at. The DM will say something like, "Well, roll a 20 sided dice to see if you hit...", without any hesitation. But if that same player says, "Ok, now I want to run over and grab that thing in a bear hug...", at 99.9% of the tables he's going to get immediate negative feedback on multiple levels. Experienced players are going to give body language or possibly verbal rebukes. The DM is going to hesitate as he tries to figure out how that should work, and quite likely even if the DM doesn't say "No", he's going to punish the player for it because it doesn't feel write. Creativity over, with nothing that the player can read to recover the idea that, yes, in some situations that might work, and here are some guidelines.

Again, it doesn't matter (or rather it doesn't only matter) what the rules forbid or permit (if the rules even have that concept). What matters is what the rules validate as a procedure of play, and provide a resolution for of some sort. What they are silent on, isn't normally a part of the game, even if your players are creative enough to regularly place in major tournaments at major gaming conventions.

Perhaps your players were not that creative?

This is one of several reasons I don't think I'm in a reasoned debate and that I'm arguing with an article of faith. Because, one of the first things you leap to is an ad homin attack to defend your position. If that is the substance of your argument, it isn't a very strong argument.

The game was written as a way to unlock YOUR (the player's) imagination. D&D isn't much good at doing that if your imagination is limited to that which the authors have already imagined. The system being silent on some matters isn't stifling creativity, it is encouraging it. If the system isn't saying no, then it is saying possibly yes.

This argument is self-evidently nonsense. Yes, it is true that the game was written with the expectation of unlocking the player's imagination. But how in the world does that translate to the less rules you have, the more your imagination is unlocked? If that was true, not having the game at all would create the most imagination in the players. The very fact that the game 'unlocks the imagination' disproves the thrust of your argument in the first place. The game caused the readers to think of things that they wouldn't have thought on their own. But by and large it is the expectation that what those game readers read was mostly what they were inspired to think about. That is, mostly they used the tools that the game gave them, whether spells, or subsystems, or monsters, or tables, or what not. By and large most of the things built with the game were made with the elements of the game. That doesn't imply that the players weren't being creative, any more than a person who plays with lego bricks or minecraft isn't being creative just because they are using what they have at hand.

But what it does mean is that all those supplements, magazine articles, modules, and settings were eagerly consumed because each of them expanded the imagination of the players, and provided new vistas for looking at the game that wouldn't have been seen without them. Your arguments boils down to, "Now that I have more options, I feel disempowered."

Not my experience at all. The silence on certain matters is what opens up creativity. One has little need to be creative when detailed procedures for everything are all laid out and ready to follow. Necessity is the mother of invention.

The second reason this debate doesn't feel like a debate is I'm the only one not speaking in generalities. Faced with the challenge that your 'old school' game probably didn't have duelists and sumo wrestlers in it before someone codified that, you breezed on to generalities without even conceding that probably was the case. Not even a shred of counter evidence for that was provided. No attempt to explain how, that might not be true, but at your table someone was allowed to play R2D2 or how that worked, or anything else of the sort.

I disagree that Moldvay basic is silent on how to explore the game world. Reading the example of play included gives a fair bit of insight into how play takes place. The DM describes the environment and the players interact with it. As exploration takes place, the DM answers queries, and based on that feedback the players make decisions or ask further questions. Not exactly something that takes hundreds of pages to explain.

On the contrary, the very fact that it takes literally hundreds of pages to explain is the reason most early games didn't even make the attempt to explain it.

Besides which, it's clear I'm talking right past you. What you described was a procedure of play, and what is basically D&D's default procedure of play from the 1970's to the present day. But that in no way describes how to explore the world. It leaves it up to the DM to invent the means of doing that, because the portion of the procedure of play that is notably missing from that is the resolution itself. How do you resolve interaction with the environment? If I decide that I'm going to use my axe to bash way the stone frame of door, what happens? The game is silent on that, leaving it up to the individual tables to decide. What's perfectly clear is that with no resolution for that, even in the OD&D world that was supposedly so "creative" that proposition would have been in the vast majority of cases negatively received (even if it was imagined), because it wasn't part of the game presented to the players or which the DM intended to run. I'm sure it was attempted at some point, but it's equally clear that it wasn't validated as good play, creative or not.

If a system doesn't explicitly call out that something is possible, it effectively forbids it. All that codification occurred to empower players.
 
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Zak S

Guest
Nostalgia.
.

1. If the OSR is driven by nostalgia than how come people who don't know anything about the old games (not just "didn't play them" but literally weren't culturally aware of them) are so into OSR games?

2. If the OSR is driven by nostalgia how come the most popular OSR products (that is: best selling, most award-winning) aren't in ay way nostlagic or written by people who have nostlalgic attachments?

3. Have you ever played any of the OSR supplements or modules? The idea that "OSR is based on nostalgia bc the games were bad" seems VERY much more prevalent among people who have played old games and extraordinarily uncommon among people who've played the new ones the OSR is producing.

If you went to Fire on the Velvet Horizon or Qelong looking for familiarity and nostalgia you'd be sorely disappointed. Yet...here they are, moving units.

Can you answer these questions?
 

Celebrim

Legend
[MENTION=90370]Zak S[/MENTION]: Ok, do you see the length of the essay just above this? Now you want to ask me three or four questions at once?

Yes, I can answer these questions, but please excuse me if I don't answer them all thoroughly just right now.

Let me make a couple of notes about some of your questions that I think are important just as a quick drive by right now.

If I'm not mistaken, "Fire on the Velvet Horizon" is system neutral and contains no stat blocks at all. I could use these monsters in OD&D or in 3e D&D or in GURP or in a White Wolf story teller system, just by putting some bones in the fluff. Now what I find really interesting about that is you seem to have by your question thoroughly destroyed the idea that people were going back to the old school because of some particular trait of the rules, since some of the things you first brought up as 'old school' are rules agnostic in the first place.

Moreover, you seem to be asserting here that 'Fire on the Velvet Horizon' is in some sense 'old school' despite not being familiar in terms of fluff or rules. So if neither the fluff nor the crunch is familiar, in what sense is it "old school" in the first place? I would suggest 'Fire on the Velvet Horizon' is not old school in any fashion, if you mean that it pertains to gaming as it took place prior to say 1990. It's very much 'new school', and has more in common with Volo's Guide or mid-90's grim dark or new weird fiction (which wasn't a big part of old school fantasy gaming), than it has to do with "old school".

And finally, I think it's reasonable to suggest that you could dress familiar things in new garments, and the new garments would not in and of themselves eliminate the question of nostalgia.

But don't mistake this short response for a full answer, or that the shortness of the response indicates I can't answer.
 

Zak S

Guest
@Zak S: Ok, do you see the length of the essay just above this? Now you want to ask me three or four questions at once?

I think it is reasonable that when someone makes an accusation ("OSR people who claim the OSR is not about nostalgia are self-deceived"), then they should answer questions about it so the claim can be evaluated.

Your evaluation of Fire on the Velvet Horizon:

a. It's trivial to find a similar product that has (old school) stats if you need to: Veins of the Earth. Old School stats., published by LotFP. Same writer, illustrator and style. Use that example instead then.

b. it is a No True Scotsman fallacy to claim "OSR is the product of nostalgia, but if you show me something the OSR has produced that isn't nostalgic it's not OSR"

To avoid this: Define OSR.

If the definition is connection to pre-90s rules. That's all games.

If the definition is greater affinity to TSR than WOTC era rules: that's definitely Vein of the Earth.

If the definition is literally only retroclone texts: then that's ignoring both the best-selling OSR texts AND the ones most intra-OSR chatter is about AND all the reasons people talk right now about OSR.

If the definition is "comes from the social clique of self-identified OSR authors" Veins is undoubtedly that.

Or it's some other definition which your accusation implies you can describe.
 

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