OSR "Rules & Regulations": An Essay on the OSR

[Lanefan]

The comment about how WotC D&D is about "superheroes" amuses me. Superhero was a Fighter level title in old-school D&D, and (to my knowledge) has never appeared in WotC D&D.

"Hero" was a level title in 1e but I'm pretty sure "Superhero" never was.

As for the rest, perhaps it can be summed up as TSR D&D made superheroes out of commoners while WotC D&D makes superheroes out of heroes. The end point is vaguely the same but the start point is quite different.

Lan-"I like that a 4th-level evil villainous Fighter can still be referred to in 1e as 'Hero'"-efan

 

[Orius]

I still haven't read it, but if what you guys are saying it's just Standard Edition War Tract #1A?

Pretty much yeah. It reads like a lot of "WotC has too many rules and stuff, and that's why 1e is better". I started skimming over it after a few paragraphs so I'm probably missing details.

Honestly, every edition had its probems somewhere.

 

[Lanefan]

I think this is a valid comment on the OSR community though the reasons why different OSR players feel this way varies pretty widely in my experience. Personally, as I posted upthread, its primarily about losing rules bloat and reducing handling time.

Or converting the same amount of handling time into something perceived as more useful to the game e.g. instead of spending x-amount of time statting out monsters in a dungeon spending the same x-amount of time designing plot and story around said dungeon

For a DM I know who has run the same 1e campaign continuously for over 30 years it is pretty damn reactionary. He won't change, its good enough for him, and all new versions are simply money grabs. He, of course, never sees the irony that his campaign is one of the most heavily house-ruled that I have ever seen.

As someone who pretty much exactly fits your description here, I for one don't just see that irony but embrace it. In fact, I and others have even gone so far as to give a name - "Victoria Rules" - to the game system we play that was once 1e D&D.

Also, the DM you refer to above is, by strict definition, not an OSR type at all; but merely OS. Remember, the 'R' in OSR stands for either Revival or Renaissance depending who you ask, somewhat implying a return to OS after an absence, and this DM - like me - never left.

Lan-"as people keep coming over here two nights a week to play it, our system can't be all bad"-efan

 

[Mishihari Lord]

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION], [MENTION=6928]Glyph[/MENTION] - interesting discussion about the OSR.

I think another part of it is this (Umbran, you'll probably disapprove of the jargon): the OSRers don't want the players to be authoring their own challenges. That's storygaming. They want the GM to be in charge of that. I think they mostly don't want playerside metagame mechanics either, both for search and handling reasons and immersion-ish reasons. So the GM is in charge of framing challenges; and the GM is the one who controls the metagame aspects of adjudication. At that point, do we need a whole lot of detailed machinery to try to lock the GM down - or are we better off punting a lot of that to the GM, whose role is pretty big anyway, and relying on neutral refereeing and sound judgement? I think the OSRers go the latter way.

Interesting. If you're right about that I may need to go check out some OSR games and communities. That's pretty close to my own preferences for gaming. Though I'd like to believe that the DM is adhering to a set of rules for adjudication, even if I don't want to know what it is.

 

[pemerton]

Interesting. If you're right about that I may need to go check out some OSR games and communities.

Cool. I'm not sure, and I've found [MENTION=98071]Gryph[/MENTION]'s posts in this thread interesting. Libramarian is good value too when he posts on old-school play.

I'm sort of the opposite in my preferences - I like playerside metagame mechanics and GM transparency according to known metagame standards (I like 4e's scaling DCs, for instance, and the Doom Pool in Marvel Heroic really appeals to me, even though both are pretty much the antithesis of old school). And my attempt to understand the OSR has mostly been from reading some of Vincent Baker's discussions on his blog. So I'm not sure I'm the best person to try and interpret the OSR. But I definitely think it's worth trying to make sense of.

 

[pemerton]

"Hero" was a level title in 1e but I'm pretty sure "Superhero" never was.

8th level fighter.

And you call yourself an old-schooler!

 

[Bluenose]

"Hero" was a level title in 1e but I'm pretty sure "Superhero" never was.

As for the rest, perhaps it can be summed up as TSR D&D made superheroes out of commoners while WotC D&D makes superheroes out of heroes. The end point is vaguely the same but the start point is quite different.

Lan-"I like that a 4th-level evil villainous Fighter can still be referred to in 1e as 'Hero'"-efan

Superhero was the 8th level Fighter title, though I've been ninjaed by Pemerton on that.

Of course if commoners are trained in casting spells, picking locks, climbing vertical surfaces, tracking, use of weapons to a level where they're not a danger to themselves, and a large variety of other things, then TSR D&D did indeed make commoners into Superheroes. Some people do not agree that those are characteristic of commoners, 0-level humans as they were usually described in the game.

 

[Iosue]

It looks like the article is just looking to stir up controversy by playing up the worst aspects of "old school vs new school". Kirin Robinson of Old School Hack put up this image as a response to the article, and IMO gives a pretty good example of what many folks involved in the OSR are enjoying about the OSR movement. I especially liked "new hacks of old games, old school-flavored hacks of new games," because that really hits to the wide variety of interests that fall under the rubic of OSR. The earliest "retro-clone" was probably Castles & Crusades, which was a hack of the d20 SRD to play closer to OD&D and 1e. Then you had Basic Fantasy RPG, another hack on d20 to play more like Moldvay/Cook, released the same year as OSRIC, followed by Labyrinth Lord, which are essentially faithful representations of the 1e and B/X rules respectively. So already you have games using modern mechanics to recreate an old school playstyle, as well as games recreating various old school mechanics.

Some of the major various reasons people might be into OSR are:
- like dungeon exploration
- like sandbox play
- like randomness in chargen and/or encounters
- like light rules
- like lots of independent subsystems and mechanics
- like adding original systems onto a light but sturdy chassis
- prefer older editions and want new material/support
- prefer new takes on old games, like ACKS or LotFP
- to play D&D again like they did back in the day
- to play D&D again in a way they didn't play back in the day
- to play D&D editions they've never played before
- to play D&D playstyles they've never played before

Any one person may be into the OSR for any one (or more) of these reasons, but what gives the community a sense of cohesiveness is that material (be that product, blogs, or what have you) from any of these subgroups can be enjoyed many of the other subgroups. If I'm into dungeon-exploring with B/X and I put out an original dungeon, it may appeal to both folks trying to anthropologically recreate the sandbox style of the mid-70s (one kind of old school), but also be of interest to folks adding all sorts of house rules (another kind of old school), from folks who want rules-light OD&D or B/X to folks who like the heavier rules footprint of 1e or 2e. It might be of interest to people using any number of diverse retroclones, from the faithful LL and DD to the divergent ACKS, LotFP or DCC. It might even be of interest to folks playing Dungeon World or the upcoming Torchbearer, games that try to approach some of the feel of old school D&D, but through wildly different mechanical and/or GM-player paradigms.

 

[Gryph]

Or converting the same amount of handling time into something perceived as more useful to the game e.g. instead of spending x-amount of time statting out monsters in a dungeon spending the same x-amount of time designing plot and story around said dungeon As someone who pretty much exactly fits your description here, I for one don't just see that irony but embrace it. In fact, I and others have even gone so far as to give a name - "Victoria Rules" - to the game system we play that was once 1e D&D.

Also, the DM you refer to above is, by strict definition, not an OSR type at all; but merely OS. Remember, the 'R' in OSR stands for either Revival or Renaissance depending who you ask, somewhat implying a return to OS after an absence, and this DM - like me - never left.

Lan-"as people keep coming over here two nights a week to play it, our system can't be all bad"-efan

Excellent point about the "R". I might even say Grognard instead of OS

 

[SirAntoine]

Just wanted to say that mini's have been central to D&D play from the very beginning. The forerunner of D&D was a miniatures wargame called Chainmail, made by the same author. 2nd edition represented the game reaching a level of development that understood the value of extensive role-playing and suspension of disbelief, however. 2nd edition is manifestly superior to every other edition for this reason, save that 4th edition proved that a far more balanced game was actually possible. The sense of wonder many people keep looking for is the feel when something in print is awesome for its newness and the descriptions it has, independent of its "discussed" uses on the battle grid. The sense of wonder "awed" almost to a point where there wouldn't be any discussion. It is the consumption of 3rd edition, by so many, that has led to these issues today. I don't mean to bash any edition, just that 3rd edition introduced a new level of discussion between players about what their characters would be doing, both on the battle grid AND in character creation and building, with different feats and so on. And yes, having magic items "in every city", for sale, didn't help because (newly discovered) magic items were one of the things that gave the game a sense of wonder literally. It was the fact that the game itself became something "to be discussed so much in its components and procedures for play", that it opened up the entire gaming community to what has been like a practical (as opposed to a sense of wonder), almost scientific discussion.

At the end of the day, what is taking place is we are all "learning more", but "also arguing more, and seeing that we don't know as much as we used to to feel ready to play" at any given time or level of play. You "have to learn it," and regardless of why or how cool it was to someone, you didn't have to do all this discussing before and the game "felt" quite different and was more ready to be used and for story-telling.