OSR What's the best introductory BX/OSR scenario for new players and DMs?

[Gus L]

r/osr is pretty actively hostile and honestly too intense for me as a non-newcomer.

Don't feel too weird I was talking with several fairly well known post-OSR and OSR authors (both older era folks like me and new guard NSR types) and we all find r/osr both frustrating to read and pointless to post on. Not only is it hostile generally, but especially hostile to people making things. Really a bad place to start.

Here is much better actually, despite OSR/NSR/POSR being a very small part of the community (I think), precisely because the culture is better and more supportive. My own advice for starting to wrap your head around OSR/POSR stuff is to ask people whose work you like in the space for recommendations. For a list of blog readings I recommend Marcia's "Keystones" list.

Keystones

Blogging has been a central mode of discourse since the early years of the OSR play style, and it has remained as such across different peri...

traversefantasy.blogspot.com

I admit I am happy to have a few posts included on it.

 

[Gus L]

Really, one of the later B series would probably work better. Maybe B5?

B5 (Horror on the Hill?) is okay. It has a nice enough regional set up, but the main dungeon suffers as it's a monster zoo with some unnaturally forced decisions and the strong combat focus of mid-era TSR. Honestly of the B's B4 (if you want to do the rest of the work) and B2 (If you can run a faction rich sandbox) are the most robust. Excepting B10 which is in the British D&D style and higher level (but also good for an 80's adventure).

 

[Gus L]

I suspect in as early as 5-10 years the numbers of folks recommending B1 and B2 and stuff from that era is going to fall off of a cliff.

This is what's odd here to me. Even last year the recommendation in the same spaces would likely have been for newer/OSR stuff: Tomb of the Serpent Kings, Lair of the Lamb (FABULOUS and FREE!), Winter's Daughter, Prison of the Hated Pretender (mine I admit), or Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine. B2 would have gotten a nod of course...but not the rest.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

This is what's odd here to me. Even last year the recommendation in the same spaces would likely have been for newer/OSR stuff: Tomb of the Serpent Kings, Lair of the Lamb (FABULOUS and FREE!), Winter's Daughter, Prison of the Hated Pretender (mine I admit), or Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine. B2 would have gotten a nod of course...but not the rest.

There's sooooo many good ""modern"" OSR adventures - all the OSE adventures, Brad Kerr's stuff, the massive trove of Basic Fantasy adventures, the dungeons in Delver magazine...

 

[GuardianLurker]

B5 (Horror on the Hill?) is okay. It has a nice enough regional set up, but the main dungeon suffers as it's a monster zoo with some unnaturally forced decisions and the strong combat focus of mid-era TSR. Honestly of the B's B4 (if you want to do the rest of the work) and B2 (If you can run a faction rich sandbox) are the most robust. Excepting B10 which is in the British D&D style and higher level (but also good for an 80's adventure).

Since the idea is to guide the new DM in their learning experience, pushing a lot of work on to them - especially with little to no guidance, is probably not ideal. Which is why I skipped over B4. (We don't talk about B3.) Likewise, expecting a newbie DM to be able to fully handle faction play is a bit of a stretch, as that is NOT a beginner technique. (And is one of the few things that I feel Phandelver did poorly.)

As for the monster zoo - yeah, not ideal from a dungeon design, but at least it would expose the newbie to multiple types of critters. Instead of limiting them to dire rats and goblins.

 

[timbannock]

This is what's odd here to me. Even last year the recommendation in the same spaces would likely have been for newer/OSR stuff: Tomb of the Serpent Kings, Lair of the Lamb (FABULOUS and FREE!), Winter's Daughter, Prison of the Hated Pretender (mine I admit), or Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine. B2 would have gotten a nod of course...but not the rest.

What "spaces" do you mean?

Here on ENWorld maybe it's still a fairly older-skewing "I love brand name D&D" crowd, on the average? While I think a lot of people are big into the OSR/NSR/etc., I still think nostalgia wins out in polls and requests like these more often than not. In part, it's about reach, too: B1 and B2 have millions upon millions of views and recommendations that Tomb of the Serpent Kings simply cannot hope to compete with simply due to numbers of eyes that have seen them.

I dunno, just spitballing. I, for one, am really hopeful that the growing "serious journalism" around RPGs in general will translate to more and better reviews of products, and eventually will lead to better recommendations. I'm doing some conversion work on B3 and even when working from a highly regarded adventure, well, it's just a lot of work.

 

[Gus L]

What "spaces" do you mean?

Specifically the ones that harunmushod mentioned in his other post: r/OSR, ENworld, and the OSR and OSE discord servers. My impression of these spaces is that they vary, but generally are largely populated by users without a long-term attachment to OSR and POSR design. That is they tend to be the gateway for new players to the playstyle ... which as some have suggested here might not be ideal. ENworld is the only one that I am currently active on, and as you note - it's largely a "brand name D&D" space, and focused on 5E. My surprise is that r/OSR, which I do read from time to time (I never post there ... though, not for years), despite a general hostility to creativity, design, and designers has been a major champion of OSR scenarios in the past. I'd also think the OSE discord (from my 2020 memories of it at least) would be focused on official OSE scenarios. Hence my surprise.

I dunno, just spitballing. I, for one, am really hopeful that the growing "serious journalism" around RPGs in general will translate to more and better reviews of products, and eventually will lead to better recommendations. I'm doing some conversion work on B3 and even when working from a highly regarded adventure, well, it's just a lot of work.

One can hope. There is almost no money in RPG journalism ... though the same could be said for journalism in general ... and the status aspect that can still bring the scions of wealth to more general journalism or the values and importance of the work that creates groups like Bellingcat are utterly lacking in RPG journalism. I know my own experience with reviewing RPGs has not been especially positive (and I enjoy it!), because of the angry demands of fandom and authors to be both critical and promotional. The majority of people doing "journalism" or "theory" on RPG topics, especially old RPGs, are hobbyists who have their own games to run and likely own works in progress. For example - I'd love to finish a retrospective of Jaquays work from F'Chelrek's Tomb to the Catacomb Guide ... but I have to write things for work, and I have a follow up to Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier that's languishing.

I think what we all have to hope for and support hobbyist efforts to review and document hobbyist work. Step back from viewing our contributions to the hobby as professional and work with other creators to give and take honest feedback rather then see criticism as an attack, talk down the work of perceived business rivals, or demand absurd levels of professionalism from those who choose to review and write about games. Of late I've noticed Playful Void blog is doing good reviews in the POSR scene.

 

[Gus L]

As for the monster zoo - yeah, not ideal from a dungeon design, but at least it would expose the newbie to multiple types of critters. Instead of limiting them to dire rats and goblins.

In the other thread on this I had some similar capsule observations on the B series to yours here - agree that best of isn't exactly great always... Horror on the Hill's specific issues (and it's pretty good overall) are specifically related to the type of games I like to run. That is the dungeon is poorly set up for expedition based sessions (return to base at the end of each session) and has many elements of the 1980's TSR style that irk me, but tend not to bother some other folks.

For "Monster Zoo" here I don't mean variety, some variety is good, and B5 generally provides at least somewhat plausible connections between many of the monsters. What I mean is that the way the adventure is written the creatures and met in specific keyed areas without significant discussion (at least in the dungeon) of how they respond to intrusion. Plus almost every encounter is aimed at combat -- even when negotiation is offered (as with the red Dragon and Berserkers on the bottom level) the adventure pushes the encounter into combat.

The "Zoo" here is that the monsters in the adventure wait in their "cages" for the party to come along and kill them.

Obviously there's a tradition to this, and dungeon inhabitants are absurdly indifferent to the ruckus their neighbors make and tend to choose violence in almost every adventure ... but in B5 it feels like it goes beyond the standard version. This is especially true of the organized factions in B5 and the Dragon. I like my organized enemies (especially militaristic hobgoblins - who really should be brigands anyways, but it's weird to murder dozens of people for gold - even bad people) to act organized and have some schemes. I like my Dragons chatty. Overcoming foes in older style dungeon crawls should be possible through something other then rolling for initiative, or at least one should be able to sway that combat encounter so it can be over faster and with less danger through intelligent scheming. B5 (unlike B2) doesn't just fail to note this, but it's written with guardrails to prevent it. That's my take at least.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Ah. Yeah. I understand what you mean. And yes, it would be better for it.

Responsive dungeons, dynamic dungeons, whatever you call them, weren't really a technique used back then. Talked about in a few articles, but even those would be considered very elementary today. It was also not considered something for a newbie GM. It would have been placed as a subject for the X series. Basically, that falls into the "Lessons Learned" category.

I'd worry though about putting too much on the beginning DMs plate, though.

 

[Mannahnin]

Ah. Yeah. I understand what you mean. And yes, it would be better for it.

Responsive dungeons, dynamic dungeons, whatever you call them, weren't really a technique used back then. Talked about in a few articles, but even those would be considered very elementary today. It was also not considered something for a newbie GM. It would have been placed as a subject for the X series. Basically, that falls into the "Lessons Learned" category.

Which is weird and funny considering that Gary went into some detail on it in the 1979 DMG. You'd think that advice would have been incorporated into TSR published designs, as a rule rather than as an exception.

Although perhaps part of the issue is that after about '81 or '82 TSR may have been aware that their primary buying demographic was trending younger and younger. More and more middle school-aged boys, fewer of the college students and adult wargamers who made up most of the market in the '70s. In that context, simple "the monsters attack!" encounters make more sense, for kid gamers to run.