OSR My definitions for OSR

VengerSatanis said:

That sounds like a bad DCC RPG experience. Sorry for your loss. No save, check, or anything? That's a GM error, not indicative of particular play style, era, or movement.

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I suspect there could be better DCC experiences, but she was running a published adventure, and I fail to see how DCC would turn out as intense roleplaying. The very concept of running four characters that could die with one hit doesn't strike me as conducive to getting into character. Both this adventure and many others I see as old-school don't have a lot of interaction; you go into a dungeon and kill things that don't want to or can't talk to you. I have no problem with that, but I compare that to Vampire or Cthulhu Dark* or Amber, and saying that "role-playing, not roll-playing" defines OSR games seems absurd.

* Rules for combat: The PCs die. It's a great incentive to find a non-combat solution to your problems.

prosfilaes said:

I suspect there could be better DCC experiences, but she was running a published adventure, and I fail to see how DCC would turn out as intense roleplaying. The very concept of running four characters that could die with one hit doesn't strike me as conducive to getting into character. Both this adventure and many others I see as old-school don't have a lot of interaction; you go into a dungeon and kill things that don't want to or can't talk to you. I have no problem with that, but I compare that to Vampire or Cthulhu Dark* or Amber, and saying that "role-playing, not roll-playing" defines OSR games seems absurd.

* Rules for combat: The PCs die. It's a great incentive to find a non-combat solution to your problems.

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I do believe your DCC experience was in keeping with how DCC is meant to be run (as said before, my own experience while Joseph Goodman himself ran the game bears this out) but this is a game designed by someone emulating their own idea of one particular old school playstyle, *not all* old school playstyles. Sometimes that is a problem with the new offerings being produced for the OSR community, which I stress predominantly play the original games and not the newer stuff, or the original stuff alongside or supplemented by newer stuff. That problem being that someone looking just at DCC might get the impression that all OSR gaming is quick and deadly with little RPing which, while mostly true for DCC, isn't true overall for the OSR from my experience.

For instance, I ran an "Exploring the Trackless Moors" scenario up in Oshkosh last Saturday using 1E AD&D rules with players spanning from 18 to 50 with five males and two females. Some played 1E back in the day and haven't for a while, some have always played, some were new to 1E but played other modern RPGs. The group begins in media res on the moors on their way toward a great tor to check out an abandoned Dwarven fortress (one of a series across the moors known as the Dragon's Teeth). I wasn't expecting a ton of RPing given there was no town or civilization time (unless the group decided they wanted to skedaddle back to such a place). I had made sure to give some languages to some of the pregens so they could communicate with a number of the creatures / races they might encounter on the moors. I was blown away how much RPing was incorporated by the players between themselves and every chance they got during encounters with non-party members. If I had to give it a percentage, I'd say 55%+ RPing during this one-shot adventure.

Again, that's very high IMO given the parameters of the scenario but not unusual in games I run using older rulesets. My own Old School playstyle definitely lends itself to plenty of RPing, perhaps even encourages it, because I jump right into the skin of any NPC or creature I am GMing and this, in turn, gives license to players to do the same with me and with one another. I could elaborate more on this playstyle but it might be drifting away from the OP a bit.

prosfilaes said:

I suspect there could be better DCC experiences, but she was running a published adventure, and I fail to see how DCC would turn out as intense roleplaying. The very concept of running four characters that could die with one hit doesn't strike me as conducive to getting into character. Both this adventure and many others I see as old-school don't have a lot of interaction; you go into a dungeon and kill things that don't want to or can't talk to you. I have no problem with that, but I compare that to Vampire or Cthulhu Dark* or Amber, and saying that "role-playing, not roll-playing" defines OSR games seems absurd.

* Rules for combat: The PCs die. It's a great incentive to find a non-combat solution to your problems.

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Personally, I've never played DCC that way but it looks like I might be in the minority.

One added benefit of multiple characters is that players don't have to be afraid to try stuff in the dungeon. Find a floating holographic head, large spider statue fashioned out of quartz, or a lone lever set into the middle of a wall... some adventuring parties would just ignore all that stuff just in case they're deadly. However, having multiple PCs at your disposal means you can experiment without the risk (ok, with less risk) of being shut-out of the entire game until a new PC could be generated.

VS

Mark CMG said:

I see what you are saying. I won't defend his point, and don't particularly agree with it. That speaks to playstyle and I've seen all sorts on the railroad to sandbox scale in practice since I started in 1974 and onward through today's so-called OSR movement. Personally, I find (and always have) setting-based adventures where PCs can go where they want, dawdle here and there, strike out off the map, and all the rest as my favorite style of play, which obviously leans toward the sandbox end of that spectrum.

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I've always found using "sandbox" or "railroad" as a weak point in OSR definitions. I mean, I would view classic dungeon explorations and hexcrawls both as stereotypical OSR campaigns. But a hexcrawl game is pretty far over on the sandbox side of the spectrum, while a dungeon exploration is much closer to a "railroad", just without the cut scenes and gratuitous exposition.

I think the most FATE-like feature of the OSR is that in-character description ("My character is a fighter, but he's the disgraced son a powerful noble.") can begin to carry weight that affects in-game resolution, much like Aspects do in FATE. The main difference is that this tendency develops in play rather than be codified in the core rules. The ability of a player to make narrative declarations is pretty much a 180 from the OSR aesthetic, though, which is why I wouldn't consider FATE anywhere close to an OSR game.

VengerSatanis said:

However, having multiple PCs at your disposal means you can experiment without the risk (ok, with less risk) of being shut-out of the entire game until a new PC could be generated.

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And if forced to split that up on the hoary old roleplaying versus rollplaying, I'd put it on the rollplaying side. It ignores the motivations of the characters, instead worrying about out of character motivations. (One could call it "playing more foolhardy characters", but that's not how you phrased it.) I think that's a perfectly valid style and fairly distinctively OSR, but I don't see it well-represented by your description of OSR.

(That is, the style where it's about the players exploring an environment with their characters.)

prosfilaes said:

And if forced to split that up on the hoary old roleplaying versus rollplaying, I'd put it on the rollplaying side. It ignores the motivations of the characters, instead worrying about out of character motivations. (One could call it "playing more foolhardy characters", but that's not how you phrased it.) I think that's a perfectly valid style and fairly distinctively OSR, but I don't see it well-represented by your description of OSR.

(That is, the style where it's about the players exploring an environment with their characters.)

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I see what you're saying; although, I'm just talking about one aspect of one OSR game. But I should update my OSR definition to include something like "death can come all too soon".

Have you ever read A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming?

VS