OSR OSR Gripes

Celebrim · Jul 9, 2019

Ralif Redhammer said:
It’s also about playing smart. About not just relying on what’s written down on your character sheet. As a DM, I kinda love being outwitted. In a 1e game I ran a few years back, I put a big window in the BBEG chamber, to give a more scenic view to the fight. When the battle turned against the PCs, the paladin grabbed the BBEG and jumped out the window, saving the party.

With respect, if we are talking about a game like 1e AD&D or BECMI that's not playing smart.

That's simply entertaining your DM. You weren't outwitted. You just enjoyed the scene and so allowed it.

It would only be smart if the game had good rules for grappling and moving a grapple. The PC wasn't relying on their wit in the described action because old school games had little, no, or terrible rules for grabbing, tackling, or bullrushing a foe out of the window. Ultimately, the PC was relying on their knowledge of you, their knowledge of what you enjoyed in a scene, and their ability to convince you the action was reasonable. But ultimately the scene depended wholly on you. You liked the outcome, so you allowed it with perhaps some minimal fortune test chosen so that there was at least a reasonable chance of the action succeeding.

And everyone had fun. But, I think it is important to really understand what happened. The player played you, not the game. And you were the sort of DM that loves that sort of thing, so it worked.

But if the player had rules, he might not have even needed to hold on - the BBEG could have just been shoved or tossed out of the window. And the player wouldn't have needed to play you: he could have succeeded perhaps even if you didn't want such an inglorious and stereotypical Disney death for your campaign's BBEG.

Thieves...take a while to become even just competent.

At some point I did the math and realized thieves never become competent. I can tell a lot from an OSR rules set by what if anything they did with the thief. If they didn't do anything, they didn't play enough 1e AD&D to start to get tired of it and they are nostalgic for a game that never really existed - a game that they didn't get to play but want to play now.

lowkey13 · Jul 9, 2019

*Deleted by user*

Celebrim · Jul 9, 2019

lowkey13 said:
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Is OSR just a secret machination of the Great Old Ones?

If you play a retroclone long enough, will you hear scratching behind the walls?

What otherworldly colour shall descend and inhabit your d8?

Been there. Done that. Have the RPG for it.

Like I said, I kinda understand the fascination with old school play, I just don't understand OSR as it actually is. If we wanted to play CoC in the 1980's, we would have just done so.

There is a certain sensibility here that is old school rules, grimdark setting, that strongly suggests content creators that came of age in the 1990's and who have been trapped in some Upside Down parallel dimension ever since.

Like the Duffer Brothers are 10 years younger than I am. They are looking back at the 80's through the lens of having missed it. I was actually there. I was the 12 year old GM in the basement with my nerdy outcast friends. Same with 'Ready Player One'. It reads like a book by a young kid who missed it and it's less about his nostalgia for what he experienced as a kid than it is his regret as a kid too young to have done it for missing out. It's all Elliot going 'Let me play guys!'.

It's all munchkin crap.

Monayuris · Jul 9, 2019

Retreater said:
My first edition of D&D was 2nd edition AD&D, and through the years I invested heavily in 3e, 4e, and now 5e (in addition to a myriad other systems, including non-fantasy RPGs.) My friend, who is a retroclone apologist, wanted to run a Labyrinth Lord game.

After rolling my character (even with the "4d6 drop the lowest" method), I came up with the worst imaginable array of ability scores: all 9-12 with no modifiers at all. Even one penalty score would've been preferable, as that would have at least given some flavor to the character.

My character is the frontline fighter, and rolled 2 hp. The weakest monster in the book could literally one-shot him.

Our cleric has one spell for the whole day. Our thief has (at best) around a 20% chance to do any thievery check - sneaking, opening a lock, disabling a trap, etc.

I get that the point is to avoid combat, but they don't even give the party tools to do that. No one has a reliable chance to hide. No one has the ability to throw spells that can befuddle groups of opponents. The fighters can't fight (or even survive). The only chance you have is to stay in the tavern and not even go on the adventure.

I'm wondering "where's the fun?" in OSR games like Labyrinth Lord/Swords and Wizardry?

The fun of OSR is in exploring a challenging and dangerous environment with only your wits and skill as a player to protect you. Your character is fragile at first level... you can't rely on the numbers on the sheet to protect it. Making a poor choice in the game will certainly result in death. However making good choices will result in success and gaining experience.

This success is derived from the choices and decisions 'you the PLAYER' make in the game. If you roll up a fighter with 2 hit points, then you certainly have a challenge on your hands. But with skilled and careful play, this fighter may survive. The game stacks the deck against you, and the luck of the dice play against you. But that is the nature of the game.

If you accept that, you can have a blast watching your hapless characters die in droves, but also gain a measure of pride and accomplishment when you get them to higher levels. Because your success is based not on some random numbers or powers, but on your actual decisions in the game.

Monayuris · Jul 9, 2019

Celebrim said:
With respect, if we are talking about a game like 1e AD&D or BECMI that's not playing smart.

That's simply entertaining your DM. You weren't outwitted. You just enjoyed the scene and so allowed it.

It would only be smart if the game had good rules for grappling and moving a grapple. The PC wasn't relying on their wit in the described action because old school games had little, no, or terrible rules for grabbing, tackling, or bullrushing a foe out of the window. Ultimately, the PC was relying on their knowledge of you, their knowledge of what you enjoyed in a scene, and their ability to convince you the action was reasonable. But ultimately the scene depended wholly on you. You liked the outcome, so you allowed it with perhaps some minimal fortune test chosen so that there was at least a reasonable chance of the action succeeding.

And everyone had fun. But, I think it is important to really understand what happened. The player played you, not the game. And you were the sort of DM that loves that sort of thing, so it worked.

But if the player had rules, he might not have even needed to hold on - the BBEG could have just been shoved or tossed out of the window. And the player wouldn't have needed to play you: he could have succeeded perhaps even if you didn't want such an inglorious and stereotypical Disney death for your campaign's BBEG.

This isn't really the case at all. Granted older edition games require a little more from the DM than modern games. Mostly because they often have to make rulings to cover for things the rules don't cover. This is a feature because it allows more open ended actions and choices for the players.

But the DM can certainly make rulings without being 'played'.

I do think it requires a lot more work and practice to become good at running old school style games, it requires a lot more skill.

Fortunately there are resources on the internet that help.

I, personally, recommend Hackslashmaster. Reading this blog has objectively made me a better DM.

lowkey13 · Jul 9, 2019

*Deleted by user*

Celebrim · Jul 9, 2019

Monayuris said:
This isn't really the case at all. Granted older edition games require a little more from the DM than modern games. Mostly because they often have to make rulings to cover for things the rules don't cover. This is a feature because it allows more open ended actions and choices for the players.

But the DM can certainly make rulings without being 'played'.

I do think it requires a lot more work and practice to become good at running old school style games, it requires a lot more skill.

Fortunately there are resources on the internet that help.

I, personally, recommend Hackslashmaster. Reading this blog has objectively made me a better DM.

Not this crap again.

Look, I've done my time. I was a DM in 1e AD&D for nigh 15 years. I know how to run the game. My lack of 'skill' in this is not the issue. You don't need to tell me how to run AD&D, nor can you tell me how to smith rulings. I'm the OG of rule smithing.

The little more that they require isn't skill. It's work. And a lack of rules doesn't allow more open ended actions and choices for a player. Players can always attempt anything. A lack of rules just means you have no good tools to use to adjudicate their open ended action.

I'm a software developer by profession. Software developers are ambitiously lazy people. If they see a problem that requires a lot of work to fix, they fix it anyway because it's better to get all the work over with than to deal with the hassle continuously. Rulings are just for people who lack either ambition or laziness. If a ruling is any good at all, it becomes a house rule. If it doesn't become a house rule, it suggests the ruling is crap.

So hang with me here and open up your copy of C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, which you bought back in the 80's when it was relatively new, and flip to the partially flooded room and read the rulings on drowning and swimming in that write up of a simple half flooded room, and tell me that you honestly think that's the way to run a game. And without referencing any modern rules or ideas, tell me how you run that room in a way that is completely fair and takes into account the factors involved in a reasonable manner. Because really, that's what making rulings to cover things the rules don't cover actually looks like. Don't give me that crap about how much more skill that you have than I do and the reason I don't think this is a good way of handling things is I don't have the skills.

Monayuris · Jul 9, 2019

Celebrim said:
Cynically, I've heard DM's on youtube or on blogs speak of OSR as the fun being that the PC's are helpless to avoid their machinations. There is a certain class of DM, and a certain class of content provider, that seems to delight in modules where the PCs have no real agency, the universe is vastly beyond their comprehension, everything is random whim, and they are vastly outclassed by the NPC's around them and limited in their resources and ultimately doomed to horrid deaths.

Gleeful fun for a certain class of GM no doubt, but as a player all that gets old in a hurry.

I've been playing D&D since the early 80's. I'm not completely baffled by the OSR nostalgia, as I can certainly point to my own variations of it in writing rules and adventures for 1e AD&D or from that mindset. But on the other hand, I'm completely baffled by the OSR as it actually exists. I played in that era. I understand pretty fully all that can and will go wrong with the system and why most people got frustrated with it and ultimately abandoned it. I do understand that it gets a lot right and could in theory be fixed.

But so much of the OSR seems not devoted to fixing it but celebrating its brokenness.

Could you have fun with that character? Yes. Once. For a while until the novelty of it wears off. The second time you roll one up though will be drudgery and you'll be reduced to suicidal play to try to get a better character. At some point, our group eventually realized that the character funnel was nonsense, because it was distraction from what we really wanted to do which was play a character we would actually enjoy playing for a substantial time. We all had fun stories to share about our crappy characters, but it was the non-crappy characters that survived the funnel that we actually cherished and desired.

4d6 drop the lowest is a horrible method. You will abandon it one way or the other, if not now then in a year or three years. You'll either find a method with less randomness or your group will tacitly accept cheating:"Yes I did roll two 18's for my character (on the 18th character that I rolled up)", "Yes I did roll two 18's for my character (after I rerolled the 7 that was ruining the character it luckily was an 18).", "Yes I did roll two 18's for my character (it was a 2 sixes and 2 threes, but I figured close enough)."

The OSR thief is a travesty of terrible design. I only figured this out after playing thieves for 10 years.

First level requires kid gloves by the DM if you aren't going to have half or more of the party die before 1st level. This is true even in later editions, but it's particularly bad in OSR. Plan on playing two characters as a viable answer, and the survivor being the character you commit to. I even had situations where a player lost both characters and a player took over another players other character. As a GM, if you don't want to just prove how easily you can slaughter the PC, you do a lot of "squash the rats" type stuff until they get their second or even third HD.

If you are trying to be fair as a GM, OSR is a nightmare to run. If you don't care and just are willing to run the game however you think is fun, well nothing validates that quite like OSR.

Really, I tried running a 1e AD&D game a few years back and it was really shocking just how badly it played compared to a modern rules set or that I put up with it for more than 10 years. I mean there are things I do love about it and I know how to improvise, it's just that I hate having to improvise every freaking thing. That's way too much heavy lifting that distracts from playing the game. Of course, if you are a seat of the pants type of GM that doesn't give a rip about the players and imagine you are vastly more entertaining than you are, that probably doesn't bother you, but I'm honestly I'm as much at a loss as to why OSR is a thing as you are.

Again, I get the 'rules light' stripped down game desire. What I don't get is the love of warts. If you are going to strip the game down and rebuild it, build it around the still solid old school 8 cylinder engine - not around the rusted body and the kitschy 70's interior.

I've also played D&D since the early 80's. The one thing to note, is that all of what you say about people abandoning the game... they are already served. For those who have moved on from this, there are multitudes of versions of D&D that support the style of play that those people enjoy.

The thing you are missing is there are plenty of people who don't believe the older editions are broken and don't believe the modern ones are superior. Old school games play absolutely fine and they provide a game experience that is not served by any other edition out there.

You provide some very uncharitable and unfair descriptions of what the game is, but there are plenty of people who enjoy the challenge and open ended nature of this style of game. The OSR exists to serve those who enjoy that style of play, everyone else can happily play other games.

Celebrim · Jul 9, 2019

lowkey13 said:
Sure! Maybe to you.

I mean, one person might say, "Why would you ever drive that terrible 1964 Jaguar E-Type? How could you keep your 1992 Audi 80 Coupe? Those don't even have real cupholders!"

And to which I might reasonably respond, "Eh, some people like the bells and whistles of modernity, and I will not begrudge them their touchscreen entertainment systems and their ability to survive crashes without dying. But me? I like this car, thank you, and even if there is a little more loving care needed, it evokes something I can't get with every cupholder than a modern SUV can provide."

To each their own.

My first car was a 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang with the Econoglide package. Beautiful car. Also had to fix or repair it daily. There are things I love about that car, but I don't miss having to fix or repair it daily even though I do miss being able to practically crawl under the hood and actually fix or repair a car because it was built to be torn apart and put together easily.

My suspicion is that if you haven't actually owned a classic car that you rebuilt out of the junk yard, you probably shouldn't tell me how great it is to own one.

My current car is a stripped down baseline package with as little bells and whistles as possible because all I wanted to pay for was 'car' and not bells and whistles that could break. Not having to fix the thing all the time is a big plus.

Celebrim · Jul 9, 2019

Monayuris said:
Old school games...provide a game experience that is not served by any other edition out there...there are plenty of people who enjoy the challenge and open ended nature of this style of game.

I don't think that they do. How you think about and prepare to play a game is entirely different than the rules you use to adjudicate it. OSR doesn't have a monopoly on style, or challenge, or opened ended games. You don't need to use an OSR rules set to have a proposition filter on your game that validates players making highly improvisational, open ended, and fiction specific propositions. "I carefully push aside the curtain with my 10' pole." is not a rule set specific proposition. It's just a way of approaching playing a game.

All the rules do for you - all any rules do for you - is provide a tool kit for handling how those propositions turn into new fictional positioning. You don't need old and busted ideas about doing that in order to run an old school game. I don't need another table argument about how infravision works. I don't need another table argument about what the chance to detect an invisible creature should be. I don't need to wrack my brain for whether or not the PC should drown. None of that is essential to running an old school game. That's warts of an old school game. That's the part I'm more than willing to leave behind. But the parts that I love, I can totally take with me. I don't need to give up any of that to use a rule set with functional skills and environment rules and a clear set of general fortune tests that are applicable to generic situations.

When someone says "old school games play absolutely fine" it really makes me wonder if you played them. Like as soon as I read the 'scent' rule in 3.0e, I smelled the 1980's and the old pizza and the table arguments as we tried to get realism and the rules to mesh into something everyone at the table agreed to. And if that didn't happen for you, were you even there?