OSR OSR Gripes

Tony Vargas said:

Yet, 2e came out in '89 and it was hardly different at all. ::shrug::

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Which made a lot of people at the time really upset. Very little that people had been complaining about was addressed. Dragons for example had been a hot topic of contention for a long time, and at least an attempt was made at that. I think it says something that we never officially adopted 2e and continued play in 1e, but that most of the DMs in the group did adopt 2e dragons and did start using something very close to 2e's simplified initiative system. But at the same time, many things that most of weren't upset about were changed.

To me there is a strong parallel between 2e and 4e, and between 3e and 5e, in that in both cases by the time the even numbered edition came out a majority of the community was chaffing about weaknesses in the rule set and was ready for a revision. But, in both the cases of 2e and 4e, the actual revision we got mostly addressed issues that we didn't have and reflected instead a very strong internal vision by the company as to how the game should be played and in addition to rules changes there were wholesale lore changes that really no one had demanded and felt more like some DMs house setting imposed on the whole community.

And in both the cases of 3e and 5e, the edition that we then got was much closer to what the core community had expected the even numbered edition to actually look like.

Of course the parallel isn't perfect. 2e can be faulted for not killing enough sacred cows and 4e faulted for perhaps killing too many of them, but at least at the time the 2e books came out I remember our group looking at the rules and mostly going, "Why did they do THAT?" and "Why do we still not have good rules for THIS?".

The only good thing we liked about 2e was that it was backwards compatible enough that we could pick and choose which good ideas (or things we thought were good ideas) to import into our games, and that ended up being a decent amount so we probably ended up liking 2e far more than we did at first glance.

Tony Vargas said:

I don't think it implies that - you could be nostalgic for something you had oodles of fun with when you were younger, and that nostalgia could make up for not having so much fun with it, now, for instance.
:

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With the way some people are using it, it does. That is, "You didn't really have fun back then. You only thought you did now looking at it through nostalgia. But you couldn't have had fun back then because the game sucks."

lowkey13 said:

So, the bolded part is what interests me.

One of the big differences, IMO, between classic OSR/1e style play and today's play (basically from 2.5e on, but especially with 3e on) is the emphasis on Chargen.

I often think that a character isn't made interesting and unique in OSR in creation; it's only through play that the character becomes interesting and unique.

I can create a 1e or B/X character, rolling included, in under 3 minutes easily. This includes equipment, etc. I don't agonize over backgrounds, or anything really, because the flavor of the character reveals itself to me in play .

5e, even with the simplified processes, is still heavy on the Chragen front; again, OSR may just not be the fun you are looking for.

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To add on to this, I saw a definite shift in how players viewed PCs from OSR to post OSR. Back then, your characters were defined by what they did in the adventure. Zero to hero. From 2.5 on, it shifted to "before we even start playing, here's all the awesome powers your PC has." Your character is just as defined by char gen as they were by anything that followed.

Sacrosanct said:

With the way some people are using it, it does. That is, "You didn't really have fun back then. You only thought you did now looking at it through nostalgia. But you couldn't have had fun back then because the game sucks."

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What nonsense: I can have all kinds of fun with a game that sucks, especially when I don't hesitate to ignore, override, re-interpret, or re-write - or lampshade, don't underestimate the fun of that! - whichever bits of it I find in any way sucky.

Tony Vargas said:

What nonsense: I can have all kinds of fun with a game that sucks, especially when I don't hesitate to ignore, override, re-interpret, or re-write - or lampshade, don't underestimate the fun of that! - whichever bits of it I find in any way sucky.

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The rules don't suck because we don't ever use them!

More seriously, you seem to be having a side discussion about me with someone that either has me blocked or I have blocked. (I don't remember which, but there are certainly more of the former than the later.) The gist of this side discussion I think you've covered well, as I at no time said we didn't have fun back in the day and have repeatedly said I understand the nostalgia. We don't have nostalgia for things we hated. Nor for that matter am I saying no one is having fun with OSR now, as surely they are.

What I am saying is that along with the fun I remember over the 10-15 years of steady play a grow sense that we could and ought to do better. And I'm also saying that a lot of the defenses of OSR are really obviously and pointedly light on defenses of the rules, and are instead defenses of attitudes, play styles, encounter design and so forth that is fairly or unfairly perceived as being harmed by changes to the rules.

And for example, as a subtle case of me perhaps agreeing that a change harmed a play style, linear XP requirements compared to exponential XP requirements made the whole 'all new characters start at 1st level' pretty much something you couldn't do because new characters never caught up enough under a linear scale.

But much of the analysis from both the crowd I can hear and the crowd I can't, has nothing to do with rules and their effects and everything to do with the attitude of the participants - for which you don't need OSR. And no one so far has stepped on up and even offered as much of analysis as I just did talking about the change in XP to level and how it impacts how you can play the game.

Celebrim said:

We eventually learned that a character was only going to be playable in the long run if:

>snip<

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Wow, I couldn't disagree more.

You certainly had a different experience in play than I did with old-skool games. Nothing wrong with that; but you seem to be insisting that your experiences somehow qualify as universal truths, while those of others don't. For example, you assert:

Celebrim said:

The problem among other things is that if a goodly portion of the party had the above qualities, and you didn't then you'd be entirely outstripped in spotlight. There is only so long that is fun. Even if you are the sort of good sport and creative player that can make it work, the second time it happens its just not fun anymore.

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Again, that was not my experience at all.

*Deleted by user*

lowkey13 said:

This all may be true, but have you ever considered the other side?

You know, that the other person is a brain in a jar, and we are all nothing but shadows on a wall and therefore have no authentic experiences?

I mean ... have you ever been to the dark side of the moon?

Do you even lift, brah?

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There's no dark side of the moon, really.

As a matter of fact, it's all dark.

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the Jester said:

You certainly had a different experience in play than I did with old-skool games.

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The problem with the phrase "old-skool games" is that if you were actually back in the old-skool you know that the actual rules in force at a particular table, and the actual styles of the DM varied so much from table to table that I honestly have very little idea what is meant by the term. But, to the extent that the term has any meaning at all, I would assume it means games played as the rules and guidelines of the original books (and then, which ones?) provided for and outlined.

The truths I'm asserting assume that by and large you played a game based on the books and on published modules, or at least with homebrew content that was something like published modules.

If you didn't play by the rules or your DM used processes of play radically different than the books, of course all my assertions about what your game was like are meaningless.

The problem I have generating any meaningful discussion thus far is everyone is happy to provide a flat denial, but no one is actually analyzing why the game they played was like what they asserted or what impact the actual rules had on the game. If you'll go through the thread, I'm literally the only one talking about the impact of rules and or published examples of play and what it is and was like to run them.

So by all means, explain how on the basis of the rules I'm wrong about the viability of characters. Or if I'm not wrong, explain what rules exemptions or modifications you used (M-U's could learn all spells regardless of intelligence, priest spells always worked regardless of Wisdom score, you could play any class despite having a 5 in a score, you could achieve any level as a demi-human, you could play any class regardless of stat prerequisites, your table tolerated cheating, you never played past 5th level on any regular basis, your DM used generous magic item placement to boost weak characters up to relevance, your DM used high illusionism techniques to ensure spot light distribution, etc. etc. etc.) that explain how you had such a vastly different experience that what you would have had, had you used the rules.

Nothing wrong with that; but you seem to be insisting that your experiences somehow qualify as universal truths...

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I'm trying to explain why fidelity to "old skool" rule sets is a misguided sort of fidelity. Remember, it is the OSR people that insist the rules create the experience of play, otherwise there would be no need to adopt "old skool" rules. Yet, it is equally the OSR people avoiding a discussion of why that is so that has any specifics in it. Instead, we get generic applies to any edition of D&D assertions like, "You really need to prepare for combat instead of blindly charging in if you want to succeed." or some other weak sauce statements that remind me of every small town in America's claim to have "world famous BBQ".

"You'll find its really different here from other places. People around here really like to eat food. We're different that way."

Again, that was not my experience at all.

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Great. What was your experience and how was it achieved?