What makes an Old School Renaissance FEEL like an OSR game?

[nnms]

And a second exercise: Sheetless play or Black Box GMing.

Again, you'll want a simple system as in this exercise, you'll be handling every single rules related thing there is. No one else will be using dice, looking at character sheets or anything at all related to the game system. It'll all be behind your screen.

In this exercise you'll run a scenario normally, but no one else at the table will ever have any access to anything game system related but you. You'll have to describe everything in normal language and never, ever, ever in rules terms.

Try to do it in a way that the players have no idea whatsoever what rules you are using. Describe injuries rather than hit or life point losses. Describe the visible effects of magic or monster abilities, not their game term names. All dice are rolled unseen to the players and you keep all the character sheets.

They have a general list of their character's capabilities in real language and they can write down any equipment or notes they like. So their note sheet might say something like "Koreil the Mighty - an experienced hunter who has never fought any monsters until now. He's trapped small animals, killed deer with a bow, but has never fought with the denizens of the underworld. Hopefully his keen eyes and survivor's instict will help him complete his quest." And then list his equipment like his leather jerkin with riveting metal disks, his bow, his spear, backpack, food, supplies, etc.,.

In this case I think you'll find:

1) Your description matters even more than before. Every single result of every action will only ever be communicated to another person using natural descriptive language. You won't have system fallbacks like talking about armour class or spell caster level or whatever. You'll be telling players about the javelin glancing off their breastplate and how they feel like a walking wall of steel rather than just saying the attack roll wasn't good enough for the AC the plate armour provides.

2) You'll also really be able to tell when the player's care about something. They'll attempt things that matter to them rather than looking at the system to provide them with the ideas of the things they should be doing.

3) When you have a description and system mismatch you'll be surprised how much more people notice it when they can't see the system. You could describe the exact same situation with the exact same words and roll the exact same dice and where people would previously shrug as the system produces a result that breaks their expectations, they'll instead be confused or annoyed as you essentially provided them with inaccurate information and they'll be far less likely to pass it off as a quirk of the rules.

4) When the system you are using behind the screen produces a surprising result, you'll have to explain or sell it to the participants through your description. Otherwise it'll seem like a description-system mismatch described in 3). If you've previously described a little dog man as shaking in fear as large human warriors loom around it and then it crits and drops a well armoured PC based on a lucky roll, you'll need to describe how the little creature closes his eyes in desperation and lunges forward with his little spear, which manages to find the spot right between two armoured plates and pierces right through the padding below.

 

[Dethklok]

Hullo nnms! These are really some excellent posts; I would have given you experience but the board won't allow it.

1) Your description matters even more than before. Every single result of every action will only ever be communicated to another person using natural descriptive language.

That's my experience gaming with our rules-light system. Recently a knight threw his sword at a sorcerer, sending him falling off of a wall. A few moments later he ran off cackling into the night, and one of the new players commented on how strange this was. By sheer common sense, the sorcerer should more likely have been totally incapacitated. In fact he had some magical protection against damage, but in a more typical game I doubt anyone would notice; they'd just assume that he had more health, or that damage rolls for the sword and the fall each came up low.

3) When you have a description and system mismatch you'll be surprised how much more people notice it when they can't see the system. You could describe the exact same situation with the exact same words and roll the exact same dice and where people would previously shrug as the system produces a result that breaks their expectations, they'll instead be confused or annoyed as you essentially provided them with inaccurate information and they'll be far less likely to pass it off as a quirk of the rules.

I used to think it was strange that more people didn't notice these things anyway. What I eventually pieced together by talking to people on this site is that, for many people, the character sheets, rulebooks, and miniature figures are the game. That is, rather than being a concrete representation of a fictional world, they are the foundation for it. I think this is why they don't notice how bizarre some rules and procedures are; there simply is no world independent of the rules or procedures.

 

[nnms]

I used to think it was strange that more people didn't notice these things anyway. What I eventually pieced together by talking to people on this site is that, for many people, the character sheets, rulebooks, and miniature figures are the game. That is, rather than being a concrete representation of a fictional world, they are the foundation for it. I think this is why they don't notice how bizarre some rules and procedures are; there simply is no world independent of the rules or procedures.

This paragraph is definitely going to stick with me a while. It's a really piercing insight into how many people approach the hobby. I'm a huge "actual play" person and am largely the first to point at the things people do in a session as the actual game, but, as you've pointed out, there is a fictional thing going on here and once you ignore it and only concentrate on the procedures and rules, you've drastically shifted how you experience the hobby.

I think you might have put forward another element that makes a game feel like an OSR game with that paragraph. OSR games feel like the fictional world matters and the rules and procedures are about adjudicating the shared fiction rather than being an end in of themselves.

 

[Yora]

Yet the more I learn about the older players and GMs playing OSR games, the more I start to doubt that. One thing that is the most puzzling to me are "classic TSR modules". Except for the GDQ series, none of these seem to have any story seeds. "There is a dungeon and you go there because it's there, and you're adventurers and that's what adventurers do."
That's playing the rules for the sake of the rules in one of it's purest forms. Even straight WotC/Paizo railroad adventurers go to much greater efforts to try to create a story and opportunities to interact with the population of the world. The most popular module ever seems to be Keep on the Borderland, which has even less story background than the old Diablo 1. It had always been puzzling me and I've been doing some asking around on other forums, and people basically told me that this is simply what they love and why they play OSR games. Clearing out the rooms of the dungeon, which they often already know from previous games, and enjoying that the encounters are always playing out a bit differently, depending on which route they take and where they run into which wandering patrols.

 

[nnms]

Yet the more I learn about the older players and GMs playing OSR games, the more I start to doubt that. One thing that is the most puzzling to me are "classic TSR modules". Except for the GDQ series, none of these seem to have any story seeds. "There is a dungeon and you go there because it's there, and you're adventurers and that's what adventurers do."
That's playing the rules for the sake of the rules in one of it's purest forms. Even straight WotC/Paizo railroad adventurers go to much greater efforts to try to create a story and opportunities to interact with the population of the world.

I think the disconnect here is that in old school play you don't attempt to "create the story" at all. The fiction I'm talking about is not a story in the literary structure sense. It's the content of the description of the participants. You play to see what happens and what you can do and let any "story" just emerge as it does (more on this below).

The most popular module ever seems to be Keep on the Borderland, which has even less story background than the old Diablo 1. It had always been puzzling me and I've been doing some asking around on other forums, and people basically told me that this is simply what they love and why they play OSR games. Clearing out the rooms of the dungeon, which they often already know from previous games, and enjoying that the encounters are always playing out a bit differently, depending on which route they take and where they run into which wandering patrols.

The last time I played Keep on the Borderlands,

Spoiler

we had issues related to magic artifacts turning some of the party chaotic, we had the dealings with the medusa and the townsfolk. Tons of dialogue interactions with a wide variety of creatures and characters.

Needless to say we never had any issues having tons of story-like fictional content emerge from our complete lack of effort to create it.

I think the issue you are highlighting is one of confusing fictional content with a story in the literary sense. I am most certainly not talking about a plot or narrative when I talk about the concentration of the game on the fiction. By fiction, I mean the description of environment, situation and character action and dialogue and nothing else.

Which might highlight another common element to old school RPGs. Playing to see what happens. The referee sets up the situation or environment and whatever happens emerges from players acting in response to the situation or environment.

It's much like our lives. Humans naturally interpret the various events and happenings in their lives into tales they tell other humans. We have a natural skill to look at a series of events and construct a tale to communicate them to others. Whether it's talking about what a co-worker did that we don't like or perhaps telling one's children how you met their other parent, we naturally create stories out of our experiences of events with little or no effort.

That's what you do in old school gaming. Let the experiences happen, see what happens and naturally tell the stories about it after the fact.

---

EDIT: I figured I'd add a bit about prepping for my 1980 Runequest game and talk about how I almost fell into the trap of attempting to create or tell a story.

I'm running the game using one of the sand box supplements published around 1980. The players latched onto one of the details that sounded interesting to them and are now trying to find an ageless shaman. We ended the session as they started their journey to another settlement where they believe they'll find out more about where this being is.

So I started thinking to myself "wouldn't it be cool if one of the characters ended up killing this shaman? And becoming a traitor to his people and the one who killed a great hero of the spirits." I started thinking about what the scenes would look like when the player found out things this shaman has done (as he's not a good guy exactly) and scenes where he got the means to kill the shaman and finally a scene where it actually happened and then the escape and aftermath of killing such a great hero.

I almost had to shout "NO!" at myself out loud. It's not my job as the referee to tell a story. Or to arrange what will happen. Or to control the plot. Or to make the game about producing a story like that.

Not my job one bit.

So I scrapped that idea and went back to prepping the environment and situation. Figuring out the details the players will come accross as they travel and pursue what interests them. Perhaps the players will discover that the shaman has sacrificed some of their family members and ancestors for magical power. Perhaps they'll never meet the person who can tell them that and they'll never learn of it. Perhaps they will see the sacrifice as necessary and not try to get revenge. Or perhaps in their travels to find this shaman, some other point of interest will grab their attention and this whole shaman related quest will be set aside.

It's not my job to decide any of that. Just like the players, I will see what happens when they make the choices they do.

This whole "rpgs are about story" is definitely a post-old school approach and will kill the feel of an OSR gaming experience pretty quickly.

 

[Quickleaf]

So I scrapped that idea and went back to prepping the environment and situation. Figuring out the details the players will come accross as they travel and pursue what interests them. Perhaps the players will discover that the shaman has sacrificed some of their family members and ancestors for magical power. Perhaps they'll never meet the person who can tell them that and they'll never learn of it. Perhaps they will see the sacrifice as necessary and not try to get revenge. Or perhaps in their travels to find this shaman, some other point of interest will grab their attention and this whole shaman related quest will be set aside.

Some questions this reminds me of:

Are all players cut out for Old School style play? It always seems like it is so wonderfully player-driven, but I've gamed with plenty of players who default to a much more reactive stance.

Is Old School play more improv-focused? Is this a necessity born from valuing a sandbox style and limited DM prep time / limited module page count?

When players *do* focus in on something they want to do, can an OSR game assume the characteristics of a Story Game for a time? Say, for example, the PCs decide to get involved in a murder mystery at a city they're passing thru? How would an OSR game handle the PCs exploring the mystery differently than a Story Game?

Conversely, can a Story Game have moments of overland travel that use random encounter tables and let the players just explore in a way evocative of OSR play?

I guess what I'm driving at is the Old School vs. New School distinction seems awfully nebulous, and is more about trends than clear definitions.

 

[nnms]

Are all players cut out for Old School style play? It always seems like it is so wonderfully player-driven, but I've gamed with plenty of players who default to a much more reactive stance.

Given the development of games that do things differently than the earliest games, I'm going to probably side with the idea that there are lots of players for whom this type of play isn't enjoyable. It didn't take long, even if you stick with D&D, for story based thinking to arrive in both module and campaign setting design.

I don't think play with an OSR feel has to ask that much of the players. For many, the game simply asks them to experience whatever dungeon complex is put in front of the players. One of the things people joke about is just how obvious the adventure hooks are in older modules. "Looking for adventure? Caves of Chaos you say? Why yes, I can tell you exactly where to find those from this particular Keep on these particular Borderlands."

Is Old School play more improv-focused? Is this a necessity born from valuing a sandbox style and limited DM prep time / limited module page count?

I think it's not especially improv-focused or not. You have improv only referees and those who run modules or completely pre-planned scenarios with box text they've pre-written for each locale. I'd say a good improv sense is certainly helpful.

When players *do* focus in on something they want to do, can an OSR game assume the characteristics of a Story Game for a time? Say, for example, the PCs decide to get involved in a murder mystery at a city they're passing thru? How would an OSR game handle the PCs exploring the mystery differently than a Story Game?

By story game do you mean a game that is designed (or at the very least intended) to produce a story right in the moment of actual play? Like a story in the literary sense of rising action, a climax and resolution? Something like what some people talk about when they use terms like "story now!"?

I think the default assumption of almost all the earliest games is "story after." Experience now, then cobble together a story retroactively just like you do when you experience things in normal everyday life.

We have a very good example of mystery play in early RPGs in the form of 1st edition Call of Cthulhu. If you take a look at the scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, you'll again find they are loaded with situation and environment and are generally not scene-by-scene story structured like a Trail of Cthulhu scenario. Since success at the investigation is not a given in Call of Cthulhu, the scenarios are often more like miniature sand boxes where the investigators may or may not successfully figure out what's going on before things turn against them. In Trail of Cthulhu, success at the actual investigation is assumed and the clues and the scenes in which they are found can be strung together in a fairly predicable order and the story structure of the typical piece of mystery fiction (initial mystery, clues lead to important characters, big reveal, resolution).

Conversely, can a Story Game have moments of overland travel that use random encounter tables and let the players just explore in a way evocative of OSR play?

One local guy runs Dungeon World this way (I suspect many others do as well). The game has it's fronts (packages of threats) that are prepped in advance and moves (participant actions) that can be chosen as appropriate. Dungeon World is explicitly a "play to find out what happens" game while also being a story game. To stick with Vincent Baker's designs & their derivatives, I'd say if you tried the same thing with In A Wicked Age, you'd have a massive failure, as the situation is front loaded with the oracle system and it is explicitly not the GM's job to create the situation himself and have the player's explore it.

I guess what I'm driving at is the Old School vs. New School distinction seems awfully nebulous, and is more about trends than clear definitions.

I always thought the only reason the "old style" vs "new style" thing came about was that Finch's primer was comparing one approach to a single game (1974 D&D and it's retroclone Swords & Wizardry) to a caricature of 3.x D&D play. It was a crude attempt at trying to capture the key differences between the oldest games and the current popular ones. Unfortunately it misrepresnted both old style and new style as one approach to a single game each in a way that both excludes other games released in the 70s as not being "old style" and ignored many, many games that don't play anything like 3.x in the "new style" category. It got people thinking about the differences, even if Matthew Finch did a terrible job of categorizing them himself.

Earlier in this thread, I think I advocated for a muddier approach as well, but throughout the thread, I'm actually reaching the conclusion that the differences between the earliest games in our hobby and later ones is easier to spot than I thought. I think what makes it nebulous is that many games from the last decade have been focused on both recapturing the play of these early games directly (like in the retroclones) or taking elements of them and using them in new ways (like some of the storygames sometimes do).

Apocalypse World & Dungeon World are pretty much the result of Vincent Baker (and LeTorra & Koebel) looking at very old types of traditional play and asking "What things can the participants do that would be appropriate in play?" Those things are the "moves." If you make the moves those things that happen in play typical of the first games in the hobby, then you'll get a game that has that style. Or you can go for something like Monsterhearts (same system) where the moves are things that are appropriate for teenage monster romance. it all depends what is available to the participants as "moves."

 

[Quickleaf]

By story game do you mean a game that is designed (or at the very least intended) to produce a story right in the moment of actual play? Like a story in the literary sense of rising action, a climax and resolution? Something like what some people talk about when they use terms like "story now!"?

To be honest, I don't know. I used the term since you had been using it as a point of clarification to distinguish a style of games from OSR games.

My experience has been that players are most satisfied when there's both (a) a wild in-the-moment explore whatever you like and any narrative structure be damned feel, AND (b) a sense of evolving NPCs, rising and falling tension, sense of dramatic revelation/accomplishment, and anticipated final showdowns associated with "story."

I don't see the two things as being at odds; on the contrary, I think they both should be present.

I've never been very "clean" when it comes to RPG theory, however, so I appreciate your attention to "how does this actually work at the table"? That's what I'm driving at, and I think the OP hinted to nicely by asking about "feel".

 

[nnms]

My experience has been that players are most satisfied when there's both (a) a wild in-the-moment explore whatever you like and any narrative structure be damned feel, AND (b) a sense of evolving NPCs, rising and falling tension, sense of dramatic revelation/accomplishment, and anticipated final showdowns associated with "story."

Yes, definitely. I guess the distinction might be that for an OSR feel, it's ideally enough to trust the narrative forming powers of our brains to create the second part. That as people who interpret everything that happens to us in the form of a narrative, we will interpret the events of play into a cohesive narrative. Now if for some reason that is failing in a particular campaign or session, there's likely a problem with the techniques of play used by that specific group or campaign. As long as play is continually referred back to the shared fiction, our brains should be able to do the rest and interpret our experience into a narrative. Doing that is built right into how we all learn language and use it to describe a situation.

I don't see the two things as being at odds; on the contrary, I think they both should be present.

Yes. I just see a difference between games that are about that story aspect emerging from play and games that are intentionally designed to create it as the main goal of play.

I've never been very "clean" when it comes to RPG theory, however, so I appreciate your attention to "how does this actually work at the table"? That's what I'm driving at, and I think the OP hinted to nicely by asking about "feel".

I think in this case, story creation or story experience in an OSR feel should be effortless and organic. It should just emerge as we naturally interpret events into a narrative we could repeat to others (like we do with our day at work). I believe that some techniques that actively support the creation of story could also be present without ruining the feel (as you said, they're not mutually exclusive and Dungeon World is a good example of an implementation of exactly this) , but as soon as play becomes about producing the plot or exploring the theme or story structure as a higher priority than exploring the situation and description, you'll probably find the OSR feel to be diminishing.

It's likely a continuum rather than an either-or.

I'd recommend anyone interested in both the OSR feel and the idea of techniques and mechanics directly supporting the creation of story to check out Dungeon World. There's a free SRD here:

http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/#TOC-How-to-Use-This-Site

And a great advice download here:

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=4996.0

 

[jacksonmalloy]

An observation I've had after really thinking on the subject that is loosely related to the point you were making above, nnms:

One of the chief differences I've been able to sort out is actually the role of the player and how they relate to their character. It is at least on this axis a sliding scale from Immersion to Narration. Specifically, this seems to break down into:

Director Stance, Author Stance, Pilot Stance, and Immersive Stance. These may be better defined elsewhere, or better named elsewhere, but these are the terms that come to mind that, for all intents and purposes, I'm making up on the spot to suit my purpose.

Immersive Stance is the farthest end of the Spectrum. In Immersive Stance, you are the character. You are expected to interact with the world purely on the level of the fiction of the world. Your actions are narrative. You are expected to do what your character would do, think how they think, and so on. The mechanics of the game should be in the background as much as possible, and the decisions made are supposed to be based on the narrative information in front of you.

Pilot Stance is a step removed from this. While you are still in many ways "the character," the game now creates an incentive to make decisions not just on the narrative information, but on the mechanics of the system as well. Where before you were in the head of the character, looking through his or her eyes, the mental image to come to mind here is being in the cockpit piloting the character, with a HUD keeping the relevant stats, modifiers, special abilities, and other system mechanics in your peripheral vision. I would argue that this is where 3.x and pathfinder sit - and many similar games. Yes, you're still "in-character" but the manipulation of the mechanics of that system is itself an important part of the game.

Author Stance is another step removed, continuing down the spectrum. In Author Stance, the goal is shifting from "being the character" to "telling the story." You have shifted from being behind the eyes of the character or in the cockpit to being the author, outside of the character. While you still make decisions based on what the character would or wouldn't do, that is because it makes for a better story than if their motivations were random or unfathomable. In addition, you aren't just interacting with the system mechanically, but a big part of the game becomes manipulating that system to manipulate the story itself - power shifts from the GM to player, giving them authoring tools of their own. Fate and Burning Wheel both feel like Author Stance games to me, as the emphasis is on story-telling, and utilizing the meta-game mechanics is a big part of how they play.

On the other farthest end of the spectrum is Director Stance. In games that take Director Stance, creating the group story is the most important thing, with your own personal character a distant second. This is the position taken in certain games that either completely lack a game master, or the position of the GM is more moderator than author. Fiasco is the best example of this to come to mind, with the chief goal to be getting your character into trouble in a way that is entertaining for the group -- not their personal survival, story, or well-being.

A lot of games straddle the lines between these, surely, but these are the points that stick out to me. I should point out that my own tastes normally actually lean towards author stance games, so none of this is meant to be critical or negative. As I try to reflect and examine my early experiences and talk to friends, the biggest common denominator I'm finding is that the early games (at least the way we played them) took the immersive stance.

Thoughts?