OSR What Has Caused the OSR Revival?

[D_Drader]

Having designed extensively for 3.5, and some on Pathfinder, I came to OSR as a reaction to actually playing those games. "Modern" RPGs, frankly, are cumbersome. Yes, players have a lot of options that they didn't get in previous editions, but that came at a cost. Encounters take longer to play through as players add up all the bonuses they get. Complex spell descriptions and combat maneuvers may settle rules lawyery type issues, but they slow the game down as the players try to figure out whether their creative use of those rules is actually allowed. As a DM, I find that my hands are tied with regards to plot devices used to move the story along. OSR solves most of these issues.

OSR is also a way to peel back the 'progress' of the game and develop it in different directions. Some of the coolest things I've seen recently in RPGs come from games that are classified as OSR.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Complex spell descriptions and combat maneuvers may settle rules lawyery type issues, but they slow the game down as the players try to figure out whether their creative use of those rules is actually allowed. As a DM, I find that my hands are tied with regards to plot devices used to move the story along.

As a long-term GM/DM I have never had problems with rules lawyers. I simply don't allow it, period. I am a very fair DM, and my players know it. They know that if I alter some rules, it's because I'm making thing more playable and enjoyable for everyone. They also know that the DMs ruling is law, and that I don't tolerate player attempts at manipulation. If they think I made an inadvertent mistake, I'm all ears, and will fix things if I messed up, but they can't try to overrule me by pulling out the books and arguing minutiae.

In 35+ years, that has always worked well. I go by Gygax's recommendation - the rules are guidelines. It's the game that is important.

 

[D_Drader]

As a long-term GM/DM I have never had problems with rules lawyers. I simply don't allow it, period. I am a very fair DM, and my players know it. They know that if I alter some rules, it's because I'm making thing more playable and enjoyable for everyone. They also know that the DMs ruling is law, and that I don't tolerate player attempts at manipulation. If they think I made an inadvertent mistake, I'm all ears, and will fix things if I messed up, but they can't try to overrule me by pulling out the books and arguing minutiae.

In 35+ years, that has always worked well. I go by Gygax's recommendation - the rules are guidelines. It's the game that is important.

That's always been my approach as well, but there's a breed of gamer that has come about in the past ten or so years who treats the written word as law. A lot of DMs feel their hands are tied with regards to making spot rulings and stretching the rules for the benefit of the game.

 

[ExploderWizard]

A lot of DMs feel their hands are tied with regards to making spot rulings and stretching the rules for the benefit of the game.

Such DM's need to locate their sack or leave Dming to those who haven't lost it.


On a more serious note, it is indeed a sad sight to see a DM that allows a rulebook to dictate what happens in his/her game. For these DMs, discovering the OSR is like a visitation from the Good Witch of the North.

" You have had the power to run your own game all along. Just fold your DM screen together three times and say 'theres nothing like rulings' and you have the game that you want"

 

[billd91]

That's always been my approach as well, but there's a breed of gamer that has come about in the past ten or so years who treats the written word as law. A lot of DMs feel their hands are tied with regards to making spot rulings and stretching the rules for the benefit of the game.

The rules lawyer has been around a lot longer than 10 years or so. Knights of the Dinner Table has been lampooning them (personified most in Brian, but present in Dave and Bob too) since 1990.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

That's always been my approach as well, but there's a breed of gamer that has come about in the past ten or so years who treats the written word as law. A lot of DMs feel their hands are tied with regards to making spot rulings and stretching the rules for the benefit of the game.

Some try, but I don't let them get anywhere with it. I make all that very clear before ever starting a new campaign, or even a single game. No player can tie my hands unless I let him, and I don't.

As a player, I abide by the same rules. I don't act like a rules lawyer, and I don't complain if the DM strays from what's in the book.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

The rules lawyer has been around a lot longer than 10 years or so. Knights of the Dinner Table has been lampooning them (personified most in Brian, but present in Dave and Bob too) since 1990.

I encountered some back in the late 70s, when I started playing and DMing. I didn't put up with it then, either.

 

[Iconic Maps]

Having designed extensively for 3.5, and some on Pathfinder, I came to OSR as a reaction to actually playing those games. "Modern" RPGs, frankly, are cumbersome. Yes, players have a lot of options that they didn't get in previous editions, but that came at a cost. Encounters take longer to play through as players add up all the bonuses they get. Complex spell descriptions and combat maneuvers may settle rules lawyery type issues, but they slow the game down as the players try to figure out whether their creative use of those rules is actually allowed. As a DM, I find that my hands are tied with regards to plot devices used to move the story along. OSR solves most of these issues.

OSR is also a way to peel back the 'progress' of the game and develop it in different directions. Some of the coolest things I've seen recently in RPGs come from games that are classified as OSR.

My experience has been very similar as well. However I find that there are aspects of 3e/Pathfinder that I really prefer over various exemplars of the OSR. I really like the streamlined unified core mechanics of the D20 system. I like the fact that level progression by experience has likewise been standardized. Overall I feel that the system is far more intuitive - though, as you say, at the same time, quite a bit more cumbersome then earlier iterations of the game.

Cheers,
-Tad

 

[Zak S]

When me and the girls started getting back into D&D, I just used the rules I already knew. Then I had a blog.

Only later did people say "Oh that's called being OSR". (Usually because they were angry at OSR people for some random dumb reason).

When I go to these charity celebrity D&D events in Hollywood we play the newest edition--it's us and actors and voice actors and animators and whatnot--and the DM always has to explain the new edition because all these folks with jobs aren't connected to the online scene and they just have been playing AD&D or Basic since whenever. All those Celebrities Who Play D&D? Patton, Vin Diesel, the Adventure Time guy--They roll old school.

The short answer is: these people who started during the height of the game's popularity are coming back to gaming--or never left. And the active blogging stuff (Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia being the most important) kind of shined a light on what was already there, people who had an edition that worked for them and so never saw a need to fix it.

 

[Celebrim]

Nostalgia.

I hear a lot of people talking about the rules and how the rules are simpler or lighter or more empowering to the DM, and things like that. And as a long time 1e DM, I just don't buy that.

What I do believe is that over time people began to subtly change the way that they thought about games, and that this change in thinking went with changes in rule systems. And I think eventually, people looked at how far they'd changed from the games that they played in their youth, and they said, "You know, I want to play like that again. The game I'm playing now isn't a game I'm enjoying any more." And for most people, this act of changing the idea of how to play a game had to go hand in hand with changing the scenery back to that which surrounded the game when they were younger, because otherwise they would have fallen into their new habits. In other words, they had to go back to the old rules to get back to their old way of thinking. And when they did so, it was probably a relief, and it was definitely a change, and they enjoyed themselves as they hadn't enjoyed themselves in a long time.

I just don't buy their explanation for why simply because I'm too familiar with the old school rules and what could and did go wrong. No phrase over the last five or six years has baffled me more than "Rulings not rules". What game were you running that didn't require rulings, and maybe more to the point what game where you running where your rulings were not relied on as much of a part of the social contract as your rules?

I tried to go back to 1e AD&D a few years ago, at least as an experiment, and I couldn't do it. For one thing, it was too much mental overhead during play. Things that would have been incredibly simple to adjudicate in a unified system became absolute nightmares in a system with unlimited crunch except for what you needed right now. With no one mechanic to turn to, I was left paralyzed by too many choices. Should I use the incredibly detailed but ultimately vague system proposed in the module? Should I just use a straight up percentage check pulled out of the air? Perhaps I should ask for a saving throw? Maybe I should use a roll under ability check? What would be fair? What would be expedient? Would I be happy with this as a precedent? Sure, those sort of problems turn up in modern systems as well, but they don't turn up as often and in particular they don't demand as much 'run time' because I can solve them at 'compile time'. Sure some DMs don't care about consistency or neutrality of fairness, and I guess that's ok too if everyone enjoys the ride, but I'm not that DM.

For me I play 3e exactly the same way that I play 1e[/e] only it's less fiddly and I don't have to make up as much crap or interpret as much vague text. Granted, to accomplish that I banned everything but the core rules of 3.0e, never adopted 3.5, and then ended up rewriting half of that to get it where I wanted it... but all of that is normal for how I run a game. (To prove that, see the thread in the 1e forums where I experimented with completely rewriting 1e dragons, as a first stage toward completely rewriting 3e dragons).

If anything, 1e vastly disempowers the creativity of the players compared to 3e.

The idea that you can't remove PrCs? Did that 16 years ago and never looked back.

I had a 64 1/2 Ford Mustang when I was in High School. I loved that car. That car was manly and cool and I had a lot of fun with that car. But I would never want that car as my primary vehicle again. Sure, I could get under the hood and fix almost everything on that car, but I had to get under the hood and fix everything on that car all the time, or it would leave me on the side of the road stranded. Going back to 1e AD&D felt a lot like that. But I totally understand why some people want to go to OSR.