OSR OSR Gripes

[Tony Vargas]

I'm inclined to agree that if the rules don't provide a 'move' then you can't directly reference the move, which is interesting and something I'm going to have to think about. But the reverse is not true.

What a game doesn't do is as important to it's flavah as what it does do.

Just because the rules provide a 'move' doesn't mean that the table's proposition filter allows you to directly access the move without indicating the specific fictional positioning you are taking up.

Yep.

However, 1e AD&D did have a diplomacy check and at times I used it as one. 1e AD&D had a reaction test, which could be made more generic than its specifically called out usages. And further, remember that most 1e AD&D tables improvised some sort of skill check at least some of the time as an ad hoc ruling.

Aren't we talking about not-rules at that point, just like the OSR set. 1e didn't have diplomacy. It did have a reaction adjustment for CHA (and for Race), and a check - which, as usual, some tables used religiously and others were unaware of & everything in between - upon initial encounters. Not so much diplomacy as first impressions.

Yes, but as I just outlined, it was possible to play that way in 1e AD&D as well and I saw example of it

It was possible to run 1e that way, if you expanded the meaning/use of one rule, and added roll-under mechanics.

Yes, it does have a caller, but if you look at the example of play Gygax only addresses the caller when the group is taking an action as whole (like do we go down this corridor and in what marching order).

...and how they split up to investigate a room, IIRC.

"Why do we need a caller? I've never needed a caller!") this was until about 20 years later when I actually ran a group of 10-12 strangers. Suddenly you realize as a DM, "We need a caller."

Heh. What I noticed about the Caller is that, even though no one played with the idea of one, most tables had a de-facto Caller. whichever player was the most assertive, or friendliest with the DM.

One of my biggest revelations about play in the last 20 years is that quantity has a quality all its own. I mean I always knew this in general, but I'd never really appreciated how it impacted game style and even game goals.

Interesting.

 

[Celebrim]

It was possible to run 1e that way, if you expanded the meaning/use of one rule, and added roll-under mechanics.

Yeah, but groups may have independently invented the roll-under mechanics, but they are right there in the published materials from TSR.

If you read a bunch of TSR AD&D modules closely, one thing that quickly becomes clear is that a ton of different designers all independently found that if they expanded encounters beyond the 20'x30' room, they needed some sort thing we'd now call a Dexterity check or a Reflex save to fairly adjudicate the player interacting with the terrain. And they each made slightly different rulings. Some tended to prefer straight luck based percentage checks - flat 20% chance you fall off the cliff and die. Others used the roll under Dexterity mechanic. Others would call for a saving throw versus Paralyzation or against Death Magic, extending the notion of the saving throw to cover areas that wasn't covered by the problematically narrow and yet numerous saving throw mechanics of the official game which neither covered the whole space of challenges nor avoided partially overlapping (something that the rules itself had to use footnotes to handle the ambiguity of). Some would bounce back and forth between the different things depending on how they imagined the challenge.

In each case you have a DM's ruling - the writer of the module - turning into something like an official statement on how to play as an example of play in an officially published supplement. And the more popular versions of these things that look like extensions of the rules became more or less canonical at different tables.

So you could reasonably assert that 1e AD&D had no reflex save. But you could equally reasonably assert that it had several of them, at least two of which look like a modern skill based fortune test, but it simply lacked a unified guideline on when to apply them.

What it wouldn't be reasonable to say is that a AD&D referee calling out for roll under Dexterity or roll under Charisma was some how breaking the rules or playing the game in a way it wasn't intended to be played. After all, it's obvious from reading that everyone working at TSR played it like that at least some of the time, and encouraged customers of the game to play it that way as well.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If you read a bunch of TSR AD&D modules closely, one thing that quickly becomes clear is that a ton of different designers all independently found that if they expanded encounters beyond the 20'x30' room, they needed some sort thing we'd now call a Dexterity check or a Reflex save to fairly adjudicate the player interacting with the terrain. And they each made slightly different rulings. Some tended to prefer straight luck based percentage checks - flat 20% chance you fall off the cliff and die. Others used the roll under Dexterity mechanic. Others would call for a saving throw versus Paralyzation or against Death Magic

There was a lotta that kind of thing back in the day, not just D&D, but the wargames that presaged it often had variants for a specific scenario.
But, IMHO, in this context, the author of a module corresponds to a DM, not a designer.

...In each case you have a DM's ruling - the writer of the module - turning into something like an official statement on how to play as an example of play in an officially published supplement.

I feel like it stays a DM's ruling, maybe with a little extra panache for being published, but not an 'example of play.' Likewise all the great stuff Len Lakofka published in The Dragon. Nice variants, but not actually 1e rules.

What it wouldn't be reasonable to say is that a AD&D referee calling out for roll under Dexterity or roll under Charisma was some how breaking the rules or playing the game in a way it wasn't intended to be played.

Mainly because it was intended to be played as the DM saw fit. I could call for roll-under at a 5e table and I wouldn't be deviating, either.


(Actually, I like roll high, but don't go over, for stat checks - makes 'em more comparable laterally, allows for the equivalent of a DC.)

 

[Celebrim]

I feel like it stays a DM's ruling, maybe with a little extra panache for being published, but not an 'example of play.' Likewise all the great stuff Len Lakofka published in The Dragon. Nice variants, but not actually 1e rules.

I agree that Len wasn't a TSR employee and that everything in Dragon was unofficial until republished elsewhere (such as the Unearthed Arcana, though I've heard of groups that never adopted the Unearthed Arcana).

However, there are edge cases. For example, in 'Isle of the Ape', Gygax published a very much needed extension of the 'to hit' table for monsters that extended the table up above 16HD so that things over 16HD actually stood a chance versus high level PCs. Was that actual rules despite appearing in a module? Or was that just a variant? And by your argument that the game was intended to be played as the DM saw fit, isn't everything a variant?

What Len however is a very important example of is the sort of discussion going on about problems with some of the rules that irritated people at the time.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I agree that Len wasn't a TSR employee and that everything in Dragon was unofficial until republished elsewhere (such as the Unearthed Arcana, though I've heard of groups that never adopted the Unearthed Arcana).

But, you'll hear people talk about d10 initiative or another of his variants as if they were /the rules/ of 1e.

Was that actual rules despite appearing in a module? Or was that just a variant? And by your argument that the game was intended to be played as the DM saw fit, isn't everything a variant?

No, Yes, and prettymuch yes. Obviously, the stuff between the covers of an actual rulebook can be considered the baseline … when all that stuff agreed with all the other stuff between the same covers...

What Len however is a very important example of is the sort of discussion going on about problems with some of the rules that irritated people at the time.

Without the internet, it happened in the pages of The Dragon, yes. And considerably more politely.

 

[the Jester]

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...

My experience was that almost any character, regardless of stats, could be fun to play, and that almost any character, regardless of stats, was one bad roll away from death or other career-ending disaster. So my favorite, and highest level, fighter that I played in 1e (he probably made around... 11th level?) had a Str of 16 and never had a strength-boosting item. Yet he was an awesome character and really fun, which certainly fits my definition of "viable".

Meanwhile, characters with great stat arrays would fail a save vs. Poison and die. Or catch a lethal disease and die. Or get exposed to yellow mold/green slime/toxic gas and die.

It really wasn't a matter of rules so much as attitude and style of play.

I'm trying to explain why fidelity to "old skool" rule sets is a misguided sort of fidelity.

Not if it's what someone enjoys. Even if the appeal is 100% nostalgia, if a game scratches that itch, if it is fun because of that, awesome- have fun. It's not for me to cry badwrongfun.

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".

I'm not sure who is insisting on what here, but in general, I'd say that rules definitely inform the experience of play, and some rule sets definitely enable some play styles better than others. Sure, you can do the work to tweak any system for any style, but it's often easier and better to just work with something that is already suited to what you're after.

Anyway, I never found the range between two characters with differing stats to be game-breaking or fun-stopping. It just wasn't like that for me. Maybe some of that was DMs being more prone to fudge; maybe some of it was that we were a bit more cavalier with pc lives when one bad roll could end you and about half of all pcs died at first level.

 

[Celebrim]

My experience was that almost any character, regardless of stats, could be fun to play, and that almost any character, regardless of stats, was one bad roll away from death or other career-ending disaster. So my favorite, and highest level, fighter that I played in 1e (he probably made around... 11th level?) had a Str of 16 and never had a strength-boosting item. Yet he was an awesome character and really fun, which certainly fits my definition of "viable".

So, your favorite character - the one that got to your highest level - had a 16 in their prime requisite, and thus was entitled to a 10% XP bonus and a +1 bonus to damage. So, yes, just about any character could be fun to play - Ogdin Mudstump, Dwarf Thief, was fun to play for his short career. But it's not surprising at all that your favorite character was one that was at least on the playable side of the equation.

However, your favorite character would totally outclassed by one with two 17s or an 18 strength. I'm guessing that didn't happen (or you did actually have another score of 16 or higher). Your 11th level fighter only would have had about 47 hit points, and that's not really viable for a front line character when you are facing off against level X monsters. If that same fighter had say a 16 Strength and also a 17 Constitution, so that they have say about 74 hit points, now we are talking. Or if you had 16 Str but also a 17 Dex, so that with plate and shield at 2nd level and without magic you'd be in that all important negative AC range, that might make up for not having any hit points. As a practical matter, you'd get hit only about half or a third the time as the same fighter with a 14 Dex through those low levels because orcs and the like would need a 20 to hit you as opposed to say a 17. That's huge.

Meanwhile, characters with great stat arrays would fail a save vs. Poison and die. Or catch a lethal disease and die. Or get exposed to yellow mold/green slime/toxic gas and die.

Did you not have a cleric in the party?

It really wasn't a matter of rules so much as attitude and style of play.

Style of play can go a long way, as can having a group with a particular attitude.

Anyway, I never found the range between two characters with differing stats to be game-breaking or fun-stopping. It just wasn't like that for me. Maybe some of that was DMs being more prone to fudge; maybe some of it was that we were a bit more cavalier with pc lives when one bad roll could end you and about half of all pcs died at first level.

Half of all characters dying at first level was normal. A lot of the time players would start with two characters (if the DM allowed it) and use one as a meat shield for the better character. Or if the DM didn't allow that, they'd buy a dog (a 2HD dog would likely outclass a starting fighter in a lot of ways) or hire a man-at-arms if they could and have the NPC shield for their character. (Who says charisma is useless?) But if you had good stats you got out of that danger zone fairly quickly. The difference between a character with 16 CON and one without it is huge. The difference between a 1st level Ranger and a 1st level Fighter with no fighter bonuses for stats above 17 is huge, because you start with that second HD. The difference between a M-U that has a 14 Int and one that has an 18 Int isn't that great to start, but by the time you hit name level the differences in your chance to learn a spell and your maximum number of spells in your spell book is massive. In 3e terms, once you start hitting name level, the 14 Int M-U is a tier 3 character, but the 18 Int M-U is tier 1 because you can learn most of the spells you want to learn and you can learn enough spells to have a solution for any problem.

Characters with different ability scores in 1e AD&D were practically playing a different game. One of the reasons 4d6 drop the lowest is such a terrible method is that in a group of 6 people who aren't cheating, you'll one player that will be like 40 point buy in 3e terms, and another that will be like 15 point buy. The power levels of party members will be all over the place.

One bad roll ending a low level character was normal. One bad roll shouldn't end a high level character who is part of a party unless the DM is just throwing crap at the party left and right. Instant death save or die poison is not fatal if you fail your save, and you have a 7th cleric either in the party or as a henchmen - slow poison, neutralize poison, character is back in action. Don't travel without one.

 

[Umbran]

Maybe...

Again, I'm assuming that there is a group of players who are more or less peers, and what the group is usually doing is having adventures, often in dungeons, against foes that at least occasionally challenge them, and that those adventures more or less resemble the sort that were published as examples of play commonly called 'modules'.

Yes, but do you realize how much variation in playstyle and play goals there still is/was between groups given those parameters? I mean, correct me if I am wrong, but a run-of-the-mill thief would not be considered viable under your parameters.

Do you actually think most of the rest of us who played found that to be true? If not, we ought to consider why others found it viable, and you did not.

But considered we are supposedly talking about "old skool D&D" I don't think they are unreasonable assumptions.

This has nothing to do with the assumptions being unreasonable. It has to do more with what your definition of "viable" really is. What are the expectations that mark the difference between viable and not?

 

[Celebrim]

Yes, but do you realize how much variation in playstyle and play goals there still is/was between groups given those parameters? I mean, correct me if I am wrong, but a run-of-the-mill thief would not be considered viable under your parameters.

Do you actually think most of the rest of us who played found that to be true? If not, we ought to consider why others found it viable, and you did not.

I played a thief pretty much at every opportunity. And no, they aren't viable. This wasn't something that was immediately obvious to me at first, and I certainly had lots of enjoyment playing a thief. When you first start playing, especially as a kid, this is all so new and wonderful that literally anything we did was fun, including monotonous hack and slash.

But the longer I played, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was playing a character that couldn't pull their weight. Again, this wasn't an immediate realization, it came about from having a lot of experience with the class both as a player and as a DM keeping track of things. Most of the time I played I was focused on my ability as a player and I just sort of had always assumed that also there was this character class that enabled my favorite play style. But my first big revelation was as a DM after I introduced a house rule that XP other than XP per hit point/damage inflicted was shared. (There were a few other ways I'd been allowing individual XP as well, RP awards, story awards, individually earned or stolen treasure.) It turned out when I started tracking it that the high strength fighter was doing more damage than the other 5 characters in the party combined, and after that revelation I noticed the thief in the group honestly didn't have much to do despite my attempts to provide utility. Whether the player was aware of this I couldn't say, but it changed the way I looked at the game.

And as a player I started to notice a few things, especially as we got to higher level.

a) Even in a round where I got a backstab in, I typically did less damage than the party fighter did every round. If I could backstab every round, I'd still be a bad fighter. I wasn't really helping in combat. In fact, the party would be better served by a reasonably skilled 5th level fighter henchmen than my 10th level thief. On average a fighter half my level was better in me in every single metric - hit points, THAC0, damage, and relatively quickly most saving throws.

b) All my saving throws at low level had been pretty darn good, but the class actually functioned more or less the opposite of a M-U in that as you leveled up you got relatively worse. You had a linear power increase that was much much slower than fighter classed characters. I had always just assumed without questioning it that this slow rate of advancement was made up for by the fact that I could level up more quickly, resulting in a balance. But then I noticed that at most I was keeping about a level ahead of even the M-U in the party, and my assumption of faster advancement was blown. Mathematically I needed to keep at least 2-3 levels ahead of other classes just to keep up with them, but that really didn't happen. For most played levels I was 0-1 level ahead of the party. And it also became obvious to me as a DM as I was doing encounter design that the thief had no good save. I had been looking for something to serve as what we'd now call a reflex save, but there wasn't an obvious candidate for that in the list. Some other class always had a better save than you. The best I could do was call for roll under Dex checks, but then no one really got better at those.

c) It had always been obvious to me that the success of the class was primarily based on the players wit. That was one of the reasons that I liked it (aside from I think normal youthful rebellion). At low levels your 'thief skills' were so unreliable and the consequences of failure so high, that the correct move was to almost never use them. As has been pointed out humorously in popular media, it would have been smarter to have the party fighter blunder into the trap and spend a spell to heal him, than risk a disarm traps roll as a thief with basically no hit points. So disarming traps was something I usually did without regard to the skill. But if I wasn't actually going to use the character's skills, couldn't I in fact do this job as a fighter? At higher levels, your thief skills became reliable enough that you could start to rely on them as a saving throw, at which point you could be a better thief than the party fighter. However, by this point your thief abilities had been completely and in all ways outclassed by the even more reliable abilities of spell-casters. For example, while I could climb a wall with some reliability, a M-U could cast spider climb to climb walls with utmost reliability and perform feats of climbing I could never really aspire to (like hanging upside down from the ceiling). Or a M-U could cast fly and climb without a wall. I could somewhat reliably 'hide in shadows'. But an M-U could cast invisibility and hide with utmost reliability, including while moving and without concealment. I could find traps with some level of reliability, but the cleric could cast Find Traps and find them with greater reliability. I could hear noise, but both the M-U and the cleric had a variety of divination spells that outclassed anything I could do. I could open locks, but the M-U could knock open doors reliably - including in situations where I had no real chance of success. I could disarm traps, but a M-U with an unseen servant had vastly better scope to disarm traps safely using their wit and better dungeon hygiene than I could ever manage. I could use wands, but by this level an M-U could in theory actually make a wand. For a while I justified to myself that I still had the valuable role in the party of conserving the spell-casters very limited spells slots. But none of the spells I listed was in fact a high level spell. They were all relatively minor spell slots, and after a while I started to realize that even if I could in fact conserve a spell-casters spell slots with good play, on an average day the number of spell slots I actually conserved were less than I would have were I an equivalent level spell-caster. If I was a M-U that specialized in the sort of magic I was trying to conserve, I'd not only do my job better, but be able to say throw out a fireball occasionally. I was in fact a bad spellcaster as well as a bad fighter.

At that point I started to realize why my fun playing the class was diminishing, and my deeper understanding of how the game actually worked only increased the frustration further. My most beloved character was a multi-classed Thief/M-U, and that character was able to do what the thief class couldn't do on its own - provide me tools for my creativity that let me actually do far more creative things than I could ever do with just my wit. It also meant that I was no longer wholly reliant on getting the DM to rule favorably on my actions, because spells were packetized narrative force that let you essentially state thing about the fiction. (Of course, at the time I didn't have any of that language to describe why this was better.) So my agency and ability to succeed were increased by playing the more viable character.

And I certainly didn't need to play a non-viable character to prove I could succeed anyway and so self-validate in that manner. I'd had measures of success before I had system mastery/understanding.

This has nothing to do with the assumptions being unreasonable. It has to do more with what your definition of "viable" really is. What are the expectations that mark the difference between viable and not?

Well, I'm not sure I can put them into words succinctly, but I think I just did a very good job of explaining why the thief in particular wasn't viable. The close I can get to answering you is that for whatever your goal of play is, for whatever your aesthetic of play, there is a viable character that fulfills that goal of play better than a non-viable character. This is true even if your aesthetic of play is gonzo and you are happy to play comic relief, or if your aesthetic of play is casual and you just want to hang out with your friends and socialize. The only goal of play I can think of that is fulfilled by playing a non-viable character is if you actually want to experience and explore the frustration of failure and defeat, but that sort of thing doesn't require a bad character. Nor for that matter can you say, "I enjoy playing a character that has flaws and weaknesses so I need to play a non-viable character." There is nothing that prevents you from playing a viable character with flaws and weaknesses whether mechanical or imposed through your RP of the character (deliberately chosing less than optimal play in order to reinforce character traits).

 

[the Jester]

So, your favorite character - the one that got to your highest level -

For clarity: He was my favorite fighter, not favorite 1e character overall.

...had a 16 in their prime requisite, and thus was entitled to a 10% XP bonus and a +1 bonus to damage. So, yes, just about any character could be fun to play - Ogdin Mudstump, Dwarf Thief, was fun to play for his short career. But it's not surprising at all that your favorite character was one that was at least on the playable side of the equation.

However, your favorite character would totally outclassed by one with two 17s or an 18 strength. I'm guessing that didn't happen (or you did actually have another score of 16 or higher).

The half-orc fighter who he adventured with for years had an 18/Something strength. (Probably in the 80's or 90's.) Yes, he was stronger and did more damage. That didn't make me have any less fun.

Your 11th level fighter only would have had about 47 hit points, and that's not really viable for a front line character when you are facing off against level X monsters.

And yet he was a front line character much of the time and managed to live to old age and retirement.

I guess I'm not quite sure what you mean by "viable"- I think you're using a very different system for evaluating what was viable. Your argument that thieves were not viable, for instance, doesn't match up with my play experience. Obviously, every table is, and was, different; what you say may have been true for your games. But no matter how many arguments you make, it doesn't make it true for my play experience. I'm not disputing that, if you stick to the numbers alone when analyzing early-edition D&D, you make some good points; but I think that kind of analysis is missing the forest for the trees. There's more to D&D than your ability scores.

Did you not have a cleric in the party?

Often, but not always. And the cleric didn't always have enough resources to prevent save or dies- imagine the (not uncommon) scenario of poison gas that gets the whole party (of 8ish!).

One bad roll ending a low level character was normal. One bad roll shouldn't end a high level character who is part of a party unless the DM is just throwing crap at the party left and right. Instant death save or die poison is not fatal if you fail your save, and you have a 7th cleric either in the party or as a henchmen - slow poison, neutralize poison, character is back in action. Don't travel without one.

We didn't use henchmen much. With ony pcs and porters, one bad roll was indeed enough.