D&D General Why is "OSR style" D&D Fun For You?

[Reynard]

Full disclosure: I legitimately do not understand why OSE is a thing. It's just B/X. Why is THAT the one that a significant portion of the OSR locked on to?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Full disclosure: I legitimately do not understand why OSE is a thing. It's just B/X. Why is THAT the one that a significant portion of the OSR locked on to?

Because it reorganized B/X in a way that made it clear what all the rules were, as opposed to TSR's "we'll just sprinkle important rules in random corners" approach to organization. Once organized, it turned out that people really liked B/X's approach the most out of the TSR D&D designs, many of which are much, much clunkier.

Back in the day, people engaged with the parts of the rulesets they learned, rather than the systems in their entirety, since often an important rule was stuck at the bottom of a truly random paragraph in the 1E DMG or something. OSE eliminates that issue.

 

[jdrakeh]

Full disclosure: I legitimately do not understand why OSE is a thing. It's just B/X. Why is THAT the one that a significant portion of the OSR locked on to?

It's a significantly "cleaned up" B/X with better editing and organization, more examples of rules in play, and the errata from B/X incorporated inline (the original B/X booklets were, as I recall, missing some rules/spells referenced therein). The thing that drives me absolutely nuts about OSE, though, is that there have been many different printings/editions of it over the last several years (and it started life as a different titled product entirely). It's much clearer what books you need to play/run an OSE campaign now, but there was a point when it was absolutely not clear (to me, anyway).

 

[Reynard]

Because it reorganized B/X in a way that made it clear what all the rules were, as opposed to TSR's "we'll just sprinkle important rules in random corners" approach to organization. Once organized, it turned out that people really liked B/X's approach the most out of the TSR D&D designs, many of which are much, much clunkier.

Back in the day, people engaged with the parts of the rulesets they learned, rather than the systems in their entirety, since often an important rule was stuck at the bottom of a truly random paragraph in the 1E DMG or something. OSE eliminates that issue.

Right, but why B/X? What about it, in particular, made it the one that has drawn all this current attention?

 

[DammitVictor]

Full disclosure: I legitimately do not understand why OSE is a thing. It's just B/X. Why is THAT the one that a significant portion of the OSR locked on to?

To start with, it's just B/X, in a single convenient boxed set (or hardback) organized to make it easy to read and absorb and easy to read at the table. It has top notch production values, but it focuses on substance (and readability) over style. It is, essentially, as good as "D&D as a toolbox" gets outside of closed content toolboxes.

edit: As far as "Why B/X?" it's "old fashioned old school D&D" without all of the ridiculous cruft and baggage of AD&D, and without the burdens of higher level Classic D&D. It's dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls and the beginning of domain play and a tight focus on all of that. I'd prefer it we focused more on BECMI because that's my jam, but it's not hard to understand why a lot of the OSR crowd is laser-focused on the first few levels of B/X.

 

[jdrakeh]

Right, but why B/X? What about it, in particular, made it the one that has drawn all this current attention?

I suspect it's because, once reorganized and cleaned up, it's easier to play/learn than AD&D of either variety and still largely compatible with adventures and setting material for those later editions (it requires a little conversion work but very little).

 

[Voadam]

Full disclosure: I legitimately do not understand why OSE is a thing. It's just B/X. Why is THAT the one that a significant portion of the OSR locked on to?

Well there is a whole thread discussing Why B/X? which I was going to suggest looking at for some insights, but then I saw who started that thread.

 

[Reynard]

Well there is a whole thread discussing Why B/X? which I was going to suggest looking at for some insights, but then I saw who started that thread.

Unsurprisingly, I still don't get it.

 

[Divine2021]

Well this thread has convinced me to buy DCC and Shadowdark, so I guess well done all.

 

[Malmuria]

It wasn't defined by what skills and abilities they had.

Exactly...I see people talk a lot about the lack of character "customization" in OSR games. My feeling is that a character can be as customized as you like, but its defined by what you bring to the table and what you do in the game, not a menu of pre-written options. "Every fighter is the same" is only true if you only have one way of imagining and playing a fighter.

Right, but why B/X? What about it, in particular, made it the one that has drawn all this current attention?

To my understanding, initially the most popular retroclone was OSRIC, simply because people wanted to keep playing and publishing for the game they were playing (AD&D). As people started to think about principles of old school play, they found AD&D to have too much cruft and detail, and thus went back to OD&D and Basic. Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and OSE were all popular basic dnd retroclones; OSE was the only one that didn't add any house rules other than optional ascending armor class.

Now I think OSE is popular because of the quality of the presentation and the books and because Necrotic Gnome makes really good adventures and settings. Swords and Wizardry has a contingent of followers. However, I think all of the interesting stuff is happening in the New School Revolution ("NSR"), with Knave and Into the Odd and various derivations of those.