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

[Micah Sweet]

However, if you want to sell me that includes everything in the OSR, its going to be hard going.

Same with everything in modern gaming.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And parts combine perfectly fine with each other and with more modern ideas. The suggestion that everything old school is utterly incompatible with everything in more modern design ideas is simply ludicrous.

Who suggested that? No one here as far as I can tell.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Same with everything in modern gaming.

When did I ever suggest otherwise? This is coming across seriously as you trying to pick a fight. If that's what you want, do it with someone else.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Who suggested that? No one here as far as I can tell.

The poster I responded to did specifically that through the chain of responses, since his first one was about OSR rejecting modern design. Would you like me to give you the post number?

 

[Oligopsony]

In the old GDS/GNS senses of the term, OSR - and this includes not just the big tomes like WWN or OSRIC but the little pamphlet-length games like Cairn and the “no written rules at all” wing in the FKR - is very and explicitly simulationist. That is, the game is supposed to simulate “what would happen” in the imagined parallel reality, fictional events driving fictional events, rather than, say, game balance or plot structure. It’s just that OSR philosophy tends to trust GM intuitions about what would happen over what a designer could codify in a rulebook.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In the old GDS/GNS senses of the term, OSR - and this includes not just the big tomes like WWN or OSRIC but the little pamphlet-length games like Cairn and the “no written rules at all” wing in the FKR - is very and explicitly simulationist. That is, the game is supposed to simulate “what would happen” in the imagined parallel reality, fictional events driving fictional events, rather than, say, game balance or plot structure. It’s just that OSR philosophy tends to trust GM intuitions about what would happen over what a designer could codify in a rulebook.

I think the latter part of that is, again, only makes sense if you exclude a lot of games that at least at times have been considered OSR. "Rulings not rules" is not a universal description of rules in that category. Traveler hardly leaned into that particularly heavily, for example.

 

[DammitVictor]

The suggestion that everything old school is utterly incompatible with everything in more modern design ideas is simply ludicrous.

Point blank, the best sources for practically limitless content-- any kind of content-- for specific OSR games isn't the OSR itself, it's the third-party ecosystems for PF1 and 5e. It just takes more effort to translate and implement than the pure stuff.

Of course, a lot of the best OSR stuff is also stuff that other OSR designers have translated from WotC/Paizo to old school language, and then implemented in Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials or Swords & Wizardry.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Point blank, the best sources for practically limitless content-- any kind of content-- for specific OSR games isn't the OSR itself, it's the third-party ecosystems for PF1 and 5e. It just takes more effort to translate and implement than the pure stuff.

Of course, a lot of the best OSR stuff is also stuff that other OSR designers have translated from WotC/Paizo to old school language, and then implemented in Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials or Swords & Wizardry.

I've mentioned Cepheus Deluxe several times here. Its an excellent game that grabs most of the best of Traveler while working around things that are a more mixed bag.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Interesting. I wonder where the line between new OSR game and Old School Fantasy Heartbreaker is.

Maybe it's just that gatekeeping rarely has clearly defined boundaries.

Dunno.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Point blank, the best sources for practically limitless content-- any kind of content-- for specific OSR games isn't the OSR itself, it's the third-party ecosystems for PF1 and 5e. It just takes more effort to translate and implement than the pure stuff.

The breadth of the ideas in the OSR is far, far wider than the third party stuff for 5E and Pathfinder.