OSR Does "Old School" in OSR only apply to D&D?

[Reynard]

I think one difference is that while some folks are reacting to either WOTC's business practices or modern D&D gameplay changes, lots of older games don't have that baggage.

If I want to play Call of Cthulhu, well, whether I use 1E or 6E, there isn't much difference. Modern RQ is basically RQ 2E. And the Traveller experience isn't too different whether I'm playing Mongoose 2E or LBB (though some folks prefer the slimness of the originals). WFRP 4E is more rules-heavy than 1E, but Cubicle7 have really leaned into the original game (and focused heavily on the old Enemy Within adventures). All of these are 'old-school' games, but it seems silly to call them Renaissance games as they have stayed similar for most of their lives (no, we are not going to talk about WFRP 3E...).

This explanation sort of asks the question of whether the OSR is a play movement or a design movement.

 

[payn]

This explanation sort of asks the question of whether the OSR is a play movement or a design movement.

 

[Bill Zebub]

...and tomorrow we are going to precisely define the difference between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter"!

 

[Mannahnin]

This explanation sort of asks the question of whether the OSR is a play movement or a design movement.

It is both, though the emergence of the retroclones was emblematic of the desire to create within the community, and there was a quasi-Golden Age in the late 2000s, early 2010s when a ton of content was being pumped out for free on the blogs, before the movement broadly shifted to publishing saleable content and OSR became more of a marketing category.

 

[Reynard]

It is both, though the emergence of the retroclones was emblematic of the desire to create within the community, and there was a quasi-Golden Age in the late 2000s, early 2010s when a ton of content was being pumped out for free on the blogs, before the movement broadly shifted to publishing saleable content and OSR became more of a marketing category.

Must a game have the 6 basic attributes to be OSR? And if it does, is that sufficient regardless of the actual systems invovled? Stars Without Number and Knave are both OSR games and feel very different.

I know some people that would call Dungeon World an OSR game, which doesn't seem right. People call DCC a OSR game, which does.

If you play AD&D with your original books, are you playing an OSR game? What if you run a 5E adventure converted to AD&D?

I know this all theoretical. I'm just curious what people think. I am not making an argument.

 

[payn]

Must a game have the 6 basic attributes to be OSR? And if it does, is that sufficient regardless of the actual systems invovled? Stars Without Number and Knave are both OSR games and feel very different.

I know some people that would call Dungeon World an OSR game, which doesn't seem right. People call DCC a OSR game, which does.

Forbidden Lands only has 4 attributes and plays and feels very OSR. Resource management survival sim skill play. However, it does not look much like D&D. Although, its important to note FL was released in 2018. Going back to your question about player movement or design philosophy, I think its shifted. Originally it was about playing old school D&D, but that has morphed as the player movement has grown within the philosophy. Which is why OSR is discussed as a thing, instead of being discussed as if it was a thing.

If you play AD&D with your original books, are you playing an OSR game? What if you run a 5E adventure converted to AD&D?

I know this all theoretical. I'm just curious what people think. I am not making an argument.

Id wonder about motive here. You either want OSR play style, or you never played it and are curious about the experience by playing AD&D. You could be doing the latter with 5E just becasue of ease of material and virtual tools available.

 

[Mannahnin]

Must a game have the 6 basic attributes to be OSR? And if it does, is that sufficient regardless of the actual systems invovled? Stars Without Number and Knave are both OSR games and feel very different.

I know some people that would call Dungeon World an OSR game, which doesn't seem right. People call DCC a OSR game, which does.

DCC does not. This has been a point of debate at least since DCC (2012) chose to use a different set of six, retaining only two of the classic six (although two more are mostly synonymous terms). I don't think there's any consensus, although the coinage "nuSR" for games which make substantial innovations away from TSR mechanics is indicative that a least a fair sub-set have reservations about it. That being said, those games definitely fall within the broad marketing umbrella.

If you play AD&D with your original books, are you playing an OSR game?

Subjective. The books are simply an Old School game. But your game at your table might be OSR in philosophy or alignment ( )if your intent is to revive interest and understanding of the old game, and/or if your DMing is consciously informed by insights and ideas from the OSR movement.

As an example, when I was a kid I bought into a lot of the arguments that XP for Gold was dumb. That it made no sense from a diegetic perspective. The concept of xp for finding a magic item was equally nonsensical. Coming back to older editions through reading OSR blogs and forums, my perspective changed and I became much more open to the elements of genre emulation through mechanics and of incentivizing player behavior through the reward structure. When I run B/X it's definitely using and informed by ideas from the OSR movement, even though B/X itself is simply an old game. But a grognard who never left AD&D in the first place might object if I describe his table/house game as OSR- his has not been revived, it's simply endured!

What if you run a 5E adventure converted to AD&D?

Again for me the deciding factor would be whether the conversion and play were influenced by Renaissance ideas. If our aforementioned Grognard who never left 1E saw a copy of Curse of Strahd on a store shelf and decided to convert it to AD&D because he enjoyed the original Castle Ravenloft, that (by my standards) would probably just be Old School.

 

[Reynard]

DCC does not. This has been a point of debate at least since DCC (2012) chose to use a different set of six, retaining only two of the classic six (although two more are mostly synonymous terms). I don't think there's any consensus, although the coinage "nuSR" for games which make substantial innovations away from TSR mechanics is indicative that a least a fair sub-set have reservations about it. That being said, those games definitely fall within the broad marketing umbrella.


Subjective. The books are simply an Old School game. But your game at your table might be OSR in philosophy or alignment ( )if your intent is to revive interest and understanding of the old game, and/or if your DMing is consciously informed by insights and ideas from the OSR movement.

As an example, when I was a kid I bought into a lot of the arguments that XP for Gold was dumb. That it made no sense from a diegetic perspective. The concept of xp for finding a magic item was equally nonsensical. Coming back to older editions through reading OSR blogs and forums, my perspective changed and I became much more open to the elements of genre emulation through mechanics and of incentivizing player behavior through the reward structure. When I run B/X it's definitely using and informed by ideas from the OSR movement, even though B/X itself is simply an old game. But a grognard who never left AD&D in the first place might object if I describe his table/house game as OSR- his has not been revived, it's simply endured!


Again for me the deciding factor would be whether the conversion and play were influenced by Renaissance ideas. If our aforementioned Grognard who never left 1E saw a copy of Curse of Strahd on a store shelf and decided to convert it to AD&D because he enjoyed the original Castle Ravenloft, that (by my standards) would probably just be Old School.

So if you play a completely different system (1990s Deadlands, so, just to pick something at random) in an OSR way, are you playing an OSR game?

 

[Mannahnin]

So if you play a completely different system (1990s Deadlands, so, just to pick something at random) in an OSR way, are you playing an OSR game?

I can't recall having seen any discussion of Deadlands in OSR circles, but it's certainly possible to incorporate ideas from the OSR movement into a wide variety of RPGs.

I'm thinking of random encounters, for example. There was a great blog article I'm half remembering about a classic Boot Hill module which made innovative use of random encounters in that instead of just being Wandering Monsters, most of the encounters were with interesting NPCs who had important roles/positions to play in the "plot" of what was happening in the module. The concept of Random Encounters being a good mechanic to randomly introduce roleplaying and intrigue and information gathering, not just dangerous monsters for dungeon resource attrition, is definitely applicable to games very different from D&D.

From an "I know it when I see it" standpoint, though, I don't think I'd generally consider playing Deadlands to be an OSR activity any more than I would playing Call of Cthulhu.

 

[Reynard]

I can't recall having seen any discussion of Deadlands in OSR circles, but it's certainly possible to incorporate ideas from the OSR movement into a wide variety of RPGs.

I'm thinking of random encounters, for example. There was a great blog article I'm half remembering about a classic Boot Hill module which made innovative use of random encounters in that instead of just being Wandering Monsters, most of the encounters were with interesting NPCs who had important roles/positions to play in the "plot" of what was happening in the module. The concept of Random Encounters being a good mechanic to randomly introduce roleplaying and intrigue and information gathering, not just dangerous monsters for dungeon resource attrition, is definitely applicable to games very different from D&D.

From an "I know it when I see it" standpoint, though, I don't think I'd generally consider playing Deadlands to be an OSR activity any more than I would playing Call of Cthulhu.

On the one hand, I guess confining OSR to D&D and its close relatives allows the term to maintain some distinct meaning when discussing types of games.

On the other hand, using OSR as a playstyle description, it does not make any sense to confine it to games that are within X distance of D&D, system wise.

What if we had a different term for the playstyle itself. What could we call following the tenets of the Old School Primer regardless of game system, new or old?