D&D General 5e D&D to OSR pipeline or circle?

[TwoSix]

Man I hate to say it but this response only really makes sense if you ignore my other post about that included some of the minor rules changes I made.

You don't need to gut or house rule big parts of the game, you just need a handful of minor changes.

I think the system does matter, but I think that 5E's bones are a lot closer to the OSR then any of you are willing to admit. If the OSR is fried chicken, 5E is roasted and it isn't hard to make roasted chicken crispy and delicious.

One comment I want to make: people with opinions like yours and Overgeek's are exactly who I was talking about in my original post when I said people are very resistant to this idea. Like, you guys legit get offended when someone assumes 5E can produce an authentic OSR experience without much change. It makes it feel like I'M not going to get anywhere because you guys are passive aggressively hostile in your lust to tear down 5E as a non-OSR system.

I don't think the argument is that complicated.

Baseline 5e has too many bells and whistles for starting characters, and too many mechanics that work against discardable, fungible PCs, to be played in the "OSR" tradition. ("OSR" here meaning in the Matt Finch primer/Principia manner, not "whatever we did in the '80s.") You can get something approximating if you tear down 5e to the studs and rebuild it (a la Shadowdark.)

But, mainline 5e does a pretty good job approximating AD&D '80s-'90s trad-heavy Hickman revolution heroic play. So if that sort of play is "old school" for you, then sure, 5e is a pretty good replica.

 

[Shardstone]

I don't think the argument is that complicated.

Baseline 5e has too many bells and whistles for starting characters, and too many mechanics that work against discardable, fungible PCs, to be played in the "OSR" tradition. ("OSR" here meaning in the Matt Finch primer/Principia manner, not "whatever we did in the '80s.") You can get something approximating if you tear down 5e to the studs and rebuild it (a la Shadowdark.)

But, mainline 5e does a pretty good job approximating AD&D '80s-'90s trad-heavy Hickman revolution heroic play. So if that sort of play is "old school" for you, then sure, 5e is a pretty good replica.

I disagree. I know what the argument is, I'm not sure why everyone thinks I'm for some reason talking about something I'm not.

When I say OSR, I mean the Principia material. No, I do not think that 5E has too many bells and whistles to play that kind of game.

 

[TiQuinn]

Because you probably played the D&D that I did: a version that emphasizes players being heroes from low level. Hickman Revolution D&D. OSR attempts to recapture a moment in D&D's history prior to Hickman asking why the vampire was in the dungeon. A playstyle that says PCs are Kleenex and you only remember the ones who succeed. You're supposed to go through a pile of Bob the fighters until you get your Sir Robert the XIV, Duke of Furyondy.

Your experiences match mine and match most players. Most people did not play prior to 1982. We played heroes saving the realm because that's what TSR put out after Dragonlance became a hit. It's taken years and a half-dozen revisions to the rules for AD&D to catch up with that style of play.

Yeah, some of us have been playing a long time and still never played quite that way. For instance, my original gaming group always allowed max HP for the first three levels. Why? Because the game was deadly enough without the extra burden of a crap roll on HP right at the start.

I still considered what we were playing to be “old school” compared to 5e / current standards but that would probably fail someone else’s measure of “old school”. So be it.

 

[TwoSix]

I disagree. I know what the argument is, I'm not sure why everyone thinks I'm for some reason talking about something I'm not.

When I say OSR, I mean the Principia material. No, I do not think that 5E has too many bells and whistles to play that kind of game.

Well, that's probably why several people think you're talking about something else; that particular take seems divorced from most of our played experience with 5e.

 

[Remathilis]

I was invited to play B/X with an older group in Vienna. The GM said that it would "old school," and he used his old used B/X and 1e books. I came ready to play, and I intentionally went in with an OSR mindset. I rolled my stats in order. But I also played as if my character was potentially disposable. I put him into the line of danger. I was ready for him to die. I was ready to roll up a new character. Except he never did.

Old school style in this case basically felt like the GM pulling their punches, making stuff up as they went along, and playing it loose with the rules. That experience pretty much dispelled myths I had about how the game was played "old school."

I find the whole"this game is LETHAL! Learn to think outside the box or DIE!" tends to be more bravado than experience. People died, but most of the time it was to bad dice rolls and poor luck than it was to deathtrap dungeons that required Holmes-like thinking to circumvent. DMs knew how to balance encounters by eyeball (an imperfect process, but most DMs could see kobolds were appropriate for low level, giants for higher), dice rolls were fudged, encounters adjusted on the fly, and house rules to aid in survival (Max HP at level 1, negative hp, auto succeed learning spells, etc) got added to ease pain points.

I don't doubt that some people played that hardcore "by the book" but I think the amount of players who didn't far exceed them.

 

[zakael19]

This thread title was about the OSR, a specific fairly modern philosophy of gaming, with a large body of work and thought around it to curate a style of table play. “My table in the early 80s was different” isn’t really a reply to something that’s been consciously created.

The best OSR modules I’ve read are very different from the classic ones in terms of scaffolding for play, because they’re designed to give anybody who opens them the groundwork to create a play experience that matches what the authors and creed espouse.

And “I’ve house ruled 5e to bend it away from the core system design promise in a way that a random dude sitting down with his character won’t expect at all” just kinda further endorses the idea that it’s not well suited for this style to play?

 

[Shardstone]

This thread title was about the OSR, a specific fairly modern philosophy of gaming, with a large body of work and thought around it to curate a style of table play. “My table in the early 80s was different” isn’t really a reply to something that’s been consciously created.

The best OSR modules I’ve read are very different from the classic ones in terms of scaffolding for play, because they’re designed to give anybody who opens them the groundwork to create a play experience that matches what the authors and creed espouse.

And “I’ve house ruled 5e to bend it away from the core system design promise in a way that a random dude sitting down with his character won’t expect at all” just kinda further endorses the idea that it’s not well suited for this style to play?

When you oversimplify someone's argument to just house rules (I made three common changes that are listed in the 2014 DMG lol) to make your argument seem objectively correct, you've lost the plot.

Why can't we ever discuss each other's different perspectives? Why do people have to frame me in bad faith? Why can't you just listen to what I'm saying and realize that your experience isn't the sum total of everyone's experiences? I think this conversation would be much more fun if we all came here to learn from each other, not try to find ways to twist words so as to appear "correct."

Youngest one here and I'm the old man yelling at clouds lol

 

[Aldarc]

I disagree. I know what the argument is, I'm not sure why everyone thinks I'm for some reason talking about something I'm not.

When I say OSR, I mean the Principia material. No, I do not think that 5E has too many bells and whistles to play that kind of game.

And yet a good portion of the OSR community does or else they would likely be playing 5e D&D as an OSR game, but they are not. So it makes you look like you desperately just want 5e D&D to be all things for all types of players, which is IMHO not a good way to go about play or discussion here.

 

[Remathilis]

This thread title was about the OSR, a specific fairly modern philosophy of gaming, with a large body of work and thought around it to curate a style of table play. “My table in the early 80s was different” isn’t really a reply to something that’s been consciously created.

Because the OS in OSR has become false advertising. OSR was originally intended to mimic the older editions of D&D no longer in print, but as it has matured, it's become less about recreating D&D's past and more about creating D&D Hard mode using Gary's long-abandoned advice as justification.

The sale-pitch here gives away the game: OSR wants to strip PCs down to a few moving parts as possible, place them in situations that are designed for lethality (or should I say, intentionally ignoring attempts at balancing) and telling the players the fun is "figuring it out."

And “I’ve house ruled 5e to bend it away from the core system design promise in a way that a random dude sitting down with his character won’t expect at all” just kinda further endorses the idea that it’s not well suited for this style to play?

I'm going to agree with you; if your intention is to simulate a high lethality, hard mode style of play 5e has too many safety nets to allow that. You need a system that depowers your PCs and ramps up the ability to kill them easily to achieve that. If teaching your players not to touch a hot stove is the goal, giving them oven mitts is counter intuitive.

Personally, I'd like to hear about OS games that actually play like D&D WAS played in the 80's but attempts to fix the pain points like PC fragility. A game that simplifies 5e but without losing the consistency of play or injects high-lethality into the mix. Give me some info on those games!

 

[zakael19]

Because the OS in OSR has become false advertising. OSR was originally intended to mimic the older editions of D&D no longer in print, but as it has matured, it's become less about recreating D&D's past and more about creating D&D Hard mode using Gary's long-abandoned advice as justification.

The sale-pitch here gives away the game: OSR wants to strip PCs down to a few moving parts as possible, place them in situations that are designed for lethality (or should I say, intentionally ignoring attempts at balancing) and telling the players the fun is "figuring it out."

I'm going to agree with you; if your intention is to simulate a high lethality, hard mode style of play 5e has too many safety nets to allow that. You need a system that depowers your PCs and ramps up the ability to kill them easily to achieve that. If teaching your players not to touch a hot stove is the goal, giving them oven mitts is counter intuitive.

Personally, I'd like to hear about OS games that actually play like D&D WAS played in the 80's but attempts to fix the pain points like PC fragility. A game that simplifies 5e but without losing the consistency of play or injects high-lethality into the mix. Give me some info on those games!

I’d argue that what OSR has done is created a play culture with new games that are built to facilitate that. “OS” or not: it’s a thing with a philosophy and manifesto and all that jazz.

A good example is probably something like His Majesty the Worm. It’s an unapologetic love letter of a game to the idea of a mega dungeon, but built off the years of OSR thinking about what makes that sort of play fun and interesting and not just “lol you died.” It’s got deep guidance for the DM on how to design dungeons that are neat places, systems set up to make the cycle of exploration -> resource exhaustion -> city -> delve again work naturally together, and an internal world logic that makes everything reasonable.

It also differs greatly from B/X etc in that it has an entirely different resolution system that goes well beyond “I roll to hit” and adds in tons of narrative elements to facilitate characterization. Cool stuff, and a very modern game - designed by a guy my age who’s way too young to have been gaming in the first couple decades so has no rose colored nostalgia.