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

[Velderan]

To add to that…
Waking of Willowby Hall.
Hole in the Oak.
Tomb of the Serpent Kings.
The Stygian Library.
Dark of Hot Springs Island.
Dead Planet and Another Bug Hunt for Mothership.

About half of the DCC RPG modules. Includes, but is not limited to…

Sailors on the Starless Sea. Frozen in Time. Peril on the Purple Planet. People of the Pit. Blades Against Death. The Croaking Fane. Against the Atomic Overlord. Moon Slaves of the Cannibal Kingdom.

Just about anything from Michael Curtis or Harley Stroh.

Hole in the Oak combined with the Incandescent Grottoes seems like it would be a fun combination. No idea how the end result would actually turn out from an exp/treasure perspective, but it certainly would give the players some options on how to approach the available areas to explore.

 

[Pedantic]

In OSR, it's orthogonal thinking; understanding what all the adventurer's kit can do; learning how to ask questions that are actionable about the world. Again, a skillset.

Pulling this quote out because it keeps coming up in OSR discussions and is a consistent point of frustration for me looking in from the outside; this sounds great, I want play to revolve around getting information, building out a strategy and trying to advance it to most effectively overcome problems and all that.

The problem is that this is always paired with rules light systems, and usually comes with the standard "stop looking at your character sheet" and "we're so tired of looking up rules" points, and no game seems to be interested in doing this alongside a detailed "rules for everything" approach. I consistently feel like I'm missing some link in the chain of logic that where those things are in conflict.

 

[Velderan]

I started with the AD&D 2e hardcovers and didn't understand them for years. My "basic set" was HeroQuest.
I've still not played AD&D 1e, B/X, BECMI, etc.

Out of curiosity, do you remember how many of the optional rules were used when you first started playing 2e? You've mentioned dice fudging in previous threads, but I'm curious if your table used things like the "Hovering on Death's Door" optional rule immediately or did you do something else to handle dying? Exp for gold? Non-weapon proficiencies?

The reason I mention this is it seems like 2e frequently gets categorized as not being OSR because of the shift that happened during the edition towards more story driven campaigns, or at least that's what was largely being sold by TSR in published modules. My play experience largely reflects that as we got more into playing, but I will say our entry point into 2e where we didn't use any optional rules probably resembles a game that is closer to a OSR style dungeon crawl. 3d6 down the line and you made whatever character you could, you died at 0 HP, monsters used morale to decide how they would approach the party instead of defaulting to a scripted hostile or friendly, we tracked resources, energy drain took levels, save or die and so on. Much like the products TSR sold, our campaigns eventually shifted in tone as we added more optional rules from the PHB and DMG in but the point of my ramblings is if you play 2e out of the box with only 1 optional rule (exp for gold), you get a game that is very typical in tone to what I frequently hear people describe their B/X or 1e games. Or at least that was my early experience playing 2e.

 

[Retreater]

Out of curiosity, do you remember how many of the optional rules did you use when you first started playing 2e? You've mentioned dice fudging in previous threads, but I'm curious if your table used things like the "Hovering on Death's Door" optional rule immediately or did you do something else to handle dying? Exp for gold? Non-weapon proficiencies?

I experimented with many of the optional rules throughout my time with 2E.
By the time my games and style were most established, we regularly used Deaths Door, Weapon Speed Factor, numerous Kits from the splats.
We also had some players who made extremely imbalanced characters. I remember a fighter who used Singing Sticks to parry multiple attacks a round, basically just moving to the boss creature and negating all damage. And then a guy who played a psionicist built from a multitude of splats including Dark Sun books - who could powerfully change reality and teleport the party from low level.

 

[Velderan]

I experimented with many of the optional rules throughout my time with 2E.
By the time my games and style were most established, we regularly used Deaths Door, Weapon Speed Factor, numerous Kits from the splats.
We also had some players who made extremely imbalanced characters. I remember a fighter who used Singing Sticks to parry multiple attacks a round, basically just moving to the boss creature and negating all damage. And then a guy who played a psionicist built from a multitude of splats including Dark Sun books - who could powerfully change reality and teleport the party from low level.

But did you start that way or do you remember if you largely played without optional rules to learn how the game works? I'm curious if your early 2e experience was similar to mine or if the dice fudging you mentioned in another thread was a larger factor.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Pulling this quote out because it keeps coming up in OSR discussions and is a consistent point of frustration for me looking in from the outside; this sounds great, I want play to revolve around getting information, building out a strategy and trying to advance it to most effectively overcome problems and all that.

The problem is that this is always paired with rules light systems, and usually comes with the standard "stop looking at your character sheet" and "we're so tired of looking up rules" points, and no game seems to be interested in doing this alongside a detailed "rules for everything" approach. I consistently feel like I'm missing some link in the chain of logic that where those things are in conflict.

I don't think OSR and rules-light are necessarily married (perhaps just seeing each other and having fun together). There are heavier OSR games.

 

[Remathilis]

The answer to all these questions is yes - Gygaxian "skilled play" takes it for granted that players, as they gain more experience and familiarity with the game, will exploit tropes and their hard-earned knowledge to do better. That's why tricks, new traps, new and ever-more baroque monsters, etc are such a key part of early D&D.

Which begs the question on when Metagaming became a naughty word. I recall as early as 2e the notion that a player should not be using knowledge his character would not have. A player may know trolls = fire, but does Gustav, his fighter know that? Because growing up in the 90's and aughts for playing, that was intentionally discouraged. It was one step below players opening the monster manual during play or reading ahead in the module. Your going have to to forgive my disbelief that "metagaming is good actually" is anything but revisionist...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which begs the question on when Metagaming became a naughty word. I recall as early as 2e the notion that a player should not be using knowledge his character would not have. A player may know trolls = fire, but does Gustav, his fighter know that? Because growing up in the 90's and aughts for playing, that was intentionally discouraged. It was one step below players opening the monster manual during play or reading ahead in the module. Your going have to to forgive my disbelief that "metagaming is good actually" is anything but revisionist...

How one feels about metagaming is nothing more than personal preference. If you want to regularly use player knowledge your PC doesn't have, more power to you.

 

[Remathilis]

Out of curiosity, do you remember how many of the optional rules were used when you first started playing 2e? You've mentioned dice fudging in previous threads, but I'm curious if your table used things like the "Hovering on Death's Door" optional rule immediately or did you do something else to handle dying? Exp for gold? Non-weapon proficiencies?

The reason I mention this is it seems like 2e frequently gets categorized as not being OSR because of the shift that happened during the edition towards more story driven campaigns, or at least that's what was largely being sold by TSR in published modules. My play experience largely reflects that as we got more into playing, but I will say our entry point into 2e where we didn't use any optional rules probably resembles a game that is closer to a OSR style dungeon crawl. 3d6 down the line and you made whatever character you could, you died at 0 HP, monsters used morale to decide how they would approach the party instead of defaulting to a scripted hostile or friendly, we tracked resources, energy drain took levels, save or die and so on. Much like the products TSR sold, our campaigns eventually shifted in tone as we added more optional rules from the PHB and DMG in but the point of my ramblings is if you play 2e out of the box with only 1 optional rule (exp for gold), you get a game that is very typical in tone to what I frequently hear people describe their B/X or 1e games. Or at least that was my early experience playing 2e.

You bring up a very important point in that my experience was a very traditional 90's experience (the Black Box Basic Set -> Rules Cyclopedia -> 2nd editon). Even not knowing all the rules, making stuff up and mixing up Basic and Advanced rules, we almost never played anything like what OS play is described as. While the mechanics of 2e absolutely are built in OS assumptions, the tone and spirit were moving towards a more modernistic/post Hickman Rev style and the two elements were at war with each other with the OS style slipping further and further into memory while the game evolved to better suit the tone it had chosen.

 

[Velderan]

Which begs the question on when Metagaming became a naughty word. I recall as early as 2e the notion that a player should not be using knowledge his character would not have. A player may know trolls = fire, but does Gustav, his fighter know that? Because growing up in the 90's and aughts for playing, that was intentionally discouraged. It was one step below players opening the monster manual during play or reading ahead in the module. Your going have to to forgive my disbelief that "metagaming is good actually" is anything but revisionist...

We always just looked at monster knowledge like that as being commonplace enough that the shopkeepers selling adventuring equipment would take advantage and remind players of things they might need just in case. Just like you probably can’t buy a PC from a store these days without being told you should also buy something for malware, the shopkeeper in a D&D world would be eager to remind you what you might need for trolls just in case.