D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts

[Arilyn]

I play a variety of games from Brindlewood Bay to A5e. I enjoy OSR games because of the simpler rulesets and character creation. There's a bubbling over of really creative ideas coming from the OSR. I love the zines that get us many many hours of play from a booklet.

Just going through the reviews on Questing Beast will demonstrate a very wide amount of games, content and styles.

A good recent example is His Majesty the Worm." Very unique Tarot card resolution system that is not just cards instead of dice rolls. It's really cool.

 

[TiQuinn]

It was not. Vampires (like Balrogs, Wizards and Giants) appear on the level 6 encounter table (the highest one in Book III The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures ), and you have to be on at least the third level of the dungeon to have those show up randomly. But certainly you can easily encounter really dangerous stuff if you venture a couple of levels down.

Sorry, not vampire - a wraith. Also lycanthropes, wights, and gargoyles were possible. Point is it could be randomly deadly.

 

[Remathilis]

Your hostility is palpable and it tastes nasty and toxic. It's not about knowing or not knowing. It's not about simple single answers either. However, I did ask "why there are people who played 5e D&D, particularly those who came into the hobby with 5e D&D, who feel in good faith that they can't get the same experience out of D&D 5e that they do from the OSR" (emphasis mine), and I don't really believe that you are answering that question.

I believe that people are genuine in their look at the OSR. I don't believe that it's all about anti-WotC sentiment as I do know that Kelsey Dionne was in the OSR scene before that and working on Shadowdark before the OGL fiasco. I believe that the same is also true for Bob World Builder who was budding out before the aforementioned anti-WotC sentiment. It's not as if the OSR only became appealing to people after WotC various muck-ups. There were a fair number of OSR products winning ENnies before that. Again, I assume that most people in our hobby are pursuing their interests in this hobby in good faith. It would be nice if you weren't just assuming the worst about these people and why they may be attracted to the OSR.

You asked me why two people, who I know little next to nothing about, would stop supporting 5e and go OSR. I said I didn't know and I presumed you would tell me. You didn't know and demanded I give an answer. So I gave an answer worthy of the question you asked. For what its worth, I don't think it was true of either of them, but since you asked for an answer, I gave one.

The fact you cannot stand even an ounce of criticism about your beloved OS movement has made everyone who isn't full-throatedly supporting it a hater. There is nothing further that can be made of this conversation that won't just be passive aggressive sniping, so I'm ending it here.

 

[Aldarc]

The fact you cannot stand even an ounce of criticism about your beloved OS movement has made everyone who isn't full-throatedly supporting it a hater. There is nothing further that can be made of this conversation that won't just be passive aggressive sniping, so I'm ending it here.

LOL. You forget that I criticized "why combat is a fail state" and "the answer is not on your character sheet" when I posted in this thread. I don't know why you have such a bitter chip on your shoulder about the OSR but it makes it unfavorably colors your discussion in this thread. There are other critics of the OSR movement and its principles in this thread who aren't so hostile to OSR as you seem to be. The only ones that I have an issue with are those that unfavorably characterize the people and and maligning their motives for playing OSR games.

 

[Shardstone]

I don't necessarily agree so I guess that your accusation applies to me. So please tell me more directly about how the only explanation is because I refuse to try the advice in 5e D&D, that I'm just stuck in my ways, and that it's just one of my hang-ups from 3e/4e D&D. You clearly don't mind making condemning generalizations about people who may disagree with you. Come on, Shardstone, please rudely insult me and others some more with your broad brush accusation here.

All of this is to say that I believe that your argument would be better received if you avoided such broad accusations as in the bold that risk making things personal and that you would probably be better off retracting it.


I'm not actually sure that there has been a convergence of dungeon design. I don't really think that it has been sufficiently demonstrated. It's mostly be a fairly, dare I say shallow, assertion that they are the same because they lack "gotchas" or that the D&D and OSR parties may both be the same level as the dungeon. And it seems motivated by a fairly open, if not embittered, desire to discredit the originality and uniqueness of the OSR and its associated playstyles.

Was not my intention to rudely insult, apologies.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It was not. Vampires (like Balrogs, Wizards and Giants) appear on the level 6 encounter table (the highest one in Book III The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures ), and you have to be on at least the third level of the dungeon to have those show up randomly. But certainly you can easily encounter really dangerous stuff if you venture a couple of levels down.

Oh, definitely. I just thought that specific monster was reserved for higher than "1st Level Dungeon areas".

I always figured that was assuming that the DM was the only person who'd have a copy of the rules, but it may have also been a holdover from how Dave Arneson ran the game back then.

Even without the rules, rolling 3D6 in the row and placing them didn't seem hard. I'd never even realized it was intended to be the case (I never saw anyone do it that way) until I happened to be skimming those old rules a few months ago.

We know from other sources that he preferred to keep the rules relatively opaque to the players, and sometimes even experimented with running as a kind of black box, where he physically hid himself so the players had to rely on their imagination and the info he gave them verbally, without reference to even his facial expressions.

Well, he was coming in from a different gaming tradition.

 

[EthanSental]

I think every gamers has had aspirations at one time or another of tweaking what they like or don’t like in a game, 1e,2e, 3e, 5e, pathfinder, insert your favorite game here and a creator who then “makes” their own game out the house rules they like. I’ve mashed 2e with MERP in the past and thought I was the greatest designer as my group loved it….it was 1992 and didn’t have social media to back my idea on a crowdfunding platform. So that desire to create what they like or think is better isn’t a condemnation of the base game that got them started but a natural progression most have done in our own homebrew games. I followed Kelsey during her 5e stuff but the OSR doesn’t appeal to me anymore but I’m glad she took her ideas and made the game she and many others like. I still like and prefer 5e.