OSR Why does OSR Design Draw You In?

[Celebrim]

Nostalgia.

I love capturing the vibe of the game back when I was a kid and everything about RPGs felt magical and cool. That's why I often find myself designing OSR style house rules and revisions and even scenarios for 1e AD&D... even though I have absolutely no intention of ever running a game using those mechanics again.

 

[Celebrim]

In contrast, more rules lite games like most OSR games default to "well, what makes sense," while having a real sense of peril.

I get it, but just like back in the 1980s, I find that "well, what makes sense" in practice involves playing to the referee or the table or the meta rather than to the fiction.

I had no problem whatsoever with scary dungeon crawls in 3e D&D and while I have famously or infamously got a lot of house rules for 3e, the game looks nothing like an OSR rules lite game run heavily by GM fiat and rulings, nor is the fact that my rules let you have 1st level characters with like 29 hit points (although 15-20 would be more typical) anything like having 1st level M-Us with two hit points and one spell.

I don't need to push down the players/PCs to a helpless lack of resources to challenge them. Green slime, swarms of scarab beetles, giant crayfish, and troglodyte cultists will handle that nicely.

 

[Retreater]

Oh neat, that's different for sure. Has she played Draw Steel yet?

She hasn't. I think she'd like it and she's interested based on what she's heard.
But I haven't been able to get it to the table yet. I'm not sure if I have the mental capacity to do so.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I get it, but just like back in the 1980s, I find that "well, what makes sense" in practice involves playing to the referee or the table or the meta rather than to the fiction.

I'm sorry about your tables.

I had no problem whatsoever with scary dungeon crawls in 3e D&D and while I have famously or infamously got a lot of house rules for 3e, the game looks nothing like an OSR rules lite game run heavily by GM fiat and rulings, nor is the fact that my rules let you have 1st level characters with like 29 hit points (although 15-20 would be more typical) anything like having 1st level M-Us with two hit points and one spell.

I don't need to push down the players/PCs to a helpless lack of resources to challenge them. Green slime, swarms of scarab beetles, giant crayfish, and troglodyte cultists will handle that nicely.

I was not speaking on your behalf, only on @GothmogIV's, as I said.

As per the thread title, I was posting about why OSR draws me in.

 

[Fenris-77]

There's something nice about dungeons in particular. They are nice self-contained spaces with hard boundaries to hold neat stuff to encounter. Plus with a myuthic underworld approach, common to many OSR systems, you can get wild and strange without much in the way of external logic. IDK, itæs fun. More generally, I like the simplicity and elegance of a good OSR system for design work, they allow me to focus on the moving diegetic parts without having to crunch too many numbers.

 

[Xenolith234]

People typically are referring to OD&D and the Basic series when they say Old School was simpler, not AD&D and definitely not AD&D second edition. If they do use ad&d as a reference point, they ignore like 90% of the rules as optional.

Old school was birthed in 1974 and died at your choice of (pick one or more):
-when Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman ruined everything
-when Greyhawk added thieves
-when Frank Mentzer ruined everything
-when they added non-weapon proficiencies to d&d
-when Lorraine Williams ruined everything
-when players started actually learning the rules
-when WotC ruined everything

That must mean that the old-school is coming back since players often don't learn the rules anymore

 

[Fenris-77]

That must mean that the old-school is coming back since players often don't learn the rules anymore

No, a lot of them just die. Very sad.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No, a lot of them just die. Very sad.

Yeah, a lot of looking at the character sheets after that first hideous death, in my experience.

"Huh, so our hit points are about the same as the average damage of a longsword? That changes things ..."

 

[TheAlkaizer]

There's some elements of OSR that I really like. There's others that I don't care about.

I really like the tendency to have lighter rulesets that allow more freedom to adjudicate during play. I also really like that it's a more consequential type of play (which is a more apt description than saying that it's deadly). I also generally really like the buzzing activity and creativity that comes from all the works of the OSR. It's the richest environment I found. Big books and bigger publisher have bored me to death in the last few years.

One thing I don't care that much about is the emphasis on player skill versus character skill. I understand the essence behind it, and I definitely don't disagree. But I very much like skills and having constrained characters. So I tend to lean towards thicker OSR products that have a bit more options to them.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, a lot of looking at the character sheets after that first hideous death, in my experience.

"Huh, so our hit points are about the same as the average damage of a longsword? That changes things ..."

It really does. The whole Doctor Who approach gets a lot more attractive.