Recent content by SpellObjectEnthusiast

The one thing about old school games that is true of all tables is that everyone's table will be different than everyone else's.

Basically, the 'player skill' focused OSR mentality (as popularized by Matt Finch's Primer written in 2008) is a fairly recent invention. The original 1970s-80s game/adventure designers did not really intend their games to be played in that specific way. So lots of old school adventures have...

Time is a flat circle.

The genre books are genuinely good resources even if you never run a Cypher system game specifically.

While this looks great, I gotta imagine the disappointment a new player would go through going from this to paper sheets. Modular, component-heavy, and intuitive character boards to clunky, boring, and number-dense character sheets. Plus, after level 1 tons of character stuff that won't even...

Basic D&D is more compatible with AD&D than AD&D is with itself.

Yes, broadly competent characters tend to work best when you have a narrow campaign frame, like dungeon delving.

Generally the more you define skills and specific actions in your ruleset, the more 'incompetent' PCs become. If you have no skills or statistics, anyone can try to do anything with reasonably similar success chance.

This rule applies specifically to 'stowed' items, which should only be the <4 bulk of items that you keep in your backpack. Consumables should always be considered 'worn' and can be retrieved with a single action. The only limitation on 'worn' items is that you cannot wear more than 2 Bulk of...

Great question. This has never stopped OSR fans in the past and never will.

Lots of OSR-sphere GMs don't want character statistics to be used to resolve actions at all, ever. I've seen a number of people who prefer any roll to be an x in 6 or a percentile with no influence from a character's ability scores. They will decide solely on whether an action is reasonably...

Absolutely agree with that. But i think a lot of people like that bias and playing to their GMs whims rather than having to engage with rules.

Part of what is implied by "Skilled Play" is that the player choice can, when the player is clever/prepared/creative enough in their choices, they can fully bypass the "relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die" entirely. You want to avoid using the rules, because...

If someone doesn't get one-shot in the first session are you really playing dnd? Maybe I've been running too much OSE

My previous campaigns have all started at level 3. I think next time I run one I'll definitely start at 1.