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

[pemerton]

Yeah, that right there is the fundamental, inoperable division I can never reconcile. If the PC is just my avatar in the game, he's a toon (in the MMO sense) and will be treated as such. His name will be Tanks For The Memories and his personality is "ROFL".

And thus we get Bigby, Rigby and Digby; Tenser and Serten; Yrag and Xagyg; Drawmij; the Medium, Rary; Melf the Male Elf; etc.

It's not as if Gygaxian D&D, in the artefacts of play that are left to us, presents itself as something other than what it was.

I can't get past the idea that playing a character isn't actually playing a character. I don't give names and backstories to the chess pieces when I play because the epic battle between two armies of knights, queens and kings aren't the important part, the ability to outthink and outmanoeuvre my opponents using my pieces is.

Maybe that's why I can't understand it: I can't accept that Remathilis is just my pawn piece in the game rather than an actual fictional character with his own life and story.

I don't think Bigby, Rigby and Digby had very exciting backstories prior to being brought into play.

And what do we know about Erac's Cousin, other than that he is the cousin of Erac?

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, that right there is the fundamental, inoperable division I can never reconcile. If the PC is just my avatar in the game, he's a toon (in the MMO sense) and will be treated as such. His name will be Tanks For The Memories and his personality is "ROFL". I can't get past the idea that playing a character isn't actually playing a character. I don't give names and backstories to the chess pieces when I play because the epic battle between two armies of knights, queens and kings aren't the important part, the ability to outthink and outmanoeuvre my opponents using my pieces is.

Maybe that's why I can't understand it: I can't accept that Remathilis is just my pawn piece in the game rather than an actual fictional character with his own life and story.

I mean at this point you're just asking questions and then taking the answers and turning them into a bit of a straw man and going "oh I hate that."

We've answered multiple times in this thread why a) that sort of disposability isn't really the norm in many games, and b) why people think that element of risk and growth through overcoming challenges and stuff defining your character is actually really attractive.

 

[pemerton]

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 could be wrong, but my feeling is that the approach you suggest will not make for very satisfying table-top play. The essence of TTRPGing is the shared fiction, and in "rules light" OSR-ish play, the collection and deployment of information mostly take place by directly engaging the fiction (and relying on the GM to adjudicate it fairly).

 

[Remathilis]

The Moldvay rulebook tells all players to read chapter 6, the monster chapter. The AD&D Monster Manual discourages players from referring to it during play.

The hostility to "trolls are vulnerable to fire" type stuff that you're talking about all comes out of "storytelling" norms, not "skilled play" norms. Players using their hard-earned knowledge to become better at beating the dungeon is precisely what "skilled play" is about. (The solo version of this, for me at least, is Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.)

and like I said, it was the norm several years ago that "This behavior should always be discouraged, because it detracts from real role-playing and spoils the suspension of disbelief." (DMG 3.5, p11). Both the 3.5, 4e, and 5e DMG discourage it. Google "metagame thinking" and you will get dozens of forum posts and blogs advising how to avoid it. "But good actually" wasn't common belief*, and I certainly hadn't heard it described as such until this thread.

* Thats not to say unheard of, Gary certainly felt it was a useful tool, but even he had his limits.

 

[EthanSental]

Thanks for the list of OSR modules up thread. Picked up 2 pdf versions and going to use the story and weave into my 5e game in the next couple sessions.

 

[Aldarc]

Yeah, that right there is the fundamental, inoperable division I can never reconcile. If the PC is just my avatar in the game, he's a toon (in the MMO sense) and will be treated as such. His name will be Tanks For The Memories and his personality is "ROFL". I can't get past the idea that playing a character isn't actually playing a character. I don't give names and backstories to the chess pieces when I play because the epic battle between two armies of knights, queens and kings aren't the important part, the ability to outthink and outmanoeuvre my opponents using my pieces is.

Maybe that's why I can't understand it: I can't accept that Remathilis is just my pawn piece in the game rather than an actual fictional character with his own life and story.

The 5e adventure path doesn’t care about my character as an actual fictional character with his own life and story either. They are an easily replaceable, interchangeable cog in the AP machine. All their hopes, dreams, ambitions, goals, and history will be subsumed and promptly ignored by the AP. I may as well play an MMO where my character is riding the story train to its predetermined stops and destination. Is my character just a pawn as well?

 

[Remathilis]

The 5e adventure path doesn’t care about my character as an actual fictional character with his own life and story either. They are an easily replaceable, interchangeable cog in the AP machine. All their hopes, dreams, ambitions, goals, and history will be subsumed and promptly ignored by the AP. I may as well play an MMO where my character is riding the story train to its predetermined stops and destination. Is my character just a pawn as well?

If you're asking my opinion on Adventure Paths, you're not going to find a particularly high one. I run them out of sheer convenience and highly modify them to fit the players' characters (I also announce them in advance so players can tailor their characters to work with it).

But that's the problem of any module. I mean, Temple of Elemental Evil didn't care, nor did Keep on the Borderlands or Tomb of Horrors. That problem didn't start with APs, it started with B1.

 

[Malmuria]

If you want to see an example of an OS campaign that is none-the-less epic in scope with deep character attachment, check out Runehammer's Old School Essentials campaign recaps. He ran a 30-40ish session campaign that started at level 1 and ended with a fight against a dragon, playing in a version of the Blackmoor setting. Lots of good GM advice in there too. It's a fallacy to suggest that epic stories and old school play can't coexist.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you want to see an example of an OS campaign that is none-the-less epic in scope with deep character attachment, check out Runehammer's Old School Essentials campaign recaps. He ran a 30-40ish session campaign that started at level 1 and ended with a fight against a dragon, playing in a version of the Blackmoor setting. Lots of good GM advice in there too. It's a fallacy to suggest that epic stories and old school play can't coexist.

@SlyFlourish's Shadowdark campaign also got crazy epic really fast. It's detailed on the podcast/YouTube page in the recap episodes.

 

[mamba]

To get some data into this discussion, Questing Beast had a video on TTRPG Kickstarters a while ago


In it he looks at the last 10 years of KS and categorizes TTRPGs into OSR, 5e and 'rest' and says that for the last 5 years (with the last year being 2023) the OSR grew at a higher percentage rate than 5e did and in 2023 5e accounted for half of all TTRPG KS with the OSR getting 1/3 of the rest and everything else 2/3s

The video also links to his spreadsheets with the data