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

[Micah Sweet]

I’ve been reading your struggles with this as long as you’ve been posting them, and I’m sorry to say this, but it sounds like you and your wife have fundamentally opposite tastes in gaming.

It’s a modern lie that everyone can happily play together. That’s not true. Different people have different tastes. What excites you is boring to her and vice versa.

The only advice I can give is either learn to love the kinds of games your wife wants to play, let her run the games for awhile, or stop playing RPGs with your wife.

I have similar problems with my and my wife's gaming tastes, so I sympathize. She compromises (a little) for me, and I just accept I'm rarely if ever going to game exactly the way I want.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Players will always default to the simplest or most effective method of handling a problem. Typically, people do. If combat solves a problem, they do that. Which is why so much of OSR is about breaking players (via breaking their PCs) of that habit.

Yup. Sounds good to me. Obviously learning a different playstyle than you're used isn't always going to go smoothly.

 

[MerricB]

Because the OS in OSR has become false advertising. OSR was originally intended to mimic the older editions of D&D no longer in print, but as it has matured, it's become less about recreating D&D's past and more about creating D&D Hard mode using Gary's long-abandoned advice as justification.

I think you're wrong - but in a very unusual way.

See, I don't this the OSR knows what it is. Or, more correctly, there are SEVERAL OSRs going on under the banner. You do have the hardcore-mode "We die and we like it" going on, but you also have the "rulings not rules" crew, and several more besides. (Individual groups know what they're doing, but some think other "OSR" groups are also doing the same thing they are - and they're not).

So, when we attempt to describe the OSR, we typically only describe one part of it.

I do think you can find examples where the new designers are including bits of "hard mode" when they meant to be doing "light rules" because they conflate them together.

(Much of what you say I quite agree with. Playing old D&D, I am a lot more cautious than in modern Wizards adventures, where challenging encounters are far and few between, but I'm still running into lots of fights.)

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Minigiant]

I doubt many OSR fans think of what they're doing as "low level helplessness to the point that it becomes the game". Feels biased.

They don't think that.

But that's the heart of OSR.

PCs have to be weak.
(The most common) enemies have to be fragile.

Because if you can magically divine information with rituals and Enemy monsters can face tank the booby traps you tricked them into, OSR gameplay just doesn't work.

The OSR is low power and rarely go to double digits level on the player side for a reason.

 

[Remathilis]

Yup. Sounds good to me. Obviously learning a different playstyle than you're used isn't always going to go smoothly.

Yeah, if I have to resort to pain as a teaching tool, I question if its worth teaching.

 

[Minigiant]

See, I don't this the OSR knows what it is. Or, more correctly, there are SEVERAL OSRs going on under the banner. You do have the hardcore-mode "We die and we like it" going on, but you also have the "rulings not rules" crew, and several more besides. (Individual groups know what they're doing, but some think other "OSR" groups are also doing the same thing they are - and they're not).

So, when we attempt to describe the OSR, we typically only describe one part of it.

I do think you can find examples where the new designers are including bits of "hard mode" when they meant to be doing "light rules" because they conflate them together

I think the OSR is not out to make a bunch of hard mode death machines.

But the OSR community has a list of potential themes, rules, and ideas within the movement.

And if you include many of these themes, ideas, and rules, you end up creating several off brand flavor of the same death machine.

And if you include the love for few rules, simple rules, or natural rules, you might not have enough page space to not create a Hard Mode death machine accidentally.

 

[zakael19]

most of the recent OSR games I’ve read have “player best practices” sections with a set of concepts of how to get into the intended culture for just this reason. It’s not unlike PBTAs: if you want successful play outcomes, tell the players (GMs included) how to do it explicitly.

Edit: Just to provide an example from His Majesty the Worm's "Player Manifesto" which as far as I've read is mostly a distillation of the Principia Apocrypha & etc philosophy on culture:

• Be careful, be fierce (you don't start a hero/the world isn't fair/you're not in a tutorial and this is dangerous/focus on stealth and avoidance but you'll get stronger - but still pick your fights and don't fight fair in turn). but don't be afraid to run.
• Solve problems orthogonally (goal: make your GM go "wow, I didn't even think of that!" Most things aren't solved by fighting: you can reason, monsters can be placated, traps avoided, monsters led into traps, don't expect to "use" your abilities to solve a problem).
• Engage the world (ask questions. more of them. NO, MORE. No abilities give you the insight asking questions and using your real-life brain to solve problems will).
• Engage each other (this is about spotlighting each other, relationships between PCs, having fun)
• Embrace the chaos: it's easy to make a new adventurer. The game has consequences, it would be boring otherwise and without teeth.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They don't think that.

But that's the heart of OSR.

PCs have to be weak.
(The most common) enemies have to be fragile.

Because if you can magically divine information with rituals and Enemy monsters can face tank the booby traps you tricked them into, OSR gameplay just doesn't work.

The OSR is low power and rarely go to double digits level on the player side for a reason.

So your phrasing, while biased against this sort of play, is nonetheless accurate to your understanding of it?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, if I have to resort to pain as a teaching tool, I question if its worth teaching.

You don't think a playstyle where the PCs are more fragile and/or less powerful might lead to some character deaths along the way of learning it? More importantly, you assume character death as a potential consequence is necessarily a pain point, which I simply don't agree with in the objective sense that your rhetoric suggests.

 

[zakael19]

You don't think a playstyle where the PCs are more fragile and/or less powerful might lead to some character deaths along the way of learning it? More importantly, you assume character death as a potential consequence is necessarily a pain point, which I simply don't agree with in the objective sense that your rhetoric suggests.

When the goal isn't "see a story" & creating a new character is purposefully made painless with the expectation that you discover who your character really is through challenge & play vs backstory, very different expectation set.