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

[Aldarc]

Part of the problem is one person's Skilled Play is another person's metagaming. For example, I (the player) knows acid and fire will work on trolls, brown mold exploded with fire, a bugbear isn't a fair fight for a 1st level PC, and never drink the fairy water. But does my PC? Is it skilled play to know the DM would put a secret door at the end of a "dead end" hall? Is it fine to use genre savviness, knowledge of the rules (including knowledge of monster stats) and Meta-game thinking to outwit the DM?

Hello. My name is Aldarc, and I think "meta-gaming" is a non-problem. I think that there is a distinction between cheating and metagaming, and I think that some people here and TTRPG circles wrongly conflate the two. I don't really care about metagaming. I would personally prefer that TTRPG circles adopt a more similar usage as is found in other games and completive sports, where it's simply an awareness of optimal strategies, compositions, etc. for playing the game: i.e., "the meta."

 

[zakael19]

Part of the problem is one person's Skilled Play is another person's metagaming. For example, I (the player) knows acid and fire will work on trolls, brown mold exploded with fire, a bugbear isn't a fair fight for a 1st level PC, and never drink the fairy water. But does my PC? Is it skilled play to know the DM would put a secret door at the end of a "dead end" hall? Is it fine to use genre savviness, knowledge of the rules (including knowledge of monster stats) and Meta-game thinking to outwit the DM?

The "metagaming" thing has always felt silly to me. Why wouldn't an adventurer know the basic set of weaknesses common monsters have? Why shouldn't a thief have an idea of what areas might be more likely to have a secret door? Newer games like HMTW straight up encourage you to use your knowledge of genre and convention to maximize the enjoyment - and then the GM designs encounters that reward and facilitate creativity and answers questions generously.

Really, metagaming is a problem when there's "proscribed" solutions to modules. Edit: which is much more just "cheating" as @Aldarc said.

 

[Malmuria]

Also, let's keep in mind that originally, 5e was itself trying to move the game back to include "rulings over rules" style adjudication and play. Mike Mearls rather infamously turned to a couple (very problematic) OSR figures for advice on how to do this when designing the 2014 rules.

The New School, the Old School, and 5th Edition D&D

This was easily the funniest picture I found for "Edition Wars" People have short memories. Actually, that's only part of it. People also ne...

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Which is funny, because I was there when 5E came out in 2014, and at the time it was being called "old school." It was a "return to form" for the franchise. "The legacy edition." A victory for the OSR, who had finally conquered the mainstream. It pulled back many of the trends of 3rd and 4th edition D&D and abandoned the way of the new school in favor of trends that had been started by the grognards years before. It openly embraced many of the specific Zen moments from Matt Finch's A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming.

 

[Malmuria]

The real head scratcher is the OSR crowd who likes Critical Role. Like me and mine. I vastly prefer OSR-style play with either actual old-school games or OSR games. But I watch CR live every week. My brother, who’s even more into OSR stuff than me, is the one who got me into CR.

That’s a long way of saying: people aren’t monolithic, they can have a wide range of seemingly contradictory tastes. Stop trying to put people in neat little boxes. We don’t fit unless you saw off several bits.

For much of the average Critical Role session, the only rule is 'roll a d20, try to roll high, narrate depending on how high you rolled.' It's low-key a FKR game

 

[mamba]

The best OSR adventures run rings around even the best TSR adventures

which ones do you consider to be among the best?

 

[Malmuria]

which ones do you consider to be among the best?

Necrotic Gnome adventures
Lorn Song of the Bachelor
The Sepulchre of Seven
Mausritter - The Estate (for Mausritter obviously)
Trilemma Adventures like The Sky Blind Spire
The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford
Dungeon Age Adventures
Desert Moon of Karth (for Mothership)
Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier
Lazy Litch Adventures
Amanda Lee Franck's adventures
The Electrum Archive

 

[Micah Sweet]

Where is the system that marries the rules light design of B/X with the narrative focus of 2e and later? The one who stll assumes certain balancing of encounters to and hardens PCs enough to make death less of a certainty? The one who innovates on OS rather than attempts to recreate 1977?

That's the OS game I want.

I feel personally that such a game would not much resemble any version of D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The real head scratcher is the OSR crowd who likes Critical Role. Like me and mine. I vastly prefer OSR-style play with either actual old-school games or OSR games. But I watch CR live every week. My brother, who’s even more into OSR stuff than me, is the one who got me into CR.

That’s a long way of saying: people aren’t monolithic, they can have a wide range of seemingly contradictory tastes. Stop trying to put people in neat little boxes. We don’t fit unless you saw off several bits.

CR has always been more entertainment than game to me. I'm glad they just made an animated TV series out of it. Felt like that's what they really wanted to do all along.

 

[overgeeked]

Necrotic Gnome adventures
Lorn Song of the Bachelor
The Sepulchre of Seven
Mausritter - The Estate (for Mausritter obviously)
Trilemma Adventures like The Sky Blind Spire
The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford
Dungeon Age Adventures
Desert Moon of Karth (for Mothership)
Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier
Lazy Litch Adventures
Amanda Lee Franck's adventures
The Electrum Archive

To add to that…
Waking of Willowby Hall.
Hole in the Oak.
Tomb of the Serpent Kings.
The Stygian Library.
Dark of Hot Springs Island.
Dead Planet and Another Bug Hunt for Mothership.

About half of the DCC RPG modules. Includes, but is not limited to…

Sailors on the Starless Sea. Frozen in Time. Peril on the Purple Planet. People of the Pit. Blades Against Death. The Croaking Fane. Against the Atomic Overlord. Moon Slaves of the Cannibal Kingdom.

Just about anything from Michael Curtis or Harley Stroh.

 

[TiQuinn]

Part of the problem is one person's Skilled Play is another person's metagaming. For example, I (the player) knows acid and fire will work on trolls, brown mold exploded with fire, a bugbear isn't a fair fight for a 1st level PC, and never drink the fairy water. But does my PC? Is it skilled play to know the DM would put a secret door at the end of a "dead end" hall? Is it fine to use genre savviness, knowledge of the rules (including knowledge of monster stats) and Meta-game thinking to outwit the DM?

That’s true, but I’ve also realized that over the course of years, expecting every PC to come in as a complete blank slate, I.E. the player pretends they don’t know fire burns trolls or a black dragon has acid breath, becomes tedious, so I chalk this up to “things someone in that world would know” for simplicity’s sake.