OSR A Historical Look at the OSR

[Thomas Shey]

We had a lengthy thread discussing whether introducing people to gaming via OSR games was harmful. It’s not like shade doesn’t also get cast the other way.

Absolutely. Though, honestly, no one in that thread was as aggressive as I've seen some OS proponents being, but that's probably the "besieged minority" effect in operation.

(There was also the issue of the association with OS with certain particularly socially retrograde parts of the hobby, which gets really complex to unpack, since its not fair to tar the whole part of the hobby with that, but on the other hand you don't have to wander far into the OS hinterlands to hit that bigtime).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would argue that character advancement is simple, but character creation can be complex. The way I explain it is, with D&D you have to make increasingly complex choices when you "level up" your character -- more so in 3.0/3.5 and 4E than 5E, but it's still there; so the D&D system is "back-loaded," where you have to do more work later.

In Hero System, 99% of the complex choices you will ever have to do for your character is done in the very beginning. "Leveling up" your character usually takes only a few minutes, since it's just a matter of adding a few points here or there. So Hero System is "front-loaded."

Admittedly, I mostly run Heroic level games, where nobody is trying to create the power to erase half of the lifeforms in the universe in an instant, or something. Mostly they're just buying skills and slightly improving characteristics; that doesn't take long.

Well, as you say, adding a +1 to a skill or buying a new perk is trivial. But that's always been a distinction hard to make for outsiders; 90% of the character creation complexity in incarnations of Hero is in buying powers, whether superpowers, psionic abilities, or spells. Once you pull the power system out, its just not all that on a complexity level.

But of course I did use Champions as an example, so you can have situations with advancement where someone is, say, buying a new multipower slot, and that can potentially be time consuming. But even there a lot of advancement is spent buying another combat level or pipping up an attribute, and that's hardly complex.

 

[LoganRan]

I would argue that character advancement is simple, but character creation can be complex. The way I explain it is, with D&D you have to make increasingly complex choices when you "level up" your character -- more so in 3.0/3.5 and 4E than 5E, but it's still there; so the D&D system is "back-loaded," where you have to do more work later.

In Hero System, 99% of the complex choices you will ever have to do for your character is done in the very beginning. "Leveling up" your character usually takes only a few minutes, since it's just a matter of adding a few points here or there. So Hero System is "front-loaded."

Admittedly, I mostly run Heroic level games, where nobody is trying to create the power to erase half of the lifeforms in the universe in an instant, or something. Mostly they're just buying skills and slightly improving characteristics; that doesn't take long.

Yes, you are correct about the distinction between character creation vs. character advancement in Champions/HERO system. I was just lazy and didn't bother to make the distinction myself but the game still fails my Old School = simple character creation (or character advancement) test.

As I said in my OP, I love me some Champions, I just don't consider it truly 'Old School' even though it is an old system.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, you are correct about the distinction between character creation vs. character advancement in Champions/HERO system. I was just lazy and didn't bother to make the distinction myself but the game still fails my Old School = simple character creation (or character advancement) test.

As I said in my OP, I love me some Champions, I just don't consider it truly 'Old School' even though it is an old system.

How do you feel about Traveler or RQ? Neither of them has the completely minimalist character gen of OD&D.

 

[Malmuria]

The author of the post the OP linked to addresses whether non dnd games are "OSR" in post V on the topic:

Not included anywhere above is a vague "old games" category. Some with no grounding in the history of the OSR have become fixated on the "old-school" part of the OSR label and, taking "old-school" to mean only "older than I am" have begun applying to any suitably (arbitrarily) old RPG. As such, you get games like Traveller and Gamma World and RuneQuest and Champions and WEG Star Wars slotted here. Some people now ask if 3rd edition D&D is included, seeing as it's over two decades old at this point. I think any serious reflection would make a person realize that a so-called movement that can encompass D&D, Bunnies & Burrows, Traveller, and Teenagers From Outer Space is conceptually useless except in the broadest categorizational sense (i.e. "RPGs"), but as this confusion occurs all the same I felt it worth covering.

I don't necessarily agree because perhaps the principles of play that the OSR (Matt Finch etc) articulated were at least indirectly also influenced by those other games?

 

[Mezuka]

Else where they use the word Simulacra to refer to more recent RPGs that emulate the old D&D editions.

It has beens said that 2e isn't really old school even if published by TSR. The removal of XPs for treasures and the shift to a more campaign arc oriented play and less sandbox being the major reasons.

 

[Mannahnin]

The author of the post the OP linked to addresses whether non dnd games are "OSR" in post V on the topic:

Not included anywhere above is a vague "old games" category. Some with no grounding in the history of the OSR have become fixated on the "old-school" part of the OSR label and, taking "old-school" to mean only "older than I am" have begun applying to any suitably (arbitrarily) old RPG. As such, you get games like Traveller and Gamma World and RuneQuest and Champions and WEG Star Wars slotted here. Some people now ask if 3rd edition D&D is included, seeing as it's over two decades old at this point. I think any serious reflection would make a person realize that a so-called movement that can encompass D&D, Bunnies & Burrows, Traveller, and Teenagers From Outer Space is conceptually useless except in the broadest categorizational sense (i.e. "RPGs"), but as this confusion occurs all the same I felt it worth covering.

I don't necessarily agree because perhaps the principles of play that the OSR (Matt Finch etc) articulated were at least indirectly also influenced by those other games?

Perhaps indirectly? But I think the article's author is correct that older games span a very wide range of play styles, and while I don't mind calling them all "old school" in that sense, I don't think they consistently share in, for example, the OSR principles of play as expressed by Finch. SOME may share in some of them, but I think he's completely right that "a so-called movement that can encompass D&D, Bunnies & Burrows, Traveller, and Teenagers From Outer Space [My insert: and Champions] is conceptually useless except in the broadest categorizational sense".

Else where they use the word Simulacra to refer to more recent RPGs that emulate the old D&D editions.

Ah, I haven't seen much use of Simulacra in that sense yet (I think on Dragonsfoot they use that as an umbrella term both for new OSR games and retroclones), but it makes sense as a term. I sometimes also see "NuSR" or "OSR-adjacent", and I think there's another term I'm blanking on.

It has beens said that 2e isn't really old school even if published by TSR. The removal of XPs for treasures and the shift to a more campaign arc oriented play and less sandbox being the major reasons.

Yup. Which is part of why in my OP I articulate that I generally see the old school of D&D as ending around the '84-'85 period. There are a bunch of markers there. The beginning of the Adventure Path/Fantasy Novel Emulation model of adventure design, with Dragonlance. The beginning of AD&D getting a skill system, with OA, the WSG and DSG. Gygax leaving the company. And in other modules and in general discussion (in Dragon's Forum and such venues) you start to see the seeds of 2E removing xp for gp as a core rule, as happened in '89.

 

[LoganRan]

How do you feel about Traveler or RQ? Neither of them has the completely minimalist character gen of OD&D.

Never played either system.

I do know that Traveler's character creation system is...unique. As in, "Hey, I just died in character creation" unique.

Runequest is the one that anthropomorphic ducks as a player race, correct? Hard pass.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The author of the post the OP linked to addresses whether non dnd games are "OSR" in post V on the topic:



I don't necessarily agree because perhaps the principles of play that the OSR (Matt Finch etc) articulated were at least indirectly also influenced by those other games?

In any case, I suspect the attempt to keep "ownership" of the term "Old School" to apply only to D&D is a ship that has sailed. Not that its stopping people.

Its probably easier to try and fence off "OSR", but then you still have the question of things like Cepheus Engine and ZEPHrys.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Perhaps indirectly? But I think the article's author is correct that older games span a very wide range of play styles, and while I don't mind calling them all "old school" in that sense, I don't think they consistently share in, for example, the OSR principles of play as expressed by Finch. SOME may share in some of them, but I think he's completely right that "a so-called movement that can encompass D&D, Bunnies & Burrows, Traveller, and Teenagers From Outer Space [My insert: and Champions] is conceptually useless except in the broadest categorizational sense".

Ironically, the original edition of Bunnies and Burrows had a lot more to do with what the author considers the core elements of "Old School" than I think he's giving it credit for.