D&D General [+] Conversations between 5E and OSR…

[Scribe]

I'm personally curious about how you can loot some things from the OSR to make 5e a better game.

You have to (all imo of course) strip both systems down, and then rebuild it. 5e makes assumptions in terms of design that introduce multiple behaviors/systems/designs, which really cannot just be fixed simply.

I'm convinced this can be done though, and I'm going to be testing it soon-ish.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm personally curious about how you can loot some things from the OSR to make 5e a better game.

Yep. Make the game your own. Whatever works for you and yours, do it.

From a 5e perspective, I like the idea of the party debating whether or not they should get into this fight -- having the appearance of a monster be an active, informed choice instead of just a "roll initiative and start looking at your character sheet" button. That's an appealing strategic dimension.

That mostly comes from the mentioned encounter distance and disposition roll. The monsters start at range and will more than likely not be instantly aggressive. Changes the whole "there's a monster, let's fight" thing into a "there's a monster, what happens now?" thing. I think those charts are in the 5E DMGs. I don't remember. But they're ever present in older editions and a lot of OSR and adjacent games.

But, to leverage those theater-stance aspects, when your character gets "knocked out," there's some other consequence. The goblins kidnap an NPC important to you. The lich-king raises your grandma as his unwilling consort. The terrasque levels a town. Maybe even a little personal trouble -- a scar (no mechanical effect, but you are marked forever), or a loss of equipment (RIP to your +2 sword), or even something like a denial of XP (you don't recieve "credit" for playing that dungeon you all died in), or an XP debt, or forced down-time, or...

Your failure still results in some awful situation, but it's presented less as something that ends your character's narrative and more as something that your character needs to start to work to get out of.

Exactly. Character death is a choice that referees don't have to make. Other consequences are right there. In some AD&D games we'd have a group of hirelings standing by as either backup characters or bodies to be killed off instead of the PCs. A more modern take is the PCs dying and the local adventurers' guild hauling your corpse out, resurrecting you, and charging your for the service. There's a lot of ways to take it. If you want both, deadliness and character arcs, it's not hard to sort out.

....makes me kind of long for a very crunchy "character arc" system where you've got your big Wants and Needs as a character at one end and your Current Status at the other and all sorts of Obstacles in between....obstacles that can be best solved by going into dangerous situations and getting something from them. Succeed in that situation, overcome the obstacle, you get some "arc points", but fail and maybe you don't earn those arc points from that obsctacle. You cash in your arc points to get closer to your Wants and Needs.

It wouldn't need to be all that crunchy. Something as simple as a clock with 6-8 segments. Define what those possible obstacles etc are either ahead of time with the referee or in the moment. Once you've collected the plot coupons, you're done. You could also look at the downtime system from Draw Steel. Something like 100 points to complete the thing and each successful check (or section in this case) counts for 1d10 points. To me that's a bit over complicated, but it might be exactly what you're looking for.

Probably not the best idea, but it gets my noodle churning...to embrace making combat a question while simultaneously not increasing aborted character arcs.

You might want to check out something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. Very arc- and story-focused crunch.

 

[Umbran]

There’s a dozen different ways to avoid a TPK in those circumstances. The enemy fishes you out of the water, you’re prisoners. Someone else fishes you out of the water, you’re prisoners or rescued. You sink into the water and find water-breathing people who take you in. You pass out and wake up on a desert island or floating in debris. Etc.

So, with respect, my experience with folks who are advocating for deadly games is generally that they are also against GM fiat solutions to avoid death. I have been told time after time, that the desired form is to let the dice fall where they may, and if you die you die, no backsies!

But their first instinct, as opposed to in many 5E games, isn't to just start blasting when they encounter a probable hositle.

So, my group is combat-avoidant even when playing games in which characters death is explicitly off the table. They just find using violence as a primary mode of conflict resolution to be ethically questionable behavior, and don't want to emulate that in play.

Which, to me, suggests that it isn't that rare death makes anyone play violently. It just doesn't stop them if that's what they want to do.

And if that's what they want to do for fun, shouldn't that be an option? Like, we're at the table for fun, right?

 

[Milieu]

So, with respect, my experience with folks who are advocating for deadly games is generally that they are also against GM fiat solutions to avoid death. I have been told time after time, that the desired form is to let the dice fall where they may, and if you die you die, no backsies!

I think there's a pretty clear difference between a PC running out of HP and the DM pulling a deus ex machina to save them from bleeding out vs the ship the party's on not necessarily meaning the all go down with it. For one thing, there's a rule about what happens when you run out of HP that the DM is overriding or circumventing; whereas most games don't have a clear rule either way about happens to you when your ship sinks, so "you die because the ship sank" is just as much fiat as the other options.

I don't doubt that there are some people who would still complain that the DM is pulling their punches by not making sinking the ship a TPK, but I suspect a lot fewer of them. Certainly I personally find it less objectionable.

Which, to me, suggests that it isn't that rare death makes anyone play violently. It just doesn't stop them if that's what they want to do.

"Makes" is a strong word. The game doesn't make you do anything. It does "encourage" certain things. If there are no consequences to going in guns blazing, and no real advantage to sneaking or negotiating instead, many players will default to combat because that's the path of least resistance and the part of the game most of their character abilities are designed for. If you know you can win the straight-up fight, coming up with a clever plan to avoid it holds less value.

And if that's what they want to do for fun, shouldn't that be an option? Like, we're at the table for fun, right?

I don't think anyone here's suggesting otherwise? But 5e encourages one playstyle and OSR encourages a different one; you can, to some degree, go against the encouraged style, but you will probably have more fun with a system that aligns with your group's style, all else being equal.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Literally the first scene of Buried in the Bahamas for Pirate Borg (my favorite intro adventure ever) is an en media res ship battle than ends with shipwreck and the PCs washing ashore on a desert island. It's still a deadly adventure (two characters died in that first ship battle back in May), but it's explicitly about the PCs failing forward into more adventure.

Heck, Pirate Borg now has a full length adventure/mini-setting about fighting your way out of purgatory when your group all dies.

I'm so kicking myself for not picking up all the Pirate Borg stuff when it was on Humble Bundle a month or two ago. It looks sooooo good.

 

[Umbran]

I think there's a pretty clear difference between a PC running out of HP and the DM pulling a deus ex machina to save them from bleeding out vs the ship the party's on not necessarily meaning the all go down with it.

You think that. Great.
The folks I am talking about don't think that.

And, importantly for this discussion, your assertion does not erase them from my, or our, experience talking about this stuff. Responses you hear will be based on our context, which includes those voices.

I don't doubt that there are some people who would still complain that the DM is pulling their punches by not making sinking the ship a TPK, but I suspect a lot fewer of them. Certainly I personally find it less objectionable.

So, with respect, trying to dismiss my lived experiences is not going to be a persuasive strategy. I know what discussions I have been in. I know the arguments I have had to break up. Trying to minimize that on me generates resistance, not consensus.

"Makes" is a strong word. The game doesn't make you do anything. It does "encourage" certain things. If there are no consequences to going in guns blazing...

Hold on there one second. I sense unexamined bias in that statement.

Weren't you just the one saying that death isn't the only possible consequence to losing a fight? But now, with "not losing" there's automatically no consequences? How is that any less a failure of imagination?

and no real advantage to sneaking or negotiating instead,

Why is that necessarily true?

I feel like you are comparing what an OSR game can do including GM action not specified in the rules, to a 5e game with only what is specified in the rules, which is bogus.

Whether there is advantage to sneaking or negotiating is situational, and thus about adventure design, not core rules design. You can't look at the 5e PHB and say what approach gets advantage - the rules are about how to act, not the context of the actions.

I don't think anyone here's suggesting otherwise? But 5e encourages one playstyle and OSR encourages a different one

I believe you are factually incorrect. Neither encourages only a single playstyle. Both have a breadth of playstles they support.

I have watched too many OSR proponents argue amongst themselves over playstyle to swallow that one.

 

[GothmogIV]

I enjoyed this conversation, and my main takeaway was this: in an OSR game, the world is primary. In a 5e game, the players are primary. I thought that was a great, and clarifying, observation. Neither way is wrongbad; they are just different ways to play.