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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8288838" data-attributes="member: 70468">I came about things kind of backwards. I can’t say I’ve ever been particularly interested in story arc play. My first D&D was 3e, but the group occasionally confused things with 2e, and the campaign was a more old-school style where we’d roll up characters in an establish homebrew setting rather than go play through some particular story. Consequently, I more or less missed the shift to story arc play (à la Dragonlance). However, I’d say my conscious shift to embracing OSR-style play got going when started reading <a href="https://grognardia.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Grognardia</a>. I found the stories of Dwimmermount fascinating, and I was intrigued by the discussions of various old-school editions of D&D.That influenced how I GM a game, but we didn’t switch to an actual OSR system until very recently — last winter. We gave Old-School Essentials a shot. We used the advanced fantasy genre rules because I wanted the extra options for my players, but what I really wanted was separate race and class (because my setting is not humanocentric). Alas, it didn’t work out. OSE went too far in direction my players weren’t as interested in going. However, we pivoted to Worlds Without Number, which I’d describe as OSR-adjacent if not OSR. WWN uses B/X as a chassis, but it does its own thing in many places.As for why, I think that comes down to the style of play one prefers. Like I said earlier, I never got into story arc play. It’s just not something that resonates with me. I prefer Story Now or the Right to Dream. Let’s make characters and see what happens (whether that’s telling their stories through play or doing things and seeing what the consequences are). I can do what I want in newer systems, but they tend to make a lot of assumptions about what you intend to do, which can get in the way. There are also issues of system aesthetics.I don’t see value in having unified mechanics for the sake of having unified mechanics. I don’t think it simplifies the game. Instead of having a player-known chance of succeeding, you go through a bunch of steps to derive a value (3e), or the GM decides on one that’s appropriate for the challenge (post-3e, but also 3e). You either communicate that to the players, or they get to roll and wait on the answer. It slows down the game, and the progression treadmill functionally negates any growth the characters have experienced. I also don’t like the extra burden of having to design around difficulty classes and skills. I’d rather just write down what something is and let a solution emerge during play.DCs aren’t necessarily a deal-breaker. WWN does feature roll against difficulty for skill checks, but the way it treats skills is very different from the way that non-OSR games tend to treat them. Skills are just for exceptional circumstances (you should never have a PC roll where it could make them look incompetent at their role in life), and most ad hoc DCs should be 8. Assuming that PCs are competent strikes me as a very OSR approach to skills. One of the complaints you frequently see is that a skill system reduces the options PCs have for solving a problem because now they are constrained by mechanics, but WWN tries to keep that from getting in the way. There’s more of my thought son WWN over in the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/worlds-without-number-general-thread.680245/" target="_blank">thread</a> in the general forum here.</blockquote>

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