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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8290419" data-attributes="member: 6777737">I started as I said mostly with B/X with very little 1e, then 2e for a few years, then I played in a 1e campaign group. I was mostly a player then.Currently I run and play 5e. It's partially because of the support for it (including digital tools), partially because I find it easy to run, partially because it's the version my group really prefers, but mostly it's because I have a visceral loathing for the 20th century attack roll and descending armor class; I simply refuse to play any edition of the rules that makes the most common roll in the game needlessly complicated. 5e gameplay suits my table's style well, which is pretty well split between OSR style players (who mainly want to run dungeons and find loot) and mechanical optimizers (who want to build characters that solve a lot of problems off the character sheet).I developed an interest in OSR after becoming unsatisfied with late 3e and 4e and dissatisfied with the 5e adventure paths. I couldn't really grasp what I felt was missing, but I knew I was missing something. I found two things that clicked with me. One was the <a href="https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html" target="_blank">Principia Apocrypha</a>, which reminded me of the older campaign styles, and YouTube DMs like Matt Colville who were able to express ways to think about the game that I'd forgotten or discarded. I realized the thing that I miss most about D&D is going out on an adventure, finding a bunch of cool-as-heck magic items that gave you a bunch of abilities unique to your character and your campaign, and then solving problems and making memorable stories doing that.I'm not interested in everything OSR. In fact, I'm not interested in many of the OSR elements. I'm not interested in reusing old mechanics; I think most of them are poorly implemented. I'm not going to roll in the open; I have no trouble fudging dice when I deem it appropriate. I'm not interested in only letting the PCs tell a story; I've tried and my players do nothing without a hook except complain that they don't know what to do. I'm not running a hex crawl; I think those are miserable as a DM, and my table likes the structure of adventure paths. I'm not interested running the game with random event tables, either. I don't care about wandering monsters. I'm not going to try to force my players not to solve problems using their character sheet; it would alienate them. I'm certainly not interested in making combat super deadly but avoidable. Everyone at my table loves combat. It's a major draw. We like it to be Hard, Deadly, or Deadly+ because we don't like throwaway encounters, but I'm not going to design an area that requires my table to avoid combat. They don't want that. A lot of OSR comes from the adversarial DM vs PC play style. Even if people claim that that isn't true, that's exactly where parts of this style came from and I'm not having it.What I pull from OSR into 5e is:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Throwing out attunement on many items (often based on the party level) because it's not an interesting choice if most of your player rewards are loot.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Letting the loot define the characters as much as race, class, ability scores, and feats. Base 5e is totally constructed around preventing that.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Letting the structure of the story fade into the background. It's not why anyone is really at our table. We want a series of dungeons and encounters loosely tied together with a story.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ignore the rules if they don't serve the game as we actually play it. It doesn't matter what happens as long as everyone has fun and what you do makes sense.</li> </ul>OSR gives me the sense of freedom that I need as a DM to ignore the parts of the books that irritate me -- even when they seem quite important like attunement -- and just play the way we want without feeling like I'm breaking something.Yeah, I definitely think they aim at the weekly or biweekly group. I wouldn't be interested in play less frequently than that, but you have to play when you can. For your needs I'd probably go with B/X rules or B/X rules with AD&D classes. I mean, I wouldn't ever play with THAC0 to to-hit charts or descending armor class ever again. They're miserable mechanics. You'd have to pay me. If I personally were in your position I'd go with strict 5e Basic D&D and then cut out classes that didn't fit. But going with whatever you already know is perfectly understandable.</blockquote>

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