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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9693698" data-attributes="member: 7045072">So I hear you one OSE - I think it's a useful game text, but I also think it came a bit too late ... It originally designed at the beginning of the end of the G+ era.  That is to say when OSE was written there was a fairly strong consensus in the largest part of the OSR that B/X was the preferred foundation for most people's fantasy games. The G+ era was heavily focused on bespoke setting and thematic rules hacks.  OSE works great in this context. It's a good and useful game - I refer to the SRD all the time.Unfortunately, since that time the OSR has broken apart, and OSE is not the reference/foundation text for a bunch of likeminded creatives in the same scene but oft promoted as the intro "OSR" (as a singular noun...ugh). There's little community and less consensus about the goals of play (so many folks moving to Trad from OSR, or trying to make it into a combat game like tournament AD&D...most claiming they represent the one true OSR (also ugh).  OSE was not designed and isn't great for this environment - even the benign and positive part of it ... people coming from 5E or other more modern games and wanting to play an old school dungeon crawl but having a bunch of misconceptions about how to do it from video games or the RPGs they are used to (and there's nothing wrong with their ideas, but they also tend not to deliver much fun with OSE or other old school games).<Old man done shouting at clouds>TL&TMOMSAC ... DR:I) I think a game with more instruction and flavor is what the spaces I see OSE most promoted in  need, because it's too often people trying to use a chisel as a screw driver these days. II) I think the bullet point style works for Gavin and a few others who know what they are down and write adventures that support it. I was trying this same sort of matrix thing back at the end of  2013 through mid 2014 or so.  I found the the problem with it is that not every entry needs all this data, and way its presented isn't that much more helpful to the referee (e.g. ceiling height only matters if it's too low to use certain weapons or so high things are hiding up there), and even disrupts comprehension of the room by being an fairly unnatural way for most people to absorb a bunch of unrelated data ... plus it takes up so much space!Here's what mine looked like at it's best:[ATTACH=full]410002[/ATTACH] Now these days I still retain some of this - noting the light and threats next to the name of a room like this:[ATTACH=full]410004[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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