OSR Minimum Requirements for OSR?

[GMMichael]

I'm working on an OSR mashup of games, but my old-school experience goes back only as far as AD&D 2e. I'm using a modified THAC0, theatre-of-mind (no grid), classes and races, memorized spells, a thieving table, maybe roll-under skills...(don't worry - it's just for fun)

What am I missing? What makes a game OSR to you (that isn't the actual book by TSR)?

 

[MoonSong]

OSR is more of a style of play than mechanics though they can be a benefit. By the loose definition of OSR, straight from the rules 5e, options turned off, Basic PDF, is pretty BX like OSR. Carefully selecting various bits & bobs in the DMG can reproduce a very 1e and 2e vibe.

But OSR is a style, rulings not rules (a guiding principal of 5e design originally as well). When you look at what makes up the OSR it IS mostly BX/BECMI and OD&D style games but it also is games like Dungeon/Mutant Crawl Classics that really play into that pre-1e vibe of D&D, off the cuff hijinks. It's built off a 3.x chassis but is very much not a 3.x era game and really not very similar to OD&D at all but hits all those OSR buttons while being very contemporary. Easy to house rule, easy to run on the fly. Don't restrict yourself to pure pre 3.5 era types of play. The 3 saving throws of 3.x are much easier, much more intuitive than the classic saving throws for example. Ascending AC is much easier to catch onto than descending. You can keep it classic by limiting the max AC to 30 (and most 3.x era games never really got that high anyway without heavy rule manipulation).

It's style, and yes real style requires substance, but really look at what made those games work and you will see it had little to do with system.

To me 5e isn't that much OSR, mainly because it lacks that element of danger and lethality. 5e characters are too resilient and too complex, magic is too easy and combat is too desirable.

 

[darjr]

consider skills as saving throws. By this I mean don’t ask for skill checks up front, describe what’s going on don’t tell, then prompt for a response. Accept anything reasonable that would fit what the PC is and the situation. Ask for a check only when the situation gets dicey.

 

[DemoMonkey]

You know you have written a good OSR style set of rules when every single person who reads them goes "I would change this part like this...", but they are all talking about different parts.

 

[teitan]

To me 5e isn't that much OSR, mainly because it lacks that element of danger and lethality. 5e characters are too resilient and too complex, magic is too easy and combat is too desirable.

Note that I said with various bits and bobs in the DMG. Some of those optional rules make 5e very lethal.

 

[Malmuria]

Note that I said with various bits and bobs in the DMG. Some of those optional rules make 5e very lethal.

But it becomes lethal for different reasons I feel. It basically keeps combat-as-sport, but gives fewer resources to the PCs, sort of like increasing the difficulty in a videogame. Whereas a lot of OSR type dangers like trapped objects, or traps in general, or running out light or food, are easier to mitigate.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The minimum system requirements for OSR are pretty forgiving. All you need is 4 kb of RAM and either a MOS 6502 or a Zilog Z80 clocked at 1 MHz or better.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Designing the game to encourage freeform by putting in unstated game style assumptions, tons of different subsystems, and long winded prose??

 

[teitan]

But it becomes lethal for different reasons I feel. It basically keeps combat-as-sport, but gives fewer resources to the PCs, sort of like increasing the difficulty in a videogame. Whereas a lot of OSR type dangers like trapped objects, or traps in general, or running out light or food, are easier to mitigate.

Yeah but all that is play style easily supported in 5e.

 

[cmad1977]

As long as people can lose their characters to a bad roll… it’s OSR.

 

[Yora]

One thing to note is that the old OSR people mostly stopped using that term years ago. Few people find it still useful, and the last holdouts including many of the "bad boys" only accelerated it going out of fashion.

Today, there's mostly two crowds that only slightly overlap. One being the people who still play AD&D, B/X, and their most straight up clones like they've done for 40 years, and the other being the artsy creative folks making new lightweight games inspired by the original D&D framework. (Like Worlds Without Number, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Forbidden Lands)