Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="robconley" data-source="post: 7680852" data-attributes="member: 5636">I appreciate your response but right here in this paragraph shows that you are missing the point of the Old School Primer. Now understand I am not saying you should like it any better as it does have a snarky attitude towards modern gaming. The point you are missing it not meant to be a description of how people played back in the day. Yes it some of it is drawn some from first person accounts based on talking from a variety of people who were involved. The problem he is trying to address is thisI seen this attitude among gamers in my local towards older rules and even modern lite system. That the lack of rules is a deficiency that has to be corrected by more rules. No where in the document Matt claims that this was how people played back in the day. Only that this is a practical way to play older games. I do disagree with this mostly because Matt goes to pains to explain that it is general advice that by its very nature it meant to be worked out by the referee and his group over time. The main problem with the primer is that it's approach relies on the talent and experience of the referee of the campaign. The better you are at improvising and adjudicating, more real world experience you have as a person the better able you are able to use the elements of the primer. The reality is that novices need something that is a bit more step by step to help up the learning curve.I will say Matt tone towards modern mechanics is really over the top and sometimes insulting to fans of modern mechanics. And that color many people perception of the document.Well there is a reason why modern games are designed the way they are. For example character customization handled through mechanics is a feature that player desire a lot and been a constant since the beginning of the hobby.    Part of what of makes the OSR is exploring alternatives that were dropped in the first decade of the hobby. For example much of my work was writing about sandbox campaigns and hexcrawl formatted setting.Well Gygax in the Greyhawk campaign and Arneson in Blackmoor campaign handled players picking locks, opening traps, charming the ladies (or guys). We have first hand accounts of players doing pretty much what more modern players do with systems that have explicit skills, talents, feats, etc. We have the rules they used and there not a lot of mechanics that explictly handle this stuff. So the question is, how did they handle it? So they were asked and as it turned it they all handled differently but what was common among them is that they came up with ruling based on their personal experience and common sense. Of course that differed between them so what they actually did varied alot.So Matt and other took what we were told, took his own personal experience, and wrote a primer for the present on how to use the older games despite not having skills, feats, talent, or mechanics like modern games.</blockquote>

Verification