The opposite of OSR

CleverNickName

Limit Break Dancing
OSR is light mechanics, light rules, and heavy DM rulings.
NSR would be heavy mechanics, heavy rules, and and light DM rulings. So 3.X

Newer school rennesaince would be streamlined mechanics, standardized rules, and and heavy player ruling. So 4e, Fate, PBTA, and stuff like that.
That's an interesting point. NSR has already happened...?
 

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mhd

Adventurer
Hmm, I always thought that FATE's ad-hoc aspects are basically "rulings", just with a vague roll beforehand.

I don't think there's a real 180 degree opposite of an actual OSR game that's a real TTRPG. The OSR playstyle isn't that radically different from anything else, as much as some adherents interpret it. Even if you'd gather the polar opposites of most elements together in a exaggeratedly different game, you'd still have too much in common. But sadly, isn't that how it's with a lot of things that are considered opposites. Freud's narcissism of small differences comes to mind...

Having said that, let's construct some fictitious "foes":

Non-D&D-Renaissance: Pick an old game (80s?) that's considered to be a prior antipode of D&D and revitalize that. I guess that means that everyone's building their own GURPS-like point-buy systems now. Instead of arguing about unusable thieves, we'll be arguing about the validity of psychological Disadvantages.

Closed School Renaissance - The OSR happened because of the open licensing of D&D's whole heritage. So this would be the piracy version of this. Not that everyone making their own Palladium rip-off would be fundamentally different, apart from having a much higher acronym ratio.

Old School Dark Ages - The great empire of D&D has fallen, everyone's playing, I dunno, Tunnels & Trolls because it has a cute manga version? No D20s are manufactured anymore, a few monk-like individuals are gathering with almost spherical Zocchi dice and handwritten copies of faded TSR books.

Amazon School Renaissance - There's no DM but Alexa! There's neither rules nor rulings, there's only what the machine intelligence gathered from a billion Twitch streams. Your Prime attribute determines everything. Drones bring refreshments. Games will have winners and losers, so better make your saving rolls or you'll end up working in the Mazes of Bezos!

Oldest School Renaissance: Pick a D&D "predecessor" and get way too excited about this. Might involve dressing up like Prussian warmongers.
 


Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member

Yora

Legend
It's not like there's only two kinds of RPGs that are completely different and contradictory, so talking about opposites doesn't make sense.

But what the term olschool was meant to contrast against when it was introduced was D&D 3rd and 4th edition specifically. Though it then expanded to not just cover mechanics, but also the general approach to campaigns and adventures, so it generally means pre-Dragonlance D&D, in contrast to post-Dragonlance D&D.
 


Aldarc

Legend
OSR and Story (Now)/Narrative Games or however you label the latter (e.g., Fate, Cortex, PbtA, etc.) have more in common than many think because they were both counter-responses to Traditional play and GM authorship of the “story.”
 


Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
So, what do YOU think is the opposite of OSR?

A myth arising from how individuals polarize discussion by having a personal need to "win".

Overall, the real world of games is not made of simple axes with everything having a polar opposite. Pizza is not "opposite" salad, and salad is not "opposite" ice cream. "Different" does not mean "opposite".
 

Warpiglet-7

Cry havoc! And let slip the pigs of war!
Earlier than AD&D is lighter. B/X seems pretty smooth but also bare to some.

my friend and I are looking at playing BECMI with our kids. I am excited about how little fiddling there is with basic and expert.

I love 1e AD&D and 5e but feel neither are really old school at all.
I've never understood the claims about earlier D&D being "rules light". Good grief. You have to take how many steps to determine whether an attack hit or not in AD&D? Something about fifteen if you actually do the steps and don't ignore them. How in the world can a game which actually details the exact space you require to swing a sword possibly be considered "rules light"?
 




Ovinomancer

No flips for you!
No, spells are not an extra-diegetic resources.
The diegetic-ness of spells is pretty arbitrary, though. It's just "magic is unquestionable" by habit, not by strength of explanation. Given that "magic" is just whatever the game needs it to be, and has no consistent or coherent standards to which it must adhere, claiming magic is diegetic is just saying that "what I make believe is fine is fine."

Spells are the acceptable metacurrency of D&D, with entire classes built around the concept of "I get to dictate fiction in discrete chunks," while any other arrangement of such is viewed as unacceptable and wrong and gets labeled as non-diegetic when there's ample diegetic descriptions available that have at least as much explanatory power as "but magic."

Let's be honest, there's are lots of metagame aspects (spells, hitpoints, AC) that are grandfathered in as acceptable, it's just new applications that get the sideways looks.
 


Marc_C

Solitary Role Playing
The diegetic-ness of spells is pretty arbitrary, though. It's just "magic is unquestionable" by habit, not by strength of explanation. Given that "magic" is just whatever the game needs it to be, and has no consistent or coherent standards to which it must adhere, claiming magic is diegetic is just saying that "what I make believe is fine is fine."

Spells are the acceptable metacurrency of D&D, with entire classes built around the concept of "I get to dictate fiction in discrete chunks," while any other arrangement of such is viewed as unacceptable and wrong and gets labeled as non-diegetic when there's ample diegetic descriptions available that have at least as much explanatory power as "but magic."

Let's be honest, there's are lots of metagame aspects (spells, hitpoints, AC) that are grandfathered in as acceptable, it's just new applications that get the sideways looks.
Predictable answer. I don't agree with you on this. Sorry I'm not doing this dance with you. Find another partner.
 




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