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The Renewing Charm of the Old School Play Experience
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 7983307" data-attributes="member: 7023840"><p>To be clear, I was responding to make sure that I disagreed with the following two assertions, which I bolded so that you would not misunderstand what I was saying. </p><p></p><p>1. <strong>We rarely ignored the rules</strong> </p><p></p><p>2. <strong> But as I say I think there is a difference between actual 1e and what is classed as an OSR style game.</strong> </p><p></p><p>I think that both of these statements are incorrect, and orthogonal to what you are saying now. I think I went through, in detail, the ways in which that game ignored the rules (you didn't even address the ring of six actions, for example). You yourself characterized it as a "Monty Haul" game. As you are aware, Monty Haul was rubbished in the very beginning of the game by the recurring column in Dragon Magazine (h/t Jim Ward). </p><p></p><p>Simply put, if you ignore a lot of rules, sure, you end up with the most powerful weapon/magic item combo in the game, and six actions a round (which gives, what, 12 attacks for a fighter?), and DM fudging, and flying around on artifacts with no drawbacks, and killing gods. This happened a lot, especially with younger gamers (the power-trip model), and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's your fun. But it's the same as someone saying, "Yeah, I play 5e, and it I go through a character almost every session, and I rarely even get to 3rd level .... it's just a real meatgrinder." It's easily possible to change and tweak the rules to make that happen, but that's not really 5e as it is presented.</p><p></p><p>Which leads to the two comments. Yes, you must have been ignoring a lot of the rule. Which is fine- I'm not saying you're a bad person, just disagreeing with your own assessment. </p><p></p><p>But that leads to the second massive disagreement. 1e is OSR-style. In fact, OD&D, 1e, and B/X are largely interchangeable, and using B1 or B2 (written for Holmes) in a B/X or 1e setting presents no real issues, and were often used in those settings. </p><p></p><p>All of which leads to this- yes, OD&D and 1e were not "low magic" in terms of items. That's why the Paladin stricture of ten items matters! But it's also because the old rules were "low magic" in terms of character abilities- no "always on" cantrips. Fewer spells per day (recollecting all the MU spells, for example, took significant time). Fewer abilities in general for your class. Your magic items <em>were your abilities and feats. </em></p><p></p><p>The other factor that I don't disagree with is that it was very, very weird. It had not yet stultified into what we think of as standard D&D tropes. You could adventure in Wonderland. You could hop to Gamma World. You would take a character from one campaign to another. You had sanctioned adventures in space ships. You had Cthulhu. </p><p></p><p>It was weird, and it was awesome.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 7983307, member: 7023840"] To be clear, I was responding to make sure that I disagreed with the following two assertions, which I bolded so that you would not misunderstand what I was saying. 1. [B]We rarely ignored the rules[/B] 2. [B] But as I say I think there is a difference between actual 1e and what is classed as an OSR style game.[/B] I think that both of these statements are incorrect, and orthogonal to what you are saying now. I think I went through, in detail, the ways in which that game ignored the rules (you didn't even address the ring of six actions, for example). You yourself characterized it as a "Monty Haul" game. As you are aware, Monty Haul was rubbished in the very beginning of the game by the recurring column in Dragon Magazine (h/t Jim Ward). Simply put, if you ignore a lot of rules, sure, you end up with the most powerful weapon/magic item combo in the game, and six actions a round (which gives, what, 12 attacks for a fighter?), and DM fudging, and flying around on artifacts with no drawbacks, and killing gods. This happened a lot, especially with younger gamers (the power-trip model), and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's your fun. But it's the same as someone saying, "Yeah, I play 5e, and it I go through a character almost every session, and I rarely even get to 3rd level .... it's just a real meatgrinder." It's easily possible to change and tweak the rules to make that happen, but that's not really 5e as it is presented. Which leads to the two comments. Yes, you must have been ignoring a lot of the rule. Which is fine- I'm not saying you're a bad person, just disagreeing with your own assessment. But that leads to the second massive disagreement. 1e is OSR-style. In fact, OD&D, 1e, and B/X are largely interchangeable, and using B1 or B2 (written for Holmes) in a B/X or 1e setting presents no real issues, and were often used in those settings. All of which leads to this- yes, OD&D and 1e were not "low magic" in terms of items. That's why the Paladin stricture of ten items matters! But it's also because the old rules were "low magic" in terms of character abilities- no "always on" cantrips. Fewer spells per day (recollecting all the MU spells, for example, took significant time). Fewer abilities in general for your class. Your magic items [I]were your abilities and feats. [/I] The other factor that I don't disagree with is that it was very, very weird. It had not yet stultified into what we think of as standard D&D tropes. You could adventure in Wonderland. You could hop to Gamma World. You would take a character from one campaign to another. You had sanctioned adventures in space ships. You had Cthulhu. It was weird, and it was awesome. [/QUOTE]
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