OSR This tells me OSR is alive and well.

[Reynard]

(I'm not sure that I know what you mean by the "dart throwing wizard" problem. Are you referring to magic-users not feeling magical enough once they've run out of spells? In that case: feature, not bug.

This. or, more specifically, the one and done aspect. I really like the Shadowdark solution here with magic rolls and the spell is gone on a fail.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[Quickleaf]

I've ran 5E since it came out and rarely have I had "Oh 5E? Have room for another player?"

For the last 2 weeks I've been running B/X (via Labyrinth Lord) and each time we've played (once per week) I've had an older gamer come and ask "Oh are you playing Basic? Have room for 1 more?"

Brings a damn tear to my eye.

Not to say this means anything negative to 5E I'm sure if someone is at the store for D&D they probably already have a group. It's of course easier to find a 5E group than just wandering a game store. Just saying there are people out there wanting old school D&D.

And let me tell you, I've been enjoying the heck out of a B/X dungeon dive. Though I think the Thief needs help. Man do they suck at the start. Need to figure out how to make the Thief useful at level 1.

Thief skills! So, I remember having an ah hah moment with thief skills. Sort of the same way I had an ah hah moment with not calling for skill checks until there was an actual conflict / risk / the outcome was in question. In some cases this means treating thief skills more like saving throws. Some examples....

Climb Walls is not walls that anyone could climb – it’s climbing sheer surfaces and overhanging ledges, clinging to ceilings, and performing other feats that would normally be impossible.

Hear Noise is not just putting your ear to a door, it’s a chance to notice ambushers that move silently (e.g. bugbears and undead), distant sounds, faint noises like tumblers on a safe, and a chance to awaken from sleep before getting ambushed.

Hide in Shadows goes beyond the sort of stealth everyone can do (represented by the Surprise Check). Hide in Shadows works like a saving throw against being noticed at the start of an encounter. It can work to blend into a crowd. It also gives the thief a chance to hide during Pursuit & Evasion (1e rules).

Move Silently allows a thief to reposition while remaining undetected. It can also work like a saving throw when an enemy focuses on listening or uses Hear Noise.

 

[Mark Hope]

I wonder how many people here on EN World consider themselves OSR gamers, and what that actually means to them, personally.

Although I largely run TSR-era games, I don't think of myself as an OSR gamer, mainly because of the "R", which variously stands for Renaissance or Revival or maybe Robots I don't know. Apart from a stint running 3e, I never stopped playing those games so it's just all D&D to me, without a need for any other label. I do think in terms of whether I'm running a game with an overarching narrative, an emergent narrative, or just vaguely connected modules, but those approaches don't belong to any particular "school" to me, old, new, or otherwise

 

[Gus L]

John Lennon's murder was a big deal in the rock and roll world. It didn't mean that rock and roll stopped being produced.

But the Beatles did... and so did Lennon's music. More importantly, if one were looking at the change of rock over time, Lennon's death would make a great marker for the end of the dominance of 1960's and 1970's styles of British Rock and the ascendence of harder Heavy and Punk styles ...

The point is not that the OSR playstyle is over, or one can't play an OSR game - much like many bands are still influenced by or even ape the British Invasion Sound - only that the OSR as a coherent scene is gone. At one time the folks wanting to discover and replicate the style of play from Gygax's basement (or whatever) were in contact with and sharing ideas with the folks designing ultralights. This is no longer the case. The scene came out of that, and the shared ethos was "the OSR".

There are plenty of influences on that, plenty of ways that the OSR scene/style/movement evolved until it wasn't one OSR anymore. The end of G+ is simply a key event and convenient marker - like Lennon's Death. Pick one you like better if it doesn't suit you.

Everything that lives -- and I would say an artistic/cultural movement qualifies in this case -- changes. That's one of the defining characteristics of something being alive.

Deciding that something is dead because it's changed in a way that you don't like -- "my beloved child is dead and has been replaced with this obnoxious, smelly teenager" -- perhaps due to a catastrophic outside force like the death of G+, is a pretty weak argument.

I'm not fretting over a lost time. Rather the opposite - I'm suggesting embracing change and growth. The OSR has had babies, or undergone speciation... there are plenty of "beloved children" around related to older games or the play style that the OSR created, but they are distinct and varied. They even fight a lot.

I think acknowledging that we are in a Post-OSR era and that there are multiple offshoots of the original scene, movement and play style is helpful. For example, note how often people insist that the OSR should be defined solely by compatibility with early D&D editions, or that it's about rediscovering a style or methods of play used by Gygax and friends/enemies in the 1970's/1980's. By acknowledging that this was a (not THE) goal of some part of the OSR during some parts of its 15 year history, and that some Post-OSR scenes have elevated it to their primary goal we don't have to fight with them about if ITO is "OSR". Everything produced in the OSR spaces of various blogs, forums and G+ until (and again this is a somewhat arbitrary date) 2020 is OSR. Everything after that stems from it is Post-OSR of some variety or another.

 

[Gus L]

The tension between dropping useful gear and carrying more loot is ever-present. Using mundane equipment to solve problems in creative ways is a huge part of the fun, and it only matters if you can't retcon what you brought or pull "miscellaneous adventuring gear" out of hammerspace. These things contribute to verisimilitude, to immersion, and most importantly to feeling clever when you made a good decision about how to equip yourself (a feeling otherwise only allowed to spellcasters who thought to memorize the right spell that day).

I note that the "miscellaneous adventuring gear hammerspace" you describe is exactly how OD&D, B/X, and AD&D approach mundane supplies... The idea that tracking rope and spikes and flasks of oil and torch weight individually is important was largeIy adopted mid-OSR as a way to revitalize the low level dungeon exploration style of play...

I'd place a good part of the influence around it on the game "Torchbearer" even...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm not fretting over a lost time. Rather the opposite - I'm suggesting embracing change and growth.

You are explicitly saying "all of this stuff was OSR and all of that stuff is something different."

I fundamentally disagree.

 

[Gus L]

You are explicitly saying "all of this stuff was OSR and all of that stuff is something different."

I fundamentally disagree.

One can recognize that things are different without being upset about it or making a judgment that one is better then the other. This is how categorization works.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One can recognize that things are different without being upset about it or making a judgment that one is better then the other.

I'm not upset at anything. I just disagree with your thesis.