It also does lead to the problems of what if the players idea of impartiality doesn't match the GM's idea of impartiality. When do real world physics start to bleed into game physics, and does that always get applied equally in different situations? Even as kids playing make believe, there were lots of disagreements about whether something was "fair" or not.
D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts
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It also does lead to the problems of what if the players idea of impartiality doesn't match the GM's idea of impartiality. When do real world physics start to bleed into game physics, and does that always get applied equally in different situations? Even as kids playing make believe, there were lots of disagreements about whether something was "fair" or not.
Yeah, back in the early days, that was not a crazy number of players and characters to have out there. But the rules also were smaller - I would say we still got through a round of combat at the same speed that a round of combat goes for 4 players in 5e. But in the 2e days, we started to see customization introduced through splatbooks and some third party products from companies like Mayfair Games, and all of a sudden the time started creeping up to the point it did become a problem.
Celebrim
Legend
Even? That everything ends in an argument is why kids stop playing make believe. For three and four year olds, generally the kids are playing alongside each other and not with each other. They don't have a real shared imaginary space: each is in their own world. As you get into five and six year olds, there are attempts at cooperation but typically there is a dominate personality that is just deciding all conflicts. This starts breaking down at age seven or eight when the non-dominate personalities begin to realize that they are just puppets in someone else's play, and so typically "make believe" ends. You have it go on a little longer in some cases but it's all dysfunction at that point with the non-donimate personality putting up with it because they have no other social options, but even that typically falls apart.
Rules are what allows make believe to continue and is the mechanism by which we arbitrate the sharing of the imaginary space. It's not the failure state; lack of rules is the failure state.
Rulings are just rules that are instituted by common law rather than "constitutionally". Even then there is silent voting going on. If the majority of the group disagrees with the ruling, the judge either has to change it or the group will dissolve.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
And that's precisely why most games we play have at least some rules. Because most people, in the end, don't want to have one person arbitrating absolutely everything.
SpellObjectEnthusiast
Adventurer
This is exactly it. I see people ignoring this fact constantly when talking about Classic D&D - It was designed for and often played with huge parties!! 4d4 kobolds should be a trivial encounter, since you should have 6-10 PCs and a half dozen hirelings with you!
Lots of those groups probably survived by Fudging the dice or starting at higher levels. Basic D&D even tells the GM to fudge, to avoid an "unsatisfying" game. Eventually, you're going to get tired of Keep on the Borderlands being a meatgrinder treadmill, and you're either going to quit the game, even the odds, or cheat.
The 'core tenets of old school play' is a modern invention with the OSR movement in the mid 00's. The only thing that was actually true about old school games and systems is this: Your Table Will Vary. Every single Referee is going to run the game differently from every other Referee. Its the nature of the incomplete rulesets, contradictory rules, and sometimes straight-up poor design.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I would hesitate to agree with this completely, as I think it goes a little too far in describing the problem. Was it the discussion? Or was it being kids without the maturity to have a productive discussion that can actually be fun to hash out and often broke down because of this?
This is not to say that I have not met or played with adults with whom such discussions would similarly break down and be no fun, but with the right group those discussions can be fun and aren’t by default “unfun.”
That said, some rules and guidelines make such discussions much easier/productive, so I am not arguing for no rules.
I also realize that “with the right group” is difficult, if not impossible, to account for in a rule set, but it doesn’t matter how good or comprehensive rules are with the wrong group, it will never be fun.
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Dude I'm so glad someone finally says it. I love the OSR, I think there's a lot of good there, but some of the ideas have led to IMO very bad sessions at my tables, both run by me or played in by me. This is the biggest one. Some monsters are avoided because they are traps in monster form, like mind flayers and vampires, but others are meant to be slain. And the part about the rooms being empty? Yeah. OSR stans will talk about how people care too much about what's on the character sheet, then they'll pop out an adventure with totally empty rooms and no details and say "What, not creative enough to make it work?"I stumbled across this blogpost as I was lurking around social media and man, this really crystallized some of the things that I just can’t really wrap my head around with OSR:
Why Combat Is a Fail State
Revisiting the old-school maxim "Combat is a fail state" and redefining what it means at my table and as a design theory for the OSR.www.explorersdesign.com
The portion that really stuck out to me was this:
Back when I was playing 1e/2e, we typically had 7 or 8 players at the table, at least a couple of which had henchmen or retainers. When we played as kids, we weren’t thinking about avoiding combat. We avoided some combat because everyone knew mind flayers ate your brains, vampires drained your precious experience points, and beholders flat out disintegrated you, but if you weren’t one of those, we felt pretty confident our party of 8+ could take your gang of orcs. Our stance mirrored the stance of the dungeon, if that makes sense. Temple of Elemental Evil? Be sneaky. Slavelords? Who doesn’t like kicking the crap out of slavers?
I also just can’t wrap my head around the idea that the rules are something there for when your imagination fails. To me, it’s the opposite. The rules are the default - here’s what you can absolutely do, but it’s not the only thing you can do and try to experiment and interact a bit. But I don’t treat combat as a fail state unless the game says so.
Call of Cthulhu says so. Mothership says so. D&D never said “don’t fight those monsters, it’ll go badly for you.”
Another one that gets my goat: the answer is not on your character sheet. Every ability, item I have, and relevant score is on the character sheet. Modern OSR eschews long blocks of text in favor of brief descriptions. But one of the things those sometimes obnoxiously long blocks of text did was give you a full accounting of what was in a room to interact with, sometimes down to the smallest detail. I find GMs struggle with the “less is more” room descriptions. If the answer is not on my character sheet, it’s also not typically in the room description of a modern OSR game. So where is the answer?
I call BS on the maxim. The answer is most certainly on your character sheet but if you want to find other answers, you may be able to find them elsewhere.
Anyways, really good article that addresses at least some of the incongruity in OSR that I’ve seen. I still feel like I’ve yet to find the OSR game that really speaks to me probably because I’m so at odds with these core maxims. Maybe I just stick with 1e/2e.
It's not about being creative, it's about wanting things to interact with. If I wanted to make up everything myself I'd just write a book, not play a game. I play a game so I can be exposed to interesting things in the gameworld.
I absolutely get what you are saying, and believe that for many, many tables... using the dice to create drama is probably necessary. I just happen to believe that certain DMs can also create true drama for their players just off of their own whims and imaginations as the "All-Seeing Neutral God" at the table, rather than needing the "dice gods" to do it.
Now granted... this line of thinking could produce a valid discussion about whether "OSR" games (as a genre) could do it as per the definitions of what makes an "OSR" game an "OSR" game (versus the much more generalized "RPG".) And that... I will concede as quite possibly true-- the genre of "OSR" might very well need and include dice-rolling as a necessary part of what makes an RPG fall within that genre of OSR. Can't argue with that.
But at least for the generalized "roleplaying game"-- as anyone who has ever played Fiasco can attest-- not every RPG needs the randomization of dice in order to create drama at the table. The players are often more than capable of creating the drama themselves.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
That's fair, but I think it's important to note that a lot of participants aren't playing RPGs with the intent of generating drama and narrative as their primary focus.
Many participants enjoy the engagement with the ruleset, specifically, and running games that are basically open-ended board games.
Oddly enough, I taught a new group of players just last month.
We made their character sheets, and I asked them "Do you have a good concept of your character in your head?"
They said yes. I said turn your sheets face down on the table.
I said "You are travelling with a caravan, slowly traversing the woods. A storm is on the horizon, and will likely hit before nightfall. The area is infested with goblins. What do you do?"
Some reached for their sheets, I told them wait, figure out WHAT you WOULD do first (as your character), then we will learn HOW to do it, if it needs something on the sheet.
They had a great time. And it eased them into the rules instead of overwhelming them.
Side Note: When folks say DnD is too complicated, I tell them no it isn't. What would you do right now if a troll came in through the front door? (B&N, where I worked). They say stuff like run, grab a chair to fight with, etc. I say you just played DnD, all the rules are for is deciding how well you did something you tried to do.
