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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9611132" data-attributes="member: 7026594">It's a good piece.  Before I followed the link I was going to link to [USER=7045072]@Gus L[/USER] 's <a href="https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2023/08/maxims-of-osr.html" target="_blank">7 Maxims of the OSR</a> post, which breaks down several of these shorthand phrases and explains their origins and where people go wrong with them, ...and then I saw that the author linked to that right up front. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f606.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":LOL:" title="Laugh    :LOL:"  data-smilie="17"data-shortname=":LOL:" />I agree that "combat is a fail state" really only applies a) for groups which are trying to maximize odds of success in treasure for xp systems, and b) when the rules and the numbers in the situation make the risk of death unacceptably high.Tons of us who play OSR enjoy combat.  But I think part of the fun of OSR games with deadly combat is picking your spots. Figuring out when to take a chance and press your luck vs. when to retreat/fold 'em and walk away to live to fight another day.  And ideally this also makes combat more exciting when we DO engage in it, because we know the risks are high. We know we had the option to run.  We know we had the option to avoid the signposted danger. We made a choice to gamble with our characters' lives. And the "combat is a fail state" maxim ideally serves also to remind the DM not to spring too many unavoidable ambushes or un-signposted dangers on the party.  Don't force them into an un-fun situation.  Occasionally it can be fun and exciting to be caught with your pants down, and scared and figuring out how to get out of a corner your characters are suddenly backed into.  But it's not good for it to be happening regularly.I think the answer is SOMETIMES on your character sheet.  In the last OSE session I played in our Thief was scouting and got charmed by a Harpy.  She was going to pick his skinny charmed elf butt up and take him 75' up into her black oak nest where he'd definitely have been dead before the party could hope to get at her.  But I decided to invest my M-U's one Sleep spell in trying to save the Thief and win the encounter, and we won initiative.But this maxim is more about players being encouraged to engage in the fictional world and manipulate the objects and people in it.  You're right that minimalist keying can SOMETIMES leave the DM and players little data to work with, and in that event the game relies on the players being imaginative and the DM being good at "yes, and" and "no, but" to their ideas to let them figure out solutions.  But the core idea is more that, broadly speaking, it's more fun and immersive to engage in this process of conversational back and forth play than just to roll a skill check.Level of room detail is a fine art. Too little and the DM doesn't have enough to work with and has to improvise a lot. Too much and it's unwieldy to work with and the DM has to read a ton and commit it to memory or hope they can find the essential details in the heat of play.</blockquote>

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