OSR Why does OSR Design Draw You In?

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

I think it is easier to start with something like Basic/Expert rules and add things to it than it is to start with 5th edition and subtract things.

 

[Jahydin]

I got into the hobby in the 90s — the 1106 D&D tan box and AD&D 2nd Edition — and the way everyone around me played was trad. Plotlines, protagonists, and playacting. If you could railroad under the table to make a story happen, awesome, that meant that you were a good DM who cared about narrative and theme and characterization. Player agency? Not a concern. Everything had to serve the story. And players weren't there to be challenged, they were there to get into character and portray their characters, ideally with full-on voices and thespianism, end of story. Or at least, until the end of the story.

This is what I observed with 2e as well. Looking back, I can't help but think the playerbase wanted campaigns to be ran in such a way the rules just didn't support. Rather than actually create a ruleset to support it, it was just easier to downplay the importance of rules and dice results. What do you think?

So I went back to the tan box and from there the Rules Cyclopedia, and the lighter systems eased the burden a bit. But it was really the OSR philosophy (think Abed Nadir: "I'm the Dungeon Master. I have to be impartial, or the game has no meaning") that makes the game runnable. Build a world, make it a lively and dynamic sandbox full of interesting discoverables and interactables, and then stop caring what happens to it. Turn the PCs loose on the sandbox, and then just let the game run itself. Play to find out what happens, and instead of being the maestro Houdini who pulls all the puppet-strings and effects all the outcomes, just enjoy that you get to be surprised.

Too good. As someone who's been primarily running "adventure paths" in one form or another for years, this sort of playstyle was novel to me. Now, I can't stop daydreaming about the perfect sandbox style mechanics all day.

Funny enough, the best sandbox campaign I ever ran was actually using Savage Worlds. Turns out the flattened progress curve lends itself to allowing players do whatever they want pretty well!

 

[Jahydin]

But that said, I like it only from a theoretical perspective, to collect the books and support the creators - not to actually play it.

How come!?

 

[Desdichado]

I like the DIY aesthetic, the rules lightness, and the darker, low fantasy vibe that is common in the OSR. That said, I'm often irked by the OSR claiming to be... well, old school. You contrast OSR with "modern" games (your own scare quotes) but the OSR is a modern movement, and the champions of it these days, including the ones you mention like ShadowDark, are modern games with many significant modern touches. Back when the OSR was all about bringing out retroclones of older, out of print and unavailable (at the time) D&D rules, it was a very different thing than now when the OSR has become a movement of wannabe edgelords trying to one-up 5e-heads with how hard they play, or whatever, or writing manifestos on the "correct" way to play, or pretending that their modern reactionary movement is the rebirth of some older ur-roleplaying style, when it really isn't.