OSR Why does OSR Design Draw You In?

[Ralif Redhammer]

I really don’t know how to work around the Perception issue. If you accept that skills existed in OSR just in an X-in-6 or percentile manner, then something akin to Perception has always existed, but with a really low chance of success. Is it that Perception (and really all skills) are just too easy in 5e?

I’m inclined to delete any skills that remove interaction with the world - specifically Perception and Insight, and at minimum leave them as passive-only.

Like the spells, it's not so much that these were entirely new concepts, but that they functioned very differently. Being able to detect secret doors on a roll of 1 in 6 by just passing within 10' of them was a direct benefit of playing an Elf. Being able to Find Traps was an active feature of Thieves. Whereas Passive Perception is both too easy, and a core feature of how the game works. Every PC has Passive Perception.

The funny thing about Insight is that it almost doesn't matter. If a PC decides not to trust a particular NPC, in my experience there's no Insight roll high enough to convince them otherwise.

 

[Xenolith234]

Like the spells, it's not so much that these were entirely new concepts, but that they functioned very differently. Being able to detect secret doors on a roll of 1 in 6 by just passing within 10' of them was a direct benefit of playing an Elf. Being able to Find Traps was an active feature of Thieves. Whereas Passive Perception is both too easy, and a core feature of how the game works. Every PC has Passive Perception.

The funny thing about Insight is that it almost doesn't matter. If a PC decides not to trust a particular NPC, in my experience there's no Insight roll high enough to convince them otherwise.

Absolutely true on the Insight My party was asking random people about a missing kid in a large-ish town and most didn’t know anything about it and they found it very suspicious. I flat out told them that nothing on their face or about their behavior indicated anything suspicious and they continued to suspect everyone of covering up information anyway.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Absolutely true on the Insight My party was asking random people about a missing kid in a large-ish town and most didn’t know anything about it and they found it very suspicious. I flat out told them that nothing on their face or about their behavior indicated anything suspicious and they continued to suspect everyone of covering up information anyway.

This comes up a lot. It's definitely a major stumbling block to playing the PC as themselves and not as you, the player.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I really don’t know how to work around the Perception issue. If you accept that skills existed in OSR just in an X-in-6 or percentile manner, then something akin to Perception has always existed, but with a really low chance of success. Is it that Perception (and really all skills) are just too easy in 5e?

I’m inclined to delete any skills that remove interaction with the world - specifically Perception and Insight, and at minimum leave them as passive-only.

"perception" in Old school games is essentially the Search action - spend 10 minutes searching at most a 10x10 square, with a 17% chance of success each time, no retries.

This rule is so horrendously bad and unusable that, by necessity, people started making up their own way of resolving searching, namely the "interrogate the fiction" approach that is so popular nowadays. Effectively - you ignore the bad rule and solve everything with the GM ruling what you do/don't find based on your description alone. Many games like Into the Odd, Cairn, etc do away with the Search rules entirely and explicitly state that "interrogate the fiction" is the correct and only way to play.

It's hard to implement "interrogate the fiction" into games that mechanize perception in a functional way - it feels like you're choosing not to use the rules in favor of fiat, rather than abandoning rules that don't work in favor of something that does. For example, in Call of Cthulhu there's some pretty detailed skill rules for searching and researching that allow for a lot of player investment - replacing all that with "just tell me where you're looking, I'll tell you if you find anything, we don't need to roll" feels bad.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think I saw something in the Knock zine - Time, skills, tools, potentially environment. If you have all of them, no roll needed. Missing one? Roll. Missing two? Roll with disadvantage. Missing three? Impossible.

Oh that's interesting.

 

[Bill Zebub]

My party was asking random people about a missing kid in a large-ish town and most didn’t know anything about it and they found it very suspicious. I flat out told them that nothing on their face or about their behavior indicated anything suspicious and they continued to suspect everyone of covering up information anyway.

This wouldn't fly with strict simulationists, but if that happened at my table I'd be all, "Hmmm....maybe the villagers are hiding...something else!"

 

[Bill Zebub]

"perception" in Old school games is essentially the Search action - spend 10 minutes searching at most a 10x10 square, with a 17% chance of success each time, no retries.

This rule is so horrendously bad and unusable that, by necessity, people started making up their own way of resolving searching, namely the "interrogate the fiction" approach that is so popular nowadays. Effectively - you ignore the bad rule and solve everything with the GM ruling what you do/don't find based on your description alone. Many games like Into the Odd, Cairn, etc do away with the Search rules entirely and explicitly state that "interrogate the fiction" is the correct and only way to play.

It's hard to implement "interrogate the fiction" into games that mechanize perception in a functional way - it feels like you're choosing not to use the rules in favor of fiat, rather than abandoning rules that don't work in favor of something that does. For example, in Call of Cthulhu there's some pretty detailed skill rules for searching and researching that allow for a lot of player investment - replacing all that with "just tell me where you're looking, I'll tell you if you find anything, we don't need to roll" feels bad.

I try to always have tells, and teach players that they shouldn't waste too much time if there are no tells. I find the whole repetitive searching thing...with dice...a huge, boring waste of time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This wouldn't fly with strict simulationists, but if that happened at my table I'd be all, "Hmmm....maybe the villagers are hiding...something else!"

"Congratulations, you've now uncovered a group planning to overthrow the monarchy. They'll kill you unless they think you're with them."

 

[Xenolith234]

I try to always have tells, and teach players that they shouldn't waste too much time if there are no tells. I find the whole repetitive searching thing...with dice...a huge, boring waste of time.

Totally agree. One 10ft area at a time… bland, in my opinion. A region of a room seems likely a better method of searching. However, I do think that 5e is missing the overall dungeon procedure from OSR and 3e. It’s there if you squint hard, but it’s not clear to DMs that are new to the game (it wasn’t to me). I understand that 5e caters more and more to the narrative-oriented crowd, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I wish they’d also support the more simulationist crowd at the same time with reliable procedures and tools. I think the game can support both approaches - they just have to include the procedures provided in previous editions (modernize them if needed).

 

[jtylerk]

1. Nostalgia. Started late 70s/early 80s, and the old games really take me back. The vibe of OD&D, AD&D 1e, & B/X was incredible.

2. Fast gameplay. I run a few 5e groups, and old d&d is way way faster. Groups got much more accomplished in a session of play.

3. Less rules means the group can use narrative vs “skill checks” (as said earlier). Though I’d argue that’s still very possible in later eds like 5e. It’s just that folks aren’t as prone to lean on skill rolls using older systems.