OSR Why does OSR Design Draw You In?

[Retros_x]

How....simple. It's a thing of beauty.

This is lowkey one of my favorite "rules" of SD.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This is lowkey one of my favorite "rules" of SD.

Same...but my list of 'favorite rules' is pretty long!

 

[morrangor]

OSR appeals to me for many of the same reasons as others. It makes me nostalgic and I grew up playing AD&D 2e and mixing it with AD&D 1e books. I do like some of the newer innovations in the OSR space, like better dungeon design, one-page dungeons and more abbreviated ways of writing adventures. Shadowdark RPG for example mixes more modern innovations like Advantage/Disadvantage and ascending AC which I think is good for more accessibility for people, especially newer gamers. Teaching AD&D 2e was always difficult for me to teach with THACO and rolling high sometimes and rolling low other times (In my humble opinion). Perhaps I was not teaching it right.

 

[Celebrim]

How....simple. It's a thing of beauty.

Pithy, but not simple. It's probably the most complicated way to write a rule. It sounds like it would be a nightmare in play.

The player doesn't know, but he always will want advantage. So he's motivated to always ask. Every single dang time. And it tends to push the game toward being resolved by the meta - DM wheedling as the primary play loop.

Meanwhile as a DM now you are not only opening up wheedling as a play loop, but you have to resolve every question as a one off relying on your feelings as a guideline. The only way that isn't a nightmare is if you are self-assured to the point of cockiness. Fiat is the most mentally and emotionally draining way to handle a rules question. It's equivalent to writing the rules on the fly, a vastly harder job than just reading or even interpreting the rules as written.

There are many things about "old school" I still find attractive, but "you can run things with more fiat" isn't one of them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Pithy, but not simple. It's probably the most complicated way to right a rule. It sounds like it would be a nightmare in play.

The player doesn't know, but he always will want advantage. So he's motivated to always ask. Every single dang time. And it tends to push the game toward being resolved by the meta - DM wheedling as the primary play loop.

I've been running Shadowdark since mid-2023. This has literally never been an issue.

 

[Scribe]

Pithy, but not simple. It's probably the most complicated way to write a rule. It sounds like it would be a nightmare in play.

The player doesn't know, but he always will want advantage. So he's motivated to always ask. Every single dang time. And it tends to push the game toward being resolved by the meta - DM wheedling as the primary play loop.

Nah, its not an issue, its an issue of player type if anything.

If you as a DM think players will struggle, put a bit of time into each of them and think 'what do I believe this applies to' but its not that hard.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Pithy, but not simple. It's probably the most complicated way to write a rule. It sounds like it would be a nightmare in play.

The player doesn't know, but he always will want advantage. So he's motivated to always ask. Every single dang time. And it tends to push the game toward being resolved by the meta - DM wheedling as the primary play loop.

Funny, that isn't my experience at all.

Maybe it's all in the quality/maturity of players one chooses to sit down with.

 

[Bluecrow]

My gaming group has a long d&d background, 1e - 2e - 3e - Pathfinder - 5e. We have been playing ad&d 1st edition/OSRIC since summer 2025, some of the players have played it last in 1989. The idea was mostly from myself (DM), but I managed to lure the players in. The starting idea was not a momentary nostalgia, but to see if ad&d would be a workable system for a longer campaign.

I think there are a lot of positives in the older system, which have been lost with the editions. And of course, the system is old and it does show in the game design. What I went looking for is a sense of danger for the players, clear roles in the game for character classes - xp from treasures, not much from combat - which will certainly guide the characters' actions in the world. Character arc zero to hero, not hero to demigod as in 5E.

I am also playing in 5E -campaign and it is great, systems are just different.