D&D General Why is "OSR style" D&D Fun For You?

[Malmuria]

Point blank, the best sources for practically limitless content-- any kind of content-- for specific OSR games isn't the OSR itself, it's the third-party ecosystems for PF1 and 5e. It just takes more effort to translate and implement than the pure stuff.

Of course, a lot of the best OSR stuff is also stuff that other OSR designers have translated from WotC/Paizo to old school language, and then implemented in Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials or Swords & Wizardry.

examples? These claims strike me as very strange indeed

 

[DammitVictor]

examples? These claims strike me as very strange indeed

The first claim is pretty subjective, but I'll stand by it. Just look at the new classes in Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, then pop over to d20PFSRD.com and look at some of the third-party classes or class archetypes and imagine them simplified and available right next to them. It's a gold mine, it's free real estate.

Second claim, any number of warlock and/or psionic systems for OSE or LL have been adapted from 3.X or 5e; I'm particularly fond of Timothy Brannon's work for The Other Side Publishing, which has elements of both the Pathfinder Witch and the 5e Warlock. Tieflings and dragonborn as classes like elf and dwarf, magi and warforged. Want to say that Barrel Rider is the standout here, CrossPlanes, Necrotic Gnome themselves.

And maybe I'm biased here, because "The OSR" frequently complains that WotC/Paizo D&D content is "too weird" and one of my biggest complaints-- even while 3.X was still in print-- was that it was never weird enough, never as weird as Mystara and Hollow World and Spelljammer and Dark Sun. People are injecting absolutely any- and everything with the OGL license on it into the framework of the B/X rules and it is glorious.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The first claim is pretty subjective, but I'll stand by it. Just look at the new classes in Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, then pop over to d20PFSRD.com and look at some of the third-party classes or class archetypes and imagine them simplified and available right next to them. It's a gold mine, it's free real estate.

Those are all classes from the 1E AD&D PHB and Unearthed Arcana books. Knight is the renamed Cavalier and Acrobat is the renamed Thief-Acrobat.

OSE is pretty explicit about where those came from: Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome

 

[Lanefan]

And maybe I'm biased here, because "The OSR" frequently complains that WotC/Paizo D&D content is "too weird" and one of my biggest complaints-- even while 3.X was still in print-- was that it was never weird enough, never as weird as Mystara and Hollow World and Spelljammer and Dark Sun. People are injecting absolutely any- and everything with the OGL license on it into the framework of the B/X rules and it is glorious.

I'd guess those "too weird" complaints about 3e/PF were largely in reference to the rules and mechanics, not what was in the adventures or setting guides.

 

[MichaelSomething]

examples? These claims strike me as very strange indeed

Look at 5E. A third of the mechanics are 4E things dressed up in natural language!

 

[Reynard]

I think the OSR is more experimental. As much as I am a little baffled by the success of OSE as a rules set, I am absolutely not confused as to why Necrotic Gnome's adventures are popular, for example. The OSR is the home of weird fantasy in a way that 5E very rarely is.

 

[theCourier]

What I like about all the weirdness in the OSR is that it dispels the notion that planar adventures or expeditions into super dangerous places are things left to the mid or endgame. You'll never catch a DCC funnel or level 1 adventure being about fighting rats or warding off bandits, usually there's always some strange, otherworldly theming in its adventures.

 

[Reynard]

What I like about all the weirdness in the OSR is that it dispels the notion that planar adventures or expeditions into super dangerous places are things left to the mid or endgame. You'll never catch a DCC funnel or level 1 adventure being about fighting rats or warding off bandits, usually there's always some strange, otherworldly theming in its adventures.

Right. First level characters can die screaming inside the corpse of a cybernetic tarrasque as well as 5th level ones!

 

[Malmuria]

The first claim is pretty subjective, but I'll stand by it. Just look at the new classes in Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, then pop over to d20PFSRD.com and look at some of the third-party classes or class archetypes and imagine them simplified and available right next to them. It's a gold mine, it's free real estate.

Second claim, any number of warlock and/or psionic systems for OSE or LL have been adapted from 3.X or 5e; I'm particularly fond of Timothy Brannon's work for The Other Side Publishing, which has elements of both the Pathfinder Witch and the 5e Warlock. Tieflings and dragonborn as classes like elf and dwarf, magi and warforged. Want to say that Barrel Rider is the standout here, CrossPlanes, Necrotic Gnome themselves.

And maybe I'm biased here, because "The OSR" frequently complains that WotC/Paizo D&D content is "too weird" and one of my biggest complaints-- even while 3.X was still in print-- was that it was never weird enough, never as weird as Mystara and Hollow World and Spelljammer and Dark Sun. People are injecting absolutely any- and everything with the OGL license on it into the framework of the B/X rules and it is glorious.

I think what this speaks to is the common root of both 5e and OSE in the TSR-era editions--tieflings from planescape, psionics from dark sun (in one iteration). Mechanically, I'd say there are various efforts to take the core of 5e and simplify it into an osr-ish style game. But outside of advantage/disadvantage (which itself came from 2e also) and the general idea of d20+mod for everything, I don't think 5e contributes too much to the OSR, whereas the OSR, somewhat infamously, helped produce 5e. "Rulings not rules" etc.

 

[Voadam]

I'd guess those "too weird" complaints about 3e/PF were largely in reference to the rules and mechanics, not what was in the adventures or setting guides.

I have heard plenty of complaints that WotC post AD&D was too weird with dwarven wizards and halfling paladins in core 3.0, PC robots and shapeshifters in 3.5 Eberron, PC core warlocks and dragonborn and tieflings in 4e, and 5e's most every class is magical, and so on.

Same complaints about 2e being too weird at the time with Spelljammer and Dark Sun and Planescape and Complete Book of Humanoids.