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

[Micah Sweet]

That didn't make it any less dull. Barring GM intervention, your real choices as an OD&D Fighting man added up to 1) Weapon, and 2) Target. As far as I'm concerned, that's simply not enough.

You do know this thread is about what you  like about OSR gaming, right?

 

[Minigiant]

What OSR games are you playing?

What OSR games had freeform multiclassing, freeform dualclassing, feats, trait, powers, or racials that let you dip into other classes and races abilities?

 

[Aldarc]

What OSR games had freeform multiclassing, freeform dualclassing, feats, trait, powers, or racials that let you dip into other classes and races abilities?

Unless I am misunderstanding you, I believe that Stars/Worlds Without Number hits some of those notes.

 

[Mannahnin]

Full disclosure: I legitimately do not understand why OSE is a thing. It's just B/X. Why is THAT the one that a significant portion of the OSR locked on to?

This got some good answers earlier, but I think I can boil it down a little better. There was a process of discovery figuring out what a plurality of people were interested in, and Necrotic Gnome has truly excellent production values and did a beautiful job with editing, layout, and art.

Originally, from what I saw (I started following the blogs and forums around 2008 or 2009) AD&D was the main focus of the OSR, with a sideline for OD&D and a smaller one for Basic. In some OSR/Old School forums even 2nd edition AD&D was considered a watered down imposter and insult to Gygax's game. 3rd and 3.5 were often referred to in those circles as TETSNBN (The Edition That Shall Not Be Named) and 4th as YAETSNBN (Yet Another Edition That Shall Not Be Named).

The movement was originally centered on a renewal of interest in and Apologism for (in the C.S. Lewis sense) TSR-era D&D in reaction to 3rd edition. Some people in the scene had never stopped playing AD&D. Other members had dropped out over the years, came back with 3rd edition (which was very successful), but then eventually became disenchanted with 3rd and its issues, and returned to old school D&D trying to recapture the magic of their youth.

This revival or Renaissance involved a lot of people really looking at the texts with a more educated, adult, fresh viewpoint than they had when they were kids. And trying to figure out what (if any) parts of the mechanics actually facilitated the fun they preferred or remembered preferring to 3rd ed.

Getting back to "Why OSE?" (Formerly BXE), it basically came down to a LOT of people realizing that they preferred a simpler game than AD&D, and that in many cases the way they actually played AD&D back in the day was ignoring a LOT of AD&D's more complicated rules and subsystems.

While there are a ton of clones and house-ruled variants of D&D now, the verdict of history (so far) seems to be that of all the versions TSR published, Tom Moldvay and David Cook (and Steve Marsh)'s Basic and Expert was the most brilliantly edited and encapsulated. Boiling down the parts most people (at least "most people" who don't find WotC D&D to better suit them) love with the least cruft and complication. This framework also easily admits of adding things to it, like more classes, spells, monsters and magic items from AD&D. Or custom ones. Or discrete mechanical subsystems that one prefers.

So why isn't Rolemaster OSR and just "Old School" (which was what I originally responded to with the question).

You already got one opinion in the thread- that it's because there aren't Rolemaster clones. Non-D&D old school games have generally stayed in print and if they have multiple editions they normally haven't made such extensive changes. So they have a continuity of existence which kind of obviates any need for a Renaissance.

I'll give you another- the OSR movement started and has always been centered on D&D because it was originally about re-examining and re-embracing TSR versions of D&D in reaction to WotC versions. OSRIC was originally published to facilitate the continued accessibility of the 1E AD&D rules in light of gradually dwindling supply of the physical books for new players, and WotC's intermittent/not-necessarily-reliable willingness to sell PDFs.

The movement has expanded/shifted to have a heavy emphasis on clones with rules variants (Labyrinth Lord arguably first among them) and on new games inspired by old-school play and philosophy (called by some NuSR games), and the same rising tide of re-appreciating old school D&D has also been accompanied by some renewed interest in other old school games (Traveller, Rolemaster, Empire of the Petal Throne, Gamma World, FASERIP games especially Marvel Super Heroes), but historically IMO those are sidelines to the original core movement.

To this day the OSR is different things to different people. Some people feel that the clone/heartbreaker part is the main thing now. Some people feel very strongly that non-D&D Old School games are every bit as much OSR as D&D ones. But the above is my view based on 15ish years of following the movement pretty closely.

Most notions of a “Renaissance” involve some degree of revisionism, idealization, and historiography about an imagined past that may differ from actuality. OSR has congregated somewhat around a particularized vision of how some old school games were played. I think that OSR has some good insights but not when it snubs modern gaming or other play styles.

Yes, I agree, though I do think there is a good variety of perspectives in the movement. When I first started reading Dragonsfoot around 2008 or so the hate for WotC versions was intense. The blogs tended to be more relaxed on average, but this was the height of the edition wars and there was kind of an absurd amount of hostility/disdain. Thankfully things are more relaxed nowadays.

You should be able to talk about what makes your game or play preferences great without denigrating other games.

An offense WotC itself is guilty of on several occasions. And to be fair, if you're doing things differently from the mainstream you have to describe that difference somehow, and it can sometimes be difficult to do that with the precise non-inflammatory language the 2023 social media outlets seem to demand to pass muster.

Yes, I think a lot of old schoolers and OSR players took serious offense to some of WotC's marketing around 3rd, and then a ton of 3rd ed and 3E-sympathetic old school players got even more annoyed at WotC's marketing for 4th, which dumped on/insulted a lot of classic sacred cows from 3rd and earlier editions.

I think that marketing was INTENDED to be tongue-in-cheek, and of course if you're making a big sales pitch for a New Thing very often part of that is trying to illustrate how much better it is than Old Thing and how you're offering fixes to problems with Old Thing, but it definitely struck a lot of people wrong.

It shouldn't be. Its possible to think older games and styles had some virtues that may have been left behind without rejecting the virtues of more modern designs. Its even possible to combine the two in fruitful ways (looking at Cepheus Deluxe here).

Absolutely.

That's kinda the point.

In OSR, the DM is kinda sorta guilted into giving the fighter the suite of magical armors, arms, and gear they want. Because that is how the game is designed around. The game rules are typical designed for a some sort of set to be heavily recommended as treasure. And it's heavily recommended to give a fighter player stuff of their wishlist to keep them happy.

So being a big dumb, brawny, heavy fighter is a blast in OSR.

Now if the "feats" you want don't exist as magic items, or your DM ignores your wishlist, or the mechanics doesn't support your build...

I never saw wishlists discussed until 4th ed. Although 3rd ed was very supportive of MAKING custom items your character wanted or "needed" for their "build". It was the first edition with detailed tables and rules for that. In old school games folks relied on a combination of treasure tables and "thoughtful placement", and sometimes that meant putting an item the DM knew a given PC would love and find useful in a horde, and sometimes it involved putting a rumor in the world of where such an item could be found, and letting the PCs seek it out if they chose.

That is my original point.
There is only one build for each class/race-as-class.

If you wanted to play one of those few supported "builds" (and rolled well enough to qualify), you were going to have a very fun time.
Everything else was cherries the DM could put on top in your treasure to make your time sweeter.

Yes, I agree that one of the limitations of the old school games is the limitations in builds and ways to customize and differentiate your character outside of treasure or DM fiat.

This is one reason I love the simple platform of B/X, though, and how it lends itself to design of custom character classes. Either using a mechanical system like the one offered in Dragon issue 109, or ones invented by the DM or a third party designer. One of the reasons I love James V. West's Black Pudding zine is the literal dozens of new classes for B/X he includes. All sorts of fun and unique character options. And of course another of Necrotic Gnome's design achievements has been their takes on making OSE classes out of all the AD&D character options which B/X didn't have.

This hasn't been my experience playing OSR style games. You tend to use things like treasure tables for that reason. Whereas when I was playing a lot of 3E it was routine for players to have wishlists (but much of the OSR is a direct reaction to things like wish lists). Which isn't to say you can't shape these kinds of things to fit the characters, just in my experience it isn't really the norm to do so in an OSR campaign

Ja.

 

[Reynard]

I want them in both places, and I especially don't want a lack of interesting choices in combat for the fighting specialist.

I feel like the issue here is about concrete mechanical choices as opposed to freedom. In general, I think most OSR fans would suggest the latter is better. Of course, it means that the GM has significantly more input into how much fun you have playing your character, which is a bit weird.

 

[Mannahnin]

I want them in both places, and I especially don't want a lack of interesting choices in combat for the fighting specialist.

I feel like the issue here is about concrete mechanical choices as opposed to freedom. In general, I think most OSR fans would suggest the latter is better. Of course, it means that the GM has significantly more input into how much fun you have playing your character, which is a bit weird.

Yeah, this is definitely one of the eternal issues with old school D&D. How to give people who play Fighters more interesting choices in combat without creating a big weight of complicated rules for combat maneuvers (like in 3E, say).

DCC gives us one approach, with Mighty Deeds, though that still requires a lot of creativity and a fair amount of DM judgement.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess gives Fighters, Dwarves and Elves two simple options- to fight aggressively and get +2 TH at the cost of -4AC, or fight defensively and get +2AC at the cost of -4 TH.

Another light house rule I've seen (first in the Black Pudding zine, IIRC) is just to let Fighters and Fighter-types declare a special maneuver whenever they roll a Nat 20- knock the enemy prone, push them off a ledge, disarm them, pin them to the wall with an arrow, etc. Optionally granting a saving throw to the bad guy to avoid if it's something really powerful which would end the fight. Of course this one doesn't give you a cool choice except WHEN you roll a Nat 20, so maybe one could make it more accessible by, say, allowing such maneuvers to be declared at a -4 TH or something, and succeed on a hit (with Nat 20s always hitting, of course).

 

[Reynard]

Another light house rule I've seen (first in the Black Pudding zine, IIRC) is just to let Fighters and Fighter-types declare a special maneuver whenever they roll a nat 20- knock the enemy prone, push them off a ledge, disarm them, pin them to the wall with an arrow, etc. Optionally granting a saving throw to the bad guy to avoid if it's something really powerful which would end the fight.

This is probably the best option, although I would say X over the required to hit. That way getting better at fighting does help instead of it being locked to luck forever.

 

[Oligopsony]

I think this is Emmy Allen’s idea but don’t quote me, but you can also have a combat maneuvers system where, after damage is rolled, you offer the target a choice of damage or maneuver of your invention.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think this is Emmy Allen’s idea but don’t quote me, but you can also have a combat maneuvers system where, after damage is rolled, you offer the target a choice of damage or maneuver of your invention.

Yeah, I'm always a little worried about the balance between making maneuvers unappealing or too powerful. In my minimalist B/X house rules I currently have the rule as a 20 gives the attacking PC the option of a maneuver or just a +1 to damage.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Following on the heels of @Mannahnin's excellent summary, I have to ask, @Reynard, are you familiar with the five-part History of the OSR? (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V) It answers a lot of common questions and should be considered required reading for anyone interested in understanding how and why the style came to be where it is (probably alongside that once-viral "Six Cultures of Play" blog post from a couple of years ago).