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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 9077982" data-attributes="member: 6750908">I am a bit of a weird outlier in the whole OSR movement, because while I cut my teeth on "early Eighties D&D" (in the early Nineties) I didn't learn anything like the grim-and-gritty dungeoncrawling style of the modern OSR. Our adventures were full of barbarians and monks with psionic wild talents, shapeshifting martial arts gunslingers, and crossovers with Buck Rogers and Gamma World. My first copy of Deities & Demigods (first printing, with Cthulhu and Melnibone) was worthless on the secondhand market because more than half of the deities & demigods in it had their names, pictures, and statblocks crossed out with permanent marker. For me, what I love about the OSR is the combination of agency and power. People like to complain about the proliferation of kewl powerz in WotC/Paizo D&D (and not without merit) but the power to crawl into a hole and kills monsters for the gold and XP to crawl into a bigger hole to kill bigger monsters for the platinum and XP to crawl into even bigger holes and kill even bigger monsters for astral diamonds is still... just the power to crawl into a hole in the ground and kill monsters. Only the numbers change.In old school D&D and the OSR, it's assumed that you crawl into those holes in the ground for personal reasons and that the money and power you drag back up to the surface is going to be used for those reasons. It's assumed that the magical and martial prowess you take into those holes in the ground translates into-- or can be parleyed into-- political and spiritual authority on the surface.I learned to play D&D from before the era of campaign settings and adventure paths, when players and umpires only had the continuity of their own campaigns to contend with and not the canon of published products. Players decided what their objectives were, and players were free to win or lose because "the adventure" didn't have a predetermined end state that led into the next adventure. The whole campaign setting could change this adventure, because it didn't have to be returned to its original shrink-wrapped condition to get ready for the next adventure.That's what I miss about old school D&D, and that's what I want to recreate in the OSR. I'm also a late TSR guy, and if you look at the Player's Option series (incuding DM's Option: High Level Campaigns), those however many (however you count them) books are the best tools for designing your D&D game the way you want it to run. The underlying AD&D rules themselves are unfortunate cruft, but this era of D&D and AD&D setting supplements and setting design supplements is the pinnacle of Dungeons & Dragons as Midwestern Folk Art.</blockquote>

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