The state of Post-OSR content

[Osrnoob]

I have liked what I read so far! This form helped me adapt the Hazard Die to Sea Encounters and a lot of your island work is great Pirate campaign gas!

With conversion the answer is always more complicated than I would like. I am lazy and prefer factors of x.

Its not totally correct but I settled on 5eCR=BX HD or 5e HD and Damage Dice / 2 = BX Stats

Basic YugiOh knowlege tells me that 3e stats have numbers even HEART OF THE TRAP CARD LARGER than 5e, thus the thesis of 1/4 3e HD and Damage stats = BX

You are totally right though, looking up the monster in a big monster book is the correct method. Likely this process is easier at the table than I give it credit for. I will give it a shot!

 

[Osrnoob]

You all see this?
The RPG general net is in a tizzy over it

Six Cultures of Play

A blog about roleplaying games and theory focused on Mythras, Dungeons and Dragons, and OSR games.

retiredadventurer.blogspot.com

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Maybe the ‘OSR play-style’ should be called ‘Neo-Classical’, seeing it shares similarities and is derived from a re-imagining of how old versions of D&D were played.

I wonder if you have looked at Trent’s breakdown of old-school play style:

Taxonomy of Old-School D&D

I've seen it before, yeah. I think it takes a different focus - one based on the institutional development of TSR as it went through what I would call a "culture change". Because of the institutional focus, I think it misses that what it calls #5 is actually a cultural transformation in "What roleplaying is". I wanted to go beyond TSR / WotC as a focus, because three of the six styles have important parts of their evolution happen outside of TSR or WotC or games published by either.

I specifically avoided using "neo-classical" as a name for several reasons:

1) The community actually calls itself "OSR" and I'm trying to use autonyms.
2) "Neo-classical" probably better applies to the actual "classical revivalists" at places like K&KA or Dragonsfoot, rather than the OSR. I wanted to keep the distinction between Classic and OSR clear since it's an important part of the essay, and having "Classic" with "classic revivalists", and "neo-classical" play would have been even more confusing IMHO.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

You all see this?
The RPG general net is in a tizzy over it

Six Cultures of Play

A blog about roleplaying games and theory focused on Mythras, Dungeons and Dragons, and OSR games.

retiredadventurer.blogspot.com

Yes, I wrote it and linked to it above.

 

[Osrnoob]

Yes, I wrote it and linked to it above.

REALLY?! So many RPG people are pissed right now. I do not understand why? Other than is there really no best way and everything we have done is a product of dominant cultures?

You are blowing peoples minds thinking they do x best for y. Or we use x system because y. You are like hey, its your culture that matters man, not the system.

This post is everywhere right now, big deal dude.

 

[Osrnoob]

I agree with others this is a lexicon and language to describe things I have attempted to hit on before.

This language also solves structural problems with rpg groups as many issues are introduced when all players and the gm are not on the same cultural basis that dictates things like gm layer relationship.

Also appologies for not seeing the link here. This thread has so much text all over the place I lost track. That did, for this to influcence your post? Bruh fr

 

[The Heretic]

The essay is up!

I still think you should make an online quiz, if only just for fun.

Ludonarrative dissonance is an interesting beast. I now have a term to describe some of the dissonance I get playing WoW. The game narrative generally promotes this idea of multiculturalism, but in play you are with your own "people" (alliance vs horde) and most of the in universe groups that are multiracial (Venture company, various cults, etc) are your foes.

 

[Beek Gwenders]

I've seen it before, yeah. I think it takes a different focus - one based on the institutional development of TSR as it went through what I would call a "culture change". Because of the institutional focus, I think it misses that what it calls #5 is actually a cultural transformation in "What roleplaying is". I wanted to go beyond TSR / WotC as a focus, because three of the six styles have important parts of their evolution happen outside of TSR or WotC or games published by either.

I specifically avoided using "neo-classical" as a name for several reasons:

1) The community actually calls itself "OSR" and I'm trying to use autonyms.
2) "Neo-classical" probably better applies to the actual "classical revivalists" at places like K&KA or Dragonsfoot, rather than the OSR. I wanted to keep the distinction between Classic and OSR clear since it's an important part of the essay, and having "Classic" with "classic revivalists", and "neo-classical" play would have been even more confusing IMHO.

Fair enough, but I think a part of the classical revivalists certainly consider themselves part of the OSR, indeed via OSRIC they may think of themselves as the founders in some measure. The OSR for them is the revival of classic play. Recently on K&K a poster commented that K&K is part of the OSR whereas Dragonsfoot is not, something that I can see a lot of truth in. The majority of Dragonsfooters are concerned with just playing and keeping AD&D alive; however, K&K has from the outset, also been focused on the promotion of OSRIC and new AD&D publications. That is to say there is more of a goal to influence the market place through publication of new, ‘for-sale’ material.

The element that appears to be different from the classic style and the OSR is the general lack of attention in the OSR to what I think of as the ‘greater game’: the long, ongoing campaign and world building. This distinction may have its roots in the original distinction between AD&D and basic versions of the game which were more focused on a series of episodic adventures. Certainly most of the OSR is a derivative of the rules-light B/X game, so this is not surprising.

 

[squeen]

Fair enough, but I think a part of the classical revivalists certainly consider themselves part of the OSR, indeed via OSRIC they may think of themselves as the founders in some measure. The OSR for them is the revival of classic play. Recently on K&K a poster commented that K&K is part of the OSR whereas Dragonsfoot is not, something that I can see a lot of truth in. The majority of Dragonsfooters are concerned with just playing and keeping AD&D alive; however, K&K has from the outset, also been focused on the promotion of OSRIC and new AD&D publications. That is to say there is more of a goal to influence the market place through publication of new, ‘for-sale’ material.

The element that appears to be different from the classic style and the OSR is the general lack of attention in the OSR to what I think of as the ‘greater game’: the long, ongoing campaign and world building. This distinction may have its roots in the original distinction between AD&D and basic versions of the game which were more focused on a series of episodic adventures. Certainly most of the OSR is a derivative of the rules-light B/X game, so this is not surprising.

I think this is a bit wrong (or I am misreading it...tired tonight) --- K&KA (Knights & Knaves Alehouse) wrote OSRIC primarily for themselves--to preserve AD&D and be able to LEGALLY make new AD&D adventure publications. There is little to no interest there in the OSR as a movement, or modifying AD&D/OSRIC into "something new". Since that's the direction the OSR primarily headed, I get the impression most K&KA folks simply said "adios OSR, smell ya' later" and moved not one inch.

Dragonfoots is generally more inclusion of later (post AD&D, post Gygaxian TSR) editions. That's why folks like Malrex (2e aficionados) hang there.

In contrast, K&KA draws the line pre-B/X (i.e. before Gygax lost control of TSR).

The OSR today is a mishmash of retro-clones AND new crazy-stuff like Artpunk Mork Borg. It's so broad as to be meaningless and smells very little like classic (OD&D/AD&D) anymore---despite it's apparent desire to tap that well in order to inject some of the orignal "lightning in a bottle" of D&D that was lost in later editions into some new hybrid-games, which then get labeled "old-school style". In a sense, 5e is OSR---or at least, what it turned in to.

EOTB knows the history far better than I. He was there from the beginning.

 

[EOTB]

Not quite the beginning but before the OSR took off in the greater web as a culture separate from the forums.

I would say its accurate that K&KA and DF both see themselves as part of the "OSR" insofar as its impossible to write a history of the OSR and leave them out. But after about 2009 the culture of the OSR was driven by blogs, and then social media platforms, and very quickly increased with new people who knew next to nothing about the OSR except as it was the day they'd encountered it. Which was a different culture. There was also acrimony as it switched to design principles for new games instead of reviving existing games.

The MOP essay nails the course of the OSR because in the end, "OSR" was just another subculture with the same trajectory subcultures normally take.

There are many differences in the two groups:

People who've played the same game (often nearly to exclusion) for decades tend towards deep rules/application expertise - these tend towards forums where that sort of discussion is most easily referenced again and again over time. People who float between games and want quick insights that help them run a functional game without much prior experience in that game tend to not go to forums because the information discussed there is usually not geared in that direction unless the requester actively frames their response as such - but lurking/browsing won't turn much of that up.

The OSR group is more heavily focused on rules-agnostic creativity that garners interaction while not requiring rules knowledge by either the creator or their audience, and is more portable between games.

Perhaps in a bit of irony, I suspect that there is more day-to-day play on the part of the "OSR" group vs the forums members, taken as a whole. Floaters will play in many versions (and often prefer switching periodically). This keeps them on the edge of whatever is the new hotness, where the greatest immediate play demand exists among other floaters. Since extensive rules knowledge is a currency standing alone in classic play, someone can be an active participant in that culture's Q&A/rules debate functions without an ongoing game; and that function is what has kept many people connected to "their game" for quite a long time without a group to play it with. This is also an intimidating barrier to entering that sub-culture for game floaters.

There's more; but it all circles back around to these rulesets being tools used for different things by different people. As different types of people change the specific gravity of a culture, who identifies with it necessarily changes.

 

[squeen]

K&K has from the outset, also been focused on the promotion of OSRIC

I guess this is the one statement of yours that I disgree with. There does not seem to be much energy behind promotion. OSRIC itself is/was preservative. Publishing new AD&D adventure (legally via OSRIC) just helps keep AD&D alive. Finch went off on his own to make Swords & Wizardry appearently because he was more interested than some in promotion and attracting new players from the nascent OSR-subculture.

The element that appears to be different from the classic style and the OSR is the general lack of attention in the OSR to what I think of as the ‘greater game’: the long, ongoing campaign and world building. This distinction may have its roots in the original distinction between AD&D and basic versions of the game which were more focused on a series of episodic adventures. Certainly most of the OSR is a derivative of the rules-light B/X game, so this is not surprising.

I think this is a red-herring, and just the one element getting the most faddish attention at the moment. There have been others in the spotlight over the course of the OSR blog-o-rama (e.g. high-legality, resource-management, exploration, etc.). I think it's pointless to try and isolate and extract just one thing that results in the classic play-style. I think you need the whole cloth to make it work. Equally, there are likely a whole host of other things you need to clear out too, that just get in the way if "old-school play" is really your goal (as opposed to "fun").

 

[EOTB]

OSRIC, it's activity levels, and its "promotion" really gets back to how what caps an era often results in a change into a different era, and the resulting near-obsolescence of the capping thing.

There are two drivers to the difference between OSRIC and later "OSR" rulesets:

1) apart from the rules themselves - all the then-true presumptions about the user base/market that OSRIC was built around were themselves invalidated by OSRIC;

2) floaters want and need a central personality behind the game they're floating to and from. When someone says "LOTFP" who is the first person that springs to your mind? Now try "Swords and Wizardry"; "Old-School Essentials"; Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperboria"; "DCC" - notice a trend? There's almost always a creator's name linked to the game, both mentally and also in discussion. Game/creator; creator/game.

Now say "OSRIC". Notice what's different?

Now say "1st Edition AD&D"? Was that more like the first group, or more like OSRIC?

Apart from those 2 items very specific to OSRIC and the OSR as it happened, you then multiply all of that by generic dynamics that no game in the OSR is ever going to rise above:

A) how one makes themselves a name
B) how what made a name is nearly impossible to sustain
C) how the easiest short-term method of staving off the decline of a name creates its replacement
D) how each 4-year (give or take) cohort primarily wants to elevate something created in "their time"
E) how each cohort will then reasonably loyal to something created in their time, subject to the half-life rule
F) The saving grace that you only need 1,000 fans to make a living; i.e., even if noon doesn't last very long, sunset takes a long time to arrive

Each of the above in a bit more detail

1) OSRIC was born in a world where D&D was the BBC. It was not the cable TV world, or the streaming a la carte channel world; it was a world where everyone that later fragmented into very specific flavors was still largely united under the banner of AD&D as the Rosetta Stone of Not-3E play. If in 2015, you were someone who'd be touting Advanced Labyrinth Lord, what were you playing in 2005? AD&D. You might be playing it like ALL eventually codified, but you were "playing AD&D". What about someone who became an AS&SH aficionado? AD&D. Etc., etc. To the extent you read, wrote, and distributed fan-material in a world where there was no profit motive for your game due to fear of legal action, you did it either in the conventions of AD&D; or in a grudging compromise of "old school feel/3E rules" such as Goodman and Necromancer Games.

It was just expected that everyone would run fan material written in the universally-familiar AD&D standard to taste. Or use the compromise commercial 3PP Necro/Goodman material while ditching the 3E rules they were written to both comply with and be easily back-convertible from.

But many individual specific tastes dipping into and drawing from very limited broadly compatible "channels" was how it had always been, and how it would always be.

Everyone making OSRIC could see the immediate attraction of a replacement channel that was free of both the no-profit limitation of faithful content, and the no-faithfulness limitation of the for-profit content. This seemed to solve all problems, because people griped about both of those things, but no one was griping about using broadly-compatible AD&D formatted adventures for their narrower gaming tastes.

But shortly after publishing OSRIC it became clear the previous consumption behavior centered around AD&D content was based on the assumption that was pretty much the limits of the possible; what people are content with changes with what is possible at that time.


No one conceived that people liked to buy rulebooks, for the same reason people like to buy cars when the car they have still runs just fine. You go back and dig up old posts by people in both scenes over the entire period who now extol new rulesets, then saying one of the best things about TSR D&D is no one had to keep buying books!

No one considered the possibility people associate "living games" with "visible/active creator-owners". Everyone was playing a game that still (in 2006) had an active, living creator for two more years. That shortly this would be a vacuum, and the different ways that vacuum would be approached by different people, was not on the radar. This also ties into...

Matt was a guy who used AD&D to run OD&D without realizing he was mainly running OD&D. He thought he just liked a really light AD&D. But Jerry Mapes, the founder of K&KA, before he passed, asked Matt to look at doing the same thing for OD&D (Jerry's game of first-choice) that had been done for AD&D through OSRIC. That started a process that led (IIRC) to Matt realizing his heart was really in the creative, free-form possibilities of OD&D. And so you get Swords and Wizardry. This is where Matt's passion really was. But the simple reality is Matt was the guy who made OSRIC possible. OSRIC was a bunch of guys with a bunch of deep AD&D-specific knowledge, interacting with Matt's drive to write (and his own knowledge also).

But Matt was the guy who wrote manuscripts to completion; P&P was the editor/project manager/secondary writer who drove projects to a finish line. Both had access to a lot of fact-checkers and idea-bouncers and process-experts who could infuse all of that to an even richer1E broth - the best sort of contributors, who excel at apologetics and essays. But that talent doesn't necessarily require enjoying writing playable content, let alone prolifically writing playable content.

So what happens when the manuscript-writing guy finds his gaming heart somewhere else? The bottom layer drops out of everything. OSRIC lost half of its public face, and also, critically, the guy who had the time (being retired) and energy to write the most adventures. At first this wasn't expected to be any big deal because the thought was still that there was a tremendous pool of independent content creators who'd want to write OSRIC-AD&D adventures. It wasn't thought that a game needed a face. Gary was still with us; he was the face of old D&D. And then that suddenly changed, leaving a tremendous vacuum that (I believe) fans of that style instinctively wanted filled. Which leads us into #2

 

[EOTB]

2) But even while identifying 1E AD&D nearly totally with the personality of Gary Gygax, the main people associated with OSRIC either did not understand that just as OSRIC was AD&D restated for the 21st Century, that there would need to be a Gary Gygax-like figure associated with OSRIC, for all the same reasons they themselves love Gary Gygax. There are many reasons, good reasons, why any of them were disinclined to even try to assume such a role, but just as 1E AD&D would likely have been just another game without EGG's continuing post-publishing voice, such is the reality of OSRIC.

It's like an iceberg - you see, and you don't see, the iceberg in the water. When reading Gary's voice in the 1E DMG there's a feeling it stirs up from people who lived those years when all that was new. But there's an illusion there - the text in the DMG is drawing upon years of experiences others coming after don't have. That text can't do for them what it does for us. We don't need another EGG. There can't be another EGG. But anyone who didn't grow up with AD&D needs someone who will be their EGG.

S&W could do that through Matt, although I have no idea if Matt consciously understood that was happening. P&P and other OSRIC folks preferred to point people back to Gary's writing as opposed to taking on a de facto "Gary for a new era" sort of role. I can understand the aversion to that. But anyone who didn't have 20 years in the scene gravitated towards S&W, the game with a face, and that also was both simpler to pick up and run for floaters whose interest was stirred up by Gary's passing, and more flexible in that rules-agnostic creativity space. Matt by himself, in the 2nd go-round, was also more willing to risk open-sourcing S&W text instead of the previous combined OSRIC group's then-consensus preference to minimize the then-unknown legal risk by keeping large sections of it closed. It's just what it is.

But all of these circumstances combine to produce very different trajectories and post-publishing activity outcomes between OSRIC and S&W.

And then there's the ABCDEF

A) You make a name by having something to say, and compelling content to say it around. Before you publish what gets you noticed, you normally have a backlog of old-growth good content built up over time when you weren't running a new enterprise, to draw upon. So there's a spurt of great adventures to fuel momentum. Look at the S&W Matt Finch catalog from 2007 up through a couple of years after the merger with Frog God; look at the first couple of years of AS&SH; Look at LOTFP; Look at Gygax's early output at TSR. Other examples abound. Many of the K&KAers did put out a lot of very good modules for OSRIC in first few years, through XRP. James Boney has several, for example.

B) Not only are you burning through that content much faster than you organically made it when you weren't running an enterprise and spending time on social media publicizing it, the time left to make new content declines even as the demand goes up. The pipeline of content starts looking shallower and shallower, and must be filled somehow.

C) So what do you do? You get new faces who are eager to publish under your banner to keep it going. Hopefully they are all talented. Your name is made, and both you and the new face understand that your name will pull sales that their unknown name won't. In return the unknown becomes known. Think of all the better 2nd gen contributors to games you've bought over a span of time.

D) Eventually you aren't the new thing/hot thing/cool thing. That's likely going to be one someone's previous 2nd gen contributor putting their own spin on the genre under their own name now that it's established. Gavin Norman supported Labyrinth Lord long before he wrote OSE; Jeff Talanian of AS&SH supported late-period Gygax with the aborted Castle Zygyg; etc. The need of each generation's experience to be obviously new-to-them and new-for-them is a dynamic that = gravity for you, and lift for them. Hasbro indulges this cycle through editions, always promising the current one is the last one before breaking that promise for the next generation implicitly demanding a D&D tailored to their own zeitgeist.

E) However...each prior cohort is divided between those who want to renew their association with the current, and those who are entirely satisfied with what was new for them in their time of winner-picking. So long as you established you name at step A, you will likely always have a core of supporters who will turn out for average to good content you now have more time to make that the spotlight and time it consumes have passed to newer hot titles.

 

[squeen]

Pure gold. Thanks EOTB. A big effort and great insights. I hope you were using a keyboard and not your phone.

 

[Beek Gwenders]

I think this is a bit wrong (or I am misreading it...tired tonight) --- K&KA (Knights & Knaves Alehouse) wrote OSRIC primarily for themselves--to preserve AD&D and be able to LEGALLY make new AD&D adventure publications. There is little to no interest there in the OSR as a movement, or modifying AD&D/OSRIC into "something new". Since that's the direction the OSR primarily headed, I get the impression most K&KA folks simply said "adios OSR, smell ya' later" and moved not one inch.

I understand the preservationist intent of OSRIC, but along with preserving the texts (all but in a new form) there also comes the intent to preserve a certain style of D&D, and K&K through the contributions of its members was certainly interested in that, whether actively pursuing this goal or not. I may be mistaken in my interpretation, but I always felt the OSR was not just talking about a particular play style but primarily about producing new products for a ’certain style of D&D’, and the larger focus of K&K on this over Dragonsfoot is what in general differentiates the two forums.

Dragonfoots is generally more inclusion of later (post AD&D, post Gygaxian TSR) editions. That's why folks like Malrex (2e aficionados) hang there.

In contrast, K&KA draws the line pre-B/X (i.e. before Gygax lost control of TSR).

My sense of the different interests between K&K and Dragonsfooters is that K&K has its name on OSRIC, an actual ’new’ product line (at the time at least). This for me is what makes something a part of the OSR, in that it is producing new material. I realise this may not be an interpretation everyone agrees on, but the subtext of discussions of OSR a decade ago implied the publishing of new products.

I think you can see the attitudinal difference between the two forums when you look at how new product announcements are received (just compare Melan’s for example on the two sites). When a new product gets announced at K&K there is much more interest and support, whereas at Dragonsfoot there might be couple of comments and the thread just gets largely ignored. Those making supporting comments are often enough also K&K members. Moreover, a lot of Dragonsfooters appear to be largely ignorant of the OSR in general and what products are coming out, K&K members however on the whole seem to be watching the OSR much more closely even though they probably aren’t consuming most of the more artsy stuff. Dragonsfooters will often have no idea of who some of the bigger names are for example: ‘Who‘s Patrick Stuart?’ ‘He did MotBM and DCO’. ’What are they?’ - a fairly common response by Dragonsfooters.

I think this attitudinal difference is what differentiates the two forums for me.

 

[Beek Gwenders]

I guess this is the one statement of yours that I disgree with. There does not seem to be much energy behind promotion. OSRIC itself is/was preservative. Publishing new AD&D adventure (legally via OSRIC) just helps keep AD&D alive. Finch went off on his own to make Swords & Wizardry appearently because he was more interested than some in promotion and attracting new players from the nascent OSR-subculture.

I agree there isn’t much energy behind the promotion of OSRIC, but there is ‘some’, whether that is through Black Blade selling OSRIC books at conventions or the like. There is certainly no-one really driving it, but there is ongoing work to produce more material for it, whether this is collaborative or by individual authors. The lack of promotion doesn’t mean K&K members aren’t interested in new OSRIC products being produced.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Fair enough, but I think a part of the classical revivalists certainly consider themselves part of the OSR, indeed via OSRIC they may think of themselves as the founders in some measure. The OSR for them is the revival of classic play. Recently on K&K a poster commented that K&K is part of the OSR whereas Dragonsfoot is not, something that I can see a lot of truth in. The majority of Dragonsfooters are concerned with just playing and keeping AD&D alive; however, K&K has from the outset, also been focused on the promotion of OSRIC and new AD&D publications. That is to say there is more of a goal to influence the market place through publication of new, ‘for-sale’ material.

The element that appears to be different from the classic style and the OSR is the general lack of attention in the OSR to what I think of as the ‘greater game’: the long, ongoing campaign and world building. This distinction may have its roots in the original distinction between AD&D and basic versions of the game which were more focused on a series of episodic adventures. Certainly most of the OSR is a derivative of the rules-light B/X game, so this is not surprising.

I think others have addressed the first part with more first-hand knowledge than I could - the divergence between what I call "classic revivalists" and the "OSR" happened, even if it was the work of the classic revivalists who gave rise to what became the OSR.

I completely agree that the interest in long campaigns is a point of divergence between the OSR and classic cultures. According to the 1e DMG, the long campaign is essential because it alone provides adequate time for the development of the progressive challenge at the heart of the game. I think even B/X, and especially BECMI, still had a focus on long campaigns as an ideal, even if in practice the fact that they were targeted to low-skill, younger players meant that this ideal was rarely realised in practice.

For the OSR, because challenge is much less pegged to progressive development, short campaigns can provide adequate working time to introduce even the most extreme challenges. You create a 1st level Munkey Bunkey PC and go off to die trying to figure out how to deal with an imprisoned god in session 3.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

In the OSR, gods tend not to operate in the same mechanical matrix as characters. They are traps, puzzles, and problems who are undefeatable in combat. One doesn't encounter them because one has surmounted level 20, but simply because their appearance in the game provides interesting, even spectacular, challenges to overcome (even if just survival). The challenges the gods pose encourage creative diegetic engagement, even in low level characters. Their incidence is unpredictable because they aren't easily slotted into a progressive set of challenges which are the the top level of, like in Classic play. This strikes me as far more "jagged" and "variable" in the difficulties they pose than the gods of Classic play.

This is an interesting observation, and it took me a while to wrestle with it but I suspect it might hold up, albeit it as a soft difference, not a hard one. The classic example would be Lolth in Vault of the Demonweb pits, supplemented with the various godlings and demonic royalty of the ludicrous Throne of Bloodstone modules, which are clearly part of the natural progression of challenges. There are of course, anti-patterns to consider; Zuggtmoy from T1-4 or Arawn from Role Aids's Shadows of Evil are challenges that are far too formidable for the characters to conventionally overcome. One is also reminded of a description of encountering Zagyg in the Greyhawk campaign setting where would pronounce various curses, fuck with the players, and then vanish, leaving behind a Deck of Many Things.

I remember an injuction of not treating Deities & Demigods as "a very powerful monstrous manual" but it is possible this injuction was included precisely because they ended up being treated in just such a fashion.

 

[Beoric]

Okay, but IIRC in ToEE your odds of encountering Zuggtmoy as a wanderer are very low, and only if you start opening doors that you don't actually have to open. I don't think there is a keyed encounter for Zuggtmoy, although it's a big module and I can never keep the whole thing in my head. And you have an alternate way of damaging Zuggtmoy using the Orb (which takes away half her HP and prevents her from using any of her powers.

And this isn't wholly a Gygax dungeon, it is also a Mentzer dungeon, published in 1985, and has some creep into the trad style. SO it may not be the best example of classic play.

Gygax published a houserule (which he strongly implied everyone should adopt, after pointing out he didn't write Deities and Demigods) which made gods much more powerful and likely precluded them being used as monsters.

 

[EOTB]

A lot of people did end up treating it that way. As far as defeating the gods go, I think demi-gods and worshiped demons/devils/etc were expected to be a pinnacle challenge, but there's no way that any character could defeat a divinity with greater power than that, if the DM wasn't either 12 years old or understood how to run a combat with more options than "Roll, check to see if hit, apply damage, roll again".

The at-will abilities listed in DDG, of every divinity of higher power than demigod, make it impossible to "kill" them.