The state of Post-OSR content

[DangerousPuhson]

You sure like to use a lot of "OBJECTION: FALLACY!" when you argue a point. With two posts per interjection, I feel like this is getting woefully unfocused, so I'm going to circle back around and try to wrangle in my key arguments here, for the sake of those trying to follow along and for my own sanity.

To the principle point: I think the OSR label is non-essential. Some people think otherwise; that point has been hammered into my head a hundred times, so I get it. I don't agree, but I see where you all are coming from - you find it handy as an umbrella term for the type of module that people are sometimes looking for. OK, fine. There's plenty of success stories on both sides, OSR badged or unbadged (I don't recall seeing the OSR badge on a few smash-hits, like Guy Fullerton's or Patrick Stuart's stuff, maybe it's on the inside, I don't recall offhand...). Personally I find that if the module is designed with a specific system in mind, then labelling that system is enough to not further require an OSR label as well. Some people have stated that they find it handy in filtering searches and whatnot - OK, again I say that specific system labels do just as much in a more useful way, but I'm one guy, and I recognize that other guys will find it more useful than I do; far be it from me to decide to rob anyone of that.

On that note though, I think OSR as a movement is dead, or at least on life support. Publishing old-school modules is not dead, but I find the "Renaissance" to be an outdated term. The market is flooded. There is little in the way of paradigm-shifting works. There are good works, to be sure, but they all check the same boxes as to what is considered "good design": user-friendly, whimsical, evocative, non-traditional (ironically a term I'd consider literally the opposite of "old-school, but whatevs), book-item averse, looping dungeons, and all that other stuff on Bryce's Review Standards page. But good works do not a Renaissance make. Groundbreaking ideas are few and far between - LotFP came out a decade ago, and the last great innovation IMO was maybe Anomalous Subsurface Environment, which came out 8 years ago. [Sidenote: If you can name a more recent innovative work that wasn't just another way to write a dungeon, I'm open to being contradicted - even what I'd consider maybe in that category is Slumbering Ursine Dunes from 5 years ago - but I'd be impressed if someone came up with an example that was considered widespread].

For that reason, I say the OSR is a finished movement; what we have now are a handful of guys who make good/excellent products, and many, many more guys who make shit products, and none of it interacts with the rest of it, so IMO the OSR was not so much a movement as it was a brief period of high activity in adventure/system design. That's all. I don't think it can be called a "revolution", especially not as it is today.

Secondary point: System compatibility and the feasibility of System Agnostic Adventures... I don't even remember how we got on this tangent, and frankly I don't see what it has to do with anything anymore other than to serve as a few nitpicky points to shout "YOU'RE WRONG" at some stranger on the internet, so I'll leave my opinion (i.e. not objective fact) as this: Some systems don't convert well into other systems. There's no universal formula to it, and frankly I blame this glut of systems the OSR left in its wake. There are so many god-damned ways of playing the game now, it's getting silly. "Roll the dice, use the dice to figure out if the action succeeds or fails" - that's essentially the gist of any retro-clone system right there, padded out to 100 pages because nobody's going to make a name for themselves (let alone a profit) selling a paragraph-long booklet.

Some systems have different ways to do hitpoints or magic or skills or XP, some use SpaceBux instead of gold pieces, and others are set in Medieval Poland... whatever, in the end it all amounts to describing a situation, having the players decide what they want a character to be able to do in the situation, and then letting them do it by considering options and rolling dice; whether that thing be "not dying" or "casting a spell" or "jumping across a gap" or "getting stronger".

I'm looking at systems through the big-picture lens, and as a result, I believe that System Agnostic adventure design is possible. Case-in-point: One-Page Dungeons. 95% are mechanically neutral. No stats used, no skills referenced, not a Difficulty Class or hit point in sight. If you stick a bunch together, you've got yourself a System Agnostic adventure. You can run it with nearly any type of system, so long as one is familiar enough with that system to assign the relevant mechanics to the declared actions of the players in overcoming the obstacles of the adventure. You may call this "a framework" and not "an adventure"... I don't want to get bogged down in more semantics, so I'll just agree to disagree with you on that one.

Tertiary Point: Mechanics available dictate player actions. Again, unsure where this crept into the conversation or how it's relevant to "is OSR still a thing, or are we at a post-OSR point right now?". All I know is I stopped caring about two days ago. This is a chicken-egg question. I'll concede that yes, in some groups players use the mechanics at their disposal to dictate what actions their characters are most likely to take in a situation. But I firmly maintain that an imaginative group will decide what they want to do, and then the DM will work out which mechanics to take into consideration to make it happen. I maintain this stance because it is literally what happens in the games that I've been running twice a week for over a decade now. It's hard for me to sit here and listen to "YOU'RE WRONG" when I'm literally doing what you say people aren't doing.

In terms of my accusation that you didn't give 5e a fair shake, I'm sure you had your reasons and of course know what does and doesn't work for you. You made the right call by ditching a system that you felt you couldn't enjoy. But I wouldn't call doing half an adventure "giving it a fair shake". How can you know for certain your mind wouldn't be changed with a different adventure, or a different DM, or by seeing a campaign through to completion? If you want me to provide an example of a fair way of writing off a game, well, if you tried the above and still didn't like the game, I'd consider that to be giving it a proper fair chance.

Last Point: Please stop using Bryce as the gospel word of what is or isn't "the right way" to do adventures. The man knows his stuff, I have mad respect for him, but honestly, he is human and he is fallible (his spelling can attest to that; sorry Bryce). His credentials are solely prolific reading, not constant playing. If I had to venture a guess, he releases maybe five reviews a week... only he can confirm how much he actually plays, but if he goes by a twice-a-week gaming schedule, he'd be lucky to get through one of those each week. That means of the material Bryce has reviewed, we can realistically assume he's only ever actually played 20% of it, at the absolute most (my realistic guess though is probably 5%, accounting for megadungeons and whatnot that take months to play through).

If Bryce shits on most 5e stuff he reviews, that doesn't automatically qualify as factual reality that 5e is always doing things the wrong way. He hasn't read the majority of what's out there, I guarantee it. Likewise, if Bryce says dungeons need more than one entrance and should replace all humanoids with humans, that doesn't make it a universal case. Reviews are opinions, by definition. They cannot be objective, by the literal definition of the word. Please stop treating anyone who says otherwise as if they are heretics to be burned at the stake.

I listen to Bryce's opinions. I read everything he writes (literally, I've read every single review going all the way back to the start). I do not always agree with Bryce, because I believe that Bryce is wrong sometimes. We agree on much and we disagree on a few points. And that's OK. But we need to stop using him to back up our points as if he were some infallible authority.

Ok, I've spoken my mind enough, I think. If there's points buried in the landslides of text around here, then I'm sorry but I didn't catch them. Considering how few people there are around here trying especially hard to see things from my perspective, I doubt it'll matter much anyway.

 

[squeen]

"There, there now DP. We all know you are a good boy."

"But, gosh, you just said some things...things, that, well...have upset some people."

"Oh, Not me! I like you. I know your heart was in the right place. I understand that you were just trying to...contribute."

"Let's just say, your words have 'unsettled' a few people. Important people. Even a few Administrators"

"Oh, don't look so worried! It's not something that can't be rectified. We just need you to make a short statement."

"A public statement"

"That is, say a few words to clarify, how you...we all...feel. Just to clear the air. Understand?"

"It's simple really. You'll just need to make another post. A special post"

"In it you'll state that your never meant the OSR was dead.
(laughing)
"No. No. You just miss how exciting it was when it all first began."

"Yes? That's right, isn't it?"

"You'll also need to explain that you were misunderstood about 5th Edition. You didn't mean to imply it was better than old-school D&D."
"Oh, dear me no! You just wanted to say that you like it also. You find it amusing. A lark!"
(leaning closer)

"Lastly...and this is very important, my dear boy...so listen closely...."

(whispering)
"You never, and I mean never, meant to imply that the Holy Bryce was wrong."
"On that point, I need to be crystal clear...because your very digital-access may depend upon it."

(returning to normal voice)
"OK. Now. .... Do we have an understanding?"

"Good! Good! Excellent!"
(removing electrodes)

"Now, let's see if we can't do something about your name...something a bit less provocative.""
"How about GrogNgamer? Doesn't that sound nice?"

Boy howdy! And I thought this thread had died!

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Meh... I'll be the black sheep, whatever. Debate is nothing without a second opinion. A one-sided coin doesn't exist.

If people wanted to sit in an echo chamber and jerk themselves off over how right they are, then they shouldn't have clambered into a public forum. That's not what they're for.

 

[squeen]

Meh... I'll be the black sheep, whatever.

Probably will need to change your avatar too.

 

[Malrex]

Ok, I've spoken my mind enough, I think. If there's points buried in the landslides of text around here, then I'm sorry but I didn't catch them. Considering how few people there are around here trying especially hard to see things from my perspective, I doubt it'll matter much anyway.

I may disagree on a few points, but I hear you and happy for the different perspective. I've been known to change my mind from time to time.

 

[Slick]

I've been out of town for a hot minute and have only been skimming this thread (I'll be damned if I'm gonna read the novellas you guys are sending back and forth to each other), but I can leave anyone coming out of this argument feeling jaded or anxious about the future with a bit of optimism: The debate about the identity of this scene only matters to a fraction of the people inside the scene itself. The terms OSR, DIY, Exploration-Based Play-- anything that isn't "Dungeons & Dragons" means fuck-all to the vast majority of the hobby at large.

Personally I just use the term "old school" because I think it creates an easily graspable (if perhaps a bit disingenuous) dichotomy between the style I like and the modern assumptions of gameplay from 3E onward, and it's a term that everyone's familiar with from other forms of media (e.g. old school hip-hop). Will the term "old school" still hold up in twenty years when 5E becomes old itself? Will I have to start calling it "old old school"? Who knows, who cares. I am sympathetic to the view that adding "renaissance" is probably unnecessary at this point, in that there was a period in history where old-school games were born and were popular, they fell out of fashion, there was a renaissance to bring them back, and now they are back so therefore the "renaissance" is over. However I can't argue with the facts regarding categorization and marketplace visibility.

There's a lot of terminology that we use that doesn't fully mean what it should anymore but that doesn't stop us from "rewinding" digital videos, "hanging up" smartphones, etc. Sometimes I get the feeling that OSR is gradually becoming a word in and of itself, and less of a shorthand for "Old-school renaissance" as it's originally meant to abbreviate.

Oops, look what you made me do, ya done made me write three paragraphs already.

 

[squeen]

Oops, look what you made me do, ya done made me write three paragraphs already.

@Slick: Don't feel too bad. It's almost the only active thread in the forum.

 

[Yora]

Anything else you would want to talk about?

Though I would dare to say, if the OSR has nothing to talk about except how it defines itself, then it would indeed have become obsolete.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

You sure like to use a lot of "OBJECTION: FALLACY!" when you argue a point.

I seek to illuminate. You have a short time preference and it affects your ability to argue because you don't take the time to examine what someone means. Anyone can scream FALLACY! but you will note I took meticulous pains to explain what fallacy you committed and why. It's fine, arguing is a skill like any other and you can get better at it, but you need to get your hands dirty first.

On that note though, I think OSR as a movement is dead, or at least on life support. (snip)... Groundbreaking ideas are few and far between - LotFP came out a decade ago, and the last great innovation IMO was maybe Anomalous Subsurface Environment, which came out 8 years ago. [Sidenote: If you can name a more recent innovative work that wasn't just another way to write a dungeon, I'm open to being contradicted - even what I'd consider maybe in that category is Slumbering Ursine Dunes from 5 years ago - but I'd be impressed if someone came up with an example that was considered widespread].

That's a pretty good challenge but aren't you throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Dungeoncrawling is such a fundamental part of what the OSR is about it doesn't really seem fair to judge places because of their dungeon status, in fact its a bizarre criterion. SUD is a hexcrawl (a terrific one), ASE is a megadungeon and Lotfp is mostly experimental hipster trash with the occasional terrific module coming out to justify its existence. So a short list of innovative works (by any standard);

Thulian Echoes (Zzarchov Kowolski) - strange narrative-within-a-narrative dungeon with a time-travel mechanic.
Gardens of Ynn (Emmy Allen) - Planar exploration dungeon generator properly capturing the exploration of vast unknown terrain from a single node
Castle Gargantua (Kaiser Kabuki) - Impressionist Gothic Megadungeon
Dreams of Ruin (some exalted guy) - Expanded Domain Level threats to a level hitherto unseen
ACKS - Systematic codification that extrapolated the ground rules of AD&D into a sensible economy
Stars Without Number - Traveller 2.0 with Everything!
Godbound - A playable Epic Sandbox!

Fuck, DCO came out...when? Are we going to pretend it was somehow spawned by an entirely different movement?

What 5e products have come out that were not blatant rehashes of ideas proposed during the early d20 boom? (just in a more user-friendly format).

Secondary point: System compatibility and the feasibility of System Agnostic Adventures...

We came to that point because you argued it bucko.

Some systems have different ways to do hitpoints or magic or skills or XP, some use SpaceBux instead of gold pieces, and others are set in Medieval Poland... whatever, in the end it all amounts to describing a situation, having the players decide what they want a character to be able to do in the situation, and then letting them do it by considering options and rolling dice; whether that thing be "not dying" or "casting a spell" or "jumping across a gap" or "getting stronger".

Yes, but all your point illustrates that if you zoom out enough it is possible to describe them in general terms. The contention is that at the level where actual gameplay takes place, i.e, the level of specifics, your generalization is less useful then one that employs additional categorization. If I zoom out enough I can probably describe both humans and bacteria as 'life' and say that 'both require energy to survive' and both 'multiply.' At the level where we operate the distinction is important. So it is with different games. Give me a good example of a system agnostic adventure.

...But I firmly maintain that an imaginative group will decide what they want to do, and then the DM will work out which mechanics to take into consideration to make it happen. I maintain this stance because it is literally what happens in the games that I've been running twice a week for over a decade now. It's hard for me to sit here and listen to "YOU'RE WRONG" when I'm literally doing what you say people aren't doing.

You are still not grasping the argument. No one is saying it is impossible. All anyone has stated is that complex mechanics tend to disincentivize such behavior, while simple open mechanics tend to incentivize it.

Illustration; Say you have 100 groups of DnD payers. Most will be average, some will be very creative, some will be very dull and literal-minded. We are stating that under an OSR game, more of those 100 groups will display creative behavior then under a rules heavy, ability-heavy game like 3.5e, because most of the mechanics in that game tend to be geared towards combat so people are more likely to use them that way. If this is not the case, they are vestigial and clutter up the game and only interfere with a more creative out-of-the-box playstyle. Do you agree with it when I put it like this?

In terms of my accusation that you didn't give 5e a fair shake, I'm sure you had your reasons and of course know what does and doesn't work for you. You made the right call by ditching a system that you felt you couldn't enjoy. But I wouldn't call doing half an adventure "giving it a fair shake". How can you know for certain your mind wouldn't be changed with a different adventure, or a different DM, or by seeing a campaign through to completion? If you want me to provide an example of a fair way of writing off a game, well, if you tried the above and still didn't like the game, I'd consider that to be giving it a proper fair chance.

First, thank you for granting that my decision may have been fair. Is 10 sessions half an adventure to you? We played...3 adventures? I lost my rogue to a deck of many things poker game along the route, my warlock got murdered by his comrades after a time-loop drove him mad and my barbarian I retired. I absolutely grant that the GM had something to do with it, but the problem is also that 5e had nothing to offer me that I could not get from another game, and get it better. I currently run Basic DnD, play Acks and if I ever run another edition I'll probably pick d20 and do some crazy Avalanche campaign setting or try a homebrew Nephandum game or whatever.

Last Point: Please stop using Bryce as the gospel word of what is or isn't "the right way" to do adventures.

That's a disingenuous point. I referenced something Bryce said but I provided the argumentation. Bryce is not divine authority, Bryce does make good points so he can be referenced.

Ok, I've spoken my mind enough, I think. If there's points buried in the landslides of text around here, then I'm sorry but I didn't catch them. Considering how few people there are around here trying especially hard to see things from my perspective, I doubt it'll matter much anyway.

It's just the internet. You'll get better.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Just as a clarification, all of you shitbags are fully authorized to promulgate hateful, bigoted rhetoric about the OSR, 4e, 5e, 6e, storygames, Bryce being wrong about literally every review he has ever written, the Moon landings being fake, Horsefondlers of Aione, lifting the Kent Ban, and DnD being invented by Zak S. and Rpg Pundit. You won't see a ban from me as long as you abide by forum rules and the rules of conduct that have existed between men since the dawn of time. I think everyone is doing wonderful, and me jumping in should not be taken as any sort of official crackdown.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Shit.

"Just when I thought I got out, they pull me right back in again!" - Michael Corleone

It's fine, arguing is a skill like any other and you can get better at it, but you need to get your hands dirty first.

Not sure I can humour the condescension much longer... the whole "don't worry, you'll learn to use the internet someday!" shtick is getting a little tiresome.

Thulian Echoes (Zzarchov Kowolski) - strange narrative-within-a-narrative dungeon with a time-travel mechanic.
Gardens of Ynn (Emmy Allen) - Planar exploration dungeon generator properly capturing the exploration of vast unknown terrain from a single node
Castle Gargantua (Kaiser Kabuki) - Impressionist Gothic Megadungeon
Dreams of Ruin (some exalted guy) - Expanded Domain Level threats to a level hitherto unseen
ACKS - Systematic codification that extrapolated the ground rules of AD&D into a sensible economy
Stars Without Number - Traveller 2.0 with Everything!
Godbound - A playable Epic Sandbox!

Fuck, DCO came out...when? Are we going to pretend it was somehow spawned by an entirely different movement?

I've asked for some recent examples, so let's see how these stack up. After a bit of digging:

Thulian Echoes - 5 years old
Gardens of Ynn - hey, 2018, nice! Oh, not technically OSR though... it says "designed for old-school roleplaying games and their modern cousins"... hmmm, maybe it could count, if you're willing to likewise concede that it's pretty damn close to what you'd call "the impossibility of a System Agnostic adventure".
Castle Gargantua - 5 years old
Dreams of Ruin - 4 years old... getting closer.
ACKS - 5 years old
Stars Without Number - 5 years old... I'm seeing a pattern here...
Godbound - 3 years old - nice, I think you've got a proper example here.
DCO - 5 years old

So the last time the OSR itself produced something revolutionary was... 2016? That's assuming everyone is on the same page about Godbound being "revolutionary" or "widespread".

Maybe Gardens of Ynn could stand as a better, actually recent example if we're flexible about it, but then again it's basically a random dungeon generator re-skinned to take place outdoors and with weird shit, so I don't know if it really counts as "shifting the zeitgeist" or anything; it's not like player groups are gathering at their local hobby stores for "Gardens of Ynn Night" or whatever.

There's definitely a glut of great work being done in 2014 though. So the argument that the OSR is still valid would have been perfect, had this conversation been taking place 5 years ago. As it stands right now... *shrug*

What 5e products have come out that were not blatant rehashes of ideas proposed during the early d20 boom? (just in a more user-friendly format).

Well, you've got me there. But then, I wasn't arguing that 5e is a movement; I was arguing that the OSR is not.

GOALPOST FALLACY! (I'm I doing that right, Prince? Am I an internet big-boy now?)

Yes, but all your point illustrates that if you zoom out enough it is possible to describe them in general terms. The contention is that at the level where actual gameplay takes place, i.e, the level of specifics, your generalization is less useful then one that employs additional categorization. If I zoom out enough I can probably describe both humans and bacteria as 'life' and say that 'both require energy to survive' and both 'multiply.' At the level where we operate the distinction is important. So it is with different games.

I'll do this bullet-point style, since bullet points always seem to get a reviewer's dick wet:

- My point illustrates that what you call a framework is the underlying bond that all adventures share. By providing a framework (which has a value to more than a few people, despite what you believe), you can updress to the specifics of the system. If an adventure says "drinking this potion will cause a person to transmogrify over a period of one week into a toad, unless they can drink the tears of an angelic being", does it not count as an adventure if there's no "DC15 CON save or...", or "...a 1hd creature" added to that clause? Is it not possible to use that potion in gameplay without the extra bits?

- Some of your best examples of OSR adventures (modules, not systems) contain little more than a monster stat line as their only mechanical addition. By it's nature, a large number of these adventures don't include stuff like skill checks or saving throws or anything beyond Monster Name [HP/AC/some attack effect] because they're trying to cast as broad a net over as many systems as they can. Sometimes if they were designed with LL or LotFP in mind they've got a couple extra bits like morale or speed added in; other times it dials back to become more agnostic by saying "armor as leather" or whatever. If we took out the monster stat lines, would the adventure be, in your terms, "too generalized to be used because it's not at the level where gameplay takes place?" If "yes", then bare-bone statistics are apparently all the mechanical crunch that's actually needed for the DM to make a module work; if "no", then System Agnostic adventures can function.

- To be clear, I'm not saying that extra mechanics are not immensely helpful for running an adventure. They are. Personally, I write for 5e, and it demands I include saving throws and DCs and modifiers and whatnot, otherwise nobody would want to use it for 5e. What I am saying is that generalization is not a death-sentence for an adventure that immediately banishes it to "the pile of unusable things".

Give me a good example of a system agnostic adventure.

Open any One-Page-Dungeon compilation document to a random page and run the dungeon. There - you have just run a System Agnostic adventure! Not long enough? Find a thematically similar one, and tack it on as "Level 2".

I feel like I've made this point already though and you just kinda deliberately glossed over it...

All anyone has stated is that complex mechanics tend to disincentivize such behavior, while simple open mechanics tend to incentivize it.

Illustration; Say you have 100 groups of DnD payers. Most will be average, some will be very creative, some will be very dull and literal-minded. We are stating that under an OSR game, more of those 100 groups will display creative behavior then under a rules heavy, ability-heavy game like 3.5e, because most of the mechanics in that game tend to be geared towards combat so people are more likely to use them that way. If this is not the case, they are vestigial and clutter up the game and only interfere with a more creative out-of-the-box playstyle. Do you agree with it when I put it like this?

I agree with your "this is not the case" scenario, because 3.5e is horrifically infamous for having vestigial, cluttering rules... that's why 5e cut most of them out. You've made my point for me. Players, when presented with rules that slant one type of action over another, will adapt to overcome that slant, and those rules will be axed from the game, resulting in a simplification of later editions (as we have seen happen). 3.5e players were overwhelmed by options and so the options were scaled back, because the players weren't using them; your premise that "rules dictate actions" is therefore incorrect - actions in this case have dictated the rules. That's exactly why homebrew rules are still a thing, even in the editions of the game that cover as many bases as possible.

Could D&D be a little leaner? Yes. But that's not the argument. The argument, the original one, is that superfluous rules can be ignored easily. It is many times easier to ignore an existing rule than it is to invent a rule that needs to exist.

First, thank you for granting that my decision may have been fair. Is 10 sessions half an adventure to you? We played...3 adventures? I lost my rogue to a deck of many things poker game along the route, my warlock got murdered by his comrades after a time-loop drove him mad and my barbarian I retired. I absolutely grant that the GM had something to do with it, but the problem is also that 5e had nothing to offer me that I could not get from another game, and get it better. I currently run Basic DnD, play Acks and if I ever run another edition I'll probably pick d20 and do some crazy Avalanche campaign setting or try a homebrew Nephandum game or whatever.

There's a glaring problem right there: what DM actually uses a Deck of Many Things and fosters a PvP environment in your very first 5e adventures? No wonder you didn't have fun. At least you admit the DM fucked up. It's just too bad it made you write off the whole system.

But I'm not here to argue against your choice of game; I'm here to defend my choice of game. As to why, honestly I'm not even sure what argument this got skewed from. Anyways, I've already made my reasons clear in a few of my prior posts, so I bid you look there.

It's just the internet. You'll get better.

Ahhh, the condescension, it burns me! Why must it always burn me?!

 

[Slick]

Open any One-Page-Dungeon compilation document to a random page and run the dungeon. There - you have just run a System Agnostic adventure! Not long enough? Find a thematically similar one, and tack it on as "Level 2".

This reminds me of the rebuttal I was going to make about a previous statement:

... I believe that System Agnostic adventure design is possible. Case-in-point: One-Page Dungeons. 95% are mechanically neutral.

95% of One-Page Dungeons are also unusable dogshit. I would know, I've submitted two of them.

Sure, not literally unusable, but very hard to make good use of without filling in quite a few more blanks than a good adventure module* should provide for a DM who's got a game to run. Using them as an example of good system neutral design is a mistake. Speaking of which, system neutral is kind of a meaningless term. Either it's genuinely system neutral in that you could use any RPG system you want and run it without a hitch (absolutely not true, as Prince has noted regarding Zweihänder/etc.), or in the sense that you could use the module with any RPG system provided you put in some work to convert it. If it's the latter, then that's a substance-less claim because that's true of even non-system-neutral modules. The most you could say is that it takes marginally less work to convert it into my desired system.

What makes the OSR family of games convenient is that you know that as long as you use one of the games included under that umbrella (either actual old D&D editions or their retroclones) then the amount of time it takes to convert them to a play-ready state is minuscule, approaching zero even.



* I think the issue brought up earlier in the thread about what constitutes and "adventure" vs. an "outline" vs. an "inspiration/fluff framework" is very important and worthy of its own discussion. Any takers?
EDIT: To clarify, by "its own discussion" I mean "its own thread" and by "any takers" I mean "I don't feel like making said thread myself"

 

[DangerousPuhson]

95% of One-Page Dungeons are also unusable dogshit. I would know, I've submitted two of them.

Sure, not literally unusable, but very hard to make good use of without filling in quite a few more blanks than a good adventure module* should provide for a DM who's got a game to run. Using them as an example of good system neutral design is a mistake.

The absence of existing good quality does not mean the absence of future potential for good quality. Once mankind was never on the moon; then mankind said "we will go to the moon", and so the days of mankind never being on the moon were gone.

* I think the issue brought up earlier in the thread about what constitutes and "adventure" vs. an "outline" vs. an "inspiration/fluff framework" is very important and worthy of its own discussion. Any takers?

"I think it's a totally good idea to start a war on a second front!" - Adolph Hitler (paraphrased)

 

[Beoric]

You won't see a ban from me as long as you abide by forum rules and the rules of conduct that have existed between men since the dawn of time.

You had better not, since you seem to be the one bringing the gasoline.

 

[Beoric]

Still, the genuine question I have for all of you is what do your players think of the OSR?

This seems like a good place to start.

My players, who I have been playing with since perhaps 1982, don’t give a crap about the OSR. They just want to play D&D.

My daughter and her friends haven’t even heard of the OSR (I asked). They have, however, heard of Critical Role. Surprising as it may be, watching video on Geek and Sundry of people acting their characters in a fashion that is intended to be entertaining catches the teenage attention more than reading cranky articles by middle-aged white men on blogger talking about how gaming was better back in their day and these young folks don’t know what they are doing. I know, it’s weird.

Sadly, Critical Role also appears to be the measure by which they judge their DMing. Their understanding is that the DM’s job is to entertain the players with amateur acting and intricate plots. The players’ role is apparently to provide characters with interesting backstories that the DM can weave into said plots.

All of which makes the prospect of DMing intimidating, and a hell of a lot of work. A lot of them won’t even try it; those who do spend ages crafting the stories they feel they have to tell. Before careers and kids, my group use to play at least weekly, but these kids are lucky to play every couple of months. Everyone in my group DMed, but in these groups people now have to be talked into DMing – except the Type “A” drama kids who are attention hogs, and are probably the last people you want to be DMs.

I am sensing in them a bit of fatigue with the game, and chafing against its perceived constraints. I think some of them would be open to a freer form of gaming if only they could find it. But they aren’t going to find in on the OSR. The OSR is not a friendly place for them. It is not a particularly friendly place for me.

I am interested in talking about D&D, and what makes for good games in my estimate. That is primarily techniques for facilitating player agency, effective adjudication of actions, and effectively communicating the environment. Pretty much everything else – dungeon design, dungeon exploration procedures, outdoor exploration procedures, wandering monsters and the like – is a subset of that. Deconstructing why certain time tested procedures work, and attempting to reconstruct them into something that works even better, is a conversation I want to have.

Some of the politer corners of what is generally accepted to be the OSR are a good place to find that. But most parts of the OSR are nowhere I want to be. The edition I play is not welcome there, and I invariably get sucked into arguments with people who have played said edition for 10 days compared to my 10 years, who explain to me how it couldn’t possibly work the way I say because of some erroneous assumption about how the edition works – often combined with an erroneous understanding of why some facet of the edition they like works the way it does (you know what it does, do you know why it does it?).

Which is usually preceded or followed with the “logic” that modules written for the system are not old school, therefore the system they are written for must be incompatible with old school play – which makes as much sense as saying Picasso forgot how to draw when he started experimenting with cubism. And no, I’m not saying Mike Mearls is Picasso you idiot, I’m saying that you are confusing fashion and artistic choice with technology.

And if I point out that I have played 1e since 1979 and might know what I am talking about, I am met with a condescending pat on the head, as if to a child. “That’s ok, when you grow up you’ll learn to play B/X or LLB like a real man.”

The OSR as a brand is also irrelevant to me. I entirely accept that there have been improvements in the design and presentation since the old TSR modules. But much of the material presented in the OSR is too specific to its assumed setting to be dropped into my game, whereas pretty much any of the classic TSR modules can find a home there. When I use published material it is nearly always B/X or AD&D material from before 1985; later 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e and 5e are useless, to me, and I can’t assume OSR material is going to be useful.

Which leads me to the “system agnostic adventure” debate. I note that if you use a system agnostic adventure you will always have to convert the adventure to your system, whereas with a system-specific adventure there is always at least one system which will not require conversion.

But that is not the end of the story. Since I run 4e using a 3e setting into which I drop 1e modules, I do a lot of converting. Effective conversions require a working understanding of at least the relevant portions of both the system you are converting to and the system that you are converting from (I don’t really know 3e, but I have a basic understanding of the theoretical power level of monsters). System agnostic adventures only require an understanding of the system you are converting to.

So you are better off with a system specific adventure as long as the system it is written for is close to the system you are using. And you are better off with a system agnostic adventure if it isn’t.

 

[Palindromedary]

Still, the genuine question I have for all of you is what do your players think of the OSR?

They don't. None of them are GMs; none of them are interested in the vaguaries of gaming movements and whatnot. So, I never bothered to explain the concept any more than I'd try to explain the difference between goth and post-punk to people I was playing music for.

How do you sell old school to new people without even the cultural cachet of Critical Role or other touchstones?

I just asked if they'd want to play old-school D&D and, since they trust me as a GM and the concept was amusing to them, they signed on. I think irony helped sell it, honestly: the idea of bothering with all that "lethality and crazy fiddliness" (I had one guy obsessed with being a -2 level cavalier, just because he found hilarious the concept of starting at negative levels). What I enjoyed was the switch from ironic appreciation ("We have to track rations? I have 2 hit points? This is fucking hilarious") to an actual appreciation once they got going. The sense of danger and the feel of the unknown from not being able to see everything in front of them really drew them in, and once they got over the instinctual reflex to ask to make a perception check all the time they tended to get really involved in exploring.

I have a good group, though: very willing to try new things (or new old things). So I know I'm lucky.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Not sure I can humour the condescension much longer... the whole "don't worry, you'll learn to use the internet someday!" shtick is getting a little tiresome.

It seems to have galvanized you into actually engaging with my points though. Perhaps it is your lot to suffer?

DP (heh) said: EXAMPLES.

So with these few examples off the top of my head I have already shifted your narrative from the last good thing that came out was 8-10 years ago to 'the last good thing came out last year but the rest came out in 2016.' That's a decent start. Your disqualification of Gardens of Ynn (which I assume you have not read) is absurd, it's statted for the Lotfp system and thus compatible with an oldschool game, it is only system agnostic if you are willing to reskin or strip out a large percentage of its actual content, and by that standard anything is system agnostic. You would do better to put forth Lapis Observatory as a good example of something system agnostic.

Those examples are all games I have reviewed, played or am otherwise familiar with. I'm sure others could give you other examples. I'm not even sure I disagree with your premise that the OSR as a movement is past its prime (I mean dead is an absurd statement), I am trying to figure out why you think it so I can make up my mind.

So the last time the OSR itself produced something revolutionary was... 2016? That's assuming everyone is on the same page about Godbound being "revolutionary" or "widespread".

Ah, now we get to the meat and bones because we have not properly defined what those things constitute nor when a movement should have them. Why don't you tell me what criterion you use for revolutionary and widespread when applied to elfgame products?

Well, you've got me there. But then, I wasn't arguing that 5e is a movement; I was arguing that the OSR is not.

GOALPOST FALLACY! (I'm I doing that right, Prince? Am I an internet big-boy now?)

Actually the fallacy that you are accusing me of is a false equivalence, because I am applying the standards of a movement to a line that you assert is not a movement (highly questionable, but still). To which I say, fine, in that case, give me an example of another rpg movement that IS ALIVE and a base rate of brilliant product output so we can test your standard of 'alive' and 'dead.'

I'll respond to your three points as succinctly as I can.

1) I never argued that you cannot easily convert an encounter, creature or object from one game to the next (again, degree of difference etc. etc.). I am arguing that an adventure, which is a complex and interlocking framework of encounters, magic items, locations and mechanics, cannot be easily converted between sufficiently different systems without considerable loss of information, which means a lot of the subtlety, context, encounter balance and flow of the game is lost.

2) I don't disagree that an OSR specific game can be given to a GM into OSR-gaming sans mechanics and turned into something useful with barely any effort since the underlying assumptions of both games are likely to be similar. But that's an insufficient example to support your premise. Can someone take a 4e module, strip out the statts, give it to an OSR GM, and still have something that is worthwhile without leaving half the good bits on the cutting room floor? A look at many between-edition conversions of staple DnD adventures like Tomb of Horrors or Temple of Elemental Evil would suggest that translating a module becomes harder as the systems tend to diverge.

If you want to argue you can use System Agnostic modules based on OSR playstyles with other OSR games and arguably 5e with relatively low effort you won't get any disagreement from me, based on this argument.

3) Yet all of the examples you have given so far seem to indicate that generalization does in fact mean such a death sentence. Your strongest example of decent system agnostic modules are One Page Dungeons, which, as Slick pointed out, are trash, or if not trash then low effort doggerel? You are forced to fall back on the "you cannot prove they cannot be good' argument, to which I say, okay but the evidence seems to point in that direction. Try arguing from Lapis Observatory, which I believe is system agnostic and also well received.

Open any One-Page-Dungeon compilation document to a random page and run the dungeon. There - you have just run a System Agnostic adventure! Not long enough? Find a thematically similar one, and tack it on as "Level 2".

I feel like I've made this point already though and you just kinda deliberately glossed over it...

Apologies, I accidentally glossed over it since I had to do some editing to keep it to one post. Its not a very good point. You can run it, I just said it would be dogshit, worth almost nothing. What are people putting down for a 100 one-page dungeon compendium, and why arent they using it to create these awesome system agnostic adventures instead of shitty more-page dungeons with useless statts?

I agree with your "this is not the case" scenario, because 3.5e is horrifically infamous for having vestigial, cluttering rules... that's why 5e cut most of them out. You've made my point for me. Players, when presented with rules that slant one type of action over another, will adapt to overcome that slant, and those rules will be axed from the game, resulting in a simplification of later editions (as we have seen happen). 3.5e players were overwhelmed by options and so the options were scaled back, because the players weren't using them; your premise that "rules dictate actions" is therefore incorrect - actions in this case have dictated the rules. That's exactly why homebrew rules are still a thing, even in the editions of the game that cover as many bases as possible.

Your reasoning is backwards. If the rules would be easy to ignore a new edition would be superfluous. The problem with d20 3.5e is exactly the opposite of what you state, that the system is so codified that house-ruling in one place has implications on other systems and its much harder for the GM to oversee what the effect of such a house-rule would be. 3.5 is actually an excellent example of a rules-heavy system that cannot be easily dumbed down because everything is so counter-balanced even a few alterations affect other systems. You can't alter how saving throws work without immediately having to consider the rammifications on DCs based on ability modifiers and HD as well, for example.

My conclusion follows from my premise, namely that 3.5e (which by the way, still had massive traction since a lot of people simply enjoyed it), led to a more combat focused playstyle, which led to 4e, the most rigid and balanced edition of all. At this point, the game had lost much of its appeal, so 5e had to dial back the superfluous crunch, codification and rigid dungeoncrawling format into a game that was more like previous editions and easier to use. Ergo, no it was not easy to ignore rules in 3.5e at all and games absolutely influence the type of games you can play with them.

There's a glaring problem right there: what DM actually uses a Deck of Many Things and fosters a PvP environment in your very first 5e adventures? No wonder you didn't have fun. At least you admit the DM fucked up. It's just too bad it made you write off the whole system

A Fun GM doesn't use a Deck of Many things? Are you shitting me? A stranger offers you a draw? HOLY SHIT was I in! I drew the Jester. 10.000 XP...or 2 more cards from the deck. SIGN ME UP COACH! Then I drew the Void. Ah Emilio, in your few weeks you lived a lifetime.

But I'm not here to argue against your choice of game; I'm here to defend my choice of game. As to why, honestly I'm not even sure what argument this got skewed from.

I think I mentioned playing 5e and then we got into the thick of it.

Ahhh, the condescension, it burns me! Why must it always burn me?!

Ace: You've got some guts for a rich kid. I guess you and I could be buddies. Waddya say?

 

[PrinceofNothing]

You had better not, since you seem to be the one bringing the gasoline.

Every once in a while a thread can use a little Disco Inferno to get it going again once it peters out.

What makes the OSR family of games convenient is that you know that as long as you use one of the games included under that umbrella (either actual old D&D editions or their retroclones) then the amount of time it takes to convert them to a play-ready state is minuscule, approaching zero even.

* I think the issue brought up earlier in the thread about what constitutes and "adventure" vs. an "outline" vs. an "inspiration/fluff framework" is very important and worthy of its own discussion. Any takers?

That Slick fellow seems to know what is up.

In.

 

[Melan]

That's way too much for me to digest right now, plus it is 32 °C and there are ants on my table because I left out an empty can of orange drink. So let me focus on just one concern.

I don't give a hoot about "revolutionary" products, and if I did, I would be looking for them among them Swine games storygames (although I don't think they have done much revolutionary stuff lately either) or ~ : : : SWORD DREEEEAM : : : ~. Incremental innovation and the rediscovery of good practice, yes. Radical innovation, not really. This is not the general purpose of old-school gaming, which should be clear from the name. It is first and foremost a preservation movement with a conservative bent. It is not, at its core, missionary. New gamers recognising the potential of the old-school approach are welcome, but it is not a big tent that is supposed to accommodate every taste and every gamer, broaden its appeal, or show X% growth every quarter. Because that's official D&D and computer gaming. We have seen their success, and it's great (I am genuinely happy D&D has come back in vogue) but we have also seen the price it has to pay for that mass appeal (for instance, creative risk-taking is right out).

Old-school gaming is a focused, reliable niche product for specific tastes. Nothing more, nothing less. It won't save gaming and it does not want to.

 

[Yora]

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I guess there always have been two populations of people wanting more of what they already had, and people looking for ideas and ways to do things that are different from what they are used to. For a while, both had a lot of overlap, but at some point the innovators probably had found all the pieces they found useful and then went on their way.