The state of Post-OSR content

The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
French fries are just a vehicle for getting ketchup into the mouth. Let's keep our perspective here and not shout obscenities.
Pfeh, ketchup is there to put the SALT on and have it stick.

Low blood pressure runs in my family. We CRAVE salt.
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Non-lethal was certainly a thing, but most of the time it seemed to be LETHAL save or die. Beoric has the stats. Also, Neutralize Poison had a specific use pre-resurrection. If a person died by poison and you didn't neutralize the poison first he'd die immediately (again) from the poison when you cast Raise Dead.
Fair enough. But when I design an area...if I don't think the monsters should have lethal poison...I'm just not going to make it lethal. If I think the party needs to see a few casualties for the monster to get proper respect---then lethal.

Maybe that's the dividing line. It's very hard for a single creature to pose a threat to high level parties. They rarely survive long enough to get more than one or two attacks in. Maybe the lethal poison is totally appropriate there to garner respect and caution. Whereas it's the opposite with large groups using poison just to "bump up" their attack.

...so then, isn't it kind of dumb to make all poisons lethal or non-lethal "as a rule". It's a setting design knob.
 
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squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Pfeh, ketchup is there to put the SALT on and have it stick.

Low blood pressure runs in my family. We CRAVE salt.
Lots of health books coming out now saying salt ain't so bad.

(Doctors can be such inept hacks. Butter! Eggs! Fats in meat! Bah! All have been back-tracked. I don't know what to believe.)
 
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The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
...so then, isn't it kind of dumb to make all poisons lethal or non-lethal "as a rule". It's a setting design knob.
Maybe? It's a gray area, still. The example in B/X Moldvay was a 1st level thief IIRC. This seems like more of a nerf to keep the game from being too lethal. I don't mind that at all, but it seems inconsistent for you to be okay with this. But then, people are consistently inconsistent.

(I did like that link to Meaningness in the other thread, very interesting!)
 

The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
Lots of health books coming out now saying salt ain't so bad.

(Doctors can be such inept hacks. Butter! Eggs! Fats in meat! Bah! All have been back-tracked. I don't know what to believe.)
Things are good in moderation. Just don't overdo it. Also, this is something specific to my family. Most people don't need to add salt. In fact, this caused a bit of a problem when one of my sisters was directed to eat more salty foods, but her husband, who has high blood pressure, was having trouble keeping his hands off her stash of salty lays potato chips!
 

EOTB

So ... slow work day? Every day?
As of AD&D, default monster poison was lethal unless specified otherwise, but onset time was not instantaneous. If you had neutralize poison or some other fiat antidote available there was time to administer it

Also, slow poison had a quasi-ability to bring someone back who had “died” of poison, to resolve a more permanent resolution. Remember the context of AD&D is that every resource in the city of Greyhawk is an hour away for low-level characters. So poison became only truly scary after you felt you were ready to venture out into the wilderness, and all those resources were no longer an hour away.

Like many things with old AD&D, people understand the de jure text but aren’t familiar with the context it was applied. Poison was check but not checkmate for lower level characters. You might have to do a service to the temple for their saving your butt on credit
 

EOTB

So ... slow work day? Every day?
How did you come to that conclusion? The term "by the book" has always meant following something to the letter of what's written as if using a script (hence, "book"). That would be rules, not pillars - pillars are nebulous concept of guidance, not a book to be followed.
Read the preface to the 1E DMG. That may always be how you have defined BTB - which creates a caricature, someone who never deviates from anything, and is a definition so pure it can be used to disqualify anyone identifying as "BTB". But if you spend time in actual BTB culture, it is rejecting "I've fixed it" guys, not a complete rejection of new rules or even small tweaks.

The guy who thinks Vancian magic sux and D&D must have a spell point system is not BTB. The guy who has extensively rebuilt the combat system to have separate pools of hit points, armor having no effect on how often you're hit but instead on damage absorption, and a bespoke hit probability table, is not BTB. The guy who tweaks the identify spell and decides that scrolls don't immediately fade if read magic isn't immediately applied to them will still be accepted as "BTB" by other "BTB" DMs. Whether people who do not identify as BTB want to accept them as such is mostly irrelevant.
 

Osrnoob

Should be playing D&D instead
Quote below
"I started with Dave at CSA meetings in '75, out at Phil's in early '76, and when I started working for Dave at Adventure Games he'd send me down to TSR stockholder meetings where I met Gary; Gary invited me to play in Greyhawk, which I did when I was down there. (Gary was always very nice to me, despite knowing that I worked for Phil and Dave.)
I was one of the founders of Phil's 'Thursday Night Group', when we split off from the power gamers' group."
Glad to see you all saw it! I think its impossible to talk historically about the hobby without the Twin City gamers and that area.

They are the OG of the OG
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Maybe? It's a gray area, still. The example in B/X Moldvay was a 1st level thief IIRC. This seems like more of a nerf to keep the game from being too lethal. I don't mind that at all, but it seems inconsistent for you to be okay with this. But then, people are consistently inconsistent.
Being 100% consistent is too heavy a burden for me to bear. I'm at least a tad mercurial. (Sometimes!) :)

-----

Even though I've already pummeled you all with enough of my biases --- here's one more to chew on.

I picked AD&D to adopt because I trust it...and specifically him.

It was Gygax's last and best attempt (before life overcame him) to "sort things out" after an insane amount of play-testing and thought put out by the whole Lake Geneva/Minneapolis crowd.

The tone and content of the 1e DMG speaks to me of accumulated wisdom, and I just don't get that nearly anywhere else.

I "get" that people prefer B/X because it's OD&D-simple without all the rough edges. Swords & Wizardry did that for me too. It held my hand in a nice way as well. Like the AD&D DMG, S&W was full of Finch's fatherly wisdom. It encouraged and commiserated.

I bring this up because of @The Heretic's example: I don't trust Moldvay, just like I don't trust Metzner or the (2e DMG's) "Wizard's RPG Team". I am not confident about their hands on the tiller. I know where AD&D leads --- I don't the rest. Those authors didn't get the chance to course-correct multiple times.

B/X is tidy --- but I don't know if it's well built for the long campaign which I love. Certainly it appeared on the scene after the rot had started to set in at TSR and the type of people (and what they wanted from D&D) had begun to slowly shift. So, while it's familiar on the surface, the trust is just not there for me.

Just throwing that out there --- not as a slam, but just to share my own personal decision process.
 

Pseudoephedrine

Should be playing D&D instead
People I don’t believe are saying “BTB” was original culture. Instead that in the original culture the game aspect was placed in primacy over the roleplaying aspect, which was an interesting, fun wrinkle but not the overriding point
I think that trying to standardise gameplay mechanics to ensure challenges were progressive and responsive to PC power levels was an important technique for Gygax and Mentzer in classic play, but the goal - maintaining progressive and responsive challenges - is more important than the technique (which is just one way of accomplishing that goal, after all). Gygax basically says all of this in the AD&D 1e DMG - break a rule to maintain the challenge, but don't break a rule if it's going to make things too easy for players.

A similar emphasis on standardising gameplay mechanics exists within neo-trad, but is used in the service of different goals and values. There, it exists to place primary creative power in the hands of players by ensuring that combats and other challenges are "fair", meaning defeasible by the PCs as they express and pursue their interests.
 

EOTB

So ... slow work day? Every day?
Sure, but its interesting that almost all of the "role-playing over roll playing" people, such as the dungeons and beavers group that were very much for free-form in the OD&D they didn't own, went on to publish very standardized games such as Runequest.
 

The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
No need to defend your position. Live and let live, even to DP. Well okay not to the smapbots.

B/X is tidy --- but I don't know if it's well built for the long campaign which I love. Certainly it appeared on the scene after the rot had started to set in at TSR and the type of people (and what they wanted from D&D) had begun to slowly shift. So, while it's familiar on the surface, the trust is just not there for me.

Just throwing that out there --- not as a slam, but just to share my own personal decision process.
Moldvay came out in 1981. And isn't that based on the Holmes set, which predates AD&D?
 

Pseudoephedrine

Should be playing D&D instead
Sure, but its interesting that almost all of the "role-playing over roll playing" people, such as the dungeons and beavers group that were very much for free-form in the OD&D they didn't own, went on to publish very standardized games such as Runequest.
Absolutely! I often argue that D&D from 3.x onwards owes more to Runequest than to prior editions of D&D (I'm only being a tad provocative and facetious). IMHO the big universal mechanics games of the 1980s and 1990s use standardised mechanics within a trad framework to stabilise things for the DM - spare them the cognitive demands of coming up with resolution mechanics so they could pump that extra thinking into their Grand Narrative. It's a different thing than Gygax and Mentzer and co. were up to.

Personally, my favourite game to play in an OSR way is Openquest. I use a phased resolution system - we first proceed through diegetic descriptions and clever ideas, and only progress to rolling when character skill needs to be deployed. It works pretty well.
 

DangerousPuhson

Should be playing D&D instead
That may always be how you have defined BTB - which creates a caricature, someone who never deviates from anything, and is a definition so pure it can be used to disqualify anyone identifying as "BTB".
Uh what...? No.... that's not "my own interpretation" of the term - that's how the English language defines "by the book"

Definition of by the book
: by following the official rules very strictly


Or perhaps you'd like to argue that dictionaries don't know the literal definition of things?
 

The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
Uh what...? No.... that's not "my own interpretation" of the term - that's how the English language defines "by the book"

Definition of by the book
: by following the official rules very strictly


Or perhaps you'd like to argue that dictionaries don't know the literal definition of things?
<grabs Nutella-flavoured popcorn>
 

EOTB

So ... slow work day? Every day?
Uh what...? No.... that's not "my own interpretation" of the term - that's how the English language defines "by the book"

Definition of by the book
: by following the official rules very strictly


Or perhaps you'd like to argue that dictionaries don't know the literal definition of things?
You are tedious. Here's what I don't see in that link:

The term "by the book" has always meant following something to the letter of what's written as if using a script (hence, "book").
When people apply all the major systems that are defined, as they are written, and tweak the minor stuff in the way the book envisions (did you even read the preface?" They are " following the official rules very strictly ". Note that "very strictly" is a lesser standard than "to the letter".

Please stop being boring or I'll put you back on ignore.
 
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