Through Ultan's Door

[Two orcs]

Actually now that I look at it, that entire list of "things that give off the OSR-style vibe" are not unique to retro-clones, and perhaps that's why I get so frustrated by the defenders here. I have all that same feeling in my 5e games. I mean, do people really think that new D&D is incapable of creating open-ended problems, player-created goals, and disposable characters? Do you really believe you can't recreate the feeling of "fun failure" and creative problem solving with anything but retro-clones?

Reading play reports from DMs and players and listening to what friends who play in 5e campaigns tell me the standard is leaning on challenge ratings to create balanced adventures and then experience immense frustration either because the players were crushed by a supposedly fair encounter or because there is no challenge at all. The idea of running away etc. seems foreign and adventures (published or self written) do not account for it.

I think you are running the game in an unusual way.

 

[squeen]

...do people really think that new D&D is incapable of creating open-ended problems, player-created goals, and disposable characters? Do you really believe you can't recreate the feeling of "fun failure" and creative problem solving with anything but retro-clones?

Nope. You just need to be aware that it's important and make the effort. The modern games do not (from everything I have seen from WotC) come with their knobs set to those settings by default.

EDIT: Beoric plays an unusual 4e too (by his own admission).

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The modern games do not (from everything I have seen from WotC) come with their knobs set to those settings by default.

I grew up in an era before express installations, automatic driver updates, and MS Windows, where we had to fine-tune programs on the computer by making the configurations manually in DOS - maybe that's why I don't take games at absolute face value, but rather for what their potential is when properly dialed-in.

 

[Beoric]

In the article I liked:

• he delineates between things that are challenging to the player-at-the-table, as opposed to the character-on-the-sheet
• the retro-gaming mantra: "the answer you are looking for is not to be found on your character sheet"
• the challenges that players overcome are often ones the players pose for themselves and so want to overcome purely for fictional reasons
• you jump in with a PC who is more or less a blank slate whom you will flesh out through play
• failure can and should be fun if approached in the right spirit, just like losing a match of basketball can and should be fun
• The frustration of failing to get treasure is a condition of the possibility of the pleasure of success.
• challenges in retro-gaming play style are also open-ended, admitting of no pre-given solution, and often not even an obvious path of least resistance--at least not one promising a reasonable chance of success. In fact, one good way to design a retro-gaming dungeon or location is to place challenges in it that you have no particular idea how the players will overcome.

That last bit really resonated with me---don't imagine a "right way to win" during your design. Just set up a tricky, seemingly balanced-to-the-point-of-stasis scenario, and let your players surprise you in how they pick its locks (i.e. no mental "Adventure Path").

This design principal generally works out well for me---except in one case, in my megadungeon---the risks looked too high, and the status-quo too unbreakable...so the player's turned around and headed elsewhere. That was well over a year ago...will they actually return at higher level? TBD.

One final tasty quote:

"...the idea of balancing combat encounters with challenge ratings is incompatible with retro-gaming play-style. If you are playing well you will avoid combat when the balance goes against you, and if you do fight, you will usually be trying to tip things your way first. A fair fight is certainly not something to be celebrated (even chances of death, yay)! The other reason that balanced combats do not work in retro-games is that they are incompatible with a sandbox and open world, without some serious contrivance."​

​

Anyway. Go read it, and get excited for the next zine issue(s).

(Speaking of magazines and this thread, Melan also just published a new issue of Echoes From Fomalhaut (#7): From Beneath the Glacier to rave reviews over at K&KA.)

I think the general rule in any good gaming is that the game has to engage the player. I don't see how anyone can argue that a RPG game that is not engaging to the player is superior or even equal to one that does. So your first bullet applies to any style of play as far as I am concerned. There are any number of reasons why players might default to relying on challenges to characters, but IMO they will invariably cheapen the experience.

Bullet 2 is merely a consequence of bullet 1.

Bullet 3 is a consequence of having agency, which I also think is a characteristic of any well run RPG.

I don't think bullet 4 is universally true. If any good RPG game has to engage the player, and a player is engaged by developing his character in advance, I don't think you should penalize it. Honestly, I don't know why you as a DM should care if I have my character's personality or backstory developed in advance, as long as said backstory is not disruptive to the game. But I also don't think players should be required to develop their characters in advance, for the same reason.

Let me expand on this. I am not a religious person, but I am not opposed to the idea of running a cleric or paladin. However, if I needed to engage in any kind of social dialogue in character, I would need to develop a strong idea of who that character was and his attitudes about his faith in order to pull it off, because it does not come naturally to me. Otherwise the character would be just a piece I am moving on the board, not a character I am playing. But most of the other core classes I can slip on like a comfy sweater.

Bullet 5 is also a consequence of bullet 1.

Bullet 6 is a specific example of bullet 5.

Bullet 7 is another consequence of bullet 1.

DP is right, CR is no more and no less than a (slightly) more accurate assessment of monster power than monster level used to be. It serves the same purpose as the dungeon tables in Appendix C, and can be just as easily ignored if you would rather use the wilderness tables instead.

What this means is that everything, except bullet 4, is something that I think is consistent with good RPG gaming in general. I think that applying an "OSR" or "retro" label to it makes in inaccessible to new gamers, who are exactly the people you probably want to adopt it. It shouldn't be retro, it should be universal. And it shouldn't be asserted that trivial differences in design prevent good play; differences like how attack order is determined, or the method of calculating hit points, or giving a monster a "CR" instead of a "monster level" and using Arabic rather than roman numerals to express it. None of those things have anything to do with your seven bullet points.

 

[Beoric]

Nope. You just need to be aware that it's important and make the effort. The modern games do not (from everything I have seen from WotC) come with their knobs set to those settings by default.

EDIT: Beoric plays an unusual 4e too (by his own admission).

I am an unusual 4e player. I do not play a particularly unusual form of 4e, from a mechanical perspective. I tinker 4e way less than anybody I ever played with tinkered 1e. It is easy to run an "OSR" game playing while strictly following the 4e rules.

The difference between modern editions and early editions in terms of playstyle is how they teach the game. For the most part it is not game mechanics. They do omit to teach some procedures, but things like the proper use of wandering monsters and hexcrawl procedures do not require any change in game mechanics to implement.

No, the problem is how they talk about it in sourcebooks, how they write their modules, and how they run organized play. You want to buck the system? I think DM guild lets you wrote conversions of existing WotC modules, as long as it is necessary to buy the original module to play. Write a proper conversion of B2 for 5e, which turns up the knob on difficulty where appropriate (and also down, it is often harder to find secret doors in new games). Include design and play notes so that players and DMs know how to handle the overland portion, and how parties might survive in a dungeon that can have 40 goblins in a room. Make a players guide with play tips. Build the NPC and monster relationships out a bit, to make the availability and handling of faction play more obvious. Explain how to use a rumor table, and do the work of assigning rumors to the important NPCs (and personalize them). Outline how XPs are awarded ("Award 1000 XP for killing the monsters and getting the loot, or 850 XP if they get the loot without killing the monsters. If they go back and kill the monsters after they have already got the loot, they only get and additional 150 XP"). Introduce a morale mechanic based on some existing 5e mechanic (probably a saving throw or ability check of some sort).

 

[squeen]

The article is better than my bullet points.

 

[Beoric]

The article is worse than your bullet points because it expressly draws a link between edition and "OSR". In part by mischaracterizing later editions; his comments about Pathfinder/3.5 are the equivalent of "the fun in motor racing comes in engineering faster cars", which makes no sense if you are the driver. Character optimization is a solo activity; D&D is a group activity, even if the group is DM and a single player. Character optimization is never the intended point of the game.

The article is self-congratulatory for anyone clever enough to play an "OSR edition" and excludes anyone who doesn't. I would respect it more if it was inclusive rather than exclusionary.

 

[squeen]

Would it be more palatable to call them "OSR principals" and ignore any mention of editions?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Would it be more palatable to call them "OSR principals" and ignore any mention of editions?

By calling anything "OSR" you are inherently omitting several editions from the conversation. That's why OSR exists - to set it apart.

 

[squeen]

Gentlemen (and by that I mean land-owners)...can we not agree that there are elements of the game, de-emphasized by TSR/WotC in later editions (perhaps heavily influenced by the profitable video game industry), that were put front-and-center again by the OSR (circa. 2000) as a sort of reactionary/preservation movement? And that these elements have been slowly filtering back into the main-stream collective-consciousness over the past decade or so? Moreover, the core-concepts can be edition agnostic, and are of interest to all here?

 

[squeen]

The article is worse than your bullet points because it expressly draws a link between edition and "OSR". In part by mischaracterizing later editions;

The article is self-congratulatory for anyone clever enough to play an "OSR edition" and excludes anyone who doesn't. I would respect it more if it was inclusive rather than exclusionary.

Serious question: Would you prefer I don't post or laud OSR links?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

can we not agree that there are elements of the game, de-emphasized by TSR/WotC in later editions (perhaps heavily influenced by the profitable video game industry), that were put front-and-center again by the OSR (circa. 2000) as a sort of reactionary/preservation movement?

Whether or not something is or isn't part of an edition has no real bearing on player-specific styles which differ from group to group and table to table. There's no guarantee that everyone playing newer D&D is going to automatically become a min-max murderhobo, just as there's no guarantee that everyone playing retro-clones is going to purposefully avoid fights and develop their own goals. Players all play differently - hell, even at the same table you'll be hard-pressed to find an entire group where everyone plays their characters the same way.

If you read through Bryce's reviews and stripped out any mention of edition (or whatever applicable ruleset), you'd be hard-pressed to identify the edition by style alone, and that's because playstyle is so damn subjective. An B/X review is going to sound like a 5e review - Bryce will gripe about formatting, use at the table, too much backstory, boring scenarios, etc. regardless of edition, which to me is evidence that the actual rules used are mostly disengaged from the way adventures unfold at the table. There was mass discussion of this long ago, whereby I was insistent that rules don't dictate playstyle as much as they serve to resolve actions, but naturally I was swarmed and shouted down.

If you want to critique or emphasize elements of a particular system, then identify it by the system, not the OSR label. It's one thing to say "I really like the way B/X does initiative" - it's clear you are referring to a specific rule we can find in a specific place, and can debate the merits of it in a straightforward way. It's another thing to say "OSR rules are better for initiative" - you have just made a definitive statement that lumps all systems from LotFP to Black Hack to Mazes & Monsters together and bundled them all up as evidence of good game practices, applying evenly across a multitude of platforms, which becomes impossible to prove or disprove because it's such a generalized statement.

The OSR label is an affectation, pure and simple. Hell, they called it a Renaissance/Revolution, as if playing a game in a slightly different way is somehow paradigm-changing. Honestly, the label has served its purpose as a rallying banner for years now, I think we can move on from the term and begin once again discussing the merits of individual rule sets, as opposed to assuming that totally subjective, individually player-driven game choices are somehow hard-coded into anything and everything made in the '70s/'80s (or their modern emulations).

 

[squeen]

I think we are speaking past each other again on this point --- I am talking published tone and zeitgeist. We've already established you can (and you do) it differently than the WotC-default. You can take pride in that as far as I'm concerned.

Renaissance/Enlightenment referred to recapturing ancient Greek knowledge (post Dark Ages). Same hold true for the OSR (at inception).

The edition details are the details, but the spirit is one of preservation of a game-knowledge/play-style/useful-mechanics there were getting lost (e.g. saving out-of-print texts via the OGL + advocating a certain style of play)---and replaced by something "different" (e.g. little/no player death, exploration, resource management, or emphasis on character-builds, etc.).

I get the sense you do not wish for the OSR to get any credit for having accomplished anything.

That's too bad...it's revisionist history from my point of view.

Where folks are "taking the OSR" now, after it accomplished it original mission---on that I have no opinion.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Beoric: you really think Ben L. wants to exclude *anyone*? Come on man.

Everyone: We can't get two pages into talking about a (for once in our lives) really great published module without batting around canards like Challenge Rating and WHAT DOES THE "OSR" MEAN? yet again. Is alignment next?

 

[Reason]

Who has run TUD & how did it go?

Once I've discovered a product I'm really jazzed about running I find play reports or DM reflections pretty helpful as way to really assess it. Modules are meant to be _run_ and a review from someone who hasn't played it only does half the job.

Just as seeing what players do in response to the challenges in a scenario is the real fun, I get a kick out of seeing wht other DM's did with a module to tweak it or how it ran out...

 

[Beoric]

Gentlemen (and by that I mean land-owners)...can we not agree that there are elements of the game, de-emphasized by TSR/WotC in later editions (perhaps heavily influenced by the profitable video game industry), that were put front-and-center again by the OSR (circa. 2000) as a sort of reactionary/preservation movement? And that these elements have been slowly filtering back into the main-stream collective-consciousness over the past decade or so? Moreover, the core-concepts can be edition agnostic, and are of interest to all here?

I agree with this. What I don't agree with is arguments that "OSR" only applies to certain editions. Which is what Ben L. was saying, and was suggested by your summary of what Ben L. was saying.

Serious question: Would you prefer I don't post or laud OSR links?

Not at all, but I will comment on them.

This discussion has crystallized my thoughts somewhat. At one time, "OSR" was a useful banner to rally a bunch of people who didn't see their playstyle recognized. Those people were excluded by the mainstream organized play and modules, and it was a good way for them to find each other.
But once the OSR people found each other, the acronym morphed into a way to exclude other people. Not just people who didn't play using that style, but people who didn't play the approved editions. It got so bad that just before the meltdown of some of the more controversial figures, I saw B/X players sneering at 1e players for not being OSR enough, and LBB players sneering at B/X players.

Things have calmed down since then, but OSR now has baggage attached to it that makes it hard for new players to participate in the movement unless they give up 5e - the existence of which is probably the only reason they are playing the game - and hunt down a bunch on antique rulebooks for themselves. Hell, every one and a while we get a new participant around here and I need to justify my "OSR cred" again. And while DP brings a lot of heat down on himself now, I remember how that defensiveness started, by people bashing his edition.

I feel like instead of excluding people we should be asking people to join us. If our playstyle is so damn good we should invite people to share it. I have no voice in the broader internet, but I have a voice here, and there are people here who can actually get stuff published. So I am going to push my "spread the word" message in the hopes that it influences their views enough to publish something that will hopefully reach some 5e players and introduce them to something cool that they wouldn't have known otherwise.

Beoric: you really think Ben L. wants to exclude *anyone*? Come on man.

Perhaps that is not his intention. I am not sure that it is not the result. He does walk a line in his discussion of PF/3.5 and challenge ratings, and in his use of the phrase "OSR games" instead of "OSR playstyle".
[/QUOTE]

 

[squeen]

Thinking that this Goblin Punch post (that Ben references) would be more palatable for the non-OSR'ers --- gets good around the section entitled Advice for DMs.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

What I've noticed is that people can't quite nail down exactly what makes something "old school". They are so many retro-clones because each person has a different definition of what gives the game its "old school feel". Every OSR system touts "a return to the old style of play" or some equivalent, and yet they're all different from one another.

From the post you linked squeen, this is particularly telling:

An Old-School Dungeoncrawl

The players will control a group of lowly peasants who attempt to escape a dangerous and exotic underground maze. That makes it a dungeoncrawl.
They will map the dungeon themselves, track light sources, they will rely on their wits (instead of their class abilities), and some will die. These things make it old-school.

So by the GoblinPunch (I refuse to use the word "GLOG") definition, "old school" means weak characters, vision management, and a lot of presumptions about how players will play the game (question: if my table doesn't have someone mapping the dungeon, am I somehow not playing an old school game?). Yet if you go to another blog, you'll see a different definition, (though you may notice they also tend to bring up totally player-specific, edition-agnostic behaviors like tactically avoiding fights, shunning character sheets, or giving a hoot about encumbrance).

Here's the thing - I think that "old school" is a gradient, not a hard line to cross. There are degrees that something is older or newer feeling, but it's not black and white, one side vs. the other (or OSR vs D&D or whatever). Ask anyone what makes a videogame "old school", and you won't get a straight answer - is it anything made before 1980? Anything with no lives system? Anything on an arcade machine? Anything 8-bit? Can Pac-Man be considered old school when compared to Pong? Is the original Mario 64 considered old school when compared to the first Mario game? No solid answer.

TTRPGs are the same way. There's no firm delineation because DMs and players are all different. There are 5e games with save-or-die traps where players pixelbitch dungeons with 10' poles, just as there are B/X games where players rush into every fight and stockpile potions of darkvision. The retro-clone push is people trying to hard-code nostalgic feelings into tangible gameplay, but feelings are entirely subjective and can be emulated in any system with the right DM.

!!!CONTENTIOUS STATEMENT AHEAD!!!

Personally, I believe that anyone incapable of recreating a nostalgic feel in a modern system is either a total novice, a poor DM, or someone who lacks imagination. I say this because there are people out there doing what many of you say can't be done - that is, recreating the old school feel in a modern system. By the brand of logic here, it is an apparently impossible feat that can only be captured if you use an "old school compliant" system with an OSR logo on it. My natural line of thinking leads me to conclude this: To many the OSR might be a badge of honor that says "I am an OG in the TTRPG world", but to me it says "I can't adapt and am proud of it".

 

[squeen]

I think the "crawl" in dungeoncrawl implies all that gritty resources management (old-school or not).

I do agree there is no clear dividing line or definition of "old school".

...all the rest...not so much.

 

[Beoric]

There are 5e games ... where players pixelbitch dungeons with 10' poles

To be clear, if 10' pole use devolves into pixelbitching you are doing it wrong. The player does not declare the use of a pole with each step his character takes, like a 90s Nintendo player clicking on every pixel in the game. The character may be pixelbitching, but the player is not. The player declaring a strategy, not declaring an action. The strategy tells the DM the character's position in the marching order, how quickly the party can proceed (ie. exploration speed), the odds of finding certain types of traps, and what the character has in his hands at the commencement of combat (or any other emergency situation).

I mention this because I often get the impression that critics of this style of play think pole use involves an interminable number of declared actions and/or pointless trap detection rolls. It doesn't. It is a role that character takes in in exploration. Once a character takes on that role, the DM only needs to check to see if the character has found something where there is something there for the character to find.