Sell me on the refereeing practices of the OSR

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The phrase "Be a fan of the players" originates from the GM advice in Victory Games' 007: James Bond RPG, which is sufficiently Old School for me.
The guy that I think explained it best (of guys I've read anyway) is Vincent Baker. I found his take on how RPGs work and what was important pretty revelatory when I read it the first time.
 
It is something you can determine ahead of time. That's what the wandering monster tables are for. And when you put monsters in a room, you're determining how many and what kind. You can't fine tune balance because you lack the tools, so you're not going to try. It wasn't a conscious decision not to balance things, it was simply a result of the system not being deisgned well enough to let you balance it.

The idea that you're creating a community of creatures in old school dungeon design is also revisionist history. Old school dungeons by and large made absolutely no sense. They were just an excuse for a series of encounters. The only difference is you didn't know the order that the encounters would happen in.
I'm not revising anything. I'm talking about how I design dungeons, right now. I'm talking about the OSR, which is a gaming philosophy/movement that started in the late 2000s.

I claim no special knowledge about how people designed dungeons in 1978.
 
I wouldn't go as far as to say I don't take character level into account at all -- at the very least, I will make more effort to telegraph significant dangers -- but I am absolutely a huge fan of opportunities for PCs to encounter things that would be considered "too strong for their level" to see how they deal with it.
Well sure, I'm not a sadist or a moron. But I do expect the players to know when to run away or sneak instead of unleashing the old ultraviolence.
 
Te idea that encounters shouldn't be adjusted to the party goes beyond dungeon levels. That's still pretty levelled, especially when you realize that in the example you offer it sounds like it's understood that the players will realize that by going down levels the difficulty rises.
By and large I don’t see anything to object to in what you’ve written, but if the players aren’t told that deeper levels are more dangerous, they’ll learn it soon enough if the DM is following the guidelines (edit: the ones in white box and Ad&d).

In white box and/or AD&D the wandering monster tables did also provide a chance that something worse than the current level would show up, so there is that also about encounters not being tailored.
 
By and large I don’t see anything to object to in what you’ve written, but if the players aren’t told that deeper levels are more dangerous, they’ll learn it soon enough if the DM is following the guidelines.

In white box and/or AD&D the wandering monster tables did also provide a chance that something worse than the current level would show up, so there is that also about encounters not being tailored.
I guess what I'm getting at is that the model where dungeons have many levels, and each level down is 'harder' is a very specific, and venerable, model for play. While that's an old idea, it's not an idea that got pulled into what I would term OSR play.
 
All good. I’m responding to migo’s historical comment in post #39.
 
The difference is like many things, as of 3e it was done better. TSR-era D&D let you eyeball things, perhaps also looking at XP value for the encounter, whereas 3.x gave you the tools to fine tune the balance. That wasn't a change in philosophy, merely an advancement in game design.

So to the extent that the idea of no encounter balance is true for the OSR, it's about moving to a system that's more messy and doesn't let you balance encounters as well. And then sells it as a feature rather than a system flaw.
I completely disagree with this statement, in as friendly way as I can. I think it's very much a change in philosophy, and not for the better.
 
Rather than waiting for a reply, I'll expand on why I disagree and why I think it's not a change for the better. When you have 'balanced' encounters, and by that I mean that the table expectations and more specifically the player expectations, are that encounters are at least roughly balanced to their level, it that it disinclines the players from fully engaging with the encounter. The baseline understanding is that they should be able to beat monster X, assuming they are somewhat solvent in terms of resources like spells and HP. My problem with that is that it really only engages the character sheet. You only need to know how fresh you are to make a reasonable decision. This has a knock on effect that I also dislike, which is that the default encounter management format tends to be combat, something that is only enforced by the notion that XP for killing shit is how you level. So the players spend less time being creative, because they don't have to and because engaging in combat is what earns them XP.

The OSR, generally, and on the other hand, uses a more old fashioned gold for XP model and specifically doesn't balance encounters. What that leads to is the players have a very different approach to solving problems. They don't need to kill the beats to get XP, and they also are probably less resilient than the equivalent 4E or 5E character, which also disinclines them to see combat as the peg that fits every hole. When combat isn't the focus I find you tend to see much more creative use of skills, set dressing, and non combat spells of various sorts. In short, I find it's usually more fun.
 
M migo, may I ask your experience with D&D prior to 2e, and when?

Obviously to you I’m just some guy on the net but I’m speaking from having played D&D starting with the White Box circa 1978, and having come to the hobby from board wargames.
 
This is revisionist history. Old school D&D explicitly had balanced encounters, and called them dungeon levels. Each level lower you had progressively more difficult encounters. Challenge ratings were introduced in 3rd Edition along with the 'Back to the Dungeon' motto, and just tied it to party level instead of dungeon level. You also had published modules indicating the total number of party levels that are appropriate and which character classes are necessary to complete it.

No way man in The Golden Age Real DMs ran 2nd level parties through Isle of the Ape all the time.

:clown:
 
In the golden age there weren’t any published modules.

Look, I’m not saying migo or anyone has to listen to me, but it might be a good idea to reflect on whether one’s certainties reflect first hand experience or sources outside one’s own suppositions.
 
On another point, one aspect of OSR/old school/rules-light DM style that I'd like your collective response to is:
Some of my players dislike OSR style "turning the game into a 'Mother may I?' dialog with the DM" (according to them).
For me, this is where most of the inventive play many of us like resides. Some players seem to think it makes the game too arbitrary and inconsistent (they want "rules not rulings" to sort this out).

How do you answer this criticism?

PS To be fair to Ron Edwards he said WoD players were brain damaged, not simulationists. I have some sympathy with this position (present company excluded :-).
 
Your argument for preferring not having encounter balance is fine. But it's not old school. Old school dungeons had plenty of combat. While it was certainly possible to sneak around, that wasn't how it was played. The primary focus of any RPG discussion, including D&D, prior to 2000, was combat. Just as it is today. This particular aspect of the OSR is more informed by the indie RPG movement and the Forge than it was by how it was actually played in the 20th century. I don't have a problem with it, I'm just saying it's revisionist history.
This is just wrong. Not just for D&D, where modules expected you to play factions off each other, heck Moldvey has parlaying with monsters in the play example, but especially for a wide range of other RPGs prior to 2000. Was combat prominent in many people’s games? Yep. Is it today? Yep.

edit to add I have a number of things to do this morning and won’t be responding for hours so I will apologize for the “drive by post” but I’m sure just about anyone that tries can think of other games prior to 2000 where combat wasn’t the primary thrust. Heck off the top of my head the Tri Tac games specifically gave out more xp for avoiding combat then getting into it.
 
M migo, may I ask your experience with D&D prior to 2e, and when?

Obviously to you I’m just some guy on the net but I’m speaking from having played D&D starting with the White Box circa 1978, and having come to the hobby from board wargames.

Sure, you can, but that would be derailing the discussion. This isn't about me or you. Start a new thread to ask me if you actually care, and aren't just using it as a point to argue.

No way man in The Golden Age Real DMs ran 2nd level parties through Isle of the Ape all the time.

:clown:

Stuff like this happened, but because higher level modules were all that was on the shelf, so that's what you bought, and because the rules didn't detail starting at a higher level, you started with 1st level.

The Golden Age has become a true vanishing point.

I believe the Real Golden Age of D&D was the moment of Gary Gygax's conception up til they introduced the Thief class. It's all been downhill since then.

This is also somewhat revisionist. The conception happened when Dave Arneson played in David Wesley's Braunstein game. Incidentally, this does also support the idea that old school play wasn't just about solving problems through combat, and XP for gold being a key element of old school play. But non-combat solutions and XP primarily from non-combat sources doesn't mean there wasn't any such thing as balance.

Treasure wasn't sitting there undefended, there was a monster with it, and the volume of treasure was balanced against the threat the monster posed.
 
On another point, one aspect of OSR/old school/rules-light DM style that I'd like your collective response to is:
Some of my players dislike OSR style "turning the game into a 'Mother may I?' dialog with the DM" (according to them).
For me, this is where most of the inventive play many of us like resides. Some players seem to think it makes the game too arbitrary and inconsistent (they want "rules not rulings" to sort this out).

How do you answer this criticism?

PS To be fair to Ron Edwards he said WoD players were brain damaged, not simulationists. I have some sympathy with this position (present company excluded :-).
One answer is, "It's ok to to not like this style of play." However, that's not helpful, so a few thoughts:

First, I tend to assume characters are competent at any task within their purview. So, when they're asking, "can I do X," if it's something I'd expect from their class, or an adventurer in general, the answer will be "yes". I've never been one to call for a lot of dice rolls, even though I grew up on Rolemaster, a skill-based game. I've always assumed the PCs can stuff you'd expect them to be able to do.

Mostly, though, I think it's really just a matter of ensuring that the group has a shared understanding of the world, of what's possible, and what's expected, and for the participants to have the ability to talk through misunderstandings in a mature, sensible fashion. This will obviously work better for an established group, than it will for five random people around the world jumping on discord.

Beyond that, I think it's just a matter of being consistent.

I have the trust of my players, and they feel confident that, if they present a logical plan, it should have a logical outcome; they know they're not relying on random whim. If they feel I've misunderstood something, or a ruling is unreasonable, they're comfortable voicing their disagreement, and they know I'll listen. They know that sometimes I'll stand my ground, and a ruling will go against them, but it's not going to be something egregious, and they understand that a decision has to be made so the game can move forward.

Edit: As a final note, the strongest opposition to this style seems to come from players with some ongoing trauma relating to one or more shitty GMs. If there is trust between player and GM, it really shouldn't be an issue.
 
The Golden Age has become a true vanishing point.

I believe the Real Golden Age of D&D was the moment of Gary Gygax's conception up til they introduced the Thief class. It's all been downhill since then.
Golden Age here meaning nothing more than the earliest phase, as in Golden Age SF or Golden Age comics. Value is a personal opinion, but history is fact, even if it’s somewhat hard to reconstruct. And things moved very quickly in the early days, so even a year or so saw a great deal of development.
 
Sure, you can, but that would be derailing the discussion. This isn't about me or you. Start a new thread to ask me if you actually care, and aren't just using it as a point to argue.



Stuff like this happened, but because higher level modules were all that was on the shelf, so that's what you bought, and because the rules didn't detail starting at a higher level, you started with 1st level.



This is also somewhat revisionist. The conception happened when Dave Arneson played in David Wesley's Braunstein game. Incidentally, this does also support the idea that old school play wasn't just about solving problems through combat, and XP for gold being a key element of old school play. But non-combat solutions and XP primarily from non-combat sources doesn't mean there wasn't any such thing as balance.

Treasure wasn't sitting there undefended, there was a monster with it, and the volume of treasure was balanced against the threat the monster posed.
Have you looked at or ever used the random dungeon from generators from AD&D? Treasure without monsters, although not usual without some sort of protection, comes up regularly.
 
...
This is also somewhat revisionist. The conception happened when Dave Arneson played in David Wesley's Braunstein game. Incidentally, this does also support the idea that old school play wasn't just about solving problems through combat, and XP for gold being a key element of old school play. But non-combat solutions and XP primarily from non-combat sources doesn't mean there wasn't any such thing as balance.

Treasure wasn't sitting there undefended, there was a monster with it, and the volume of treasure was balanced against the threat the monster posed.

I was joking. I find those who think the introduction of the Thief class, the most awesome of all D&D classes, 'spoiled' D&D pretty laughable. Puritianism eating its own tail.
 
I was joking. I find those who think the introduction of the Thief class, the most awesome of all D&D classes, 'spoiled' D&D pretty laughable. Puritianism eating its own tail.
I think it belongs in a separate discussion but the thief class was right at the beginning of bloat in the game. It was unneeded, especially once the rules started to be codified that certain things could no longer be done by other classes to give the thief niche protection. Adventurers did fine exploring prior to the introduction of the class. Locks were defeated, chests opened, guards snuck up on, and all without having to look at a character sheet for permission to do so!

Anyhow this is a side tangent so I’ll drop it but you can play just fine with the 3 LBB and nothing else.
 
Sable Wyvern Sable Wyvern robb robb My suggestion may or may not be “OSR” but if the players are feeling like they’re in a game of “mother may I” while the referee really isn’t sure how to rule—and feels torn over letting the players have their way vs “keeping it real”, resorting to the dice may be a good idea. For example—you might ask, “What could go wrong with this plan?” And once you think of it, choose a target number for it to happen, and roll. If it doesn’t happen, the players’ plan goes off as expected. Otherwise, you introduce the complication.

While this is touched on or suggested by Gygax in the 1e DMG, I find the approach of the Mythic Game Master Emulator somewhat inspirational as a kind of “expanded approach to random encounters”.
 
Have you looked at or ever used the random dungeon from generators from AD&D? Treasure without monsters, although not usual without some sort of protection, comes up regularly.
Even treasure without protection is de facto protected by wandering monsters.

I was joking. I find those who think the introduction of the Thief class, the most awesome of all D&D classes, 'spoiled' D&D pretty laughable. Puritianism eating its own tail.

Right, I was responding specifically to the conceived by Gygax part. Gygax worship is a pet peeve of mine. I don't think he was a good game designer. He was just a gamer with passion and the drive to actually produce a product others could buy. It took less than a year for people to be inspired to design better games than him.

As for the Thief, while the concept is great, the implementation was garbage up until 2e. I can't imagine what they were thinking when they designed it. It's also my quick filter for deciding which OSR systems to pass over. A) Does it have the Thief? B) If yes, is it designed stupidly like the B/X or AD&D 1e Thief? If yes, I pass. If it doesn't have the Thief (Spears of the Dawn, for instance), or does it better (Expert in Lamentations of the Flame Princess), I'll consider it. It's also why Palladium Fantasy is a hard pass for me - Kevin Siembieda took everything that made the Thief a badly designed class, and applied it to every class.
 
Precisely, and that’s why I don’t get the above argument. Even if the evolutionary tree of RPGing practices underwent a radiation similar to the Cambrian explosion, there was a basal form from which it derived.

Because I find Tristram's definition too restrictive. If we use it literally, it would mean almost nothing in the OSR actually qualifies as OSR because the vast majority of products take influences from D&D post 1976, by which point the divergence is obvious. Where do we draw the line anyway? Does the "old school style of play" mean "use Outdoor Survival for wilderness exploration" because I'm not sure anyone is doing that now.

As a broader point, the argument is partly based on the concept that the ten years preceding and following OD&D is as much of interest as the launch of the ur-product in 1974. That's obviously a primarily philosophical question and as such doesn't have a correct answer beyond "some will agree, some won't".

To tie this together, what leads me to make the argument is not to try and discredit Gygaxian archeology as an approach. (It's not really my interest, but I appreciate many people find it useful). It's because by looking at a broader range of early playstyles it gives people a wider toolkit to draw on for their games. And I suspect we'd agree that at the end of the day it's good games that are the overall goal of any "old school" discussions.
 
I think the whole debate about what gaming was like before 2000 should be a separate thread. The topic of OSR GMing style is its own thing. This thread is just going to be a long debate about Gygax rather than address the OP's questions about this GMing style if we get bogged down discussion the history of play style in D&D
 
In a thread in the Community Chat forum, where this inquiry would be off-topic, AsenRG AsenRG remarked


Never having felt the draw of nostalgia for old-school D&D like it was in the old days, I have let the Old School Revival pass by unexamined, and am shamefully ignorant. I would of course not impose on AsenRG to do my research for me, but if there is someone to whom it would be not too much trouble to suggest where I might do well to start, I would be grateful if they did so.
Aside from Matt’s Old School Primer. I have the following

The world outside of the dungeon

When to Make a Ruling

How to make a fantasy sandbox

Blackmarsh

Hope these help and they are all free.
 
It's also worth mentioning that "old school refereeing" is something of a misnomer. If Jon Peterson's research has shown anything it's that right from the early days there have been groups that treat RPGs as improvisational theatre, groups that treat it as a wargame and see the referee's role as (fairly) playing to try and beat the players and everything in between.
And me who focused on letting players trash the setting.
:grin:
 
Some of the OSR advice is so D&D-centric that I don't have much use for it (what's a "Challenge Rating", lol), but "learn to roll with whatever crazy thing the PCs want to do" works in any game.
There's a good reason for this. When D&D changed hands, and went from AD&D 2nd Edition (with some 'Classic' D&D on the side) to D&D 3rd Edition, that was one of the biggest changes to happen to an RPG line. The change from RQ2 to RQ3 may have been similar, but not quite on that magnitude. But other than that, edition changes were usually quite minor, and didn't drastically change the game.

So while a bunch of people were quite happy with D&D 3e (and 3.5 after it), a bunch more who were quite happy with D&D the way it was before felt orphaned. D&D really was its own thing, perhaps Palladium Fantasy 1e got close (but it wasn't supported anymore), but while d100 games like BRP seem close to TSR-D&D when compared to the rest of the market, they're also a fair bit different. There wasn't anything new being published in that style.

After fans of other systems saw TSR-D&D getting revived like that, they started doing it with other orphaned systems. The OSR is more than just D&D now, but it started with D&D, and specifically contrasting TSR-D&D with WotC-D&D.
 
I think the whole debate about what gaming was like before 2000 should be a separate thread. The topic of OSR GMing style is its own thing. This thread is just going to be a long debate about Gygax rather than address the OP's questions about this GMing style if we get bogged down discussion the history of play style in D&D
Also, and with respect to the original folks, the OSR has a lot more experience at this now than they did back in the 70s. Many of the folks who write about this stuff have decades of refereeing under their belt. Along with newer folks who have the advantage of building off of the old guys work and do a good job expanding on it.
 
Some of the OSR advice is so D&D-centric that I don't have much use for it (what's a "Challenge Rating", lol), but "learn to roll with whatever crazy thing the PCs want to do" works in any game.

Most of the ideas and practices as outlined in the pdfs I posted were refined over two decades of playing GURPS.
 
Honestly, I've always found the obsession with "how it was done back in the day" as kind of unnecessary. Not only has gaming been more diverse than some people think for much longer than some people think, it is interesting from a academic perspective I think but not really that useful at the table for me.

It's like, I don't need to figure out how Arneson did it or Gygax ran a game. I need to figure out how I run a game. If that ends up lining up with a specific "style" that exists so be it, but I've generally found that there are good ideas everywhere. And limiting how I do things to one specific style of GMing, one specific style of RPG, gets to be more about puritanism than making the game work for me.

And to me, how each person runs a game should be personal and individualistic.

I find it useful to explain some mechanical choices. For instance reading an early T&T rulebook you see it talking about 'saving throws' for what we would nowadays call a skill or attribute check. And as it turns out, that's how Gary ran his games. Your 5 saving throws weren't just to survive in the event of something bad happening to you, but also to judge your chance of accomplishing something actively. Meanwhile attributes did next to nothing, except give you an XP bonus and limit what you could qualify for.

If you're going to play with old school rules, it's good to know what the intention was, especially if it wasn't communicated clearly in the books. I'm not sure I would use saving throws like that, it seems a bit too far removed for me. But it is useful to know that the idea was that characters would get better at everything as they levelled up, not just at class abilities while other things were handled statically with attribute checks.
 
I just GM like I've always GMed and it wasn't until decades later I looked at the "Old School GMing" concepts and was like "oh yeah, that's how I play"
Yeah, that's the way to do it. I do read GM advice and sometimes I'll even read the historical examinations of "how games played", and hey, sometimes I'll even steal some bit or piece of how someone did something that I like. It's just never been about what style it is. Turning out to run a style pretty closely to how people describe it naturally feels like it should be a "huh, neat" rather than revelatory to me.
 
Because I find Tristram's definition too restrictive. If we use it literally, it would mean almost nothing in the OSR actually qualifies as OSR because the vast majority of products take influences from D&D post 1976, by which point the divergence is obvious. Where do we draw the line anyway? Does the "old school style of play" mean "use Outdoor Survival for wilderness exploration" because I'm not sure anyone is doing that now.

As a broader point, the argument is partly based on the concept that the ten years preceding and following OD&D is as much of interest as the launch of the ur-product in 1974. That's obviously a primarily philosophical question and as such doesn't have a correct answer beyond "some will agree, some won't".

To tie this together, what leads me to make the argument is not to try and discredit Gygaxian archeology as an approach. (It's not really my interest, but I appreciate many people find it useful). It's because by looking at a broader range of early playstyles it gives people a wider toolkit to draw on for their games. And I suspect we'd agree that at the end of the day it's good games that are the overall goal of any "old school" discussions.


Someone is using Outdoor Survival :wink:
 
On another point, one aspect of OSR/old school/rules-light DM style that I'd like your collective response to is:
Some of my players dislike OSR style "turning the game into a 'Mother may I?' dialog with the DM" (according to them).
For me, this is where most of the inventive play many of us like resides. Some players seem to think it makes the game too arbitrary and inconsistent (they want "rules not rulings" to sort this out).

How do you answer this criticism?

I bypass this sort of criticism by describing my GM style to new players before I ever allow them to join one of my games. If they think it sounds like fun, and it sounds like they may be a good fit for the game, then I let them join. If they don't like that style, I tell them that my game probably isn't a good fit for what they are looking for, and we part (hopefully) amicably.

40+ years of GMing has taught me what type of game I like to run, how I like to run it, and (importantly) what GMing style I'm best at. I play to my strengths, and take into account my own enjoyment of the game.
 
Agree. For any rulings heavy games, open honest discussion, checks ins, and info sharing are largely essential.

it’s very much about the skill in Using the tools available more than what tools are available
 
Surely not in so few words
Actually, he says that "roleplaying is a conversation" in those exact words, IIRC...:smile:
But yeah, the view that storygames are trying to do the same thing as old-school games tends to be strangely unpopular among both story gamers and OSR players...bad blood do the forum wars engender:wink:!

Also, in the start of the thread (not in post#123) JAMUMU JAMUMU gave a good list of what OSR games are like in practice, while carpocratian carpocratian gave a good list of how I see old-school games in general to be, instead. But thing is, the first list helped me to reach the second list in my own way...

As an example, today I ran a game set in HK 2018 using a d6 system called Heaven's Shadow. I'd argue that it was an old-school game, despite the fact that the only dungeon-like place was the metro (without any dangers inside), the PCs didn't throw a single rolled* punch, let alone anything more substantial**, and there wasn't a single character death:shock:!


*I.e. beating someone who doesn't fight back doesn't count. And those were body punches meant to speed up the conversation:grin:!

**And despite the fact that they had from 6 dice to 7d+2 in their attack skills, in a world where most people have like 2 dice in their attack and defense pools:shade:.
 
I agree with one OSR blogger that a bit more knowledge of the history of those debates and the variety of play from the beginning of the hobby would help the OSR from spinning its wheels a bit.
Indeed, reading all the books about RPG history helped me a lot when it came to writing When to make a Ruling.
 
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