OSR: what is it even

[lategamer]

You seemed to have missed my basic point …

No, I just didn’t like the options.

I don't think XP systems should hold realism too high as a design principle either. They are very much part of the G in RPG and I tend to treat them as such.

I’d get rid of them if players didn’t demand them.

So long as there is a thin patina of verisimilitude or covering fluff I'm fine.

Sure. It’s possible to make a purse out of a sows ear, just not a silken one.

 

[Fenris-77]

Sure. It’s possible to make a purse out of a sows ear, just not a silken one.

You do you my friend.

 

[lategamer]

So, ultimately, you do understand what OSR is now?
You simply realized you don't like it?
I mean, I guess that's as good as any other outcome.

Yes. I also enjoyed the chat and the anecdotes.

I realised I won’t like it. I’ve got some of the games but sure I won’t play them. I thought the various “hack” games just showed a lack of imagination.

 

[AsenRG]

I do like DCC and it is newer than BoL, I’ll revise my comment to the last new game that really grabbed me was DCC.

Well, "BoL and DCC" help to put your point across even more efficiently, since they show at what intervals you find something new you like...

As the progression was mostly “how useful are you in the next fight” it seemed that experience from killing monsters would be valuable. (“This manoeuvre worked when killing the Assholecreature so it might work when we are fighting the Rectumbeast”)

XP for gold must never sat well and was probably an early time when I thought D&D was “stupid”.

To be fair, I also thought XP for gold makes no sense.

Amusingly, it was a line in the Acsiom 16 XP section that helped me make peace with the option. It said simply that XP is for achieving stuff (paraphrasing and translating). Thus, according to it, it was fine to give XP for negotiating with a monster (or other NPC), as long as the PCs achieved something.

Thus, I think that XP for gold is simply XP for achievement. It's just baking in the assumptions that PCs are into it to get rich.
It wouldn't be the only assumption in the rules that the authors didn't bother explaining...



Also, if people move immediately to "kill and loot" when you add the notion of XP for GP, it's likely that they're too certain about winning fights against your NPCs, IME!

Currently in a BRP game where, in a few days, I’ve managed to double the value in a couple of skills (going from 20-40). Which indicates

1) I did bugger all before the adventure - character was the epitome of laziness
2) the skill increases are ridiculous in BRP
3) experience systems are mostly player service and not remotely realistic.

...OK, first time I've heard that BRP skill increases are ridiculously fast!

And possibly, 4) BRP starts you at ridiculously low levels of skill, and then counts on XP to help you catch up to normal levels!

 

[DeadBob]

Thus, I think that XP for gold is simply XP for achievement. It's just baking in the assumptions that PCs are into it to get rich.
It wouldn't be the only assumption in the rules that the authors didn't bother explaining...

Damn? What will I do with all of this gold?

I mean the only things in here that cost those levels of gold are fortresses, armies, and navies.

Maybe a little to make some new magical abilities too.

If only someone had pointed out what to do with all of this!

IOW, I'm pretty sure the goal was less Become Rich and more Become Powerful independent Warlord. If players chose not to do that, and just continued to knock around the world as heroric-ish murderhobos-for-hire, then well, that's pretty much on them.

 

[robertsconley]

Yeah I'm not a fan of the 'Primer' which is full of strawmanning and straight-up factual errors, as Justin Alexander ably demonstrated in this thread: Post in thread 'Principia Apocrypha: Principles of Old School RPGs' https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/principia-apocrypha-principles-of-old-school-rpgs.1891/post-103796

And I called him out on this and replied in detail

Principia Apocrypha: Principles of Old School RPGs

I thought all of those as purposeful limitations (Con is likely to not be a major stat for wizards, arcane knights magic is to be a buff not combat magic) that can be optionally 'addressed' by Feats. Warmagic seems an odd ability if arcane knights aren't meant to cast in combat.

www.rpgpub.com

And our exchange continued for a few more posts after that. And what Justin and others ignored are the sections of the Primer where Matt Finch clearly stated what the point was. Not an account of how it was played back in the day. But how a modern (2008) gamer can make use of older editions as a referee or player.

 

[Sharrow]

Currently in a BRP game where, in a few days, I’ve managed to double the value in a couple of skills (going from 20-40). Which indicates

1) I did bugger all before the adventure - character was the epitome of laziness
2) the skill increases are ridiculous in BRP
3) experience systems are mostly player service and not remotely realistic.

In Runequest 2, you got one potential advancement between downtimes. The usual pattern was: Do an adventure. Check for skill increases. Spend time training skills/learning spells until the money from the adventure ran out. Do another adventure, etc.

As training took weeks, for the characters increasing skills was fairly slow.

 

[DeadBob]

In older versions of CoC (based on BRP), generally the skill increase was fairly quick for surviving characters when...

1) The skill was something started at a low-ish value, but not terrible (so 20-25% range) and
2) Had in-game justifications to be rolled multiple times in an adventure, so as to generally produce at least one successful roll

This then produced a fairly rapid increase (more so if you rolled d10 for increase rather than d6) until you started to go significantly above 50% (so in the 65-75% range, IME), since you need the post-game roll to fail in order to get a roll to increase.

Or to put it another way, we learned quickly that you wanted, at character creation, high scores in rarely used, rarely re-rolled skills (Pilot) and low-ish scores in commonly used, commonly re-rolled skills (combat skills).

Where skills like Dodge, Sneak, or Library Use come in are more flexible, but presumably something you want in the 40-60% range at chargen.

With CoC, we tended to play more adventure to adventure, so passing fictional time didn't come up much, except for the team weirdo reading things they ought not be reading or figuring out if our previous team weirdo was stable enough to get out of the boobie hatch yet.

 

[Jerry_B]

If Reddit is anything to go by (and I'm not saying that it is) there seems to be a pretty defined idea about what OSR actually is, but it's hard to find out what anyone means by it. Someone must've set up a meeting somewhere and I missed it. If it it is indeed a renaissance/revival of old-school games (possibly those of the 70s/80s) and their various functionalities then quite a lot of people seem to think that a lot of old-school games don't fit the template. Awhile ago I mentioned Star Frontiers in a post for someone looking for and old-school scifi rpg and someone told me that SF wasn't OSR. This struck me as a bit odd, as I don't see OSR as being restricted to just D&D, even though it ostensibly kicked off as that.

What I do like about the whole hubub around OSR is that it's became possible to tell people about older rpgs that they might not have heard of (Star Frontiers, Chill, Twilight: 2000, Traveller: 2300, Bushido, etc) and not have them write it all off as 'old' and therefore somehow of little to no worth. For a while it seemed very difficult to get rpgers of a certain age rage to look at anything older than D&D 3.5 and not consider it defunct because it predates that...

 

[DeadBob]

Generally, OSR coalesced around one form or another of early D&D with 0E and B/X being the most popular core sets to play with and mutate.

And yes, it also tends to center around dungeoneering.

So, no, it doesn't tend to be very much about other early games, even ones contemporary with those, although there are playstyle similarities in many cases and interest in OSR often also brings players into contact with other older games.

But that makes sense as, as was pointed out upthread in the back-and-forth about The Old School Primer, it started in some ways as a reaction/comparison between older D&Ds by TSR and newer D&Ds by WotC.

But also, yes, it would be nice to find like-minded souls who want to geek out on old games like those you mentioned, even if we aren't cool enough to be part of the OSR!

 

[Fenris-77]

I want a t-shirt that just says Dungeoneer in neat font.

 

[DeadBob]

I want a t-shirt that just says Dungeoneer in neat font.

Are we sure there isn't already some Scandinavian metal band with that name whose t-shirt you could buy?

It just seems like something that should exist.

 

[Fenris-77]

Are we sure there isn't already some Scandinavian metal band with that name whose t-shirt you could buy?

It just seems like something that should exist.

Yeah. The closest Mr. Google could get was this:

 

[Endless Flight]

If Reddit is anything to go by (and I'm not saying that it is) there seems to be a pretty defined idea about what OSR actually is, but it's hard to find out what anyone means by it. Someone must've set up a meeting somewhere and I missed it. If it it is indeed a renaissance/revival of old-school games (possibly those of the 70s/80s) and their various functionalities then quite a lot of people seem to think that a lot of old-school games don't fit the template. Awhile ago I mentioned Star Frontiers in a post for someone looking for and old-school scifi rpg and someone told me that SF wasn't OSR. This struck me as a bit odd, as I don't see OSR as being restricted to just D&D, even though it ostensibly kicked off as that.

I think it’s up to each individual person to define what it means. I think AD&D 2e (1989-1999) is OSR but I don’t think most of the supers games are, such as MSH (1984-1992) or DCH (1985-1993), even though the years may overlap. A game like WEG Star Wars is iffy to me. I could go see arguments either way, but I lean not OSR because of Force Points.

That might actually be what my line is: meta-currency or not. In that regard, James Bond might have been the first non-OSR game.

 

[David Johansen]

Villains and Vigilantes is OSR and Heroes Unlimited might be depending on how you define OSR.

I think the problem with gold for experience points is the word 'experience'. Consider video games where you pick up gold pieces or pellets or whatever and you get points for them and power ups when you get enough points. If the gold is scattered through the dungeon it might even be considered points for exploration. It's something I've had to explain to new players from time to time, the risks are in the dungeon but so are the rewards because the game is in the dungeon.

 

[Jerry_B]

I'd say Golden Heroes is OSR. That was out fave supers rpg back in the 80s.

As for what OSR is, it seems to me (in an ideal world, perhaps) that it's not just about D&D. It's really just about looking back at some older rpgs and saying 'Hey, these were pretty good. Let's play them again'. Or at least looking at older rpgs and seeing what they had to offer in terms of concepts, design, etc.

 

[E-Rocker]

That’s fascinating. And odd to me.

It's similar to my taste in horror movies. My first choice would be to watch a 1970s/early 1980s Italian horror movie that's all atmosphere and nightmare logic rather than something with more of a linear & coherent narrative.

 

[sharps54]

OSR is (depending on who you ask) about trying to be compatible with TSR era D&D, embracing certain design and play principles as put forth in various primers, or about a sharing DIY nature. Hardly anyone in the community uses it as short hand for all old games. If you enjoy other old games(and I do!) you are into old games or Old School Games but there is no earthly reason to try and force them under the OSR tent, just say you enjoy old games like the sadly defunct Dead Games Society podcast did.

 

[Toadmaster]

XP for gold never made sense to me and we never used it. I mean the gold was in itself a reward. I do far prefer the idea of XP for solving a problem vs killing stuff, but sadly back in the day when I was playing a lot of D&D that was not an idea anyone I played with came up with (in D&D, other games that was often assumed, but we never had the light bulb go off to use the idea with D&D).

Yes. I also enjoyed the chat and the anecdotes.

I realised I won’t like it. I’ve got some of the games but sure I won’t play them. I thought the various “hack” games just showed a lack of imagination.

What OSR / D&D-like games have you tried? If just the fairly pure retro-clones might I suggest a look at Beyond the Wall. The D&D inspiration is apparent, but the implementation is quite different.

In older versions of CoC (based on BRP), generally the skill increase was fairly quick for surviving characters when...

1) The skill was something started at a low-ish value, but not terrible (so 20-25% range) and
2) Had in-game justifications to be rolled multiple times in an adventure, so as to generally produce at least one successful roll

This then produced a fairly rapid increase (more so if you rolled d10 for increase rather than d6) until you started to go significantly above 50% (so in the 65-75% range, IME), since you need the post-game roll to fail in order to get a roll to increase.

Or to put it another way, we learned quickly that you wanted, at character creation, high scores in rarely used, rarely re-rolled skills (Pilot) and low-ish scores in commonly used, commonly re-rolled skills (combat skills).

Where skills like Dodge, Sneak, or Library Use come in are more flexible, but presumably something you want in the 40-60% range at chargen.

With CoC, we tended to play more adventure to adventure, so passing fictional time didn't come up much, except for the team weirdo reading things they ought not be reading or figuring out if our previous team weirdo was stable enough to get out of the boobie hatch yet.

CoC is one of those games were sort of zero to hero makes sense to me. I say sort of because the PCs are usually competent in their field, but their field usually isn't stop a gruesome world ending plot, so very OJT in a new field. They have to adapt quickly or they will not be around long.

 

[sharps54]

XP for gold never made sense to me and we never used it. I mean the gold was in itself a reward. I do far prefer the idea of XP for solving a problem vs killing stuff, but sadly back in the day when I was playing a lot of D&D that was not an idea anyone I played with came up with (in D&D, other games that was often assumed, but we never had the light bulb go off to use the idea with D&D).



What OSR / D&D-like games have you tried? If just the fairly pure retro-clones might I suggest a look at Beyond the Wall. The D&D inspiration is apparent, but the implementation is quite different.



CoC is one of those games were sort of zero to hero makes sense to me. I say sort of because the PCs are usually competent in their field, but their field usually isn't stop a gruesome world ending plot, so very OJT in a new field. They have to adapt quickly or they will not be around long.

Beyond the Wall is a great OSR game with wonderful collaborative world building.

As far as CoC I always saw it as hero to zero as sanity inevitably dribbled away… (but I also wouldn’t call it OSR, it is its own thing)

 

[David Johansen]

OSR is (depending on who you ask) about trying to compatible with TSR era D&D, embracing certain design and play principles as put forth in various primers, or about a sharing DIY nature. Hardly anyone in the community uses it as short hand for all old games. If you enjoy other old games(and I do!) you are into old games or Old School Games but there is no earthly reason to try and force them under the OSR tent, just say you enjoy old games like the sadly defunct Dead Games Society podcast did.

MInd you, the OSR wouldn't be the first club I was happy to be excluded from.

 

[sharps54]

Mind you it isn’t about excluding it is about having some sort of connecting tissue. I don’t demand that WEG d6 Star Wars be considered a PbtA game so I don’t get the need to try to make Top Secret an OSR game.

It is OK if a game you like isn’t OSR

 

[Voros]

OSR is (depending on who you ask) about trying to be compatible with TSR era D&D, embracing certain design and play principles as put forth in various primers, or about a sharing DIY nature. Hardly anyone in the community uses it as short hand for all old games. If you enjoy other old games(and I do!) you are into old games or Old School Games but there is no earthly reason to try and force them under the OSR tent, just say you enjoy old games like the sadly defunct Dead Games Society podcast did.

Yeah from the beginning it seemed pretty obvious to me that OSR means old D&D or derived from older editions of D&D.

Most of the stuff I like tends to be the 'what if D&D, but for stoned adults?' adventures and supplements.

I love the likes of BtW and Into the Odd but the endless stream of essentially self-published houserules is the least interesting aspect of the OSR for me. Ditto most of its attempts at game design theory.

More recent attempts to claim games like Mothership and the like as OSR because of its layout or who the designers hang out with or vague 'design concept vibes' not convincing.

Lots of older games are great but what makes them great imo has very little to nothing with D&D and its playstyles. The best older games are the best distinctly because they are not based on D&D and give a totally different experience (CoC being the clearest example).

But all that aside the endless debate about 'what is the OSR?' is just deeply uninteresting, like teenagers arguing over what is and isn't 'metal.' Who gives a fuck?

 

[Voros]

I’m not being contrarian on purpose but these days I tend to feel that way about new stuff, that it isn’t necessarily useful. I find most new mechanics to be gimmicks or unneeded complications trying to crack eggs that were already handled decades ago. Gumshoe for example, a gimmick and a solution to a human problem not a mechanical one. It takes a lot to sell me on a new system, the last one I really feel for is Barbarians of Lemuria.

As far as games in the OSR sphere I’d much rather play the original games, same with things like Against the Darkmaster, give me MERP instead.

I think people sweat the idea that Gumshoe 'fixes' CoC too much.

To me, it's a good light to mid (depending on the iteration) crunch ruleset that has been used to design a lot of cool games and adventures. That's what I care about.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

MInd you, the OSR wouldn't be the first club I was happy to be excluded from.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." - Groucho Marx

 

[hawkeyefan]

Oldies
Stubbornly
Resisting

 

[Toadmaster]

Beyond the Wall is a great OSR game with wonderful collaborative world building.

As far as CoC I always saw it as hero to zero as sanity inevitably dribbled away… (but I also wouldn’t call it OSR, it is its own thing)

Agree on the OSR. I don't understand the motivation to include other games than D&D evolved and I although they are "old" I wouldn't consider any BRP based game OSR.

 

[Savage Schemer]

For a long time, I would insist on including the likes of Traveller and RuneQuest in any list of OSR games. And in a broader, general sense I still do. But I also recognize that for most people OSR equals D&D derived, and it's become far easier to take the path of least resistance and accept that for most conversations that's precisely what people mean. It's about as productive as arguing about what "pulp" means as it relates to games to split hairs any further. Most of us know what people mean when they say it.

 

[robertsconley]

Keep in mind folks that the OSR (classic D&D) is a subset of a larger OSR (all older RPGs).

Plus, the situation that existed with classic D&D in the mid-2000s did not exist with Traveller, Runequest, and many other of the more popular RPGs. Many of those RPGs then experienced less change, were supported (licensee or parent company), or had better availability for the older version than classic D&D did.

Finally, while classic D&D has folks promoting and playing in the mid 2000s, it wasn't until publishing was enabled that it really took off. The fact that slightly later (2010), folks who were fans of Runequest, Traveller, and others also got a self-publishing option was more an OGL thing than an OSR thing.

 

[DanDareGM]

And I'm using this post of yours to express hope that your next project would be titled "How to build a SF sandbox", and feature a Cepheus-based variant as a stretch goal...

Your request is my command. https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/loprep.html
Shortly after that I wrote this series : https://strangeflight.blog/2016/11/03/low-prep-rich-traveller-campaigns/

Actual I wrote all that 8 years ago and it needs some rework. Making it more concise and procedural as well as expanding it to include new techniques I learned from Stars Without Number https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/230009/Stars-Without-Number-Revised-Edition-Free-Version

 

[DanDareGM]

I quit a long term group because of this. Didn't matter about how impassioned or skilled I was at oratory personally, it was all down to my PC skill (which I wasn't bad at talking). And that just made me disengage.

Yeah, another reason for player skill over character skill. My way of dealing with that now is similar to the find traps thing but reverse. If the player explains a good persuasive argument (act it out or not doesn't really matter) then I give them a bonus to success for their character. And yes, it gives the characters of people skilled at social interaction an edge but it tends to work out.

I also run open tables with a number of people on the autism and asperger's spectrum and I help them compensate by giving them some cheat hand signals to both help them feel the right way to go but to also curb socially inappropriate behaviour. Of course that only works for those comfortable with telling the other players about their condition.

 

[DanDareGM]

You seemed to have missed my basic point which was that the game plays very differently in each case and I prefer the way the game plays with advancement tied to treasure. I wasn't speaking to realism at all (well, aside from perhaps by allusion given my stated preference at the end of my post).

I don't think XP systems should hold realism too high as a design principle either. They are very much part of the G in RPG and I tend to treat them as such. So long as there is a thin patina of verisimilitude or covering fluff I'm fine.

Yeah. The OD&D 1 gp = 1 xp for treasure was, excuse the pun, gold. It set the behaviour motivator as bypassing combat, instead of seeking out combat. And combat was often deadly for PCs. Modern milestone xp is similar, in that goals are set that don't require combat all the time. However I prefer if players get to set their milestone target as they play, rather than the GM handing them to players, or worse, keeping them secret until achieved.

 

[Voros]

I don't think player skill/PC skill is the binary that so much of the debate suggests.

I do think completely ignoring the import of your PC stats in how you play them seems to be missing a big part of why we play rpgs but others can do that if they insist.

If I had a player PC with low charisma trying to persuade a guard or noble of this or that I'd let them rp it.

If they did a really good job I'd give them some kind of advantage on the roll to determine the reaction. Or if they did a really good job I'd skip the roll entirely, etc. Everyone has moments where everything clicks and you do far better than usual. It doesn't have to be an either/or thing.

 

[Voros]

Yeah. The OD&D 1 gp = 1 xp for treasure was, excuse the pun, gold. It set the behaviour motivator as bypassing combat, instead of seeking out combat. And combat was often deadly for PCs. Modern milestone xp is similar, in that goals are set that don't require combat all the time. However I prefer if players get to set their milestone target as they play, rather than the GM handing them to players, or worse, keeping them secret until achieved.

Except the claim that it encouraged avoiding combat is largely just not true.

I played loads of D&D with gold as xp and it was all hack n' slash until we got older and found combat increasing boring and a grind and wanted different things from the game.

That, getting older and wanting different things from the game, shaped play far more than a rule that was largely taken for granted and unexamined until the arrival of the many optional xp rules in 2e.

Some of these retroactive apologetics for D&D's eccentric ruleset are far too determinist. The assumption that the rules shaped play to the degree claimed is rarely backed up by those who actually played those editions when they were contemporary.

 

[DanDareGM]

For a long time, I would insist on including the likes of Traveller and RuneQuest in any list of OSR games. And in a broader, general sense I still do. But I also recognize that for most people OSR equals D&D derived, and it's become far easier to take the path of least resistance and accept that for most conversations that's precisely what people mean. It's about as productive as arguing about what "pulp" means as it relates to games to split hairs any further. Most of us know what people mean when they say it.

The thing is OSR was meant to be, once it first arose, a handy descriptor of a style of play and those games that intentionally support that style. By acquiescing to the "it's D&D" crowd you lose the utility of the term entirely.

 

[DanDareGM]

Except the claim that it encouraged avoiding combat is largely just not true.

I played loads of D&D with gold as xp and it was all hack n' slash until we got older and found combat increasing boring and a grind and wanted different things from the game.

That, getting older and wanting different things from the game, shaped play far more than a rule that was largely taken for granted and unexamined until the arrival of the many optional xp rules in 2e.

Some of these retroactive apologetics for D&D's eccentric ruleset are far too determinist. The assumption that the rules shaped play to the degree claimed is rarely backed up by those who actually played those editions when they were contemporary.

Possibly, it was long ago. However I remember a great deal of play in 1974/75 that was "there are about 10 orcs in there, is there another way around?". And the inevitable "I want to convince the elf queen to have sex with me" that seemed to haunt early, all male, high school level play.

 

[Voros]

The thing is OSR was meant to be, one it first arose, a handy descriptor of a style of play and those games that intentionally support that style.

 

[Savage Schemer]

I'm sure if I had any actual fucks to give about it, I'd make at least a better show of fighting on that particular hill.

But, yes. When I talk about Classic Traveller in particular as part of an OSR conversation, I'm implicitly (or even explicitly) making a reference to the style of play the game engenders. It'll usually fit within the context of the discussion at hand. The issue you run into is that, for a lot of OSR fans, OSR implies more than "just" the playstyle; it also implies a degree of compatibility (ie: for adventures) that goes along with that old D&D lineage.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Except the claim that it encouraged avoiding combat is largely just not true.

I played loads of D&D with gold as xp and it was all hack n' slash until we got older and found combat increasing boring and a grind and wanted different things from the game.

That, getting older and wanting different things from the game, shaped play far more than a rule that was largely taken for granted and unexamined until the arrival of the many optional xp rules in 2e.

Some of these retroactive apologetics for D&D's eccentric ruleset are far too determinist. The assumption that the rules shaped play to the degree claimed is rarely backed up by those who actually played those editions when they were contemporary.

The OSR is at its best when it recognises that what it's trying to create is a modern mythical version of how old RPGs *were* and leans into that fact and capitalises on it.

It's at its worst when it tries to claim that it's discovered some kind of estoeric insight into what it was *really* like back then without any actual evidence to back that up or even worse makes claims that directly contract the texts and other evidence.

Most things lie somewhere in between the two extremes obviously.

One thing I have noticed is that a surprisingly large number (not all by any means) of OSR people are actually really bad at understanding RPG history and how it's not the same thing as how their teenage group played. I've met several self proclaimed "old school roleplayers" who seem genuinely offended that Peterson insists on relying on primary evidence rather than their 50 year old eyewitness memories.

 

[Voros]

Possibly, it was long ago. However I remember a great deal of play in 1974/75 that was "there are about 10 orcs in there, is there another way around?". And the inevitable "I want to convince the elf queen to have sex with me" that seemed to haunt early, all male, high school level play.

I believe you but for me in all those years of playing D&D until my early 20s I never heard anyone say, 'Let's sneak pass and just steal the treasure for the xp.' XP never came up in discussions about tactics or goals at all.