RPG Design history is one of overcorrection. The various currents and trends that can be loosely termed ‘OSR design philosophy’ came out of a series of principles or documents, say, for example, Matt Finch’s primer that codified the then existing knowledge in an effort to differentiate the OSR from the backdrop of contemporary gaming. While documents like this primer are generally robust and serve their purpose, they were created for an audience that would have been familiar with overly mechanized and complex D20 system, with its endless modifiers, feats, character abilities, spellike abilities and items. Over time, the context of the original wisdom was lost, and the natives are left mindlessly imitating the motions that came before them. Like random tables, the mantra has become a cargo cult. ‘The answer is not on your character sheet,’ is one of the more egregious of OSR brainworms.
In its original context, when compared with something like the D20 or even 5th edition system, there is some justification for it. Oldschool d&d characters do not possess an extensive list of skills, feats and abilities and thus if the character wants to try an action he does not generally have to refer to his character sheet before attempting to do so. You can listen at a door, build a fire, or prepare an ambush.
The number of specialized skills is comparatively small, particularly in the case of mental and social skills. But even here, the six character abilities tend to determine the relative success of many of these ad hoc activities. Forcing open a door, sprinting through a gallery of swinging blades, and otherwise interacting with the game using the properties of one’s fictional alter ego will often involve referring to his abilities. When confronted with an obstacle like a door with orc noises behind it, the expectation is that instead of looking at your spellbook you might instead consider putting on a female Orc voice and ordering them to help you while the rest of the party waits in ambush with blades bared. The solution is meant to be more free-flowing, creative and open-ended to differentiate it from MMORPG/4e style ability spamming.
Despite some clumsiness in the wording, the principle is not untrue, in the extremely limited context of level 1-3 play. Having gained experience with higher level games, the truth is that as your characters gain access to spells, abilities and a host of magic items, the clever use of these will be increasingly decisive in solving many of the challenges that are set against them. After all, if these are not needed, why do you have them? The desired end-state of a high level adventure is one where the characters still use their wits (clever use of the terrain, ruses, efficient exploration, interrogating captives etc.) but this is supplemented, to an increasingly large degree, with challenges that require the use of one’s abilities and items. If done well, such a game is more challenging, open and engaging then any low level mudcrawl. Watching the characters figure out they can clear out tunnels of mold with a decanter of endless water, explore tunnels with wizard eye so they can be teleported into later, or turn an area to mud, then line the sides with burning oil so the creatures inside do not escape, only to then dispel the area and turn it back to rock, trapping everyone inside, is a joyful experience. The opponent must not only be anticipated in terms of mundane threats, but also in terms of the magical arsenal that is at his disposal, something inextricably linked with the substance of the game.
If done well, additional powers should increase creativity, rather then stifle it. The mundane and the supramundane battlefield intermingle. What could be a truer expression of fantastic adventure gaming?
Yet what is the current trend towards ruleslites and low level adventures if not the opposite of this? The desire to repeat ad infinitem, with maximum theoretical efficiency, the first 3 levels of the game, with minor variations. The game never expands. The addle-brained swindlers of the false OSR have convinced you that the tutorial phase of the game is somehow its truest expression and that you must never move from your parent’s basement. That its power lies in low hit points, low magic, 2-hour micro-sessions. If the very notion does not make you recoil with revulsion then you are in the wrong hobby.
With the dwindling of craftsmanship and the increasingly blurry definition of what constitutes the OSR, it is imperative that we identify and root out such cognitive weeds as have been sown by the witch-doctors, crackpots and snake oil salesmen of the latter day OSR and restore oldschool gaming to its proper state. If some portion of the OSR is to be freed from the enchantment that has trapped it into this monstrous ouroborine form, and embraced into the fold of Fantasy Adventure Gaming, this is what we should strive for.
I say to you, high level DnD will live again.
Age of Dusk 
That primer is so dumb lol. Some newbie plays 3rd edition for a couple of years and hates it. Then he goes and reads that Moldvay garbage without even playing it and thinks he can tell everyone what D&D is. Can’t believe anyone gives a shit what some clueless ankle biter thinks.
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I had no idea Matt Finch himself ran over your dog with his hummer and shot your mom with a colt. Fuckin sucks man but them’s the breaks as they say.
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The Finch primer is pretty good, and of course about 0e.
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It’s funny. This week, I was on the OSR subreddit, and I ran into someone who was very confused about some of the baseline OSR edicts, finding them to be contradictory or excessive. I think this comes about because, as you elude at the start of this post, the OSR came into being as a corrective to what D&D had become from 3.x onward. I’ve seen a lot of pushback against the various edicts of OSR lately from within, and I think that’s because either the people doing the pushback don’t understand the original intent, or as is the case here, because it is necessary to pushback against people who take the edicts too literally.
For instance, it’s a bit extreme to say that combat is a fail state, or that combat is never fair. Combat is certainly a part of the game, and you are not expected to get through every adventure without a fight. It’s mainly a correction of the move towards rewarding all XP for successful battles. The idea that combat can be unfair is a corrective to complicated calculations of CR and curated battle set pieces.
If a DM takes that too literally and has 1st level character getting jumped by squads of mind flayers, it would be absurd. Sure, fledgling adventurers could run into groups of mind flayers, but any good DM will clearly signpost the encounter, give the players every indication that they’re in over their heads, and perhaps have the psionic squidheads sleeping, squabbling or sated.
Now that the OSR is its own movement and not merely a reaction, these edicts need to be restated in a less extreme form so they can stand on their own. It would be interesting to see what that would look like.
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Combat is a fail state is another thing that you say to sort of wake people up from a game where all you do is arena-based set-piece combat as your PRIMARY METHOD FOR ADVANCEMENT. It works if you look at OSR gameplay like a distant observer since it is ultimately not about fighting, it is about treasure. Fighting is not always your best option, and in some cases should be avoided.
But actually playing oldschool games, you are still going to be fighting as your primary method of obtaining the means for advancement most of the time.
Yes the ‘forget balance’ stuff is also a (in this case forgiveable) oversimplification. D&D still has a balance, it is just that within that balance there is room for more then just fighting.
I tried something along the lines of finding some principles with my list of NAP edicts, I think I shall repost these in the next NAP, just for kicks.
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“I tried something along the lines of finding some principles with my list of NAP edicts, I think I shall repost these in the next NAP, just for kicks.”
I don’t recall the exact list, although as far as I recall, yours was ALSO a reaction (to artpunk, in this case). Or at least, that was your reason for coming up with them; like I said, I can’t recall the substance of your edicts.
As an exercise, I came up with my own restatement of OSR, intended as a set of standalone edicts that represent a distinct style of roleplaying. They are nowhere near as succinct as Finch’s original “Zen moments” or the Principia Apocrypha. But they are, for my purposes, complete unto themselves.
I. RPGs are played as games of adventure and exploration.
Corollary: This often includes elements of combat, negotiation, investigation, and general problem solving.
II. Resource management is an important part of the game.
Corollary: Resources include equipment, time, wealth, social standing, and physical and mental states of characters.
III. Adventures should be designed such that success is well-possible with good decision-making.
Corollary: Good or bad fortune may change the expected outcome depending on what players leave to chance.
IV. The GM must either rely on the rules or good and consistent rulings that do not bias a desired conclusion.
Corollary: The mechanics of these rules and rulings must be followed as faithfully and transparently as possible.
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That post is the first thing I thought of, and a good illustration of the issue. People are being mislead by treating stuff like the Finch primer as divine commandments. Artpunk purists? How did this happen? Not even /osrg/ takes their canon as universally literal and infallible.
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The interesting part is this is not just Patrick. This was discussed on google+ by 5-10 supposed luminaries (among them fellow non-player Zedieck Saw). The process of discussion served to actively worsen the conclusion.
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“Now that the OSR is its own movement and not merely a reaction, these edicts need to be restated in a less extreme form so they can stand on their own. It would be interesting to see what that would look like.”
I think it would look like something very ineffectual. All reasonable, non-hyperbolic statements have the problem that they sound reasonable, therefore bland and quasi universally applicable. If you restate e.g. “combat is a fail state” to “getting into an evenly matched stand-up combat is often suboptimal when another tactic could have been employed to circumvent it”, a 3e player will now think that describes his game also and will not see that he ought to do things differently or that the OSR is any distinct form of play.
Aggressive, clear, uncompromising and literally incorrect statements are a necessity for forming a coherent ism.
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Yes.
You begin by stating something in its clearest, most uncompromising and aggressive form possible, and you reason and refine from that premise.
The only drawback is that you get endless divarication as a crowd of newcomers reads only the meme and forgets the context. If you keep a stable of experienced players around, this can be corrected. If you sever that connection, you get people trying to make Peaceful DnD or whatever the fuck.
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Meh. I find the endless overstatements, turf wars and outright trolling to be petty and dull. Such things seem well-suited for exciting children like jangling keys. Is this the best advertisement for a community of well-adjusted adults, or for a tiny niche of squabbling autists? One looks around…
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Definitely squabbling autists.
Think of a primer as a commercial or signpost.
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Edgewise: “I find the endless overstatements, turf wars and outright trolling to be petty and dull.”
Perhaps you do, but this does not imply that edicts restated in a less extreme form so they can stand on their own are a practical or effective pedagogical tool. What I am trying to suggest is that there will be more, not fewer, misunderstandings, confusions and turf wars if and when OSR principles are restated in a more anodyne, more literally accurate form. We can already see the butthurt flow from the OSR reddit, with its strange insistence on porous borders and letting everyone in who thinks he wants to be in. The more possible you make it for some guy with an indie game or 2e campaign to misunderstand his thing as OSR, the greater will be the manglement of the collective ass as people talk past one another and try to force mutually incompatible play styles as the norm.
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I dunno, Anon. To me this sounds like you’re saying “accuracy is boring,” “accuracy is harder to understand than inaccuracy,” and “the risk of not overstating oneself is that more people will feel included.” That doesn’t sound like a recipe for changing minds. As for butts-a-hurtin’, I see no lack of that on this here thread.
And Prince, don’t tell me that you care about marketing all of a sudden. I wouldn’t know where to begin! This is a niche community that makes a virtue of gatekeeping. OK, I actually did know where to begin…and end. As a marketing genius once said…”nuff said!”
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Even hooligans advertise.
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If the OSR was a video game it would be Pong, direct and immediate response to your input. The children however, want more, they always want more – where is my bubble? That is something worth aborting.
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Strange analogy. So video games peaked with Pong? I dunno, I rather enjoyed Elden Ring…
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WHAT IS THIS FOUL PAC MAN YOU SPEAK OF
SPRITES ARE FOR INGRATE UNEDUCATED MOTHER FUCKER ZOOMERS
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Very powerful take. What you talking about is essentially System Mastery, a concept that sprung up in latter-day 2E and became the cornerstone of 3E design (and then, by the time of latter-day 3.5E, became truly cancerous).
It wasn’t merely about the right “builds” or “power gaming” per se – a n00b given to play a 3E 18th-level wizard would get the character killed by the first “level appropriate” encounter while an experienced player worth his salt would murder everything in the dungeon without ever setting foot there (divinations + summons + earthquake, etc.).
However, this was also that edition’s undoing (see “cancerous”, above).
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I was condering adding a discussion of 3e and I think we can do that here. In my opinion (and I have run 3e for years), 3e had several horrific elements which ultimately ruined it.
1) Builds vs gameplay. It was not merely that you could select a few abilities to add some light customization, it was that doing so had a vastly disproportionate effect on your character’s ultimate power. That means that the actual game is affected, to a large degree, by decisions you have made prior to it.
2) Stratified growth. The way power and ability used to scale meant there was a relatively narrow ‘band’ around the EL of a monster or PC within which he could interact. Technically this Band existed in older games too, but there it was much broader. If you faced a powerful monster, not only would its AC be automatically much higher but its powers would be harder to resist, its damage would be much greater etc. etc. The curve was much steeper. This AND the cancer of Monster XP created the obsession with balance and arena combats.
3) High coupling. The game was intertwined to an immense degree which meant that any changes in one area would cause regression elsewhere.
Imagining a high level adventure without system mastery is almost impossible. What would be the point, if the bulk of your abilities come from inside the system. The thing to avoid is the sterile arena combat of 3.5e. So we can consider negotiation, faction play, environmental hazards that can be bypassed cleverly or turned against the enemy, exploration etc. But if you play high level dnd, the wizard and cleric figuring out a good loadout can mean the difference between life and death.
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I played an old-school roguelike (full ASCII glory) called “Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King” which used 3.5e as the basis of its rules. It worked very-very well for a CRPG, partly because many of the weaknesses you cite are no issue or even strengths in a video game (e.g. builds). It was initially intended as a prologue for a bigger chapter but the creator predictably lost interest. You can still find it here (you’ll need 7zip): https://bitbucket.org/rmtew/incursion-roguelike/downloads/
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I 100% agree with your assessment of the Original Sins of 3e.
And we all know how 4e inherited the concept of “interesting” combats with 666 status effects, terrain giving +1 to this or that, in-built skill challenges, Level 16 Brute Goblin Nutbusters, etc., etc., and completely ran it into the ground.
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Excessive use of monsters with class levels started in 3e too, I never thought about why its so fucked up but it completely disables the players ability to estimate a threat. Light use or the odd exception is permissable (I mean we all use Orc Chieftains), but repeated use fucking sucks.
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A thousand times this. I found the conventions of D&D spellcasting much easier to stomach once I started thinking of them as “cheat codes” (with increasingly creative applications) for particular situations in the dungeon. In these circumstances one no longer fills one’s boots with Magic Missiles and wails when one has cast them all; one accepts that one is valued for one’s Sleeps and Knocks and Passwalls at crucial moments and, the rest of the time, one is a body for the carrying of items and translating of inscriptions and (whisper it) roleplaying. (When nobody has Performance as a mechanically protected niche, anyone can put on the female orc voice.) The damage spells need to be thought of as solutions to particular problems – monsters immune to this or requiring that to be killed for good or that simply cannot be hit by conventional weapons – rather than as substitutes for weapons.
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Absolutely. If no one ever lugs along a Knock, Hold Portal, Floating Disk or ESP, then the truth is that you must spice up your adventure.
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Not only this, but there seems to be a serious lack of ambition within the OSR community. If you read the CMI rules for BECMI then you’ll find that there are extensive rules to do all sorts of shit, but everyone wants to stick with the ultra basic dungeon crawling stuff. “Domain-Level play” gets tossed around a lot but nobody takes full advantage of that kind of style. I 100% blame OSE and the B/X praise that does not stop.
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I think that this is a valid point, but I’m sympathetic for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s hard to produce domain-level content. That sort of thing is far more table-specific, and harder to provide drop-in material that can be used in any campaign.
Second, it’s probably just harder to run those kinds of games. If you’re earnestly starting from first level, I think a lot of groups break up before they get that far into it, because people have kids, move away, go to jail, join cults, take up a meth habit, etc. etc.
Finally, it’s mostly on the PLAYERS to take a campaign in this direction. The players have to actually decide to build/refurbish a fortress, attract settlers, etc. The GM can always nudge players in this direction by having adventures that provide rewards like plots of land, but it’s primarily a player-driven thing.
I think the best that a game can do is give you the rules for that kind of play, and when a campaign evolves that way, you’ve got the mechanics for it. ACKS probably does the best job at providing this framework.
One thing I’ve always wondered about all these frameworks is that they seem to provide each class with different options for domain-level play. So the party splits up? How do you run a table with four players where one has a castle, another establishes a cathedral, yet another takes over the local crime syndicate, and the last one holes up alone in a tower? I’m genuinely asking, because I’ve never brought a campaign to this stage.
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Your questions will remain unanswered. No one actually plays Domain Level play outside of ACKS autism. Everyone here is pretending that it’s so much better to appear like a true gamer like JohnDuck above.
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Downtime mostly. We manage our resources (e.g. hiring mercenary companies) in-between gaming sessions. Remember 1:1 time!
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Eh…domain rules is always going to be a bit of a niche. Macris himself is not putting out module material for those levels (he told me the expected return would simply be too low, most of these domain GMs run their own business). I personally think that even if it received more support, the percentage of people that enjoy domain play and the additional complexity of campaigns and alliances is always going to be a minority compared to the visceral thrill of dungeon crawling.
You can find a possible outline for domain style play in something like CM1, or various floating reports, or the ACKs discord or whathaveyou.
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prince, please have the next windmills you charge at be mapping dungeons, how that was a lost art, how people straight up refuse to map and referees are too bitchy to put their foot down and start relying on VTTs and “player-facing maps”. of all the backwards things the OSR gets wrong, this never comes up curiously enough. makes me think that all TRVE oldschool D&D players dont have a mapper either? weird right.
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As a dutchman, I am well versed in the slaying of windmills.
Mapping is a point of skub. The question is ultimately, is the payoff of having the players map themselves worth the extra time of you precisely describing the layout of the room, issuing corrections, answering questions. etc. If you have dungeons with irregular geometries, say, caves, this will take up a not insignificant chunk of time (say, 20 minutes in a 4 hour session). I’ve had players map in my B2 game, and currently I use a VTT to quickly sketch the map we are playing on. I don’t have a hard preference (but the extra speed is pretty sweet).
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In my actual table games, I mostly use Chessex mats. Doing that in combat everything is obvious. And describing geometry is circumvented. But My players still draw maps, as once the markers are cleaned away, they have no persistent auto-map. WHen they run, for example, they have to tell me quickly when to go through which door. Thus, they meticulously map. In VTT, this is indeed not practical, but I do re-fog stuff. In VTT via VOIP, the communication is hampered enough that I see this as smoothing things over to conentrate on other things.
OTOH, I have spent a frustrating amount of time as player in the “Theatre of mind”-online sessions, which lead to unceccessary combat deaths and make spellcasting hard to do. Especiayll with complicated room layouts.
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I have always found it a silly thing to say, for if the answer is not on your character sheet why is there a character sheet at all? Why was there all that shopping? Why worry about loot?
Personally, I find “we suborn the guard commander of the wizard’s stronghold through clever blackmail” to be a much more interesting solution for gaining entry to somewhere than “we cast Passwall.” Spells that flat-out eliminate issues (or other character classes) are dull. Spells that do weird or interesting things are interesting. IMO, anyway. Even fairly straightforward spells have some level of this: Fireball is inherently more interesting than Flame Strike, because Fireball creates tactical tradeoffs.
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This is a trade-off, you get to bypass the encounter but you spend a slot. Many dangerous solutions are more ‘interesting’ but the chance of failure is much higher. Mobility magics are great, particularly if combined with spells like wizard eye or clairvoyance. I think if High level D&D were just bigger explosions it would be fairly easy to make stuff for it but it is the mobility, divination and the summons that change the game.
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Maybe “Not all answers need be on your character sheet” is a happier description. In your “lure the orcs into an ambush” example, you could use Audible Glamer or your best thespian efforts, you could set a fire magically or mundanely, etc.
Imaginative use of combinations of magical effects is one of the joys of the game. In post TSR D+D, there became an expectation that characters would have certain designated items by certain levels, rather than what exploration (and possibly trade) turned up. A humble low level fighter suddenly became an asset the moment they strapped on a girdle of frost giant strength.
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Yes imaginative use is the key drawing point in this case. I remember fondly the session when my Slyth Hive players figured out how to clear the mould-infested tunnels of the Fungal Warrens using their Decanter of Endless Water, a solution I myself had not foreseen. The game definetely loses soul when everything is reduced to either purely mechanical effects with no real world correspondence or becomes tracked to the point where you are expected to have certain purely mechanical buffs.
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“That its power lies in low hit points, low magic, 2-hour micro-sessions. If the very notion does not make you recoil with revulsion then you are in the wrong hobby.”
Hey!
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I always took “the answer isn’t on your character sheet” to be about skills and… feats? I guess?
Like, “oh, I can’t try to bluff, my bluff score is too low.” – No, dummy, just try bluffing. Make something up!
Or “My character doesn’t have a swashbuckling feat, so I can’t try to jump off the platform and land on the fire beetle to kill it.” – Try it. Make a dex save to avoid spraining an ankle.
That sort of thing. I never understood it to mean that more magic spells and collected fantastical gear wouldn’t matter.
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Try to figure out where the delineation between the two lies and you will see one follows from the other, the principle still applies. It is a question of thinking out of the box for a solution to a problem versus looking inside the box. As the game grows in scope and complexity, the toolbox becomes more elaborate, meaning the solution will more often be found inside the box.
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