What's your OSR?

#21

Hello, my favorite OSR related systems are now Macchiato Monsters, Black Hack and Troïka. But I am thinking leaving game systems behind for my upcoming zines to focus on random tables interactions.

I am preparing to run a Macchiato Monsters Americano Anomalies road trip campaign that I hope to eventually publish as a zine.

I am also trying to work on a cute dungeon project about village community life inspired by the work of studio Ghibli.

While it have been my strong source of inspiration for a while there is not much in the OSR that captivate my interest now, much of the time I will only notice new publications if someone I know are involved.

But to be fair there is a lot of things happening in my life so this is mostly me naturally being distracted by real life stuff.

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#22

I cut my RPG teeth back in 1981 with a group playing a hybrid game of blue-box OD&D and AD&D 1e. I quit playing with them after several months, then started DMing my own group using the Moldvay D&D Basic Set.

For me, OSR is an attempt to bring back that “anything could happen” feeling from early gaming. Not everything was codified, and the storyline (such as it was) came directly from the DM’s imagination and what they rolled on the random encounter tables. PCs weren’t expected to be able to defeat every encounter: Running away from deadly monsters was a regular occurrance!

One thing about early gaming that I’m not eager to revive is the lack of separation of character knowledge v. player knowledge that early adventures assumed. (E.g. AD&D module S2: White Plume Mountain (1979) has a puzzle that assumes PCs would know what a prime number is.)

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#23

I’m another person who has no real knowledge or fondness of pre-4th edition D&D, and the system that got me into role-playing was Savage Worlds, which is pretty distinct from either OSR or PBTA storygames.

The thing that I like about the OSR is the weirdness of it - I’m reading through Patrick Stuart’s Silent Titans right now and it’s just full of incredible ideas that I could’ve never thought of, with a system that is easy to understand and run.

I appreciate the OSR because I read a lot more RPG content than I run, so the adventure and setting books they put out are more interesting to me than a new PBTA system which is much more focused on gameplay and mechanics (though I like both).

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#24

…and I just realized that I’m now older than Gary Gygax was at the time I started playing D&D!

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#25

Hello. Minor thread necromancy…

I started gaming around 1984 with kids at school playing a mix of basic and advanced D&D. From day one I was focused heavily on creating stuff for the game. The idea that there was a framework and a language in which to be creative absolutely had me spellbound. I loved DMing for that reason.

Like so many others, I got out of gaming for a span of time then came back to it later, though I never actually stopped making gaming materials in my spare time. I created some RPGs in the early 2000s (The Pool, The Questing Beast) and then later, around 2012, I discovered DCC RPG and then the OSR.

For me, the OSR meant one thing: a wild west show of making stuff up for Dungeons & Dragons. Full stop. I completely accept that OSR doesn’t necessarily mean only D&D, but my experience with it and my reason for being part of it was pretty much all about D&D. I made a lot of OSR stuff between 2012 and 2019.

With the death of G+, things shifted for me. Not just because of G+ but other things in my personal life. Anyway, I’m currently on a journey in which my idea of “old school gaming” has shifted quite a bit. My love for classic D&D hasn’t died, but I’ve expanded that same childlike love for creativity within the FRPG context. Right now I’m fixated on Troika!, which I believe is even more conducive to creativity. And clearly since that game is based on Fighting Fantasy it also has deep roots, a language, and a cultural context. I like playing in sandboxes such as that.

OSR is a big sandbox.

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#26

The game I (Swede born in 1972) started out with that’s closest to what I associate with the OSR would be Mutant, the 1980’s BRP-derived precursor to Mutant: Year Zero. We rarely had any long-running games in it since it’s pretty deadly even if you’re not going up against any of the TPK-level mutated monsters or ancient robots (and the published adventures were pretty liberally peppered with both) and we often played with just a GM and one or two players and the PCs start out rather incompetent.

When we played Mutant, our characters were not big heroes, or even particularly skilled. Usually they started out as third-rate adventurers (read: opportunistic thieves and robbers) who got roped into some scheme by one of the standard quest giver NPCs from the published modules whether we were running one of those or something else, and they rarely advanced beyond that. Sometimes one of us would run a game based around a cool movie we’d seen recently but with the high lethality of the system we rarely made it all the way through the plot.

I guess that informs my view of what constitutes an OSR game, though I’ve mostly associated it with pre-AD&D2 versions of D&D.

Either way, I’m not sure I would want to get back to that style of play. We’ve just started up a M:Y0 game and while that seems have some of the same sensibilities with regards to PC mortality rates and much of the world being unknown and dangerous, it’s also very different since those aspects are filtered through more modern game design sensibilities rather than being poured straight into our then barely teenaged brains. However, I do have some fascination with OSR style dungeon crawling. There’s something about that particular mode of play that entices me, but my meatworld group has little interest in that style of game and there is so much else to get to the table.

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#27

My OSR was a G+ and blog based scene and community largely about amateur play, reimaginings and rediscovery of 1970’s, 80’s & 90’s rulesets and playstyle. Effectively the TSR or pre-Vampire the Masquerade period. Its heyday was 2010 - 2017 or so. Dying with the destruction of G+, the OSR was already sickly with cults of personality, bigots and grifters by the time it collapsed into what remains largely as a branding exercise.

Ironically, or perhaps like many dead subcultural moments, the aesthetic trappings of the OSR are more popular now then ever, being used to promote and add a certain gloss to everything from radically different genres of game to mainstream megaproducts.

My classic play is a set of mechanics and ethics derived from the mechanics of OD&D and Moldvay B/X, various aesthetics: Vance and Lord Dunsany to Blanchitsu and Soviet Sci-Fi (minimal Tolkien) with a huge helping of the newer mechanics and playstyle derived from OSR practices, which in turn were influenced by (or in reaction to) post 90’s play.

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#28

My first RPG (1992) was AD&D 2nd edition. Played a bunch of traditional games in the years that followed, took a break after college, got back into it (and experimented with a bunch more varied kinds of games) starting about 10 years ago. I still play, run, and create my own RPGs, OSR games more than any other.

I’m not sure when I first heard the term “OSR,” but I initially associated it with D&D retro clones like Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry. Later, I learned it was being used for other D&D inspired games, and then for other games even more broadly, like Traveller. I didn’t get excited about it until I saw games that were really transforming the rules to not just tweak their inspirations (”should clerics get a spell at level 1?”), but interpret and distill their inspirations into new forms that captured unwritten styles of play (like Into the Odd cutting out Intelligence and Wisdom abilities because it’s your decision making skills that matter). I came to distance myself from the term because of some high-profile bullies and bigots laying claim to it and spoiling it for everyone, at least from where I sat. But I ended up using it to tag posts on my blog, describing a certain kind of game I just can’t stop playing and designing, just because I don’t know of another term that captures this set of design assumptions. That includes:

  • A distinction between GM and player roles that (might permit, but) never requires players to imagine the world from outside their own character’s perspective
  • Relatively unstructured, open-ended play that may present or imply goals, but doesn’t push players down a specific path
  • Spare rules, focused on describing the consequences of granular actions and a few core situations that might be uncomfortable to leave to GM whims, with the expectation that the group can comfortably improvise “rulings” to fill in the gaps as needed
  • Charitably, an implicit assumption that the “let’s play pretend” is sufficiently universal that I can get away with describing roleplaying itself in broad strokes; less charitably, an implicit assumption that the only people who will care to read this stuff are either already insiders or big enough nerds to do homework to figure out what we’re talking about, so we don’t bother to explain some conventions
  • A hacker ethos that encourages customizing rules for different groups, cobbling together games from multiple different sources, and sharing ideas—not out of laziness, but because that’s actually fun for a lot of us
  • Tools for characters to go on adventures

I guess that’s “my” OSR. And honestly, the main reason I still use the term at all is that I’ve encountered a lot of really great people still using it (some in this thread! :wave:), mostly via The Gauntlet and Twitter, so I guess that’s also “my” OSR.

You might notice, though, that my definition doesn’t specifically include any particular game, genre, rule set, or even rules accessories. I know that some folks might cringe if I tell them I’m working on an “OSR” game that uses diceless, token-based resolution and Apocalypse-World-style moves, or if I mention I’ve been kicking around ideas for an “OSR” game about bored, mundane high-school students using a modified set of Knave rules. So, I can’t help but think sometimes if I need some other term, too. “SWORD DREAM” is popular among some for insisting upon some progressive politics—or basic human decency—on the community side of things, but that term has less to say about rules and play style, which is really what drew me to OSR games in the first place.

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#29

I don’t have an “OSR”; I have no nostalgia for the rubbish style of play that I used when I was in middle school. It was a mess and I don’t miss it at all. (Much like a lot of things about middle school, really)

In fact, I tend to view the use of the term “OSR” to be almost a sort of secret handshake for people involved in it, rather than a descriptor of anything to do with the style of play. I think it likely that very few of the people in the “OSR scene” every played the original games the OSR is based on prior to becoming part of the “OSR” and I’m sure that even fewer of them played those games in an “OSR style”, so it feels a little bit misleading to assert that this is somehow “Old school” for these people.

Honestly, the approach of the OSR and the whole “This is how Gary intended the game to be played!” vibe that I get from it pushes me away pretty firmly, and I wish they had chosen a different name for their “player skill based, rulings-not-rules” ideology.

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#32

I hear you. I’m one of those players for whom the “old school” part doesn’t really mean anything—by the time I first played D&D, it was already into its second “Advanced” edition (so fancy!), which was already more complex, mired in tradition, and user-unfriendly than I was really fond of. (Who on Earth thought the term “non-weapon proficiency” made more sense than just saying “skill”?) I honestly don’t even know how much of the modern OSR is really based on early play styles or, as one writer has suggested, it’s more of a “never-was school.”

All of that said, people use brand names and genre monikers because they’re useful, at least sometimes. I can’t be sure that everything that people describe as “OSR” will be of interest to me, but seeing that descriptor increases the odds that (a) it’s broadly compatible with a TON of other published and free material dating back roughly 50 years, and/or (b) it’ll be a GM’d game by an independent creator with more pared-down rules than most of what I’d see published for D&D 5th edition. And that’s useful to me for filtering the massive influx of new RPG content on the internet every day, and sometimes, for describing my own work and hoping to connect with people with similar tastes.

But I would love to have a narrower term that describes rules and play style more than scene and tradition.

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#33

Oh, it’s definitely a good idea for the OSR to have a term for itself, I just wish it had chosen a different one, that’s all. I’m not attacking the style or the people, and maybe “secret handshake” is too dismissive – I just meant that it’s not descriptive in any sort of way.

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#34

If you don’t have an “OSR”, commenting in a thread asking people what their OSR is about seems pretty obnoxious. I think calling the play style rubbish and suggesting it’s predicated on nostalgia isn’t the best. There is certainly some part of the OSR most interested in trying to recapture how AD&D should be played from first principles, but there is much more going on in the scene—as you note.

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#35

I’m really happy with most of the Sine Nomine, Kevin Crawford stuff I’ve bought. I’ve run a bunch of Godbound and I think it’s excellent fun. My other OSR experience has been MCC & DCC which I found to be a mixed bag. I will say, having played the OS games back in the 1970’s, I like most of the OSR versions better because you don’t have to wonder if there’s actually rules you can play from in there.

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#36

When I see the term “OSR,” I interpret it in my mind as “broadly focused on emulating 0E/1E D&D”. That’s still a spectrum, including folks who enjoy detailed exegesis of the original writings through games that try to examine what it looks like to take modern game design ideas and apply them back to those old rulesets.

In 2019, it’s also something of a code word for a community of grognards that are often (but certainly not always) a bit reactionary or even regressive. To be sure, the games themselves aren’t necessarily - or at least, not any more so than D&D still has problems in need of decolonization. I think that’s why the semi-tongue-in-cheek label “SWORD DREAM” has come up, or at least the focus on “DIY D&D”.

In my individual case, having been a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s in a conservative evangelical family, D&D was pretty well ruled out very quickly when we tried to play AD&D. Burned books, threats of shunning, etc. So we played GURPS and MegaTraveller and Avalon Hill wargames instead. Oddly enough, now I remember very little about how those games work. But we also tried designing our own games back then, and the idea that I don’t have to accept whatever some publisher gives me as the only way to play is what I still love when I think about DIY RPGs.

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#37

I didn’t call the OSR playstyle rubbish. What I played in middle school is absolutely NOT “OSR” – which is why I don’t have an OSR of my own. Believe me, if you saw what I did with D&D when I was 12, you’d call it rubbish too. :slight_smile:

Apologies if that is out of place here.

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#38

No worries. I’m probably reading too much into your post!

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#39

I definitely could have been more clear. Sorry about that.

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#40

OSR is a label for something that I feel like I should attach myself to, but I can’t.

I started playing with the Mentzer Basic D&D red box and Keep on the Borderlands. Unlike a lot of people in 1981, I didn’t learn by watching others play. I read the rules, figured out what worked, and DMed for a couple years before interacting with anyone who had played the game before. I “advanced” to AD&D and started down a path of deep interpretation of the rules that would make a tax lawyer self-conscious. I combed through Dragon articles and advice books by Gygax for wisdom handed down from on-high.

And yet, my games made me unhappy.

I found the Forge about 20 years later and it rocked my world. I drifted away from D&D but never entirely. I played every edition that came out. The Forge and Story Games taught me new ways to look at game play and game design. I played new kinds of games and learned new techniques from them.

Eventually, I took those techniques back to “traditional” games. I started playing story games less and started playing a lot more D&D and Traveller. I started running 1981 Basic D&D and Keep on the Borderlands at least once a year at conventions, faithfully to the rules, but informed by story game techniques to fill in the gaps.

The OSR movement took hold somewhere in there and I dug into it with deep interest. I was fascinated by its ability to take rules that were sitting on my shelf and smooth out the rough edges for me. Don’t like Descending Armor Class or no cleric spells at 1st level? There’s a ruleset that fixes that – maybe not in the same book though. I saw that folks had the same issues with the old rules that I had.

I originally approached OSR with a sense of nostalgia but quickly realized that there was no going back. I knew too much. I had embarked on the Hero’s Journey, crossed the threshold, and had become a different person. Also, I gained new respect for the old rules as they were. I didn’t need Labyrinth Lord; I had Mentzer Basic and it was just fine.

I’ve definitely embraced the OSR pathos in the Traveller world. When Mongoose locked down the Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition Open Game License and trademark stuff, a lot of publishers (not me) got the shaft, so they created Cepheus Engine so they could continue to publish their games. That ruleset inspired me to create my own CE stuff very much in the OSR vein.

In the D&D universe, I’m still fascinated by the OSR but pretty turned off by the wave of gonzo in it. Also, I tend to hate dungeons, murder hobos, and the stench of colonialism. I also like slightly more complicated rulesets than OSR games often champion. I often feel like an outsider to fantasy OSR stuff, like it’s not for me. At the same time, the story games community (in general) isn’t producing games that really hit my sweet spot with a combination of rules complexity and long-term “campaign” play.

I guess there’s no “my OSR” for me.

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#41

When I was around 12 some family friends gave me a copy of the 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. I knew I was interested in D&D but didn’t know anyone who played it, and didn’t have access to anyone who did (the internet wasn’t really a thing yet). I ended up being fascinated by it and attempted to “reverse-engineer” how to play D&D without a Player’s Handbook (which meant a lot of crucial information was either incomplete or missing). I ended up running some games using my own AD&D “reconstruction” before finally getting my hands on a 2nd edition Player’s Handbook and moving to a more traditional RPG experience.

The aspects of classic play (or old-school play or OSR) that resonate with me are:

  1. The use of random tables and systems to generate unexpected scenarios
  2. Emphasis on player exploration, discovery, problem-solving
  3. Space for GMs to come up with their own consistent sets of rules/mechanics/rulings
  4. Experimenting with system design to accomplish the above

I was never part of the G+ group nor ever in any of those scenes, but I do enjoy collecting and reading old modules, manuals, etc. from the late 70’s into the late 80’s. Apart from a historical interest, many of these old games are sources of inspiration and interesting ideas.

(I should add that I agree with those that have critiqued “OSR” as being politically or socially reactionary – it’s one of the reasons I don’t strongly identify with it.)

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#42
  1. The use of random tables and systems to generate unexpected scenarios
  2. Emphasis on player exploration, discovery, problem-solving
  3. Space for GMs to come up with their own consistent sets of rules/mechanics/rulings
  4. Experimenting with system design to accomplish the above

I agree wholeheartedly. I suspect my OSR would be Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures…if I could get it to the table.

It’s odd because I always think of D&D derivatives first but actually the OSR I play often now is Mothership.

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