OSR movement threat or menace?

[Mistborn]

So as far as I can tell there some kind of internet mass grognard movement. The thing is that despite breifly conducting social expiriments on their forums I have no idea what they're on about. What I got from their posts was sort of contradictory. Acording to them It dosn't matter that your fighter is completely incapable of beating a monster like a Behir because you can just herd a bunch of cows into the pass as a distraction and if the DM dosen't let you do this he's an asshole. On the other hand if your cleric polymorphs into a Arrow Demon you god should smite you imediately (even if your god is TN) and then the DM should bop you on the head with a rolled up newspaper and say "No Bad Caster!". This totally makes sense to them because unlike us they apparently understand "the rules are not the game".

Ordinairly I wouldn't care but apparently several of these jackasses have been tapped as 5e consultants and thus apparently that means they are a thing now. So could someone tell me what's the deal with the "OSR movement" and please be as snarky and self-indulgent as possible?

[hogarth]

The deal with the Old School Regression is (a) that the golden age of fantasy RPGs is 12 years old and (b) that some people don't have the time or inclination to read a thick rulebook.

[Almaz]

The Old School Resurgence or Regression or Reanimation or whatever those unruly Rebels are calling themselves today are a bunch of dudes who basically want both less rules and more incomprehensible rules so that there's nothing to gainsay the viking hat referee when she or he tells you that your magic spear and helmet avails you naught.

But to give them credit, there's actually some sensible design or at least analysis coming from this corner. They just happen to favor simplicity. A few of them actually don't hate or even dislike 3rd Edition very much, they simply are uninterested in playing. Just like how even jaded 3rd Edition fans can, in the end, pick over 4th Edition calmly for something of value to save (the setting, while incomprehensible, was designed with some cool ideas, for instance), or a 4th Edition fan might look back to the past for something interesting to bring into their game, they can pick over 3rd or 4th Edition D&D for something of merit to their particular play styles. It's just everyone who doesn't have the ability to stop being a frothing ranting asshole that gives any side a bad name, while also contributing absolutely nothing because they don't shut up long enough to write something interesting.

And, of course, like any group of internet fans, there's lots of those fucks.

[OgreBattle]

Acording to them It dosn't matter that your fighter is completely incapable of beating a monster like a Behir because you can just herd a bunch of cows into the pass as a distraction and if the DM dosen't let you do this he's an asshole.

It's always a god damn behir. I remember posting something accusing them of being videogamey for thinking that would work because the behir shoves rocks on top of them on some website that I forgot the name of because I cut back on the forums I browse to spend more time on work and productive personal projects.

Why do behirs even exist anyways, they're multi-limbed snakey lizards covered in electricity that are smarter than dolphins. And they Something, for Something.

[Mistborn]

But to give them credit, there's actually some sensible design or at least analysis coming from this corner.

Please explain how you got sensible design from.

a bunch of dudes who basically want both less rules and more incomprehensible rules so that there's nothing to gainsay the viking hat referee when she or he tells you that your magic spear and helmet avails you naught.

or generally stop taking cocks in slots A to Z and grow a fucking spine. This is The Den you don't have to be weaslely about it saying bad stuff about people on the internet is what we do.

Why do behirs even exist anyways, they're multi-limbed snakey lizards covered in electricity that are smarter than dolphins. And they Something, for Something.

I googled it and apparently they're somthing Gygax pulled out of his ass so your guess is as good as mine.

[Username17]

The OSR people are right that rulebooks have gotten too long. They are wrong that simplifying and unifying mechanics has made anything worse. Their prescriptions for gaming are absolute bullshit. The "glory days" of the late 70s or early 80s were actually pretty awful. The books were poorly written, had glaringly awful editing, and had incoherent design goals. AD&D and OD&D were played during the glory days of our youth because:

• We were younger then and didn't know any better.
• There wasn't anything better at the time.
• Nostalgia reminds us of the cool stories more than the stupid arguments.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

or generally stop taking cocks in slots A to Z and grow a fucking spine. This is The Den you don't have to be weaslely about it saying bad stuff about people on the internet is what we do.

I knew going in that this is a circle jerk thread, but it's still funny that you're whining about people not agreeing with you hard enough as if that was true waste of time going on here.

[Almaz]

or generally stop taking cocks in slots A to Z and grow a fucking spine. This is The Den you don't have to be weaslely about it saying bad stuff about people on the internet is what we do.

1) Movements are composed of individuals. Individuals may defy or embody the trends of the movement as they see fit. Have you ever played 3e D&D? The majority of 3e D&D players are fucking morons. If I speak in generalities, I will call them fucking morons. Do you consider yourself a fucking moron? Apparently you are one. OSR suffers the exact same problem. They've grabbed on to a single good idea. . . boiling down rulebook sizes and rule density even for "traditional" gaming. They then decided to source Gygax as their canon. The quality of an individual OSR creator is inversely proportionate with how much they suck off Gygax and Tolkien, but there are ones who in fact don't.

2) I joined this forum a year before you did. Whether I choose to insult people or waffle on how hard I want to insult them not is my own damn business. Now sit down and shut up you mouthbreathing moron. If you weren't a fucking idiot you could go read some of their shit and form your own conclusion. But you apparently fail reading comprehension because you claim you did that and couldn't make anything of it. That you want others to spoonfeed you their opinions means you get their opinions - which may be fucking self-contradictory because not everything is a cut and dried black and white, except for the black spot on the CAT scan where your brain should be.

Seriously this is TGD, home of the love-hate relationship, do you even into complexity?

[Almaz]

I knew going in that this is a circle jerk thread, but it's still funny that you're whining about people not agreeing with you hard enough as if that was true waste of time going on here.

I'm also mildly offended that he brought up my last weekend as if it had anything to do with my gaming habits.

[Juton]

There is actually an OSR annual convention in Toronto, I went last summer. I had fun. They weren't as backwards as some of you are depicting them, most of the games I played used ascending AC for instance.

I'm finding it hard to describe how their MC'ing style varied from most of the 3.5 MC's I've played with. Rules where bent more often than in 3.5, a lot more was made up on the spot or rolled for on a random table. Since most of the games I've played where convention games I can't really say that they are less rail-roady since the adventures usually only had one location. They where mainly dungeon crawls, which moved along at a quicker pace than 3.5 did generally. The OSR dungeon crawls also felt closer to a wargame or a board game.

The OSR players did seem different from 3.5 players as well. They where more willing to try nonstandard, silly or stupid approaches to common problems. It certainly made games more entertaining but had a predictable toll in PC death. The only real mechanical options to customize a character a stats and class. Consequently there was less investment in each PC.

Talking to some of the OSR players, a lot of them have or are playing in 3.5/Pathfinder games. Some liked both, some didn't like the system mastery aspects of 3.5 (although none knew the term) or just the changes from their favourite edition to 3.5. The consensus seemed to be that it took less work to make a worthwhile character or play at a satisfactory level than in 3.5.

As to the concern that the OSR will have an undue effect on 5e, I'm not worried. Mearls may want to capture the 'feel' of older editions but that is so damned nebulous a goal I can't see how a thalidomide baby like him could actually accomplish it. The extent of OSR's input will be 'make it simpler', which even if they accomplish it will be undone slowly with the release of each new splatbook.

[hogarth]

The OSR players did seem different from 3.5 players as well. They where more willing to try nonstandard, silly or stupid approaches to common problems.

I don't think that's necessarily a difference in the players, just the play style for that game. Personally, when I play a light-hearted, rules-light game, I try all kinds of crazy things that I wouldn't if I were playing a more serious, rules-heavy game.

[Mistborn]

So to sumarrize their is a legitmate grivance about books being too long. So how do we make shoter books in a way that is less retarded.

[Ravengm]

The OSR players did seem different from 3.5 players as well. They where more willing to try nonstandard, silly or stupid approaches to common problems.

I don't think that's necessarily a difference in the players, just the play style for that game. Personally, when I play a light-hearted, rules-light game, I try all kinds of crazy things that I wouldn't if I were playing a more serious, rules-heavy game.

This, basically. It's a willingness to improvise a bit more than a rigid system allows. When there are specific rules for things it's harder to get people to agree on how to bend them.

[rasmuswagner]

The problem with improviation in 3E is not rigor, it's POWER. The abilities availble to even a level 5 character vastly outstrip any improvised plan you'll see protagonists attempt in tv shows.

[Mistborn]

The problem with improviation in 3E is not rigor, it's POWER. The abilities availble to even a level 5 character vastly outstrip any improvised plan you'll see protagonists attempt in tv shows.

+1 to this. If cooking something up with opposeable thumbs and a lever is an central part of the game any meaningful advancement is a ruse. In 3e "trained" mundane actions start to fall of the usefullness wagon around level 5. You have thumbs and levers at level 1 and those thing never advance.

[Juton]

So to sumarrize their is a legitmate grivance about books being too long. So how do we make shoter books in a way that is less retarded.

It's simple. Don't put rules for levels 1-20 in the same book, split it up. Only include the best spells, gear and feats, less filler. Don't include rule subsystems you haven't honed to perfection.

How much of the PHB do you think the average gamer actually uses? I'd be surprised if it was as much as half.

[erik]

Why do behirs even exist anyways, they're multi-limbed snakey lizards covered in electricity that are smarter than dolphins. And they Something, for Something.

I like to believe that they are the evolved form (or fully grown form) of Shocker Lizards. After all, 3e Shocker Lizards pre-errata were semi-intelligent and grew to size large. Behir is the perfect next step.

I mean, surely Behir aren't born being 40 feet long, there's no size listing for them under Huge.

Juvenile


Young


Adult (oh look, a snack!)

[bosssmiley]

The OSR is a cat herd loosely definable as those guys who play 'not-WOTC-D&D' (except for those who do).

Really, anything you can say about the OSR crowd has at least one counter-example.

Some have never stopped playing AD&D. Others are 3E or 4E exiles.
Some play retro-clones or licensed D&Derivatives like Hackmaster or Castles & Crusades.
Still others play their own kitbashed 20-years-of-evolution-from-the-original mutant games.

Some few of them are "small name, big ego" arses who put out a copypaste of B/X and claim to have made something new, or do a Kickstarter then fuck off in silence for 6 months. Others give away the sort of stuff that makes you want to shout "Take my money damn it!" (False Machine, Netherwerks). But most OSR output is enthusiastic 'outsider art' D&D: odd, sometimes charming or useful, other times just plain outlandish, with little formalism or rigour.

Most of the OSR happens on blogs or G+, but there are forums ranging from the fusty (Dragonsfoot, K&KA) to the Den-esque (The RPGSite). Some of them even organise open table club nights.

As for the "game consultant" thing, WOTC hired a few of the bigger name OSR guys to try and astroturf buzz for D&D Next. It's the Pathfinder thing all over again: cheap marketing ploy, no actual input.

[Korgan0]

I think The RPGSite can only be characterized as "Den-esque" insofar as a lot of posters from both loathe the other.

[OgreBattle]

Is Adventurer Conqueror King OSR?

I enjoyed playing it, character creation was quick too.

[Username17]

The way to make rulebooks shorter and punchier is to get rid of prerequisites. Prestige Class Prereqs, Feat Prereqs, whatever. People think they want them in the game because it makes your past choices consequential. But they are really bad for the game in a lot of ways.

Let us say for example that we were going to take prerequisites to their logical conclusion: that every option you had this level was allowed by the choice you made last level. In order to give everyone the bear minimum number of options to even qualify as a choice (which is to say: a choice of two options), we would have to actually write twice as many options each level. That is a choice of two at first level, a choice of two at second level for if we picked option A at first level and another two options for the case where we selected option B - for a total of 4 options for 2nd level. And 8 for 3rd, 1024 for 10th, 4096 for 12th and so on. To do twenty levels that way, we'd need to write over two million options.

Obviously, that's impossible. Such a list of options would be longer than the sum total of every role playing book ever written in any language combined. It is physically impossible to have such a game written or read by anyone given humanity's tragically finite lifespan. Also, it would be terrible, since as previously mentioned you'd only get a single binary choice at each level.

So what really happens if you even try to go down that road is that books bloat the fuck up with materials no one ever uses, while at the same time lots of advancement chains simply peter out because no one has bothered to write higher level versions for this. You can see this in action in both 3rd and 4th edition. Look at how much space 4e wasted on options for Tiefling Fighters that no one will ever play while at the same time the Strengthadin dropped without having any powers to select from 7th level on. Look at how much space 3e wasted on Prestige Classes no one was ever going to take because you had to be a Half Elf with TWF and ranks in Use Rope, while at the same time there were damn few feat chains that had anything relevant to do at 12th level and literally zero feat chains actually mattered at 17th.

Now imagine that instead of doing that, or even trying to do that, we just gave people independent choices every level. Let's say we went crazy and gave people ten times as many choices per level (20 distinct options each level) and then made them all have no prereqs at all. This would give people a lot more different character types they could play. And by "a lot" I mean 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as many options. That's the actual number, that isn't exaggeration for effect. And yet, that would require actually writing only 400 options - which could fit in about 50 pages (art included).

Now in reality, you're actually going to want to have more options at lower levels (where people spend more play time and start more characters) and less options at higher levels (which are used less often). But I think the point is made. Getting rid of prerequisites reduces the need for writing wordbloat into books by many actual orders of magnitude and increases the number of characters that the rules can cover exponentially. And all you have to do is to allow Rangers to level up into Witch Kings.

-Username17

[hogarth]

The problem with improviation in 3E is not rigor, it's POWER. The abilities availble to even a level 5 character vastly outstrip any improvised plan you'll see protagonists attempt in tv shows.

You forget -- one of the tenets in the Old School Rimjob is "in real life, that would kill you!" So you get bullshit like dropping a rock on someone's head causing 10d10 damage or pushing someone down a staircase makes them break both their legs or whatever because "no one could survive that".

So how do we make shorter books in a way that is less retarded[?]

Irrelevant. The retardation is part of the charm for old-schoolers.

[Whipstitch]

I don't think that's necessarily a difference in the players, just the play style for that game. Personally, when I play a light-hearted, rules-light game, I try all kinds of crazy things that I wouldn't if I were playing a more serious, rules-heavy game.

And of course, by dint of being rules light in the first place there will be some things that the rules do not explicitly deign an awful idea, so if your MC defaults to the Rule of Cool then you're off to the races. Whereas Rolemaster may have a chart somewhere that shows all the organs you'll need to replace if you don't roll over 83 on the test.

[shadzar]

the only thing i have figured out the Olf School Renaissance was about was the fact that WotC jsut shit on anything that came before it and claimed the carcass of D&D and put it around something else. the lack of support for TSR editions in play and events pissed people off. WotC started a war with the players that were just at war with the evil bitch, after buying the company just for the game D&D. i dont understand the need for OSRIC to be OGL compatible or whatever because game rules can't be copyright. trademark such as AD&D or D&D cant be reused. other than that you can pretty much do what PF did and make all the changes you want and have the same game backbone like every MMO that has 6 stats does to make the old version of the game as close as you want/remember. except PF wanted the OGL since they wanted to continue 3.x.

basically it started as people trying to get new players in early 2000s to realize that the older games werent how WotC claimed them to be and the rumormill about them was wrong, since there was a new growth of players with the media circus that was 3rd edition.

i cant see how it could be a threat to anything. threat to WoD? GURPs? Rifts? that are also old-school game systems? if it is threatening the new-school, then maybe it shows that the new school isnt what is wanted, and the threat came from within rather than from without. some designer, developer, researcher, or CEO misjudged the market and what it wanted and was willing to support, and WotC failed to support what the consumers were willing to support. again why PF is trading blows for #1 TTRPG with D&D.

so in the beginning it was WotC starting a flame war online and everywhere, and the existing players thinking they would be free from stupidity of Lorraine Williams getting shit on AND losing all support for their version. now nearly 20 years after WotC bought TSR 2nd edition books are set to be reprinted to put physical copies into the world, and a set of new players exist with new minds, hopefully not all tarnished and brainwashed by WotC and their ideas of how the game MUST be played.

[zugschef]

i've read this 3 times now, and i have no idea what you're saying.