OSR: what is it even

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DanDareGM said:
Fully agree


Cheers


Yep
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Cheers to you, too:thumbsup:!
DanDareGM said:
I get right into Rory's Story Cubes. I tend to roll 3 at a time when an encounter is called for to help me frame the encounter.

www.storycubes.com

Story Cubes

www.storycubes.com www.storycubes.com
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I have those as well! I just found Tarot to work somewhat better for me, for no reason I can explain.

...well, apart from someone at the house relocating them to weird places, but that's secondary, I had to search for the cards as well:grin:!
 
lategamer said:
There wasn’t anything Earthsea about it. Which was the draw. But hey, I bought it. Read it (well, skimmed the system) and it sits with all of the other games in my drive thru digital graveyard.



No, but that’s probably because
1. It isn’t re-skinned D&D (who’s being uncharitable?)
2. My first boxed multi-person RPg experience was MERP. My second was D&D and goodness was it a step down. Like I was moving from Lego Technik to Duplo.
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BtW's premise is more Alexander than Le Guin, being centred around the idea of a village, heroes of a humble origin, etc. What I like about it is it's far more low magic than other OSR games and its terrific character and scenario playbooks, which are openly influenced by PbtA.

But yeah it would be awesome to have an rpg built from the ground up for Earthsea. D&D just isn't suited to close setting emulation like that I think.
 
Voros said:
But yeah it would be awesome to have an rpg built from the ground up for Earthsea. D&D just isn't suited to close setting emulation like that I think.
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Hence my disappointment. I’ve bought and stored more than a couple.

But then the problem is that Le Guin didn’t think up a magic system. It was just a plot device.
 
lategamer said:
There wasn’t anything Earthsea about it. Which was the draw. But hey, I bought it..
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True Names are in there. That said, the Prydain angle is the more accurate one. If Flatland ever did a seaside supplement, then there’d be more Earthsea.
 
T. Foster said:
I’m okay with WFRP being categorized as old-school because even though it was released in 1986 it felt like kind of a throwback: it had classes (of a sort) and alignments and kitchen sink races and a kind of wonky system based on WFB stat-lines that wasn’t at all elegant in the way that other games of that era were at least beginning to strive towards. I feel like it’s more spiritually akin to games from c. 1980 like DragonQuest, Stormbringer, TFT, and Rolemaster than games more contemporary with its release like GURPS, Pendragon, Ars Magica, and WEG Star Wars. As we were growing disenchanted with AD&D in the late 80s, WRRP was a strong challenger for us as it gave a similar dopamine hit.
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It also has skills that have fairly low chances of success, because (and this is not explicitly called out in the rules) you were only expected to roll when failure was likely (and thus automatic for the unskilled). That's a pretty old-school attitude by the late 80s, and not calling it out but either assuming the group will know this, or work it out from reading/playing the game is also an old-school thing.

One thing I've always associated with old school games, though perhaps not so much with D&D, is the discovery of emergent properties in play. The rules didn't explain everything, and how they interacted with each other, how they affected play, and so on was something you discovered in play. Part of the fun was discovering new tactics, new synergies of classes, skills, spells, etc. This was part of the reward for player skill, and also why 'game balance' was not (and could not) be tightly tuned.

I also think that it's something that requires a certain degree of inexperience in players - once you've read a few score of games with wildly differing systems and approaches, unless a game is extremely complex and fiddly you'll spot the main synergies, etc., so they won't be a surprise (and these days most games assume you'll be taking advantage of those synergies).
 
T. Foster said:
I’m okay with WFRP being categorized as old-school because even though it was released in 1986 it felt like kind of a throwback: it had classes (of a sort) and alignments and kitchen sink races and a kind of wonky system based on WFB stat-lines that wasn’t at all elegant in the way that other games of that era were at least beginning to strive towards. I feel like it’s more spiritually akin to games from c. 1980 like DragonQuest, Stormbringer, TFT, and Rolemaster than games more contemporary with its release like GURPS, Pendragon, Ars Magica, and WEG Star Wars. As we were growing disenchanted with AD&D in the late 80s, WRRP was a strong challenger for us as it gave a similar dopamine hit.

So I at least wouldn’t object to counting a game based on WFRP as OSR. I feel kind of the same way about the Palladium games - they were released after what’s generally considered to be the “old school” era but they felt even at the time more like a throwback to that era than they did like their contemporaries.

Which is part of why “old school” has always been more about style and approach than chronology alone to me. Aces & Eights was released in 2007 and felt 100% like an old school game to me.
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Also, in terms of "old school", the UK was about five years behind the US in the development of RPGs. I think the first commercial one from over here is Heroes in 1979.
 
Voros said:
There's this odd blog post by Chris McDowall who designed the very good Into the Odd and the interesting Bastionland where he makes a - to me - torturous argument as to why he believes Bastionland is OSR.

Which to me again provokes the response: who cares?
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If the OSR really means D&D like many suggest, then there’s no need for someone to twist themselves into a pretzel making a case for their game. The answer should be “I’ll know it when I see it”.
 
B
Endless Flight said:
If the OSR really means D&D like many suggest, then there’s no need for someone to twist themselves into a pretzel making a case for their game. The answer should be “I’ll know it when I see it”.
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But people don’t want to be excluded from the club! Actually some, like Runehammer, specifically do not want to be referred to as OSR.
 
Endless Flight said:
If the OSR really means D&D like many suggest, then there’s no need for someone to twist themselves into a pretzel making a case for their game. The answer should be “I’ll know it when I see it”.
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sharps54 said:
But people don’t want to be excluded from the club! Actually some, like Runehammer, specifically do not want to be referred to as OSR.
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There also a positive aspect to the appeal of the OSR in this regard. Outside of its focus on the systems and themes of classic D&D, the OSR also represents an evolving example of publishers, promoters, and players who have successfully connected socially and commercially. Not by just using one way of getting together but a least a half-dozen ways using dozens of different formats. For example, there is a thriving zine community that has considerable overlap with the OSR.
 
T. Foster said:
I’m okay with WFRP being categorized as old-school because even though it was released in 1986 it felt like kind of a throwback: it had classes (of a sort) and alignments and kitchen sink races and a kind of wonky system based on WFB stat-lines that wasn’t at all elegant in the way that other games of that era were at least beginning to strive towards. I feel like it’s more spiritually akin to games from c. 1980 like DragonQuest, Stormbringer, TFT, and Rolemaster than games more contemporary with its release like GURPS, Pendragon, Ars Magica, and WEG Star Wars. As we were growing disenchanted with AD&D in the late 80s, WRRP was a strong challenger for us as it gave a similar dopamine hit.

So I at least wouldn’t object to counting a game based on WFRP as OSR. I feel kind of the same way about the Palladium games - they were released after what’s generally considered to be the “old school” era but they felt even at the time more like a throwback to that era than they did like their contemporaries.

Which is part of why “old school” has always been more about style and approach than chronology alone to me. Aces & Eights was released in 2007 and felt 100% like an old school game to me.
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Those are all good points. The biggest obstacle to calling WFRP "old school", at least as defined by OSR purists, is Fate Points. It's common to see the claim that game needs players to be wary of immanent death at all times to be properly OSR, and Fate Points give you a cushion.

However, you could make the counter-argument that plenty of horrible things can happen to your character in WFRP, even without the death on the table.

Just to clarify my position in this discussion, I'm not arguing against certain games not being OSR from a position of gatekeeping. I've always been hot and cold on D&D as a GM. There are periods of my life where I like running it, but there are times when I get tired of the specific parameters it puts on you as a GM. I'm in the latter phase now.

I also think it's important to separate "Old School" and "OSR" as entirely separate things. I think a lot of arguments come from conflating the terms.
  • Old school, without the R, covers RPGs released in the '70, and some games of the '80s. Games like Traveller and Runequest are unquestionably old school.
  • OSR is a term for a specific game design movement that developed in response to WotC making significant to changes to D&D over the course of its editions. Prior to 3E, all editions of D&D were essentially the same game, and GMs could mix and match them. WotC broke that compatibility, and beyond that, simply didn't have the seem feel at the table or encourage the same kind of play. The OSR came into being as a response to that. It was an attempt to keep the earlier form of D&D play alive.
Yeah, Traveller and Runequest are old school, but that's nothing to do with what the OSR was about.
Voros said:
Yeah I like Mothership a lot but don't know where this impulse to declare it OSR comes from except for some people OSR seems to mean 'games I like.'

I suspect it comes down to Sean McCoy having buddies and interest in the OSR, even if little of Mothership reflects the OSR. Essentially, he was internet buddies with a well known narcissist (and probably regrets it now).

Other than Mothership McCoy focuses on boardgames through Tuesday Knight Games and his former podcast.
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Yes, as is often the case with creative classifications, it does seem to be called OSR based on the social circles the creator moved in rather than based on the actual work itself.
Voros said:
There's this odd blog post by Chris McDowall who designed the very good Into the Odd and the interesting Bastionland where he makes a - to me - torturous argument as to why he believes Bastionland is OSR.

Which to me again provokes the response: who cares?
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It's been a while since I read it, so I can't give specifics, but Bastionland felt closer to Over the Edge than D&D or any other old school game.
 
There are lots of games that were 'inspired' by various other OSR games and those are often where arguments break out. Is it enough to be inspired by and attempt to emulate an OSR 'feeling'? Personally I'd mostly answer yes (like I would about Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland) but sometimes I wouldn't. We all have different tolerances on this.
 
robertsconley said:
There also a positive aspect to the appeal of the OSR in this regard. Outside of its focus on the systems and themes of classic D&D, the OSR also represents an evolving example of publishers, promoters, and players who have successfully connected socially and commercially.
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This has real value.

Not to me as it's not for me, but I think it's good they have their stuff. I'm not a complete narcissist/solipsist. Not completely
 
Baulderstone said:
Those are all good points. The biggest obstacle to calling WFRP "old school", at least as defined by OSR purists, is Fate Points. It's common to see the claim that game needs players to be wary of immanent death at all times to be properly OSR, and Fate Points give you a cushion.

However, you could make the counter-argument that plenty of horrible things can happen to your character in WFRP, even without the death on the table.

Just to clarify my position in this discussion, I'm not arguing against certain games not being OSR from a position of gatekeeping. I've always been hot and cold on D&D as a GM. There are periods of my life where I like running it, but there are times when I get tired of the specific parameters it puts on you as a GM. I'm in the latter phase now.

I also think it's important to separate "Old School" and "OSR" as entirely separate things. I think a lot of arguments come from conflating the terms.
  • Old school, without the R, covers RPGs released in the '70, and some games of the '80s. Games like Traveller and Runequest are unquestionably old school.
  • OSR is a term for a specific game design movement that developed in response to WotC making significant to changes to D&D over the course of its editions. Prior to 3E, all editions of D&D were essentially the same game, and GMs could mix and match them. WotC broke that compatibility, and beyond that, simply didn't have the seem feel at the table or encourage the same kind of play. The OSR came into being as a response to that. It was an attempt to keep the earlier form of D&D play alive.
Yeah, Traveller and Runequest are old school, but that's nothing to do with what the OSR was about.

Yes, as is often the case with creative classifications, it does seem to be called OSR based on the social circles the creator moved in rather than based on the actual work itself.

It's been a while since I read it, so I can't give specifics, but Bastionland felt closer to Over the Edge than D&D or any other old school game.
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I did a quick search to see if McCoy has commented on whether he considers Mothership OSR and I couldn't find him saying it himself.

Although he does talk about being pulled back into rpgs by his interest in the OSR and it inspiring Mothership, where the inspiration was the idea of a crew exploring a giant derelict spaceship like a party of adventuers exploring a dungeon.

I can see that but I'm not sure if I think transplanting the structure of a dungeoncrawl into a sf game or other genre makes a game OSR, by that logic a number of early Traveller adventures and CoC scenarios are OSR.
 
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sharps54 said:
See to me Metamorphosis Alpha is an Old School game not an OSR game.
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I submit it along with Gamma World because it straddles the line. This is mainly because, unlike most science fiction RPGs, both assume that you start out at a medieval/primitive level of technology.
 
sharps54 said:
See to me Metamorphosis Alpha is an Old School game not an OSR game.
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IMO playing and talking about an old-school game now (and treating it seriously/straight, not as an ironic goof about making fun of the old/timers who didn’t know what they were doing) = OSR.
 
Baulderstone said:
Those are all good points. The biggest obstacle to calling WFRP "old school", at least as defined by OSR purists, is Fate Points. It's common to see the claim that game needs players to be wary of immanent death at all times to be properly OSR, and Fate Points give you a cushion.

However, you could make the counter-argument that plenty of horrible things can happen to your character in WFRP, even without the death on the table.

Just to clarify my position in this discussion, I'm not arguing against certain games not being OSR from a position of gatekeeping. I've always been hot and cold on D&D as a GM. There are periods of my life where I like running it, but there are times when I get tired of the specific parameters it puts on you as a GM. I'm in the latter phase now.

I also think it's important to separate "Old School" and "OSR" as entirely separate things. I think a lot of arguments come from conflating the terms.
  • Old school, without the R, covers RPGs released in the '70, and some games of the '80s. Games like Traveller and Runequest are unquestionably old school.
  • OSR is a term for a specific game design movement that developed in response to WotC making significant to changes to D&D over the course of its editions. Prior to 3E, all editions of D&D were essentially the same game, and GMs could mix and match them. WotC broke that compatibility, and beyond that, simply didn't have the seem feel at the table or encourage the same kind of play. The OSR came into being as a response to that. It was an attempt to keep the earlier form of D&D play alive.
Yeah, Traveller and Runequest are old school, but that's nothing to do with what the OSR was about.

Yes, as is often the case with creative classifications, it does seem to be called OSR based on the social circles the creator moved in rather than based on the actual work itself.

It's been a while since I read it, so I can't give specifics, but Bastionland felt closer to Over the Edge than D&D or any other old school game.
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WFRP Fate Points (at least the way we think see them) were functionally equivalent to D&D’s hit points and saving throws: allowing heroes to “miraculously” avoid critical hits that would kill ordinary folks. Maybe the rules included other uses for them (re-rolling failed skill checks? Getting free clues towards mysteries? It’s been at least 30 years since I played the game so I can’t remember) but the only way we ever used them was to avoid/undo deadly critical hits which, without FP, were extremely common.

I’m also not one who says any sort of Fate Point mechanic automatically makes a game non-old-school, probably because in the AD&D games I played in with Gygax in 1988 he used a fate point-like system (joss factors). I feel like these sorts of litmus tests are mostly an artifact of the culture of blog-analysts obsessively taxonimizing everything and ascribing intention to design choices that were kludged together organically - pretending that Gygax, Arneson, et al had some grand philosophical master plan instead of just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and keeping the stuff that seemed to work well enough and made the game more fun, with justifications applied after the fact (like D&D’s one-minute combat round - Gygax has an essay in the DMG about how it’s appropriate because it allows PCs to flee combat without inevitably getting skewered by missiles and spells as they retreat (because you can pretty much get out of range in a single round of movement) like that was an intentional choice instead of just a serendipitous side-effect of carrying over the time-scale from Chainmail’s mass combat into D&D’s personal scale combat).
 
T. Foster said:
WFRP Fate Points (at least the way we think see them) were functionally equivalent to D&D’s hit points and saving throws: allowing heroes to “miraculously” avoid critical hits that would kill ordinary folks. Maybe the rules included other uses for them (re-rolling failed skill checks? Getting free clues towards mysteries? It’s been at least 30 years since I played the game so I can’t remember) but the only way we ever used them was to avoid/undo deadly critical hits which, without FP, were extremely common.

I’m also not one who says any sort of Fate Point mechanic automatically makes a game non-old-school, probably because in the AD&D games I played in with Gygax in 1988 he used a fate point-like system (joss factors). I feel like these sorts of litmus tests are mostly an artifact of the culture of blog-analysts obsessively taxonimizing everything and ascribing intention to design choices that were kludged together organically - pretending that Gygax, Arneson, et al had some grand philosophical master plan instead of just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and keeping the stuff that seemed to work well enough and made the game more fun, with justifications applied after the fact (like D&D’s one-minute combat round - Gygax has an essay in the DMG about how it’s appropriate because it allows PCs to flee combat without inevitably getting skewered by missiles and spells as they retreat (because you can pretty much get out of range in a single round of movement) like that was an intentional choice instead of just a serendipitous side-effect of carrying over the time-scale from Chainmail’s mass combat into D&D’s personal scale combat).
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I was talking about whether it was OSR, not whether it was actually old school. The relationship between Old School and the Old School Renaissance is like the relationship between the Classical Era and the historical Renaissance.
 
T. Foster said:
I’m okay with WFRP being categorized as old-school because even though it was released in 1986 it felt like kind of a throwback: it had classes (of a sort) and alignments and kitchen sink races and a kind of wonky system based on WFB stat-lines that wasn’t at all elegant in the way that other games of that era were at least beginning to strive towards. I feel like it’s more spiritually akin to games from c. 1980 like DragonQuest, Stormbringer, TFT, and Rolemaster than games more contemporary with its release like GURPS, Pendragon, Ars Magica, and WEG Star Wars. As we were growing disenchanted with AD&D in the late 80s, WRRP was a strong challenger for us as it gave a similar dopamine hit.

So I at least wouldn’t object to counting a game based on WFRP as OSR. I feel kind of the same way about the Palladium games - they were released after what’s generally considered to be the “old school” era but they felt even at the time more like a throwback to that era than they did like their contemporaries.

Which is part of why “old school” has always been more about style and approach than chronology alone to me. Aces & Eights was released in 2007 and felt 100% like an old school game to me.
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WFRP is a weird RQ / D&D / RM mash up to me. I find it an interesting system but the setting is what stands out to me. If it had been set in a vanilla setting, I doubt I would have paid any attention to it at all.

Agree it did seem very much a throwback when it came out. It was several years before I gave it more than a passing glance because in 1986 I was deep into RQ 3E, CoC, HERO, and the latest hotness GURPS. It wasn't until the 90s that I started to pay any real attention to WFRP where the setting along with its peculiar RQ-isms began to intrigue me.

I wouldn't consider it OSR (by my definition), but it is certainly adjacent. However if its in, then MERP and RM would kind of have to be as well.
 
Sharrow said:
That's a pretty old-school attitude by the late 80s, and not calling it out but either assuming the group will know this, or work it out from reading/playing the game is also an old-school thing.
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This is an aspect I rarely see mentioned in discussions of "old school" games. A lot of the published games read like somebody's house rules. Lots of places where there are assumptions in the rules that of course the players know this.

People talk about how a lot of people played D&D RAW differently, because few actually used all the rules. AD&D in particular fell back on Basic and OD&D in areas (the Monster Manual being exhibit A).

Tunnels and Trolls is a neat game when there are experienced GMs to educate a new GM on how to work with the rules, but it loses a lot just reading the rule book on your own. Still completely playable because it is pretty simple, but it is almost a different game once you learn some of the vaguely stated aspects.

Runequest was way ahead in this regard being a pretty coherent set of rules that actually explained things and rarely contradicted itself. Perhaps Steve Perrin's degree in English proved itself useful when it came to writing a rulebook.

I'm not sure this is an area that should be regaled, but vague writing that assumes things in the authors mind are known is a very common attribute of many early RPGs.
 
Toadmaster said:
WFRP is a weird RQ / D&D / RM mash up to me. I find it an interesting system but the setting is what stands out to me. If it had been set in a vanilla setting, I doubt I would have paid any attention to it at all.

Agree it did seem very much a throwback when it came out. It was several years before I gave it more than a passing glance because in 1986 I was deep into RQ 3E, CoC, HERO, and the latest hotness GURPS. It wasn't until the 90s that I started to pay any real attention to WFRP where the setting along with its peculiar RQ-isms began to intrigue me.

I wouldn't consider it OSR (by my definition), but it is certainly adjacent. However if its in, then MERP and RM would kind of have to be as well.
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WFRP is pretty much an example of why people started using the term BOSR in the first place. I'd agree it's largely about the setting though. (And that's where Zweihander always fell down for me as a WFRP retroclone, even with the Warhammer with the serial numbers filed off setting stuff in Main Gauche. Not only does Fox not share the sense of humour of a British geek in the 80s, I get the feeling he doesn't really understand that sense of humour at all. Zweihander always felt very 2020s extremely online American to me in terms of tone, even before I knew that's an accurate description of him).
 
Fenris-77 said:
The fact that I might roll my eyes at the artificial nature of dungeons whilst sitting at my desk shooting the breeze about RPGs doesn't have much effect on how much fun I have playing a game that explores that exact same dungeon.
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When John Woo was directing his first American movie, Hard Target, he kept getting static from the studio. During one scene (the scene at Uncle Douvee's house), Woo wanted more hitmen/enemies to be coming at the hero than the producers did. Someone reportedly asked where all of these people were supposed to be coming from. Woo's response: "Who cares?"

Stories are great but dungeons exist so players have something to do.
 
Baulderstone said:
I was talking about whether it was OSR, not whether it was actually old school. The relationship between Old School and the Old School Renaissance is like the relationship between the Classical Era and the historical Renaissance.
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It's like the relationship between



And
 
Baulderstone said:
I hate to keep repeating myself, but old school and OSR aren't the same thing.
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I don’t disagree, but who says so? If I wanted to call my blog OSR and download the old OSR banner as the logo, which OSR police will bring me before which OSR court?
 
Baulderstone said:
I was talking about whether it was OSR, not whether it was actually old school. The relationship between Old School and the Old School Renaissance is like the relationship between the Classical Era and the historical Renaissance.
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Take the point, but not really. Fifteen centuries divided the Classical from the Renaissance. The OSR is akin to an Augustan poet revisiting Catullus.
 
SJB said:
I don’t disagree, but who says so? If I wanted to call my blog OSR and download the old OSR banner as the logo, which OSR police will bring me before which OSR court?
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Nobody but folks may reserve the right to mock you. :wink:

At which point you say "fuck you!" and continue to do whatever it is you feel is OSR related.
 
SJB said:
Take the point, but not really. Fifteen centuries divided the Classical from the Renaissance. The OSR is akin to an Augustan poet revisiting Catullus.
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It's not the same situation, as there was an unbroken cultural continuity between Catullus and Augustus. Baulderstone Baulderstone's analogy is on point due to the intervening "medieval" (Complete X/Skills & Powers/D&D 3.X) era between AD&D 2e and the debut of C&C/OSRIC/Basic Fantasy.

The Catullus to Augustus analogy you use describes the situation from the debut of OD&D to the initial release of AD&D 2e. But starting with the Complete books and kits, D&D morphed into something else, with a decisive break coming with the debut of D&D 3.0. While the fingerprints of classic D&D still can be found in D&D 3.0 it was it own thing just as the fingerprints of Rome can still be found in the Medieval Era of our history but the cultural mishmash that resulted after the fall of Rome was it's own thing.
 
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robertsconley said:
It's not the same situation, as there was an unbroken cultural continuity between Catullus and Augustus. Baulderstone Baulderstone's analogy is on point due to the intervening "medieval" (Complete X/Skills & Powers/D&D 3.X) era between AD&D 2e and the debut of C&C/OSRIC/Basic Fantasy.

The Catullus to Augustus analogy you use describes the situation from the debut of OD&D to the initial release of AD&D 2e. But starting with the Complete books and kits, D&D morphed into something else, with a decisive break coming with the debut of D&D 3.0. While the fingerprints of classic D&D still can be found in D&D 3.0 it was it own thing just as the fingerprints of Rome can still be found in the Medieval Era of our history but the cultural mishmash that resulted after the fall of Rome was it's own thing.
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I'd say the split is earlier; the Kits are pretty much extensions of the skills rules found in OA (1985)
 
Toadmaster said:
WFRP is a weird RQ / D&D / RM mash up to me. I find it an interesting system but the setting is what stands out to me. If it had been set in a vanilla setting, I doubt I would have paid any attention to it at all.
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The thing that really made WFRP special to me is the way it wove the setting into the career system. Just by flipping through the careers while making a character, you are getting a sense of the world the game takes place in.
 
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