Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Good analysis by Wayne Rossi: "This means that some monsters encountered in the Holmes edition of the game will be...
Good analysis by Wayne Rossi: "This means that some monsters encountered in the Holmes edition of the game will be "friendly" and involve some negotiation. If the referee chooses to ignore that, it's not the D&D game's fault; it told the players to roleplay, right there in the text."
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Thanks for sharing this, Zach H. It's stunning how many people overlook the roleplaying elements in Holmes and Basic D&D in general.
ReplyDeleteHm. Interesting post, and ditto for the article (as well as the John Wick article link). I think they all have points, to a degree.
ReplyDeleteI'd say part of the problem is that the OSR by its nature is not one single rules system or approach, but more of a mind set and design aesthetic. As a mind set, it consciously moves more towards a rules light, open play style that emphasizes both GM and player ingenuity versus hard core following of a rules text (the "rulings, not rules" maxim).
Ron Edwards is right in pointing out that back in the good old days, every group was different - you had groups that slavishly followed the rulebooks (or their interpretation of them), you had groups that threw most of the rules out the window and focused on dramatic storytelling, you had groups that played games like wargames or board games moving pieces around on a map, etc. There was a tremendous diversity in play styles, and to peg any one of them as "the one true old school style" isn't really accurate. It took me a bit to wrap my head around what he meant by cargo cults in that sense, but insofar as he appears to mean that the original rules were distributed to folks who were new to roleplaying and then interpreted said rules as they saw fit (since they couldn't game with the authors as a reference point), I'd agree.
Wick on the other hand seems to pick his favored design and play aesthetic as "roleplaying gaming" and labels anything else as being effectively board gaming. So someone running a murder hobo dungeon crawl, in his book, would not be a RPGer but a board gamer. Can't say I agree with that, but to each their own. The rules are what they are, and people can play a given rules set as they see fit.
re: the "OSR is a marketing label".. when I first read it, I called BS on it - if for no other reason than while the OSR has spread through the hobby, you would not call it a runaway business success. But in a sense, he's right. It's a marketing label inasmuch as it is a recognizable brand for folks who enjoy one or more elements of the play experience of older games - the rules themselves, the implied fantasy setting / genre of those original rules, a rules lite approach, and so on. When someone sees an OSR label on something, they know the author of the product was influenced by and shooting for one or more of the cloud of OSR elements out there, and can then take a look at the product and see if it scratches their particular itch.
Just as d20 / D&D 3.x became marketing labels for crunchy, rules-heavy play and 4e became a marketing label for MMORPG / fantasy super hero style play, the OSR has evolved (and continues to evolve) as a marketing label for its own set of assumptions about design, rules and game play.
Thanks for posting, great articles and good food for thought : )
Thanks for the further comments, Andy. You should start your own blog! : )
ReplyDeleteHere is a follow-up post by Wayne. I like the suggestion to run The Caves of Chaos as a Diplomacy variant.
http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2014/10/diplomacy-d-and-roleplaying.html
Zach H Heh heh, no blog for me - then I'd have to update it on a regular basis. Far better to comment from the peanut gallery ; )
ReplyDeleteTalking about the OSR as a movement, I'd almost say that its something of an immune response in the body of the RPG community. After the excesses of the 2e splatbook era, the railroady storytelling trend, the 3e uber-crunch trend, and the 4e MMORPG approach I think a fair number of folks found themselves frustrated with what was currently in the market.
Combined with a bit of nostalgia, the yearning for a simpler era and simpler rules to deal with yielded what is now called the OSR. As Edwards pointed out, accurately I think, the OSR is not at its heart a desire to ape all the myriad forms gaming took in the 70's and early 80's. Its a desire to cherry pick the best aspects of gaming in that era (light rules open to high interpretation and customization by DMs and players, more of a sandbox than story-heavy approach, etc.) and move away from the negative aspects of recent gaming trends. That's certainly true I my case, at least, and I suspect for others as well.
Unrelated - I dig that KotB Diplomacy idea.. Actually, would be pretty cool to do a Diplomacy variant of Greyhawk / the Flanaess or Mystara / The Known World : )
I've always chafed at labels, and I really chafe at being labeled as an adherent of the "OSR" or anything else in my life, mainly because it seems to take on a cheerleading quality of its own when its used as a battle-cry - if you don't understand what its all about and follow the brand because it produces the kind of games you like, then crying out "OSR!" like "D-Fence!" is at football games becomes dangerous in attracting and promoting ignorance without truly understanding.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I love the comeback of the "module" approach to D&D and AD&D gaming, because it truly was modular and revolutionary in gaming 30+ years ago. What I'm having a slight problem with is the excelsior approach to retro-clones. I can only take so many versions of BX, 0e and Holmes, and if I had my druthers, I'd rather buy a WotC re-print of 0e, Holmes and BX off the shelf than get another free PDF of someone else's take on what Dr. Holmes should've put in his rules, or alluding to a hidden agenda to drive the game rules in a direction that the author believes the original was, but was in reality: nebulous. (and yes, my finger is pointing directly at myself too, as I am working on a Holmes 'companion' to mesh the Basic set with 0e...) ;)
In the old days, it was sooooo much easier to mix & match BX and AD&D rules. These days, it is comprehensively much more difficult to do so unless you 'publish' a set of rules that explains every little detail, and that is all I really wanted in the first place. Converting modules between systems was never a problem, but these days the basic requirement to converting modules is to completely re-write a retro-clone for the system you want to play it in. I call bullcrap on that too. I don't want more rules, I want to play whats out there with the rules I have, which I can. So why have I been suckered into a single yet overwhelming concept born of the whole retro-clone movement, and focused on writing 'patch' rules for a published system, or searching for a retro-clone that perfectly resembles the set of rules I (and everyone else) used to use - instead of creating new dungeons & adventures for my own table?
I'm a hobbyist, not a writer or a world famous game designer, but after saying all that, I'd LOVE to see the KotB/Diplomacy house rules! ;)