Thoughts on OSR

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Most outside the OSR give it some side-eye. Those inside ask "What the hell is water?" and keep playing. I've been borderline obsessed with this play style for a while now, and it's not abating. Not that I don't have reservations... but there's something to it I'd like to explain.


Appeal of OSR:

  • genuinely risky. No matter the stage of the game, if you want to progress at a reasonable rate, you have to get into, what has been for me, heart pounding situations. 
  • Tactical gameplay. In a (currently hiatus'ed) Nightwick Abbey megadungeon game, I have been thinking throughout the hiatus of the tactically best way to combat some regular old goblins. Because they're being annoying goblins, and it takes some genuine brain racking.
  • Free-form. I don't know that I'm all about my old "immersive gaming" play after becoming so fond of straight up OSR games. But there's still a strong rules-lite feel to most OSR stuff I am fond of. Your tactical gameplay opens up into tactical infinity.

Things to like about OSR:

  • genuinely good game design. Most every mechanic and procedure really encourages the core gameplay goals (gambling via exploration).
  • Very open setting. You can play OSR in most settings (though not for every gameplay goal); obviously fantasy, but also science fiction settings, modern day. The setting is also open because you are dungeon delving: you can put all sorts of stuff in the dungeon that is non-constraining setting-wise. Crystal golems in sci-fi? Guess it's sci-fantasy and you just didn't find out yet.
  • Easy to design/run/play. There's so much on OSR design on blogs, you can find an answer to most questions. You just need a rules cheat sheet & some common sense to run it. You need less than that to play, just an inventive streak in challenges.

A handcrafted meme for you. Pass it on to your kids, it'll be more relevant then.

 Things to object to in OSR:

  • Killing things. You can avoid it at each individual encounter, but overall you're not going to get as far without killing things.
  • Money/wealth-centric play. It feels like an expansive enterprise, marching across a hexcrawl or dungeon. There are alternatives, but they loosen the tight loop of game design. It can remind one too much of similar bad bits of history.
  • Bad roots. I think this is the least concern, despite being the most voiced point. Gygax & co. should be known for their faults, but their game design is tight in a way that isn't ruined by rules surgery (race-as-class is easily obviated by changing the names & allowing cosmetic race and a class, which is what I usually do). I dunno. I think there shouldn't be much OSR guilt, because as many have noticed, OSR is revisionist of how the 70's/80's games were actually played. So we can revise out the bad.

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