Biggus Geekus and the OSR

The topic of this week's Biggus Geekus show was about the OSR, its origin, definitions, versions and variants. 

Even though I got started on the "easy to master" black box and played a lot of 2nd Edition AD&D I don't particularly care about the OSR: virtually every game I've seen billed as OSR is essentially an existing version of Dungeons & Dragons, perhaps with a few odd houserules shoehorned into it or bolted on almost as an afterthought (or perhaps as a lamentable attempt to justify its existence), and/or an incomplete vapidware trash game.

Besides the one time we tried playing OD&D as best we could just to see what it was like (and it was terrible), I haven't played an older edition of Dungeons & Dragons for over twenty years. While I have looked at many of the older books (including Dungeon and Dragon magazines) for inspiration, given that I've already made the version of D&D that mostly does what I want I have no interest. In other words I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I also don't think it matters if your game or a game you play meets the vague and/or arbitrary criteria to be classified by this or that group of people that you don't know and whose opinions you also aren't aware of--and should probably ignore, anyway--as OSR.

Whatever that even means, of course.

During the show they looked at or at least referenced various documents and blog posts, such as an old school primer. I didn't see any links crop up in chat, but luckily afterwards they compiled everything in the video description. One of them is an old school primer by Matt Finch, who is a guy I don't know, and wrote or rehashed a game I don't play.

It talks about rulings, not rules, which is a bizarre statement that I've heard parroted for well over a decade at this point and something I feel many lazy hacks rely on as a way to ideally excuse their shallow, incomplete vapidware trash games. In the document, Matt claims that most of the time in old-style gaming you didn't use a rule. Instead, you made a ruling, which sounds completely alien to how I recall playing the black box and 2nd Edition, where we referenced the rules all the time.

Make an attack? Cast a spell? Use a thief skill? There are rules for all of that, and I find it amusing that Matt refers to disarming a trap as a "die roll" challenge found only in modern games, when in 1st Edition AD&D thieves have a find/remove traps skill that they can use to "die roll" their way past it. His strawman examples are even sillier, more so because he frames the "icky bad modern" playstyle as boring and mechanical. Worse, he even admits that it's not how a "good modern-style GM usually runs his game" but does it anyway.

Basically, the character declares that he is checking for traps, GM has him roll, gets a good enough result to find a pit trap, makes a roll to disarm it, and then they move on. It's about as exciting as I'd imagine finding a pit trap to be, assuming it wasn't because you blundered into it.

The "old style" example is given more character, technically, but it's also strange. The players somehow forget that their 10-foot pole was eaten by a stone idol for some reason (lolsorandom), but think there's something in a corridor. Not having a spare 10-foot pole, or wanting to go back to get one, or using a spear or sword or hammer or something else to probe the floor, and also unable to just make a thief skill roll that any normal DM would let you do (assuming John the Rogueish is in fact a thief), just so happens to pour water on the floor where the pit trap is, causing it to pool into a square shape. I guess despite the limited light and angle they couldn't discern the shape.

And then, assuming that he found the trap, John wants to disarm it but again the DM won't let him roll a skill that exists specifically for that purpose, and none of them bother to just stomp on the floor, throw a rock on it, probe it with a weapon, etc to trigger it, which is precisely what would have happened had they been able to use a 10-foot pole in the first place.

If Matt were honest he would have described the "modern" example in the same way, because even in the reviled 3rd and 4th Edition a player could probe floors with 10-foot poles and trigger pit traps. They could also pour water on the floor to reveal the pit trap. I have no idea why he and others like him are so disingenuous, pretending that only in "modern" systems levers, cracks, hinges, etc are invisible to characters unless they happen to roll a high Search skill or whatever.

Both scenarios would have played out the same way in any edition, except if the DM was playing normally the player would have been able to also make a skill check to find and/or disarm the trap (if possible, because the DM could also declare that the characters lack the materials and ability to disarm it).

The ninja jump example is just as flawed. Player wants to jump on a monster 10-feet below him?

In my game, easy: make an attack roll, plus a charge bonus and a damage bonus from the impact. You'd probably take some damage as well, unless you make a decent skill check because, again, you're falling from 10 feet. A nat 1 on the attack roll would just be you miss and take full damage. Matt only thinks there's some kind of surprise jump feat or whatever because he's never played "modern" editions, listened to people that never played "modern" editions, or is just lying.

The "old style" example is completely ridiculous and does nothing to sell me on it being better in any way. The same character wants to jump attack, rolls a 2, so the DM rules that he somehow tripped while attempting to jump, got tangled up in his sword, landed on the goblin (which somehow didn't injure it in any way), and stabbed himself. I could maybe see something this disastrous on a natural 1, but a 2? What, is the DM going to rule similarly on that in the future?

No, just leap attacks, because it's all arbitrary nonsense.

In the next part Matt boasts about how OD&D and his game are games of skill, albeit in only a "few areas where modern games just rely on the character sheet". He then talks about game mechanics that simultaneously make sense in context but somehow fails to grasp.

The first is a "spot" mechanic, which in more recent editions is a sensible and intuitive mechanic that gives your character the chance to notice something, without having to constantly tell the DM that you're moving down the hallway, slowly, closely inspecting every nook, cranny, crack and crevice for signs of danger.  It is functionally similar to random checks in older editions that could be used to determine if the characters happen to notice a secret door, concealed passage, or ambush. 

But since it's different and in a "modern" game that somehow makes it bad.

He also cites the use of a bluff skill as a method of "automatically" fooling a suspicious guardsman. This check would only be automatic if the DM allowed you to take 10 and your Bluff skill was high enough that it beat out the target's Sense Motive modifier, assuming that the DM let you make the check in the first place.

Normally it's simply a modifier to determine if what you are saying or doing is sufficient, but only so long as the DM doesn't determine that what you're doing has no chance of working, or would be an automatic success. Again, this sounds precisely how it would work in any edition: player says he wants to do something, DM determines if it's a success, failure, or needs a roll to find out. It's jut that here Matt doesn't like it.

He states that unlike in "modern" games you have to tell the DM that you're looking for traps and what buttons you're pushing, as if in 3E there was a "push correct button" skill. Spot is used to randomly determine if your character happens to notice anything awry, again, similar to checks for noticing secret doors and ambushes, and the DC for those is generally quite high (20 or more). If you want to actively search for traps, that's a Search check, and in 3E only rogues and classes with the trapfinding class feature could do it.

Which is, you know, similar to how in older games you had to make a find/remove traps check.

As for buttons, yeah, there's no check to just magically push the right buttons. For the guard, you still have to tell the DM what you're telling the guard. From there the DM determines that it works, doesn't work, but if he's not sure he assigns a DC based on believability and then you make a Bluff check. If someone's lying the DM can have the NPC make a Bluff check opposed by your Sense Motive, or just give it a DC, but I am fine with this because depending on how well the DM can even act and how gullible you are in real life it would make more sense to have that sort of thing depend on the character's ability scores (much like how much your character can carry depends on his Strength as opposed to your own).

Matt tries to handwaive this dissociation away by chalking up your retarded character's unusually intelligent plans and problem solving capabilities as luck or intuition. Intelligence of 3? Just ignore it and do whatever you want, because otherwise, to Matt, this is a "suicide pact" with your character. One wonders why even have mental and social ability scores at all, if they have no mechanical impact (especially when compared to the others). I'm being serious: if they provide no penalties or benefits, and you are just going to play the character however you want, then just remove them and stick with only physical stats.

You can even ditch Intelligence and just make a stat that reflects magical aptitude.

But normal players are interested in playing a roleplaying game, so these stats should have an impact. And just like jumping off a cliff, landing a goblin, inflicting no damage, and stabbing yourself can be the result of a bad attack roll despite how cool it would have been how it worked, then I see no issue with a player trying to bluff past a guard, coming up with a decent lie, getting a bonus because of how good it is, but botching the roll anyway.

Assuming the DM even decides a roll is required. A good DM can just say, you know what, that's an excellent lie, so it works.

For his third point Matt compares older editions to games that don't exist, where apparently your 1st-level guy can fight off ten club-wielding peasants at once. It's an...odd example, as peasants aren't monsters and so aren't typically the sort of thing a character would fight, but even in 3rd Edition your fighter will have perhaps around 11 hit points, assuming the DM gives you max HP and you have a Constitution of 12-13.

Your AC is likely 14-16, so let's say 15, and the typical peasant will have +0 or +1 to hit. However if they are mobbing you all of them will get a flanking bonus, which bumps it up to +2 or +3 to hit. Even f you manage to slay one, another will just step up, and they can take a 5-foot step so others can move in, meaning that if we're being generous you will get subjected to nine melee attacks per round. At an average damage of 3.5, it's going to take four hits to bring you down, assuming none of the peasants have a Strength modifier

This also assumes that none of the peasants just try grabbing the fighter and knocking him to the ground in order to beat him to death that way.

His other comical example is that in an older game you can't beat a dragon by strangling it to death, which is perhaps something that a very high level character could achieve with some sort of obscure build and specific magic items. Though he doesn't specify the size or type of dragon, and I gotta say that I can't imagine your average, non-super optimized character with no magical powers defeating a dragon with equal Hit Dice, much less "strangling it to death" due to the insane difference in Strength and size.

Frankly I can't even imagine a character strangling a smaller dragon to death, unless he was of a considerably higher level, and that's just so he can absorb the damage while waiting for the dragon to fail saves or checks or whatever whilst holding its breath. Also, no one becomes Superman in any edition of D&D. You might be able to use magic to temporarily buff yourself up to the point where you can perform superhuman feats for a period of time, but it's never a constant. 

Matt eventually gets to game balance. Or rather, the lie of game balance in newer editions.

Way back when I ran Age of Worms using 3rd Edition, the characters ran into the wolf encounter, which was three wolves against the four of them. Though they killed the wolves they nearly died, having to spend a few days resting so the cleric could heal them up before going back. The next encounter was against a swarm of acid beetles and something called a mad slasher.

This also nearly killed them.

Then they found a ghoul underwater, which nearly killed them. Then more acid beetle swarms and some giant beetles. Then a water elemental. Then an earth elemental. The easiest part of the adventure was when they had to confront a necromancer, and that's only because he had more normal monsters at his disposal, like skeletons and zombies, and they had a cleric who could turn those.

Later in the adventure path there was a trap that required an absurdly high Will save to resist (so high that the cleric only just barely resisted it). Failure would have meant that he would have been killed instantly, and his soul essentially devoured, preventing him from being revived. Then during a fight against lower level NPCs the fighter got confused due to his low Will save, and he almost massacred the party in the process.

The list goes on and on and it wasn't unique to those adventures. There are numerous monsters that are much easier and more difficult than their CR would indicate, not that you are even supposed to stick to that in the first place (adventure design recommends deviating the value by around 3-5 points in both directions, creating a mixture of easier and more difficult fights precisely to avoid players thinking that everything will be beatable).

As bad as this primer was, the second one linked is even worse. But then what do you expect when it is co-authored by Ben Milton, praises Powered by the Apocalypse games for any reson, and attempts to justify the nonsense game mechanic of awarding XP for the unrelated act of moving treasure from one location to another. This is already far more commentary and attention than it deserves, so I'm just going to skip it.

A link about the different flavors of OSR takes us to a blog post that attempts to describe what the author considers the four distinct groups of self-proclaimed OSR games. The criteria for each depends on how compatible that game is with earlier versions of D&D, as well I guess how similar the style and concepts are. I don't find this categorization particularly useful, especially given the examples included in each: knowing if a game has the "vague feel" or another game doesn't matter when the rehashed vapidware trash is inferior to the original.

For example, in OSR Adjacent he includes 5E Hardcore Mode, and why? 5th Edition is about as far from an older "feel" as you can get, and a shallow set of houserules which is really just a mix of normal rules from other editions chased with utterly retarded ideas of the author's own design, which isn't surprising given that he's a poser that doesn't even design roleplaying games. You know, like a magic save point candle that a wizard only gives to adventurers for free.

So not only is it vapidware trash but it's also not old school at all.

The next category down is NSR, which not only includes garbage like Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, Troika, and Mork Borg, but Dungeon World and Torchbearer as well, so now I'm dubious as what the hell the author considers to be old school. The last category is Commercial OSR, which he defines as the realm of the grifters and the lazy, shitty shovelware on DriveThruRPG, and products by people that do not get it. I'm not sure if he's being a coward, disingenuous, a dumbass, or all of the above, but there's nothing mentioned despite this being precisely where everything in the NSR category, plus most of the stuff in the other categories should have gone!

But, hey, found a bunch of stuff to add to my review list.

The last set of links I could maybe care about pertains to the Brody Bunch, a group of people that pretend to play D&D the right way and insult anyone that points out how retarded they are. Someone had sent me one of the articles on Twitter already. It's pretty insane even by Brody Bunch standards, and I intend to get to it at some point.