The state of Post-OSR content

[Beoric]

Hmmm. I would think DM predilection is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making thieves appropriately fun. That is, as a DM, as much as I would like to let first-level thieves be awesome, I don't think I could do it under AD&D 1e rules where the success rates are so low. *Maybe* I could do it with 2e rules (more thief skill customization at level 1 to let you be mildly good at one or two skills, although sneaking still requires boosting two separate skills).

When it comes to thief skills, one issue is that the 1e DMG does not expressly state, and that you could only know if you were taught the game by previous veterans, is that the majority of skill use was apparently intended to be narrative in nature; player describes how they intend to do what they are doing, DM rules on plausibility while taking into account character archetype (such as rangers being woodsy hunters). So thief trap detection, for example, is a safety net when narrative detection has failed to produce a result. Which makes those low probabilities easier to swallow.

However, many people, like me and everyone I played with, did not learn from mentors. We learned from reading the books, and with our 10-12 year old literal minds determined that if there was a rule for it, and the rule only applied to one class, then only that class could do it. So for your ranger to be able to climb trees to be stealthy, he needed to multiclass thief.

Thieves are one of the many cases where I wish the people who wrote down the rules had given some kind of explanation on how they would actually use them in practice. I don't care if it's "you can use and apply the rules any way you want to in your campaign", If they wrote it and printed it, they should at least have played with it before until they decided they had something that works for them. And I really would like to know what that was.

Exactly.

WotC really has a product called Monsters of the Multiverse? I mean, wow, jumping on the MCU cinematic band-wagon a bit hard aren't ya? No original concepts of terminology of your own? The Marvel comic-book multiverse has existed since the 70's...but after one or two movies...and BAM! it multi-verse this, meta-verse that sprayed all over pop culture like a cheap coat of paint. Pathetic!

I'm pretty sure I heard the term "multiverse" used in gaming long before I saw it in comics. I gather the word was first used in this context in 1963 by Moorcock, who is of course an Appendix N author.

 

[Yora]

WotC has been using it regularly since the start of 3rd edition.

 

[squeen]

I'm pretty sure I heard the term "multiverse" used in gaming long before I saw it in comics. I gather the word was first used in this context in 1963 by Moorcock, who is of course an Appendix N author.

No doubt! It was part-and-parcel of the popularization of the the implication of Quantum Physics that occurred in the 1950-1960's.

WotC has been using it regularly since the start of 3rd edition.

Sure, it was in the 1e PHB too IIRC...pinched from Moorcock, as Beoric said. Jim Starlin pinched it from Moorcock too, for his Adam Warlock (1975) and (original) Captain Marvel comic runs. Reading it back then, I thought it was cool too.

I'm just saying...it's trending ad nauseam right now.

Re: The Thief...I'll try to find time to jot down some thoughts about how I've seen it used in a few days. I think, as you allude, there's a deeper class-skill issue at play.

 

[Hemlock]

When it comes to thief skills, one issue is that the 1e DMG does not expressly state, and that you could only know if you were taught the game by previous veterans, is that the majority of skill use was apparently intended to be narrative in nature; player describes how they intend to do what they are doing, DM rules on plausibility while taking into account character archetype (such as rangers being woodsy hunters). So thief trap detection, for example, is a safety net when narrative detection has failed to produce a result. Which makes those low probabilities easier to swallow.

However, many people, like me and everyone I played with, did not learn from mentors. We learned from reading the books, and with our 10-12 year old literal minds determined that if there was a rule for it, and the rule only applied to one class, then only that class could do it. So for your ranger to be able to climb trees to be stealthy, he needed to multiclass thief.

I know about this narrative solving thing, but I don't think this helps the Thief. Rather the contrary! It makes Thieves with low skill percentages even more redundant. If the guy sneaking ahead and looking for traps could be *either* a Thief with 35% or whatever to Move Silently, or a well-armored Fighter who has been rendered Invisible by the extra Mage who replaced the Thief, why play the Thief?

When the Thief starts getting actually *good* at that safety net, it becomes more appealing, but by that time other characters have more magic workarounds as well.

Someone upthread mentioned just boosting Thief abilities by +4 levels and I think that *might* be enough to make me play a Thief, but refactoring the abilities to be more broadly useful and less easy to replicate with magic would do more. I really like the Savvy example of "I already bribed the guard to drop a key", but maybe that's just because it reminds me of Bill and Ted--although the Grey Mouser does this too, now that I think on it.

I'm just saying...it's trending ad nauseam right now.

Yeah, and WotC doesn't really tie it to any idea of parallel realities, alternate Prime Material planes, or anything like that. It feels like a buzzword, especially because it's 100% a retread of monsters they already published for 5E, with minor changes to damage types or converting spellcasting to spell-like abilities (which turns out to be controversial for NPC priests and wizards, but they did it anyway, along with giving them at-will blasting attacks that aren't spells).

 

[squeen]

...with minor changes to damage types or converting spellcasting to spell-like abilities (which turns out to be controversial for NPC priests and wizards, but they did it anyway, along with giving them at-will blasting attacks that aren't spells).

Not that I'm against NPCs playing by different rules than PCs...but, Oy!

Thanks for the insights.

 

[squeen]

Something I just found:

The OSR Should Die

You are on my old URL! You will be redirected in 5 seconds...

chiquitafajita.blogspot.com

And a reply to it:

Have you tried ANT? A response to Marcia’s “OSR is Dead” post

I don’t usually indulge in talking about “the scene” or categories like OSR or Storygamers, but this article was so nicely and lucidly written that I couldn’t help worrying …

lurkerablog.wordpress.com

For people with nothing else to do for the weekend.

Whew! All the sudden surge in activity from Yora and Hemlock has put me behind on reading here.

I made it through the first link, "The OSR Should Die", and here's my reaction:

On the plus side, I found his condensed history interesting, and learned some new things. His list of seminal post posts was fun too. What was very striking/shocking to me was the dates on some of these things. It's only been 6(?) years since 5e, and 4 since Zak-Gate. Shockingly recent, the events seem so much longer ago.

The downside was the heavy psycho-babble. I guess I don't place as much importance on notions and classification that famous people had (Marx included). We are all capable of coming up with wild theories that seem to connect events, but every mental-model of reality is Swiss cheese at some level. If you have an idea, just say it---I don't need its pedigree to judge whether it's rubbish or not. It made the post come off as too eager to be seen as an "authoritative landmark".

Holistically, my thoughts are two-fold:

1. There is a point in every serious DM's career when they are trying to make sense of all the disparate sources and get his or her game under control that requires some archeology of the hobby. We need to sort out a timeline and put all the elements into their respective places so our small minds can index them. Weirdly, 15-years after OSRIC, there is now a "history of the OSR" that is equally as tangled as all the official D&D editions that now needs to be organized too (for new comers), even though many movers and shakers of that time are still active.
2. While everyone must make their own private "History of the OSR" map --- each and every one is flawed (this one too)...but that's fine, eventually you "find your Jeep" and it just doesn't matter how/why others play the game if you have something that works well for you. And while innovative ideas are great, after a point you usually can see quickly whether a particular notion suits your style or clashes with it.

Lastly, the thing that's getting to be weird in an Orwellian sense is how the "classic playstyle" is getting discounted and erased from the history books. Just because it was vibrant and diverse doesn't make it equivalent to white-noise. It's a simple fact that people played differently back then...probably because people (specifically American culture) was different back then too. You can't really turn back the clock, but you can (like I did with my kids) do something similar that works today. I think new comers who hear all the "it used to be better" talk are frustrated because it's (temporally) out-of-reach, and want to dismiss it as a fictional "Golden Age". Rest assured, there was a whole lot of bad DMing and half-baked notions back then too---just read The Dragon!

Still, when it's all said and done, it's clear that the official sources (TSR/WotC) made a whole lot of wrong turns...mainly in pursuit of profit, but also sometime out of ignorance of just how the (O)D&D lightning-in-a-bottle actually worked. Folks with no real experience designing successful games and lacking a deep understanding of D&D were allowed to tinker-with and/or steer the ship---ultimately publishing game-variants that were largely untested for durability. Nevertheless, some folks bought them and established their own (new/different) play-style to varying degrees of success. After all, if a new demographic comes in, buys all the books and plays for a few months (on average)---isn't that a "win" for corporate D&D? Until they find a way to make D&D a monthly-subscription "service", there's not much incentive for rules that support lifetime (DIY) users.

Next time, a few thoughts of thieves.

 

[Yora]

The longer thoughts have had time to sort themselves out, the more I am thinking the whole thing is way simpler than all the people really still concerned with it are making it out to be.

As 3rd edition was taking its course, some people were saying "actually, I'd rather want to go back playing 1st edition again", and some of them tried reaching out saying "hey, take a look at these mechanics and procedures from 1st edition and B/X. These could be worth using again". And some people came and took a look and said "yeah, these are cool. We can use them in our work." Which they did. And then they went their merry way, doing other things with the good ideas they had learned.
The End.

That's of course by looking at the body of works. And why I am one of the people who think of the OSR as an event that went on for a time.
Now obviously, the event was people colaborating and sharing ideas, and these people formed communities. (That second link talks about Actor-Network Theory.) And it appears at times that some people see that community they are in or were in as being "the OSR".
I've been deeply into modifying and expanding B/X for seven years now, being fully hooked on the game style those rules are tailored to, and been regularly peeking over since Death Frost Doom became something of a sensation. But I've never been part of that community. I often linked post from various sites doing B/X related content on my own site, and had my articles linked by those as well a handful of times. But I didn't hang with the main crowd, so to speak. (I also never heard about that Google Plus thing as anything other than people bemoaning that it's gone.) The OSR event and the OSR community are not the same thing. And I think that's where some disagreement might come from about whether the OSR is dead or still serves a purpose.

If some people insist "We're still here and we're still doing the same thing we've always been doing", that's good for them. But when seeing the OSR as a body of works and the process of creating those work, all of that is irrelevant. Some guys hanging around late into the morning after the concert is not the concert.
The fat lady has stopped singing.

 

[squeen]

The OSR event and the OSR community are not the same thing. And I think that's where some disagreement might come from about whether the OSR is dead or still serves a purpose.

If some people insist "We're still here and we're still doing the same thing we've always been doing", that's good for them. But when seeing the OSR as a body of works and the process of creating those work, all of that is irrelevant. Some guys hanging around late into the morning after the concert is not the concert.
The fat lady has stopped singing.

I think the event/community divide is well said and accounts for the original "The OSR [community] is dead" series of declarations post G+ demise.

Another factor in OSR-isms is the changing face of technology and how people were/are collaborating. DF = forums, OSRv1 = blogs, OSRv2 = G+, OSRv3 = reddit, etc.

It also seems pretty clear folks "return" to D&D in their late 30's/40's and the edition du jour is the one they started with, which is why B/X has seen a recent boost. (Watch out, a 3e revival is next!)

Thanks for the link and an interesting read.

 

[Yora]

I think B/X has beaten out AD&D in the long term in regards to creative variant rules because it is much easier to hack.
For one thing, the rules are much simpler, more streamlined, and presented in a very straightforward way, which means you have much fewer balls to juggle in the air. The other thing is that it's much easier to strip of the D&D-Fantasy-Archetypes and reduce it to just the mechanics. When you want to make something new that is based on the D&D mechanics without being D&D style, B/X is just an obviously better choice than AD&D. Or even BECMI.
And I think that's what we've seen increasingly throughout the later years. It started with straight retroclones that all very much aimed to continue being D&D. And both AD&D and OD&D style games were popular. The rise of B/X appears to have happened at the same time as we've seen more experimental stuff becoming more common and popular. (Even though Lamentations of the Flame Princess goes back to 2009, pretty much at the start of OSR becoming a thing.)

 

[squeen]

I think B/X has beaten out AD&D in the long term ...

Perhaps. Or perhaps the long term ain't over yet.

Millennials have always had sheer numbers on their side. Time will tell.

I own the original B/X books that I bought new-in-stores, but the tone was off for me and I was never was tempted to use them.

Your point about rules-light systems being easier to riff off of is totally valid. I liked Swords & Wizardry/OD&D when I was first getting back into the swing of things too. B/X was an attempt at stepping back away from "advanced" toward the success TSR had with the OD&D re-write of Holmes Basic.

 

[squeen]

A brief note on how we used thieves in OD&D/AD&D (1e) successfully.

I understand what I'm about to outline may not jell with everyone's favorite play-style, and that's fine. With my original OD&D group (79-89) in which I was a player and with my (now adult) children as the DM (2012-2022), this is how we did it.

To put it in context, can you imagine a D&D variant in which every PC was a ordinary human, with d6 HD and an average chance to hit? No classes at all, no special abilities? Just roles to play in a party. It would be like the modern military.

Some would invest in armor and weapons, other would handle the heavy ordinance, and some would be lightly and mobile in order to scout the territory and report back. You'd also need a medic of course. These are your fighter, magic-users, thieves and clerics.

They are roles in a party that need to be played...again not really "classes".

In the non-combat stages, the scout/thieves are critical. The are willing to take the risk of moving out ALONE in front of the party, stealthily because they aren't in armor. Discover what's ahead and "report back" (which often doesn't happen for various reasons). Even if they are not powerhouses in combat, they get to do the lion's share of exploration in solo mode. Often the other party members are far away...and the other players listening (and making suggestions---we didn't care if that's "meta", they hear stuff, they say stuff---it's part of the fun).

It's a dangerous job, but it's also a fun one. Player who enjoy playing thieves tend to be natural puzzle solver, explorers, and strategists. They also get to be unabashedly neutral and driven by self-interest. That doesn't mean back-stabbing or betraying the party...but it can mean quickly pocketing treasure they stumble across before the party arrives. They also tend to get all the stealth-magic items.

OK. So their move-silent and hide-in-shadows percentages are bad at low-levels. Well, everyone is bad at the low levels! Take the poor magic user with 2hp and a single sleep spell---it can be a very passive role they play when things heat up. And I think that's the crux of the Thief-Haters' problem---these are sophisticated, adult players, intimately familiar with the rules and know their chances to a tee. You can pretend otherwise, but these are really the character build min/max'ers in disguise. Folks need to chill a bit and stop trying to optimize. It's ok to suck, a little. Take a page out of @Malrex's book and play a librarian.

The important things about the classic play-style (as I came to know it, and saw it work in two decade-long stretches that did not exhaust the player's interest) is that those class-mechanics are secondary to the general "I am a [human] being in this fantasy world, interacting with things". Combat happens, but (good) players generally try to avoid it unless it's a cake-walk.

In a non-combat heavy, interactive world in which class is not of ultimate importance...thieves are essential. Someone has to play that silent scout role for the party. Remember, in true OSR/classic-play there is no assurance of balanced encounters, you absolutely need to understand your enemies and avoid things out of your league.

Perhaps the thief-class's function was almost broken by WotC with their late-edition, player-catering rule mods. Since I've never played any other way, I never thought for a moment the class was broken (in OD&D/1e).

Two footnotes:
1) The most successful thieves have always been hobbits.
2) We also always let them use short bows.

Lastly, as EOTB reminds us, the thief abilities are to be preternaturally quiet or hidden. It goes above and beyond what a normal person could do, which goes hand-in-hand with the notion (for me) that very seldom is a roll required when a thief is acting as a scout. I would, for example, rule that a a hyper-alert thief sneaking ahead in a dungeon has almost no chance of being surprised.

All that said, the-party-rushing-in-to-rescue-the-theif is a common motif. As DM, I hand-waive away knowing he's in trouble, despite the meta-communication implication, but will leave other obstacles (like traps, secret-door detection, path bifurcations, etc.) in place.

Hope that explains my stance on (and love for) AD&D [1e] thieves.

 

[Hemlock]

They are roles in a party that need to be played...again not really "classes".

In the non-combat stages, the scout/thieves are critical. The are willing to take the risk of moving out ALONE in front of the party, stealthily because they aren't in armor. Discover what's ahead and "report back" (which often doesn't happen for various reasons). Even if they are not powerhouses in combat, they get to do the lion's share of exploration in solo mode. Often the other party members are far away...and the other players listening (and making suggestions---we didn't care if that's "meta", they hear stuff, they say stuff---it's part of the fun).

...

OK. So their move-silent and hide-in-shadows percentages are bad at low-levels. Well, everyone is bad at the low levels! Take the poor magic user with 2hp and a single sleep spell---it can be a very passive role they play when things heat up.

...In a non-combat heavy, interactive world in which class is not of ultimate importance...thieves are essential. Someone has to play that silent scout role for the party.

...Hope that explains my stance on (and love for) AD&D [1e] thieves.

I actually think it raises more questions than it answers. You do a good job of arguing for the vital importance of scouts, while simultaneously arguing that class is secondary! In a world where "class is not of ultimate importance", "thieves are essential!"

If class isn't of ultimate importance, why couldn't the scout role be played by a fighter or a wizard? Is this really just about a roleplaying niche, as if adrenaline junkie scouts can't be wizards? Or is playing a scout wizard or invisible scout fighter just something which no one ever felt like doing?

 

[Beoric]

OK. So their move-silent and hide-in-shadows percentages are bad at low-levels. Well, everyone is bad at the low levels!

...

Someone has to play that silent scout role for the party.

The interesting thing here is that you defaulted to the thief skills being necessary to be sneaky, which precludes the ranger from acting as a scout. Even later in the comment when you talk about thieves being preternaturally sneaky, you don't make the leap that this can be done by a ranger. And neither to most DMs, that is the problem; no ranger specific mechanic for sneakiness (other than the surprise mechanic), and no general mechanic for sneakiness (or attempts to do things not covered in the rules generally) equals no ability for the ranger to be a scout, in the mind of your average teenager (and a lot of adults).

 

[The1True]

The interesting thing here is that you defaulted to the thief skills being necessary to be sneaky, which precludes the ranger from acting as a scout.

I think he considers Rangers to be another 'candy' class like paladins...

 

[squeen]

I did anticipate there would be some questions along the lines of "why can't another class fill the scout role?". I'll give you one answer in a bit that is technical and probably unsatisfying, but the short answer is of course that you are correct---another class can serve as the party's scout.

Obvious choices are ranger and/or races like hobbits and elves who gain (in 1e) advantages in surprise when they are out in front of the party and not in armor. That's really the key though...to be sneaky you give up armor. Which is why that role is somewhat against grain with a fighter.

"What about a fighter with elvish boots, invisibility, etc. etc.?"

Sure. You can jazz things up and get there as well---but then I think you are again playing at min/max optimization and not really embracing the spirit of the game. All that magic just to make the perfect scout? (That said, with my kids, as soon as our magic-user had invisibility, the thief was always asking to be made invisible before dangerous excursions---heck, the whole party wanted to travel around invisible "holding hands" the whole time if they could get away with it. It was a constant refrain because stealth is golden in a dangerous world.)

Taking a step back for a second. The point of what I wrote was to address the following: Why I never personally experienced issues with thieves in OD&D/1e---e.g. don't they suck? I say NO because...

1. They fulfill the role of scout for the party -- crucial if "balanced encounters" mollycoddling, 5 room dungeon paradigm, and D&D as equal-participation-combat-porn have not been invented yet
2. They don't solely rely on the success of their initially low ability scores to function usefully---those skills are icing, and kick in more at higher levels when it matters more (i.e. when greater risks are taken & character death is more devastating)
3. They aren't expected to be heavily involved in combat, using their backstab strategically.

Also, for some context, when I started playing D&D after the release of the Holmes Basic (B1) edition --- there weren't too many class options (and we weren't experienced or mathematically inclined) so we took things at face value. For the role of scout/thief, we simply played thieves.

After the 1e AD&D PHB came out, that's when the min/max-ing started. Really. All of a sudden EVERYONE was a ranger/paladin/bard or multi-class fighter/magic-user/cleric. I mean it just got silly and stupid. There was a lot of talk about Monte Haul DM's, but truthfully it was player greed that ruined the game. No one was satisfied with just being average and playing anymore. They sought to "win" through character builds. This was 1978! This was made worse because the DMG wasn't out yet, and the Basic rules didn't include the checks-and-balances against power-creep---which, after they did arrive, were mostly ignored.

Fortunately, when I was just about done with the stupidity of D&D (as practiced by middle-schoolers), I bumped into some older kids playing OD&D (LBB+). Our DM did not let players have their way. There were rules and structure and everything was a challenge. We weren't allowed to peek behind the curtain, and had to take things at face value. Multi-classing was allowed, but prohibitively expensive. That's the D&D that kept me engaged for a decade as a player. That's the D&D I passed on to my kids as a DM that we've played for the last decade. That (IMO) is the D&D that lasts and is good.

Sure, a ranger is a natural scout---but we were almost never were lucky enough to get the stats for a ranger (and we were totally fine with it). We knew we had something that worked, and we'd all seen what happens with tricked-out, class-inflated, player-catering D&D and weren't interested. It is such blarney when people say "I won't have fun unless I get the character I want." I think you really don't want to be adventuring with that type of player anyway.


OK. Circling back to "Why can't a magic-user or fighter be a thief?" :

The holistic argument (above) is "why are you trying to buck the system?" Just play a thief as a scout and it can work just fine. At low-level they will die a bit---just be cool with that, it's part of the fun. ("If at first you don't succeed...") Also, to be honest, The Hobbit.

The "technical" argument---that will irritate those who really just want something more "combat effective"---is that in the 1e DMG Gygax (the Great Satan?) suggests you admonish a PC fighter who doesn't wear armor and avoids fighting with an XP penalty. He's playing against class...fighting the system, as it were, and doesn't go up a level. Rules like that shouldn't really be necessary, but some people can be obstinate jerks.

Perhaps this is why that rule (and Gygax) is hated/ignored, along with other anti-optimization safe-guards (like race level-limits), is because it/he is trying to course-correct against all the pressure from the player-side to break the sustainable rhythm of the game by designing infallible PC super-men---a trend exacerbated with the release of 1e PHB and it's candy-classes. (There! Now I've said it. I'll show myself to the door.)

 

[Two orcs]

Last session my player's made textbook use of a thief henchman (2nd level) who scaled a gallery, crept through a dimly lit portion and killed two minor monsters with a backstab (cleaving!) depriving the big monster they were there to slay of scouts and ammo carriers.

 

[squeen]

Just for fun, I am hauling out and re-posting a quote from May 6, 2005 by Papers&Paychecks (Stuart Marshall, co-editor of OSRIC) that mentions how important scouting is to classic play. This is at the genesis of the OSR---a reaction to how the game had morphed in the 1990's and early 2000's.

An encounter that the player characters cannot overcome through combat is fine, imo, provided there's another option. It only becomes a problem if they can't anticipate it - or if they can anticipate it, they can't avoid it, sneak past it, or talk their way past it.

One of the early 1e adventures, aimed at a party of starting characters, included a room full of 32 kobolds. If they charged the room, a wipe was pretty much inevitable; but the encounter was avoidable. The adventure designer simply assumed that the PCs would scout ahead, or would capture an earlier kobold and interrogate it, or would otherwise have some means of reconnaissance on hand. And, crucially, the adventure designer also assumed that it is okay to wipe the party if they fail to scout effectively.

I imagine that every DM here has used encounters the players couldn't beat in combat. Those encounters where a bunch of lowbie PCs has to tiptoe past a slumbering Giant are fine. Those encounters where a bunch of lowbie PCs have to talk their way past an alert but stupid Giant are also fine.

The alternative is to fill endless dungeons full of rooms that the PCs can definitely beat. The problem with this is that superior players will simply waltz through such a place, cherry-picking the encounters that they want to work on and dodging the ones they don't, and therefore it presents no challenge to them - but inferior players will simply charge, room by room, boot door, kill monster, grab treasure.

Frankly, a lot of people who've been playing for a long time still suck at D&D because they've never learned better.

You can tell these players because they fail to scout ahead, fail to take captives, fail to interrogate captives on the rare occasions when they do get some, and then whine when they run into an encounter they can't hack their way through. Often they will charge in without a plan and whine when they die. They fail to search for traps and then whine when a trap kills them. They fight to the death and often the idea that they can surrender to monsters doesn't even occur to them. They squabble and separate and even duel each other in dungeons.

These players who suck often continue to get away with it because when they die, they blame the DM for creating encounters that they couldn't handle. And all too often the DM believes them and tones back the encounters so that they can continue to suck at D&D without losing any characters.

I call it Sandbox D&D. The players play in a nice, safe sandbox where the DM has carefully removed the nasty sharp objects that could hurt them. If there's a difficult encounter coming up, the DM carefully flags it up for them and gives them plenty of warning. (I keep imagining dungeons with big signs on some of the doors saying "Health warning: This encounter could be harmful!") Treasure's contained in nice, helpfully-obvious containers scattered evenly throughout the dungeon, with some of the containers having predictable traps that will cause nothing worse than mild inconvenience if triggered. Heaven forbid that anything would actually be hidden effectively.

The problem with this comes when you get people who've only ever played Sandbox D&D playing around in a non-Sandbox dungeon. They get hurt on the nasty sharp edges and they think the DM's being unfair to them (classic example: Tomb of Horrors - players with any actual skill at D&D can get through it without casualties; Sandbox D&D players get wiped around room 7).

Sometimes, there are tears.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Lastly, the thing that's getting to be weird in an Orwellian sense is how the "classic playstyle" is getting discounted and erased from the history books. Just because it was vibrant and diverse doesn't make it equivalent to white-noise. It's a simple fact that people played differently back then...probably because people (specifically American culture) was different back then too. You can't really turn back the clock, but you can (like I did with my kids) do something similar that works today. I think new comers who hear all the "it used to be better" talk are frustrated because it's (temporally) out-of-reach, and want to dismiss it as a fictional "Golden Age". Rest assured, there was a whole lot of bad DMing and half-baked notions back then too---just read The Dragon!

If it's any comfort, I think we're actually about to go through a big revival of classic style play, but now attached to new rulesets and more strongly formalised that it was during Gygax. I don't think it's a new play culture such that I would call it "neo-classical" but it's an interesting third wave (after the original and then the early 2000s revival).

The key words to look for are a phrase Ava Islam coined to describe her Errant game, which is "rules-light, procedure heavy". This is linked to an emerging "proceduralism" movement (both Marcia, whose Chiquitafajita blog is linked above, and Gus L. of All Dead Generations are advocates, tho' there are many other people as well) is very interested in both studying past classic play and innovating on its techniques and ideas. This movement is still fairly small, and most of its theoretical work is discussed in semi-private fora rather than publicly, but it's starting to recruit and inspire a number of people who might otherwise firmly think of themselves as working with an OSR / post-OSR design tradition.

Alongside "proceduralism" there are a number of other schools of thought that are interested in classic play in various forms, including the "BrOSR" (and derivatives like the MachOSR). While I think some of these have shallower insights to offer than proceduralism, they are contributing to a larger familiarity with the values of classic play and the games that were the backbone of classic play in the RPG space.

I think we'll see a lot of interesting material emerge from the revival of classic play as it spreads. It won't be a return to AD&D 1e by-the-book, but one hopes it will preserve and develop on many of its insights.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Back when I still played classed OSR games regularly, I just used the Hear Noise chance for all thief skills or activities, typically starting at 4+ on a d6. I would allow everyone else to succeed on similar tasks on a 5+ on the same die. However, other characters' chances remain flat, while the thief's ascends with level as their Hear Noise skill goes up. It's a little thing, but it avoids most of these issues while allowing thieves to feel more competent and skilled than their peers. I also use the same roll and progression for fighters to accomplish "feats of strength" and for magic-users / wizards to detect magic, identify straightforward magical items and read scrolls or captured spellbooks, rather than using spell slots. Clerics could detect lies and chicanery using a similar roll and progression. People seem to like it as a system since it is simple but still keeps the classes meaningfully distinct.

 

[The1True]

"proceduralism"

Could you remind me what proceduralism is?

Also, some elaboration on the BrOSR/MachOSR both which sound satirical - Like the kind of epithet I would slap on some of the more regressive things I've seen written hereabouts - would be appreciated...