The state of Post-OSR content

[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.)

 

[EOTB]

A ranger can be a fine scout, as far as pure "recon and report". But most ranger players want the best AC available for their ranger, and so reduce their movement rate. At higher levels this is less of an issue because armor is more likely to be magical, and/or the ranger may have a cloak of elvenkind.

The thief is likely to have an unpenalized move without taking a tradeoff for it (at low level). And they have the preternatural abilities rangers don't which may allow an enhanced scouting role such as climbing where necessary, or spoofing a monster's infravision that's crossing the path of the scout without requiring a retreat from the area.

Re: "poor starting skill %s", anyone playing a human thief with average dex gets what they get. Most thieves start out with bonuses for dex and/or race to the core thief skills necessary for scouting - or at least, it isn't hard to create such a character for someone desiring to make one. Not hard to get up to 40%+ on these rolls at 1st level, which only improves.

 

[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...

 

[squeen]

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).

Settembrini and Prince had an interesting (English) podcast together on this topic

Episode 38: The Grand 1E vs B/X Smackdown! – PESA

Nominally a B/X vs. AD&D smackdown --- it stays pretty friendly as PoN's heart has secretly been slowly turning towards AD&D in recent times (in my estimation).

I have no idea what "procedure heavy" precisely means, but like anything else you try to put a label on, it will most likely get misinterpreted and over used.

 

[The1True]

Maybe it's something to do with procedural generation? There is an awful lot of that (and I'm a fan when it's judiciously applied!), but I feel like that's been around as long as the DIY movement has.

 

[squeen]

Maybe it's something to do with procedural generation? There is an awful lot of that (and I'm a fan when it's judiciously applied!), but I feel like that's been around as long as the DIY movement has.

I hadn't thought of that!

That fits---and is also barking up the wrong tree. That's not at the heart of the new/old difference.

It's appropriately gauged challenge defined by:

1. Not being an idiot DM who tries to kill the party...but just a dangerous world that has the potential for lethality if not approached cautiously.
2. Not giving the players what they want. No pandering to wish fulfillment. The opportunity exists for success, but you have to work for it, and it's almost never 100% complete or without caveats/cost. There is always something more, frustratingly out of reach.
3. Putting in the hard work as DM to create a campaign world with many, many layers where just about anything is possible if you search long and hard enough, as well as dynamic enough it keeps the players generally on the back-foot and out of their comfort zone. The DM does not fabricate a a story, he/she just constructs an environment and moves around the scenery.

Good rule-sets support this. Bad edition rules almost always break #2. If your D&D game lacks the push-pull balance of the real world, it will not engage a human being for very long---we are too well made to fit this world and none other.

#3 is hard---there are no short-cuts, procedural or otherwise. Good DMs are like pro-athletes...few have the stamina and discipline to function at the required level. Anthony Huso comes to mind as a pro willing to put in the sweat so that his players have a great time and that the classic game "works".

 

[The1True]

Not giving the players what they want.

Sorry man, my bros and I are at least partially in it for the wish fulfilment. We're not alone in this, and it's been around as long as I can remember playing the game.
Obviously there's a difference between adolescent power-fantasy shit like letting your friend stomp around in a Glitter Boy suit in Rifts or drive a big-rig with a naval cannon bolted to the trailer in Car Wars vs more adult hopes and dreams; but if my player writes an intention to rule a kingdom or ascend to demi-godhood in a glorious apotheosis, or just wield the Holy Avenger in service of justice etc. into his character, I'm going to help them work steadily and noticeably towards that goal.
The real world sucks. It is arbitrary and unfair. A gameworld does not have to be. Things have meaning. Getting rewarded for great deeds is deeply satisfying. A little stress from the DM is awesome. The odd death and TPK where appropriate is excellent. A constant 'them's the breaks' real-world grind is not.

 

[Beoric]

Maybe it's something to do with procedural generation? There is an awful lot of that (and I'm a fan when it's judiciously applied!), but I feel like that's been around as long as the DIY movement has.

I hadn't thought of that!

That fits---and is also barking up the wrong tree. That's not at the heart of the new/old difference.

It's appropriately gauged challenge defined by:

1. Not being an idiot DM who tries to kill the party...but just a dangerous world that has the potential for lethality if not approached cautiously.
2. Not giving the players what they want. No pandering to wish fulfillment. The opportunity exists for success, but you have to work for it, and it's almost never 100% complete or without caveats/cost. There is always something more, frustratingly out of reach.
3. Putting in the hard work as DM to create a campaign world with many, many layers where just about anything is possible if you search long and hard enough, as well as dynamic enough it keeps the players generally on the back-foot and out of their comfort zone. The DM does not fabricate a a story, he/she just constructs an environment and moves around the scenery.

Good rule-sets support this. Bad edition rules almost always break #2. If your D&D game lacks the push-pull balance of the real world, it will not engage a human being for very long---we are too well made to fit this world and none other.

#3 is hard---there are no short-cuts, procedural or otherwise. Good DMs are like pro-athletes...few have the stamina and discipline to function at the required level. Anthony Huso comes to mind as a pro willing to put in the sweat so that his players have a great time and that the classic game "works".

@squeen, you probably shouldn't make assumptions that @Pseudoephedrine is wrong until he clarifies the term. I note that 1e is pretty procedure heavy - a good example is the surprise/initiative/combat phase procedure, but also grappling, morale, combat positioning (flank, rear, etc.), disengaging from combat, running away, finding and hiring henchmen, overland travel rules, airborne travel rules, waterborne travel rules, etc., etc.

Here is a quote from the site @Pseudoephedrine linked:

What does that mean? Well, it means that the rules you need to play Errant are simple to understand and minimal. At its core, the basic mechanic is to simply roll a twenty-sided die and try to get a result that’s in between two numbers (“roll high under” or “blackjack”) to resolve tasks.

However, Errant has a number of procedures that are designed to help you navigate different play situations in fair and interesting ways. Want to know how to run an exciting chase scene, or establish a fried cockatrice restaurant, or sue a demon for emotional negligence? Errant has procedures that can help you do that!

Procedures are not rules, but neither are they vague, general guidance. They provide a framework to structure the game, and can be adjusted, ignored, hacked, mangled, broken, stolen, or seasoned to taste.

I think that pretty much defines it.

 

[squeen]

I wasn't imply he was wrong...just being pessimistic that the emphasis was on target for the desired result.

 

[The1True]

Now I want to sue a demon for emotional negligence...

actually reminds me of an ex-girlfriend now that I think about it...

 

[Beoric]

I hate to say it, but this sounds a lot like having a core mechanic and a robust and flexible action resolution system.

(Actually, I don't hate to say it.)

 

[Beoric]

Wanted to add this teaser from the Errant kickstarter, which reveals an aesthetic I think a lot of you will appreciate:

You have no home.

You have no job.

You have no friends.

You have no family.

You have no prospects.

What you do have are a particular set of skills, the kind that make respectable folks avoid you, a handful of pennies, and a suitably blithe disregard for your own life.

Out there, beyond civilization, lies danger: monsters and magic and ancient ruins pregnant with treasure. Death is likely, but what did you have to live for anyway? At least out there is the chance to make something of yourself, and maybe even get back at those who wronged you.

Surely, this is no life for decent folk. But you’re not decent folk. You are an Errant.

 

[squeen]

Nice set up, but to be honest the world need yet another set of RPG rules like it needs a hole the head.

 

[Beoric]

Could you remind me what proceduralism is?

Funny you should ask...

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Could you remind me what proceduralism is?

Gus posted his take on it today. Marcia posted her take on it about a month ago. Their takes aren't identical, nor are they quite what Ava means when she describes Errant as "rules light, procedure heavy" but all three of them are expressing slightly different takes on a shared idea. That idea is that using what Beoric IMHO accurately describes as "a robust and flexible action resolution system" allows one to structure play in ways that give it a distinct feel.

One of the outcomes of their focus on procedure is meaningful decisions because the procedures provide a clear sense of what the system is or isn't sensitive to. Another is that it allows both players and DMs to accurately gauge the difficulty and thus challenge of different kinds of tasks, aiding people to develop a well-structured progression of challenge.

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...

The BrOSR is half 3/10 tedious joke, half serious, unfortunately. If you're familiar with Jeffro Johnson, he's effectively the leader of a group who are mostly active on Twitter. A brief summary of what they see as the pillars of "correct" play are available here. I find some of their ideas interesting, but the way they express them much less interesting.