While doing this I had a question pop up in my head that I thought would be good to make a quick blog post about, and that is "How would you pitch the OSR to someone unfamiliar with it?" this I feel is an important question, because OSR systems are so wrapped up in certain play philosophies and jargon that it can be hard to properly explain their appeal.
I've talked about in a past article about how I enjoy many OSR systems focus on exploration (found Here: https://mazecaretaker.blogspot.com/2022/01/why-i-love-osr-exploration-is-king.html) And exploration is definitely one aspect these systems understand and do well in my opinion.
But outside of that there is an immersive quality found in old editions of D&D and OSR systems, when you are exploring a dungeon or traversing the wilderness you do so through describing actions or making choices presented to you, a skill check isn't needed for such interaction, this sort of freeform interaction with an imaginary environment can be incredibly satisfying if done well and encourages a more active play style than a reactive skill roll would make.
The term tactical combat is one I have heard in the TTRPG community since I joined a few years back. Usually it means a system that encourages different actions based on the context of the encounter or discourages the same repetitive action or routines. Within the context of the OSR though I feel the more free form and naturalistic playstyle results in a different kind of tactical combat, one where most of the actions aren't strictly defined and largely dependent on a players imagination and a DMs interpretation.
One thing widely talked about when comparing OSR systems to other systems is the deadliness of OSR systems. This is largely over stated, unless you are playing a direct B/X clone its unlikely that the system is a strict death a 0 affair and many DMs may have additional house rules to increase survivability, its rather easy to make a deadly system less deadly while retaining its inbuilt challenge.
A parties teamwork and tactics are largely accountable for its survival in OSR systems, some members of the party have significantly less hit points than others while also having skills or spells that are incredibly useful to the party as a whole, for an example of this lets say you have a lvl 1 magic user with average hit points (so 2hp) and the sleep spell, in your standard party, casting the sleep spell can be an instant win against most low level monsters but in many OSR systems that borrow heavily from B/X a spell is declared at the start of a combat round and goes off at the end, in this time the magic user taking damage will result in the spell fizzling, to prevent this the rest of the party can form a protective formation around the magic user to prevent monsters for attacking them in melee as well as charging monsters to prevent them using ranged attacks, after the round the sleep spell goes off and all the surviving monsters are put to sleep and can be killed easily by slitting their throats.
In terms of character customization, your characters will be defined more by their equipment or behaviour than their abilities. In many ways the difference between a knight and a bezerker is what weapons and armour they use and how they fight. On top of that the simple mechanics most OSR systems use means modifying and creating different options for characters. Most systems also stick to the core 4 classes (Fighter, Thief, Magic User and Cleric) with a bit of tweaking of mechanics I would argue that most character concepts could fit into one of these 4 archetypes. Races are usually kept to Humans Halflings Elves and Dwarves, this should by no means be seen as a hard limit though as creating new races for an OSR system is usually quite easy.
I suppose then the common theme in the OSR is: doing more with less, allowing your imagination and common sense to inform you on how to handle any one situation or in creating content, these systems where made incomplete on purpose its part of their design. This also means that a DM holds more important in such systems, they have to fill in the gaps in the system using their common sense, it is important to be fair as a DM because of this your players may sour to you if they think you are too flippant or cruel in your rulings. A DM should be open to the players desires and be willing to create content for them if it is missing.
To the players I would say that like any TTRPG usually get out what you put in, I think most players start playing TTRPG the right way with using their imagination to interact with the imaginary environment, over time we naturally pick up habits based on the systems and groups we play with. OSR systems are a chance to return to this style of play which is quite an enjoyable experience when done well. There are certain ways to prompt you DM, asking more details about an object or location, searching areas enthusiastically and asking a few questions about how they would handle certain in game procedures before playing with them.
Anyway here are the Servers I've been working on as well, feel free to jump on one and say hi;
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/9rx886nc
Guilded Server: https://www.guilded.gg/i/2OOA5qZ2
I am also working on a project at the moment with some other people, ill let you know about it when its ready :)
M.C.
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