Over the past year or so I’ve been doing a lot of reading of OSR modules, OSR rules and articles about OSR style play on the internet. This is the first in what will likely be a series about OSR style games, why I’m interested in them, etc.
It’s said that there are three pillars of D&D:
- roleplaying/interaction
- combat
- exploration
My games have historically done a reasonable job with the first two pillars and pretty terribly with exploration. Sessions I run tend to be prepared linearly in anticipation of the players actions in the next game. This is doubly true since I started doing the bulk of my games mastering online via virtual tabletops such as Fantasy Grounds and Roll20.
I’d really like to spend a campaign or more emphasising exploration. Hex crawls seem like they would be really fun to run and a great way to give the player’s agency. It may require a bit more work than usual for me to come up with sufficient hooks that the players are wandering heroes, rather than the more stereotypical murder-hobos (my regular players and I prefer to play heroes), but once we get into the mindset I think it will be great fun and it will certainly be interesting to see how such a campaign differs from the usual linear fare we’ve been playing in for the past 20 years or so.
Hex crawls aren’t unique to OSR rule sets, far from it – Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign has a section on Exploration which gives some guidelines for a hex crawl in that system, but I feel that OSR rules will make them easier to create and run. The stat blocks of an OSR monster are significantly simpler than Pathfinder and even 5th edition D&D, for example compare the humble skeleton in: Swords & Wizardry, D&D 5e and Pathfinder.
These simpler stat blocks (and thus easier creation of custom monsters) lend themselves much more readily to improvised combat situations and preparing content which may never be used. With an OSR system your random encounter table can include a full monster stat block and still only require one line per encounter.
OSR rules are generally much easier to hack about and create interesting mechanics. A player recently confessed that one of their favourite moments in a campaign I ran last year was where their character won an archery contest, even when the odds were against them. This was a 5th edition campaign and the tournament mechanics were based on some rules for Archery Contests in an issue of En5ider. These are the kind of situations I’d like to run more of. I have all sorts of ideas but generally don’t get around to using them in my games, mostly because I spend too much time preparing for potential combat encounters (and a little bit that I fear a battle with the rules lawyer when I disagree with some published mechanics they’ve read).
In summary, what I want from OSR gaming are simpler mechanics that help me improvise more easily and encourage sandbox/exploration games.