Any grognards in the room? (OSR gaming)

[nikolokolus]

After a somewhat long layoff from tabletop gaming, I started to get that itch to play again after I stumbled on to a lot of OSR (Old-school Revival) blogs and material sort of by accident. After diving in, man I've really want to put together a game of weird fantasy, free booting and swords and sorcery (basically gaming based on a mishmash of influences including: Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber and Micheal Moorc o ck's books).  Not to disparage anyone who likes WotC's vision of D&D, but the OSR stuff has been so compelling not just because 3.x D&D (and especially 4e) finally wore me out and sort of sucked the fun out tabletop gaming for me a few years back (especially as the rules became more battle-mat focused and bogged down with "video-gamey" elements) but my best gaming memories are still of that old red box and playing Keep on the Borderlands with all of the weird Erol Otus and Russ Nicholson art that always got my creative juices flowing.

 

So on a whim I busted out my old Basic D&D Cyclopedia and 1st ed. AD&D stuff from boxes and I even strolled over to DriverthruRPG to pick up some retro clone stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics and I've started to rebuild my old home-brew world from memory and I'm feeling pretty inspired; writing a lot of good material, developing some good hooks, but alas no one that I know seems the least bit interested in playing something that isn't 4e or Pathfinder.

 

So has anybody else been bitten by the OSR bug or played an old or retro-clone game recently and has any experiences or advice they'd like to share?

 

 

Edit:  Apparently the author the Elric, Corum, Oswald Bastable and Von Bek novels doesn't pass the swear filter?

Edited July 29, 2013 by nikolokolus

[Walsingham]

After a somewhat long layoff from tabletop gaming, I started to get that itch to play again after I stumbled on to a lot of OSR (Old-school Revival) blogs and material sort of by accident. After diving in, man I've really want to put together a game of weird fantasy, free booting and swords and sorcery (basically gaming based on a mishmash of influences including: Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber and Micheal Moorc o ck's books).  Not to disparage anyone who likes WotC's vision of D&D, but the OSR stuff has been so compelling not just because 3.x D&D (and especially 4e) finally wore me out and sort of sucked the fun out tabletop gaming for me a few years back (especially as the rules became more battle-mat focused and bogged down with "video-gamey" elements) but my best gaming memories are still of that old red box and playing Keep on the Borderlands with all of the weird Erol Otus and Russ Nicholson art that always got my creative juices flowing.

 

So on a whim I busted out my old Basic D&D Cyclopedia and 1st ed. AD&D stuff from boxes and I even strolled over to DriverthruRPG to pick up some retro clone stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics and I've started to rebuild my old home-brew world from memory and I'm feeling pretty inspired; writing a lot of good material, developing some good hooks, but alas no one that I know seems the least bit interested in playing something that isn't 4e or Pathfinder.

 

So has anybody else been bitten by the OSR bug or played an old or retro-clone game recently and has any experiences or advice they'd like to share?

 

 

Edit:  Apparently the author the Elric, Corum, Oswald Bastable and Von Bek novels doesn't pass the swear filter?

 

Apologies if you've been about and I just haven't seen you. Welcome.

 

Yes, we've spent about the last eight months running a 1988 edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP) campaign. My top three observations are as follows:

 

1) The world building source material is often comparatively weak. I don't mean sparse and undeveloped. I mean weak.

 

2) To circumvent this I set the campaign outside the given core world and used inspirational material - historical, Captain Alatriste, When Gravity Fails, A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

 

3) I found the game mechanics a little underdeveloped. But they avoid the sin of being too comprehensive and or too simple.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

So has anybody else been bitten by the OSR bug or played an old or retro-clone game recently and has any experiences or advice they'd like to share?

 

 

My advice: read the Hack & Slash blog. It has some amazing materials and GMing advice.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

No me. Don't get me wrong, the new D&D is awful, but Pathfinder is ****ing great and Shadowrun 5th edition seems pretty cool.

[nikolokolus]

 

 

So has anybody else been bitten by the OSR bug or played an old or retro-clone game recently and has any experiences or advice they'd like to share?

 

 

My advice: read the Hack & Slash blog. It has some amazing materials and GMing advice.

 

Thanks, I'll check that out.

[nikolokolus]

 

After a somewhat long layoff from tabletop gaming, I started to get that itch to play again after I stumbled on to a lot of OSR (Old-school Revival) blogs and material sort of by accident. After diving in, man I've really want to put together a game of weird fantasy, free booting and swords and sorcery (basically gaming based on a mishmash of influences including: Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber and Micheal Moorc o ck's books).  Not to disparage anyone who likes WotC's vision of D&D, but the OSR stuff has been so compelling not just because 3.x D&D (and especially 4e) finally wore me out and sort of sucked the fun out tabletop gaming for me a few years back (especially as the rules became more battle-mat focused and bogged down with "video-gamey" elements) but my best gaming memories are still of that old red box and playing Keep on the Borderlands with all of the weird Erol Otus and Russ Nicholson art that always got my creative juices flowing.

 

So on a whim I busted out my old Basic D&D Cyclopedia and 1st ed. AD&D stuff from boxes and I even strolled over to DriverthruRPG to pick up some retro clone stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics and I've started to rebuild my old home-brew world from memory and I'm feeling pretty inspired; writing a lot of good material, developing some good hooks, but alas no one that I know seems the least bit interested in playing something that isn't 4e or Pathfinder.

 

So has anybody else been bitten by the OSR bug or played an old or retro-clone game recently and has any experiences or advice they'd like to share?

 

 

Edit:  Apparently the author the Elric, Corum, Oswald Bastable and Von Bek novels doesn't pass the swear filter?

 

Apologies if you've been about and I just haven't seen you. Welcome.

 

Yes, we've spent about the last eight months running a 1988 edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP) campaign. My top three observations are as follows:

 

1) The world building source material is often comparatively weak. I don't mean sparse and undeveloped. I mean weak.

 

2) To circumvent this I set the campaign outside the given core world and used inspirational material - historical, Captain Alatriste, When Gravity Fails, A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

 

3) I found the game mechanics a little underdeveloped. But they avoid the sin of being too comprehensive and or too simple.

 

Awesome.  I never really got a chance to play WHFRP, but I loved Gamesworkshop's magazine and the artwork surrounding the game always inspired the hell out of me.  As for source material and world building, I've always been more of a build my own kind of guy, because frankly I've always been terrible at keeping somebody else's creative intricacies straight in my head and I loathe when some players will try to override some ruling by quoting chapter and verse about some published game-world that they've clearly spent hundreds of hours memorizing *shakes fist at Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance*

 

EDIT:

And no, I haven't really been around much on this sub-forum at all.  Just a little bit of light lurking.

Edited July 30, 2013 by nikolokolus

[Walsingham]

What I always say to the 'lawyers' is to ask which country or town or history is definitive in our world (there isn't), then ask how there could possibly be one for any other.

 

Imagine, for example, an RPG set in the trenches in WW1. Except there are three rulebooks: British, Turkish, and German. You won't hav ethe same locations, rules, or even 'monsters' in all three.

[Amentep]

DM is the ultimate arbitrator anyhow; as much as I have rules lawyery tendencies, everyone at the game has to agree to let the game flow.

 

If not the rules lawyer needs to be the DM so it goes their way.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Amentep

[Thuringwethil]

DM is the ultimate arbitrator anyhow; as much as I have rules lawyery tendencies, everyone at the game has to agree to let the game flow.

 

If not the rules lawyer needs to be the DM so it goes their way.

My experience is that a table full of rules-lawyers can easily be a recipe for trouble regardless of which one happens to be DMing.

Amentep speaks truth: everyone at the game has to agree to  let the game flow.