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Old 02-23-2021, 02:00 PM   #8
Cpt_Clyde
 
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Ottawa
Default Re: Old School Renaissance?

I consider myself an OSR fan but didn't actually start playing RPGs until '88. By then we pretty much only played long story driven campaigns.... or at least aspired to. Our characters never died or even really came close.
These days I've been really enjoying going back and "playing old-school proper" using the good old D&D Rules Cycplodedia. I also use the amazing (free) Basic Fantasy RPG book which is a new system which pretty closely copies B/X D&D without the ascending AC.
For us, OSR style play is just a more light hearted way of playing which can be quite enjoyable and has honestly re-kindled my love for fantasy RPGs. The things we like about OSR styleplay is the simplicity of character creation, the deadliness of play and the ability to rely on random tables to generate most of the hexcrawl/dungoen crawl on the fly.
But I must agree that D&D is (and has always been) an inferior game compared to GURPS. I've always said GURPS does every other game better than they do. And it's been proven once again for us, as of late we've been playing old-school style dungeon crawl campaigns using GURPS and it's been a blast. We do not bother with Dungeon Fantasy. That';s WAY to overpowered for "level 1 characters". Instead we roll up our PCs using 3d6 in a couple mins. Everyone runs 1-4 characters at any one time because characters die. A lot. And it's hilarious the situations these poor peasants find themselves in. And the best part is thanks to GURPS, as the PCs progress they actually become interesting fleshed out people with amazing variety. Not just another lame 9th level human fighter as in the true old days of OSR. I do not miss the lack of customization in the old systems.
Here's some video demonstration of our play style:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...1C1qiJTXTp4KL1
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