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02-20-2021, 03:08 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Old School Renaissance?
Of late I've been hearing about something called Old School Revival or Renaissance. Does anyone here know about this stuff?
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
02-20-2021, 03:20 PM | #2 |
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
That wiki page isn't a bad introduction. It's a movement of mostly older gamers which uses older--like, pre-AD&D--editions of D&D and similar very early RPGs as inspiration. There are a number of OSR products on the market produced in deliberate emulation of those old games in structure, content, and appearance. Relatively rules light ("Rulings rather than rules" is a common motto), mostly about killing things and taking their stuff rather than more complex plots, but on purpose this time rather than operating in the framework of pioneering an entirely new genre of gaming in the 70s when none of us really knew what we were doing. It strikes me as being somewhere between nostalgia and an attempt to create what us older gamers now like to think we could have experienced back then.
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I've been making pointlessly shiny things, and I've got some gaming-related stuff as well as 3d printing designs. Buy my Warehouse 23 stuff, dammit! |
02-20-2021, 03:35 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
Try Matt Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming for a better summary of the intent.
Note that this "movement" is more than a decade old, and has had plenty of time to turn on itself, schism into factions, and re-define itself. There are as many versions as there are writers, many of them contradictory. Note, also, that as a gamer who lived through the era (started playing in 1976), I sometimes find my recollections at odds with the features that OSR advocates ascribe to it. |
02-20-2021, 03:47 PM | #4 |
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
As a gamer of similar vintage (I started no later than '78, no earlier than '77), I concur.
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I've been making pointlessly shiny things, and I've got some gaming-related stuff as well as 3d printing designs. Buy my Warehouse 23 stuff, dammit! |
02-20-2021, 08:25 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
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I believe Castles & Crusades counts as OSR. It was certainly very like 1e in rules terms. I made the mistake of playing a Fighter in a short C&C camapign and it was incredibly boring (just like 1e). I've had fun playing fighters in 2e games even in recent years. If you end up in some OSR game I recommend that everyone play Magic-users. Casting spells and comically trying to avoid losing your single digit's worth of HP are the only fun to be had. I miss lots of things from 40 years ago but game rule sets aren't one of them.
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Fred Brackin |
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02-20-2021, 09:27 PM | #6 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
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Unfortunately, the OSR is also full of fundamentalism, historical revisionism, sock puppets, and internal political bickering. Blood-feuds erupt over whether Arneson or Gygax (or someone else) gets the credit for inventing D&D or RPGs. Propaganda gets published and criticism gets suppressed. If you engage in the OSR, do it purely as a consumer of their gaming products, not as a designer or forum participant! |
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03-25-2021, 05:55 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
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Also, the base ruleset from which they modify is just about evenly split between Original D&D (axiomatically with sups 1 & 2), and Moldvay's Basic Set; OSRIC was by grogs for grogs and kicked off the OSR, but the OSR rapidly moved away from OSRIC as the dominant clone. A smaller set are based upon reducing OSRIC in specific ways. One is a direct clone of the 4th edition of basic rules, the Cyclopedia, and it's Wrath of the Immortals supplement: Dark Dungeons. I've not seen a specific Holmes clone nor BECMI clone, but BECMI is covered closely enough in Dark Dungeons. |
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03-25-2021, 07:05 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
There's the Blueholme rules. Excuse me, "BLUEHOLME™," with a bunch of marketed variants. The author never, EVER writes the name without the trademark symbol.
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03-25-2021, 10:53 AM | #9 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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04-06-2021, 08:22 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Apr 2012
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Re: Old School Renaissance?
As one who played OD&D in the late 70's, I don't miss the random character stat generation. Roll 3d6 six times, no stat higher then 11. Next person rolls same dice six times, no stat lower then 12. What I do miss is the feeling that the characters have some control over their lives. Many of the modern 1-20 adventure paths seem like poorly disguised movie scripts where most of the action is pre-determined. "After accepting the mission to rescue the prince, the PCs exit town to the north until scripted encounter 1. After defeating the encounter the PCs continue until scripted encounter 2. After defeating the encounter and finding the key, the PCs soon arrive at the dungeon.... ".
Most of the campaigns in the early days were ad-hoc short missions often punctuated with a run through a freshly purchased module perhaps with a session of wandering around the countryside using the random encounter tables. Often, the GM would let the players choose what the next adventure was going to be. After our Pathfinder sessions were paused due to Covid, we started up a TFT game over Roll20. We have gained 2 players attracted by the relative simplicity of TFT ruleset and the GM running a non-scripted adventure. |
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