OSR Games - What do you like and why?

[Admin Pete]

We have these days all kinds of "*OSR" games and I am curious what people like and why? What about a particular game makes you like it? Does it have a unique twist or sometime truly original or a great friendly layout and readable font or well organized and easy to follow or something else that make you like it?  Please share this with us. This is not a thread to tell us what you do not like about any game or anything negative, just do you like something and why.


*Also I do not care in this thread how you define OSR. It can be Old School Role-Playing, Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival, Old School Resistance or something else, that is not relevant to this thread.

[makofan]

My first exposure was Holmes version of D&D. Warts and all, it fired my imagination. I learned to make things up to cover the gaps, and now I prefer that to 500-page rulebooks.

Traveller was so elegant - using hexadecimal notation! It was the "C-programming of games". From a bare skeleton you could flesh out anything.

[tetramorph]

I wish I could help you out here, Admin Pete, but the sad truth of it is that I just like D&D (original).

If I did space opera, it would be D&D in space.

If I did old west, it would be D&D in the old west.

I just don't want any other rules anymore!

I'm too old and it's what I know and it works!

But I've played in LL games and in AS&SH games and they were awesome.

I'll play in rule systems that I would not referee.

[Admin Pete]

Hey, tetramorph, I didn't specify play or ref . So you like LL and AS&SH to play, so tell me what makes you call them awesome? What is it that you liked so much?  Any game that anyone has reffed, played or even just read, is fair game here under the question in the O

[makofan]

LL is like a well-edited complete B/X. All my players like it whenever I run it

[ffilz]

My list of the games I am most interested in includes three old school games (and one new school game that I would say is highly informed by the OSR).

OD&D - Why? Because it works. I've never stopped liking the kind of play that OD&D supports even if I went off in wild directions with new school games.

RuneQuest II - Why? I just really like how the cults work in the game and the experience system. Combat is definitely more complex than OD&D, but still reasonably quick.

Classic Traveller - Why? I'm heavily on the Books 1-3 "urTraveller" because it promises to be an interesting game, with many of the same features as OD&D.

Frank

[tetramorph]

Feb 13, 2017 21:30:06 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Hey, tetramorph, I didn't specify play or ref . So you like LL and AS&SH to play, so tell me what makes you call them awesome? What is it that you liked so much?  Any game that anyone has reffed, played or even just read, is fair game here under the question in the O

I think in both cases it was less about the rules and more about the ref and the quality of the module.

[mormonyoyoman]

OSR was introduced to me as a revival and renaissance of the style of play that was one step (MAYbe two) removed from Cowboys and Indians gaming of yesteryear's children. It might have had well structured rules and writing, or either, or neither. What it DID have was a forced responsibility on player and gamesmaster to get along well enough to complete a shared adventure that worked more in the mind than on paper. Paper was needed (before electronic records could be used) only to keep track of what happened - at least, according to the record keeper - and rules were useful only if they helped things happen.

Rules which could help players and GMs do this were the ideal goal of creators. After awhile, subordinate goals were fragmented from the ideal goal, and specific types of rules were created.

Some think that OSR only means D&D-like. Yet any rules which deliver, with minimal house rulings, the same experience and excitement of "YIKES! That felt REAL!" is OSR. Blackmoor and D&D get the biggest and best credits for showing us how to deliver that in a repeatable way.

That others learned to do the same thing with different rules, in no way diminishes these originals.

When the focus is on different intents and/or different experiences - when you are no longer experiencing what isn't happening - it's no longer an OSR gaming experience.