What is the OSR

Posted this first on substack because my wife has been active there, trying to support her(she is @sarahsoloadventures, and I am @wagalade). 

What is the OSR? The perennial question asked alike by navel-gazing grognards and perplexed youngsters in our gaming hobby. And by my wife @Sarah Blount. So in an effort to confuse her even further I'm giving a small (if you saw my full list of bookmarks you'd agree this is a small number too) collection of posts others have made about the OSR, both lambasting it, praising it, trying to explain it, and even going over the long(where has the time gone?) history of this niche subset of our niche hobby:

https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2014/10/osr-defined.html

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/where-hell-old-school-renaissance-come.html

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/09/once-againthe-deal-with-old-school.html

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2025/10/what-is-point-of-osr.html

https://lordofthegreendragons.blogspot.com/2010/07/from-desktop-my-final-stance-on-osr.html

https://www.greyhawkgrognard.com/2019/06/02/the-osr-has-no-gatekeepers/

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109033331/https://hexed.press/2018/01/25/o-s-r/

https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-osr-as-d-stuckists.html

https://pitsperilous.blogspot.com/2020/03/nostalgia-ok-osr-boomer.html

https://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2016/06/what-i-remember-rant-about-old-school.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-i.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-ii.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-iii.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-iv.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-v.html

On Adventures vs Campaigns

So kinda inspired by certain posts I've seen around the blogosphere recently and what's been going on in my own recent campaign. 

This kinda goes back to an earlier post I wrote about why I dont like to run adventure modules. I've been running B4 the lost city for one of my groups for a bit now, but I had to take a lot of time to prep for it. Basically I had to rewrite the entire module just so I could run it, I made a few changes to fit with my world, but its mostly unchanged. It went from a 32 page module to 5 pages of notes and redrawn maps(with more detail). I had to do this partly because the module is overly wordy, but mostly because "running a module" just doesn't fit with how I run my world. I had to turn the module into a setting(which ultimately resulted into some really unexpected outcomes)

I've got this one player who keeps asking me to run this or that old module for him, and I keep saying that they exist as locations and he would have to get his pc to make the effort to discover and go to that place(which he finally did for the lost city). Because I use my version of mystara that means that most of the basic line of modules are present in my world, I just don't run them as "adventurers" that I take the party on. 

I run a setting not an adventure. I don't separate between the two. The current actions of the PCs are the adventure, they don't go from one adventure to another, going through a cycle of Dungeons and plots and whatnot. The only real thing separating "adventures" is each individual session we get to play; it's all one continous adventure. The adventure is the players(not the pcs, but the actual players) discovering my world and interacting with it. Without their direct interaction, there is no game. As much effort as I put into the campaign setting it is nothing without someone else playing in it and finding their own adventure. 

It's my job to present the setting, and most assuredly not to give the players an "adventure" to play through; the adventure is created by them.

Delvers and Denizens: Design Goals

Go to the Delvers and Denizens Index

So I wrote a rough draft of this post in early 2019 and I've finally gone back and revised it; my views are still well reflected in what I wrote then. I've held back on posting it because I wanted to also post links to my UGS rulesets I mention in the post, but the files were disorganized and lost their formatting because the originals were saved with word perfect, and they got all jumbled up when I opened them in Microsoft Word. So instead of going back to the oldest files, I just converted the newest complete version(which was in Word) to PDF and maybe eventually I'll release older versions of the game. Without further ado, here are my opinions on RPG design in general . . . 

I designed an RPG in my senior year of high school; there have been 6 major versions or "editions." The impetus for this new game came about because I was constantly making new rules for D&D to incorporate things from newer editions of the game or to 'fix' problems I found in D&D, so I figured if D&D was so broken and I was making all these rules anyway, I might as well write my own game. The original ur-document of this new game was derivative of BECMI D&D with influences from 2nd and 3rd edition and and Alternity mostly. During the design process I researched practically every rpg I could get my hands on(digitally anyway, it was a lot harder to find pdfs for out of print games back then, sometimes I would resort to descriptions of a game system instead of reading a book). I quickly switched away from a D20 system to a D6 dice pool skill based system with rules I liked cherry picked from various other game systems; I called this game UGS(Universal Gaming System). I completed the 1st version by the end of 2010. Over the years I continued to develop the game and there were 5 complete versions or 'editions.' I changed the name a few times because I thought UGS sounded too similar to GURPS. While I was in university in 2017 I was working on a 6th version, revamping the skills, when I decided to abandon this game, not because the mechanics or system are bad but because I've come to the realization that I never designed the game I simply compiled it. I didn't have any overarching design goals other it being a game I wanted to and could play in any setting (which I've come to realize can be done with DND or a variety of other games).

To actually design an RPG there has to be goals and a plan to reach those goals. The game should be created with a purpose in mind and everything should tie back to that purpose. I made the mistake with UGS of just wanting a game where it could be adapted to any setting. I created a universal mechanic and then made everything mechanically sound, but without any real purpose of what I wanted out of the game. There was no actual plan or design goals beyond having the mechanics work together.

I learned a lot from creating UGS. I did a lot of research into the mechanics of other RPGs, about combat and weapons and real life professions, trades, and skills. I also came to the realization that this is not the game I want to be playing. It has many pieces of what I want from a game, but because it was never designed it doesn't fit my vision of the perfect RPG system. I've come to an understanding that in designing an RPG it's critical to set clearly defined goals and to make specific plans on how to execute those goals. A perfect example of a game which was not designed vs one that was:  the Original D&D from 74 vs AD&D1e.

The next RPG I want to design is an OSR D&Dish game that could be called a fantasy heartbreaker or maybe a retroclone. Though it's not really a clone of anything; I'm not trying to emulate any specific version of the game, maybe BECMI a little, but only because that's the version I'm most familiar with. Details about my design goals follow.

So this OSR game I'll be working on has the working title of Delvers and Denizens. My main goal is to create a game that is compatible with most versions of D&D or retroclones and for the game to still 'feel' like D&D. It will of course have my personal touch to create the game I want to run. Most of all I want to maintain compatibility, if something is no longer easily convertible to or from D&D then I've gone too far. I also want to avoid any universal mechanics. There will be discreet systems for each possible task/resolution, similar to TSR D&D as opposed to WOTC D&D.

Some specific systems/smaller goals I have: use a class system with a corresponding subclass/profession type associated with each class; name level titles are a character's prefession; include a wound system that is complementary to HP, but doesn't replace it;  create a new system for divine magic while being compatible with the old spell lists; refine vancian magic to be more vancian(ie in line with the fiction vance wrote); and also make non human magic(elves) inherent and not based on spells; nonhuman peoples will be designed different than humans in significant ways, and any adventurers of these species will be abnormal; create a social interaction system that is just as detailed as combat but still encourages freeform role-playing. And above all I want it to be a game that runs well at the table, my experience with OSE has shown just how much layout is important to an RPG.

Some things I want to include in the book: 

basic rules
solo training adventure for new players
training adventure for dm
gm book-how to run, how to make rules, how to make setting
setting book-special rules and fluff

Other possible expansions:

Dwellings and Dens(about city and wilderness games)

Domains and ???? (about domain management and warfare)

???? (superhero book based on the goldbox Immortals rules set)

You may notice most of the houserules I've developed here on this blog recently have been in line with my design goals of Delvers and Denizens, I've just held off on announcing the title. Over the course of the next few weeks/months I will be posting my houserules which I haven't previously talked about on this blog that I have been using that will form the backbone of this system.

You can find version 5.2 of UGS here, if you're interested in perusing it.

On Modules

Recently I've had one of my players badger me consistently to run this or that module, and I keep saying that if they go to that part of the world then they will encounter what's in the module. And honestly the modules I do have in my game world are all site based locations located in specific places in the world of mystara, they are part of the lore/background of the setting (for example I have the tunnels under threshold and the temple of the shield connected to my megadungeon which have both been partiallyexplored by my current group).  I almost never run modules that aren't baked into the setting. The modules put out for OSE recently are pretty good as far as modules go, but I have yet to buy a single one. And I tend to ignore all the modules coming out of kickstarter too, whether they are OSR-adjacent or not. I just have no use for them, and I feel they are a detriment to DMs really fulfilling their potential.

You might ask whats my beef with modules, or why I think they are a primary cause of bad games. 

First off, I dont need someone else to do my imagining for me (something gygax originally supported, until he realized the plebes would give him $$$); I already have too many ideas to actually put in play. 

The real problem with modules is prep. I realize most people use modules because they think it saves them on prep time, but I believe that's a false assumption. Time is one factor in my poor opinion of modules, but it really comes down to knowledge of the material (which is why prep time is a problem). My first rule of DMing, which I try to impart to others but noone really seems to take to heart, is modified axiom from my college days: "know your setting,  be your setting" (the original pertains to GIS, know your data, be your data). If you know your setting,  every other detail of dming will follow. And this is where the problem with modules arises, because the module is written by someone other than oneself it takes a tremendous amount of labor to really know it and thus dm it well. Sure modules can be run without being overly familiar with them, but that usually leads to a very poor running and some degree of obvious railroading. 

Essentially it comes down to the quality of game you want to run vs how much time you want to put into prep. In general, any game session I run will be better if I do a half-assed completely improv session, than if I do a module which I just skimmed through or read completely only once. And sure I can do a well-run session using  a module, but at that point it must be practically memorized, and in the time it takes to get to know the module to that degree I could have prepared so much more material myself. And even the well run module will rarely measure up to my own material. 

Now I can hear everyone saying that modules are a great tool for beginner DMs to learn from. I call BS. I've helped over a dozen(probably more, but I'm not really counting)  players transition to DMing, and the most common thing I've found is that they all have a lack of confidence, whether running a module or not. Yet in all cases the dms who start with their own material tend to run better sessions(but let's be honest,  every 1st time dm is pretty bad),  and more importantly, they tend to stick with it and want to learn to be better. The desire to learn and grow as a dm is stifled when half the job is done by someone else; it's nearly impossible to really know the setting if you didn't make it yourself.

Degrees of Difficulty

So listening to a the revisionist history podcast by Malcolm gladwell, and he brings up the subject of degrees of difficulty as used in judging professional divers. I think it is relevant to any rpg using Difficulty Checks or assigning Target Numbers to tasks. The difference between the difficulty of doing a thing or doing a thing well are also discussed,  and I think that is extremely relevant to being a DM; it's easy to start DMing, but really hard to be a good DM. The relevant part of conversation starts at about the 15 minute mark

Wilderness Exploration and Journeys

 For a long time now I've wanted to develop a robust rule-set for traveling on long journeys as opposed to the classical hex crawl of D&D. What I mean by a journey is when the PCs want to go from city A to City B and they take the King's Road or some such. They aren't mapping or getting lost or doing any kind of exploration. They just want to get to the destination, and it is anti climactic to just say you travel for eight days and you get there, or they travel for 3 days, random encounter, travel, for 2 days, random encounter, travel for 3 days and they arrive. It never feels like they actually traveled. 

So towards that end, I've been looking at the house-rules of other people, and most recently examining The One Ring and its 5e adaptation Adventures in Middle-Earth. I was working on converting it wholesale when it hit me: long journeys and detailed wilderness exploration don't need separate rule-sets. Sure I can have a robust travel ruleset that expands on the normal D&D rules by giving PCs tasks of scouting, or foraging, etc, but I can use the same method for both aspects. The only real difference between the two modes of travel is the navigation, or getting lost. Just skip that step when the PCs are on a road or river. Resolving all the travel tasks every day, instead of trying to figure every 3 days or 5 days like TOR, can give the journey a sense of length. Every single day matters. 

I'm also of the opinion that wilderness exploration should not be done on a day by day basis, and even the 4 hour watch may be too long of a time frame, because the PCs are exploring and don't have a destination in mind; if they did they would be following a road or river. But that's beside the point. Journeys require the same day to day resolution of tasks as wilderness exploration, discounting navigation rolls.

Weapon vs Armor Adjustments

Go to the Delvers and Denizens Index

Dan Collins at Delta's D&D Hotspot recently did a statistical deep dive into the weapon vs armor table in the 1e AD&D PHB. Essentially the numbers come from the Chainmail man to man melee table, but Gygax did his math wrong. This is why the numbers in the PHB don't even remotely reflect historical reality. The numbers in Chainmail aren't exactly historically precise either, but at least they feel like they could be reasonable.

In my last effort at putting together houserules for OSE I considered using a weapon vs armor table, but since the one in AD&D is so ridiculous I tried to make my own. To do this I thought about restricting AC just to specific armors as originally intended and have dex add to hp instead of con. However, in the end I decided against it because if AC equaled actual armor types then I would have to redo the AC for every single monster, which I wasn't about to do. So AC is an abstract concept representing how difficult it is, or how much effort is required, to actually cause a significant injury. I tried assigning specific +or- values to hit for each weapon vs armor types, e.g. giving +2 to hit chain for maces to represent the fact that the chain doesn't protect against bludgeoning weapons, but the padding underneath would. I found it too fiddly though, and I ended up giving certain weapons Target Specialization(granting advantage or disadvantage) vs certain armor types, such as chain, or padded, or plate, and this bonus would apply to monsters with a similar type of 'natural armor' like dragon scales, etc. So this is what I came up with:

So spurred on by Dan's analysis and by this post with a further conversion of the chainmail numbers, I decided to do my own take. 

First, since chainmail used a 2d6 as a basis we can assume that a 7 to kill is average. So going from there I extrapolated the probabilities of getting below or above seven and converted that to a bonus or penalty, numbers above 7 result in some -%, and numbers below seven result in some positive %:

then I took the numbers needed to roll a hit in Chainmail, resulting in a kill, and converted the 2d6 number to a % bonus or penalty. For the missile weapons I took an average value of all three ranges:

From this it's simply a matter of dividing by five to convert to a d20 to hit roll as +or-1 is the same as +or-5%. I ignored the values for shields as I have my own rules for shields and their use is very situational, as opposed to armor which is always there. So this is what the Chainmail values to kill would be converted as adjustments to hit:

Some of the numbers make sense to me, like the huge penalties to bows vs plate; its not really any of the numbers that bother me, but comparing them to each other. What's the difference bewteen a horse bow and a composite bow? I'm assuming a horse bow implies a bow used by the different steppe cultures, but all those bows were composite, so why have two listings? And why is the 2-handed sword better at killing someone in armor than the lance? That is so ridiculous. and why are the polearm and halbard so drastically different? did Gary not know that a halbard is a polearm? And the Spear, I mean come on. And the drastic differences between a mace, morningstar, and flail; why would weapons that are so similar have such huge differences in effectiveness? 

So, I think we can conclude that Gary set a few of these numbers based on what he knew about history and pulled the rest out of his ass. I think I'm going to stick with advantage/disadvantage as it better represents the vicissitudes of combat, rather than try to work this table so it represents reality.

What is a Class?

Dungeons and Dragons is a fundamentally class based game, I think that is fairly self-evident from the earliest versions of the game. Any skill-system was tacked on in the later development of the game, and whether taking the form of non-weapon proficiencies of AD&D or the skills of the Rules Cyclopedia or WOTC D&D, these skills never worked in harmony with the classes. What exactly is boundary between a class ability and a skill or a skill and a feat? I think the impetus to add skills to the game came from a misunderstanding of what a class is.

There seems to be an instinctual tendency to view the D&D classes as somehow equivalent to the Social Class of a character. This probably goes back to the original game when it stated that high level fighters could become barons. In modern times a class is most often associated with a defined 'archetype', and these 'archetypes' tend to get more and more specific so that they make the base classes irrelevant. Whether you see it as representing the social class or the archetype of a character, this view of a class necessitates the addition of a skill system. 

If fighter is a PC's social class, then this means the character is a fighter and will always be a fighter unless some drastic changes happen in the fiction of the game world wherein he jumps social classes. Therefore, in order to allow this fighter to learn any skills not granted by his fighter levels there must exist a separate system to allow him to learn them. If the fighter wants to learn to Sail, he isn't going to get that ability by doing more adventuring and gaining experience and subsequent levels, he has to spend time training this new sailing ability completely unrelated to his fighter class. Thus was born the myriad of skill systems that have been invented for D&D. This essentially means a person's profession is independent of their class and that people automatically gain abilities based on the status of their birth. 

On the other hand, we can directly equate a character's class to their profession. Characters gain skill through their class and they improve those skills by leveling up their class. This necessitates the ability for a character to multi-class. Training in a new class is literally training a new profession. If a fighter wanted to learn to sail they would spend time training and gaining levels in the Sailor class. Skills do not need to be separated from class, they are what make a class what it is. A person can be a Noble and also a fighter and a courtier and a spy. There is no need to explain how a fighter suddenly became a thief. These are simply professions that can be trained; If the fighter is born a Noble, that is their identity not whether they are a fighter or thief. Social status can be completely divorced from skills and profession.

Milestone XP

Dan and Paul talked about XP in their wandering DMs podcast here and Alexis recently put up a post about Milestone XP awards here.

After playing in a 5e game for a while now I have come to detest Milestone Awards for xp or leveling. In the past I have played in D&D games where xp was awarded through 'milestones', yet it was always xp that was awarded and not direct levels. I have also played in skill based games where xp was awarded based on story milestones. In both cases I tolerated the practice, yet now with a new perspective I see the perniciousness of milestones in conjunction with D&D.

The root of the problem applies to all RPGs in general; milestone awards are given out when the DM feels like it. The advancement of a PC is entirely dependent on the whims of the DM, granted that could be said for every other method of XP awards, yet with milestones a player has no real choice in the matter. Using milestones to level up a D&D robs a player of their choice to do things that will advance their character. What constitutes a 'milestone' is always an uncertainty to the player, and so it can seem as though anything they do has no consequence.

Level based games, like D&D, exacerbate the problem. In D&D it can take a significant number of sessions to level up when using standard XP awards. In skill based games, some XP is usually earned every session, and so even if the awarding of the xp is arbitrary and based on milestones, the player can still feel invested in their character. When a DM doesn't ever give out XP and just tells the players when the PCs have gained a level after 4 or 5 session or some arbitrary story point is passed, the significance of the increase in level is lost. That sense of reward and gradual increase that comes with every single session is gone, and the new level is just some new numbers on the character sheet. I don't feel like I earned that new level. And no matter how much work we put into the game as players, we have no idea how close we are to leveling up. There is no longer the incentive to do a little bit more so we can get that last 100xp. And in addition levels don't matter, not just because everything is scaled based on challenge ratings, but because being level 10 doesn't feel any different than level 1; my investment in my character hasn't increased over 10 levels. I don't feel like my character is more powerful. There are different numbers on the page, but we haven't changed our behavior in the game world. We don't act more powerful or experienced and the NPCs don't treat us any differently.

Railroad vs Sandbox

Just a quick rant here.

I listened to the plot points episode about ravenloft on my drive back from Sacramento last week, and then I was thinking about the railroad vs sandbox argument today again. In the podcast Ben Riggs makes the argument that Ravenloft is really a sandbox from the point to entering Barovia to the end where Strahd is defeated; as long as they accept the end goal of killing Stahd they are free to wander around Barovis and do whatever they want; all you know is the beginning and endpoint. He makes a pretty persuasive argument, but I think he's wrong.

First off let me start by saying there are issues with using the terms 'railroad' and 'sandbox'; the terms themselves don't really represent what we mean when talking about rpg campaigns, Alexis and others have discussed this. But for the sake of this argument I'll be using those terms because they are so widely accepted and understood in the gaming community.

Ravenloft is not a sandbox because the adventure requires the PCs to complete a singular goal! Most published adventures are not sandboxes for this same reason; the PCs are given an objective, usually defeat a villain, and then sets up obstacles to hinder them from completing that goal.

IF THE DESTINATION IS KNOWN THE GAME IS A RAILROAD!!!!

I'm going to go ahead and say that's what separates a sandbox campaign from a railroad campaign. This doesn't mean the railroad is bad in and of itself, just that there is a clear dividing line, and that line is drawn at how the players set their goals. If their goals are dictated by the dm or module writer then they are on a railroad, if the players create their own goals that they personally care about they are playing in a sandbox campaign.

When the players choose from a list presented to them by the dm, they aren't playing a sandbox. Just because they have multiple hooks to latch onto does not mean they are playing in a sandbox game. These games where the dm claims it is a sandbox because the PCs can go in any direction and there is always a hook for adventure are still railroads, simply with many branches. they are railroads because the dm is the one to present the options to the players, and like sheep they follow wherever the dm leads. When the players go and create an adventure out of something which the dm did not intend to be a hook is when those games can become true sandboxes.

In a sandbox the PCs will create their own goals and do things which are unheard of in most gaming circles. You won't have players setting out to become druglords, or wanting to own a farm, or organizing tournaments so they can prove they're the best fighters, or building modern nation states, or becoming vassal to two different kings, or founding a cult. I could go on. These types of events are not the norm when someone thinks of a D&D adventure, but they all happened while I was either running or playing D&D and not some other system designed to let us be crime lords or farmers, etc. These events occurred because the players set their own goals and set out to achieve them, sometimes unsuccessfully, and they were given the opportunity to do this while playing in a true sandbox. In a sandbox, the world is presented and the players decide what to do in the world; the DM has the world react to the PC decisions. Whereas in a railroad the players react to the world as presented by the DM, the players are always reacting and never making proactive decisions.

The difference between a Sandbox and a Railroad campaign are who is setting the end goals of the campaign.

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Ok, I guess that was a rather longer rant than planned. I should be putting a post up about my conclusions from analyzing the cleric spell list pretty soon. Also I've been reworking the turn undead table as a means for casting clerical spells, and I've almost finalized a set of new houserules for use with BX/Old School Essentials. Oh yeah, and in the near future I will starting a series of posts as a tutorial of how to build a set maps for your fantasy world using QGIS.

Broken Rules?

I play in a 5e game every Saturday morning and sometimes one of the players and our DM will get to discussing obscure rules minutia. I generally don't join in on these discussions because I find them to be fairly inane. Yesterday they were talking about an "exploit"(like this is video game or something)that some youtuber had discovered in the 5e rules that allowed a wizard to summon and control an infinite number of summoned Elementals. At the time I didn't put much stock in the conversation; they were just discussing how a Dm should rule on that particular ambiguity in the rules and why it's probably overpowered, but it could be interpreted in that overpowered way, etc. 

Now, looking back at what they were talking about, I feel like they were completely missing the mark. The discussion was about what the DM ruling should be from rules perspective and that it would "break the game", etc. I think this sort of thing should be considered not from a rules or power perspective, but from a setting and world-building perspective. From my understanding this 'exploit' required the use of a 9th level spell in the first place, so the question isn't really about whether it's too powerful, but what do you envision the powerful wizards in you world being able to do? If the Gme wants the greatest wizards in the land to be capable of summoning armies of Elementals and doing other magnificent feats and probably waging destructive wars as a result, then the DM should support the 'overpowered' interpretation of the rules. On the other hand if the DM wants a more grounded setting where the high level wizards can still do amazing things, but there are limits to their capabilities, then the DM should rule in favor of disallowing the 'exploit'. 

The DM's interpretation of 'broken rules' shouldn't be about whether one or another interpretation of the rule will 'break the game', but instead about what a certain interpretation says about the DM's world and what supports their vision.

Success in D&D

"The players want to win in spite of me. The more convinced they are that their success has been stolen from within the machinations of my game, the sweeter their success will be. Therefore, I must play the villain. My machinations must be complex, demanding insight and innovation. Yes, of course, I help the players; but I do this cleverly, in ways the players do not suspect . . . covering up my intercessions with play-acting, confusion, and a little luck on the die when it happens to not go 'my way.'"(How to Run, pg 31)

Here Alexis clearly explains what I meant when I discussed the need to be a cooperative DM.

Yes, you can 'win' D&D; It's not when you reach 20th level or 36th level or attain immortality, it's when you as player achieve a goal. The players succeed when they accomplish something they set out to do, not when they complete 'the plot' a DM has devised. And this success is only meaningful if the players feel they have earned that success. Therefore, the DM must cooperate with the players to allow them to seek out their own goals within the game and also to make the accomplishment of those goals mean something. The DM has earned that success as much as the players; It's something they've accomplished together.

The Cooperative DM

I was thinking about what I wrote in  my Why I DM post, and had some further thoughts to add.

I talked about the players giving me a constantly changing challenge that the AI of strategy computer games can't. Following that line of logic, why don't I just play multiplayer mode for those games? I would be challenging myself against a human opponent who I would have more difficulty predicting and manipulating. The answer lies in how the strategy game changes in multiplayer mode.

For me, these strategy games are a mental exercise and challenge. As soon as I enter multiplayer mode, it becomes a competition. First of all I don't like the hassle of setting up a multiplayer game in the first place, and second I don't like to lose (who does), which I often do because of how I play. I don't play strategy games to win; my goal isn't to 'beat' the AI. I will often draw the game out so it will last longer when I could have 'beat' the game fairly quickly. I don't care about competing, so when I do play against another human, my opponent often defeats me fairly easily because I'm not playing to win. So I usually stick to single player and spend the time to enjoy the game. My goal when I play a strategy game is to develop a strategy and see if I can execute it. It's an exercise of my mental faculties. I get enjoyment just from the play itself and the complex challenges that arise out of play.

I DM RPGs in the same way, I get enjoyment from the challenge of the play itself. In my last post about this, Scott Anderson said he doesn't see the DM as being oppositional or antagonistic. Well, I don't either, as I tried to explain in my reply. The reason RPGs are superior to computer strategy games is the human factor involved, as I explained in my previous post. And as I said above I don't play to compete. I don't take on a competitive stance when I DM. D&D is a cooperative game, and not just for the players. The DM has cooperate with the players just as the players have to cooperate with each other. I prefer to run D&D than to play strategy games because there is the human factor, but also because it is a cooperative game. I'm not out to kill the PCs, or stop their plans, my job is to cooperate with the players by presenting the setting as it is and narrating the consequences of player actions and how those actions affect the setting. My role is purely dependent on the players, so I have to cooperate with them to play the game in the first place. If I take an antagonistic role, the game will be over shortly and no one will have enjoyed themselves.

The Necessity of Rules in RPGs

I recently came across a discussion debating the validity of this quote by Gary Gygax, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." I'd just like to talk about my experience and opinions regarding the sentiment behind this. First off we should acknowledge that this was probably said in a business sense, meaning that if the DMs knew they didn't need rules or books published by the company, then RPG publishing wouldn't be a viable source of income.

Alexis Smolensk on the Tao of D&D blog has often explained the need for codified rules in an RPG with an emphasis on the Game aspect of Role-Playing Game. I generally tend to agree with what he has written on the subject. The more we treat RPGs as games and less as story-telling devices, the more varied and meaningful our game sessions will be.

However, some of my experience contradicts this sentiment. My best friend, Christian, invented what he called "Mind Games" before I met him or introduced him to D&D. These games were very similar in play to RPGS. He would take the role of narrator and anyone else would play a character. Before the game would start, Christian would describe the setting, and each player would describe their character. He would then describe events based on what we chose to do. There were no dice or paper or pencils or anything to keep records, except sometimes we would draw a map. Consequences of actions were decided by what is now called 'DM fiat' though we didn't know of the term at the time. In many ways it could be called a 'story-game'. Yet the game played out in a manner very similar to our D&D games run by my father at the same time. In my view at the time, it was D&D without any rules.

So, I guess the takeaway is that RPGs don't need rules if a certain style of play is wanted and if you have a good DM.

Why I DM

Over the years, I have heard other people explain why they like D&D so much, why they play and why they run. Some people like the social aspect, it is an excuse for them to hang out with friends; others like the world building and creative outlet, some like to see a story unfold. there are as many reasons as there are people playing the game. All of these explanations never really resonated with me, I always felt that  one particular reason might have some impact on on why I like to DM, but I was never able to pinpoint a singular aspect of the game that drove me to this obsession with D&D. Oh, I am able to say why I like to be a player in RPGs; I am there for the social environment, it is  somewhere where I can be myself and spend time with family and friends. when I act as a player in games where I don't know anybody I just don't really enjoy the game as much. But this isn't the case for me when I DM, sometimes I prefer to run for total strangers.

I was reading this post over at Paul's gameblog, and I had an epiphany; of course there are many contributing factors to why I like to DM so much, but the main reason I do so is the same reason I like to play large scale strategy computer games. I like to be challenged mentally, having to juggle several different variables and making on the fly judgement calls. It's all about strategy and planning and adapting to new circumstances. After so long playing these strategy computer games (Civilization, Age of Empires, Total War) they become stale and I begin to lose interest because even if the situations are new and the variables are never the same, the game engine is programmed and predictable. Once you learn how to manipulate the game, it is no longer a challenge. Even if the situation is different the solution will be the same. The game is programmed and therefore cannot have infinite variety and continuous challenge. D&D and other RPGs never have that problem, every situation is different and and every group is different. The challenge is always there and it will never seem stale.

The Expert Amateur

Alan McConchie has some interesting things to say about the work of so called amateurs; I recommend watching the whole video.

I think these ideas are also applicable to the RPG hobby, specifically the idea of the expert amateur. So much product in this hobby is put out by people who are basically amateurs; they haven't been trained in writing or publishing or game design or cartography. Despite this lack of training, many of these individuals are the best possible people that could be chosen to produce the material they work on because of their expertise. It is because individuals like Thorfinn Tait and Daniel Collins and Jon Peterson and Anna Meyer, among many others, are experts in their respective areas of interest that such great products can be made. It is through the work of these amateurs who are also experts that this hobby continuously expands and pushes new boundaries. You don't need to be a professional to be an expert, and sometimes the lack of training can be beneficial, giving the opportunity to see things from different perspectives.

A Vision for the Future

Upon watching this video of Rutger Bregman I was struck by something he said at 3:27, "we need some kind of vision for the future." He then mentions how MLK didn't have a nightmare, but a dream; Hillary Clinton said in an interview that she was the only thing standing in the way of the apocalypse; and how 'the left' is anti-everything, but don't have anything they are for.

I think this can be applied to the fantasy genre in general and even more specifically to RPGs. Let's first look at the root of most fantasy fiction, The Lord of the Rings. The basic plot of the trilogy is driven by the need to stop Sauron, and we're never really sure what his goals are. Essentially the heroes of the story want to maintain the status quo. This may work for this work of fiction where morality is black and white and certain species are clearly good or evil, yet this same idea of maintaining the status quo is juxtaposed with more modern fantasy settings where morality has more grey area. One of the most popular modern fantasy characters, Drizzt Do'Urden, who stars in 20+ books is a prime example of this. Excepting maybe the Homeland trilogy, where he has a goal to escape his stereotypically evil family, Drizzt never has a goal of his own, he is always working to stop a villainous plan or some great catastrophe. In some cases, yes he will assert himself, or more likely one of his friends will, and decide on a productive goal to accomplish, but this is only used to lead to the greater conflict in the book and he ends up having to stop a villain from accomplishing their goals. It is never about what he wants, it's about what he doesn't want. You can see this same pattern in so many different cases of modern fantasy fiction.

So, RPGs? Well, we see the same issue, especially among new players or DMs, and D&D games more than other RPGs I think (though this may be because new players/Dms come into the hobby through D&D). DMs have to create a 'plot' and lead the players by the nose to follow it. Then everyone is up in arms about railroaded adventures, but they still want to play in a planned adventure. And people claim that they are playing in a sandbox world when they are just given the option of following 3 different 'railroad' adventures. Whenever players are given the opportunity of unstructured play and the ability to pursue their own goals, complaints arise about the DM not doing their job. So the cycle continues, DMs create railroad adventures where some evil matermind is hatching a diabolical plot with worldshattering consequences, the PCs must work to stop the villian usually by killing him, the world is saved, the players retire their characters, and the DM has to create a new 'campaign' oftentimes in a different, but essentially the same setting. It's always about stopping the villain and not creating something new or improving some aspect of society in the fictional game world. That would be too hard and require too much foresight and introspection.

This may not be the case in all games or groups, but it is definitely the norm. I think this is more of a player problem than a DM problem, most DMs who have a little experience would be happy to run a different type of game. Therefore as players we must strive to make a difference in the game world, not through just maintaining the status quo, but by working as force of progress. Why is it the villain often has goals that the players in the real world might agree with, but the consequences are always 'the end of the world.' Perhaps, the PCs could work to upend society with a goal of 'Utopia' and the villain is the one trying to stop them and maintain the status quo? I just feel that players have a larger role in shaping the nature of the game than the DM, and it is our responsibility to realize that and have our PCs pursue personal goals and not just react to whatever the DM throws at them.

I meant to talk a little more about the state of politics and the messed up party system in the US, but I think I'll leave it fairly short. This same general advice from above can be applied to the real world as well. Your vote always counts, vote your conscience, not your party. In this 'information age' parties are more unnecessary than they have ever been. If you want a better world, do something about it, pursue your dreams and goals. Have a dream to begin with.

Being a Better DM

So, recently at the Save vs Poison blog, there was a post describing a failed game session. I want to talk about the discussion that has happened around the post both in the comments and here and here.

In the comments of the post, there is continual mention of different editions and the different play experience of different games or editions of D&D. I feel like everyone is focusing on the wrong thing. The author of the post talks about his players not adjusting to a different playstyle because of the edition he is running. My question is, why is the playstyle different if you are still the one running the game and it's D&D? A DM should be running the game in the same manner no matter what rule set they are using. D&D is D&D, why should it feel different if you use different numbers or dice to roll to hit or damage? The style or feel of a game should only change if you change genres; if you go from playing D&D to a horror or sci-fi game there should be a noticeable difference. As the DM you are in control of how the game feels, the impression the players get from the game, and just which rules to use when. When running a Star Wars game, the game should feel like Star Wars and be DMed the same whether using the d6 rules, the d20 rules, the the new Fantasy Flight games; it's should be immediately recognizable as Star Wars. The same goes for D&D, or Call of Cthulhu. It doesn't matter whether you are using Pathfinder or BX or 5e, D&D should feel the same when the same DM is running the game. The system is subject to the DM, if you want to run in an 'old-school' style then you should be doing that in every D&D game. If the players don't like playing a different system, that means the DM is changing how he runs the game. I agree with Alexis when he says that it is the DMs fault when a bad session happens, but we need to learn from that and be proactive in solutions. Don't blame the failure on the rules. The players enjoy most of your games, right? So if you change systems, but are maintaining genre and the base conceits of the game, then the factor which was unenjoyable was how you ran the game. Figure out what you did different and learn from it. If the players are exhibiting behaviors you want to avoid it is because that is what they learned from games in the past. Figure out how you can encourage different behavior though natural play. Every DM should always be working to better themselves, and never assume they know 'how to DM.' It may be easy to begin your career as a DM, but it can be extremely difficult to measurably improve. A good DM is constantly analyzing their game sessions, looking for mistakes and areas of possible improvement because it is the DMs responsibility to run a good game.

The Creation of a Character

I was browsing though youtube today, and I found this video about basic character types in a story.

Most of the video, about Mary Sues and the Everyman is fairly standard stuff you can find all over the internet; I want to focus on what he said towards the end of the video.

"Characters don't exist like in a vacuum. You don't like design a character, like here's the character! And that's something that a lot of amateurs do, is they like write down all their character traits or something like that. No, characters only exhibit themselves through a story, through a plot, through the execution of events that's going on in your story. Because they only exhibit themselves through that, those events have to have an impact on them and they have to have an impact on the events, so it's a mistake to design a character outside of the plot. You have to think about how a character is going to grow through a plot; the plot is going to affect the character intimately."

I see this as more relevant to the creation of a character for D&D than for a novel; yes, it still applies to writing novels and such, but it rings still truer for RPGs in general. He describes exactly what everyone is doing with their RPG characters (whether PC or NPC), writing down a list of traits and calling that a character. This is what character backgrounds are at their core; they "design a character outside of the plot." 

I recently started playing in a group where we are using the Cypher system, and character creation that should have taken 20 minutes, based on the pure mechanics, took over an hour because we needed to have an idea of our character before making it. I have trouble creating a new character concept before play because I just don't have any new ideas that are significantly different than any of the 30+ D&D characters and at least a dozen characters from other game systems. Sure I can make a character mechanically different,  but to come up with a character with a different personality and motivations? That's difficult! Especially trying to do it before even starting to play in a setting/campaign/with a new group; also most of my previous characters were developed organically through play, and not all at once before starting a game. When creating new characters, I tend to come up with something and then analyze the character I just made, and think that this character is essentially the same as another character I already have, so why not just transfer my old character to the new campaign? Except that any DM I have met that started DMing after the year 2000 (3.0D&D) doesn't allow character transfers.

Back on topic. Characters in any RPG are not created at character creation, or as I prefer to call it: character generation, but that's another topic. The PC is not a character before play starts, you could even say they aren't a character until the end of the 1st session. At character creation they are just numbers on paper, a list of traits. There is nothing that grounds those numbers in the players mind and imagination. It's all abstract ideas. When the PC is played by a person, they make decisions for that character as if they are that character, when there is some interaction between the character and the audience(in this case the players), that character becomes real. The character is revealed though play. It doesn't matter if the player wrote a 26 page long backstory; there is no character. It's not until the character acts in the context of the game that the character emerges, and more than likely the character being played is drastically different than the one in the 26 page backstory. It is through the events of the game, interacting with obstacles presented by the DM that we learn who the character is.

I could probably go on, but I think I'd only belabor the point.

The Right Way to Play

Recently JB at B/X Blackrazor wrote this,

"I've written in the past (more than once, I'm sure) that "there's more than one way to play D&D." But folks inferring some sort of non-judgmental, egalitarian declaration should note that I'm NOT saying there exists more than one RIGHT way to play D&D. Truth is, I secretly believe that many of the multiple ways in which folks run the game of D&D are wrong, some of them dead wrong."

And Alexis wrote some commentary on it, basically saying that the right way of play lies in the deconstruction and design of the game.

I completely agree with him; I have abandoned my previous efforts to make my own game system for precisely these reasons. I determined that the method in which I designed my game was faulty. My design philosophy has undergone a complete 180 in the past year. As Alexis says, how is what you are designing better? What is the purpose of this difference in design as opposed to all the other game designs that have already been made? I now think that it is paramount to understand your purpose and what exactly you want to accomplish  before even beginning to look at the design of a thing.

Relating to my post from the other day, this is the same problem with every map made for RPGs. Cartographers(if you dare call them that) just start drawing and make maps haphazardly without looking at the purpose of the map. Examine your purpose before laying pen to paper. This is why I'm finding it so hard to actually know how I want to change the maps I make for RPGs. What is the purpose of a map in an RPG? The answer is so varied and vague, that I am beginning to think one map will not be able to accommodate all that is needed. Maybe I should start making multiple maps of the same area for different uses? I really don't know.

Getting back to playing the game wrong, there is one big offense that I see throughout the hobby, among all age groups, in stores and among the games hosted at someone's home. The prevalence of dms or groups to tell others that they are full and aren't looking for new players. Not everyone does this, but in my experience a large majority of gamers behave like this. The idea that you can't dm a group larger than 5 players, or that someone can't join the campaign after the first session, or that they can't play with you because they're not your personal friend is completely wrong. In a hobby as small and niche as ours, it's a tragedy when someone doesn't have a chance to try a game and has a bad opinion of RPGs  because they weren't given the chance. So for those few, who actually read this blog, please just never turn away a prospective player!