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The Old School Renaissance (OSR) Faggotry

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The Old School Renaissance (OSR) Faggotry

Unread postby icycalm » 07 Jul 2021 08:56

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So after seeing people reference “OSR games” for quite a while, I decided to look it up and finally figure out what they mean.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_Renaissance

The Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival, or simply OSR, is a movement or trend among players of tabletop role-playing games that draws inspiration from the earliest days of tabletop RPGs in the 1970s, especially Dungeons & Dragons. It consists of a loose network or community of gamers and game designers who share an interest in a certain style of play and set of game design principles.


It’s not really as big of a deal as they make it out to be. It certainly doesn’t justify ditching D&D/PF for some lame faggot’s “homebrew” system, or even going back to older D&D editions. You can very easily play the latest editions with “old school principles” because the differences between the two are tiny and seem to revolve around basically making somewhat fewer dice rolls outside of combat than is customary for the newest editions. An example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/o ... perfectly/

This sums up old school play perfectly.

I had an exchange with a player in my weekly White Box game that sums up the old school experience perfectly. The elf wizard (whose player was accustomed to 5e) had obtained a strange potion and wanted to know what it was. Here’s what happened:

Player: So what do I have to roll to know what this potion is? DM: There is no roll. What do you do to figure out what this potion is? Player: Oh. Well, first I look at it. What does it look like? DM: The glass vial is round at the bottom with a long, thin stem holding in a cork. It’s filled with a murky black fluid the consultancy of honey. Player: I uncork it and smell the fluid. DM: A horrible, pungent smell exudes from the vial. Make a saving throw! Player: Uh oh! Umm, I fail. DM: You vomit a little on the cobblestones. Player: Ewww. Okay, are there any plants around? DM: There’s a flowerbed nearby. Player: I cover my mouth and pour a little on a flower... DM: It instantly loses its color, shrivels and turns to dust...

This is the kind of exchange that makes me love the OSR.


I enjoy this too, but sometimes players waste 30 minutes discussing what said potion is, and then one of them runs out of patience and drinks it or throws it away. Chaos usually ensues.


That's fair and fine - if they want to spend that time on it, they can. Some groups will maybe spend a few minutes on it, and if they can't get it, will haul it back to town to be identified by an expert, or alchemist or something. Others will just quaff it back, or try and sell it to some passing goons.

I think that the whole appeal here is that it's neither the DM handing out treasure that comes with pre-identified name placards ("You lift a Whirlwind Katana of the Ancients from the chest!"), nor is it all contingent on a single die roll ("I get that you've spent the last ten years as an alchemist brewing potions of healing that match the exact description of this mystery liquid, but because you rolled a 3, you have no idea what it is.")


He doesn’t have to roll a die if he already knows what the potion is, faggot. You’re just exaggerating because you’re a faggot who has nothing better to do than virtue signal on Reddit about hipster shit no one cares about.

Modern editions contain all the tools you need to play as “old school” as you want; they merely add a ton of OPTIONAL complexity to the game, they don’t remove anything. It’s still the DM’s call whether a die roll will be made for anything outside of combat, and even for lots of things within combat. If you are arguing for going “old school” on everything (which I take it to mean dicelessness on everything) you might as well argue for bringing a real sword to the table and trying to hit the DM with it (which for many DMs actually wouldn’t be such a bad idea). It will always be up to the DM whether to role-play a situation or whether to roll for it, and his decisions on this matter have a tremendous impact on the quality of the game because if he chooses to role-play boring shite the game is doomed, just as surely as if he consigns to rolls every interesting role-playing possibility; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the ruleset or edition he is using: the best editions (meaning the most complex ones) give him BOTH options FOR EVERYTHING, and he makes the call on a case-by-case basis (though if he tries to role-play combat he’s a faggot for reasons I’ve already explained, as D&D without combat is just a bunch of faggots daydreaming; and this btw is where “theater of the mind” mechanics come in, which consist in eschewing tactical grid-based combat for the DM making stuff up about where everyone is on the battlefield. We might as well call this type of combat “gay combat”, just as purporting to be for “old school principles” is “gay DMing”).

In short, don’t be gay, and you’ll be fine. D&D wasn’t made for the gays, and gays ruin it wherever they are allowed to. So don’t allow them.
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icycalm
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