I kick things off with a couple of great messages from Che Webster of Roleplay Rescue and Michael "ChicagoWiz" Shorten of The Dungeon Master's Handbook.
Yes... a Leo Kern quote from 'The Day the Earth caught fire', Yes! - one of my favourite films. Thanks for reading my message. I have had a thought about my extended message about ChatGPT. If you would rather use it to make a podcast like the Green Knight one, rather than try to get together and discuss them, then please be my Guest. I'd probably just go off topic and end up ranting about OSR and stuff anyway, ( I guess I AM Chaotic Neutral ). I've got to hunt out this voice challenge of yours. That sounds one hell of a tough task! Good stuff. I hope your voice gets better soon. Take care.
Thanks Safer. I was contemplating breaking up your message and interjecting as I have a handful of messages from Menion to address. Having said that, i'd still love to do an episode with you and we can talk about whatever you like.
Oh! You do like to live dangerously! It's just that ChatGPT's multiple options responses ( which is just a deep Google search combined with a flow chart!) reminded me of how we played in the early 80's. That Faustian pact / verbal arms race between GM and player. All actions had to be described. Everything could kill you. Paranoid about everything. Desperate to avoid the danger at all costs. Hoping to never have to roll a dice. Save against poison - No chance, unless you were a cleric. DnD was sadistic. It demanded you be cautious and then penalised you for that caution. Wandering monsters if you were too slow. Traps and ambushes if you were too quick. Ear worms if you listened at every door. GOD. Door Drill ! Check the keyhole for darts
Check around the frame for wires. Tap the step for pressure plates. Half an hour just to get through a door. The horror! It was the major difference I noticed that first game of League with Barney at Carlisle. I was in old DnD mode, trying to avoid the danger. Distrusting the GM, the game and the process. But when you told me to ease up and go with the flow. It was a light bulb moment. I realised then. Ah! - Trust. You all trusted the process. Trusted the stages of the play. You were happy to go where the narrative took you all. Happy for the evil to reveal itself. Happy to follow the expected trajectory. Exposition- Investigation- reveal- climax - denouement. Story style gaming. But I had been raging against the dying of the light and so I moved to my Trad mentality and left the Classic mentality I started the game with. - You see I could take any chat in a very chaotic direction. You would have to discipline my mind with your Lawful Good alignment and keep me focused. Take care.
I'd certainly like to discuss this further as I would consider myself more a fan of "Classic" than "Trad" and yet spend most my time playing just as you describe and having a whale of a time.
I guess, what's important to me is that all that stuff is emergent and I'm not seeing the whole narrative picture but viewing everything from my character's perspective.
I feel we could definitely explore this avenue further with a proper chat.
Oh! This is a very contentious issue. And could get you thrown out of the OSR. I'm a heretic and not part of it, and would just end up with people saying more of the 'oh! Feck off Safer' that I imagine they say, if they ever mention me at all. But I've got news for you Spencer and I don't want to insult you but you are not 'Classic', as I understand it, in the way you play today. Almost no one is these days. Most OSR types are more Trad. Trad was still very much describe your action. No meta currency and similar to classic but it was more accepting. More Trusting. Letting your character die if that was 'what they would do'. The whole being comfortable with character death thing is Trad. Almost as an inevitable response to classic. We hated loosing our characters at classic gaming level cos it was competitive and we wanted to win. We just eventually came to terms with the fact DnD was stacked against us and better get used to it and find other ways to have fun with it. Like accepting a dramatic story arc. Most of us became Trad either through frustration of DnD or just getting to the point of numbness were you don't care anymore! I think a lot of OSRites are engrained in OSR more than they are in how we really used to play. There are many things in OSR I just did not recognise when I cam eout of the deep freeze in 2018, but even in that short time I have become changed by newer ideas that I am NOW not so sure what was from back then and what was not. I deffo remember the shock of fate points in Warhammer fantasy roleplay. ACTUALLY changing dice roles...with fate points...cheating I say! It was genuinely shocking and revolutionary. I could go on for hours. But it's 'trust' Spencer. That is the new concept we did NOT have back then during classic. Hence all the rules lawyers and wanting to see the dice. We never thought a GM would Fudge in OUR favour. We needed to watch him in case he was screwing us over. When Trad came around we GM's starting nerfing encounters and trying to keep the players alive long enough to get to the end of all the cool stuff we had prepped. But we tried not to show the players that too much. I never fudged a roll cos they could all see them out in the open, but I might have fudged an NPC STAT to make them miss a player at a critical moment. They never knew though as they never understood the Runequest rules -The game I GM'd. I'll stop now but I could blather incoherently for ages!
I doubt I qualify as OSR anyway. I didn't play D&D back in the day, only really looking into the history when rediscovering the hobby in 2018. I just happened to come back at a time all this amazing stuff was coming out of G+ which happened to be tagged OSR.
And it has to be a couple of years now since I've played anything you'd call OSR but I still follow those creators whose stuff is now referred to as NSR, post-OSR or some variation of that.
Well like I said. I don't want to insult anyone but a lot of what I see being said in the OSR has me stumped. And I think a lot of it is more about a reaction against the sparkle trolls, for want of a better word. I doubt I can be anything but contentious with this. Emergent was never a word I heard back then. Nor the word sandbox or open table. Fixed, mission games were most common. Perhaps OSR harkens back to a play style before classic. To Gygax and OD&D. Perhaps to an American approach we didn't have in the UK. I know Jason talks about his early games being Monte haul type with lots of goodies which is very different to my memory of my games which were very sparse. We wanted Monte haul. We wanted Excalibur and to be heroes, but all we got was a quick death as a grubby grave robber! I don't know what the NSR is. I'll have to look that up. I actually think most people play far more narratively today than we ever did, and in so many ways it is an improvement. More chill and less frustrating, but I do think one element has been lost with the more sanguine approach of modern players, either OSR or not. That 'lack of trust' in classic style gave a real sense of challenge, a real sense of risk and jeopardy. A more earnest connection to your character as you. Not just a token or vehicle for having fun and a good time with friends. Losing money in poker isn't nice but by god it is intense and I think that element is what we have lost with more narrative approaches today. I really am standing alone on a barren cairn with this one I think.
Yes... a Leo Kern quote from 'The Day the Earth caught fire', Yes! - one of my favourite films. Thanks for reading my message. I have had a thought about my extended message about ChatGPT. If you would rather use it to make a podcast like the Green Knight one, rather than try to get together and discuss them, then please be my Guest. I'd probably just go off topic and end up ranting about OSR and stuff anyway, ( I guess I AM Chaotic Neutral ). I've got to hunt out this voice challenge of yours. That sounds one hell of a tough task! Good stuff. I hope your voice gets better soon. Take care.
Thanks Safer. I was contemplating breaking up your message and interjecting as I have a handful of messages from Menion to address. Having said that, i'd still love to do an episode with you and we can talk about whatever you like.
Oh! You do like to live dangerously! It's just that ChatGPT's multiple options responses ( which is just a deep Google search combined with a flow chart!) reminded me of how we played in the early 80's. That Faustian pact / verbal arms race between GM and player. All actions had to be described. Everything could kill you. Paranoid about everything. Desperate to avoid the danger at all costs. Hoping to never have to roll a dice. Save against poison - No chance, unless you were a cleric. DnD was sadistic. It demanded you be cautious and then penalised you for that caution. Wandering monsters if you were too slow. Traps and ambushes if you were too quick. Ear worms if you listened at every door. GOD. Door Drill ! Check the keyhole for darts
Check around the frame for wires. Tap the step for pressure plates. Half an hour just to get through a door. The horror! It was the major difference I noticed that first game of League with Barney at Carlisle. I was in old DnD mode, trying to avoid the danger. Distrusting the GM, the game and the process. But when you told me to ease up and go with the flow. It was a light bulb moment. I realised then. Ah! - Trust. You all trusted the process. Trusted the stages of the play. You were happy to go where the narrative took you all. Happy for the evil to reveal itself. Happy to follow the expected trajectory. Exposition- Investigation- reveal- climax - denouement. Story style gaming. But I had been raging against the dying of the light and so I moved to my Trad mentality and left the Classic mentality I started the game with. - You see I could take any chat in a very chaotic direction. You would have to discipline my mind with your Lawful Good alignment and keep me focused. Take care.
I'd certainly like to discuss this further as I would consider myself more a fan of "Classic" than "Trad" and yet spend most my time playing just as you describe and having a whale of a time.
I guess, what's important to me is that all that stuff is emergent and I'm not seeing the whole narrative picture but viewing everything from my character's perspective.
I feel we could definitely explore this avenue further with a proper chat.
Oh! This is a very contentious issue. And could get you thrown out of the OSR. I'm a heretic and not part of it, and would just end up with people saying more of the 'oh! Feck off Safer' that I imagine they say, if they ever mention me at all. But I've got news for you Spencer and I don't want to insult you but you are not 'Classic', as I understand it, in the way you play today. Almost no one is these days. Most OSR types are more Trad. Trad was still very much describe your action. No meta currency and similar to classic but it was more accepting. More Trusting. Letting your character die if that was 'what they would do'. The whole being comfortable with character death thing is Trad. Almost as an inevitable response to classic. We hated loosing our characters at classic gaming level cos it was competitive and we wanted to win. We just eventually came to terms with the fact DnD was stacked against us and better get used to it and find other ways to have fun with it. Like accepting a dramatic story arc. Most of us became Trad either through frustration of DnD or just getting to the point of numbness were you don't care anymore! I think a lot of OSRites are engrained in OSR more than they are in how we really used to play. There are many things in OSR I just did not recognise when I cam eout of the deep freeze in 2018, but even in that short time I have become changed by newer ideas that I am NOW not so sure what was from back then and what was not. I deffo remember the shock of fate points in Warhammer fantasy roleplay. ACTUALLY changing dice roles...with fate points...cheating I say! It was genuinely shocking and revolutionary. I could go on for hours. But it's 'trust' Spencer. That is the new concept we did NOT have back then during classic. Hence all the rules lawyers and wanting to see the dice. We never thought a GM would Fudge in OUR favour. We needed to watch him in case he was screwing us over. When Trad came around we GM's starting nerfing encounters and trying to keep the players alive long enough to get to the end of all the cool stuff we had prepped. But we tried not to show the players that too much. I never fudged a roll cos they could all see them out in the open, but I might have fudged an NPC STAT to make them miss a player at a critical moment. They never knew though as they never understood the Runequest rules -The game I GM'd. I'll stop now but I could blather incoherently for ages!
I doubt I qualify as OSR anyway. I didn't play D&D back in the day, only really looking into the history when rediscovering the hobby in 2018. I just happened to come back at a time all this amazing stuff was coming out of G+ which happened to be tagged OSR.
And it has to be a couple of years now since I've played anything you'd call OSR but I still follow those creators whose stuff is now referred to as NSR, post-OSR or some variation of that.
Well like I said. I don't want to insult anyone but a lot of what I see being said in the OSR has me stumped. And I think a lot of it is more about a reaction against the sparkle trolls, for want of a better word. I doubt I can be anything but contentious with this. Emergent was never a word I heard back then. Nor the word sandbox or open table. Fixed, mission games were most common. Perhaps OSR harkens back to a play style before classic. To Gygax and OD&D. Perhaps to an American approach we didn't have in the UK. I know Jason talks about his early games being Monte haul type with lots of goodies which is very different to my memory of my games which were very sparse. We wanted Monte haul. We wanted Excalibur and to be heroes, but all we got was a quick death as a grubby grave robber! I don't know what the NSR is. I'll have to look that up. I actually think most people play far more narratively today than we ever did, and in so many ways it is an improvement. More chill and less frustrating, but I do think one element has been lost with the more sanguine approach of modern players, either OSR or not. That 'lack of trust' in classic style gave a real sense of challenge, a real sense of risk and jeopardy. A more earnest connection to your character as you. Not just a token or vehicle for having fun and a good time with friends. Losing money in poker isn't nice but by god it is intense and I think that element is what we have lost with more narrative approaches today. I really am standing alone on a barren cairn with this one I think.