OSR Explorers OOC

Good to know! Yeah I was definitely aware that I was pushing things a bit in the interest of moving things onward. I appreciate the flexibility. So your preference here would have been for my first post to stop at the door, allowing your further description, then I do my prayers and look for the priest on a second post, get the answer, and start the conversation on a third (if the priest is in and doesn’t initiate himself)?

It seems like the OSR leans heavy into the philosophy that Warden (GM) owns the setting/NPCs and the players simply react to the information given. Players asking questions to learn more about the setting/world is key as opposed to making assumptions. Is that a fair assessment?

I wanted to give a heads up that I'm going to be leaving on vacation this weekend and will be gone for a week. My posting rate will be quite a bit slower, but I'll do my best to keep up. Feel free to play Rowan as you see fit and assume he's along for the ride.

I guess one way to think of this is not in terms of what you do but what you INTEND to do. It is a bit muddy here as we are in town talking to people, but it becomes much more obvious in a dungeon. You don't say: "I open the door." You say: "I try to open the door." You don't say: "I jump over the bottomless pit." You say: "I try to jump over the bottomless pit." And once you made your intentions clear, the GM takes it from there.

In PbP you have the luxury of adding some prose and some liberties can and should be taken to keep the pace up. Something I have seen used is adding conditions, as in: "I try to open the door and if it is locked I try to pick the lock." Just to reduce the amount of posts needed. But the general structure of: "GM describes scene -> players state their intention -> GM adjudicates -> GM describes the scene, should be kept in place.

Ah, really interesting to hear how to approach these games. I didn't realize there was so much nuance to it!

Or a very short game! It's tough to survive failing multiple saves in a short time in those types of games...

But yeah, I will say that my experience with OSR and NSR games depends more on the GM's philosophy than the specific system chosen. I've played some fairly old school classic OSR systems with GMs who took a very story game style approach, inviting players to fill in large parts of the world, as well as those who took the more traditional approach described above. I like both, though sometimes I don't really want to do the heavy lifting of world building and would prefer simply to react and state my intentions.

I don't mind shared worldbuilding, if done right (Beyond the Wall comes to mind here) I even love it. But I never really meshed well with story games. I think this is more of a mechanics issue than a problem with the style of game itself though.
Thinking about it just now, I really just do not like the PbtA family of games. That's probably it, as I do enjoy Fabula Ultima well enough and that game has a lot of story game elements.

That is totally fair. Myself, I happen to love PbtA games — some of them are my all time faves. But I also love moderately complex (but not TOO complicated) tactical games and OSR games as well, so… go figure.

So yeah, I love Monsterhearts and Masks, but also D&D 5e and Lancer, and also Dolmenwood and Cairn. I’m a weirdo!

Oops! I need to pay attention the thread I'm in before posting! LOL

I play a lot of rules lite games with no or very low prep, so having the players add to the world during the game is great, but within reason. There needs to be some kind of guard rails in place otherwise it gets out of hand.

I don't think you're a weirdo, Gwen, I think you just like different experiences / ways to play. It's always struck me as a little strange when people tout one style over another -- we all have our preferences, but I can absolutely love a writer's room approach (indeed, Beyond the Wall, Fate, loads of indie and PbtA games), a 'classic' OSR vibe where a very tangible world already exists and is revealed to the players through play, emergent play from tables (also often OSR), and all kinds of mixtures in-between.

I will admit I've had really bad experiences at both ends of the spectrum -- with tight-fisted GMs loredumping, and loredumping, and with fully emergent play with no guardrails that just immediate became super dumb. I don't love lore-heavy D&D (though ran a three year campaign in Greyhawk in the 80s!), and don't tend to enjoy Trophy either, where it's both buttoned down (you want treasure, you will die for treasure) and very much open to players adding this, that, and the other thing on a whim.

Gaming is complicated.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Ok, exhausted, but back from vacation. It was relaxing while there, but man can flight issues completely ruin the end of a great vacation.

I'll get Rowan back into the action later today after I read up on everything I missed.

Woohoo! I'd just written an OOC post to ask what we should do with Rowan! Rest up, get caught up, chime in!

Welcome back!

Thanks! I think your suggestion of him turning in or hanging with Wren is great. I'll get caught up and get him involved.

Wren will loiter for a while longer at the tavern listening to the music and making herself available to others to chat with, but failing to have the courage to flirt with Rosie. And she is fine with that; flirting with a service worker when they are at work is gross anyway.

After a while she'd return to the Egg and chat or sleep.