OSR Explorers OOC

Hi folks! I'm setting this up and then zooming off on vacation, and then heading to a gaming convention! We won't get started really building things out until the end of the month, but in the meantime feel free to chat, introduce yourselves, etc. I'd love to see a little on each of your gaming histories, hear about what attracts you to this kind of gaming, and any experiences you've had with the OSR and especially with Cairn.

I'll get something similar for myself up when I can!

Have fun with your family and friends Harrigan! We'll keep ourselves occupied here!

Hello everyone! I'm quilltid and I've been on GP for almost a year now. This is also where I was introduced to other TTRPG systems to play so I am excited to learn more about playing OSR games. I think I've played OSR-adjacent games like Mausritter with Harrigan and still learning how to play Tales of Argosa. I'm interested in playing more OSR games as it seems very popular here on GP and I'd like to learn more about what makes them so fun! It's been great to try a lot of new systems here and recently my group (shout-out to soises and Adrasthea) successfully finished our Lego D&D campaign, my first time DMing!

Hi everyone! And have fun on vacation and at the convention, @Harrigan! Which gaming convention, if I might ask?

I'm Gwen. I'm a philosophy professor and pro TTRPG designer/publisher. I've been playing RPGs since the early 80s -- the 1983 Mentzer edition Red Box with the Elmore cover, to be precise. I've always played a wide range of systems, from superhero games in the 80s, Palladium and World of Darkness games in the 90s, tons of indie games (PbtA games are my favorite) in the 2000s, and for the past few years OSR games (and tons of 5e)! I've played a fair amount of OSE, a bit of Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Hyperborea, and Dolmenwood, among others.

But I haven't played Cairn yet, nor Knave or Into the Odd, on which Cairn is supposed to be based. So I am excited to try it!

@quilltid Tell me about Lego D&D!

Hi all! I’m Sudo, I’ve been playing RPGs on and off since I was a kid in the 90s, my first game was a TSR flop called Dragon Strike, and I eventually moved on to D&D. I played (mostly GMed) a lot of 3e, 4e, and 5e, and over the last few years have shifted away entirely toward other systems like Symbaroum, Quest, and ICRPG. I’m big on physical books and have accumulated quite the indie collection recently, so I read a lot more game systems than I play. For OSR I’ve only played Knave 1e, and Cairn looks great!

After the pandemic I’ve mostly sworn off playing RPGs by Zoom or VTT since it feels too much like my day job, and I’ve also struggled to keep in-person only games alive recently due to scheduling. I’m new to PbP, but really keen to try since it shouldn’t suffer from the same challenges (though I’m sure it has its own!).

@drgwen philosophy has been a big hobby of mine for the last few years! What’s your area of focus?

Oh fun! My work is on the history of philosophy, especially the 16th-19th Century in Europe. My first book was on Spinoza and I regularly work on people like Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and so on.

Hi All!

I've been on GP for a number of years, but I've only played in 2 games and GM'd 1 game for others. I've been using it for solo play off/on for a while now and have been enjoying that when I actually sit down and play. I'm looking forward to joining a game, especially in the OSR realm which i want to learn more about. I've read Cairn multiple times and love the system on paper. I've never played it and I'm really curious to see how combat plays out.

I started playing in the early 80's during the satanic panic. i got my start on AD&D, then moved onto WEG Star Wars. I took a long break from the hobby and finally found my way back in 2020 when a lot of others did. My how did the RPG world change in 30 years! I quickly latched onto rules-lite games like TinyD6, Maze Rats, Tricube Tails, Tunnel Goons, and 24xx.

I spend most of my gaming time hacking out rules-lite games. I've got a group of online friends who I play voice games with on a weekly basis, but I love me some PbP!

Love seeing these bios and know that I’m a fan of almost every game mentioned!

Forgive me if any of you have seen mine before — started in 1983. Played two sessions (that i remember) of Against the Giants with a fella I met in high school. I played Fonkin Hoddypeak (famous TSR pregen) and from those fateful fall sessions, I never looked back. Got the AD&D PHB, DMG and MM that year for Xmas and ran a campaign for friends until about 1988. In the early years I was running about five days a week, after school, on weekends, during the summer — I was pretty obsessed.

That probably led to my burn-out on D&D in 88, and the group I was in sort of coming apart. They all wanted more D&D, and wouldn’t go for what I was pitching — James Bond, Gamma World, MSH, Judge Dredd, WEG Star Wars, Star Trek, Palladium Fantasy, GURPS, many other 80s games.

Skip to grad school and I found my people. I was still basically a forever GM, but I was able to run *loads* of GURPS (sci-fi, fantasy, Swashbucklers (17th century Europe), post-apocalyptic wastelands, cyberpunk, Cliffhangers (30s Pulp)), plus Underground, Feng Shui and some other 90s stuff. That group also introduced me to Call of Cthulhu and Champions… and those two games were transformative for me as a gamer.

After grad school in the US (1995), that group all went their separate ways and I moved back to my home town (Halifax, I’m now a dual citizen), got married, started a career as an archaeologist and generally had not much time for gaming. Except I found I just couldn’t give it up — and so I found another outlet: play-by-e-mail! I ran years-long games of Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, eventually moving to PbP, to forum-based play in the early 2000s. I played anything and everything during this period (except D&D, I was still ice-cold on the game and 3.5 and PF had made it worse), and I eventually dug deep into the alt and indie scenes. Fudge, Fate, Risus, PbtA and a ton of other non-trad games.

In 2019 I decided to get back into live play, which I did by attending cons, listening to podcasts and getting involved with some online communities who actively played together. Since that time, I usually attend 2-4 cons a year and play biweekly with two different groups.

Since about 2018 I’ve been into the OSR, and maintain that, at least for me, the OSR is an optimized and idealized version of the old games I ran back in the mid 80s. I don’t dig retroclones, but I -surely- like that classic black and white art and simple, "elemental" stories about adventurers facing off against wizards in their towers, witches in dank woods, and giants lurking beneath ice-capped mountains.

I’ve recently realized that PbP might be my preferred way to play RPGs. I don’t ever want to give up playing live again, but there’s something special about this medium when it all clicks. Anyway, sorry to blather. The family is asleep and I’m loose on my iPad!

Gwen: I’m going to Genghis Con in Colorado next week. I’ll be playing Call of Cthulhu (in the arctic circle!), Outgunned, a Savage Worlds take on BattleTech (!), a Savage Worlds western run by an absolute gem of a GM (Karl Keesler, highly recommended), Pirate Borg, and Torchbearer. I’ll also be running Outcast Silver Raiders, and am excited because Luke Stratton (Limithron, creator of Pirate Borg) will be a player. I tend to cover my con experience in my blog / substack, if you want to dig into that further for some crazy reason.

Anyway. Really looking forward to this!

Oh super fun! I hope you have a blast. I'd love to hear how Outgunned is! I've played the rest of those, except Outcast Silver Raiders. What's that like? An OSR game I assume? (OK well I've never played Pirate Borg, but I have played Mork Borg and Cy Borg and I assume it is similar))

So hi, I guess everyone is doing the full blown introduction bit. Here I go:

I started roleplaying in the mid 2000nds, mostly on forums. We did not have a way to roll dice, so it was all purely narrative. We also did not really have GMs back then, just mods that would arbitrate any disputes. Given that we were all just a bunch of teens at the time, I have no idea how this did not instantly fall apart. XD
We also did a lot of RP in video games. As in, playing a game of Civ and sending diplomatic missives in character.

My introduction to "proper" RPGs was though Trevor Devalls solo RP series and I have been playing solo games for about two years now. Wanting to play with other people again, I decided to get in to forum RP once more.

As for the games I play: I did play a lot of Savage Worlds a while back, but I have mostly shifted away from that and gravitated towards the OSR ever since. Lots of Stuff Without Number, Beyond the Wall (Maybe my favorite game so far), some Mörk Borg, some By this Axe I Hack. The really pure retroclones never managed to capture my interest though. I have no nostalgia to rose tint my glasses, so some of the designs of early DnD just seem really obnoxious to me.
I also really like Fabula Ultima for some reason, no idea why. It's about as far removed from all the design principles that make the OSR so good as you can get.

@Harrigan I also avoid D&D. I've played 2 sessions of 5e and that was more than enough for me.

I forgot to include The Black Hack in my bio. I really enjoyed that.

I really enjoy D&D with the right people and when I’m in the mood to have my roleplay interrupted by a surprise war game. Just finding that mood more elusive as I get older xD

Nice to meet everyone!

@Drgwen For Lego D&D, we used the adventure designed for the Lego set made recently. You can still get the free PDF for the adventure, Red Dragon's Tale from D&D Beyond. Everyone made a Level 5 character and, to make it a little bit more Lego since we didn't have the set to play with in person, people could "build" like the Lego movie to help with puzzles and challenges. We had people building rafts, buckets of boiling oil for spider tempura, and walkways over poisonous plants. We did end up veering a lot from the original story, but I think that's part of the fun of doing TTRPGs with others, right?

This may be a very basic question, but I was wondering what your opinion is on The Good Place show as a philosophy professor?

To squid: What game would you recommend for someone trying out solo RPG?

To Sudo: Which game system do you have that you think is the best physical book so far? Is it the page quality, the illustrations, what makes the physical book the best of your collection?

To Aline: That sounds really fun about RPing through Civilization! This may be a very basic question, but which version of Civilization do you think is the best?

To our DM/GM Harrigan: I'm curious to know if your years of archaeological knowledge helps in building the worlds you play in for the TTRPGs? I can imagine it works great for games like Call of Cthulhu.

That's a tough question to answer, honestly. I think it comes down to finding a system that you enjoy enough to stick with it. Solo games are notoriously challenging to keep alive. People bounce off them for a variety of reasons and one I see discussed frequently is system. Personally, I like very rules-lite systems that have player facing rolls for my solo games. The fewer rules the better. A lot of people love Ironsworn for solo play, but it's a little too much for me. I do love the Ironsworn (and Starforged) oracles and use them frequently for both solo and group games.

So first of all, your Lego D&D adventure sounds like fun! Especially for younger players. I'll check it out. Thanks!

As for The Good Place, it is one of my all time favorite shows. They had a real philosophy professor as a consultant and it shows -- they generally get the philosophy right and manage to put in some good philosophy jokes. The episode where they discuss the trolley problem was a particular favorite!

Best Civ version is Civ 4 with the Fall From Heaven mod. Nothing will ever compare to that. For the uninitiated, the FFH mod turns the game in to a fantasy world. And a pretty good one at that. I keep meaning to play it again, but it's such a chore to set up under Linux. :S

Also, for solo RPGs, Mythic GM Emulator is the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. It even works very well as a rules light game all on its own. I did play Ironsworn, once. I had an absolutely miserable time with it. That thing did just not compute for me.

That took a bit of thinking. In terms of quality, illustrations, overall feel of the book, I think I'd have to go with Mausritter actually, though it's possibly a weird choice to go with a black and white print. Everything there is just so perfectly put together for the feel of that game in particular - and all the art and design just works so well together to support the game itself. The other one that comes to mind is a solo game called Thousand Year Old Vampire, it's just a gorgeous and well-made book that exudes style fitting for the fiction it's presenting. I highly recommend both!

Fantastic conversations here while I’m on vacation! I’ll try to catch up a *little*…

Outgunned — I’m not 100% sold on the system just yet, but it is an upgrade from the prior ‘Broken Compass’ engine. I’ve only done one-shots so far, but good pal of mine (digitalhobbit) is about to run a short campaign I’ll be a player in. Hugely looking forward to it, and I might even port in an action-hero type character I developed for a couple of World of Dungeons Turbo: Breakers games…

Outcast Silver Raiders — hardcore mud and blood, human-centric OSR. Think of it as Mork Borg but more serious, more dour, a little less absurdly black / death metal. A little bit of googling will illuminate this path but basically it’s a great hex map game of the ‘Mythic North’ where medieval factions vie for power — including the conquerors, the rebels, the Church, smugglers, etc. It draws on Western Europe and medieval England / Scotland vibes heavily, which I love.

Beyond the Wall — perhaps my favorite game. I will run it on GP eventually.

Archaeology — I would say that my time as an anthropologist and archaeologist (about 12 years including college, grad school, work for Parks Canada) absolutely helps me to build the worlds, scenes, scenarios an characters in my games. Especially for the RPG staff that is closer to what I specialized in which was Northeastern North American Historic Archaeology — basically the contact period in the 16th century to the early settlements in 1604/1605 through Victorian times. Further focusing on the 17th and 18th century in the "colonies."

When you study about the history of archaeology, you learn a ton about work done in Egypt and elsewhere around the world in the 19th century through about the 1930s — perfect stuff for Victorian Cthulhu, WWI treasure-hunting, and all the pulp stuff of the 20s and 30s.

Ironsworn: Amazing piece of masterful clockwork RPG tech… that I don’t want to play. ;)

Wow! Everyone gave such thoughtful answers on the questions posted, appreciate it! I'm glad to hear my liking of The Good Place is not misplaced. I have Civ 4, but not the mod so I will need to check that out. It's funny to hear solo games are hard to keep up, but that is also heartening to know it's not unusual either. I did enjoy playing Mausritter so will look into the book now from the description. It sounds like the people playing in the Genghis Con games will have a lot of fun in detail and setting thanks to your knowledge base. There are also so many games to check out from what you guys listed!

Back from vacation! Now two heavy days of catch up with work, then a gaming con to round out the week and weekend! I'll be popping up here and there, but it'll be next week before I can put serious time into this, discuss the adventure, etc.

Alright, fully back in the saddle! I'll do a full review of the PCs, answer questions, then pose some of my own. Let's fire this puppy up...