Is this what the OSR is trying to get back to?

There are certain things that nostalgia chooses not to remember.

Every time I play and "Old School" game, I fear that things might end up the way they did in this article.

Heaven knows, the "Pathfinder" game I was a part of last year veered dangerously close to this territory. Things totally out of your control as a player, people hating each other because rules were followed to the letter rather than to the spirit...

...maybe I'm being a bit harsh. But I think it's that final comment that's the clincher here, the spirit of the rules versus the letter of the rules.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game Mechani(sm) of the Week #18: Life Path

Let's grab something I loved from an old game... Something that hasn't really been seen in many of the more recent games that I've been looking at (whether independently produced or mainstream). (Yes, I'm doing this because I've noticed that my blog is running behind on it's weekly game mechanisms and some of my own ideas just haven't seemed adequate as I've started numerous times to write this post) I love the concept of the life path in Cyberpunk 2020, I adapted some of it's ideas when I wrote the Eighth Sea. I know that the concept has also been thoroughly explored in games like Traveller and HoL (with both of these games offering options that can kill a character before they even enter play). I like the idea of rolling a bunch of dice to fill put the backstory of a character instantly gives characters a time and place in the setting where they will be developing their stories. It helps to set the tone of the game, gets into players minds that thi...
Read more

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 7)

Image
A working computer and scanner...that means it is time to get back to work on the geomorph sequence. A lot of the discussion in this set of tutorials has been focused around square geomorphs. They're the easiest for most people to wrap their heads around.  But my preferred form of geomorph is based around the hexagon, these tend to produce more organic and interesting shapes. This is true for natural environments, but it's no less true for urban environments. The example set of geomorphs above as a simple two-phase system. One edge type is plain, the other edge type has a road piercing the centre. There could be dozens of combinations and permutations for each of the two phases around the hexagonal edges, but a quick look at the variety of buildings and road shapes shows that there could literally be hundreds of possible options when drawing these map fragments. But you certainly don't need to create hundreds of designs for the system to be effective. Usin...
Read more