Avoiding Homogenous DIY Play

I think there’s a tendency that once people get into the blog sphere, which is predominantly OSR in its practices and conventions, they all of a sudden become Gygaxian dungeon-crawlers with a thirst for adventure that only gold can satisfy. Like, I understand the extent to which D&D has informed the aesthetics and dynamics of fantasy, but I know for a fact that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea (it’s not mine, at least, and I can think of others). Rather than trying to align ourselves to some Gygaxian line, I think it might be worthwhile to consider broader concepts and applications of DIY play which are not so restrained. This isn’t going to be a long post; I’m just going to be spitballing.

Broader Principles of Play

Non-fidelity to texts: One of the most touted mantras of the OSR is “Rulings over rules”, but I’ve noticed that this slogan has sometimes become a dogma rather than a word of caution. We shouldn’t feel stuck to doing what rulebooks say if we can think of something better, whether on the fly or between sessions. It doesn’t mean that we should be like Socrates, decrying books for ruining our memory skills or whatever, but it does mean we should pay attention to whether what we are doing is fun or not (regardless if it is in a book).

Interesting decision-making: The early OSR reacted against the play culture of Third Edition by elevating player skill over character skill, eschewing game balance, and denigrating “roll-play” relative to “role-play”. More broadly, I think it’s good to think about which decisions players can or will make, ensuring that choices have a sufficient degree of info and impact in order to engage players. Whether the outcomes of those decisions manifest in dice or in talks may as well depend on preference, but both can have a degree of overwhelming superfluidity to the detriment of interesting decisions. This can include stuff like cost-benefit and risk-reward analyses, but not necessarily.

Forecast consequences: This plays into decision-making insofar as it sucks to make a choice about which you’ve been given little or no information (especially if the missing information costs you your character’s life, for example). Whether or not your game is tightly balanced is also a matter of preference, but not being able to avoid disaster deprives players of making informed and interesting decisions. A well-ran OSR style game is only deadly if you play it like a hack-and-slash Fifth Edition game, but theoretically it does not have to be deadly at all. “All who live by the sword will perish by the sword”, and all that.

Specific Aspects of OSR Play

I think all the above concepts survived into numerous offshoots of the original play culture that called itself the OSR, in some shape or form (and not without critique or other introspection). They are principles which inform interesting play in general: offer impactful and informed decisions without there being just one right answer. But what is specific to D&D, as far as aesthetics and conventions go? Here I’m talking about not the brand name, but the broader social category of games and associated media (and in particular, of the variety where the players’ characters are dungeon-crawling treasure-hunters).

Gold for XP: I wasn’t going to start with something obvious like “It’s European pseudo-medieval fantasy”—no shit! But gold for XP, or more generally advancing your character by accumulating treasure, is a specific quality of D&D. Within the scope of D&D, it’s said to proffer interesting decision-making opportunities insofar as players have to weigh different options or adjust their strategies to react to dynamic or dangerous environments. However, it’s also just obviously D&D. What if I don’t want to be a treasure hunter? Why is that the default except that it’s what we accept as the most rational, interesting, or realistic motive (and not only a motive, but a formal aspect of the rules)?

Combat as war, not as sport: This one is very specifically OSR, originating not from Gygax but from forum enjoyers and blog writers in the mid-to-late noughties. The idea is that combat is not a fairly balanced game like a sport, but a conflict between life and death where surviving means playing “unfair”. It also means that opponents are not necessarily balanced to the players’ own capabilities, but they can be extremely dangerous and thus more desirable to flee from rather than fight. Once again, this is just a manifestation of making informed and impactful decisions based on forecasted consequences. But this one mantra isn’t gospel truth, in as much as it is not the only way in which interesting decisions can emerge. Also important is that combat itself does not need to be a feature of a campaign, which is something else I see taken for granted even by people who say they want violence to be a fail state.

The dungeon crawl: I already said that D&D being pseudo-medieval fantasy is so obviously D&D that there was nothing to say about it but, although “dungeon” is in the name of D&D, the idea of the dungeon is so often taken for granted as a cornerstone of tabletop games in general. Sure, there’s something to be said about an explorable environment with definite boundaries and interesting toys. But I have seen literal dungeons—dark spooky 10’-wide gray corridors—or analogs where they do not belong, not even a little bit. We have internalized pretty well, as a group, that Euro fantasy does not have to be the default. Why are dungeons and similar locations nevertheless so often the predominant environment for DIY games?

Conclusion

I’m not super interested in the specific conventions of the OSR as much as the broad concepts which were implicit in the play culture’s practices. I think we would do well to consider what things are conducive for interesting play in general—stuff like resource management, risk mitigation, random events—versus things which we take for granted by virtue of being in a largely OSR space. Focusing on factors which produce engaging choices and play, rather than feeling indebted to certain aesthetics or publications, is freeing, but it certainly requires practical knowledge of those factors which we often first acquire through hand-held forays.

Bibliography

It’s hard for me to make nice citations while I’m writing on my phone and not my computer. Like, it’s not impossible, but it is high effort. Please refer to my Keystones page and look for the following articles:

• “The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact” by Chris McDowell.
• “Rules vs. Rulings?” by Justin Alexander.
• “OSR-Style Challenges: ‘Rulings Not Rules’ is Insufficient” by Arnold Kemp.

NB: I think I wrote this last October (when my computer was broke). We’re deep in the backlog now!