Lessons from the OSR – Part I: Those Clunky Rules and Two Keys to Understanding Them

 So you picked up a copy of an old school game such as Old School Essentials (OSE,) Swords & Wizardry, or an original, TSR edition from D&D Classics such as the Rules Cyclopedia or the three venerable, Gygaxian pillars of AD&D: The Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master Guide.  You even read A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming and picked up some pastel dice at your friendly local store, filled them in with crayon yourself, and stuffed them in a Crown Royal bag* for extra authenticity.  You managed to convince  a couple of friends, family, the dog, and even that charming vagabond that hangs out by the railyard to get together for a riveting game of old school dungeon-delving and dragon-slaying.  Now what?

* If you’re under 21, kindly give that bottle to mom or dad after a hard day's work, or to that vagabond you convinced to buy it for you, you juvenile delinquent!  (AI image courtesy of Bing Image Creator.)

Don’t panic!  Weregrog is here to help you make sense of some of this arcane stuff.  In this series, I want to cover some of what I’ve learned about old school games and how to enjoy them.  I humbly submit this series as a companion, or Rosetta Stone of sorts for navigating those rulebooks.

You see, I’m not an OG grognard (although I am getting older and hairier.)  Just like I was born in the late 70s, but didn’t actually experience that era of Disco music and cocaine in any practical sense, I started playing D&D with old school rules (the 1991 version of Basic and AD&D 2nd Edition,) but during a progressively “new school” time and culture in roleplaying games (RPGs.)  At the turn of the century, I enthusiastically adopted the Third Edition as an improvement on an “outdated” game, overindulged and burnt out on it, then moved on to the Fourth in the hopes of regaining a certain, je ne ses quoi feeling of fun and freewheeling gameplay that I had somehow lost along the way.  I was wrong…so wrong.
 

"Ze game will remain ze zame!"  No, not really, and why are you hugging me, bro?

I then began to look backwards, first to games that sought to recapture that feel, like Castles & Crusades (still a great game by a great company,) then to my old haunts of AD&D 2e, and finally going deeper down that rabbit hole to the likes of Basic/Expert, AD&D 1st Edition, and even the Original (plus its supplements.)

 

I also discovered that I was not alone.  There was a whole movement of online forum-goers, bloggers, and the like who like myself, were rediscovering old school games (or never stopped playing them!)  A few were even genuine, OG grogs who, like Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, were there at the proverbial Mt. Dooms (or is it the Two Towers?) of Dave and Gary’s sand-filled, wargame tables.  This grassroots-like movement was (and is still) known as the Old School Renaissance/Revival/Revolution (no one can seem to agree on which one it is,) and as I delved deeper into the subject, I found that I had become infected with grogcanthropy!  I began to develop a new understanding and enjoyment of those older games in a way I never had before, almost as if I had discovered them for the first time.

But enough about history, and before I continue, I want to place a little disclaimer. What I’m going to write is my opinion based on what I’ve learned in the past decade or so via both theory and practice.  As such, it may be prone to error, bias, and even revisionist glorification of an idealized past.  Therefore, I’m going to present to you my Golden Rule:

There is no wrong way to play (A)D&D

 I hold this truth to be (anecdotally) self-evident.  How many of us learned the game from some form of basic or starter set, barely understood it, but ran with it and had fun anyway, or perhaps learned from an established group, with their own culture and house rules, only to find out later they were unique to that group and not necessarily part of the rulebook, let alone gaming culture at large?  It is a credit to these games that people all over (including yours truly) have enjoyed them for many years, each in their own way.

If you find yourself disagreeing with me and feel the need to set me straight, by all means, comment away, but just keep the Golden Rule in mind.  None of what I write here invalidates or is in any way a challenge to the way you enjoy these games, even if I write it an authoritative, grumpy, or otherwise opinionated manner.  In other words:

Don't be this guy (AI image courtesy of Bing Image Creator.)

Also note: I will use the term (A)D&D throughout this series to refer to all the TSR editions of the game from about 1974 to 1999, which I consider to be practically the same game due to their high degree of compatibility, and therefore “old school.”  This also includes their modern simulacra.

Those “Clunky” Rules

One of the first things you’ll notice about the old school rulebooks, even if you’ve picked up a tight, modern recreation like OSE, is that the rules tend to be all over the place.  You roll a d20 for this, a d6 for that, and in this one corner case, you refer to a table, cross-referenced by your character class or race and roll a d100 (I kind of made that one up, but you get what I mean.)  Worse, there isn’t a rule for every situation that comes up.  If you’re coming from an edition that just has you roll a d20 for everything, it can seem frustrating.  Are these rules incomplete?  Is this even a game?  

Don’t sweat it!  In the words of Master Yoda, you must “unlearn what you have learned.”  I’m going to give you two keys to navigating these arcane rulesets.  The first is why the rules seem disjointed or incomplete, and the second is a way to understand these rules in their proper context.  So let’s go!

I’m not going to go into a lengthy history lesson about the origins of the game.  There is plenty of information about the subject out there on the interwebs or in great books such as Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World and The Elusive Shift (which I’m finally getting around to reading,) as well as documentaries like Secrets of Blackmoor.  Still, I need to explain some things so that the reader and newcomer to old school games can better understand things (at least as I understand them.)

The Original game was made by niche wargamers for niche wargamers.  In a sense, it was more of a supplement for the medieval wargame, Chainmail (also by Gary Gygax, with Jeff Perren) on how to run “fantastic medieval wargames campaigns with paper, pencil, and miniature figures” like the authors (Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax) had done, which was in itself a relatively novel and experimental form of wargaming.  Even grognards back then criticized the game when it was first released in 1974.  Hating new things on principle is an ancient and august tradition, you see.  

Because of this, it seems the authors made certain assumptions about the reader.  Particularly, that they were already experienced with wargames and how to run campaigns, especially ones with a referee (or Game Master, naturally) in the free Kriegsspiel tradition.

What is free Kriegsspiel?  Well, really it’s a fancy word for a specific kind of freeform wargaming.  In the late 19th century, military generals with majestic facial hair and equally-majestic names like Julius von Verdy du Vernois believed that the wargame rules used to train military officers of the day (Kriegsspiel) were too rigid, unrealistic, and therefore unsuitable for training people whose decisions could lead soldiers to their deaths.

Therefore, they came up with the idea to use an experienced officer in the role of an impartial referee to oversee these training wargames.  The could make judgments on the spot that better simulate the changing, real-life conditions of the battlefield, and to accommodate for player ingenuity.  If you’ve played RPGs before, this may sound familiar.

Pictured: 19th-century military majesty and a face that says “games are serious business”

How does this apply to old school (A)D&D?  Well, folks like Gygax, Arneson, and their players (all wargamers) were well-versed in this form of play.  Their players trusted the referee (mostly) to make sound rulings based on the situation at hand, and fairly adjudicate between them, hence the old school mantra: “rulings, not rules.”  I know that Wizards of the Coast (WotC), likely for commercial purposes, would like the consumer to believe that anyone can be a GM, and that’s mostly true, but good GMing does require developing some level of skill that, just like characters, can get better with experience.  Imagine that!

Because of this play style,  old school games tend to have the minimal rules required to cover things like skirmish-style combat, procedures for the classic modes of play (which I will describe below,) and some specific, or corner cases that come up during play.  The authors expected the referee (or GM) to adjudicate the rest (often with the help of the dice as a randomizer.)  Is this lazy design? Maybe, but keep in mind that those free Kriegsspiel referees way back then understood that no set of rules, no matter how complete, can possibly cover every simulated situation.  I find it ironic that RPG authors have historically made the same mistakes, going to more rules, then less rules again.

This is the first key: old school (A)D&D doesn’t necessarily need many rules, as much as a skilled GM armed with one or more resolution systems.  These systems in turn are not hard limits on the GM, but tools used to adjudicate the game impartially and fairly.

Now on to the second key, another rule of thumb that may help you navigate old school rules.  This one borrows a phrase about evolution: 

Nothing in (A)D&D makes sense except in the context of the classic game modes: the Dungeon, the Wilderness, and the Domain (wargame.)

 Why can dwarves detect shifting passages?  Because (proper) Dungeons have shifting passages; it’s a perk!  Why can rangers track?  To find the lair (and treasure) of those orcs that just ambushed the party in the Wilderness.   Why is gold tied to experience?  To build powerful leaders with wealthy war chests necessary for the Domain wargame.  Why are there weapon vs. armor tables?  Well, that one may have been in error from the beginning, but there is at least some context in the form of the skirmish wargame (Chainmail.)

This is not to say the old school rules are perfect, far from it, but Gygax and Arneson did not come up with them out of the blue, either.  They do have some context in at least one of the three classic game modes, which I’ll cover briefly in the next installment.

Having a general understanding of the two keys above has been essential for me to grokking old school play on its own merits by understanding the underlying concepts of these games and campaigns a little better and I hope they help the reader as well, which I encourage to do their own research into the subject and check out the classic rulesets.  Feel free to share this and continue to follow the blog for further, in-depth looks at these topics.  I plan to cover them in a loose, piecemeal manner, so check back until you find a topic that interests you.  

Happy gaming!