OSR Recommend any of these games?

[Quickleaf]

I've developed an interest in what have been dubbed "old school baroque" RPGs (article about it from the Traverse Fantasy blog) - basically idiosyncratic takes on D&D that tend to be rules light but procedure heavy. "The focus is on abstracting the minutiae of the game in order to focus on procedurally simulating specific activities, from dungeon exploration to hex crawls to long-term domain play." These games involve some or all of the following:

• abstract measures of distance (e.g. hexes, rooms, zones)
• quantum items representing vague supplies or tools, which are transformed into specific items at will
• a more robust system for random events, including resource depletion or personal exhaustion besides just the typical wandering monster encounters
• more interest in the political/social dimension of play

So, the author of that blog gives a list of "old school baroque" games, and I'd like to try some of these. So far the only one on this list I've played is Cairn. I'm curious if you have run/played any of these, and which you can recommend I definitely check out first?

• Anderson, Micah. 2021. Bastards.
• Boven, Emiel. 2022. The Electrum Archive, Issue 1 (TEA).
• Gal, Yochai. 2020. Cairn. ✓
• Islam, Ava. 2022. Errant.
• Linderum, Markus. 2022. Down We Go (DWG).
• McCroo, Joshua. (Unreleased). His Majesty the Worm (HMTW).
• Milton, Ben. 2015. Maze Rats, v0.1 (MR0.1).
• Smith, W.F. (Unreleased). Prismatic Wasteland (PW).
• Surles, Reese R. 2021. Crowns.
• Verte, Emmy. 2022. FLEE.

 

[Gus L]

I find Errant quite interesting, and Cairn is very well supported by its community. The Cairn 2nd edition certainly seems to fit into this category that Marcia designated. Electrum Archive is also fun, but I'd call it a setting more then a game (though it has one attached).

In general these games are Post-OSR responses to the ultralight trend of the late-OSR. Some are still rules light to a varying degree but they tend to incorporate or explain a more robust set of procedure rather then just assume one will be following that of Moldvay Basic D&D (B/X). In that they are I think representative of the collapse of the OSR as a unified scene because one can't write things and assume that they are being fed into a community where play style is already understood and defined.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Errant is the game that made procedures such a big deal, I believe. If you're interested in procedures, that seems like the place to start.

 

[GMMichael]

I've developed an interest in what have been dubbed "old school baroque" RPGs (article about it from the Traverse Fantasy blog) - basically idiosyncratic takes on D&D that tend to be rules light but procedure heavy.

Sorry, the plots/charts of that blog made my eyes gloss over. How does one have light rules but heavy procedures?

"The focus is on abstracting the minutiae of the game in order to focus on procedurally simulating specific activities, from dungeon exploration to hex crawls to long-term domain play." These games involve some or all of the following:

• abstract measures of distance (e.g. hexes, rooms, zones)
• quantum items representing vague supplies or tools, which are transformed into specific items at will
• a more robust system for random events, including resource depletion or personal exhaustion besides just the typical wandering monster encounters
• more interest in the political/social dimension of play

I'm contractually obligated to recommend Modos 2, which involves some or all of the following for free:

• "Postures" instead of grids. Characters move where the narrative takes them.
• Support for "quantum items" with player-defined character elements and modular rules. Any character element can represent an item/supply, like the Healer skill, which removes Damage, could be the supply of healthful/healing food. Modular rules make it easy to add, for example, a Wealth or Supply attribute to characters, which could be used to determine on-the-spot purchasing power or preparedness.
• No random generators, since it uses only one table, but depletion and exhaustion make excellent character Flaws, which can add to role-playing by both PC and GM. They can also serve as motivators for PCs to earn rewards (Hero Points).
• Social conflict gets support that rivals physical conflict with the general ("extended") conflict framework, a selection of social skills (Persuade, Deceive, and Engage), and the option to treat social conflict like combat - complete with weapons, armor, and damage. "Mr. Darcy, roll metaphysical when you ask her to dance. Your best cummerbund gives +2."

I'd like to know if this qualifies as "old school baroque!"

 

[Quickleaf]

I find Errant quite interesting, and Cairn is very well supported by its community. The Cairn 2nd edition certainly seems to fit into this category that Marcia designated. Electrum Archive is also fun, but I'd call it a setting more then a game (though it has one attached).

In general these games are Post-OSR responses to the ultralight trend of the late-OSR. Some are still rules light to a varying degree but they tend to incorporate or explain a more robust set of procedure rather then just assume one will be following that of Moldvay Basic D&D (B/X). In that they are I think representative of the collapse of the OSR as a unified scene because one can't write things and assume that they are being fed into a community where play style is already understood and defined.

Could you speak more to that last bit about “[cannot] assume they are being fed into a community where play style is already understood and defined.”

Are you saying the communities of OSR and OSB (old school baroque) have different expectations?

Or are you saying OSB has different play style assumptions? Cause based on playing Cairn and reading Maze Rats those didn’t seem that different in terms of play style from something like B/X - different rules yeah, but dungeon crawling exploration seems like it goes the same way.

 

[Quickleaf]

Sorry, the plots/charts of that blog made my eyes gloss over. How does one have light rules but heavy procedures?


I'm contractually obligated to recommend Modos 2, which involves some or all of the following for free:

• "Postures" instead of grids. Characters move where the narrative takes them.
• Support for "quantum items" with player-defined character elements and modular rules. Any character element can represent an item/supply, like the Healer skill, which removes Damage, could be the supply of healthful/healing food. Modular rules make it easy to add, for example, a Wealth or Supply attribute to characters, which could be used to determine on-the-spot purchasing power or preparedness.
• No random generators, since it uses only one table, but depletion and exhaustion make excellent character Flaws, which can add to role-playing by both PC and GM. They can also serve as motivators for PCs to earn rewards (Hero Points).
• Social conflict gets support that rivals physical conflict with the general ("extended") conflict framework, a selection of social skills (Persuade, Deceive, and Engage), and the option to treat social conflict like combat - complete with weapons, armor, and damage. "Mr. Darcy, roll metaphysical when you ask her to dance. Your best cummerbund gives +2."

I'd like to know if this qualifies as "old school baroque!"

All these categories are just one way of thinking about pattern clusters within RPGs. But "old school baroque" sort of is where the easy definitions start to break down - I think - because of their idiosyncratic nature.

Light rules, heavy procedures I think would be something like Dolmenwood's exploration mechanics with tons and tons of random tables (though Dolmenwood is pretty much a retro-clone of B/X). Or possibly something like the old Atlas Games Dynasties & Demagogues' social combat (or any of that trio of books from Atlas Games). Um...ah AD&D's jousting rules might be an example. I think it's taking a more streamlined set of rules, and then applying them in unusual ways based on "Chase", "Negotiation", "The Joust", etc. At least that's how I'm reading it...

...But my unfamiliarity with many of the OSB games is why I'm asking!

 

[Gus L]

Could you speak more to that last bit about “[cannot] assume they are being fed into a community where play style is already understood and defined.”

Are you saying the communities of OSR and OSB (old school baroque) have different expectations?

Or are you saying OSB has different play style assumptions? Cause based on playing Cairn and reading Maze Rats those didn’t seem that different in terms of play style from something like B/X - different rules yeah, but dungeon crawling exploration seems like it goes the same way.

The Old School Baroque designation is Marica's, I don't necessarily buy it fully, even though I count many of these designers friends and have been involved in a lot of the discussion of "Proceduralism". I see some similarity in their work, but I'm not sure it's fully a unified design trend. What I see is less an "OSB" trend and more a response to the "death" of the OSR. Wait a second before you get defensive. I don't mean you can't play OSR games.

With the 2020's, and even more with the end of G+ the idea of the OSR as a singular scene or movement becomes an increasingly absurd proposition. We already have the "professionalization" of the late OSR, which I arbitrarily mark at around 2017 with the release of Hot Springs Island or Maze of the Blue Medusa, but which is perhaps better characterized by a slew of single creator ultralight systems like Knave, Maze Rats, and ITO. Then even that shatters and a bunch of opposed or at least distinct scenes arise forming a sort of Post-OSR. It's very much solidified by 2021 or so.

The thing about the ultralights is that part of how they are so light is that they assume the players will have a basis of procedural/play style knowledge. This knowledge being the "OSR" play style - which of course is up for debate itself, especially now as a lot of revisionists are spending time trying to recontextualize it as "D&D before 1980", "AD&D RAW" or "No weird stuff" and such.

So for ultralights, and I think even more by things like the FKR scene, they work great if everyone is on the same page with expectations and play style ... but they often fail when you just hand them to people who have different play styles and expectations. Without a supportive and semi-unified scene ultra-lights really have this issue.

Think of it as the difference between B/X and OSE. If you read Moldvay, 1/2 of the Basic book is examples, samples and instructions. OSE is just very clean mechanics. It's hard to play Moldvay as if it's a stereotypical 5E campaign (set-piece combats strung together by referee directed narrative) and not think maybe you're not doing it right. Not so with OSE - there's no examples of play or samples so the newcomer often does what they know, and if that's coming from 5E the game can feel like boring, high-lethality version of 5E with too brutal a set of skill challenges.

In 2011 - 2018 or so you could easily go to an existent OSR community and play games, get the basic ideas of how play worked and then just move forward... not so easy in 2024 because instead of a few entry points into a basically unified scene one has a mess of smaller Post-OSR scenes. Games like Cairn manage alright because they have communities built around them ... but for a lot of people's ultralights there wasn't really one, so proceduralism becomes a way of teaching new players again, and its necessary because it's harder to find good answers or examples of the intended play style.

 

[overgeeked]

Of those, I only have experience with Cairn, Errant, and Maze Rats. I would heartily recommend any of them. Though for me, Cairn is top of that heap. Errant and Maze Rats are great as resources and well worth picking up.

 

[Malmuria]

The Old School Baroque designation is Marica's, I don't necessarily buy it fully, even though I count many of these designers friends and have been involved in a lot of the discussion of "Proceduralism". I see some similarity in their work, but I'm not sure it's fully a unified design trend. What I see is less an "OSB" trend and more a response to the "death" of the OSR. Wait a second before you get defensive. I don't mean you can't play OSR games.

With the 2020's, and even more with the end of G+ the idea of the OSR as a singular scene or movement becomes an increasingly absurd proposition. We already have the "professionalization" of the late OSR, which I arbitrarily mark at around 2017 with the release of Hot Springs Island or Maze of the Blue Medusa, but which is perhaps better characterized by a slew of single creator ultralight systems like Knave, Maze Rats, and ITO. Then even that shatters and a bunch of opposed or at least distinct scenes arise forming a sort of Post-OSR. It's very much solidified by 2021 or so.

The thing about the ultralights is that part of how they are so light is that they assume the players will have a basis of procedural/play style knowledge. This knowledge being the "OSR" play style - which of course is up for debate itself, especially now as a lot of revisionists are spending time trying to recontextualize it as "D&D before 1980", "AD&D RAW" or "No weird stuff" and such.

So for ultralights, and I think even more by things like the FKR scene, they work great if everyone is on the same page with expectations and play style ... but they often fail when you just hand them to people who have different play styles and expectations. Without a supportive and semi-unified scene ultra-lights really have this issue.

Think of it as the difference between B/X and OSE. If you read Moldvay, 1/2 of the Basic book is examples, samples and instructions. OSE is just very clean mechanics. It's hard to play Moldvay as if it's a stereotypical 5E campaign (set-piece combats strung together by referee directed narrative) and not think maybe you're not doing it right. Not so with OSE - there's no examples of play or samples so the newcomer often does what they know, and if that's coming from 5E the game can feel like boring, high-lethality version of 5E with too brutal a set of skill challenges.

In 2011 - 2018 or so you could easily go to an existent OSR community and play games, get the basic ideas of how play worked and then just move forward... not so easy in 2024 because instead of a few entry points into a basically unified scene one has a mess of smaller Post-OSR scenes. Games like Cairn manage alright because they have communities built around them ... but for a lot of people's ultralights there wasn't really one, so proceduralism becomes a way of teaching new players again, and its necessary because it's harder to find good answers or examples of the intended play style.

I feel like the Old School Primer and especially the Principia Apocrypha helps with orienting people towards the expectations of OS play. Granted, it's different from having procedures, but I do see a lot of people get directed to those texts to transition in mentality to OS play.

 

[Malmuria]

I've developed an interest in what have been dubbed "old school baroque" RPGs (article about it from the Traverse Fantasy blog) - basically idiosyncratic takes on D&D that tend to be rules light but procedure heavy. "The focus is on abstracting the minutiae of the game in order to focus on procedurally simulating specific activities, from dungeon exploration to hex crawls to long-term domain play." These games involve some or all of the following:

• abstract measures of distance (e.g. hexes, rooms, zones)
• quantum items representing vague supplies or tools, which are transformed into specific items at will
• a more robust system for random events, including resource depletion or personal exhaustion besides just the typical wandering monster encounters
• more interest in the political/social dimension of play

So, the author of that blog gives a list of "old school baroque" games, and I'd like to try some of these. So far the only one on this list I've played is Cairn. I'm curious if you have run/played any of these, and which you can recommend I definitely check out first?

• Anderson, Micah. 2021. Bastards.
• Boven, Emiel. 2022. The Electrum Archive, Issue 1 (TEA).
• Gal, Yochai. 2020. Cairn. ✓
• Islam, Ava. 2022. Errant.
• Linderum, Markus. 2022. Down We Go (DWG).
• McCroo, Joshua. (Unreleased). His Majesty the Worm (HMTW).
• Milton, Ben. 2015. Maze Rats, v0.1 (MR0.1).
• Smith, W.F. (Unreleased). Prismatic Wasteland (PW).
• Surles, Reese R. 2021. Crowns.
• Verte, Emmy. 2022. FLEE.

I have Down We Go, but have never played it. I think at a certain point I just searched itch.io by the tag "FKR" and downloaded as many free games as I could. Those are all games that might benefit from the procedures in a game like Errant, but are themselves not procedure-heavy. A lot of those games take inspiration from blades in the dark in particular ways as well.