Why OSR is FAR BETTER to run than 5e/Pathfinder

Today I opine (it was the right word) my thoughts on OSR being the best game genre to run, especially for new players.

#dungeonsanddragons #osrgamer #rpg #basicfantasy #becmi #dnd #oldschoolessentials #shadowdark #roleplay #castlesandcrusades #pathfinder2e #pathfinderrpg #dnd5e #

[heroeshomebrew]

Once I started digging into old school games I realized how much more enjoyable they are for me to run. I’ve never looked back.

[patkelley]

I prefer B/X. My rules assortment is similar. But DnD Rules Cyclopedia is king! I also love OSE. I need the OSE Advanced Players Tome but it's expensive right now. Check out the Pathfinder 2e Basic Box set. Way easier to understand and it's amazing.

[gamervideos]

I am a strong fan of the OSR. It is my go to style of play.

[ZarbanDerek]

I think a lot of 5e players are put off by the claim that old-school games are more lethal, but i (who started in 1981) never heard of a total party kill until i started looking into 5e. I think in the old days the PCs would negotiate or just run away when faced by a more powerful foe. But because of “balanced” encounters, 5e players think they can kill anything, so a misbalanced encounter can go off the rails.

[Ixnatifual]

Having less rules is incredibly liberating. And you get other advantages, such as the game being easier to get into and you don't have to spend 1-2 hours planning and creating your character.

[AtariTomX]

5e scared me away from running games. All the specific rules and mechanics, needing to worry about encounter balance and providing a satisfying narrative arc to the players and just....bleh. It was too much all at once. Hell, the DMG teaches you about the freaking multiverse at the start, and not how to stock a basic dungeon, a section that's tucked in the back of the book where it's likely to go ignored, if the reader ever gets that far. Maybe that's how they incentivised buying their campaign modules and setting books. "Look at all this work you won't have to do if you just buy more books!"

Thank God I found the OSR. With less than fifteen dollars, I can get multiple small, but complete rulesets, and with some dice, grid paper and imagination I can run a game in no time.

Old-school play is the cure for DM burnout. The hard part is convincing a 5e group to try it.

[rafauke]

Thank you for the video. Just to give some counterargument to your examples, it really boils down to how you want to run your games and what kind of people you play with. There's literally nothing blocking you from improvising in pf2e. You can emulate that style with rulings based on how many actions you want to spend on given thing (1-3), modify difficulty if you feel like it (-5, -2, +2, +5, whatever) and there you go. You don't need the clearly defined rules from the book, but if you would like to read find them, they are there for you and the players. In my experience it strongly depends on the group you're playing with (obviously). I teach pf2e to new players and always tell them the classic mantra of "feel free to go through the player book & specific rules, but if you don't feel like it, just focus on what your character would do" and they just explain their actions and I rule how many actions will it take (for example 2) and adjust difficulty to support the fantasy (yeah, that should be easy for him, let's give him a +2 to that attempt). And they enjoy it, they just need some very basic core rules to play and we're all good. You don't have to be restricted by these rules is what I'm trying to say.

I often see people making fun of Pathfinder not trying to realize or understand that it can be a flexible system if you want it to, not to mention that it's often people who haven't even played the system "but they've heard/read that somewhere". With regard to "you have to give them a proper item on given level" - you can just play with automated progression and you just forget about it. When you play with people like you explained on 2:37, it's a player problem, not a game problem. As in, "don't be a d**k" rule. IMHO the rules are there if you want, you are not forced to use them. You'll have a better time probably if you make adjustments if you don't want some of them (e.g. automatic progression). I play both OSR games and pf2e and I enjoy both of them. I know it has been said hundreds of times but "the players make the game".

To give another example, sometimes I play with people who are just starting out and they don't feel super confident in terms of what they want from the game, what kind of fantasy they want to play, what *can* they actually do in the game, how they interact with it etc. and from my experience, and I would like to emphasize that *for some people*, having these options laid out is also a way to deal with their anxiety about the game and what they can actually do with their character. Other people just go full out, they role-play, feel natural about it and that's great. Others can get intimidated by the lack of the rules. As I said, different people, different needs. I've seen on multiple occasions when playing some one shots, some pretty introvert people had no idea what to do at first, then they've read their pregenerated character background, skills and feats and they kind of filled in the gaps themselves and had great fun RPing.

I do agree though that there are a lot of players who are powergaming, min-maxing, focusing too much on the mechanics of the game, not on the story etc. I just decided that I don't want that kind of gameplay. So in short, IMHO it's possible to run a crunchy system as a base and still make it as flexible as you want it to.

[RolePlayGeek]

I prefer to run old school, but also players do like the options from new school now days too. A combination is best for me.

[derrells]

Lovely insight! I played old school nearly 40 years ago and it had a specialness I could not put my finger on. You nailed it bang on.

[sumdude]

PF and 5/e suffer from a Paradox of Choice for players and too much to memorize for a DM, having run all editions. But the one thing that I personally like about OSR is that it's basic and you can bolt things on from other editions with ease and little push back from players but taking 5e and saying I am stripping this thing away you will get a lot of push back.

[MykeDiemart]

Old school is the way too go - the game moves faster.

[Arnsteel]

Love this video. But we had rules lawyers in B/X also. But your voicing the rules lawyers was spot on.

[BX-advocate]

Yes you do tend to respond to comments and I appreciate that.

When I first switched to OSR it was shocking how easy it was to run. In the dark times when I was trying to run 5E it always felt like I never prepped enough or I prepped stuff that was useless, whereas in OSR I don't prep at all. I discovered that the best way for me to run a module is just read it then wing it and it works way better than spending hours prepping for 5E.

[LynnLeFey]

Yep. I just started a Basic Fantasy RPG game with some friends, and remembered the fun of D&D when it was 'roll some dice and make stuff up'.

[yellingintothewind]

Pathfinder 2e works _great_ for OSR style games. You just need to be up front about what kind of game you are running. This is the reason Proffor DM has the "no rulebooks at the table" rule. You can debate about how to handle a situation after the session, but in the moment, the DM picks something reasonable and you run with it.

Can players have their expectations broken this way? Yes. Is that different from AD&D? No. As long as the table expectation is "the game keeps moving", it's fine.

Just to elucidate that point a bit further. Say you have a character want to run along a balance beam in AD&D. So you tell them to roll a D20 and get under their dex score. Then a few minutes later, they come across a ladder spanning another crevice. So they say they want to run across it, expecting you will give them a similar success chance. Instead you assign it a low percentile chance and have them roll a d100. Or possibly the next week when they go to run across the _same_ balance beam, you have them make a DC 20 death save. The fact that the expectation arose organically at your particular table doesn't change the fact that players will make (sometimes outrageous) assumptions.

[lilacorkindheart]

Thank You for explaining everything!
My knowledge of D&D 2 edition comes only from Baldur's Gate and Spoony One, and they don't really go in depth into rules because they don't need to. They come from a position of knowing the basis already, so I'm really happy to know how Free the old system is.
Using your head, being smart is what I absolutley love.

If I may go on a tangent; the rules obediance remindes me of a video game called "W40k: Space Marine" where we had oposing ideals on interpreting The Codex Astartes in the form of two marines. There is our main character Captain Titus and Leandros.
Titus interprets it as a guidline to your actions, whereas Leandros think's you HAVE TO do exactly as it says.
Your examples of different rulesets of different edition reminded me of such an example.
I guess it is similiar at the table at times.

[finnfish]

every video has been great man, keep em coming!

[Androsynth]

My main reasons for switching/going back to the OSR:

1. DM prep: it takes less than half the time and there are tons of procedural tools for on the fly generation. Doesn’t feel like work.

2. Lethality=tension. It’s hard to make a bunch of fantasy marvel superheroes feel actually threatened. When a regular orc can two shot a pc even a few levels in, combat and danger feel genuinely threatening

3. Rulings over rules: without all the ‘roll for literally everything’ in 5e, players are forced to think and be clever. Far more engaging for the players once they adapt. Beating a trap by guile is actually bragging rights. The person did that, not the dice

4. Modules are easier to run: it’s like taking a college course prep wise to run curse of strahd. Hole in the Oak on the other hand just takes like 10 minutes and it’s every bit as fun.

[Skulliver-tq]

Spot on. I hit a point where I felt like RPGs were turning into Warhammer or tournament Magic the Gathering with the "builds". Something OSR-like is more fun as a GM and I think it really draws players out into better role play and more creative problems solving. Rules heavy RPGs often made me feel like I had to take away the player facing candy over and over. I always favor rule of cool.

[Postal]

My experience has been the other way around. If a question comes up, if we can look up the answer in a few minutes it resolves the problem. If we just make a ruling, it might get debated and discussed for multiple sessions distracting from the rest of gameplay.