Thoughts on Mike's Dungeons

[mannclay]

I've been using Mike's Dungeons for play with four kids (my daughter and her neighborhood pals) age ranging from 11-14 years old. Their energy is overwhelmingly positive in how they respond to the world around them and how they also, with lots of freedom to improvise, negotiate problems. They are not summoning murder hobo gods (as much as I find that fun too). They try their best to stay alive, without me really helping them.

While running these games I thought more on what the OSR acronym means. Now that Geek Culture is (unfortunately?) main stream and can be considered another link on Pop Culture, I'm seeing the loss of what I thought OSR was suppose to represent. Mike's Dungeons to me exemplifies what OSR was trying to accomplish...it's also those lost dreamy dungeon designing late evenings with a sprinkle of "who the heck knows if I'm doing this right" situations that are exemplar of a great era without ultra-mediation and portable notification devices.

I think what I'm aiming for in this thread is what are your thoughts on what OSR or anything that resembles gathering that 70's-80's era into a name means to you.

[DungeonDevil]

I'm not at all sure what you're going for, so I'll just shoot into the dark.

A "70s Feel" consists of:

1) avoiding the terms, "FRPG", "RPG", "roleplaying game" completely: this is a fantastic-medieval wargame playable with miniatures
2) keeping the rules a loose and open construct tacitly demanding the heavy creative input from GM.
3) slapdash, unprofessional artwork (Sorry, Greg Bell, but not sorry).
4) presupposing the audience will be historical miniatures wargamers.
5) contact information for people to either call or write in for clarifications (remember those days?)
6) digest size with lots of rusty staples! (or loose leaves badly mimeographed and stuffed hastily into a zippy bag).
7) assuming everyone and his uncle is familiar with (and wildly loves) the Lord of the Rings, etc.
8) assuming everyone is a regular member of a local wargaming club.
9) assuming the readership is VERY well-read, and has an eclectic taste in both fiction and non-fiction.

The above principles guide me in my own quest for how to appreciate the older games, and to develop my own "OS" materials. YMMV.

[DungeonDevil]

Sorry for the ramble. My response would have been more focused if the OP were a bit more specific.

[Deleted]

I'm not old enough to have gamed in the seventies, but two things I've come to embrace since taking a deep dive into OSR sensibilities are:

1 - The answer isn't on your character sheet. The character record sheet is for recording your gear, your spells and other numbers that only come up if you get yourself into a bad situation. You solve problems by asking the right questions and taking calculated risks that you think you'll succeed at, and you do that narratively, as if you are a person in a real universe.

2 - Combat isn't always the solution. It usually isn't. In fact, violence isn't always the obstacle. In, say, a 5e or Pathfinder game, if a low level party runs into something like an ogre, they're likely to be able to actually kill it in a combat with minimal difficulty. In OSR, the Ogre might not even be violent. It may be more interested in hiring them to help it with some pesky kobolds. Or it may be way too tough to take on face to face, but it likes to go out and take a walk at around midnight every night and leaves its treasure unguarded. (And as a subset of this one, the treasure is worth way more xp than the kill in Old School. In some cases, as in the campaign world I run, it's the only thing worth xp!)

[mannclay]

May 24, 2020 13:40:48 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Sorry for the ramble. My response would have been more focused if the OP were a bit more specific.

Pardon, I'm not really sure what I was going for here. Probably a rant that just defused while I was writing. I did not intend to try and gain a True or Correct definition of OSR though. But I enjoyed reading the responses about '70s Feel' and learned from them because I started with the Redbox when I was stupid young...so that was D&D for me.

To possibly be more clear, I've been experiencing from some local gamers and reading online about how 'old school' RPGing is being defined. I think that unique and very creative publications that are somewhat rules agnostic are labeled 'Old School', like publications now that have huge production values and have hardback versions for collection...etc. When I join in the convos, I end up having to explain for example why I'm getting loads of fun out of adding content and meaning to Mike's Dungeons. The response is "well, this book has no setting or meaning or campaign at all". So, I say "That's old school, bro". So, once again, as was already said, YMMV

[Starbeard]

I feel you. I wholeheartedly resonate with your first comments about ultra-mediation, notification devices, redefining geekdom and all its trappings as an expression of pop culture, and lost concept that gaming is about dreaming away evenings stabbing wildly at something that probably isn't working.

I have a complicated relationship with DCC for a lot of these reasons. All the things I love about it – the visual aesthetic and imaginative vibe, the community zine culture it supports, the fun modules – are also the things that feel like walls. The game's whole grass-roots, unabashedly old-school, DIY vibe is ultimately a veneer: really, the only way to get your stuff out there in the scene is to be a talented artist whose quality artwork and professional layout exudes the correct attitude.

There was a recent Save for Half podcast, with Jon Peterson on board to talk about Alarums & Excursions, where they said something similar: Kickstarter had just completed a hugely successful Zine Quest with zines for just about every RPG currently on the market, but these offers really have nothing to do with actual zines, because they're all professional products. The real deal, the APA, is as dead as roadkill.

I guess what I'm stabbing at is that the big difference, for me anyway, isn't that games like DCC are "too professional." It's that the driving force behind the community is too wrapped up in presentation and mediation. In a wacky uber-psychoanalytical sense, they really aren't about consuming games so much as they are about consuming attitudes (in other words, it's pop culture).

I've been playing Mike's Dungeons with my own nephews too (9-15), using a whatever-I-feel-like mashup set of D&D rules (at this point I've literally used every TSR version of D&D as a reference, and made up stuff from Final Fantasy, Zelda and Star Wars to boot, since that's their bag). The whole affair has been a muddled, stilted, disheveled mess, sometimes moving forward at glacial pace (the 9-year-old at one point refused to join the game until he had rolled up 30 characters by hand and arranged them from best to worst). It's also been a blast, and the only time they've pestered me to keep playing. Not sure where I'm going with that, but somehow it feels like there's a link to me. When I run DCC or D&D for my group of friends who don't care at all about the RPG scene, and wouldn't know one edition of D&D from another, we all get that same wonderful rush. But the couple of times I've jumped in on a DCC game with other OSR sceners, I kept saying to myself, "Is that all there is?"

[DungeonDevil]

May 24, 2020 13:56:55 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

I'm not old enough to have gamed in the seventies, but two things I've come to embrace since taking a deep dive into OSR sensibilities are:

1 - The answer isn't on your character sheet. The character record sheet is for recording your gear, your spells and other numbers that only come up if you get yourself into a bad situation. You solve problems by asking the right questions and taking calculated risks that you think you'll succeed at, and you do that narratively, as if you are a person in a real universe.

2 - Combat isn't always the solution. It usually isn't. In fact, violence isn't always the obstacle. In, say, a 5e or Pathfinder game, if a low level party runs into something like an ogre, they're likely to be able to actually kill it in a combat with minimal difficulty. In OSR, the Ogre might not even be violent. It may be more interested in hiring them to help it with some pesky kobolds. Or it may be way too tough to take on face to face, but it likes to go out and take a walk at around midnight every night and leaves its treasure unguarded. (And as a subset of this one, the treasure is worth way more xp than the kill in Old School. In some cases, as in the campaign world I run, it's the only thing worth xp!)

I like your description better!

a) it's not always about stats.
b) if the monster's too tough, don't get rough; another way is to parley!
And if parley is not okay, then it's always best to RUN AWAY!

Sorry, I'll stop now.

[mannclay]

This recent article from The Alexandrian on May 26th is relative to what I was driving at in this post: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44578/roleplaying-games/whither-the-dungeon-the-decline-and-fall-of-dd-adventures

[greentongue]

Good link with many things to consider.

[jeffb]

May 27, 2020 13:31:29 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

I have a complicated relationship with DCC for a lot of these reasons. All the things I love about it – the visual aesthetic and imaginative vibe, the community zine culture it supports, the fun modules – are also the things that feel like walls. The game's whole grass-roots, unabashedly old-school, DIY vibe is ultimately a veneer: really, the only way to get your stuff out there in the scene is to be a talented artist whose quality artwork and professional layout exudes the correct attitude.

There was a recent Save for Half podcast, with Jon Peterson on board to talk about Alarums & Excursions, where they said something similar: Kickstarter had just completed a hugely successful Zine Quest with zines for just about every RPG currently on the market, but these offers really have nothing to do with actual zines, because they're all professional products. The real deal, the APA, is as dead as roadkill.

I guess what I'm stabbing at is that the big difference, for me anyway, isn't that games like DCC are "too professional." It's that the driving force behind the community is too wrapped up in presentation and mediation. In a wacky uber-psychoanalytical sense, they really aren't about consuming games so much as they are about consuming attitudes (in other words, it's pop culture).

Nice (and spot-on, IMO) observation about the DCC community. The culture that was groomed by Joe, et al, or simply built up around this game became a big turnoff for me, for reasons I have a hard time putting into words- There are game elements I love in DCC. The fictional elements of Appendix N I love, are there- but I feel, justified or not, that I don't belong in the DCC community. It's almost a "cool kids cult" vibe. There is an attitude and aesthetic one must prescribe to , to be sufficiently a DCC fan. Again, justified or not, that's the feel I got being part of the Goodman forums, Google + (especially those first few years), the BLOGosphere and elsewhere.

As to the topic at hand.

We are seeing the Disney-fication of D&D (proper), and the OSR has become a small fish in the big pond of RPGs. In the golden/silver age of RPGs, these were the second and third tier games behind D&D. OSR is simply a second or third tier now in comparison to WOTC D&D. The OSR has turned commercial in the last 10 years. Certainly there are many who are still plugging away along, sharing content with the community for free, and producing their own little zines or newsletters. But this is no longer the majority of the OSR- or perhaps, the OSR that is easily accessible.

S&W jumped the Shark years ago, as FGG started churning out the hardcover big books on KS right along with their Pathfinder volumes. So disappointed Matt went that way, but I get it- $

Labyrinth Lord faded out because- no big push and amateur-ish looking product. It was not "cool" enough.

Same for Basic Fantasy RPG. This game is still being contributed to, updated and has TONS of very good free content out there. So how come we never hear about it? Nobody ever discusses it here. I bought my copy from Lulu back in 2008? Yet- Old School Essentials- with it's big beautiful books, and big KS is now all the rage in OSR-dom and has even the 5e yootoobers and posters talking. Chris Gonnerman aka solomoriah the "creator" of BFRPG and Iron Falcon is still holding that original torch as to what the OSR is supposed to be about and keeps plugging away. Yet his efforts are largely ignored.

:Charlie Brown Voice: OSR has gone commercial...….AUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH