Friday, October 12, 2018

OSR Guide For The Perplexed Questionnaire

Zak posted these and I thought I'd answer them.

1. article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me:  
Alas, I cannot give the perfect answer to that because it would've been on one of Huge Ruined Scott's blogs that he has destroyed and are now lost to time.  A close second, however, is the Dismal Depths from Sham's Grog and Blog. The way he was able to pack so much flavor into those one line monster statblocks and the way it feels weird but still obviously inspired by the fantasy that inspired D&D is just great.  It was the first thing I saw that made me want to do megadungeons, which anyone who has read this blog knows is a passion of mine.

2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark: 
Just because a rule is old or out of fashion doesn't mean its bad.

3. Best OSR module/supplement:
The Tome of Adventure Design is the one I use the most by far.  It requires a certain level of interpretation if you're not running a fairly Pulp Fantasy game, but even for something like Nightwick it's extremely useful.

4. My favorite house rule (by someone else): 
Using Whitebox/OD&D number of hit die to determine bonus to hit. I learned that one from Antion but I think he may have gotten it from somewhere else.

5. How I found out about the OSR: 
I was running a Wilderlands game using 4e and was trying to find resources for the setting when I stumbled upon Huge Ruined Scott's Wilderlands OD&D blog. 

6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy:
Dave's Mapper.

7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers: 
the Nightwick game hangout at 3am Monday morning.

8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games: G+?  
I guess that's going away though.  

9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough: 
All D&D prep is hack work.

10. My favorite non-OSR RPG
Delta Green.

11. Why I like OSR stuff: 
The big thing is that its simple while allowing for a great deal of creativity on the part of the referee.  I also tend to like the pieces of inspiration OSR people look to better than the mainstream fanatasy RPG crowd's love of epic fantasy.

12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:
I'm going to imagine anyone reading this is familiar with Grognardia, but I want to particularly call out his Dwimmermount session reports as a powerful inspiration on me.

Robert Parker's post on "campaign frames" is a must read for anyone working on rpg stuff, OSR or otherwise.

13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be: 
So many of the ones I used to read don't update anymore that it's kind of hard to answer.

14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is: 
Nightwick Abbey, but that's not really in a form y'all can look at yet so instead I'll say the What the Hell is Wrong with this Guy hireling table.

15. I'm currently running/playing: 
I'm running a Wilderlands game in person on Saturdays and my long running Nightwick Abbey campaign online on Sunday nights. 

I'm playing in Huth's Zothesque game and a 5e thing Cole runs that I don't think has a name.

16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because:  
Actually I prefer you use ascending AC because I am young by grognard standards.

17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice:


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