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OSR Definition

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Sep 23rd, 2017
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  1. OSR
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  3. A play style marked by attempting to emulate the feeling of Dungeons & Dragons editions made under the TSR era. This play style puts emphasis on several gameplay elements, including:
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  5. •Dice as the method of storytelling. Characters are randomly generated by dice rolls and in many versions of OSR, the character can be fully generated through dice rolls, such as 1e/2e's method of rolling up age, race, and profession.
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  7. •Removal of skills. OSR games strongest characteristic is the lack of a proper skill system outside of a thief's skills. All characters can attempt all challenged provided that the DM allows them to try.
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  9. •Incomprehensive list of rules. OSR by design lacks many rules for certain cases, especially for those outside of combat and survival in the wilderness. The purpose of the DM/Referee is to adjudicate those situations and provide stable and consistant ruling for the group as needed for these cases. Note: This is distinguished from Rules-lite style games which attempt to remove as many rules as possible. OSR tends to be very rich in rules concerning character creation, combat, magic, and survival, and expects you to uphold those rules. Rules-lite will thin out those rules as well and expect you to ignore what rules they HAVE written.
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  11. •Low levels of differentiation. OSR characters are vulnerable at all levels, and low level characters can journey and keep up with high level characters fairly easily. Monsters rarely have "power creep" marked by more modern games and tend to also slowly grow in power along with the players. AC tends to stay low enough that even low-level players can hit them, and enemies tend to stay dangerous at all levels.
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  13. •Front-loaded character design. Class elements tend to be given to the class upfront rather than spread out through all levels.
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  15. •High levels of lethality. Characters are prone to instant death spells, traps, and techniques at any time, such as poison.
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  17. •Low levels of character granularity. OSR characters are defined by six traits, race and/or class. There are very few other decisions that go into making a playable character
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  19. •Ease of reentry. Because of the four traits above, it's very easy for a player to make a brand new character and have them rejoin the table within minutes. It is not odd at all for a table to have a level 5, level 4, level 7, and level 1 adventuring all together.
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  21. This is what denotes an OSR experience. Please note, that for a game to be OSR, it doesn't have to adhere to all elements of the above. Rather, the above is what I feel is the example of the most OSR game possible, and as you remove elements, you step away from that guideline and become less and less OSR until you finally get to a point where you only follow maybe one or two of the above. Or in otherwords, I view this as the definition of OSR, but games tend to land on a sliding scale.
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