One of the cornerstones of OSR is tactical transparency, or system agnostic challenge. Or as I like to state it: The players shouldn't need to know the rules to overcome their challenges. This is something that tends to make OSR the opposite of indie storygames, which are neither challenge based nor system agnostic. Storygames tend to use meta techniques to promote good storytelling (Such as bonus dies you can use when you really want to succeed with a roll). This is anathema to tactical transparency as the meta techniques are, well meta, and therefor not something that the character is aware of. So to use them strategically you need an outside perspective rather than looking at it from the perspective of your character. This isn't a problem for a storygame as you simply don't need to apply strategy.
Another thing that is popular in OSR is the original Dungeons and Dragons rules, and the early adaptions of these. But the thing is that they do include some meta techniques, foremost experience points, and secondary hit points.
It is often claimed that the point where D&D jumped the shark and left old school territory was when the primary source of XP became killing monsters rather than finding gold. I don't disagree, but I think we need to realize that XP is a meta currency. Your character is not aware of how XP is handed out in the system, or even that they exist. XP exists in the game as an additional motivation. It promotes a certain kind of story telling. I think one of the reasons XP for gold rather than XP for killing fits better into the OSR style is that gathering gold is a reasonable objective no matter if you get XP for it, while killing monsters, is more debatable. Strategies like "we need to find an additional 5000GP so I can level up enough to cast a resurrection spell", is certainly not system agnostic, but they are a consequence of how XP and leveling works in D&D.
The other part is hit points. These are not as meta as XP but I still think they are worth discussing. Discussions about what hit points actually represents in D&D, seems to be something that crops up periodically, and everybody have their own opinion. Most seem to agree that it is not simply how physically damaged your body is, at least not on higher levels. A level ten barbarian being able to take multiple ax wounds to the face seems to be ridiculous to most, even though it feels like people accept it more and more after having played computer games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy there you literally whittle down on the enemies hit points, getting in hit after hit. So in practice it seems to work like some kind of meta currency that you spend to avoid getting hurt? In any case it doesn't seem to line up very well with how our universe works, and leads to rather system specific solutions, like ignoring certain threats because you know you have hit points to spare.
You can see this in other early rpgs such as BRP that they tried to get away with the more abstract parts of D&D as these didn't facilitate tactical transparency. Unfortunately this tended to result in a lot of bloat, and more complicated systems, rewarding system mastery above system agnostic competence.
I would hope this is something that the OSR community could work on. To hold fast to our principles and question if and how our traditional mechanics support them, or oppose them. To continue the spirit of the early roleplaying games, while still questioning their methods.
No comments:
Post a Comment