East Coast OSR Roleplaying Games Meetup

This meetup is for people who are interested in "tabletop roleplaying games" (TTRPGs), both complete beginners looking to start with an easy-to-learn ruleset and for experienced players who have become a bit bored with the most common games like D&D 5th edition and Pathfinder (an off-shoot of D&D 3rd edition). Instead, we'll be playing TTRPGs associated with the "Old-School Renaissance/Revival" (OSR) that try to recapture the looser play-style from the first generation of RPGs in the 1970s-80s while streamlining and altering the rules a bit (or a lot) to make the game easier to play & more fun. Fans of these old-school RPGs are called "grognards".

For a quick overview of what the "Old-School Renaissance/Revival" (OSR) games are like, check out this 11-minute video from Ben Milton's Questing Beast Youtube channel or if you want to learn a bit more, read Matthew Finch's "Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming".

There's several core principals that set the OSR games apart from more modern TTRPGs:

1. Rulings not Rules: Game mechanics are minimalist & there's not an exhaustive list of your characters skills & abilities. On-the-spot rulings from the Game Master (GM), based on his/her intuitive understanding of how the game world works, are favored for resolving situations not specifically covered in the rule books. GMs must also prevent anything that seems to them like a game-breaking abuse of the rules. This is why OSR gamers often say "the answer isn't on your character sheet" and encourage players to just try creative tactics and let the GM rule on their plausibility. It's also why OSR gamers discourage player attempts at "rules lawyering" and refer back to "Rule Zero" - i.e. the game master can override published game rules for any reason.
2. Roleplaying not Roll-playing: The point of minimalist game mechanics is to avoid the break in story immersion that comes with constantly having to roll dice, calculate bonuses & penalties, and discuss stats. For example, instead of merely saying "I check for traps" or "I try to bluff my way past the guard" and then rolling dice to see if your Find/Remove Traps or Bluff attempt succeeds, OSR games force the player to describe HOW they check for traps or WHAT they say to the guard. This is why OSR gamers often say "play the world not the rules". It also means the "disassociated mechanics" (i.e. character abilities without any in-world explanation of how/why they work) we see in later editions of D&D don't exist in OSR games. This explains why many OSR gamers will talk about the importance of "player skill over character skill", i.e. with enough ingenuity on the player's part (e.g. taking your time, using your equipment judiciously, getting into an advantageous position, combining the efforts of several PCs), you may be able to boost your character's base chance of success or even get an automatic success. It's important to note that while OSR games may give characters a "background" that gives them advantage on skill checks related to their former profession, they tend to lack detailed skill systems and just assume PCs have general competence in a wide range of adventuring-related activities. Thus, most OSR games allow any PC to attempt many mundane activities related to dungeon crawling & wilderness exploration (provided they have the right equipment) even if their base chance of success is lower than a skilled specialist like a thief or ranger - i.e. all characters can try to be stealthy, listen at doors, bash open a locked door/chest, find/trigger a trap with a ten-foot pole, climb a wall with a rope & grappling hook, look for unaccounted spaces in their dungeon map to deduce where secret rooms might be, knock on walls to search for secret panels, bind wounds with bandages, use flint & steel to light a torch/campfire, hunt for wild game with their bow/spear, swim or construct a raft to cross a river, ride & care for a horse, navigate with a compass, etc.
3. Heroic not Superheroic: While OSR characters are "heroic" in the sense of being able to perform a wide variety of adventuring-related tasks (as noted above), they aren't invulnerable since heroism requires taking real risks. Hit points are often lower (and sometimes capped), there's no "healing surges" that make characters regenerate like Wolverine, and characters typically die when they hit zero hit points rather than merely falling unconscious as in later editions of D&D. Also, any sort of massive damage - e.g. falling into lava or from a hundred foot cliff - typically kills you with no save. (If/when your character dies, you'll be expected to laugh it off and create a new character or take over an NPC nearby.) Success in OSR games typically means surviving and gradually becoming more skilled, not gaining so many magic items you're almost festooned with them (a.k.a. the "Christmas tree effect") or having umpteen feats & special abilities like in D&D 5E. OSR games consciously avoid the "power creep" that's plagued later editions of D&D, although you can find complaints about "power gamers" and "munchkins" even back in the 1st edition days.
4. Lethality not Game Balance:  Unlike later editions of D&D, in old-school play the random encounter tables aren't adjusted so that the "Challenge Rating" (CR) of monsters the PCs encounter are what they have a decent shot at beating. At best, in OSR games, some GMs will have encounters get more dangerous the further you go from a settlement or the deeper you go in a dungeon, or they will telegraph the level of danger in an area by allowing players to hear rumors or encounter tracks or kills of a powerful monster in an area so they can try to avoid it. This is what OSR gamers mean when they talk about "combat as war" vs "combat as sport" and it's why they often say "combat is a fail state" - i.e. the party may often need to hide, negotiate, or run away instead of fighting.
5. Sandboxes not Railroads: There is less emphasis on character arcs & predefined endings, and a greater emphasis on generating "emergent narratives" from a mix of interesting maps, setting guides filled with lore, random tables, and player choices. This is a reversal of the trend that began with 2nd edition AD&D where boxed adventures were designed to fit player actions into a pre-existing narrative. This is why OSR gamers sometimes say "Dragonlance ruined everything" since it was the success of the original Dragonlance adventures and tie-in novels that changed the direction of D&D away from the earlier DIY ethic.
6. Pick-Up Games not Epic Campaigns: Rather than expecting a small group of regular players to commit to multiple sessions that are part of an overarching campaign, tabletop RPGs in the 1970s often assumed a large group of irregular players and several DMs (often in college gaming clubs) who'd drop in whenever they had some free time. The 1st edition D&D rulebook famously said that "four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign", but this assumed all the players wouldn't show up on the same day. As OSR game designer Ben Milton has explained, interlinked groups of players explored the same world in different sessions in a way that resembled a tabletop version of MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) like "World of Warcraft" that would come several decades later. To facilitate this style of play, old-school D&D often used an "open table" format where anyone who wanted to play was welcome. You didn't have to commit to a campaign that would span several sessions and required regular attendance. Instead, each session was a self-contained adventure (usually a dungeon crawl) with the players starting & ending the session at a nearby town where they could rest, heal & resupply. However, over multiple sessions, a rotating cast of characters could gradually explore the same "mega-dungeon", returning again & again to progress through different rooms & levels, evading traps, battling monsters & collecting treasure. This play method faded by the late 1980s but was revived in 2007 by the game designer Ben Robbins who touted his open-ended "West Marches" adventures on his blog, which focused on exploring the wilderness around a frontier town instead of a dungeon crawl. As Robbins explained, when all adventures begin & end at a home base location, this makes it easier to accomodate irregular players by explaining how/why new characters are joining the party (i.e. they met the other characters in town) and what happened to the characters whose player didn't show up (i.e. they stayed in town).

There's several more common aspects of old-school RPGs that we may incorporate into our games, depending on what most of our members are interested in:

• LOW MAGIC / LOW FANTASY: Thematically, our adventures will probably lean more towards grittier sub-genres of fantasy like low fantasy, sword & sorcery and sword & planet - often with a dash of "dying earth" or eldritch horror - which reflect the sources of inspiration found in early D&D's "Appendix N". This means most adventures will revolve around survival and practical, smaller-scale goals rather than saving the world or ascending to godhood. These fantasy sub-genres tend to be "low-magic" which means magic items will probably be rare & unique, and magic spells may often be dangerous to the caster's heath or sanity. Think Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories and Fritz Lieber's "Fafhrd & Grey Mouser" tales rather than the high/epic fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy where the heroes are on a mission to defeat the forces of darkness, or the "high magic" fantasy settings of modern D&D where almost every town has a shop that sells magic items and a temple that offers healing & resurrection.
• MORAL COMPLEXITY & DARKER THEMES: As befits the grittier fantasy sub-genres we're drawing upon for inspiration in our games, there won't be any attempt to interject a conservative Christian allegory like C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia" or the progressive social messages you'll find in modern fantasy adaptations like Amazon's "Rings of Power" and "Wheel of Time" series. Instead, the world's morality will often be ambiguous, with differences in character temperaments, allegiance to different guilds or factions, or the cosmic forces of law & chaos replacing the traditional good-vs-evil alignment. This moral complexity treats players as adults, which was the intended audience of original D&D before the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s forced D&D 2nd edition to be toned down for kids & younger teens (e.g. removing nudity, gore, devils/demons, half-orcs, assassins). This also vibes with the darker fantasy themes popularized in recent years by HBO's series "Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon". Moral complexity gives us an opportunity to explore the motivations of "monstrous" races and "barbaric" cultures in a more nuanced way, whereas D&D 5th Edition has been riven by debates over "inherently evil races" like orcs due to its simplistic good-vs-evil framing. And since we're starting with the assumption that many games will include darker themes similar to an R-rated movie, we won't be including any of the "safety tools" that have been implemented with D&D 5th edition to protect players from "traumatic" content.
• PLAY STYLES ("GAMER" VS "ROLEPLAYER"): Different RPGs tend to encourage different play styles, often broadly categorized as "Gamist" (more like a videogame or board game where mastery of the rules & achievement are important) or "Narrativist/ Simulationist" (more like a fantasy film/novel where immersion in the character's motives & a detailed setting are important). Sometimes these play styles are subdivided into several "player archetypes" (e.g. power gamer, thespian). Even within D&D, which aspect the GMs & players emphasize more has shifted back & forth over time with different editions and in different gamer subcultures - check out this "Six Cultures of Play" blog post for more on that. Play styles also tie into how players treat their characters (something called "Stance Theory"), i.e. whether they play them like "pawns" or "actors". If there's lots of focus on die rolls and complex rules connected to your character's skill progression like in D&D 5E, that tends to encourage a gamier play style and "pawn stance". But the lighter rules of early D&D and many OSR retroclones also lend themselves to what's called a "beer & pretzels" game - i.e. easy-to-run adventures without much plot that mostly just involve killing monsters, collecting loot & leveling up - almost like a tabletop RPG version of classic '80s video games like "Gauntlet", "Ultima I" or "Final Fantasy I". However, some of the newer OSR games simplify the rules and deemphasize rolling dice to shift the game's focus back to the narrative. Players in these more narrative-focused RPGs are encouraged to inhabit their character's perspective and roleplay them in a dramatic way like an actor would as opposed to using them instrumentally to "win the game" without any consideration of the character's background or motivation. This "actor stance" sometimes means not taking the optimal strategy or even "losing the game" (but helping the narrative) by fleeing in fear, getting captured, losing an important item, going insane, or dying tragically.
• ANTI-CANON VS ESTABLISHED SETTINGS: While many OSR games tend to use lightly-sketched or undefined "anti-canon" settings that are filled in by using a mix of random tables, player ideas and GM fiat, we may also set adventures in established fantasy settings from novels, movies & RPGs that are already fleshed out with great locations, interesting NPCs, and lots of lore.
• HEXCRAWLS VS POINTCRAWLS VS THEATER OF MIND: Although some OSR gamers have revived hex maps and detailed rules for overland travel & exploration (a.k.a. hexcrawls), these can sometimes be cumbersome in online play. So when traveling between locations is more important than exploration, we may use a "pointcrawl" method where notable locations are shown as points on the map connected by lines indicating possible paths, or we may use the "theater of the mind" method where movement & distances are even more abstracted into something like "3 days travel over rough terrain". For OSR games with highly strategic combat where tracking the PC's positioning & movement matters, we may use a "virtual tabletop" that simulates the miniatures & grid that old-school games used to employ for determining battle lines. However, for OSR games that have a more narrative approach to combat (i.e. like the description of a fight scene you'd read in a fantasy novel), we'll use the theater-of-mind approach.
• ROLLING FOR STATS VS POINT-BUY SYSTEM: While many OSR games favor using dice rolls (usually 3d6) to determine a character's starting attributes, to put everyone on an equal footing we may use a system where all players get the same number of starting points to allot to their attributes as they see fit. Some RPGs with point-buy systems even give players some additional points to spend on special abilities, perhaps at the cost of incurring some disadvantages (e.g. the "edges" and "hindrances" from Savage Worlds), and we may experiment with that as well.
• PLAYABLE RACES: While D&D 5th edition has a plethora of exotic races/species available for player characters, many OSR games mirror Original D&D and limits players to just humans and a handful of Tolkienesque demi-humans (i.e. elves, dwarves, halflings). For game balance, early D&D gave demi-humans various racial bonuses but capped the max level they could achieve, whereas later editions removed the level cap but gave humans a bonus feat or stat bonuses. However, another way to keep the game balanced is to restrict the options for playable races. For example, some "low fantasy" settings (e.g. Robert E. Howard's "Hyborian Age") may limit PCs to humans and also make humans the most common NPC antagonists, although there's often a variety of human cultures that give characters stat modifiers or special abilities. In these human-centric settings, other humanoid races are typically powerful & mysterious NPCs who are only encountered in far-off realms - like the elves & dwarves in the Norse sagas. Conversely, some RPGs focus on non-human characters like vampires & werewolves in a Gothic horror setting, or aliens & androids in a sci-fi setting, in which case humans serve as the underpowered NPCs - like peasants in a typical fantasy RPG.
• PLAYABLE CLASSES & CLASSLESS SYSTEMS: Many OSR games still use the standard 4 "core classes" of OD&D (fighter, thief, cleric, wizard) perhaps with some older sub-class variants (e.g. barbarian, paladin, ranger, druid, bard, assassin, monk, illusionist) and/or 2nd Edition AD&D's "character kits" which can add some variety to each class. Some OSR games follow Basic D&D and use "race as class" - i.e. humans can select from several class options, but non-human characters like elves, dwarves & halflings automatically get a unique class suited to the stereotypical strengths & weaknesses of their race. Other RPGs (e.g. Runequest) are "classless" and ditch the concept of "class" and let characters mix & match various abilities in a way that's much simpler than D&D's multi-class & dual-class rules. These classless systems often allow for the creation of PCs that resemble the multi-talented protagonists from classic pulp fantasy tales, so we may experiment with it.
• MAGIC SYSTEM VARIANTS: Original D&D borrowed its conception of magic from Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels which featured magicians memorizing specific spells then forgetting them as they were cast - a.k.a. "Vancian" or "fire & forget" magic - in a way that vibed with D&D's focus on resource management. However, some classic RPGs have used more flexible "mana" systems where each spell costs a certain number of points (e.g. Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest), while others used "ritual magic" that involves exotic ingredients and long casting times (e.g. Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer), and some newer RPGs feature "freeform" magic systems (e.g. Whitehack, Maze Rats) that involve more ad-hoc negotiations between the player & DM to determine the spell's difficulty & effects.
• HIT POINT/HEALTH VARIANTS: Most OSR games use Hit Points (HP) as an abstraction to measure a character's health without tracking hit locations or the effects of various wounds, allowing a character to keep fighting at full capacity until death occurs when you hit zero hit points. However, there's several common variants to make the game less lethal without sacrificing the "gritty" feel. Some games' rules state that characters merely fall unconscious & bleeding out at 0 HP so that you'll die in several rounds if you don't promptly receive first aid. Others have you roll on a death/dismemberment table when you reach 0 HP where you might've died or might've just lost an eye, nose, hand or leg if you're lucky (which often reduces one of your base stats). There's also the "shields shall be splintered" rules that allows you to sacrifice your shield or another piece of your equipment (often your weapon or armor) to avoid a fatal blow. Similarly, some games allow you to take a wound that temporarily reduces your effectiveness (e.g. broken arm) instead of a hit point loss. Lastly, some games don't use hit points and instead use "wound tokens/levels" that can impose penalties to actions, reduce skill effectiveness, or trigger other negative effects up to & including death once a certain threshold is reached.
• LOW-LEVEL PLAY VARIANTS: If players are okay with extra high lethality, we may experiment with "funnel sessions" (a.k.a. "running the gauntlet") where each player starts play with several 0-level commoners who are thrust into an adventure. The idea is players will keep the handful that survive as their 1st-level characters, and they've got a great backstory. Conversely, a less-lethal idea for 1st-3rd level characters is to assume that fighters start as a knight's squire, clerics start as a temple's acolytes, wizards start as a sorcerer's apprentice, thieves start as a street urchin who wants to join the thieves' guild, etc. Initially, their superiors will assign them some tasks that involve in-town adventures, e.g. "kill ten rats in the tavern's cellar", fetch quests, murder mysteries or exploring a haunted house. Then they become independent adventurers around 4th-5th level, at which point it makes more sense for them leave town and risk the higher danger of escort quests, wilderness exploration & dungeon crawls. Yet another method is to skip low-level play and just abstract it into a "prologue" or "platform" that shapes a character's backstory and perhaps helps determine their starting stats, class & abilities, allies & enemies.
• XP VARIANTS: Many OSR games follow early D&D rules and give experience points (XP) for finding treasure rather than slaying monsters which motivates characters to play in a stealthier & more strategic manner. We may or may not experiment with this, since most players enjoy combat. It also makes narrative sense that characters would get better at fighting, spell-casting, stealth, etc, by practicing those skills regardless of how much loot it got them. However, we will look for various ways to reward players for tactics that don't involve combat so we avoid having PCs devolve into stereotypical "murder hobos" whose only motive is killing monsters for XP.
• CHARACTER EXPENSES: Some OSR games have revived the rule that PCs must pay for training to level up, which helps explain where they spent all that treasure they found on their last adventure - along with taxes & tithes. However, a more fun method of draining the PC's coffers are the "carousing rules" from various OSR games that reward players in various ways (e.g. XP, Luck, Morale, Status) for blowing their money on finery, feasting, drinking, gambling, companionship, etc., instead of always spending it wisely on more gear. This can also generate lots of plot hooks for urban adventures if the PCs get pickpocketed, arrested, challenged to a duel, indebted to a local noble, seduced by a vampire, etc.
• REAL-TIME PLAY: We may experiment with what's called "playing in real time" or "1:1 timekeeping". To facilitate a string of pick-up games with a rotating cast of characters that all take place in the same world (as described in Point #6 above), old-school D&D often had time pass in the campaign world at the same speed as our world. In between sessions, it was assumed characters could accomplish various tasks back at their base of operations like resting/healing, training with their weapons, learning new skills, researching a new spell, crafting items, etc. But it also meant wilderness areas you'd already cleared could repopulate with monsters or bandits, and a dungeon's treasure might get looted by another group while you were back in town. Similarly, while you're off adventuring, your base of operations could be raided and all your accumulated treasure could be plundered. This sort of dynamic game world also means quest-giving NPCs wouldn't wait forever for you to complete the task they gave you, and villains won't wait forever for you to come & try to stop their master plan. These are some of the reasons why D&D's creator Gary Gygax emphasized to GMs that "strict time records must be kept".
• REACTION ROLLS, MORALE & "SOCIAL COMBAT": While later editions of D&D minimized social interactions and placed such a high emphasis on combat that Charisma (CHA) became a mostly useless "dump stat" (except for some CHA-based spellcasters), many OSR games have made high CHA useful again by bringing back early D&D's emphasis on reaction rolls for randomly encountered people & monsters, as well as morale rolls for hirelings & henchmen. Some OSR games have also developed rules for "social combat" - i.e. extended interactions where each side can deploy a variety of social skills to chip away at each other's resolve/morale/status over multiple rounds (sometimes tracking this as damage to "social hit points") - rather than making the outcome of a social encounter hinge entirely on one social skill check. However, this tends to be more common in low-magic settings where simply casting "Charm Person", "Cause Fear" or "Detect Thoughts" isn't an option.
• PLAYER-VS-PLAYER (PvP) CONFLICT: While most OSR games encourage players to cooperate and focus on fighting NPC enemies, we may experiment with some OSR games like "Brozer" that aim to recreate the "Braunstein" wargames that inspired D&D. These wargames divide players into factions and feature player-vs-player battles with the GM acting as referee. Another PvP option is scenarios like "Paranoia in Red Rock" that assign 1 or more players to a secret enemy faction and the rest of the players try to figure out who the traitor is, as in "social deduction games" like Mafia or Werewolf.
• DOMAIN PLAY, HIRELINGS/FOLLOWERS & MASS COMBAT: Old-School D&D often had PCs employing hirelings and henchmen at lower levels, and allowed higher-level characters to attract followers, build a stronghold (e.g. castle, temple, wizard tower, guild house), and begin "domain play" - i.e. ruling a geographic area & fighting against or allying with neighboring factions - which connected D&D with its roots in wargaming. Our games will mostly focus on low-to-mid-level adventures that precede epic-level domain play, but we're open to letting PCs hire NPC hirelings and/or staging massive battles using various OSR "mass combat" rules. I'm also open to allowing players to take over running some of the world's major NPCs in the way the OSR blogger Jeffro Johnson has promoted as "patron play", since this lightens the load for GMs.
• DIFFERENT OSR RULESETS: Rather than sticking with one particular OSR ruleset, we'll play-test several of them so our members can get a sense of their advantages and shortcomings. OSR-related games can be loosely categorized into 5 categories:
  (1) "Classic OSR" generally refers to "retro-clones" that repackage & streamline the rules of early editions of D&D like the White Box, B/X, BECMI or 1st Edition AD&D without changing much (e.g. OSRIC, Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord).
  (2) "OSR-adjacent" games mix original D&D rules with some modern game mechanics you wouldn't see in old-school D&D like armor as damage reduction, non-Vancian magic (i.e. no daily spell slots), advantage/ disadvantage on die rolls, and/or action/ luck points that can modify die rolls (e.g. Castles & Crusades, Whitehack, The Black Hack, Worlds Without Number). Games that combine OSR principles with innovations from D&D 5th Edition (e.g. Shadowdark, Five Torches Deep, Into the Unknown) are sometimes referred to as "O5R".
  (3) "New School Revolution" (NSR or NuSR) games often combine rules-light OSR design principles with some unique game mechanics that are very different from original D&D and/or include horror & science fiction elements in a way that alters or abandons the standard fantasy tropes familiar from D&D (e.g. Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Into the Odd, Troika, Mork Borg, Cairn, Knave). The tendency for many NSR game books to use unique fonts & layouts and surreal/extreme artwork to help convey a "new weird" atmosphere has led to the moniker "Artpunk".
• (4) Rules-Light Story Games: Story Games, a.k.a. Storytelling or Narrative-Driven RPGs, have very different game mechanics than D&D and are often considered an RPG genre distinct from the OSR because of conflicts in their design principles. Notable examples of story games include "Ars Magica", "World of Darkness", "FATE", "Apocalypse World", "Burning Wheel" and "Blades in the Dark". However, some newer story games now incorporate enough elements from the OSR they could be considered a subtype or offshoot of the NSR games (e.g. Barbarians of Lemuria, World of Dungeons, Torchbearer, Vagabonds of Dyfed, Beyond the Wall, Nightmares Underneath, Vampyre Hack, Freebooters on the Frontier, Into the Dark).
• (5) "Free Kriegspiel Revival" (FKR) games got some interest due to the 2019 "Secrets of Blackmoor" documentary, although a few predecessors like the Amber Diceless RPG existed in the 1990s. FKR games take the OSR minimalist principles of "rulings not rules" and "roleplaying not roll-playing" to the extreme and keep the mechanics very simple - in some cases, dispensing with die rolls & relying entirely on GM fiat to adjudicate the outcome of player actions (e.g. Tiny Dungeon, Barons of Braunstein, Any Planet Is Earth, Old Freestyle Revival).
  => After checking out several of these game systems, we can figure out how to combine the best parts with our own house rules. Luckily, unlike many TTRPGs, the OSR & NSR games tend to have a small set of core rules that can fit on a one-page "cheat sheet", so it's easy to learn a different system and start playing 5-10 minutes later. Many games offer a "quick-start" version of their core rulebook for free online, so startup cost isn't a barrier. (Note: Click on the name of the OSR games above and you can download their rules for free.)
• NON-GAMING SESSIONS: Since OSR games tend to attract players interested in game design, we may occasionally host meetups on GM techniques, the merits of different game mechanics & house rules, tips on roleplaying drawn from improv & voice acting, world building methods from the top fantasy authors, ways to make medieval combat feel more realistic from practitioners of Historic European Martial Arts (HEMA), etc.

Since OSR games are a niche hobby and it's often hard to find players, we'll be playing online via Zoom which enables us to tap into a much larger pool of potential players. I'm opening this group up to interested people anywhere & everywhere!