East Coast OSR Roleplaying Games Meetup

This meetup is for people who are interested in tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), both complete beginners and experienced players who have become a bit bored with the most common games like D&D 5th edition and Pathfinder. Specifically, 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 tweaking the rules a bit. For a quick overview, check out this 6-minute video from World Anvil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOF0luh0_NM

For those who aren't aware, there's several 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, so on-the-spot rulings from the game master are favored for resolving situations not specifically covered in the rule books, and for preventing anything that seems like a game-breaking abuse of the rules. This is why OSR gamers often say "the answer isn't on your character sheet" and often 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. Instead, the focus is more on inhabiting your character's perspective and roleplaying them in a dramatic way like an actor would - even if that means not taking the optimal strategy or "losing the game" (but helping drive the narrative) by fleeing in fear, getting captured, losing an important item, or dying tragically. This also means "meta-gaming" - i.e. acting on knowledge the player has that their character would not have - is strongly discouraged. This is why OSR gamers often say "play the world not the rules".
3. Heroic not Superheroic: Success lies in surviving and gradually becoming more skilled, not gaining tons of magic items or umpteen feats & special abilities. OSR games consciously avoid the "power creep" that's plagued later editions of D&D, although you can find complaints about "power gamers" even back in the 1st edition days.
4. Lethality not Game Balance: Characters' hit points are often lower, healing magic is often rare or non-existent, and characters can & will meet more powerful opponents. This is why OSR gamers often say "combat is a fail state" - i.e. the party may often need to hide, negotiate, or run away instead of fighting. If/when your character dies, you'll be expected to laugh it off and create a new character or take over an NPC nearby.
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. Dynamic World not Stasis: The campaign setting changes as time passes - i.e. this is why Gary Gygax said "strict time records must be kept" in original D&D. Many early RPGs had time in the campaign world pass at the same speed as the real world, with time between play sessions being used for characters to heal, train, research lore, craft items, etc. With the passage of time, day alternates with night, weather & seasons shift, areas that have been cleared out of monsters & brigands get repopulated, and upkeep costs on the PC's stronghold & wages for henchmen come due (if they have any). This also means friendly NPCs who give you a quest won't wait forever for you to finish it, and enemy NPCs won't wait for you to come & stop them.

There's several more things that distinguish this meetup from other TTRPGs meetups:

• Thematically, our adventures 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". Player characters will typically be humans, other humanoid races will either be absent or will be grotesque or otherworldly (often only NPCs), magic items will be rare & unique, and magic spells will often be dangerous to the caster's heath or sanity. Think Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories and Michael Moorcock's "Elric" novels rather than the high/epic fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the lighter & more comedic tone of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", or the "high magic" fantasy settings of modern D&D where almost every town has a shop that sells magic items and many characters are some type of demi-human or talking animal.
• As befits the grittier fantasy sub-genres we're mimicking, there won't be any attempt to interject a Christian allegory like C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia" or hit you over the head with the progressive social messages you'll find in Amazon's "Rings of Power" series. Instead, the world's morality will often be ambiguous, with character temperaments, cultural origins (e.g. barbarian, civilized or decadent), allegiance to different guilds or factions, or the cosmic forces of law & chaos replacing the traditional good-vs-evil alignment. Player characters are more likely to be anti-heroes like mercenaries, thieves, gladiators, shamans, or warlocks than whimsical bards, virtuous clerics, or knights in shining armor.
• 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.
• 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, Status) for blowing their money on drinking, gambling, etc., instead of always spending it wisely on more gear. This can also generate lots of plot hooks for urban adventures.
• Rather than sticking with one particular OSR ruleset like OSRIC, Old School Essentials (OSE), Whitehack (WH), The Black Hack (TBH), Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP), Into the Odd, or Troika, we'll play-test several of them so our members can get a sense of their advantages and shortcomings. After checking out several game systems, we can figure out how to combine the best parts with our own house rules. Luckily, unlike many TTRPGs, the OSR 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 OSR games offer 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.)
• While many OSR games tend to use lightly-sketched settings that are filled in by using a mix of random tables, player ideas and GM fiat, we tend to focus more on established settings from novels, movies & RPGs that are more fleshed out with great locations, interesting NPCs, and lots of lore. Possibilities include some pulp classics like Robert E. Howard's "Hyborian Age" and Fritz Leiber's "Nehwon", modern grimdark fantasy settings like George R.R. Martin's "World of Ice & Fire" and Andrzej Sapkowski's world from "The Witcher" series, and some grittier RPG settings like 2nd Edition AD&D's "Dark Sun" or "Ravenloft" or the ancient/medieval Earth of "Cthulhu Invictus" and "Cthulhu Dark Ages".
• Although some OSR gamers have revived hex maps and detailed rules for overland travel & exploration, these can be cumbersome in online play. So we'll probably be using the "theater of the mind" method where movement & distances are more abstracted into something like "3 days travel over rough terrain". This abstract method will also carry over to combat, since we won't be using miniatures or grids to determine battle lines.
• Rather than expecting players to commit to multiple sessions that are part of an overarching campaign, we're using an "open table" or "pick-up game" format where each session is a self-contained one-shot adventure with whatever players happen to show up on a given day. (Note: We may end up adopting the "West Marches" format where all adventures begin & end at a home base location, so it's easier to explain how/why new characters are joining the party and what happened to the characters whose player didn't show up.)
• Since we're assuming the vast majority of GMs and players aren't experienced fantasy writers or method actors but still aspire to improve their roleplaying skills, we encourage the use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT. They can help generate evocative descriptions of scenes, flesh out NPCs & special items on the fly, help players improvise dramatic dialogue, and make descriptions of combat more cinematic. (Some OSR gamers disdain AI since it didn't even exist in the early days of gaming, but we're essentially using it as training wheels until our natural creative abilities improve. AI chatbots are especially helpful for GMs who want to run a player-driven sandbox adventure, since this requires constant improvisation as players make unforeseen choices.)
• If there's sufficient interest, we'll 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!