I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
5e is already too simple, playing anything simpler makes me want to vomit.
Plus, OSR games are generally made by the most absolute vicious racists and general bigots imaginable. Genuinely awful in every way possible.
Can you link me some sources on the racism/bigotry? Genuinely curious, didn’t realize this was the case.
He’s likely referring to the New TSR, which did make a pretty racist race section for a game. But they already are basically dead as a company, if not actually bankrupt.
The only other scandals would be WotC getting sued for labelling Adnd stuff as racist, when WotC made at least 2 books with racist art in the 2020s. Or the Zac S lawsuit, where a pornstar OSR creator was accused of stuff then won the lawsuit so easily he looks like the nice guy in porn. Reggie (LotFP) is also weird, but not the average creator. He’s basically just an eccentric artist.
The OSR is way less bigotted than WotC. Hell Shadowdark was made by a lesbian and she is very well regarded even by people critical of SD as a system.
OSR has a vocal minority or reacitonaries giving it bad name. But even among perpetually online, they’re a minority. Facebook had two OSR fan groups - one for reactionaries (it’s now deleted) and other being very welcoming and progressive. The latter had ten times as many members.
It’s true; 5E and most versions of D&D are just too heavy and get in the way of actually having fun.
I think it says something that out of old editions B/X is still so well-regarded among old-school fans for being simpler than AD&D. Sadly when I ran it for my players they found it too counter-intuitive. I consider it a personal failiure as a gm to properly represent the system, even though they assure me it was not my fault.
Yeah I wouldn’t worry about it too honestly; it’s very tough to get into OSR style games without having watched a session, played a game, or read a few OSR-y Internet thought pieces. Much of how it’s done is cultural and not presented in the books. That is one of the things that later editions of D&D are better at.
Calling 5e and pf2e bloated with unnecessary rules, meanwhile Pathfinder and 3.5e are quite literally full of a couple decade’s worth of volumes and modules, in comparison to OSR?
I don’t know if you’re a boomer, a troll, or both
PF2e is a joke. It requires reading the whole rules and planning out a character for multiple levels before making your first character. It gatekeeps the hobby worse than FATAL.
Yeah, PF1 and 3.5e are bloated as hell. But you didn’t need to read all the feats for all the races before picking human fighter. Plus the people still playing those never used everything that was published.
Lmao, I think you confused pf1 and pf2. In pf1 you can build yourself into a corner and create useless characters with ease. In 2e the worst characters are still decent
Nope, I know both. They both suck because of the required over optimization. But pf1 at least didn’t have characters constantly at full hp, which is one of the biggest balance issues.
PF2S is bloated with unnecessary rules. If that’s your thing, and I totally get the appeal of having a “wait let’s just see what nethys says abou — Oh apparently there are mechanics for this drug” moment; personally I find it really gets in the way of the session. Rule and move on with the story. Keep the mechanics to what they need. We’re ultimately dealing with a pretty simple underlying system: d20 roll high. All the subterfuge and wordy mechanics don’t really change that at the end of the day you need to roll a d20 and generally do better than a 12 or so to do what you want.
I feel like pf2e has just enough rules to empower the players to the level I like
The more DM fiat a game has, the more trust I need from my players for things to go smoothly.
That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but for me structure is usually good as long as it doesn’t raise the skill floor too high.
Once I’ve got trust built and feel a bit more experimental, I like Dungeon World or even Universalis
They’re not just calling it big, they’re calling an elephant big in comparison to a crude 8 year old’s drawing of said elephant (and of course the colouring is not inside the lines because it doesn’t have to conform to the consistent rules of an elephant). What purpose does that serve unless you’re the 8 year old trying to make your drawing sound impressive? See how small and unique my elephant is?
Meanwhile the whale sitting right next to the elephant is like wow that was a very specific callout on their size when I’m sitting right here. That kid must really hate that elephant.
It’s quite ridiculous. Wrong or right don’t factor into it.
3.5 has a ton of splatbooks, sure, but they’re expansions. You go in one, if you want, at character creation to pull out a cool class you want to play. Not playing something out of that book? Then you never need to think about it. It’s not like you have to have encyclopedic knowledge of all the hundreds of splatbooks; all the rules are contained in the DMG and PHB, just like with 5e.
Meh, don’t play it, then. Why turn everything into a competiton?
I think 5e is simple enough the issue is that its become ridiculously sprawling as WotC endlessly add more and more classes to the point that its eroding balance pretty badly.
Presumably you’re talking about subclasses? If so, I disagree to an extent- a lot of the subclasses have a valid reason to be included, since they fit more specific archetypes that people might want to play, for instance the conquest paladin fills a niche that doesn’t really have any strong alternatives. The issue I have is power creep- it feels like Strixhaven, for instance, throws the balance right out of whack with Silvery Barbs, while Tasha’s Cauldron gives us the Twilight Domain cleric with all it’s issues. If the new subclasses were balanced well, I’d be fine with having more of them, since players only need to remember the rules for the one they’re playing at the table, if that makes sense.
