OSR Analysis Paralysis
After wrapping up a 3 ½ -year campaign, I’ve started planning the next one and hope to cross another thing off my TTRPG bucket list: a mega-dungeon. And it just so happens I grabbed The Halls of Arden Vul when it came up in a Humble Bundle, so we are good to go, right? Let’s roll ‘em up and get delving.
One small hiccup: what system do I use? WHAT SYSTEM DO I USE?
I mean, the plan was to just use good old B/X. We used that earlier this year for our playthrough of Keep on the Borderlands in honor of D&D’s 50th anniversary, and we all had a blast. The simplicity, the flexibility, the ease of character creation after the first party inevitably got bodied…plus, I still own the original books!
But then…I also have the Basic Fantasy 4th edition rulebook. People rave about that and I am super into the whole open-source mentality.
But then people also rave about Old School Essentials, and that’s on my Christmas list.
Plus I have Hyperborea 3e and have been dying to try that. Hell, I’ve still got my original AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, so why not just keep it legitimately old school? Arden Vul was made for OSRIC, after all. Hell, maybe I should look at OSRIC?
And I just downloaded Swords & Wizardry because the PDF was 5 bucks and I have a job.
Plus, let’s be honest, I’m going to tinker a little here, graft on a mechanic there, steal a bit and make some shit up at the table and whatever system I choose isn’t even going to look like itself after four sessions.
I’m agonizing over this decision, and it’s stupid, because they are all the same god damn game anyway.
I mean, obviously they’re all iterations of the same rules, which were themselves iterations of each other due to contract weirdness and interpersonal beef between Gygax and Arneson. At the end of the day, it’s six attributes, hit points, roll the dice, steal the treasure, and hail Satan. And in the age of the virtual table top, a machine’s going to handle the rough stuff anyway, right?
Somewhere I read a piece about TTRPG essentialism, the gist of which is that every TTRPG is actually the same ur-game anyway. Basic or Advanced or 5e or Traveller or literally whatever, it’s all just a re-statement of some Platonic role playing game that exists independently of our attempts to codify it.
That may be true, I don’t know. But for some reason, Swords & Wizardry gets me excited to play when I read the rules in a way that Basic Fantasy doesn’t. I don’t know if there’s some grand philosophical reason or if it’s just because the font choice and artwork resonate better.
I think maybe that’s really the dragon I’m chasing: that excitement. The same excitement I experienced the first time I cracked open that Player’s Handbook and this whole D&D thing opened up in my mind like a fever dream. Some systems hit and some don’t, and I’m sure what lights me up leaves someone else flat.
All that to say, right now, I think we’re using Swords & Wizardry, with Goblin Punch’s Underclock bolted on, played on Quest Portal, starting in about a month, at which time, I’m sure all of the above will have changed.