Return to the Combat OSR

Welcome back everyone! I have finally returned to my blog after a weirdly long hiatus, and hopefully I'll be able to blog again about every one to two weeks. Things have just been very busy lately.

 

In this post I'm going to return to the Combat OSR that I've played around with before and revisit it in more depth. Hopefully by the end of this post I'll have a list of core principles and some suggestions for houserules and gameplay changes. I'm also going to start it off with some musings on motivations and play cultures - feel free to skip that if you'd like.

 

Motivations

The reason I'm revisiting the Combat OSR is due to a recent playtest of Jangli I ran. Character creation went well, the actual gameplay went fine, and when a fight came up the party jumped right in, rather than running like a good OSR party might do.

Part of the reason they fought was because this group of players wasn't my usual Mausritter table and weren't super accustomed to the style of play I expected. The other part of why they fought was because they had been hyped up by Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior and Bajirao Mastani, where fighting is exciting and cinematic, and expected that same level of daring combat in Jangli. They very quickly realized that that was not the case, a character died, and we ended early to discuss their expectations, my expectations, and where we went wrong.

In that discussion, I realized a few things about my game. First, that although I love OSR's focus on emergent narrative, player choice, and the primacy of the setting, the modern idea of old-school play discourages combat in a way that doesn't line up with the inspirations of my game. I didn't necessarily want careless, cinematic violence like Tanhaji, but I also didn't want hesitant characters who tried to solve every problem with diplomacy and trickery. The shiledar (both historically and in stories) are bold and cunning warriors. In play, I want my characters to get into dangerous fights often, but be able to live if they play their cards right. Combat should be war, yes, but it should also be winnable, and the characters need to want to get into fights and be able to win them.

I also realized that this was something that I wanted out of combat in my usual OSR games too. I just want more combat overall. That doesn't mean combat is no longer war, or that combat is no longer deadly - it just means that combat is incentivized, fun, and winnable. Combat is not the fail-state, it's a focal point of the game.

Is this still OSR?

Not quite.

In the Six Cultures of Play, The Retired Adventurer describes six TTRPG gameplay styles, from older originals like Classic (think AD&D) and Trad (Ravenloft, Dragonlance) to the more modern Neotrad (D&D 5e), Storygames (Blades in the Dark) and OSR (Into the Odd).

Personally, I disagree with these specific categorizations and would suggest my own based on distinctions in setting and plot primacy and emergent vs structured narrative but that is not the point of this post. The point here is that the OSR is a style of play based on emergent narrative, player decisions, diegesis in everything, and importantly, variability in challenge.

My vision for a Combat OSR is not too far off this course. Emergent narrative and player decisions are still important, as is the importance of maintaining setting consistency and primacy. The game is fundamentally still about the setting and interacting with it as a real place rather than producing certain styles of plots or narratives (as most Storygames do).

That being said, I would also acknowledge that a combat-heavy OSR game leans away from the ideas of "combat as a failed state" and "if you fight, you die" that are prevalent in the OSR, and towards ideas of matched challenges and game balance that are more prevalent in Classic style games. I want my Combat OSR to feel more like AD&D 1e than Into the Odd.

To ask if the Combat OSR is OSR is to ask if OSRIC is OSR. It most certainly is, but it also most certainly is something else. Like TRA said, "no quizzes, no buckets". Combat OSR is OSR, but also leans towards Classic and what I would term "challenge" style play.

 

 

Core Principles

Here we get to the juicy stuff. I'm not going to fluff it up, here are my core principles for the Combat OSR, or what might better be termed "Challenge" style play.

 

1) Setting First - This is a game about exploring a fantasy world and treating it as if it were real. The question of "what happens next?" is answered by the logic of the world rather than the needs of a plot or narrative.

2) Combat is Incentivized - This is a world of violence where combat is common for people like the characters. Combat is not only a part of life, but something that is incentivized. Foes reward the party with treasure and experience.

3) Combat is Dangerous - While fighting is a fundamental part of the game, a party that fights every fight will end quickly. Combat is dangerous, and a "fair fight" is one where there is a strong chance of death. The party must pick their battles carefully.

 

4) Combat is About Choice - Combat tactics and strategy are about making decisions with the information you have. Good players will have figured out their options in different scenarios, and good encounters are ones where characters and monsters alike make meaningful decisions in response to a changing battlefield situation.

5) Setup is Half the Game - The party should rarely ever enter a fight on equal footing with their foes. Half the game is collecting information about your enemies, stacking the odds in your favor, and prepping the battlefield. The other half of the game is violence.

This list was inspired by the OSR Ten Commandments and my agreements and disagreements with them.

 

Some Possible House-rules

So you want to play a Combat OSR / Challenge game - that's great! Let's see what we can do to modify what you're playing into one.

1) Higher Starting HP - We want fights to be more common and more winnable than your average OSR game. Assuming that your game has level one characters start with 1d6 or 1d8 HP, consider the following: A) start with the highest number on the die, like 6 or 8 HP; B) roll twice to start, so 2d6 or 2d8 HP; or C) start at a higher level, like 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.

2) Treasure Tables - Monsters carry treasure and good loot with them, and fighting monsters means getting that loot. Create treasure tables for your monsters, and award characters with treasure when they defeat them. Common treasure items include gold, weapons, spells, and monster-specific special items.

 

Other ways to convert monsters to treasure would be to place bounties on certain types of monsters. Perhaps the High King is paying 1 gp per demon horn - fighting and killing demons would then be highly incentivized.

 

3) Monster XP - Most OSR games use some form of GP = XP conversion for experience and levelling. In this case, monsters would award XP based on their challenge rating or hit dice. A goblin, with 1-1 HD, might be worth 50 or 100 XP, while a horned devil, with 5+5 HD, might be worth 250 or 500 XP (depending on the frequency of monsters in your game).

4) Combat Maneuvers - Characters can make specific maneuvers in combat, based probably on their level and class, but maybe also by fully diegetic means. When using a maneuver, state what your character aims to do and apply a penalty to the roll (something like a -4 for unskilled maneuvers, or -2 for fighter maneuvers or other skilled maneuvers). The maneuver takes effect on a success.

 

5) Combat Roles - If your game doesn't already have classes, consider adding them back in, and make sure they have roles to fill in combat. Fighters and paladins may be better at maneuvers and might get a second or third attack per turn at higher levels. Rogues and assassins can sneak behind enemies, backstab, and poison. Clerics and druids can heal the wounded. Wizards and illusionists can change the battlefield and deal large amounts of damage from afar. Party composition then becomes important, introducing choices at character creation and adding more tactical depth to combat itself.

6) Damage Type Weaknesses - If your game doesn't already do damage types, consider them. Monsters may take more or less damage based on damage type, forcing the party to consider how they approach and attack monsters. Additionally, monsters may have more esoteric weaknesses, such as being invulnerable on every night but the new moon, or having a weak spot on their back.

7) Speed Factor and Damage-vs-Large - Add more depth to your weapons. Some weapons are faster than others, and characters may be able to act out of initiative order or multiple times. Some weapons may be better suited to dealing with small hordes of enemies (like goblins) while others may be more suited for fighting larger, singular enemies (like ogres). Use speed-factor and damage-vs-small, damage-vs-large tables to make weapon choice matter.

Conclusion

I'm definitely not done thinking about this, but this is where I'm going to wrap it for today. Later this week I might take a crack at what Challenge style play would look like in Jangli, or maybe look at writing out a hack of OSRIC and GLOG that's centered more firmly on Challenge / Combat OSR style play and is overall just more streamlined than OSRIC currently is.

 

Finally, let me know what you think of all this! I'm pretty excited because I can see some direction and a consistent style popping up here, and I'd be interested in hearing y'all's thoughts too.