OSRdF Revisited

In January 2019, I signed on to Tam H's OMGAM project to create one micro-game per month.  Over the course of that year, I produced 12 tiny games for the project as well as a few others for various game jams and challenges.

The very first one was called OSRdF, or "Old School Roll-under, dF".  I also wrote the first real content for this blog in that same month of January where I talked about the intentions and thoughts behind that game.

Very briefly, and without any of the philosophy, it is like this:  

• You have six stats because that's what White Box had, though the names have changed
• You roll under them to do things because that is what you did back then
• You roll randomly for your stats for the same reason, and because of a bunch of other baggage
• There is no dedicated combat system because we already have the roll-under thing and don't need anything else
• It uses Fudge dice for two reasons:  First, I like them because they only have + and - and I always thought the very notion of them really gave the middle finger to the notion that complex dice systems were important.  Second, a few people had recently (at the time OSRdF was released) been really hostile to the opinion that Fate Accelerated is in spirit an OSR game, and I was feeling a bit sassy about it.

I have made noises a few times about expanding this game and making modules for it, and that starts now. There is still a lot about this game that I implied without stating, and one really has to look sideways at it to spot any traditional fantasy gaming in there -- so here is a teaser:

	Brawn	Grace	Creativity	Logic	Will	Empathy
Brawn	bend bars, save v poison	bows	melee	scale rough surfaces	lift gates	intimidation
Grace		impersonate Elf, move silent	dodge bonus	pick locks	scale sheer surfaces	pick pockets
Creativity			Cleric spells	spot traps	save v wand	persuasion
Logic				Wizard spells	save v charm	read languages
Will					save v death	henchman limit
Empathy						Druidic spells

Now, there are some place-holders in here, and a couple of tongue-in-cheek jokes that wont make the final cut.  But this is the basic form of how a skin of OSRdF emulates the kind of fantasy RPGs that I played in the 80s.

I have four of these drafted that evolve the basic system through forty years, taking on slightly different styles and varying the rules at each decade.

A produced version of it was going to be coming for Zine Quest for 2022, but between the pandemic and other events that didn't quite happen.  I might still lay it out for print, commission an artist, pay an editor, and put a game (or possibly a collection of multiple games) into peoples' hands to play.  But that is probably a couple years off when I take a realistic look at my other commitments.

But how many eggs were left out?

I recently spent 566 words of elaborate digressions, studiously not telling you why I think it isn't important how attribute points are allocated.

After that rather irresponsible abuse of verbiage, I thought it might be courteous of me to actually answer the unasked question.

2dF down the line

I was a small child when D&D was "roll 3d6 down the line" for your stats.

Technically that was my first experience with character creation, but the practicality of it was a little different.  By the time my friends and I were playing the games properly, it was a 4d6 drop one, or arrange to suit your taste.  Homebrew (and later official) point-allocation systems quickly became the norm with the groups I played with.

Old School Evolution

For January 2019, I've created a little one-page game for Tam's OMGAM project.  It is an "OSR" game, and I when I first pitched the idea I had joked that I would make a game each month, parodying the evolution of RPG styles over the decades.

I never really planned on doing that of course, but I do plan to keep making monthly games for this project.

This particular game started as a list of stats that you could "roll under" to do things.  It doesn't specify a number of characters per player, so you could run it "troupe style" if you wanted.  It doesn't specify any hitpoints or combat rules, or really much of anything.  If you wanted to have characters fight, they'd make opposed rolls and the results could be discussed by the Table and adjudicated by the Ref.