Hello, Cauldronites, welcome to this week’s blog club. I’d like to start things off by thanking Martin who founded the club and has done a fantastic job facilitating discussions over the last 5 months. The torch has now been passed to me for a time.
This week we are looking at “On System” from 2009 by Jeff Rients (Jeff’s Gameblog).
You can see a list of previous blog club posts here.
This post addresses a perennial thorn in the side of Old School Gaming: system.
Jeff argued that “system does not matter” for D&D and its derived retroclones prior to 3rd edition. He contends that the family of games that comprise old school D&D do not have distinct identities. Evidence provided in support of this theory is that a culture of homebrewing and hacking amongst not only D&D players, but also its designers, means that there is no predominant version of D&D.
The post suggests that when someone wants to play D&D but has indecision over which type, they should just pick one and hack it to the preferences of their table. It is suggested that this is the true spirit of the hobby.
I think the biggest problem I have in caring about most of these blog posts is that we’re so far distant from the context that we don’t recognize their importance because they seem obvious. In this specific case, there aren’t a significant number of AD&D-heads saying B/Xers are elfgaming wrong; the question of OD&D vs S&W isn’t a subject of debate. So instead of having a spirited discussion about these posts, I think 90% of us mutter some variation on “Well, DUH!” and move on.
Hey Pooserville! Thanks for the reply. I definitely think you right in many respects. We have moved on from the specific context that created this blog post. And sure, I haven’t always had much to say about some posts of this era… like combat matrices. But I will try and explain why this post was an interesting read for me, who entered the OSR sphere of games over 10 years later. I still wrestle with the idea of “what is D&D to me?” people that have already done with work probably won’t find much interesting here.
To me this post is something of an optical illusion. The type where you see either a candle or two faces in profile depending on your perspective. Depending on where you stand its either an inclusive or exclusive message. Some commenters took umbrage with Jeff’s deliberate exclusion of modern D&D (3e, 4e). He claims that he does this partly out of unfamiliarity with their workings, and partly out a belief that those systems are more tightly designed and harder for a person to hack their way to an ideal D&D.
I think I tentatively agree with this position. Knowing what i know from years of DMing fifth edition D&D, I believe I could hack my way to a personal ideal of an OSR adventure game. But I would likely be playing such a game alone, as the result becomes something so different from the expected play culture that it effectively becomes a new game. This is where I personally see games like DCC and Shadowdark. They are modern versions of D&D that have shed so much system to adopt an OSR playstyle that they take on new identities.
I also see echoes of this post in the modern OSR just because we are still having similar kinds of reactions to new things calling themselves “D&D”. I first became aware of the OSR in the late 10s amid a wave of fantasy heart breakers, at a time when certain participants of the hobby were feeling fatigue and were rather grumpy over their existence. There was bickering similar to what Jeff describes and counter messaging to let cooler heads prevail and that its ‘all D&D’. I believe this type response is what led to a wave of ‘system neutral’ but ultimately BX compatible products. But what I’ve been seeing lately with NSR games is people are starting to care a lot less over 'whether something is D&D" and the discussion has moved on to whether a particular games captures spirit of the OSR such as problem solving, lethality.
I guess the final way I see modern relevance to this post is discussions I’ve seen on the Cauldron. In his post two weeks ago “Turning the Dial” Yochai asks folks why they feel the need to turn his fine game back into D&D. I believe one answer to that question is in the final paragraph of this blog ‘on system’. Cairn is close enough to someone’s imagined ideal of D&D that they feel moved to hack it and make it their own.
What resonates with me here is the DIY nature of the hobby. These days, it feels like everyone wants to sell you their new system as a solution to perceived problems. It’s just an endless parade of similar systems with rule variations that could have been blog posts. People are entitled to charge for their work, but I can’t help but feel that most of them should be free.
I’m guilty as well of thinking that a new system might lead to the game I want. Ultimately though, the game is made at the table through trial and error and reflection.
I agree with the author’s final idea: just play something!
I see a lot of people in local D&D groups who say they are planning to start something, or collecting interest, or working on a campaign, when in my opinion all these aspiring GMs would be better served by getting out there and trying it out in the live environment.
I do think that new systems might lead us to games we want, particularly when systems are opinionated in some way. However I don’t think the majority of B/X or AD&D 1e retroclones really offer enough differing opinions to really push an person to one over the other purely on a system basis.
There is probably less in-fighting about particular retroclones, but you still have lots of folks hemming and hawing over whether or not they should play OSR game X or Y, thinking that one particular hack imposed by an author’s personal pet peeve will radically shift the experience, when the actual rules text that you use is one of the least contributing factors to play comparatively.
This is just quibbling, but of all that Jeff bundles together I feel like AD&D 2nd Edition felt like more of a distinct, coherent system than those that came before it even if it was building on those same rules. This may just come from the fact that for a time I played with a group that is and has been playing continuously with that ruleset since it debuted.
I’m not sure how exciting I’ve ever really found systems in the OSR/NSR space. I’m drawn to the ethos, the tools for GMs, and the choices made in presentation and layout. There are individual rules I take for my own, of course. What I’m more interested in are settings, adventures, and toolkits.
Maybe I’ve just been around long enough, but where I used to buy as much as I could of what was coming out, I have basically stopped buying systems unless I find something that truly stands out to me. For example, I skipped Shadowdark for now (though I grabbed the quickstart), I bought and sold Mörk Borg, but I picked up Mythic Bastionland after it hit retail. Where I used to run Advanced Labyrinth Lord and Dungeon Crawl Classics, I now default to OSE Advanced Fantasy or Worlds Without Number.
We are spoiled for choice; I don’t begrudge all of the entry points to the hobby (they are each someone’s first game), but once here we can all come together to play.
maybe it would be fair to say that this post was less about “system does not matter” and more about “system dogma is not helpful”? good faith discussions about how to change rules to achieve different outcomes seems to me in spirit with the main advice in the post, which is to make the game your own.
I have to say I think that system does matter. In the OSR, each of the new entries iterates on one sub-system or another to create a mix that fits the designer’s tastes. Choosing from amongst those can put somebody much closer to their preferred D&D from the outset, instead of having to hack much more with a different system from the start. Figuring out the best starting point makes for a shorter journey to the goal.
And if somebody pulls a sub-system out of each of a dozen OSR titles to assemble their preferred D&D, cool. If somebody else starts with a different system and only has to change out one system to get theirs, cool. I think that’s how the systems matter most in the OSR – as starting points and donors to an individual’s Frankenstein’s monster.