Transcript
Speaker: What's so funny? Oh no, no, no, you're a smart guy. Clearly picked up some flashy tricks, but you made one crucial mistake. You forgot about the essence of the game.
Speaker: It's about the cones.
Speaker: Move my abbot to the ocean hex, which moves my brinksman to the devil's lair and pushes my farmer, yes, my humble farmer, directly into the central cone.
Speaker: Tune up, level up your fun Tune up, your quest has not begun Tune up, we'll show you how it's done Tune up, tune up, tune up, tune up
Speaker: Welcome back everybody to Tabletop Tune Up. I am your host, Mark Lehman. I'm here with my friend, ben Dyer. How you doing, Ben? I'm good, sir. How are you? been very busy this summer.
Speaker: We had a little interval since our last episode, but guys, we've been we've been going back to the well. We've been refilling that creative tank so that we have great new things to bring you. Yeah, that is kind of how we've been thinking about it, too, haven't we? We've kind of so said a while back, like, let's not record unless we've got something worth talking about. And we saved up a few good ones for you guys.
Speaker: And we're excited. We're excited to bring them to you and to just talk about it. You know, we've been, like, sitting on these. We haven't talked about this in a while either, so. Yeah. Yeah. I, it's interesting. I think these conversations I've missed, uh, not just because they're good for then podcasting out, but I think, uh, yeah, you and I are overdue to be sort of chopping it up and talking shop about the, uh, RPG situation, the game master situation you've been running games and you've also been, I think tying some stuff off, opening up some new Mark, what's the, give us a quick rundown. What's your situation?
Speaker: Um, yeah, we're kind of, bringing ah one of my big long campaigns to aoff to a stopping point, a ah halfway mark, and we'll take a break here. I think a friend of mine is going to pick up a game and run with it, which I'm excited for, and which means i can I can run some other things. I can do some pickup games. We could talk about that. like Not today, but like I think at some point I'd love to discuss kind of like the ideal pickup game and what that what that looks like.
Speaker: Yeah, how do you do the one or the two shot? Like we've kind of talked in general about like adventures and sort of short form things. I think we've even at some point talked about like kind of the convention game, but there's something kind of between, right? Which is like the two or three sessions, maybe something like that. Yeah, you know, people are going to be out for a week or two. So let's gather whoever can play and we're going to run something in the mean in the meantime.
Speaker: That's kind of where i'm where I'm at right now. The filler game. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I'm also looking at Playing some new stuff. i've I've got Delta Green all queued up and ready to go. I'm kind of waiting for fall to kick in. I'm waiting for that that weather to get a little colder and, and you know, a feeling of dread.
Speaker: There's literally no better time to start a Delta Green game than around Halloween. Yeah. So that's what we're looking at right now. but But we're talking today about a game that you kind of been been running a little bit here and there as a filler game, so to speak.
Speaker: an old school renaissance ah dungeon crawl classics. Yeah, well, so we're going to talk about DCC and the OSR as two different episodes. Yeah.
Speaker: And so today we're just going to start with the broad concept, the category, the old school renaissance. ah Some people called it the old school revival. I guess there's a little bit of ah ambiguity about that. I'm not sure. But at any rate, the the point is, is there is kind of an old school aesthetic that has returned into modern games. And there's a number of different games that are you know, that use that aesthetic. So today what we're going to do in our discussion is we're going to kind of get into what the OSR concept is as such.
Speaker: And then on a different episode later, we're going to actually dive deep dive into Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics, which is, I thought, a really kind of fun starter, good exposure to that. But there are a lot of different um OSR games. So Maybe that's a place to start here. so And also folks like the OSR creep as we're going to, you know, this resurgence of this OSR aesthetic isn't just, you know, limited to tabletops. I've seen these in video games too. yeahs There's some games coming out, exciting games coming out that definitely kind of appeal to that old school ah video game feel too. People are longing for,
Speaker: something that they maybe played when they were younger. It's interesting. I see a lot of like 8-bit games out there. ah But the one that I think really captured that kind of old school feel, I think you've played it. i think our our mutual friend Randy turned us on to It's called Secrets of Weepstone, I think.
Speaker: Yeah. and it's And it's a video game, but it it captures the old school appeal the first edition modules, even so far as to have some artwork that's very stylized after it.
Speaker: yeah It's a dungeon crawler, but it's it's all done in black and white. All the art is in black and white. And yeah you know the interactions that you have as you're getting into combat or making skill rolls, you actually see dice come out and they they roll. So it's really it's a lot of fun. um But let's maybe take a moment and talk about what this thing is. What is the old school renaissance?
Speaker: And so just just to the brief overview here right is that OSR is basically a a interest in returning to some of the kind of the aesthetic and the modes of play and the ideas that we saw in the very very early parts of dungeons dragons so if you're somebody who's old enough to remember the 1970s level first edition kind of stuff the very early stuff then osr is probably something that's going to seem very familiar to so there's a lot of different osr style games but they all kind of have in common this idea that
Speaker: we're going to essentially kind of go back to the the kind of the tropes, the expectations, the attitudes. And so we can talk about what that is. um there's There's kind of two elements, I think. One is kind of like the style of play.
Speaker: And then the other one would be the the tropes, the what kinds of things you expect to find in those kinds of games. I think there's a third part to it as well. Oh, okay. Interesting. What would you say is the third part?
Speaker: Nostalgia. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's yeah fueled on nostalgia. I mean, that's these things wouldn't exist without it. But there's ah there's a lot of people that are playing this that weren't alive then. Actually, ah you pressed me beyond this point once.
Speaker: Yes. You can be so nostalgic for times you never experienced. That's right. The the game the the Stranger Things is a perfect example of that. Okay. There's a lot of people who enjoy it they get They can feel nostalgic about a time they never they never experienced the 80s, but they they there's kind of a feeling of it.
Speaker: Yeah. I remember ah really kind of getting into my first RPGs in like the late 80s, early 90s. So that was, ah you know, way after ah the first edition original kind of D&D stuff. So, okay, so I think it's a great point. Nostalgia plays a big role in this. And I think that can kind of um make you more forgiving of things that that maybe in those early games were unpolished.
Speaker: There's good and bad to it, and we can get into that later, but let's let's yeah put that to the side. Well, so so style of play was one thing we were talking about. So um here's a kind of a thing. I pulled this from the Wikipedia article, and it seems pretty nice. There's a guy named Matthew Finch in a book called The Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, and he talks about four things. Number one, that rulings from the game master are more important than rule books.
Speaker: And you remember when we did our episode on house rules, we talked about how like in the early books, they were like, we don't think these rules are finished. This is not like the best version of them probably even. You guys go ahead and make it what you want. And there's this kind of expectation that the rules were not like a a legal contract. They were kind of like a rough framework that the GM was going to fill in. So that's part one. Number two, player skills more important than character abilities.
Speaker: Outwit the enemy. and Do not simply outfight them. This is one that I think is really interesting. And I think it's ah it's a great thing for people to be thinking about. Back then, you didn't have, like in the first edition of D&D, you didn't have skills.
Speaker: So there's no bluff. There's no insight. There's no none of those things that we see in a lot of modern games where you're trying to move some you know, some, some kind of plot lever forward, some conversation or whatever. And a lot of times what you'll see now is people will just go, I roll persuasion and that's it. That's all they say. But back then, back in the early editions of D and d you would say, you'd actually come up with what you'd say. You know, if you were going to try to bluff your way past the guard, the GM would be like, well, what do you say? And then on the, on the strength of whatever your bluff as a player was, that was what you do.
Speaker: Yeah, and like in in the the whole concept of rolling for investigation is almost laughable in that those early editions because you would you'd have to actually investigate. You'd have to ask the GM questions. Well, I'll i'll try the lever. I'll pull the lever. I'll listen, instead of just rolling the skill. what's What's behind the statue? Does it sound like the statue's hollow? You'd have to actually like spell out like what is it that you think yeah where is it that you think the trap would be, or what is the danger? Which direction do you want to look for that?
Speaker: yeah So a lot of really fun stuff there. Number three, emphasize the heroic, not the superheroic. ah Success lies in experience, not superpowers. And I think there's a lot of things about the kind of OSR games that will seem like they're especially vicious or like crippling or, you know, unforgiving. And a friend of mine, actually, one of our guests, Chris Robichaud, you remember him from our Halloween episode a couple years ago?
Speaker: He said, that you know when you're playing these first edition games, he he was telling me about this before we ran a first edition Ravenloft game that I completely died in, but he said that you know at these early games, a lot of the fun of them or a lot of the thing that you were trying to do was not sort of tell somebody's life story. You were trying to get into a dungeon and the dungeon was kind of like the sporting event. It was the thing. And the question was, could I get my character through this dungeon and succeed and live? Not you, Ben.
Speaker: Not me in that case. you know If you ever have a chance to play a game with Chris, I think that's ah that's a great... Those kind of harken back to the roots of D&D in in a sense. It was you know it was it it a war game, tabletop war game for conventions.
Speaker: yeah And you're right, it wasn't about developing your character. It was trying to get through a dungeon in a competition, you know competitive tournament style game.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. but's That's kind of its roots and it developed into other things. Thank goodness it did. Um, but that was, those roots were really part of first edition. Yeah.
Speaker: And so the fourth thing would then be um that gameplay is not meant to be balanced. He says, game balance is not important. If the characters meet a more powerful opponent, either think of a clever plan or run away. And we've all kind of played this in video games too, I think, right? Like there's zones that you know not to go to in these kinds of older games.
Speaker: If you see a giant show up and you're first little character, you know, it is kind of metagamey to go, well, ah you know, in principle, this is a balanced game and there's no, you know, this giant must be something that we could, you know, successfully fight ah because of course it's showing up here and the DM wouldn't do that to us, would they? Well, in first edition friends, he absolutely would because giants are big and strong and awful and he'll just stop you.
Speaker: I would argue that nothing's changed on that front. I mean, that's, that's more of a GM style or decision and than anything. i mean, some games Some games will like use that Skyrim model where yeah everything you encounter will be roughly your level.
Speaker: But that's just a GM choice, honestly. I don't know if that's... Well, I'll say it this way. there The fact that there are games that do that and kind of scale, every encounter is kind of scaled to your level, um that just doesn't exist in the OSR. And that's that's intentional. so But you were expected with a module, it would say this module is for levels one through four or whatever it was.
Speaker: And you would expect that that module would be within that realm. of But I will say that the the creatures were very... like ah fourth level creature was not even in your wheelhouse. Like you you wouldn't want to go up against a fourth level creature at first level. And honestly, in in fifth edition, you almost could, couldn't you? you could I think so because of that third point about characters now being a bit more super heroic. I think, you know, you look at what the characters were like back then and they were they were adventurers. You know, they were they were not people, you know, maybe they've got some skill with a sword, but they're not taking on armies. They're not taking on rooms full of bad guys. You know, it's not um it's not like watching Batman fight a whole bunch of Joker's goons. you had a bunch of You didn't have feats. You didn't have a lot of the stuff that you we've grown accustomed to.
Speaker: And armor was hard to get. It sure was. It was expensive. Yep. Okay. So that's, that's kind of what the OSR is like in terms of style, in terms of like tropes, it's going to be goblins and bug bears, and it's going to be, you're going to be doing damage with dice that do like a single D six or a D four or a D 10.
Speaker: um You know, you're, you're not going to have a lot of hit points. Yeah. The frustration gets, can get real guys. Yeah. like I mean, you don't have a whole lot to fall back on. If your dice aren't cooperative,
Speaker: You better have a backup character. yeah that's right. um But so that's a little bit of of, we're talking about kind of some of the some of the tropes and some of the things. Mark, I'd like you to talk a little bit more now about that nostalgia and some of the other kinds of expectations that come with that. Like if you're playing, somebody says to you, hey, let's go play an OSR style game.
Speaker: What are you expecting to find when you sit down at that table? Why? Well, first of all, I expect to find old people. Yeah. um these games are These games are running. and are They're huffing nostalgia. And it's, it's for for better or worse, I always think of the Billy Joel song, the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems. I've kind of lived off that model.
Speaker: um Because I don't believe those old games were always great. mean, they were fun. But I've tried going back and playing some of them and they're they're like, you know. Yeah. theyre there They got as many works as I remember and then some. um Yeah, you know, they they can be fun though. like I will say like there is a there's a joy to them that can be captured. I think they're better for shorter stints. I don't know if they're good for like a kind of campaigns that we like to run these days.
Speaker: But um they can be really fun. Hey guys. Get plans on a Saturday. Let's get together. I got a game. Let's play. And you can just have a really good game for a night. And it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: There's a lot less investment um because, again, your characters kind of just i but kind of can be disposable in some way. i mean of Yeah, you're not writing a six-page backstory for these guys.
Speaker: Yeah, and you you might later. If they survive that long. They survive. um So there's kind of a fun to that. i want to connect that to something that you said earlier about this kind of having its roots in war gaming is that you know when you make a character in an OSR game, you're making a game piece.
Speaker: You know what I mean You're not making like, again, ah a deeply written narrative character with all of these parts and pieces. You're making a a game element that's going to try to survive this dungeon that DM is going to throw at you.
Speaker: but But I'll tell you what one thing that's true ah even when all is said and done. um The memories you have from those game from these games, these OSR games and the experiences you have, they're no different as far as like in your mind, like the excitement you had. and Yeah. And like when you look back and go, I remember when, you know, Ragnar, you know,
Speaker: grab that boulder and push it aside. Those stories will still be there with these OSR games, just like they would in your other, in any other game. So there's a, there's still joy to be had. There's still fun to be had. And there's, there's lots of stories to be told. They're just, they're just different.
Speaker: just Here's what I would say. i I think that's right, but I think what's interesting about this is, you know how like when you don't see Jaws for most of the movie, your imagination is doing all that work of filling in what the shark's doing and and how horrible it is. And I think that's kind of what's going on with these kinds of games too. It's because they're kind of spare in the narrative department that when something happens in the game, your imagination is picturing it and you fill it in and you're like, yeah oh my gosh.
Speaker: that guy made a saving throw that he has no business making. What just happened? This guy's amazing. you know Or if he gets a couple of good roles in a row, that kind of thing. you know Yeah. And that sparsity, um you know there's a lot of good books that writers, like really talented writers who I think write incredibly sparse.
Speaker: And part of yeah part of the brilliance of writing so so sparsely is that it allows a creative mind to kind of grow in that space. Whereas like Tolkien – was brilliant in a different way. Tolkien wrote every detail so he didn't have to use your imagination. i He filled in your imagination.
Speaker: And there's a separate skill to that too, and there's a brilliance there as well. um So just because one is sparse does not mean it's lacking. Right, right. I also will say, though, I think that this kind of fits in the concept of like what's the old school vibe.
Speaker: um I think there's a whole lot of kind of like mid-century pulp fantasy literature that connects up with this that people have been reading. Certainly Gygax at the end of his original DMG had this thing he called Appendix N. And I'm going to make a plug for a book that I've been just...
Speaker: enjoying and reading the heck out of it's an anthology it's actually called appendix n and it's basically a collection of short stories from the roots of dungeons and dragons and so it's it's robert e howard hp lovecraft it's uh people i'd never really heard of it's tanith lee lord dunstney i'd heard of paul anderson they're all these amazing stories of you know, swords and sorcery and ancient monsters and civilizations long gone and, and all of this kind of stuff. But, you know, I think when we think of that as pulp, um, we're missing that it's also the kind of the main input, I think, to a lot of what's going on in this OSR vibe. So read a few of those, pick up that appendix end book maybe. And i think you'll kind of know what you're in for in these games.
Speaker: So speaking of these games, Let's talk about what some of the games are in the marketplace. We mentioned DCC, that's Dungeon Crawl Classics. Yeah, and and just a heads up, guys, haven't played all these games, and I'd like to.
Speaker: oh yeah one um One of my commitments this year is to play more play more types of games. we've we've We've ah played a little Dungeon Crawl Classics. But we had a, this was like a Sophia's choice of games. I mean, these were some cool looking games, but go ahead, man. I'm sorry. david No, no, this is great. So there's, here's what I'd say is I played three of these at this point at a long time ago with Chris, as I was mentioning, we, I think we used Osric. This is the, this is like an old school early, I think it's old school reference and index compilation. It it sounds really groggy. It,
Speaker: Enjoy if that's if you're really like high fidelity first edition kind of person. I think they still use Thacko in that one. See, I recently played first edition. Mm-hmm. I just straight up played. I mean, they when they reprinted the first edition books in a nice, you know, mother bound whatever, i picked those up and we actually played them and it was a lot of fun.
Speaker: lot of fun. Yeah. Okay. So some of these games are, i think the way that you'd put it is there are people who want to recover that first edition vibe and the kind of the assumptions and the way it plays, but they don't necessarily want to have,
Speaker: you know, six different kinds of saving throws for things that are right. Like they're gonna, they're gonna kind of polish the mechanics a bit to be a little more in line with, with what we've learned about gameplay over the years.
Speaker: So Osric, I think, is in that first category. it's It's kind of, I think, more close to first edition D&D. DCC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, which we'll talk about more in another episode, I think is very much that kind of polished revision that's kind of modern, but has a lot of those early sensibilities. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It has has this the feel of it. I don't know if it's fully ah first edition clone as it is it kind of advertises itself as.
Speaker: The way I would say it is that I think... DCC isn't trying to be first edition. I think it's trying to be a game that people who played first edition would like.
Speaker: Yes. And that's probably true. And then the other one I've played is, and not very much, but I thought it was really good. It was called Shadow Dark. And that actually won a bunch of Ennies this year. so That's the one i I really was hoping to play when we were talking about doing that. Do I need to go buy Shadow Dark? are we going to do that as We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll get to it. But the artwork and stuff in that book looked so good. Beautiful. looked Like a lot of fun.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So um I will say the thing that kind of got me interested, I saw that there was a recent... ah there was the humble bundle of DCC stuff. And so that was kind of how I got into it is I was like, great, a bunch of books. ah I'll get this and try it out and and see. So I would say if it's something like that's available to you, give it a try if this seems at all interesting and some nice, easy entry entry point. and And DCC has been out for a while now. i want to say at least more than a dozen years or so, I think. And they have a lot of, there's a lot of support for it out there. There's a lot of adventures. There's a lot of books.
Speaker: There's like a lot of like just, single night event kind of adventures they run. So anyway, um we'll talk more about that another time. But those are an example of some of the games that you'll find out there. There's other ones like Mork Borg and I'm going to leave out a bunch because we aren't really ah We aren't really like that deeply versed in it just yet. But Mark, I want to get back to something you were saying a moment ago.
Speaker: You've played now that first edition game you're talking about. You've played some of the newer ones. um Is there a good reason to not just play the old games or should we be playing these new games? well What do you think?
Speaker: That's kind of what I was thinking about this, this whole time is like, why are we reinventing the wheel? I mean, If nostalgia is what you want, those books are still out there. you know Go dust off your first edition book and play them. There's nothing wrong with those books. like I had a lot of fun with that game we played.
Speaker: And we played, i mean, I think we played a good six months of of games every other week in first edition. And it was it was a lot of fun. But I will say like there may be reasons why you wouldn't want to do that.
Speaker: First of all, those first edition books are hard to get by now. They're hard to find as much. They used to be used to be able to pick them up like a half price bookstore for years. They were just littered in those stores. But now they're kind of expensive.
Speaker: DCC and things like that. You can sometimes find them on a humble bundle. bunle Bundle? Yep, that's right. Not easy to say, guys. um You could pick those up for and pick up a bunch of them for pretty inexpensive. They pop up there every once in a while. yeah Those are PDFs usually, yeah. Yeah, and um yeah, so, and plus if you're playing like digital, there might be more support for something like that. Like if you're playing on Foundry, we probably don't have a first edition Foundry module, I don't think.
Speaker: but I'm sure they would they would have a Dungeon Girl Classics. Yeah, I was going to that the thing that's maybe the maybe then the best reason, and i'm this is what I'm hearing, Mark, is you're saying maybe the best reason to go with some of these newer games, um system aside, which I think I i i might fight you about that a little bit. I actually think the systems are improved and I think they function better, they're smoother and stuff.
Speaker: um ah These are arguable. Some people really want those old systems. That's fine. The heart wants, and if it wants Thaco, then you've got to give it Thaco. Well, but then the idea is that then because these are also systems that have ah a lot of current support, yeah that's the difference, right? Nobody's going to make a new first edition modules.
Speaker: And honestly, guys, i mean, I'm in the boat. Like if I'm playing in person, sure. Yeah. I'll break up those books. But if I'm playing online, I want support. I want the tech to be available for me um in a format that I can access. Otherwise, I'm just not going to play it if it's online. This is too much work.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, cool. I think it's time for us to transition to this week's tune-up segment.
Speaker: All right, Ben. Since we're talking about um old school, old school games and OSR, thought we'd skip the whole like question for the audience because...
Speaker: Ben, ah what old school rules or things do you like from your early days of gaming that you still like to bring into your new games? I, this is going to be awful because it's hard to do at the table, but I love charts.
Speaker: And one of my favorite things about DCC is that all of their spells, they're not like a description and then you do some damage and that's it. They're a chart of different effects that according to like how good of a role you did on your spell attack, you might get overpowered effects or you might end up getting corrupted or, or things like that. So There's that, there's like the critical charts, the other charts that they had back in Rollmaster. Again, charts can be really unwieldy at the table. So I'm a big fan of finding ways to automate that stuff if you can to kind of get to that result. But I love the idea that that you could have a richer story around what happened when you succeeded or failed than just here's some points that went up or down on your character sheet.
Speaker: And so that was one of the things I thought was really fun. And it also kind of gave the dice a little bit more of a role in the narrative. You know what i mean? Like, yeah you know, when you shatter your knee or you trip on this, or you, you know, fry that guy with your electrical blast. Um, those are all narrative elements that the, that the, that the dice and the rules have now given you rather than I rolled a thing. And now we've got to kind of tell a story around the you know, the, the the dice result.
Speaker: So I think that's kind of one of the things I think it'd be the most fun to bring forward. How about you? I would almost, well, I'd concur with you on that. I, I greatly love crit charts and you know, what they bring to a game, um, which is horror.
Speaker: Stress. existential dread Bad, bad things coming your way. Oh, but I, um, Not as much from, so I mean, there's also homebrew stuff from our first and second edition games that we'd bring in.
Speaker: But as far as actual rules, I'd probably go back to third edition. um I thought third edition, one thing they did really well with third edition Dungeons and Dragons was they synergized the skills with the physical traits.
Speaker: And they were just really brilliantly done. Their skill list was great. And I thought, what a huge step back in fifth edition when they introduced the limited skills. And they weren't tied in terribly well with the stats. I didn't think they were tied in quite So the that you could use a different stat as the base for your skill was something that felt was a bad move? There's that, but like, I mean, we'll say this, there was skills like Arcana, Nature,
Speaker: um All these things were tied into not only the stats, but the the creatures themselves were tied into that. Like the creature was of nature. So when when you looked at the Monster Manual and you looked at a creature and it said, this is a nature creature, applied to that nature skill.
Speaker: It was a brilliant tie-in. But they also had a lot more skills in which allowed people to kind of like explore different types of proficiencies and and things of that nature. But yeah, I mean, you could use different stats for different, that might be more homebrew, but yeah using like strength for intimidation might be a good example of what people do.
Speaker: i'm I'm going to push you to go even further back in time. You need to you need to get that flux capacitor up to... I mean, but the the thing is, like most of that stuff in the first and second edition was homebrew. So I guess if there's something that I do ah like about, that I like to bring into my fifth edition games, it's more homebrew. I'd like to be able to think creatively about like how I want to do rulings or movement, positioning,
Speaker: i just feel a little bit more freedom to mess with the system. And there was ah there was a freedom you had in those first and second dishes. It was almost like it was in the books. You have the excuse. Hey, Gygax told me I could mess with this. I'm going to mess with this. And now it's we get little pushback from players. I'm i'm done with that. like I'm going to bring that stuff back. I want to i want to institute house rules, and I don't want...
Speaker: I don't want crap for my players. There's a lot of people talking about the rules as written say this and the rules as intended say that. And, you know, but that's not what the rules say and and all that kind of stuff. I will say it's not like the concept of a rules lawyer is new exactly, but I will say that people, I think, expect and intend that the system has a lot more. a lot more people have passed the bar, Ben.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right. That's great. Well, guys, and i want to use and I want to use that gift as much as possible. but yeah I am the law. Yeah. But real quick, Ben, before you shut this down. Yeah. What rule what or old school thing could you just say it should stay buried?
Speaker: Oh, that's a great question, Thacko. take there's i Here's the thing. I think that one of the best things that ever happened was when they actually like just flipped Thacko around and they said, listen, what this has always been is essentially like 10 plus an armor class for whatever armor you're wearing plus your decks. And then that's your target number. Roll that with a positive modifier on a D20 and you're done. And I just...
Speaker: Like you don't have to explain that to people. Don't have to think. don't have to overthink it. And the thing was with the Thaco, uh, it was fine. I was, could do Thaco. Yeah. Until I had my third drink.
Speaker: Yeah. And there was no Thaco to be done. I remember I had all my character sheets had a Thaco calculator on them because at some point in the night, I would be like trying to figure You the reference. I need the reference. It was it was pretty sad. But Thaco is maybe, that's a good one.
Speaker: you You got in there. I'm trying to think what else i I'd say goodbye to. I mean, I have a second one too. Let's see if you'd agree with this. the the just a weird random a way that they figured out what their, what your saving throws were. Like they had like six different kinds of saving throws. It didn't have categories. It was like, this is what it is versus like breath weapons. And that's what it is versus poison. And that's what it is versus ah you know, yeah wands and, and staves and and things like that. ah Tying in of those things the,
Speaker: a very core, you know, amount of saving throws was brilliant. And that was welcome. Cause that was a nightmare. You're right. Yeah. It not, it was not fun. Nobody liked that aspect of it. Um, well, I think it also shifted attention over to the, you know, when they revised that, right. When they did third edition, they said, look, you've got fortitude reflex and will all of a sudden you started really focusing on the interaction between the characters,
Speaker: whatever right and if they were a high will character or a high fortitude character whatever they might be and the kind of effect that they were experiencing and so in a certain sense it was like don't care if it came from like a flamethrower or a dragon like if you're throwing fire at me i need a deck save to get out of the way of this thing a reflex save you know yeah so i think that was ah much more intuitive way and it also made it easier for people who were homebrewing and who did want to you know, come up with some rando hazard of the week to, to know what it was that was relevant as a way to defend against it. So your GM was a lot easier. You could just go, well, if I'm going to have a trap door here, then that's going to be a reflex save.
Speaker: Yeah, no, the design has come a long ways and you guys, good old days. We're not always good. It's a mixed bag guys, but we've grown a lot of funds. had a lot of great memories. So let's appreciate those.
Speaker: All right, well, I think we've wrapped another great episode of the Tabletop Tune-Up. Thanks for joining us this week. I hope you go out and try out some OSR games. And if you are an OSR player who has fighting words to pass along about our rejection of Thacko and random saving throws, you just bring them over to our comments.
Speaker: We'll see you on YouTube. Put them there. Or ah go ahead and put them in our inbox at tabletoptuneup at gmail.com. We'll see you next time, guys. Till then, keep those dice rolling.
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Speaker: Level up your fun Tune up Your quest has now begun Tune up We'll show you how it's done Tune up, tune up, tune up, tune up, tune up, tune
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