My first years in RPGs and the OSR

19 May, 2024

I played my first tabletop role-playing game between shutdowns during the Covid pandemic in late 2021. I began to play online shortly after and GMed my first dungeon half a year later, mid-2022. Somewhere around that time I jotted down some of the newbie questions I had answered for myself with the intention to write a reddit post or something that would include all the information that was most useful to me as a beginner. Two years later and I actually got around to doing it! And it's high time since I've started to feel at home in the scene and my memories of what it's like to be new to RPGs and the OSR subgenre in particular are fading.

I'm not trying to present objective truths here but to write for myself a few years back. Reports about another's experiences are often invaluable to me when it comes to start something new, both in the TTRPG space and in other areas of my life. That's why I'll present my experiences as a FAQ with questions that weren't solved with a quick google search and the answers I found. Please note that I'm not claiming any objective truth. Experience is tinged in opinons and impressions.

About Me

The vast majority of my TTRPG experience is in the OSR genre, so this article will reflect that. To me that means:

• I prefer to talk through a situation rather than to follow a detailed set of rules.
• I prefer location-based adventures over story-based adventures. Give me places to explore and monsters to outwit, not plots to follow or hour-long theatric small talk.
• I prefer exploration and common sense problem-solving over first-person roleplay and deep tactical combat.

Most of my gaming experiences come from online OSR open table games, a year long OSR sandbox campaign with 11-12 year olds and various "trad" games in a local gameshop.

FAQ

• How do I find a group?

  • If you're in or near a town, look for a local gaming club, game store or convention. They tend to have public games aimed at beginners. I dreamt about joining one of those D&D sessions for years before I just googled "Pen & Paper" and my hometown and - to my surprise - there was a gaming club that offered free monthly RPG rounds to the public.
  • Discord! [r/RPG list of Discords], almost all RPG systems have a Discord server dedicated to them. The nature of Discord servers is that they are very fragmented, which is frustrating. However, Discord servers is where it's at when it comes to playing online in 2024.
    • huge list of RPG Discords: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/discord
    • most bigger RPGs have their own Discord server, or a shared server for all games of the same author. Just google the game's name and Discord.
  • r/lfg_europe - I had some success here but it was mostly a frustrating experience. As a GM you'll attract a lot of people who ghost you. As a player I rarely received an answer. r/lfg in particular is also flooded with 5e games and players who are only interested in 5e.
  • Be open to different systems. New players usually only know D&D and they understand it to be the latest - newest, best - version. Don't do that and you'll have a ratio of a lot more GMs per player. You also don't really know what you're into. I wanted to play "D&D" (meaning 5e) so badly but after only one game with a great GM I started looking for alternatives, and I only have played two more games of 5e since. I was bored to death by the long-winded character creation and the granular combat system. Maybe you'll feel different but you won't know until you try. Be open for new kinds of fun!

• How do I become a better player?

  • Adopt a mindset of someone who wants to help the game run smoothly. Take responsibility. You're not playing a finished product, you're playing within a conversation. And you are part of it. No GM can run a good game for bad players, just as no one can have a good conversation with people who don't keep it going.
  • Do something (be proactive), don't do everything (share the spotlight).
  • Take notes. Try to stay on top of things like other players' names and current goals.
  • Don't just ask "what would my character do?", but also "what would be most fun for the party?".
  • Stay focused. Don't distract yourself with text messages and memes when you get bored for a moment. Instead, think of ways to drive the game: make/review/organize notes, think of the next steps to take, think of how to pull in other players in fight or RP scenes, think of how to use your gear, environment or character abilities, etc.
  • Show your interest, appreciation and gratitude when you feel it. If you like what somebody did, tell them. Make them feel as awesome as you felt and reinforce the behavior for everyone's benefit. Create a positive feedback loop of fun and creativity!
  • Leave a group when you can't make it work for you. Just tell the GM or group "it's not the kind of game I'm into at the moment" or "I don't have the time anymore" or whatever. Don't ghost them or keep making excuses.

• What's the best RPG product ever?

  • Maze Rats - it's sold as a game but consists mostly of random tables. Hands down the best collection of random tables for a beginner GM who doesn't really know what to look for. Names, what to find on a looted body, tactical street features to spice up combat in a city - it's all in there! If you're not a GM, you'll still find plenty of inspiration for character concepts.

• How do I GM for the first time?

  • A simple dungeon crawl, hands down. A good dungeon crawl takes a lot of the burden of being a GM off your shoulders: You don't have to worry about the party going "off stage" - the dungeon area is the game, period. You don't have to hold a ton of things in your head, everything fits on one page. When you prep, get a clear mental image in your mind about the different rooms and how you present the information (what's obvious, what's hidden until someone looks closer).
  • Find a prewritten one page dungeon you like, there's no need to also write an adventure from scratch. Add, remove or change things as you like when you read it.
  • Don't start in a tavern. Start in front of a dungeon or better yet, in the first room and an action scene, and let your players do things. Give them goals right away, get them involved. It's so much more dynamic than the awkwardness of roleplaying small talk with strangers. Give players something to react to, something to latch onto, a purpose.
  • Probably the most helpful thing for me was an actual play of an actual regular session. I can recommend the following two in particular. Both exemplify the OSR playstyle very well in my opinon and they include the GM's thought process in the subtitiles. They show you that it isn't that hard and that even GMs with years of experience make mistakes - and that that's not a big deal.
    • Winter's Daughter with DM Commentary. An OSR dungeon crawl without much acting or voice acting. The players are newcomers to the playstyle.
    • The Waking of Willowby Hall Actual Play. Another dungeon crawl, this time with an established group.
  • Keep these very basic play procedures in mind:
    • Describe situations (e.g. a room or an arriving NPC) like this:
      1. Describe obvious elements the PCs can interact with.
      2. Ask: "What do you do?". You don't have to say it out loud every time but it certainly doesn't hurt either.
    • When you're not sure you understand the what, why or how of a player's action, ask to clarify:
      • Action: "What do you do?"
      • Goal: "Why are you doing this?" / "What is your goal?"
      • Approach: "How do you do it?"
    • When players don't know what to do, give them information to react to. When in doubt, point out the doors to new rooms (or other points of interests). As I've said before, players will remember a lot less of what you said than you do.
      • Example: "There's an exit to the north and east, and of course there's still that sarcophagus that was nailed shut."

• What are some GM truths I wouldn't think to ask?

  • You're the last one to get bored. I've found that as a player I get bored about an hour before I get bored as a GM.
  • You care more about the world than your players. Your players care more about their characters than you. I'd recommend to keep worldbuilding to a minimum unless you enjoy it on its own.
  • You remember most of what you said, the players forget most of it. Accept and adapt. Try to be succinct, repeat information, don't try to convey more than maybe three information chunks at once. Hint at something and let players ask to find out more.

• How do I take notes for a campaign?

  • You'll have to figure out what exactly is useful to you over time. Too many notes are usually worse than too little. They take up time and remove your ability to find what you need when you need it almost like you hadn't written it down at all. When in doubt, just trust that you'll remember it if it's important.
  • I've largely adapted Kelsey Dionne's system. Watch her video, she'll explain this much better than I could: How To Organize D&D Campaign Notes | DM Journal Tips.
  • I've found it helpful to just note down some questions right after a session about the obvious impact player actions had. "How will the Kobolds react to being bullied out of their home by Bob the Barbarian?". "What will the Lizardfolk do to thank Clara the Cleric for returning their offspring from the hands of the man-eating Ogre?". I write these on the page for next session's notes, let them sit in my mind for a while and usually have an answer ready when I prep for the next session (which can be in the 10 minutes I wait for players to show up).

• How do I make my own adventures?

  • Get creative juices flowing by coming up with a lof of ideas, then picking the ones you're excited by. See GFC's videos about the How to Brainstorm for D&D and How to Make a D&D Dungeon From Scratch.
  • Just watch some experienced GMs and adventure designers at work.
    • The Programmable Dungeon (video): Ben Milton designs the prototype of one of my favorite dungeons, later published as "The Alchemist's Repose". It's a great showcase of a hand-made one page dungeon. Sadly the image is mirror-reversed.
    • RPG Dungeon Design - Part 1 and Part 2 (video): Chris McDowall designs a whacky D&D-like dungeon with barebones computer programs (Paint and WordPad).

• What are the best tools for playing online?

  • Discord for voice chat and dice rolls. Most RPG sessions I've played used Discord for voice chat.
    • Rollem bot: Dice bots allow you to also roll dice directly in Discord's text chat. Rollem is the only dice bot for Discord that doesn't drive me mad. The reason is that it rolls dice whenever you write d[number] in chat (d6 for example). All other bots I know make you remember some weird command that seems to be different for every bot (!d6, !!d6, rd6, ...) and have a ton of other syntax attached that no one uses which makes it harder to find the commands you do want to use.
    • HammerTime: If you play online in English, you'll have timezone differences. The HammerTime website creates timestamps that will show the time for the timezone of the device it's read on when posted to Discord. Very useful for setting up sessions.
  • Discord can be all you need but often it's useful to have some visuals. Visuals will depend on your needs:
    • Excalidraw (Whiteboard): If you quickly want to draw something and share it like you would at a table, or you just want to track some relative positions, a whiteboard is generally all you need. Just share it with the top right button and copy the link. The link even stays persistent, so you can pick up where you left off next session!
    • Miro (Whiteboard): Excalidraw will start to stutter and no longer save data if you draw a lot. You can easily reach that size limit if you try to store whole character sheets or a campaign world map in a single file. In that case, you want a more powerful whiteboard - like Miro.
    • Owlbear Rodeo (Virtual Tabletop): If you do want to use battlemaps and a grid, Owlbear Rodeo is the easiest free option I know of.
    • Foundry (Virtual Tabletop): The most capable solution I know of that's also the most troublesome to set up. I'd reccomend Foundry only for complicated games that have a well supported Foundry module available. On my home server, no one uses Foundry anymore for OSR games because it's just such a hassle to deal with its complexity, updates that break things and the drawing tools are much worse than those of the other options listed.
    • Roll20 seems to be the most popular Virtual Tabletop but the user experience sucks. It's laggy. It clunky. The people who work there aren't very deep in the hobby, if at all (according to a former employee who shall remain anonymous). The Co-Founder authored the third-most downvoted comment in reddit history because of how badly he handled valid customer complaints. Please don't make me use Roll20 in your game.

• What even is and isn't "OSR"?!

  • "OSR" stands for multiple overlapping or even contradictory things and different people interested in "the OSR" may be interested in different parts of it. The community famously can't even agree on what the "R" stands for: Old School Revival? Old School Reneissance? Old School Rules? The following concepts were key to me getting orientated. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the term means different things to different people and that the details don't matter that much.
    • OSR can mean old D&D versions: Some people never stopped playing the game they started playing as a kid. Others return to the game after decades of no RPGs in their life and look for something close to what they played back in the day. The driving force is habit or nostalgia in that case. That's probably a smaller part of the OSR today.
    • OSR can mean compatibility with old D&D versions: Some say that OSR should be label reserved for whatever is mechanically compatible with old D&D versions. That's probably the most useful definition for everyday game mastering. Of course people will have very different idea of what's "compatible" and what not. How much conversion is acceptable, if any? Different GMs have very different opinions about what is easy to convert on the fly and what isn't.
    • OSR can mean a reaction to mainstream D&D: During the time of AD&D 2e and particularly with the release of D&D 3e, the game changed to have more rules and support story-based adventures rather than location-based adventures. Some players realized that they preferred the game that was created by the older rulesets. Most notably Matt Finch, who was instrumental in creating the first retroclone OSRIC. He wrote A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, an early milestone piece on fundamental assumptions of old school D&D.
    • OSR can mean a playstyle: It is often pointed out by gamers who lived through old-school D&D that the game was played different by different groups from the very start. The draw of the OSR lies in a particular playstyle and the playstyle isn't necessarily tied to the rules themselves. The unifying characteristic shouldn't be seen in rules, it should be in principles that are applicable across any RPG system. These were developed out over time in online discussions and blog posts as gamers figured out what exactly they liked about these old games and how to get the most ouf them. A popular collection is laid out in the Principia Apocrypha. Removing these principle from their original context and discussion can lead to misunderstandings - Gus L has done a great job to explain and put them into context again: 7 Maxims of the OSR. If I could only suggest one article on what the OSR is all about, I'd suggest that one.
    • OSR can mean old role-playing games: If you hang around in spaces of OSR fans, you'll sooner or later come across those interested in old RPGs in general, such as Runequest, Traveller or Tunnels & Trolls. However, the OSR grew historically out of D&D and is centered on early D&D or at least a particular playstyle of early D&D. Interpreting the OSR as everything related to old games seems to me the least useful definition. It's more of a side effect of a scene with a larger number of nostalgic players and those already open to "old" material.
    • OSR can mean rules-light: One of the main draws for me originally was the idea that OSR games are rules-light. That's generally true since most games use Basic/Expert D&D, a simplified version of AD&D aimed at kids, or a simple "hack" like Cairn or Knave. However, AD&D is firmly in the OSR camp as well, and that's certainly not rules-light. The same goes for Stars Without Numbers which is often cited as an OSR game with involved character building. What I've learned is that the OSR can be a good spot to find ruleslight games, but it's not defined by being ruleslight.
  • If you're still unclear about what the OSR means, I'll point you to the most in-depth article series about the OSR that I know: A Historical Look at the OSR — Part V . And please remember the most important thing: "OSR" means different things to different people and the details don't matter that much.