“As long as everyone is having fun, you are playing it right.”
Bullshit.
There are two problems.
Playing it right is not always fun. You can be having fun but playing wrong.
Playing it right is not always fun.
Players can have bad luck, or a momentary lapse of judgement and fail in achieving their objective or lose a character.
Not fun.
A player can read the situation wrong despite your best efforts as a referee to provide all the information and clues needed.
OSR games are adventure games. Adventure means there is a possibility of loss and failure.
How fun is it to have your 12th level fighter, and all his sweet magic armor and weapons be disintegrated because you rolled a “1” on a saving throw?
That’s not fun and that is playing the right way.
The evil wizard has disintegrate in his spell book. The referee made sure the players knew he had some serious magical fire power. The players were arrogant and didn’t take proper precautions to prevent the wizard from casting spells.
It happens. You lose a character and it sucks.
The game needs moments of “suck.” Without it, all the other times your characters avoid danger will have little meaning.
They will be empty adventures only providing the illusion of challenge.
Removing the danger is playing it wrong.
A classic adventure game where the PCs are never truly in danger is playing wrong.
Our characters kick ass and haul wagons of treasure from every dungeon in the land and nobody ever dies! What fun!
You are playing characters who intentionally enter into the lair of a monster. Monsters kill people.
That is a monster’s favorite hobby. Do I need to say more?
If characters can’t die in an old school game then you are playing it wrong.
When I say “wrong” in this context I mean going against the intentions of the designer and the generally accepted play style in the culture of the classic fantasy adventure gaming hobby.
I’m not saying “wrong” that it is bad or immoral to play however you want or rewrite the mechanisms however you want. If you are enjoying yourself, go for it.
Gary’s designed the game so that characters could fail and have something the player doesn’t like happen to their character. If you don’t want to play the game that way, that’s fine. Understand it is not the experience that Gary wanted you to have nor is it what most of us would consider “old school” fantasy gaming.
I don’t like it when the DM lies to me as a player
We tried to avoid those bounty hunters but they still found us. Good thing we were able to escape the dungeons of the Evil Overlord and rescue that imprisoned wizard in the bargain. Handy that the wizard knows where we can find the magic sword that will kill the overlord. Great story! This is fun!
Railroading is a lie. The railroading GM says, “Your choices matter. Your choices will determine the outcome of this adventure,” but they don’t. The GM’s “story” is what matters and the GM has already determined the outcome.
Wow! What a close fight! I thought for sure that dragon was going to finish us off that last round. That was fun!
Fudging Dice is lying: The monster missed. The monster didn’t do as much damage. The monster failed the save.
In some forms of entertainment, lying is accepted because the audience knows they are being lied to. Nobody believes the magician is actually sawing the lady in half. Old school games are not like that.
I want the truth, even when it’s not fun.
Fudging the dice means:
- The players didn’t actually defeat the monster.
- The players didn’t actually avoid the danger with smart play and teamwork.
- The referee decided the players must win to advance a plot.
- The PC didn’t actually win by cleverness or even luck.
Not-fun moments are necessary for meaningful play.
Your character gets hit by a fireball, you fail the save but you survive. Huzzah!
Then the referee tells you to roll saves for your gear.
A magic item, some scrolls, maybe your spell book gets torched.
Ugh! That sucks. It’s a gut punch. A lot of gamers would say, “That’s not fun.”
Is the referee playing it wrong? According the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide that’s correct.
“Fun” has become this arbitrary and subjective standard of “playing it right” and I disagree.
Not-fun provides a necessary element of satisfaction for a challenging old school method of play.
Having un-fun moments provides a contrast. When the fun happens after a not-fun moment, there is an appreciation and gratitude that comes from it.
The not-fun moments are part of the player skill feedback loop.
Many in the OSR claim that our games are about player skill and imaginative manipulation of the diegesis within the game world and not a mastery of mechanics.
What is an objective measurement of player skill?
Getting your characters through a sticky situation with creativity and teamwork is high player skill.
Failure, something that is rarely “fun”, must be a true possibility. If spectacular and lethal failure is not a distinct possibility then “player skill” becomes a trite and meaningless way for old schoolers to puff up their egos and claim some sort of gaming superiority over games that do not offer such challenges.
The un-fun moment of failure focuses the group mind and puts them on the path to actual player skill. If players want to avoid character death, they need to pay attention, work together, gather information, prepare for the probable threats, think and be creative when a problem arises. That is player skill.
Accept it and be grateful when your game has a not-fun moment. There will be more fun later and it will be all the sweeter.
Grumpy Wizard 
Hmmm. I think it depends on your definition of fun. Edge of your seat, genuine peril is fun. Sometimes you roll bad and die. When we played as kids we had a roll of honour, a list of dead characters. It was A4 paper, two columns per sheet, four sheets. Lots of dead characters, many we were fond of.
It’s fun to reminisce now, one in particular still raises hackles; a 7th level cavalier, separated from the party for a few rounds, bitten by a poisonous toad, paralysed, fell in a pool in full plate, glug glug.
But the argument was fun; the adrenalin flowed, it was great.
Fun is fun, more than just feeding egos. Surviving against the odds was fun, but so was rolling a new character… You can have fun without winning. Play the game…
Milo
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There is definitely spectrum and sometimes a character being killed doing something stupid or spectacular can be very fun.
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Bingo. Nu-players, aka fragile children, can’t deal with any adversity, and their psyche is shattered if their char with a backstory they spent 2 weeks crafting dies in 3 sessions.
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Well, we know what your session zero looks like 😛
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Ha! Maybe I should do a post on that. It may be splitting hairs but I don’t do a session zero. I lay out the stuff that is typically covered in a session zero via email. Any questions or concerns get answered before we play.
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I think an email for session zero works just as well, Probably even better for some people.
This also touches on something that I’ve been thinking of as “The Westworld Conundrum”. The idea being that both GMs and players think of a game as kind of like the movie Westworld (not the series) but with one crucial difference: players think of a game like Westworld *before* the robots go crazy – a fantasy world that they get to live in and be the hero. Where as GMs think of a game as Westworld *after* the robots go crazy – a dangerous and untamed land where players have to use their wits and everything at their disposal to get their characters out alive.
Yes this is a big generalization, but I think there is something in it. I ran smack into it in my last campaign and it caused a major disconnect. And it is something that I have been guilty of as a player. Next campaign I run I will be explicit about this at the start – it is your job as a player to learn how to overcome the challenges of the game (this is the ‘g’ part of ‘rpg). NPCs will help you, but if you and/or your characters don’t learn, or make stupid decisions, then there is a very good chance that your character will die. You don’t need to be a powergamer, but if your character concept is not supported (ie a wizard that likes fighting in melee with a whip because reasons, or a rogue that always goes off by themselves, etc…) then it is *your* job to make it work. I’m not going to pull any punches.
Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t have this all worked out yet.
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I guess we disagree on the definition of “fun” here. For me, failure (in this context of course) isn’t “not-fun”, and winning by GM’s fiat definitely isn’t “fun”.
Removing danger is playing wrong because it’s not fun. Lying is playing wrong because it’s not fun. At least at my table. If at another table those things are fun, then they are also “right” for them.
Definitions aside, let’s give some context to that quote: as I’ve seen it, it’s usually given to new GMs that are overly concerned about “playing it right”, in a form of “performance anxiety”. In that context, I definitely agree. If you’re all having fun, you’re doing it “right”. Keep learning, but stop worrying.
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There are many gamers (particularly in 5E circles) who think characters dying is not fun and are fine with railroady adventures with dice fudging used to protect PCs and “the story.” I think there is a correct way to play old school style and an incorrect way and sometimes the correct way can produce unpleasant situations. There have been character deaths that bummed me out but that was the result, we accepted it and moved on.
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It’s difficult to reconcile this post with your “Swords against Snobbery” post. I think the point you’re trying to make is that OSR has a meta in which certain modes of play are “correct”, but to me, it sounds like gatekeeping. “You can’t call yourself OSR unless you play by these defined modes” Maybe it’s just the tone of the post. IMO, one of the best things about roleplaying games is that each DM is free to set the rules for their table. The hobby really doesn’t need the level of balkanization that seems to be prevalent on various internet forums, especially over a stylistic issue that probably doesn’t matter to 90% of players.
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Hi Paul. Thanks for reading and commenting.
I don’t have a problem with fragmentation in the tabletop gaming hobby. I don’t expect everyone to like my work or what I have to say. If everyone agreed about the topics I cover there would be no point in writing this blog.
It is 100% true that issues I bring up on my blog don’t matter to 99% of players. Those people aren’t the people I’m writing for. I’m writing for the 1% of the hobby for whom it does matter.
In the “Snobbery” post I’m talking about how I find it difficult not to be judgemental and dismissive of people who like mainstream things to the exclusion of more sophisticated, difficult or refined things. I don’t enjoy the company of “basic” people. I make an effort to be kind and courteous to everyone. I’m human and sometimes I fail.
At the same time, I do hope some people despise me. Know a man not by his friends but by his enemies. There are circumstances when I go full on snob. Some people are assholes, others have dumb ideas and bad taste. My approach is to avoid those people and not engage with them unless I have to, which is rare.
The thesis of this post is that “fun” is not the standard by which I judge whether an old school game is being played correctly. There is such a thing as correct and incorrect. Playing the dice as they turn up is correct. Fudging dice is incorrect.
Someone can call themselves whatever they like. That doesn’t mean I am going to agree with them. Sticking a feather up your butt doesn’t make you a rooster. Gatekeeping is trying to keep someone out of the hobby or reducing their ability to participate in the hobby. If you think that is what I am saying, please point me to the sentence where I’m doing that.
There is a generally agreed on old school style and method of play. If a DM doesn’t want to use that style, OK. Carry on. Do your thing. If you call it “old school” when it isn’t, someone who cares might say something about it.
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If Wizards of the Coast made a “Powered by the Apocalypse” game and called it an “indie game” since it was using Lumpley’s rule set would it actually be an indie game? Most people would say no and 99% of gamers wouldn’t care.
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