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The OSR is a name for a bunch of games and styles of play in roleplaying games where the OS stands for Old School and the R stands for Revolution or Revival or Renaissance depending on who you ask.

But it's generally a move to look at older styles of play from a modern perspective and either "go back" to them or reinterpret them and find the "good" in them. It's a fairly popular branch of RPGs by now that has had an effect on more mainstream games - 5e D&D has some OSR influences in it, although it is not really an OSR game, it was designed fairly obviously with a look to that.

Wargaming and Warhammer have Old Hammer and old school simulationist games like Battletech, but not as much in the way of reinvention and reinterpretation. At least, that I'm aware of!

There's also the physical aspect - wargaming is a lot about collecting or crafting physical artefacts, minis, scenery and so on. Old Hammer seems to be a lot about Ebay hunting for old models, but there's less making models in old styles (though I see some change there!)

For me, I'm coming from mostly a more "middlehammer" kind of place anyway, so in that regard what I see coming from the likes of North Star really tickles my fancy - affordable plastic multipart highly modular kits from Frostgrave, Stargrave and Oathmark seem to hit right in the spot that I want... also they are in the correct scale rather than upscaled like modern GW stuff.

I wonder if we'll see more rule sets aiming at this general area - Warlords of Erehwon springs to mind for fantasy gaming, but not sure that something at the same scale exists for sci fi. I use Grimdark Future 2.0 but I'm not as enamoured with their newer stuff, and there's nothing on the more simulationist end that I'm aware of that is also relatively model agnostic...

Do you think the Old Hammer movement is influencing modern GW game design at all? Is that what Horus Heresy and The Old World is all about? Personally I'm not super enthused because of their insistence on messing with base sizes and then making bases gameplay relevant, but maybe I'll be won over!
Interested in any thoughts or disagreements!

Hard to say.

I’m mostly into historical GW stuff for the sake of history and how the background developed over the years, especially when you keep in mind how rinky-dink early GW was, and how unlikely their ongoing success and sheer size seemed.

Epic and Old World are of interest to me as an Old Grognard for the same reason. But it’s also GW ensuring no niche goes unfilled by their own products. Will they take root? I hope so. But time will tell if there’s still enough appetite in the wider market.

I think "28" is the closest equivalent to OSR you'll get in the wargaming sphere. The irony is that in true "old school" times, 54mm and 15mm (and smaller) were the predominant wargaming scales and the subject matter was historicals (especially napoleonics). 28mm in fantasy/sci fi subject matter is a relatively modern thing.

If we went really OS we would be pushing around wooden blocks or firing little cannons ala Little Wars.

I am not sure people want to go that far back, and if they do they tend to play board games instead.

Heh, yeah as soon as I posted this I was like "Historicals don't need a revival, the old school is still going strong!"

I'm interested in Historicals but I suppose the lens I was viewing this through was fantasy and science fiction wargaming mostly. I'd like to see model agnostic sci fi and fantasy catch on even more than it has, because I think pick the models you like and the rules you like is the ideal way to wargame.

I dunno if that would catch on, given the market is well used to the background being an intrinsic part of the experience.

Speaking solely for myself? That’s always been my problem with AD&D. I know it has settings within its range, but the core book itself doesn’t.

Having cut my teeth on GW’s offerings, I find that jarring. How am I meant to effectively roleplay a character when I know sod all about the world I’ve apparently inhabited for a couple of decades before I went on an adventure?

Compare to WHFB or World of Darkness. WHFB? I’d give you a copy of Skavenslayer, and kick us off in an Empire City. World of Darkness? I’d show you Underworld and John Wick, as those give interesting touchstones to “our world, but scary things are very real”.

Why John Wick? His speed, skill and resilience to injury works really well for a WoD Vampire. Far better than most humans, and just, arguably, entering the Superhuman. Like a low level Vampire with maybe a point in celerity moving faster than a baseline human, but not to the point where it’s particularly noticable when glimpsed by The Man In The Street. Indeed, for the masquerade to be breached, you’d need someone following the entire fight as the camera does. And us humans tend to be disinclined to stick around and applaud once the toys are out and a pagga’s kicked off.

Perhaps OSR would lean back into GameMasters for games based on scenarios instead of pick-up, competitive games as the default?

Why would wargaming need OSR, our clunky 90s mechanics never left!

Hahaha!
I dunno, the scene strikes me as similar to D&D around 4e at the moment. The change to disassociated mechanics like stratagems and the changes to the background to move it away from it's original feel, all that sort of thing is what turbo charged the already present movement away from those elements in the D&D community. And I see elements of that here on Dakka with people discussing old editions much more than they used to, but it's still pretty different and maybe to me smaller scale than the OSR. Perhaps it's because wargaming has always had a more diverse base than RPGs.

Maybe that's because it's harder to self publish a wargame and wargames are generally more expensive and more effort than RPGs, I dunno.

You also have the lodestone that is GW.

There seems little point in trying to be 40K, or the next 40K, because, well, 40K is already 40K. It’s incredibly well established and in many respects, GW is the Father of modern war gaming, outside of the Historicals.

As maligned as GW are, they’re still the benchmark when it comes to kit quality, rules, price, availability, background etc.

We’ve seen a few games billed as no better than “hey, at least it’s not GW!” within the community come and go. Such as WarmaHordes, a system which seemingly inevitably went the GW Route all the same.

The various Star Wars games confuse me as an individual, as they all seem to be different attempts in different model scales at…the same overall scale of combat. Well, other than X-Wing and Armada.

I wonder if the transition to Primaris and away from the regular marines and units will drive a larger gap between nu40k and Old/middlehammer. I've certainly been impressed by aphyon's efforts for plugging new units into "5th edition with tweaks." (Thread here.) I've seen some of that done with 2nd here and there on the intertubes, but the 3rd to 5th edition era seems to capture a sweet spot with players. Perhaps the Primaris thing will help bolster that era of play, which could spawn more creativity in refining it.

In my headcanon, I'm still in static 40k. Timeline is frozen. Minute hand is at a minute before midnight and that seconds hand is quavering but never reaching the end. I always liked that aspect. I liked the freedom of taking that and running with it however you want.

Does the divide between static 40k'ers with regular marines vs "the timeline advances!" 40k'ers with Primaris marines become the impetus for a 40k OSR? I'm hoping so, because I think any kind of play style that coalesces with player involvement and testing is a good thing.

I do take your point, but I think the same is broadly true of for example D&D 5e (or whatever it is now) in the RPG space.

I mean, I love the 40K universe and the Old World and I've got really fond memories of those games that I played in them.

But to me, modern GW isn't really selling something I want any more. The modern background is more like Horus Heresy Mk2 with a smallish cast of characters who influence the outcome of things and a progressing plot. Same for Age of Sigmar where it's a small number of mostly reimagined WFB characters that guide a mostly stakes-less progressing plot.

I like comic books too, but it's not what I go to a wargame for. So in that sense, I'm not really in the market for GW's background any more. It's not that it's awful, but it's not what I'm into.

With models, they changed the scale on the models and made them out of scale with my old stuff, and moved to a monopose plastic approach that while it gives some nice models, is to me a step down from modularity in plastic kits. So I genuinely prefer North Star's stuff to GW's, because modularity and scale consistency is important to me. I am irritated that they changed the scale to 32mm rather than 28mm as it was. Also, you've no idea how annoyed I am at the prospect of rebasing my collection when GW could very easily have written the rules so as to make base size irrelevant and not inconvenienced their existing playerbase.

And for rules, there's a lot I like about the modern rules but too much that I don't like. I prefer a more simulationist ruleset and while I can see the appeal of the more modern GW stuff it's just not for me.

So I'm just in the market for stuff that lets me use my miniatures with a background I like and rules that fit my taste. And like, broadly, I've found that and am happy with it, but I just find it interesting that there's not really much of a "scene" for it than I'm aware of.

Like the most recent version of D&D is always going to be more popular than OSR, because OSR is a niche taste, but OSR still has a fairly lively scene with a lot of products and discussion, moreso than I see for wargaming.

Edit: Fugazi, yeah I do a similar thing where my version of 40K background is somewhat a mix of the stuff I like from 3e-5e 40K, the Great Crusade and Rogue Trader.

I miss the stagnant universe and 5 minutes to midnight, but with plenty of corners you could put your own stamp on.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The various Star Wars games confuse me as an individual, as they all seem to be different attempts in different model scales at…the same overall scale of combat. Well, other than X-Wing and Armada.

I'm in the same boat. Imperial Assault was basically Descent, reskinned. However, IIRC, the Imperial Assault community was already moving to a kind of freeform skirmish level scenario building on the old forums before FFG nuked them. Then Legions came out, completely different scale, wargame instead of a board game that had some skirmish-lite rules. I don't know if it had to do with licensing or to prevent people using their Imp Assault minis. I didn't keep up with the development of Legions after the initial release or the more recent Shatterpoint game. The scale is ...close? ...but stylized differently? And from what I gather the games are very, very different from each other.

X-wing and Armada had clear visions about what they were, and I think the games benefited from that.

It's funny, because I used to think I would throw buckets of $ at miniature stormtroopers/clonetrooopers/rebels/jedi etc. But I feel nothing when I look at these. X-wing and Armada? Oh, yes, gotta have 'em. Legion/Shatterpoint? meh.

I am generally less enthused about Legion/Shatterpoint myself. Still buy them, but of the four Armada is my clear favorite. Shame it was strangled to death by Atomic Mass Games.

 Fugazi wrote:

It's funny, because I used to think I would throw buckets of $ at miniature stormtroopers/clonetrooopers/rebels/jedi etc. But I feel nothing when I look at these. X-wing and Armada? Oh, yes, gotta have 'em. Legion/Shatterpoint? meh.

I did throw buckets off money at WotC Star Wars minis, bought a bunch of Imperial Assault minus because they were close enough in scale to match, and absolutely would have thrown buckets more at Legion for the chance to add multi part plastics to the collection... But because it was a completely different scale, I bought none of it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

We’ve seen a few games billed as no better than “hey, at least it’s not GW!” within the community come and go. Such as WarmaHordes, a system which seemingly inevitably went the GW Route all the same.

As much flak as I give GW, I always considered it a red flag when a company tried to establish itself by declaring which of GW's mistakes they're not repeating.

To be fair it usually isn't the company declaring they are the anti-GW, it's the fans of that company.

 Da Boss wrote:
But it's generally a move to look at older styles of play from a modern perspective and either "go back" to them or reinterpret them and find the "good" in them. It's a fairly popular branch of RPGs by now that has had an effect on more mainstream games - 5e D&D has some OSR influences in it, although it is not really an OSR game, it was designed fairly obviously with a look to that.

There's a lot to be said for the early version of D&D, which emphasized storytelling and player interaction over grinding out tables and percentages. That came later. Indeed, the early 80s version actually stated that variable weapon damage was an optional rule. The core rule was all hits did d6 damage.

Reject modernity. Embrace tradition. Pole arms do d10 damage.

I am playing White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure game in my lunchtime D&D club after becoming disillusioned with trying to run a meaningful short 5e session in 45 lunchbreak.

It's basically an 0e retroclone with some stuff tidied up, costs 4.5 euro for an A5 book with everything in it or free for a pdf. So the only dice you need is a d20 and a d6, super simple to teach and play. I love it!

I think OPR Grimdark Future does something like that for 40K, a stripped down game you can play in a short time and is easy to teach. But I feel since they started their patreon and selling the 3D prints it's mostly become about that and I'm not a fan of the latest changes to the rules at all.

chaos0xomega wrote:
To be fair it usually isn't the company declaring they are the anti-GW, it's the fans of that company.

There have been direct references to GW rules writing and marketing, besides obviously Mantic, early Corvus Belli comes to mind with statements in the line of (paraphrased): "What does our game do? It doesn't make you buy a new army book every 4 years" where my reaction was always, why are you defining your product by what it doesn't do?

chaos0xomega wrote:
To be fair it usually isn't the company declaring they are the anti-GW, it's the fans of that company.

Either way, it’s not exactly a persuasive argument. And it feels like it’s never long before game design issues crop up all the same.

From Warmachine making mook infantry king, to X-Wing graciously locking updated cards and costs in Very Expensive Epic Ship Expansions, and turreted ships removing the need for being good with your manoeuvres.

I for one am wary of the modern Star Wars games, because it seems rather than support and continue to develop Game A, we instead get Game B, with slightly differently scaled models. Oh, and they’ll drop a given game at the drop of a hat, or flat out state they’re not doing more with it, because reasons.

GW being the benchmark remains a central issue for any would-be competitor. You either need to do better kits, better rules, lower price etc. Otherwise? Why should I invest in your game, when I’ve hundreds if not thousands (it’s definitely thousands) of pounds worth of GW kit and a ready made community to use it with?

OSR is so passé. I'm trying to get my group into the FKR spirit.

 Rihgu wrote:
OSR is so passé. I'm trying to get my group into the FKR spirit.

I'm googling this just so nobody asks you what it is

You may have heard of FKR recently, an emerging style of RPG play that takes inspiration from old-fashioned Free Kriegsspiel wargames and pre-DnD RPG campaigns. It's something like a fork of the OSR. Here's some of the principles that I've observed, with links if you want to dive deeper into the rationale:

1.) FKR tends to be very minimalistic, rules wise, although it usually isn't completely freeform. Opposed 2d6 rolls are common, although other dice conventions can be used as needed. A common trend seems to be starting out very bare-bones and then adding in rules as the campaign continues, based on what it needs. These mini-systems are frequently tweaked, replaced, or thrown out as the campaign evolves. The rules are the servant, not the master of the game. FKR uses table-centric design.

2.) FKR strips out most of the rules in order to increase realism. FKR places a high priority on immersion and realism by giving the DM a lot of authority over the rules. They can decide what to roll, when to roll, the range of possible outcomes, etc. The idea is that a human being is better able to adjudicate a complex situation than an abstract ruleset. And they can do it faster.

3.) FKR has less rules to let players do more.

4.) FKR prioritizes invisible rulebooks over visible rulebooks.

5.) FKR is a High-Trust play style. It's only going to work if you trust that the DM is fair, knowledgeable, and is going to make clear, consistent rulings.

6.) Boardgames (and some very crunchy RPGs) derive their fun from manipulating abstract rules to your advantage. FKR derives its fun from manipulating an imaginary (but logically consistent) world to your advantage. It plays worlds, not rules. It emphasizes the joy of tactical infinity. You don't use mechanics to solve problems, you use real, open-ended problem solving skills to solve problems.

OSR? FKR?

We Humans with our obsessive need to categorize things.

Just play the game all ready.

 Easy E wrote:
OSR? FKR?

We Humans with our obsessive need to categorize things.

Just play the game all ready.

It's useful to find a community with similar ideas/play style if you can categorize yourself/your interests. If I'm interested in OSR style games, I'm better off going to an OSR community and asking questions/for advice from them than going to a more general RPG community.

It's also fun if you've been a person "just play[ing] the game" and you find a community of people with similar ideas as you, and they might even have some interesting additions for you to incorporate!

Gaming/existing in a bubble is fine but sometimes it's fun to expand that bubble, you know?

 Easy E wrote:
OSR? FKR?

We Humans with our obsessive need to categorize things.

Just play the game all ready.

Known as the JPG movement

 Fugazi wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The various Star Wars games confuse me as an individual, as they all seem to be different attempts in different model scales at…the same overall scale of combat. Well, other than X-Wing and Armada.

I'm in the same boat. Imperial Assault was basically Descent, reskinned. However, IIRC, the Imperial Assault community was already moving to a kind of freeform skirmish level scenario building on the old forums before FFG nuked them. Then Legions came out, completely different scale, wargame instead of a board game that had some skirmish-lite rules. I don't know if it had to do with licensing or to prevent people using their Imp Assault minis. I didn't keep up with the development of Legions after the initial release or the more recent Shatterpoint game. The scale is ...close? ...but stylized differently? And from what I gather the games are very, very different from each other.

X-wing and Armada had clear visions about what they were, and I think the games benefited from that.

It's funny, because I used to think I would throw buckets of $ at miniature stormtroopers/clonetrooopers/rebels/jedi etc. But I feel nothing when I look at these. X-wing and Armada? Oh, yes, gotta have 'em. Legion/Shatterpoint? meh.

Imperial Assault was never really designed as a competitive game. The skirmish mode from it initially existed to try and squeeze through a legal loophole. FFG only had the rights to make Star Wars tabletop games. Hasbro owns the rights to make Star Wars board games. The skirmish mode was included to try and sneak around this and make Star Wars Descent, but ultimately FFG had to settle with Hasbro and pay most of the profits from the line to license the board game rights from them. After this, they gave up the pretense and developed Legion as a game they could keep the money from and toe into hobby miniatures. At the same time, they started making more dedicated board games like Rebellion because... why not? They already had to pay for the license.

Legion is definitely something of a weird product. I'm not sure how many of the decisions in its design are a result of trying to distance itself from Imperial Assault, but even if there aren't Habro legal considerations, I don't think the idea of reusing the models from that would have really worked. Early Legion sculpts are BARELY up to hobby standards as is and they're a bit better than Imperial Assault. IA also just didn't have the kind of models you'd want for a minis game. Like I don't think I have a single Legion units worth of Stormtroopers and they're all the same pose. The hero models are another story, particularly given the high cost low utility they ended up being for IA. I'm curious if that's part of why Legion has so little focus on the characters, though I think some of it might simply be a result of Legion obviously being someone's 40k homebrew.

Shatterpoint though, is definitely its own beast. It definitely has the clearest vision of the 3. Much closer to X-Wing and Armada in that regard.

 Easy E wrote:
OSR? FKR?

We Humans with our obsessive need to categorize things.

Just play the game all ready.

Amen.

And FKR just seems a silly name to begin with. You're referencing a *wargame* in order to categorize a style of playing RPGs that actually doesn't really have much of anything to do with the game being referenced?

Ok, thats a choice.


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 LunarSol wrote:
though I think some of it might simply be a result of Legion obviously being someone's 40k homebrew.

You lost me here. I don't play legion and think "yeah, someone was trying to rework 40k when they designed this".

Heh, I can understand frustration with the three letter acronyms and ever more granular categories. I feel it myself sometimes! But at the same time, categories are useful when trying to have a conversation, and I think the OSR scene in RPGs is distinct and interesting, even if it is a bit fuzzy around the edges and people like to argue about what is "real" OSR possibly more than they like to play the games.

But I've gotten a lot out of that scene that's given me a lot of enjoyment, and I think I'd enjoy a similar scene for wargames if it existed. But perhaps the development of that scene on blogs and G+ was an artefact of it's time, and the nature of the modern internet means a similar thing happening in the same way for wargames is unlikely.