The Eternal Dance of Intellect and Emotion

The OSR and Story Games Are Not the Same After All

I’ve previously written about how the OSR and story games both focus on emergent narrative. Today, I would like to explore how they are different.

Old School Reasoning

The OSR/NSR play style is known for its mantra “player skill, not character skill,” also known as “the answer is not on the character sheet”. In my experience playing and refereeing this kind of game, this mostly means that the play is focused on creative manipulation of the environment and of the equipment PCs have at their disposal. It is an ultimately intellectual endeavor, trying to solve the open-ended puzzle of the current scene. The thrill lies in stacking the odds in your favor, bypassing problems, and prevailing against the odds.

As a side note, this is also the reason for the popularity of weird and gonzo settings in the newer OSR/NSR games. Dreamy, surreal landscapes, unique monsters, and surprising situations provide interesting scenarios to be solved, and strange gear, spells and powers give players exciting tools to creatively solve these scenarios.

The Forge of Emotion

Where the OSR wants to manipulate interesting things, story games want to manipulate the narrative. The GM is no longer supposed to be a neutral arbiter, presenting the world to players. They are supposed to be “a fan of the players’ characters” as Apocalypse World puts it, and “[m]ake the players’ characters’ lives not boring.” If there is a GM at all, that is. Games such as Archipelago do away with that role completely.

Let’s take a look at the resolution mechanic in Apocalypse World, since it’s spawned the most popular story game movement: there is a steady stream of PbtA¹ games iterating on the idea. To make a test, you roll 2d6 plus your relevant stat, and try to roll over a static difficulty number of 10 for complete success or 7 for partial success. This means that, statistically, you will rarely see your character succeed fully. They will most likely succeed but with a complication, or they will fail.

In the OSR, the challenge was front-loaded, and you worked hard to solve it to your advantage. In PbtA, you jump into the fray, confident that complications will only make the story more interesting. The GM is a fan of your character as much as you are, you work together to generate plot twists and excitement. In other words, we maximize for emotional impact.

A friend of mine who is a story game GM is often disappointed if players roll too well, and not enough complications are generated. The story is more boring to him that way. This mindset would be ridiculous in old-school style gaming, where the whole point is to be clever and avoid complications which can turn lethal quickly.

Photo by NIKLAS LINIGER on Unsplash

Story Shackled by Rules

In mainstream, traditional play style, the line between these two priorities (intellectual vs emotional engagement) is less clear. The primary goal of trad/neotrad gaming is to tell a satisfying story which places it closer to story games. However, the rulesets typically don’t really support that goal. If you look at something like D&D or Pathfinder, large parts of the rules focus on the tactical puzzle that is combat: a clearly “brainy” activity. PC death is a real option if playing the rules as they are written. And the way we achieve a satisfying story has more to do with traditions than it has to do with rules.

There are specific rituals around trad aimed at providing that satisfying story. The GM prepares a storyline. The players write their characters’ backstories, and provide them to the GM so they can weave them into the narrative. The GM carefully balances combat encounters against the party’s power level to create tension but ultimately ensure the heroes succeed – or at least survive. If push comes to shove, the GM may fudge die rolls or place “quantum ogres” in the PCs’ path to make the story more interesting.

I believe this to be a large part of the all too common GM burnout – way more prevalent with trad GMs than with OSR referees or story gamers. You have to constantly tread a fine line between the expectations of a cinematic story (with the bar raised high by the popularity of actual play streams) and rules that don’t care that much about said story. It’s a lot of work, and if the story falls flat, it can feel like it is all your fault.

Obviously, what I am talking about are trends. Each game and each table falls somewhere on the spectrum between the heart and the mind. Neither is right or wrong. Ultimately, there is emotional satisfaction from overcoming intellectual challenges, and there is an intellectual challenge in weaving a compelling story from the events of a session.

It is, however, a useful mental model to have. It can help you understand better what works for you and your table, and ultimately have more fun.

1. “Powered by the Apocalypse.”