Player vs Character Skill

Something’s been itching at me for ages. Just this morning a Facebook comment helped me scratch it.

People often ask “What’s the difference between Old School (or OSR) gaming and modern gaming?” The differences are many (for an excellent free primer, download Principia Apocrypha by Milton, Lumpkin, and Perry), but one that is in my experience seldom expanded upon is player skill.

In a rather large Facebook group devoted to RPGs, someone posted a riddle they’d heard. Some comments leaped out at me, because they were variations on “don’t give players riddles; test the character, not the player”. 

That shocks me. 

When I was a new gamer, back when the Old School was just school, there was no such thing as “testing the character”, at least in D&D. As Ben Milton points out in Principia Apocrypha, “Players are not meant to solve problems with die rolls but with their own ingenuity.” 

For me, that right there is the biggest difference between Old School and modern play. In OSR play, player skill is an acceptable and expected part of the play experience; the character sheet is a last resort. Modern gaming tends to not only eschew player skill but condemn it; if it’s not on the character sheet, it’s not possible.

Putting this into words was an epiphany moment for me. Kabouter Games adventures lean heavily into OSR tropes, even in (especially in) our 5E adventures. I need to more explicitly point out these differences in design philosophy. A GM running a KG adventure needs to be able to communicate these differences in tone and approach so the players immediately know how different the expectations are.

I’m going to have to add a sidebar to the adventure that’s Kickstarting soon…

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