East Coast OSR Roleplaying Games Meetup

This meetup is for people who are interested in tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), but have become a bit bored with the most common TTRPGs like D&D 5th edition and Pathfinder and are looking for something different. Specifically, we'll be playing TTRPGs associated with the "Old School Renaissance" (OSR) that try to recapture the looser play-style from the first generation of RPGs in the 1970s & early '80s while streamlining and tweaking the rules a bit. For a quick overview, check out this 6-minute video from World Anvil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOF0luh0_NM

For those who aren't aware, there's several principals that set the OSR games apart from more modern TTRPGs:

1. Rulings Not Rules: Game mechanics are minimalist & easy to understand, and on-the-spot rulings from the gamemaster are favored for resolving situations not specifically covered in the rule books.
2. Heroic not Superheroic: Success lies in surviving and gradually becoming more skilled, not gaining tons of magic items or umpteen special abilities.
3. Lethality not Game Balance: Characters' hit points are often lower, healing magic is often rare or non-existent, and characters can & will meet more powerful opponents. This means the party may often need to hide, negotiate or run away instead of always fighting, and if/when your character dies, you'll be expected to laugh it off and create a new character.
4. Sandboxes not Railroads: There is less emphasis on character arcs & predefined endings, and a greater emphasis on generating "emergent narratives" from a mix of interesting maps, random tables & player choices.

There's a few more things that distinguish this meetup from other TTRPGs meetups:

• Thematically, our adventures lean more towards sub-genres of fantasy like low/pulp fantasy and sword & sorcery - often with a dash of "dying earth" or eldritch horror - which reflect the sources of inspiration found in early D&D's "Appendix N". Player characters will typically be humans, other humanoid races will either be absent or will be grotesque or otherworldly (often only NPCs), magic items will be rare & unique, and magic spells will often be dangerous to the caster's heath or sanity. Think Robert E. Howard's Conan stories rather than the high/epic fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy or the lighter & more comedic tone of the recent "D&D: Honor Among Thieves" movie.
• As befits the grittier fantasy sub-genres we're mimicking, there won't be any attempt to interject a Christian allegory like C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia" or the progressive social message you'll find in Amazon's "Rings of Power" series. Instead, the world's morality will often be ambiguous, with character temperaments, allegiance to different guilds/cults/clans, and/or lawful-vs-chaotic forces replacing the traditional good-vs-evil alignment. Player characters are more likely to be anti-heroes like mercenaries, thieves, gladiators, shamans, or warlocks than whimsical bards, virtuous clerics, or knights in shining armor. (However, we'll try to avoid having PCs devolve into stereotypical "murder hobos" whose only motive is killing stuff for XP.)
• Rather than sticking with one particular OSR ruleset like OSRIC, Old School Essentials, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, or The Black Hack, we'll playtest several of them so our members can get a sense of their advantages and shortcomings. Luckily, unlike many TTRPGs, the OSR games tend to have a small set of core rules that can fit on an index card, so it's super easy to learn a different system and start playing 5 minutes later. Many OSR games offer their core rulebook for free online, so startup cost isn't a barrier. (Note: Click on the name of the OSR games above and you can download their rules for free.)
• While many OSR games tend to use lightly-sketched settings with that are filled in by using a mix of random tables, player ideas and GM fiat, we'll focus on established settings from novels, movies & RPGs that are more fleshed out with great locations, interesting NPCs & lots of lore. Possibilities include some pulp classics like Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age and Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, as well as some modern gritty fantasy settings like George R.R. Martin's World of Ice & Fire, and some well-known RPG settings like Call of Cthulhu's Cthulhu Dark Ages and Cthulhu Invictus, or the bleaker D&D settings like Dark Sun and Ravenloft.
• Since miniatures & hex maps are cumbersome online, we'll be using the "theater of the mind" method where positioning, movement & distances are more abstracted.
• Rather than expecting players to commit to multiple sessions that are part of an overarching campaign, we're using an "open table" or "pick-up game" format where each session is a self-contained one-shot adventure with whatever players happen to show up on a given day. (Note: We may end up adopting the "West Marches" format where all adventures begin & end at a home base location, so it's easier to explain how/why new characters are joining the party and what happened to the characters whose player didn't show up.)
• Since we're assuming the vast majority of GMs and players aren't experienced fantasy writers or method actors but aspire to improve their roleplaying skills, we encourage the use of AI models like ChatGPT to help generate evocative descriptions of scenes, flesh out NPCs, help players improvise dramatic dialogue rather than saying "I roll 'Persuade' to bargain with the blacksmith over the sword's price", and make the players' combat actions more immersive than "I rolled an 18 so I hit - the monster takes 6 damage."
• If there's sufficient interest, we'll occasionally host meetups on GM techniques, the merits of different game mechanics & house rules, tips on roleplaying drawn from improv & voice acting, world building methods from the top fantasy authors, ways to avoid common pitfalls that make RPGs too slow & less fun, etc.

Since OSR games are a niche hobby and it's often hard to find players, we'll be playing online via Zoom which enables us to tap into a much larger pool of potential players. I'm opening this group up to interested people anywhere & everywhere!