Falchion

How I Became "OSRified"

The Before Times, The Long Long Ago

Being born and raised in the Midwest, Kansas to be exact, you might think that I had a greater exposure to roleplaying and Dungeons and Dragons. However, this was not the case. I grew up in a small Kansas town. The closest movie theater was 45 minutes away. I was always a nerd growing and enjoyed things like science fiction and fantasy. Star Wars, Beastmaster, Conan the Barbarian (Schwarzenegger) and The Hobbit (Rankin-Bass) sucked me in. However, it was video games that really got me.

I was born in 1985, so I was the NES generation. I loved games like Faxanadu and The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. As new systems came out, I started enjoying other games like Golden Axe and the Final Fantasy series. I heard snippets of Dungeons and Dragons, but only that “its what super nerds play”. I, of course, was above that… Spending all my time sitting on the floor in front of my PlayStation or Nintendo 64, drinking Pepsi and eating Cheetos. At that point, what little I did know boiled down to this video.

College and My First Try

Fast forward to the early to mid 2000’s and I’m in college. My senior year I moved out of the dorms and into a duplex with my cousin and another friend. One day, while looking through Waldenbooks (RIP), I came across Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. I decided to flip through it.

I was blown away.

This tome of infinite knowledge had ways to calculate everything you could ever want to do in an imaginary world! It was like an encyclopedia to your own imagination! I immediately bought the Players Hand Book, took it home, and devoured it. I then talked to my cousin and a friend about maybe trying to play it and they were on board. With my next paycheck, I bout the Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual, and Races of Dragon (I loved Kobolds). I read through them as best as I could, the we all met up in my friend’s parent’s basement one night to make characters…

And that night lead into another night…

And then another night…

It took us three nights to figure out how to make characters in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5.

Now, keep in mind that this was before Critical Roll and before actual plays. Youtube was still fairly new. You learned how to play DnD by someone who already knew how to play teaching you. Once we finally figured out how to make characters, we had to figure out how to DM.

And that is where we gave up.

I shelved the books for the next 2 to 3 years.

My First Official Session

By then I was living in a new house with new roommates. Some of my friends from college (twin brothers actually) asked if I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. Turns out they had been playing and DMing for each other since they were kids. I was stoked! Finally I would get the chance to give this a shot.

I met up with two other friends (one of which was the friend that gave up on 3.5 with me years prior).

We were a thief (me), a wizard (my friend from before), and a fighter (my other friend).

I don’t remember exactly what we did, but it involved going into a cave. The wizard died within the first room or two. I don’t exactly remember how, but we all thought it was funny. The fighter and I got to the last chamber, where we fought a skeleton with a big sword I think. Turn after turn we missed our attacks while the skeleton hacked at us. Finally, as we were about to die, we asked the DM:

“...This is crazy… We keep missing our attacks! What are we supposed to do!”

To which he replied:

“...Have you tried pushing him off the edge into the bottomless pit behind him…?”

We did. He fell. We won.

It was a blast.

Then I learned we were actually playing a game called Pathfinder and I felt betrayed.

What is this Pathfinder… I want Dungeons and Dragons! The OG!

Editions? There Are Editions?

The DM listens to me and explains that Dungeons and Dragons recently evolved into a new edition, Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. He would gladly start up a new campaign if we all wanted to play. I was super stoked again. Finally I get to play actually Dungeons and Dragons!

I look through the books and decide to play a Ranger. For some backstory, I had always found Rangers cool for two reason:

  1. My first MMO was Final Fantasy XI, where Rangers were basically glass cannons and could destroy anything. I was never hardcore enough to actually become a ranger (the grind in FFXI was… stupid crazy originally) but I still loved the mystique.
  2. Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. The Peter Jackson movies came out when I was in High School. Aragorn was the epitome of badassery in my eyes, even more so when he went by Strider.

So we sit down and start playing our sessions of DnD 4e and its… Not what I thought it was going to be…

Why can I only shoot my by a certain way sometimes? Why are things laid out in a grid, but we are playing with minis on a table with no grid? If the rules are laid out in this super structured way, why is the DM so handwavey with a bunch of it?

I was super confused.

It didn’t help that no matter what d20 I rolled, I had shit luck.

The best sessions ended up being the last few, when I ended up makin a “Castlevania-esqe” Axe-Armor character, and we fought the “Puppeteer” boss from one of the Castlevania games, and my mind finally clicked on how positioning and shifting worked in a skirmish game…

Because I didn’t know what a skirmish game was at that point.

And then I shelved TTRPGs for a few years again.

The Dark Times, And The Coolest Basement Ever

I met a girl. We dated for a year or two. She was the one.

Then she broke up with me and I was devastated.

It was the lowest point in my life, and I made some decisions that I will always regret.

But during that dark time, that twin brother reached out to me:

“Hey man, I know you are feeling down… You probably need to get out of your apartment. I play DnD with this guy in his basement. You want to join?”

Dungeons and Dragons? In a grown man’s basement? Sounds sketchy…

But I do need to get out of my apartment…

The house is normal from the outside. I am greeted by a brick wall of a man that played rugby all of his life. His built-in bookshelf is lined with mass market sword and sorcery paperbacks. His wife is making us all snacks. He has 7 kids, all names beginning with ‘K’. We go down to the “man cave”, which is lined with Board Games, action figures, Magic the Gathering, Role-Playing Games, incense, a mini-fridge with beer and soda, and every edition of DnD back to 1st.

I end up playing Pathfinder, DnD 3.5, and some edition of Call of Cthulhu with this man and my friends, and he helps me crawl out from the darkness of my depression.

My ex girlfriend and I end up getting back together, and we actually end up getting married!

The 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons comes out, and I am excited. Finally I get to start a game at the ground floor. Not only that, one of the first books being released is Curse of Strahd… Gothic Horror! Castlevania DnD! Just what I’ve always wanted! I get the books and take my first stab at DMing. I run the starting scenario with the group and it goes ok for the most part.

Somethings... Not Right... But What?

About this time, while we were taking turns running different games for each other I started to realize something about myself as a player. I'd spend a lot of time creating a character, picking feats or backgrounds. Assigning my ability scores. Coming up with a backstory... Only to feel, hollow and bored with my character after only a couple of sessions. I couldn't understand why? I liked the idea of making a cool demon hunter, bad-ass barbarian, or edgy ranger... But once I was actually roleplaying them, I lost all interest.

I also realized, even though I had done theater and loved being on stage, that when I played a roleplaying game, I didn't really want to be another character. I wanted to... Play a game. If I was presented with a puzzle, I felt conflicted if I, the player, knew how to solve it, but my character didn't have a high intelligence score so, "was too stupid" to know how to solve it. This almost came to a head once when a DM (my cousin) had crafted a puzzle that was basically the Resident Evil room involving portraits of a man aging over time.

I sat there in silence as everyone is taking forever to "solve" the puzzle. After 15-20 minutes I finally just say that my character arranges the portraits from youngest to oldest. Everyone asked me if, "My character figured it out" or if, "I had figured it out". I lied and said that my character had a stroke of luck... But really I couldn't stand sitting there playing dumb any longer.

I also realized, both then and much later, that I had no interest in a "grand over-arcing plot" by the DM. Even if it has been tailored just for my character. It felt that, if everything was tailored to my character, then what's stopping the DM from just handing me mcguffins, ultimate weapons to kill my villains, and cheesing/fudging the dice when it was time for the monsters to attack? If I was the "hero" of the grand plotline, then of course I had plot armor, just like every hero in every book, movie, and video game... And I didn't like that.

I wanted to feel like I actually earned my victories through my decisions. I wanted get loot, and then figure out how to use this random stuff I found, not be given it because it had a very specific purpose to the plot. I was around this time that when a DM would tell me I could go left or right, I would try to figure out a way to go through the wall in front of me.

I'd like to sum all of this up by saying that I was still having an absolute blast hanging out with my friends once a week and being a nerd... But I just didn't feel like I was playing DnD the way I had always imagined.

Curse of Strahd, Round 2!

My wife and I end up moving close to Kansas City for my job. I put DnD on hold for a few years.

I then slowly turn my wife (a former high school/college/semi-professional cheerleader/pin-up model/actress) into a super nerd. She literally plays video games more than I do at some point. She won’t touch Dungeons and Dragons until some of her theater friends start explaining to her what it’s like, then she is on board. I get her and some others together to give Curse of Strahd another go.

And we have fun! Session after session is a blast… But I also notice that I am starting to get more and more anxiety before each session. Each chapter in Curse of Strahd requires reading pages of NPC backstory and motivations. I need to gather and organize stat block after stat block. I need to make sure I know all the possible story arcs of each settlement that the players may go to.

And some sessions the players end up going to a different place than I have prepared!

More than once I end up canceling due to just being too stressed out and we end up playing a board game instead.

"You can't play D&D like that, play a different game!"

During this time, I started dabbling with the idea of creating my own setting influenced by the fantasy things I grew up with, along with other more modern influences. One big one was Dark Souls (Yes… I know… Everyone talks about Dark Souls now…). I had gotten board of how vanilla fantasy had become in video games, but suddenly here was this franchise that was legit dark/horror fantasy where nothing was spoon fed to you, and you were some super bad ass right from the beginning with awesome super powers. You were just a dude with some armor and sword and shield.

I started asking around on the 5e reddit forums how I could alter the ruleset and player options to fit a world like that and I was not exactly met with open arms. In fact I was basically told to play a different game all together.

“Dungeons and Dragons isn’t for that. Players don’t want that. You are taking away options from the players. You would be a bad DM.” Etc. Etc. Etc.

Old School Rules!

And then someone suggest the game that I should play if I was interested in a more low/dark fantasy setting.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Word of warning... If you are not aware of what Lamentations of the Flame Princess entails... It definitely has some horrific NSFW art within.

Ye hath been warned...

So I look at the free PDF and get intrigued, so I order the book from my FLGS. It comes in and my head explodes. Everything just seems so much… Simpler? How does a single game fit in this tiny little digest sized book!? I start wondering if there are adventures for it and somehow stumble on Death Frost Doom. I download the free PDF… And once again my head explodes. Everything suddenly just clicked. Everything that 5e told me in terms of how adventures were ran and set up was a lie.

I starting looking online and found a Facebook group for the game and quickly joined. After some lurking I ended up meeting a guy that was interested in running a one-shot for newbies to the system. I nervously sign up and end up having a blast in my first ever OSR experience as I lose a fighter to the Tower of the Stargazer, only to quickly come back as a Specialist and manage to survive.

One thing leads to another. I learn about Discord and set up and account. I then start joining as many OSR discords as I can, which leads to more systems like Old School Essentials, Mork Borg, and Cairn. I learn about other modules and adventures. I end up subscribe to various Youtubers like Questing Beast and Bandit’s Keep. It was like I was in a desert and now suddenly I was sitting in the middle of an oasis eating fruit off of silver platters!

COVID hits so my 5e game goes on pause indefinitely. Stuck at home, I keep downloading PDFs and ordering more books, soaking everything up like a sponge. My wife asks me if we can somehow play something online... We start playing random OSR one-shots over Roll20 and Zoom.

One of my wife's theater friends that moved to New York right before Covid reaches out. He is having a real hard time of it, and is in a real dark place. She suggest trying DnD with us. I start running one shots for him and my wife. We quickly become friends and it helps him with much needed social interaction. After Covid, he ends up moving back to Kansas and is now part of our semi-regular gaming group.

The Present State of Things

And that brings us to today! I'm still reading and watching as much as I can, trying to absorb everything. I have many good friends over on the OSR discord, I dabble and ask questions on a few other discords, and am a lurker on many others. I'm constantly tinkering away on my own house rules (Falchion, the ruleset listed on this site), and will be starting my home game up this weekend once more.

If you somehow stumbled upon this blog from the wilds of the internet, maybe searching the OSR for the first time, looking DnD blogs, or poking around on Reddit, I highly recommend continuing to do so. Don't listen to any of the rumors you may have heard about the OSR being full of grumpy/racist old white dudes... Yes, they are there, but guess what? They play the games you already play as well!

Get involved! Ask questions! Play games! Run games! You don't need the new DnD hotness peddled by WotC to play Dungeons and Dragons or whatever game you are wanting to play. There are hundreds of others that you can tailor to exactly your style of play!

If you want to chat with some cool people and learn a lot about the OSR world, definitely join us weirdos on the OSR Discord. Feel free to hit me on on there, I'm @fateweaverfalchionrpg.

Play games!!!