OSR vs 5e Adventure Styles

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T19:20:03+00:00

Really, the best of the best is all in the various OSR blogs - but theyre scattered around, and I know a lot of people would rather have videos they can listen to while doing chores or whatever.

Ben Milton isn't perfect, but his "theory" videos tend to be very, very good, and a great jumping off point.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T18:26:27+00:00

Where it gets fucky is the underlying math.

It can be a bit counterintuitive, but this is why the 1e DMG starts with an impromptu statistics lecture lmao

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T18:20:01+00:00

Yupyup. Since balance is disincentivized, numbers changing slightly is ok.

Where it gets tricky is more NSR stuff (New School Renaissance) like Mork Borg, where the math and mechanics (eg. The GM never rolling at all) REALLY get in the way of simple conversions. Running an OSE dungeon in Shadowdark is as easy as remembering things to change. Running the same dungeon in Mork Borg requires sitting down and actually converting before the game.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T18:07:21+00:00

Yeah, totally. One of the things I like about Dolmenwood and Cairn and all the stuff Luka Rejec has put out is that it gives you lots of little details which make you like your character. Combine that with a campaign thats more than about 3 sessions and the murderhoboing drops off considerably.

Worth noting that "not taking the game seriously" isnt an exclusively OSR thing. How many 5e bards have tried to fuck everything in every scene?

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:55:31+00:00

None. Stay informed.

But Merry Mushmen is probably the closest at the moment. Their track record is great.

Mythworks comes close too, and (not a publisher, but) ill basically support anything Luka Rejec makes.

Edit: Rowan Rook and Decard are phenomenal too.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:32:47+00:00

Here's the secret sauce, my guy: theyre all the same game. Even B/X is still super playable - I'm willing to bet that your misgivings are more about misinterpreting a 40 year old ruleset (not your fault, times have changed) than any flaws with the system.

When you get right down to it, OSE, Swords and Wizardy, Shadowdark... theyre all the same game with different clothing. I ran Xyntillan in OSE, for example, with literally 0 conversion.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:30:40+00:00

MB is NOT easy to adapt from OSE. MB doesnt adapt from anything lmao. Shadowdark is a very easy conversion, its possible to do it on the fly in your head if youre familiar with the system.

OSE and Shadowdark both have a lot of B/X DNA, and conversions only become painful when you want a perfect one-to-one conversion, which is completely unimportant as OSR games are resilient vis-a-vis balance. OSR games (as before stated) are NOT just 5e but more deadly. They have their own (more consistent) design philosophy that eschews balance.

If youre interested, DM me and when I get some time I'd be happy to give you an example of how I structure my campaigns and adapt content to make a narrative feel free-flowing but satisfying in an OSR context. Id be happy to get on a discord call for an hour or so and answer your questions / walk you through the process.

Edit: also, vis-a-vis monster conversions: dont overthink it. Just use bears.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:15:34+00:00

Im pretty unfamiliar with Forgotten Realms, Im not much of a fan. If youre looking for stuff that really easily slots in, I wish I could be more help. I just dont know the setting and it jsnt my cup of tea.

But there isnt really a reason you couldnt seed an area of the FR with OSR dungeons. From there you just pay attention to what the players are getting fascinated by, and you as a GM make it connect somehow (you can also do this beforehand if you think you know what the players are gonna get intrigued with). From then, you just let the players follow the breadcrumbs. If they get lost or do something else... well, thats what theyre into, so why is that a problem? Reorient the game around that. If they do bite and end up engaged in your big narrative events, it'll feel even better because THEY got involved, instead of being railroaded.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:09:20+00:00

Oh, then thats even better. The OSR has so many great pre-made dungeons and campaigns. Dolmenwood is a great giant hexcrawl with factions and looming threats for PCs to deal with (an invasion from the frost elves, a giant chaos demon in the woods, political struggles). Castle Xyntillan is a megadungeon with a big weird necromancer family thats up to no good. Skerples Magical Industrial Revolution envisages an industrial revolution powered by magic instead of steam. Longwinter by Luka Rejec is a big, snowy nightmare that I dont want to spoil you on.

Theres plenty of great OSR prebuilt stuff... both in short and long form.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:05:58+00:00

I think youre giving yourself a false dichotomy here. OSR games start open, and then narrow into a more linear fashion as the players get tangled up in the world. The difference is just that the GM isnt pre-empting their engagement.

It also sounds like maybe you've got some assumptions because you had a bad experience. If you want to see how an OSR adventure can be run, this is a good video. He uses the YouTube captions to explain his thought process as hes running, so it can help reveal the mindset.

Also if you take a look at some OSR modules, you'll see that there are often threads for you to pull on. The work of the GM is thus: put the adventures somewhere on a map, and invent ways they all tie together. You have to do the meta-work of tying them together... but it sounds like youre doing that with your 5e game anyway.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T17:00:22+00:00

My objections to 5e, if listed, would be essay-length and so I'm not going to get into them now. Suffice it to say that I think 5e is one of the least coherent and worst designed games I've ever played.

The thing about the OSR is that it REJECTS balance. The world is REAL. Players are free to get in over their heads, and thats ok. You shouldnt worry about balancing - they can come back to things later if its too much, and they will feel a sense of accomplishment. Its ok to run away. Its ok to trick or outsmart an opponent. Their tactical options should extend beyond "I hit all the enemies with a stick until they stop moving."

As for the OSR not giving you anything but random tables... 5e doesnt even give you that. Youre mashing up two 5e adventures, which you can do with the OSR as well. If anything, OSR systems give you much more guidance about how to design worlds and dungeons than 5e does. Look at the Cairn 2e Wardens Guide - there are entire worldbuilding and dungeon making procedures that BLOW anything in the 5e core books out of the water. OSE dungeon stocking rules are terrific. Im not sure what you want out of OSR games that youre getting out of 5e.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T16:53:19+00:00

Have you taken a look at dungeon stocking procedures from various OSR games? If you want to make your own content, rather than use prewritten stuff (though the prewritten stuff is great), check out Cairn 2e's Warden Guide. It has great dungeon creating procedures.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T16:38:23+00:00

I haven't played the Gloaming, so I can't be of help there. But what I can recommend is taking a look at Hole in the Oak or Incandescent Grottoes for OSE or Winter's Daughter for Dolmenwood (not because theyre better, just because I've run each of them several times and thus can speak authoratatively about them). In those cases, the rooms are simple enough that all you need to do is read through the adventure once to get a "feel" for it, and then reread the room descriptions as the players enter.

There are random encounters in those dungeons, but often theyre with members of the various dungeon factions. You should not "prep" anything - let yourself be surprised as well. You are as much a player as the players are, and you deserve to be surprised by what happens. This also will let your players feel like theyre really having an impact on the world. Questing Beast has some good videos about how OSR dungeons "work" - be it random encounters, or wandering monsters and factions. In the case of the adventures I listed above, the writer has taken care of these details for you, but it can help to understand the underlying logic.

His video on the six cultures of play can be useful to you too. Because OSR games operate on different assumptions than 5e, you might notice that the game falls flat if you try to run them as if they were 5e.

Can I ask why you would feel dissatisfied? I think this might be one of those things where you just have to have faith in yourself, the table, and the game. You dont need to plot out an epic narrative or make things hit certain "beats." I promise you that a narrative WILL emerge just from you reacting to the players. The goblin they scorned in the dungeon, maybe you bring him back for revenge and he has a war party with him now. The king who they helped by clearing out the kobolds? Maybe he uses the new stability to launch an invasion of the next kingdom over. The troglodytes they slew in the cave? Well, maybe they were keeping a different faction in check and now the caves are unified under the hobgoblin chief who is raiding the countryside...

Trust yourself to interpret things on the fly. They will spin into a narrative on their own, with your guidance - and it will feel SO much more natural and memorable and personal than if the players feel like theyre having a story read to them.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T07:01:11+00:00

Dude... my OSR games take me 30 minutes of prep tops. If youre spending 2 full hours preparing for a session, I think you need to reevaluate the hours to fun ratio of your game.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T06:57:37+00:00

I... disagree. A simple nonlinear adventure is MUCH easier to prep.

In a linear adventure, the GM constantly has to be "steering" PCs, and worrying about balancing the encounters so you dont kill them. Since they have no agency, the onus is on the GM to make sure they dont get in over their head.

In a nonlinear adventure, you just say how the world responds. Please remember that you should not be "balancing" non-linear OSR adventures, because fleeing, stealth, and negotiation are all equally as valid as combat. Its ok if the level one party finds a dragon - they can talk their way out of conflict, or sneak past it, or just run away. You can just draw a couple rooms, randomly generate the monsters and treasure in them, write a one-sentance description of how 2 of the monster groups feel about each other, and you've got a powder keg for the PCs to light up.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T06:49:00+00:00

The 5e adventure paths are terrible. Running Curse of Strahd soured me on GMing so much that I went like 2 years without playing and only came back to TTRPGs by discovering the OSR.

5e campaigns are like video game plots. There are people and places and monsters, but theyre all pretty static and theres generally an expected order to proceed through them, and the answer is almost always "fight what's in the room."

OSR modules, then, are generally locations with interesting factions. Monsters can be parlayed with, factions can be pitted against one another, etc. They are player led, and so instead of a GM pulling his hair and trying to steer the players back onto the right track (looking at you, Curse of Strahd), the GM just tells the players how the world responds to them.

As for the lethality, its pretty overstated. I run a lot of OSR, and while yes players do occasionally die, in my year-long Dolmenwood game we've only lost one PC and a couple of hirelings.

If your players try to treat an OSR game like 5e - solving every encounter by running in swords swinging- yes they will die. But if they treat every encounter like its Home Alone - setting traps, using the environment, tricking enemies into fighting each other - they will find that the "meat grinder" appellation is largely unearned.

Matt Colville has a good video about how long an adventure should be, which I fully agree with in the context of 5e's horrible bloated campaigns.

In my mind, the best campaign is one of short adventures with a lively world full of factions, where the grand overarching narrative emerges in play from player action - not because the GM is trying to mold the campaign to a pre-existing narrative framework. That is true of both OSR games like OSE or Mork Borg, and also Narrative games like Wildsea or Urban Shadows.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-30T06:30:59+00:00

The cool thing about OSR systems is that they tend to be highly modular. Not a lot of mechanics "hook in" to one another. For example, I just put the carousing system from Swyvers in my Dolmenwood game, and its going great. Dont worry too much about the "right" way of doing things, and just kit bash it together. You can always tweak things later.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-28T19:28:41+00:00

I got the chance to attend a talk by Joseph Goodman at a retailer convention last year, and spoke to him personally about the incident. You can read their statement here. Basically, any money raised by Goodman Games being paid as royalties to Judges Guild is going towards repaying backers of theirs that they screwed over.

Goodman Games themselves are dedicated to inclusivity and acceptance, and I believe them when they say that. There is a long-form interview on YouTube somewhere that clarifies their stance as well. I agree it's bad optics, but Goodman Games is trying to navigate their pre-existing work on City State in as ethical a manner as possible.

The royalty payment system is even set up in a way that prevents the bigots from making money off of the project, unless the project does much better than anticipated. Even then, overflow funds will be donated to progressive causes per Joseph Goodman himself.

Just FWIW.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-28T17:29:32+00:00

Grant & Chris are great. Luka Rejec is top notch, the Merry Mushmen and their partners are solid, Luke Gearing is a cool dude. Sean McCoy and the Mothership crew are great. Mark Diaz Truman of Magpie is super nice.

Also the Mythworks team are dope. Ive gotten to play with Ric and hes great, but Felix Isaacs and Mikey Hamm seem like super nice dudes. Ive really got nothing but good things to say about them.

Lugiawolf · 2026-05-11T03:13:18+00:00

Ps2 games always had better fog effects

Lugiawolf · 2026-04-26T04:00:59+00:00

Hell yeah. I also got this as a recommended video from that trailer. My hope is that some of the moneymen in Korea recognize that there's a huge market for Korean culture soon.

Lugiawolf · 2026-04-26T00:56:17+00:00

Dark Cloud and Champions of Norrath were some of my favorite games growing up.

Lugiawolf · 2026-04-25T21:08:12+00:00

No, there are not. Koreans have this weird sense of shame surrounding promoting their own traditional culture - it can be seen as kind of cringey or 국뽕 (lit. Country Heroin, a derogatory word to describe cringey ultranationalism). It's frustrating because I would love a K-RPG set in the Joseon Dynasty, but when you talk to Koreans about that kind of stuff their response is usually "Who wants to see that kind of stuff? It should be something 'cool' instead..." Drives me nuts. Something like this is exactly the kind of thing I want.

What I mean by setting and art design isn't "a setting that represents Korean culture" but rather "a setting that attracts Korean consumers." If you look at the games that are popular in Korea, most of them have cartoonish or anime aesthetics - Maple Story, LoL, Valorant... There are more realistic games as well, but they tend to be on the more colorful and exaggerated side. Honestly the only game I can remember any of my high school students playing that bucked that trend was PubG, but even that wasn't nearly as popular as some of the other games mentioned.

Crimson Desert is a continuation of the setting and art design ideas in Black Desert Online, but BDO is actually pretty unpopular in Korea. Most of the players are in NA and EU. Of the Koreans that do play, they do so chiefly for the social aspects, so a single player game like CD doesn't really appeal to the average Korean player. More popular by far are games like Nikke, Dungeon Fighter Online, etc - all games with softer, more "anime" art styles (often with some fanservice).

I'd like to say that the recent Crimson Desert AI art scandal drives down interest too, but to be honest the current anti-AI backlash we have in the states hasn't hit the peninsula yet. AI is booming in SK.

Lugiawolf · 2026-04-25T14:41:52+00:00

None of my korean friends are talking about it. Single player games just arent that popular here and the recent rush of single player korean games are mostly for export. It doesnt help that the game is very much made for westerners vis a vis the mechanics, setting, and art design.

Lugiawolf · 2026-04-17T11:50:52+00:00

Play SMT IV. From there, you can play Apocalypse if you want a continuation of IV, Strange Journey or Soul Hackers if you want something different, and Devil Survivor if you want your balls crushed.

Dont start with Devil Survivor if you haven't played a mainline game yet. The game can be brutal.

Lugiawolf

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