My OSR story

Although I am of the correct age to have been a player of Chainmail and the subsequent games, I never played until about 2019. I had some exposure in the 80s as one of my roommates played, but I was about to get married, and although I bought some books at the time, I never played.

My first game was a D&D Adventurers Leage¹ game at Atomic Empire² in Durham, NC. It was 5E, and it was a blast. I did not know the rules, but I knew that this was roleplaying, and I knew my player character’s background because he was a Hobbit, and everyone from my generation knows Hobbits. When in doubt, do what Bilbo would have done. I brought that character, Darvas is his name, to a game that my friend Mark³ was running. Mark has been playing since the beginning and taught me the 5E rules. Towards the end of that campaign, Mark started bringing up “old school DnD,” but the reason did not catch in my mind because I did not know what I was missing, and I never really cared about rules; I care about the collaborative story.

My next player character is Sylceran. I think Mark had me roll up Sylceran before we finished the first campaign, and we were still using 5E. This time my character was more complicated, Sylceran was going to be a Druid and an Elf, and at some point in his life he was going to be a, (excuse me while I pull out the freaking book to see what the sub-classes are). I am back; he was going to become a member of the Circle of the Shepherd. When I initially worked all of this out, I was an expert on 5E Druids. I had spent three days reading and watching videos about which race to choose, which subclass, which spells, etc. Three days of my life were wasted on this because I was just going to wing it anyway and roleplay. I think I told Mark about this, and he probably reminded me of the OSR conversation he had brought up. Sylceran became an OSR Druid. No race, no subclass, no fluff.

Why OSR? More roleplay, less wasted time, and more fun.