Myths of the OSR Part 1: Mudcore

The erasure of heroic elements of older RPGs

Anyone who’s followed me for the past year or so knows that I have gone from firmly identifying myself with the OSR movement, to distancing myself from it, to being highly critical of the movement as a whole. There are a number of problems with the movement. Firstly, nobody can agree on what the R stands for making it a completely ineffectual movement. If you can’t identify what you believe in, you can’t explain it to others. Secondly, the movement has served its purpose and rendered itself obsolete. As my good friend Krafty Matt frequently points out, the original OSR retroclones offered an old-school game in a time where OD&D, B/X, BECMI and AD&D were not readily available. Wizards of the Coast caved to the market demands and now you can get a PDF or POD version of those rules. No more retroclones needed, we have the originals. Thirdly, I am increasingly skeptical of the Benedictine Option that so many old-school adherents adopt. We can’t just cling to the old, we have to use it to inform new culture. Lastly, I have found that the OSR philosophy is not built so much on truths derived from old-school rules but on myths derived from faint recollections and tribal knowledge that have little to no basis in the reality of the rules. It’s the latter that I would like to discuss in a series similar to my ongoing Immersion series. Today specifically, I want to focus on the myth that first level adventurers are disposable peasants that are meant to be ground into powder as soon as they enter a dungeon. As it turns out, this is a horrible interpretation of old-school rules. Let’s discuss why.

Firstly, let’s understand the position being taken here and the discourse that surrounds old-school gaming versus the modern super hero-style fantasy. About a year-and-a-half ago, there were a series of dust-ups on X over a number of topics including the status of a 1st level fighter as a veteran, the survivability of low levels, and even XP for gold. A number of my friends were involved in these arguments and a particular term was coined to refer to a specific style of game. That term was “mudcore” and it refers to games where low-level characters are weak, poor and disposable, spending all of their time crawling around in dirty holes in the ground to scrape up whatever limited treasure they can find to survive another day. This was presented with a negative connotation, especially when compared to the ascendant 5e style. Why would anyone want to play a mudcore game scrambling for treasure when they could take on a hero saving the world? I am no fan of the default 5e playstyle where parties of adventurers are more like the pseudo-medieval Justice League rather than a group of mercenaries on the come-up. That said, their criticism of the OSR style is valid. Many OSR adherents will proudly proclaim how deadly and brutal their games are. It’s a supposed badge of honor to go through a giant stack of character sheets and to have basically zero reward for going through the grinder. Magic items are withheld, and it is common for OSR GMs to keep their players poor so they have to stay on the treadmill. OSR games tend to just abruptly end once you should logically be moving beyond dungeon crawling and offer nothing but the endless cycle of delve, fight monsters, die a lot. The mudcore criticism is absolutely valid when directed at OSR games…but not the games that the OSR thinks it’s emulating.

When one examines the actual rules of OD&D, BECMI, AD&D and even B/X, he will not find a harsh, brutal game that kills wantonly and withholds rewards. He will find a game that is harsh but fair, encouraging players to play smart and use resources wisely, punishing those who don’t and rewarding those who do. As I have talked about ad nauseam, the implication of the original editions of D&D is that hirelings, followers and henchmen are important and even essential. Players have stables of characters to choose from and the implications hint towards domain play and mass combat on the near horizon. As I often reference, Jon Mollison pointed out how a 1st level AD&D fighter can spend his starting gold to hire 3 men-at-arms, giving himself 4 attacks at 1st level. These sorts of things are only possible because Gygax D&D presents 1st level characters as experienced adventurers. A 1st level fighter is called a veteran and his starting gold is roughly equivalent to ten years’ pay for a heavy foot. All the pieces show that even a low-level character should be somewhat experienced and capable.

The problem is that the OSR has largely placed all of their eggs in the mudcore basket seemingly for no other reason than that it scares the modern gamers. I’m all for dunking on them, I do not believe that a 1st level character should already be heroic, but this leads them down a path of creating games that are anti-fun. One of the worst examples of this is the culture that has been built up around Dungeon Crawl Classics and its funnel system. The only aspect of DCC that ever gets talked about seems to be the zero-level funnels which are just meat grinders. You don’t even play real leveled characters, you play zero level peasants. Granted, the idea is that the survivors become characters but that hardly matters when so many games end with the funnel. The OSR is just as bad about ending campaigns prematurely as the 5e crowd, but it’s because they ignore everything beyond the dungeon delve.

In the name of owning the modern coddled 5e storygamer, the OSR has forsaken the strengths of the older editions and opted for needlessly brutal and anti-fun games. Challenge is good, harshness early on is good, but there needs to be more than just the character sheet grinder in your game. There’s more than just the dungeon. There’s no need to keep characters poor and low-powered. These are artificial constraints placed on games by people with limited imaginations and it does not reflect the reality of the old-school rules. The games these guys remember is not the actual game and I’ll keep banging this drum until people start to get it. Old-school doesn’t mean mudcore. It means a challenging game that’s open enough to allow for creative thinking and rewards are generous for smart players.