Exactly this. I learned Basic D&D in the 90s and the OSR principles really call back the wonder and excitement of that play style.

I’m excited to lean into it more in my upcoming games.

I'm tempted to put the 7 principles on stickies behind my GM screen to remind myself the type of game I want to run.,

There's so many facets of TTRPGS (adventure design, mechanics, running the game, playing the game) and ways to approach those facets, it's fascinating.

@dodo-decahedron.bsky.social does a great job of outlining their interpretation of OSR philosophy and include so many excellent links.

I think I will try counting each wave as its own encounter and see how that goes.

They can earn victories and re-roll initiative between them.

I’m starting a WotC adventure module with it next week.

I made a “translation” guide for my players (i.e. polder -> halfling; hakaan -> goliath; etc)

Working great so far.

Hmm that's a bit close - but not quite there. It seems like I'll need to do some experimenting.

For 5e encounters I would count each "wave" as its own encounter in terms of balance. I'll try that approach and see if it's too hard or too easy.

Does that make the encounter a bit easier? Taking the enemies in waves instead of all at once?

Thank you for this trip down memory lane.

Seeing all these posts about PAXU and I'm like... what cons do I need to put on my schedule for 2026?

AngryGM has a good post on how to make traps more interactive and less punitive.

I agree with Sly here; the way players interact with the world has to be more than just die rolls.

Yea that makes a ton of sense. I was just thinking of the idea of “blending in” and with social status that can go both ways. I would likely notice if royalty was casually wandering around my neighborhood.

Are you adding a lower bound as well? Players with a renown that is too high will stand out in certain areas?

Oooh what are you gonna play?!

I’m excited to try out this proactive approach.

I’ll see if my Draw Steel Rime of the Frostmaiden players are interested in setting goals for their characters.

It’ll be interesting to adapt the module to a proactive approach.

A lot of the advice in the book resonates with my story-driven way of building campaigns.

But according to their style, I’ve always built my campaigns in a “reactive” way. The players have a backstory and I tie their history to the campaign. But they’re still reacting.

For this 4 Session cycle, we've got @wanderingdm.bsky.social as our GM! I will continue on as a new Security, @highshelfdavid.bsky.social will be a new Scrounger, we will get to see @laughlovelindy.bsky.social's Intellectual, and our guest player Wildcard is @popeworldbuild.bsky.social!