Risus and the Old School Rennaissance

Before I resumed blogging about Risus, I spent a long time immersing myself in the bloggy goodness of the Old School Renaissance (OSR). Like most gamers of my age, I cut my teeth on an original versions of Dungeons & Dragons (in my case, the Moldvay Red Box followed quickly by AD&D).  It is only natural that I retain a great fondness for the aesthetic and style of play that I remember from my youth. I am constantly amazed at the quantity and quality of the content being produced by and for the OSR community, be it blogs, retro-clone rule-sets, adventures, or supplements.

As a blog about Risus, the Risus Monkey lives on the distant fringes of the OSR. In the Risus Companion, S. John Ross describes Risus as "Kind of Old-School" in that it is very "eighties style" and that the "GM controls all the game-world juju". I'm not sure that meets the contemporary notions of what is means to play "Old School" (e.g. James Raggi's definition of Old School at LotFP), but one only needs to look at Encounter Critical to see that S. John has significant Old School credentials.

Can Risus be used to play in the Old School mode? Specifically, I'm thinking of the style of play discussed in Matt Finch's excellent Quick Primer For Old School Gaming.  Finch presents four "Zen Moments" of Old School play. The first is that you don't use a rule, you make a ruling. Risus lines up nicely with this "Zen Moment" since everything requires rulings in Risus. The rule-book is only 6 pages long and it does not describe any specific game situations.

"Zen Moment" number two is trickier as it relates to the question of player skill vs. character abilities. Risus cliches are big sacks of character ability and I think most players want to actually use them. Every time that I've played Risus, dice rolls are fast and furious. It doesn't have to be this way, however. There is plenty of room for focusing more on player skill. Riddles, NPC interactions, and exploration of one's environment can certainly be handled without dice. And who says it has to be an all-or-nothing thing? For example, a delicate negotiation with an NPC could begin without dice and conclude with a Target Number roll based on the arguments made by the players.

I've been thinking about these issues a lot lately, especially as I consider what types of content that I'd like to put on the site. The Risus community doesn't seem to be as large as the OSR community... certainly, it's not as prolific. But I feel inspired by the OSR's "do it yourself" ethic. Given time (always the issue) I'd like to try my hand at writing material can be used by both communities. For now, I'm using the Mythic Game Master Emulator as a sandbox for  trying out some ideas. I'll be posting the results of these experiments soon.