u/osrelfgame

I love this film, and the instructional portion is actually a pretty good primer on DMing.

(this is a piece I wrote for my defunct OSR blog on Saving Throws which contains history but also opinion. the full version is at the link)

Atha, warrior of the Mountain People, had slain many enemies. The dead lay in piles about her, bodies hewn by her mighty blade. As the Serpent approached her, she raised her steel one more time, bracing against the flames she knew were to come…

How do you determine what happens next?

That’s basically the question we’re asking ourselves every moment we play the Game. We figure the chances of this, and the probability of that, and if we add in some role-play, we’ve got everything the Game is about. But what about in moments where Characters are injured, or facing insurmountable odds with a good chance of death? How do you calculate the chances of surviving the unsurvivable?

At first, it seems the best way is an Ability Test. Rolling against an Ability Score (or, in modern games, a Difficulty Class) allows the Character to perform some action in hopes of preventing their impending death. Atha in the example above might test her Strength to leap out of the way of the Dragonfire, or her Constitution in simply weathering the flames.

However, what if Atha fails to leap out of the way? Or finds the heat unbearable even to her heroic form? Is she simply allowed to die? Does a Character's life always hinge on a single roll of the dice? Or are these fictional beings a little more important than that?

The answer lies in the Saving Throw

Saving Throws have been around in games for a long time. The first game that is said to have a "Saving Throw" is the war game created by Donald Featherstone, where Characters who were about to die could sometimes roll (or “throw”) a D6 to see if they live, with different odds of survival determined by their armor. Tony Bath later created a set of rules for war games that also included a sort of Saving Throw, which Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren were inspired by when creating their war game, Chainmail. This is where the idea started that Saving Throws should be categorized by the thing the Character is being saved from, rather than by how the Character is being saved.

In Chainmail, only certain Monsters, Heroes, and Super Heroes could make any sort of Defense roll. Attackers roll against one of many Matrices measuring both the Attacker’s stats and the Defender’s, and success or failure are automatic based on the result rolled. However, if the Defender is one of those types of Monster, or a Hero or Super Hero, then, for Fireball and Lightning Bolt, and only those two attacks, the Defender can make an extra roll to try to Save themselves.

When working on Dungeons & Dragons, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax initially used the Chainmail rules for combat resolution. But they also included an "Alternative Combat System", which took this idea of a Throw to Save oneself and, coining the term “Saving Throw”, changed again how the actual mechanic worked so that now all Defenders benefitted from them, but only in certain circumstances, and at different ability levels. They also expanded the number of Attacks that could trigger a Saving Throw from 2 specific Attacks to 5 broad categories of Attacks.

Some games frame the Saving Throw as a Luck Roll, or use a special mechanic or die to represent the chaos of life or otherwise alter the way that Characters can be saved from near-certain death. So long as the overall mechanism is based on chance, it is essentially the same thing. But, other systems for saving Characters near death are not the same thing - spending a specially-named point not to die, for example, is analogous to a second set of Hit Points, and not a Saving Throw.

Despite their mechanical and diegetic differences, all of the types of Saving Throw share one trait in common: they are an extra roll of dice to see if a Character is really dead, when the dice have already determined that the Character should die. This is the thing that makes Saving Throws different from normal Ability Tests, their last-minute nature. And this is the most often confused aspect of Saving Throws as well, in that many Players will use them in place of the initial Ability roll, rather than as a second roll to keep the characters from dying after the first has failed.

This misconception has led many to see Saving Throws in OSR games as a separate Ability, only used in cases of Dragonfire, or whatever the category may be. This is very much not the case.

Saving Throws are last chances, not the only chance.

The flames swept through the cavern, igniting the piles of bodies arrayed about the warrior. Atha's blade shielded her from the bulk of the fire the bodies did not, though her hair was burned clear to her scalp. The heat seared her skin, leaving it red and raw, covered in a thick sheen of sweat as she climbed atop the evidence of her conquest, readying her sword for attack...

(this is an abridged version of the article, full version at the link)

In their game, Gygax & Arneson codified the role that they played in their own games with their friends. This role is just as much a Player of the game as any other, although the game which the Dungeon Master plays is very different from the game played by the rest of the Players at the table. While the other Players typically control a single Character, the Dungeon Master controls many, calculating their responses to the other Players’ actions, and then describing not only those Characters’ responses, but the whole world’s responses. This is not unlike the Umpire’s role in Kriegsspiel, though adapted to a non-war game.

It is also like the impartial Judge role of the Hellanodikas, in that, once the rules of Dungeon Mastering are known, they are expected to be carried out without bias. This style of gameplay, where one Player plays a game that is different from the one being played by the others, is called “Asymmetrical”, in the sense that there isn’t perfect symmetry between the experiences of the Players. In board gaming, a popular example might be Monopoly, where one Player takes the role of Banker, and so plays a game that is about keeping track of loans and sums in addition to normal play. A well-known Asymmetrical multiplayer video game is Dead by Daylight, where one Player takes the role of a Slasher Movie villain, and the others take the roles of the movie’s heroes.

So, knowing all this, what role does a Player take on as Referee in an OSR game?

This is a question often asked in the Old-School community and the larger Roleplaying Game community as a whole. Many thousands of articles and videos and podcasts of advice - much of it largely on the subject of writing rather than having a fun game of imagination - have been produced without any being truly seen as “Definitive”. This is due to the basic nature of the OSR’s Referee role; in a sort of paradox, the Referee’s role is so simple many think there must be more to it in order for it to be as difficult as it is to carry out.

To restate: A Referee’s role is not complicated, just difficult.

The OSR is the evolution of these Old-School rules for gaming, inspired by games like Gygax & Arneson’s D&D, Free Kriegsspiel (a variant on Wargaming that removed most of the formal rules), and Tom Moldvay and "Zeb" Cook's Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Expert Sets (a confusingly named but almost wholly dissimilar game from Gygax & Arneson’s “D&D”, “B/X” was largely based on a game known as “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” - itself another new game from Gary Gygax - and “The Complete Warlock” by Balboa Game Company, which was an adaptation of D&D by Gygax & Arneson. Moldvay’s “Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set” should not be confused with Dr. J. Eric Holmes’ “Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set”, which is itself another game altogether, again based largely on The Complete Warlock*).

As such, it is fairly clear from context what the Referee’s intended role in an OSR-style game is, but let us frame it simply:

The Referee is a Player of the Game, there to have fun like everybody else

The Referee acts as Computer, calculating probabilities and the outcomes of actions

The Referee acts as a fair Judge, ruling according to the rules of the Game

The Referee acts as interface with the Game’s world, describing it in detail and allowing for the other Players to interact with it

This last point seems to be the most contentious amongst Gamers, despite how uncontroversial it looks when stated plainly. Many people, Player and Referee alike, believe that Roleplaying Games are the realm of Play-Acting, and that “funny” voices, accents, and mannerisms acted out by everybody are the norm. There is nothing inherent in RPGs that calls for this style of theatricality. There is nothing that says you can’t do it, but it is not required, and does not overall make for a better experience, just a different one from a more descriptive play style.

There also exist Players who think that the enjoyment of the Game for the Referee is found in tormenting the other Players, in frustrating their efforts, or insulting them for whatever reason. Even done in a “playful” manner, this is not friendly behavior. This is bullying. People should simply refuse to play games with those who find enjoyment in bullying others during play. Dealing with a “Problem Player” is as simple as either not playing those sorts of games with them, or just not being their friend at all.

Some games have the Referee create the world. Some have it created for them already. Others have the Players collaboratively create the world in which they play. In all cases, one of the Referee’s tasks is to set up the game. Traditionally, this means organizing the whole Event - corralling Players, procuring snacks, etc - but it doesn’t have to. A Referee’s task may start at an already set-up game board, from which point their job is to run the game. A Referee’s work might start weeks or months beforehand, when they write up complex histories for each and every Character the Players might possibly interact with, and draw out maps and Character portraits. A Referee might describe the world to the other Players in intricate detail, using flowery language, or might use question-and-answer format to give the other Players information. A Referee might even “get into Character” and talk in voices or act out certain actions physically. This is not a bad thing, it is in fact a sign of an enthusiastic Referee who is likely having a very good time. But none of these styles of play are necessary to do. None is any better than any other.

A given game may have a lot of math precalculated for the Referee, with tables and matrices full of information about what this style of sword does against that style of shield, when both combatants are left-handed and have trained for exactly 972 days or what have you. Or a game might have none of that, leaving the Referee to determine such probabilities themself or else find such tables and matrices elsewhere. Again, neither play style is better. Some Players are able to perform complicated math on the fly. Others are not. Both types of person are valid as Players and Referees.

Some games seek to eliminate the role of the Referee altogether. Generally these games take one of two approaches: either they seek to do the Referee’s job in the rules, by making clear every possible ruling and requiring strict adherence to the rules such that if any disagreements are had, the rules will hopefully have an answer to them; or else they seek to eliminate the singular role of Referee by offloading the work to all the other Players. Both styles are analogous to the way sports games were run prior to the 1890s, though obviously in different ways.

So maybe your group takes the Victorian Footballer approach to Refereeing, and sees the role as one of arbitration, only needed when disagreements arise. Maybe your group views the role more like a Kriegsspiel Umpire, where the Player runs the whole world and makes all the calls. Maybe your group prefers to leave the Refereeing to everybody instead of one single Player. In any case, the Game is meant to be fun for everybody involved, not a job one Player has to perform for the others.

After all, this is Roleplaying, not the Olympics.

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Warlock, 1978, Balboa Games

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