“An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity,” Terry Davis, Creator of Temple OS. This article more exists for the sake of completeness and a bit more perspective on my introduction to the OSR. My conversion from the 5th edition D&D to Old school D&D was a long, yet remarkably simple one. It involved very little convincing and at the same time very hard fought internalization. We forgo doing things which we objectively known are better or more efficient because we think the effort expended to make that change is costly.

One point of comparison often brought up in discussion about Dungeons and Dragons in relation to other Fantasy roleplaying games is of course D&Ds magic system. It is one of the more unique aspects of the game that often is one of the first things shed off or replaced when someone makes a heartbreaker or some contrary system, but why? There is a great many reasons for why, some good, some bad, often the complaints are aimed from a position of ignorance to to exactly what is D&D’s magic system.