Archetypes
Diegetic vs. Non-Diegetic Mechanics
OSR+ has both non-diegetic (fictional) and diegetic (narrative) mechanics. This is a fancy way to say that some rules let you shape what happens in the fiction, and other rules let you directly shape the story that arises from playing your hero in that fiction.
- For example, when you make a spell check to cast a spell, that's a diegetic mechanic. The roll directly relates to what your hero is doing. She knows about the spell, its relative power, that mana is converted into a magic pool during the casting (mana points), and generally how easy or difficult it is to overcome an opponent's resistance (represented by the spell check).
- On the flip side, when you spend a story point to creative narrative advantage, you narrate something into the fiction. For example, you might declare that there's a chandelier in the room that your hero can use as part of an acrobatic stunt. In this case, your hero doesn't know what story points are—only you do, as the player—and so you as the player are directly changing the story that arises from your hero doing those acrobatic tricks in the fiction.
Types of Narrative Mechanics
Most of the rules in OSR+ are fictional, meaning they model what your heroes are doing. That's because OSR+ is primarily a simulationist system: it strives to use the core rules to create a representation of what your heroes are doing through the dice. For the most part, the "story" is what happens naturally as you play: you'll succeed, you'll fail, and the dice simulates the randomness that is a part of adventuring. But there are a handful of mechanics that you can use as tools to craft the story directly. Sometimes, you might as a player find it important to the story that you succeed on this or that particular action, and so OSR+ gives you resources to improve the odds in your favor.
Story hooks are aspects of the game world you create with the GM during session zero that directly relate to your hero. There are five types of story hooks: bond, person, place, thing, and group. When designing the campaign, your GM uses your story hooks to "hook" you into the story and provide opportunities for you to resolve your hero's conflict.
Archetypes
While heroes may have a sense of the sort of ethics they believe in, you (as a player) are rewarded for playing your hero according to that ethos. Each ethos has an ethos tag that determines what behavior qualifies. Once per session, you may choose to invoke an ethos tag and gain a fate point if you take a stand for what you believe in.
Every hero starts with a conflict that manifests as a flaw. You resolve your conflicts and overcome your flaws by playing through your story hooks.
Your conflict is represented in the game as a pair of story tags that you make up. Story tags are descriptors that characterize your hero, based on your conflict. For example, if you took the conflict The Ex-Soldier, you might create the story tags Tough as Nails, because you've seen armed conflict, and Eyes like an Eagle, because you were trained as a sharpshooter.
Story Points
Story points are a special resource you gain that helps you wrest control over the narrative from the GM temporarily. When you spend a story point, you create narrative advantage. You can accrue as many story points as your level; any story points accrued beyond that maximum are lost, so make sure to spend down your bank of story points as you embark on your adventure.
Fate points are like story points on steroids: not only can they be used to create narrative advantage, but they can be used to defy death or explode a die. You start with 3 fate points.
Dungeons & Flagons