While doing some navel gazing recently I realized that I really like games in which the game rules decide a lot of important stuff without much GM input and that's why I like OSR games so much.
What I mean by this is that generally in OSR games the rules are often very narrow and give exact rules for a specific situation that isn't really tied into any overarching system. For example in the Caverns of Thracia module that I'm currently running there is a rule for likelihood of slipping in bat shit and the effects thereof despite the rules the module is designed for not having any balance skill or general rules written up for the effects of being covered in shit.
So when the players interact with these rules as a GM you don't really have to make any decisions, you just apply the rule. Caverns of Thracia tells me exactly what to do when the players are running about in bat shit.
Now obviously in OSR games there are vast swaths of gameplay with no rules at all, which means you've got to make shit up on the fly a lot of the time, which often isn't ideal. It's just that there are only so many rules you can keep in your head and more modern games have tried to plug up the many holes in OSR rules and the more they do this the more rulings the GM has to make.
The thing is, when you create a set of rules that covers everything you generally get gameplay along the lines of:
Player: so I try to leap on the food cart and surf through the crowds!
GM: that'd be Balance. You're pretty good at that skill.
Player: yup, +10. What's the DC?
GM: Um, 15?
Player: *rolls* Great! I pass! Now how fast does this food cart go?
G: Hmmmmmm...
Sure the player is using rules for the Balance skill, but the GM has to make just as many rules handling decisions as if they were using an OSR ruleset and just making up shit whole cloth. Quite often universal systems get stretched to the point that their vague haze doesn't look too much different from just having a hole in the rules while at the same time trying to make all of the rules so broad robs you of the wonderful simplicity of exact rules for bat shit that don't try to be anything but rules for bat shit.
The same goes for attempts to nail things down more. With games like 3.5ed there's rules there if you want to know how much harder it is to tumble across even vs. uneven flagstones but the problem with that is you don't keep the number of rules manageable it becomes incredibly opaque for the players since they don't know exactly how you're going to apply the rules, even remember if that rule exists or are going to bother look it up in the first place rather than winging it. For example every single 3.5ed GM I've had has applied Diplomacy rules differently, often radically differently.
The same goes for rulesets that try to abstract away all of the specific stuff that makes it hard to make rules that fit everywhere. The problem with this is not only is interacting with the specifics a whole lot of fun but with a lot of abstract rules you get the mechanics starting to become unmoored from the ingame reality so GM decisions about what difficulty level to hit the players with can often be really arbitrary, which again really leads to actual gameplay depending on GM rulings to a massive degree.
The other thing that OSR rules do to provide me with rules not rulings is to provide me with useful rules for the stuff that most often spells the difference between a loot haul and a TPK, stuff like "are we going to run into monsters on the way home?", "is the treasure a few light gems or a massive bulky pile of coins?", "does the ogre attack on sight?" Deciding questions like these often have a MASSIVE effect on what happens in an adventure so that if I have them to lean on what happens to the players is more determined by their skill and luck than on how lenient or bloodthirsty I feel like being while with a lot of modern rulesets the answer is "the GM will now make some shit up."
It's not that I can't make good ruling on the fly or that I like the sort of sessions where nothing that requires rulings come up. I love when players make up plans that are so off the wall that no rules could account for them. It's just that as a GM I love it when the players win some crazy triumph in a way that was purely due to their cleverness, without it depending on how lenient I wanted to interpret things and as I player I love knowing that the the fact that I didn't run into any critters while limping home with one hit point is because I was just that lucky, not because the GM decided that I wouldn't run into any. Same goes on the other side, feels a lot better to know that your back luck in running into a bunch of ogres at level 1 is actual bad luck, not the GM fucking with you by choosing to hit you with an incredibly difficult encounter while cackling evilly.
One example of doing a good job of capturing this are ACKS proficiencies. Sure they don't cover a lot of things, but they're very exact about what they do cover so you don't need much in the way of GM rulings to apply them. For similar reasons my favorite spell descriptions are the 1ed ones as I think they do the best job of providing information about what happens if the players try to use them in creative ways.
What I mean by this is that generally in OSR games the rules are often very narrow and give exact rules for a specific situation that isn't really tied into any overarching system. For example in the Caverns of Thracia module that I'm currently running there is a rule for likelihood of slipping in bat shit and the effects thereof despite the rules the module is designed for not having any balance skill or general rules written up for the effects of being covered in shit.
So when the players interact with these rules as a GM you don't really have to make any decisions, you just apply the rule. Caverns of Thracia tells me exactly what to do when the players are running about in bat shit.
Now obviously in OSR games there are vast swaths of gameplay with no rules at all, which means you've got to make shit up on the fly a lot of the time, which often isn't ideal. It's just that there are only so many rules you can keep in your head and more modern games have tried to plug up the many holes in OSR rules and the more they do this the more rulings the GM has to make.
The thing is, when you create a set of rules that covers everything you generally get gameplay along the lines of:
Player: so I try to leap on the food cart and surf through the crowds!
GM: that'd be Balance. You're pretty good at that skill.
Player: yup, +10. What's the DC?
GM: Um, 15?
Player: *rolls* Great! I pass! Now how fast does this food cart go?
G: Hmmmmmm...
Sure the player is using rules for the Balance skill, but the GM has to make just as many rules handling decisions as if they were using an OSR ruleset and just making up shit whole cloth. Quite often universal systems get stretched to the point that their vague haze doesn't look too much different from just having a hole in the rules while at the same time trying to make all of the rules so broad robs you of the wonderful simplicity of exact rules for bat shit that don't try to be anything but rules for bat shit.
The same goes for attempts to nail things down more. With games like 3.5ed there's rules there if you want to know how much harder it is to tumble across even vs. uneven flagstones but the problem with that is you don't keep the number of rules manageable it becomes incredibly opaque for the players since they don't know exactly how you're going to apply the rules, even remember if that rule exists or are going to bother look it up in the first place rather than winging it. For example every single 3.5ed GM I've had has applied Diplomacy rules differently, often radically differently.
The same goes for rulesets that try to abstract away all of the specific stuff that makes it hard to make rules that fit everywhere. The problem with this is not only is interacting with the specifics a whole lot of fun but with a lot of abstract rules you get the mechanics starting to become unmoored from the ingame reality so GM decisions about what difficulty level to hit the players with can often be really arbitrary, which again really leads to actual gameplay depending on GM rulings to a massive degree.
The other thing that OSR rules do to provide me with rules not rulings is to provide me with useful rules for the stuff that most often spells the difference between a loot haul and a TPK, stuff like "are we going to run into monsters on the way home?", "is the treasure a few light gems or a massive bulky pile of coins?", "does the ogre attack on sight?" Deciding questions like these often have a MASSIVE effect on what happens in an adventure so that if I have them to lean on what happens to the players is more determined by their skill and luck than on how lenient or bloodthirsty I feel like being while with a lot of modern rulesets the answer is "the GM will now make some shit up."
It's not that I can't make good ruling on the fly or that I like the sort of sessions where nothing that requires rulings come up. I love when players make up plans that are so off the wall that no rules could account for them. It's just that as a GM I love it when the players win some crazy triumph in a way that was purely due to their cleverness, without it depending on how lenient I wanted to interpret things and as I player I love knowing that the the fact that I didn't run into any critters while limping home with one hit point is because I was just that lucky, not because the GM decided that I wouldn't run into any. Same goes on the other side, feels a lot better to know that your back luck in running into a bunch of ogres at level 1 is actual bad luck, not the GM fucking with you by choosing to hit you with an incredibly difficult encounter while cackling evilly.
One example of doing a good job of capturing this are ACKS proficiencies. Sure they don't cover a lot of things, but they're very exact about what they do cover so you don't need much in the way of GM rulings to apply them. For similar reasons my favorite spell descriptions are the 1ed ones as I think they do the best job of providing information about what happens if the players try to use them in creative ways.
[Realization] I like OSR games because I like rules, not rulings
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