The Philosophy of Ozro RPG

Published: October 1st 2025 (week 40 of 2025)

Ozro is not a game for everyone. It is a game designed to suit my personal style, and to give me the best possible experience while running it. I designed it first and foremost for myself, and it is just by accident that some other people may find it appealing.

That said, everyone can play the game however they want, but it will give the best results if every person at the table agrees with most of the philosophy of the game.

What is the game about?

The in-game answer is simple: the game is about a group of adventurers growing more powerful, and overcoming obstacles presented by the game world. It is, however, only one side of the coin, exactly as the player characters are just one half of the actor—the other half being the actual players.

And so, the meta-game answer is that the game is a way to realise a power fantasy, experience catharsis, and have a bloody good time with your friends.

What is the role of a player character?

What I said in introductory chapter of the core Ozro rulebook about the player characters, that they are "a set of values on a character sheet" is true, but it is not the whole truth. The whole truth is that those values, those numbers, are the vehicle by which the power fantasy can be realised. The game does reward theatrics and shakespearing in any way whatsoever. Everything that counts is on the character sheet, anything that is not on the character sheet is irrelevant; this is both final, and crucial element of the game's design. Why?

Again, the answer is pretty simple: to provide as clear and sharp a separation between the player and the player character as possible.

The reason for this is that we neither fully control who we are, nor who we want to be. I suspect everyone has some aspirations that will never be fully achieved (I believe those are what people call dreams), and some aspects of themselves that they would rather hide or reject.

The power fantasy

Remember that one of the goals of the game is to provide an outlet for the power fantasy of a player.

Hard power

In case of "power" taken literally it is quite a simple goal.

A player creates a character with a perfect Strength rating, puts his skill points into Melee (Sword), calls his character Koman, then goes on to happily hack-n-slash his foes, and all is fine and dandy. No one in their right mind will ask Koman to show exactly how he is splitting the skull of that goblin warlord, or how he cuts through the belly of that beast.

Soft power

Now imagine, if you will, a person who is naturally shy and timid, but who dreams about being a charismatic socialite, feeling at home both in a tête-à-tête and a debate watched by a crowd.

Let us then say that, to realise their particular power fantasy this person creates such a character—the most daring rogue to have ever dared, the smoothest operator to ever have operated—and names him Joe. During a game, Joe finds himself with his crew on a black-market, looking for guns, and plenty of them. The only merchant who can deliver the goods in required quantity drives a hard bargain, but Joe is determined to drive an even harder one—after all, the character was created for exactly this type of a situation.

Not only is he the only one on the whole crew who can fluently speak the merchant's language (notice the XP spent on Foreign Language), he is also the only one with enough street etiquette (through the Grace skill) to even get the merchant to do business with them. His Foreign Language level is so high that he does not even need to roll, and the success count on his his Grace roll is enough to convince the merchant that the crew can be trusted.

Now comes the time to Haggle. Joe uses the successes he saved from the Grace roll to get an even better deal, gathers the impressively-sized dice pool ready to unleash it upon the merchant... and then the game master interrupts with a seemingly innocent question: "So, tell me, how exactly do you convince the merchant to give you a better price? After all, you are first-time customers who have not yet proven themselves."

The game promptly and screechingly comes to a halt.

The power fantasy is ruined.

A player and his character

(The title of this section is a play on A boy and his tank by Leo Frankowski.)

See, the thing is, the player who plays the role of Joe does not know how to convince a merchant, or how to haggle. Or maybe he knows the theory but, being the timid person he is, he lacks the practical interpersonal skills to use the theory in practice. Regardless of what they are, the personal qualities of the player do not matter in the slightest, because it is not the player who is haggling, but the player character.

The player built the character to realise a fantasy, to engage in escapism, not to be faced with the same problems they face in everyday life. The answer to the question "How do you convince the merchant?" is, and must be, "With Joe's Haggle pool of 12d6, that's how!"

If the game master does not take a hint and restates the question, the only proper response is "Fuck you, my success count is 9."

Who calls the shots?

This does not mean that players can lord over the game master and do whatever they want whenever they want. Make no mistake, the game master is still the one who calls all the shots.

However, the only thing a game master can ask of a player concerning an in-game action is to roll for a particular skill. "You want to convince the merchant to give you a better price? Roll for Haggle." This is how an action should be resolved. "Tell me how you convince him" is an unacceptable proposition. Players are not part of the game world, and cannot influence it in any way directly—the only way they can interact with it is through their characters.

To this end, the distinction between the player and the character must be ruthlessly enforced.

The sin

This is why I asserted that the game is not for everyone.

To some people, what I have said above is sacrilege, a style derisively referred to as roll-playing, leading to the sins of meta-gaming and immersion-breaking. To others, it is epiphany and liberation, and what lets them immerse themselves in the game.

It is to those others, those roll-playing sinners, to whom Ozro is dedicated and for whom it was designed; and, from this place, I heartily invite them in—there is place enough in hell for all of us.