My friend Ben asked me the other day, "What's the benefit of OSR? I mean, what does it give you for this game that you wouldn't get from another kind of system?" Thinking aloud, in written form, follows.
1) Underlying structures.
The classic six D&D stats kind of "don't do anything". Certain ranges give certain modifiers. But the numbers from 3 to 18 don't do anything by themselves. I'll probably spoil this idea by finding some spot rule that needs a d20 roll-under test or something. But in principle, your six attributes are largely dormant.
In a game designed to stretch over in-game months and years, where every answer to the question "so what do you do now?" is presumed to take a whole day, the gradual wearing away of those underlying numbers is a way to measure the vagaries of time. Losing a point of CON doesn't mean much. Lose a few and your modifier goes don't to +1. You used to be a real tough guy; not any more. You get used to it. Time, injury, stress wear you down a little more. +0. You're just like any other guy now. Bang average. But you've learnt things in the meantime, gained experience. Built relationships – people owe you. It's not so bad. You're not the tough guy any more but it's not so bad.
Those attributes also map well to the way we talk about cops. Real or fictional. Strong or not, tough, smart, wise, charming. Dexterity maybe not so much, but even then you get the occasional crack marksman.
2) Levels are markers of competence
That's another way we talk about cops. A "veteran detective of 12 years" means something - quite a few things - without having to say more. This person is good enough at the job to stay a detective for over a decade. Maybe putting together evidence; getting witnesses to talk; kicking down doors and making arrests; playing the politics of the department. Whatever they strength is, they got good. And they were good enough at all the rest of it that they didn't get dragged down by some fatal flaw: procedural errors leading to mistrial, brutality charges, nervous breakdowns.
To put it another way, a cop is a complete package. So this is a genre where the idea of advancing in competence, measured in 'levels', is appropriate.
3) OSR mechanics: rules are serious business
Rulings, not rules. Yes. But. In old-school D&D the rules are for the serious business, the things that can kill you. If you can avoid uncertainty, avoid rolling the dice, that's generally good for you. When the dice come out, you are no longer in control.
So in Block by Block, using AC and HP for interrogations and chases as well as fights helps to set the stakes equally -- if you take a chance and mess up here, it's going to be bad. So you need to try and stack the odds in your favour as much as you can: get the high-powered lawyer down to the station, don't talk to him at his ritzy garden party. But take risks when the price of failure is to high: kick down that door or run that car off the road if the alternative is the killer's escape.
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