Thanks for getting back to me! I took your advice and changed it a little, I essentially nerfed the races so they only have one unique ability, and we played a one shot like that. Just wanted to say my players loved it and they really liked styles as a mechanic. One of my players told me it reminded him of playing a rogue-like video game, where you really discover your character as you play rather than knowing exactly what powers they'll have at the end right during character creation. We plan on doing a longer OSE campaign later this year using Old School Stylish and I can't wait!
My only other question is how transparent should I be in letting my players know doing something will grant them a style? Some of the suggested learning methods seem like tasks a player wouldn't normally do if they didn't know it would net them a style (such as observing a bunch of direwolves for the Hungry Wolf style). Thanks again!
That's awesome! I appreciate the feedback.
What I was trying to convey in the seeding advice was to have a rumor that basically says "you could learn a style by observing direwolves going to war" or whatever and have players craft an adventure for themselves out of that, so I suppose I would say the book leans toward transparency on that end. I think players generally don't want to know exactly what rewards await them at the end of an adventure, but I think a good rule of thumb is that if players are concocting plans and doing a bunch of elaborate stuff to learn a style, they should probably know in advance if learning a style is on the table.
Of course, I've only tested this stuff with my own table. I would love to hear the results of your own further experiments!