OSR: what is it even

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sharps54 said:
The OSR police are almost as bad the Vegan Police.
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Reminds me in the early 90s in our local 'zine subculture I'd call the more doctrinaire 'punk' scenster types the Punk Gestapo.

I didn't invent it, think that may have been the punk rock music producer and rock historian Joe Carducci, who was a big influence on my music writing back then.

Maybe a bit extreme for today's sensibilities but it was largely intended to be OTT and in jest, a way to mock those who insisted they knew what was and wasn't 'real' punk rock.
 
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sharps54 said:
The OSR police are almost as bad the Vegan Police.
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Nothing has made me want to go back to eating dead animals more than the vegan police.

(Could not get spoiler caption to work: cultural/religious digression)
Was recently interviewed by scholar studying Jewish Vegans and one of the things that came up was how the religious culture conditioned us not to proselytize and we laugh at concerns about cooking vegan meals on the same grills that handled meat because it seems like cartoon Kosher law, or for you Dune fans, Museum Freemen
 
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robertsconley said:
It's not the same situation, as there was an unbroken cultural continuity between Catullus and Augustus. Baulderstone Baulderstone's analogy is on point due to the intervening "medieval" (Complete X/Skills & Powers/D&D 3.X) era between AD&D 2e and the debut of C&C/OSRIC/Basic Fantasy.

The Catullus to Augustus analogy you use describes the situation from the debut of OD&D to the initial release of AD&D 2e. But starting with the Complete books and kits, D&D morphed into something else, with a decisive break coming with the debut of D&D 3.0. While the fingerprints of classic D&D still can be found in D&D 3.0 it was it own thing just as the fingerprints of Rome can still be found in the Medieval Era of our history but the cultural mishmash that resulted after the fall of Rome was it's own thing.
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I’d submit that the collapse of the Republic, the Roman Revolution, and the foundation of the Principate was a rather more significant caesura than D&D 3e. Granted, all analogies have their limitations!
 
robertsconley said:
Nobody but folks may reserve the right to mock you. :wink:

At which point you say "fuck you!" and continue to do whatever it is you feel is OSR related.
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I’d probably just slink away in shame.
 
I should by honour accede the caveat that I do not play OSR games OR videogames, the former out of preference and the latter; frankly I just don't have time for anyone else's imagination at the moment because I'm heavily engaged in communicating mine through prose. I spend periods of my life consuming and periods, um, expelling I guess. Last game I played was Dark Souls III, I enjoyed it very much because of the ergotic presentation, and I own the game Blasphemy for the same reason (and excited for the sequel this year), but have only watched Youtube videos discussing it, no time. Video games are awesome, but so are movies and I use to watch....everything, I had to drive to other towns to find video rental places that had stuff I hadn't seen (yeah this is Gen X speaking, hi to everyone raised in the internet generation, my past self envies your unprecedented in human history access to media and information). But yeah, now, maybe less than a dozen movies a year. Often rewatches, because I want comfort food, not a new frustration. And in my youth I would regularly consume one book or more a day. Now my reading is drawn out and leisurely, a few chapters before bed. Now my spare time is mostly writing and computer stuff, and when I take breaks my brain needs a break, so I engage with something stupid or silly that doesn't require much thought. Painting minis, sh#tposting, Youtube.

My engagement with the OSR has always been from a distance because....I don't like D&D. I didn't back then, I don't now. The system just rubs me the wrong way. It takes me out of the game, and most of you know that I'm one of those immersion-in-character sorts (but I'm mostly a GM, meaning I have to deal with the system the most intimately of all players). That is not me saying that D&D is a "bad game". It is a game that has wide appeal and I honestly can see that appeal. I understand it in many respects, and mostly when I try to engage in OSR topics I try to focus on those things. The brilliance of Dungeons as a training tool for players and GMs. The conceptual succinctness of Classes (initially). The use of in-game rewards and a level system to fuel player engagement. The modular approach to rules in TSR editions. The, in some cases genuinely elegant streamlining of aspects of the system in both 3rd and even 4th edition (I think 4th was a work of genius, from a design perspective, it's only failing was that it wasn't D&D. Or rather, it was exclusivelly one smaller group of player's specific concept of D&D that, in appealing directly to them, excluded everyone who didn't engage with the game in that manner. And, sure I blame 3rd to an extent for sending them in that direction, but again, not a game I play so I don't have any feelings attached to this. To me it's interesting from a "history of the hobby" perspective.

4th edition is fascination to me in that regard, We in real time saw what it's like to follow the essence of Forge Theory design, taking the conclusion's of Edwards' "System Matters" declaration to heart and hyperfocusing on design to cater to one playstyle. To not be "incoherent". The reasons it was a failure I can't say for certain, so I'm not blaming Forge theory entirely for that one. That may have been more "commercial inertia" in that the majority were wed to or accustomed to a different playstyle. The subsequent rise of the OSR seems not only to support that theory, in that the majority of participants in the OSR are near to past middle aged, hence no small portion of Nostalgia must, by common sense, play a part. I've seen that used as a negative accusation before, but that isn't my perspective. We shouldn't we enjoy the things we grew up with. That does not speak to them being of lesser quality. Far from it, from my perspective. Certain things last for a reason, good memories are often good for a good reason. We also cannot reasonably exclude art and marketing from playing a role. I personally found the style of art in 4th cold, unevocative, and a bit garrish. But that's my tastes...I prefer more subdued fantasy.

Anyways, so If you ask me my favourite edition of D&D, I'm going to say AD&D 2nd edition, because it sacrificed itself to give the world Planescape. So if I have any bias, it's towards the OSR. And I have to say I very much enjoy the periphery of the OSR. Grognardia was a blast. Peterson's blog and books are a treat. That Secrets of Blackmoor documentary was the tits. And some OSR content is fantastic outside of the system. Some genuinely great adventures. And I said earlier that I thought the best part of the OSR was the random charts and I think everyone took that as a joke, but I was, at least to some extent, in earnest: some of those are really fantastic. As someone who runs sandboxes often those are great tools. And some are just hilarious. I have a longrunning thread on them, worth checking out just for entertainment value.

I appreciate the aesthetics of the OSR as well. I mean, some of it is as crude as the amateur press of the 70s, but some have a vast amount of charm that supersedes that, IMO. A special shout-out to Peter Mullen's work on DCC, which somehow both captures perfectly and supercedes Erol Otus' style. And then you have stuff like the LoTFP covers, many of which are just objectively beautiful and evocative. Some might say that my preferred style of illustration (which is a generous way of saying the artistic shorthand I engage in when doodling) is reminiscent of an "OSRish style", and I imagine that is because I grew up with a lot of the same influences.

Finally, as I mentioned before several times, I like the historical investigation and re-evaluation aspect of the OSR. The attempts at reconstructing or just understanding the context of the original design choices.

OK, so all of that was preamble to addressing the question in the thread's title

I've been asked (felt like accused TBH) a few times "why game at all if you [insert some form of Rulings not Rules playstyle]?", most recently by a youtuber who also said the OSR was horrible because ten years ago someone who worked on an earlier edition of Chivalry & Sorcery was mean to her. I told her C&S was not an OSR game, they replied whatever, and then proceeded to blame the OSR for nuTSR, and our conversing permanently ended when I pointed out it was Tenkar, as much as anyone, that broke that story.

So is C&S an OSR game? It's certainly contemporary of the early editions of D&D associated with the OSR. It is certainly "Old School".

Actually I think it's better to generalize that question:

Is the OSR just D&D and D&D adjacent games
or
is the majority of the focus in the OSR on D&D because the majority of the focus in the hobby overall has always been D&D?

And the long answer, from my perspective is....the OSR is a movement, so it's defined by whatever is adopted by the movement et large.

The OSR movement accepted and adopted DCC into it's ranks. It's not D&D, but it tries to replicate the feel of one form of old school D&D in numerous ways. OTOH, the OSR movement thoroughly rejected Dungeonworld, which had similar design goals. This suggests that it's not just the end result, it's the process that's important to how the movement defines itself.

Which is not to say that the OSR is a hivemind or even a cohesive whole. There are enclaves focused around specific games, specific goals with those games. Someone who is an active member of the Swords & Wizardry online community might never engage with the Old School Essentials community or the OD&D/Braunstein community (it's that one I get along the best with, because my approach to RPGs is very similar to Arneson's). The Castles and Crusades community seems to have drifted off in isolation.

Likewise, there are creators on the periphery of the movement, orbiting it, calling themselves OSR but isolated to a very small group that the majority of the OS?R simply won't engage with, for a variety of reasons. I would say that rejection counts just as much as that of Dungeonworld, but that's not to dismiss that that small community is still a community in and of itself as much as any of them. Some might call that the OSR's "dark side", and some can't see the rest of the OSR past that screen. But that's a limitation on the viewer's part, not the OSR's.

The OSR does not have a "head" anymore. It did, once. Grognardia was the focal point that the rest of the OSR orbitted. But that head got cut off and the OSR splintered. Jennifer Aniston declared this is when the OSR "got gud", but I'm not inclined to agree. Aniston also declared themselves the new "king of the OSR" in a futile attempt to fill the empty thrown, but the rest of OSR ignored them.

Regardless, even in this periphery, D&D dominates. And I am going to give my theory as to why this is:

Like the Renaissance itself, or any movement, we can trace multiple origin points. I am going to point to two: the first was a revival in interest in "Old School" games and approaches to gaming in general, the second is the release of OSRIC.

The former *began* with hree games: Encounter Critical, Mazes & Minotaurs, and Hackmaster. All came in the wake of an extended period when the hobby was engaged with both the new WoTC approaches to D&D, and modern narrative and high concept systems that had moved away from Simulation and the post-WoD "90s Standard".

The latter is I what I believe put the OSR in OSR. OSRIC opened up the possibility of engaging with the OGL in a way that allowed recreations of earlier editions. It spearheaded the concept and from there the OSR exploded. The conditions were optimal (a widespread rejection of 4th edition among the fanbase) to ignite a fad that is still going strong.

That does not leave us with a definitive answer, but I'm going to propose an alternative solution.

The OSR as an acronym is interpreted variably just like it's meaning: "Old School Renaissance", "Old school Revival", etc. I suggest the reason this is the case is because OSR isn't actually an acronym, it comes from "OSRIC" and was simply retrofitted with a meaning to convey the movement overall.

That gives us 4 primary movers that created the OSR, 3 of which are some form of D&D (M&M, Hackmaster, and OSRIC). Encounter Critical is...not meant to be a playable system, it's meant to capture the aesthetic and feel of old school systems contemporary of OD&D. Metamorphisis Alpha, Villains & Vigilantes, EotPT; all those D&D-alikes in the earliest days of the Hobby before very large digressions from D&D came about. And I think we can see the same thing in a modern context with Mork Borg. It's not technically any edition of D&D, but it's early D&D derived enough that, in combination with the aesthetic, represents an aesthetic wing to the OSR.

In other words, yes, the OSR is all about D&D. But in it's wake, it lifts up interest in other contemporary "Old School" games.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
So something like the controller below, but for all games not just racing games, is too much for you.

View attachment 79892
Click to expand...
Joking aside, I have been simulator nerd since my C64 days. I own a racing wheel with force feedback (although not as fancy as that one) and shifter for driving games, and on the flight end, I have flight stick, throttle, and rudder pedals. On top of that I have a Valve Index, and even my Xbox controller is the Elite model.

Ironically, despite owning a working Atari, I have no paddle controllers.
 
Baulderstone said:
Joking aside, I have been simulator nerd since my C64 days. I own a racing wheel with force feedback (although not as fancy as that one) and shifter for driving games, and on the flight end, I have flight stick, throttle, and rudder pedals. On top of that I have a Valve Index, and even my Xbox controller is the Elite model.

Ironically, despite owning a working Atari, I have no paddle controllers.
Click to expand...

I've never been a racing or flight sim gamer. That's more my brother's territory. He has the same stuff as you for those games, nothing as fancy as the pic I posted.
I'm more to the arcade style for stuff like this, so Need For Speed or Wipeout then it comes to racing. For flight stuff I've only played a couple of the Ace Combat games. There's also Star Wars: Squadrons and Star Wars: Racer that I've played.

Regarding controllers, I do wish sometimes that there was only one standard that everyone used. Instead of having to own one, (and if you want to game with others at least two), for each type of system.
 
TristramEvans said:
The OSR movement accepted and adopted DCC into it's ranks. It's not D&D,but it tries to replicate the feel of one form of old school D&D in numerous ways.
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Great post. I think the above point is debatable though. DCC is explicitly based on the d20 OGL and the D&D chasis. It mimics BX in class design and harks back to older editions in art and many spells call out 1e spell effects.
Sure, it changes a few things but for me, it is certainly a D&D (as is PF).
Now exactly where one game ends and a new design begins is certainly debatable, but I think this is a debatable case rather than black and white.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
I've never been a racing or flight sim gamer. That's more my brother's territory. He has the same stuff as you for those games, nothing as fancy as the pic I posted.
I'm more to the arcade style for stuff like this, so Need For Speed or Wipeout then it comes to racing. For flight stuff I've only played a couple of the Ace Combat games. There's also Star Wars: Squadrons and Star Wars: Racer that I've played.

Regarding controllers, I do wish sometimes that there was only one standard that everyone used. Instead of having to own one, (and if you want to game with others at least two), for each type of system.
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I like the arcady side as well. I've played more Forza Horizon than any serious racing game in the last year. And Star Wars: Squadrons justified my purchase of a Valve Index all by itself.

I have and Xbox and my nephews have a Playstation, so we are always struggling going back and forth. "Press X!" has gone badly more times than I can count.
 
Baulderstone said:
Joking aside, I have been simulator nerd since my C64 days. I own a racing wheel with force feedback (although not as fancy as that one) and shifter for driving games, and on the flight end, I have flight stick, throttle, and rudder pedals. On top of that I have a Valve Index, and even my Xbox controller is the Elite model.

Ironically, despite owning a working Atari, I have no paddle controllers.
Click to expand...
Ever try Orbiter Space Flight Simulator?

Orbiter 2016 Space Flight Simulator

Orbiter is a realistic 3D real-time space flight simulator program. Official site with free download.
orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk

1711385356610.png

Pretty much the best of the best when it comes to realistic space simulators.

If you want something more structured and less freeform, I recommend Re-entry on Steam.


Orbiter has some sophisticated add-ons like my own Mercury add-ons, but this guy takes it to the next level.

1711385591741.png

Of course, there is Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program – Create and Manage Your Own Space Program

Build spacecraft, fly them, and try to help the Kerbals fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space.
www.kerbalspaceprogram.com www.kerbalspaceprogram.com

Version 1 is more mature and better for enthusiasts with a wealth of mods, but Version 2 is coming along nicely. Kerbal (both versions) is probably the best at being balanced between fun and simulation.
 
robertsconley said:
Ever try Orbiter Space Flight Simulator?

Orbiter 2016 Space Flight Simulator

Orbiter is a realistic 3D real-time space flight simulator program. Official site with free download.
orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk

View attachment 79893

Pretty much the best of the best when it comes to realistic space simulators.

If you want something more structured and less freeform, I recommend Re-entry on Steam.


Orbiter has some sophisticated add-ons like my own Mercury add-ons, but this guy takes it to the next level.

Of course, there is Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program – Create and Manage Your Own Space Program

Build spacecraft, fly them, and try to help the Kerbals fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space.
www.kerbalspaceprogram.com www.kerbalspaceprogram.com

Version 1 is more mature and better for enthusiasts with a wealth of mods, but Version 2 is coming along nicely. Kerbal (both versions) is probably the best at being balanced between fun and simulation.
Click to expand...

I spent a lot of time with Kerbal Space Program. I'll have to try Orbiter Space Flight Simulator soon. At present I am prepping for a new campaign, so it would be a dangerous distraction to jump into it now.
 
TristramEvans said:
I should by honour accede the caveat that I do not play OSR games OR videogames, the former out of preference and the latter; frankly I just don't have time for anyone else's imagination at the moment because I'm heavily engaged in communicating mine through prose. I spend periods of my life consuming and periods, um, expelling I guess. Last game I played was Dark Souls III, I enjoyed it very much because of the ergotic presentation, and I own the game Blasphemy for the same reason (and excited for the sequel this year), but have only watched Youtube videos discussing it, no time. Video games are awesome, but so are movies and I use to watch....everything, I had to drive to other towns to find video rental places that had stuff I hadn't seen (yeah this is Gen X speaking, hi to everyone raised in the internet generation, my past self envies your unprecedented in human history access to media and information). But yeah, now, maybe less than a dozen movies a year. Often rewatches, because I want comfort food, not a new frustration. And in my youth I would regularly consume one book or more a day. Now my reading is drawn out and leisurely, a few chapters before bed. Now my spare time is mostly writing and computer stuff, and when I take breaks my brain needs a break, so I engage with something stupid or silly that doesn't require much thought. Painting minis, sh#tposting, Youtube.

My engagement with the OSR has always been from a distance because....I don't like D&D. I didn't back then, I don't now. The system just rubs me the wrong way. It takes me out of the game, and most of you know that I'm one of those immersion-in-character sorts (but I'm mostly a GM, meaning I have to deal with the system the most intimately of all players). That is not me saying that D&D is a "bad game". It is a game that has wide appeal and I honestly can see that appeal. I understand it in many respects, and mostly when I try to engage in OSR topics I try to focus on those things. The brilliance of Dungeons as a training tool for players and GMs. The conceptual succinctness of Classes (initially). The use of in-game rewards and a level system to fuel player engagement. The modular approach to rules in TSR editions. The, in some cases genuinely elegant streamlining of aspects of the system in both 3rd and even 4th edition (I think 4th was a work of genius, from a design perspective, it's only failing was that it wasn't D&D. Or rather, it was exclusivelly one smaller group of player's specific concept of D&D that, in appealing directly to them, excluded everyone who didn't engage with the game in that manner. And, sure I blame 3rd to an extent for sending them in that direction, but again, not a game I play so I don't have any feelings attached to this. To me it's interesting from a "history of the hobby" perspective.

4th edition is fascination to me in that regard, We in real time saw what it's like to follow the essence of Forge Theory design, taking the conclusion's of Edwards' "System Matters" declaration to heart and hyperfocusing on design to cater to one playstyle. To not be "incoherent". The reasons it was a failure I can't say for certain, so I'm not blaming Forge theory entirely for that one. That may have been more "commercial inertia" in that the majority were wed to or accustomed to a different playstyle. The subsequent rise of the OSR seems not only to support that theory, in that the majority of participants in the OSR are near to past middle aged, hence no small portion of Nostalgia must, by common sense, play a part. I've seen that used as a negative accusation before, but that isn't my perspective. We shouldn't we enjoy the things we grew up with. That does not speak to them being of lesser quality. Far from it, from my perspective. Certain things last for a reason, good memories are often good for a good reason. We also cannot reasonably exclude art and marketing from playing a role. I personally found the style of art in 4th cold, unevocative, and a bit garrish. But that's my tastes...I prefer more subdued fantasy.

Anyways, so If you ask me my favourite edition of D&D, I'm going to say AD&D 2nd edition, because it sacrificed itself to give the world Planescape. So if I have any bias, it's towards the OSR. And I have to say I very much enjoy the periphery of the OSR. Grognardia was a blast. Peterson's blog and books are a treat. That Secrets of Blackmoor documentary was the tits. And some OSR content is fantastic outside of the system. Some genuinely great adventures. And I said earlier that I thought the best part of the OSR was the random charts and I think everyone took that as a joke, but I was, at least to some extent, in earnest: some of those are really fantastic. As someone who runs sandboxes often those are great tools. And some are just hilarious. I have a longrunning thread on them, worth checking out just for entertainment value.

I appreciate the aesthetics of the OSR as well. I mean, some of it is as crude as the amateur press of the 70s, but some have a vast amount of charm that supersedes that, IMO. A special shout-out to Peter Mullen's work on DCC, which somehow both captures perfectly and supercedes Erol Otus' style. And then you have stuff like the LoTFP covers, many of which are just objectively beautiful and evocative. Some might say that my preferred style of illustration (which is a generous way of saying the artistic shorthand I engage in when doodling) is reminiscent of an "OSRish style", and I imagine that is because I grew up with a lot of the same influences.

Finally, as I mentioned before several times, I like the historical investigation and re-evaluation aspect of the OSR. The attempts at reconstructing or just understanding the context of the original design choices.

OK, so all of that was preamble to addressing the question in the thread's title

I've been asked (felt like accused TBH) a few times "why game at all if you [insert some form of Rulings not Rules playstyle]?", most recently by a youtuber who also said the OSR was horrible because ten years ago someone who worked on an earlier edition of Chivalry & Sorcery was mean to her. I told her C&S was not an OSR game, they replied whatever, and then proceeded to blame the OSR for nuTSR, and our conversing permanently ended when I pointed out it was Tenkar, as much as anyone, that broke that story.

So is C&S an OSR game? It's certainly contemporary of the early editions of D&D associated with the OSR. It is certainly "Old School".

Actually I think it's better to generalize that question:

Is the OSR just D&D and D&D adjacent games
or
is the majority of the focus in the OSR on D&D because the majority of the focus in the hobby overall has always been D&D?

And the long answer, from my perspective is....the OSR is a movement, so it's defined by whatever is adopted by the movement et large.

The OSR movement accepted and adopted DCC into it's ranks. It's not D&D, but it tries to replicate the feel of one form of old school D&D in numerous ways. OTOH, the OSR movement thoroughly rejected Dungeonworld, which had similar design goals. This suggests that it's not just the end result, it's the process that's important to how the movement defines itself.

Which is not to say that the OSR is a hivemind or even a cohesive whole. There are enclaves focused around specific games, specific goals with those games. Someone who is an active member of the Swords & Wizardry online community might never engage with the Old School Essentials community or the OD&D/Braunstein community (it's that one I get along the best with, because my approach to RPGs is very similar to Arneson's). The Castles and Crusades community seems to have drifted off in isolation.

Likewise, there are creators on the periphery of the movement, orbiting it, calling themselves OSR but isolated to a very small group that the majority of the OS?R simply won't engage with, for a variety of reasons. I would say that rejection counts just as much as that of Dungeonworld, but that's not to dismiss that that small community is still a community in and of itself as much as any of them. Some might call that the OSR's "dark side", and some can't see the rest of the OSR past that screen. But that's a limitation on the viewer's part, not the OSR's.

The OSR does not have a "head" anymore. It did, once. Grognardia was the focal point that the rest of the OSR orbitted. But that head got cut off and the OSR splintered. Jennifer Aniston declared this is when the OSR "got gud", but I'm not inclined to agree. Aniston also declared themselves the new "king of the OSR" in a futile attempt to fill the empty thrown, but the rest of OSR ignored them.

Regardless, even in this periphery, D&D dominates. And I am going to give my theory as to why this is:

Like the Renaissance itself, or any movement, we can trace multiple origin points. I am going to point to two: the first was a revival in interest in "Old School" games and approaches to gaming in general, the second is the release of OSRIC.

The former *began* with hree games: Encounter Critical, Mazes & Minotaurs, and Hackmaster. All came in the wake of an extended period when the hobby was engaged with both the new WoTC approaches to D&D, and modern narrative and high concept systems that had moved away from Simulation and the post-WoD "90s Standard".

The latter is I what I believe put the OSR in OSR. OSRIC opened up the possibility of engaging with the OGL in a way that allowed recreations of earlier editions. It spearheaded the concept and from there the OSR exploded. The conditions were optimal (a widespread rejection of 4th edition among the fanbase) to ignite a fad that is still going strong.

That does not leave us with a definitive answer, but I'm going to propose an alternative solution.

The OSR as an acronym is interpreted variably just like it's meaning: "Old School Renaissance", "Old school Revival", etc. I suggest the reason this is the case is because OSR isn't actually an acronym, it comes from "OSRIC" and was simply retrofitted with a meaning to convey the movement overall.

That gives us 4 primary movers that created the OSR, 3 of which are some form of D&D (M&M, Hackmaster, and OSRIC). Encounter Critical is...not meant to be a playable system, it's meant to capture the aesthetic and feel of old school systems contemporary of OD&D. Metamorphisis Alpha, Villains & Vigilantes, EotPT; all those D&D-alikes in the earliest days of the Hobby before very large digressions from D&D came about. And I think we can see the same thing in a modern context with Mork Borg. It's not technically any edition of D&D, but it's early D&D derived enough that, in combination with the aesthetic, represents an aesthetic wing to the OSR.

In other words, yes, the OSR is all about D&D. But in it's wake, it lifts up interest in other contemporary "Old School" games.
Click to expand...
Great post. I was heavily involved in the OSRIC branch of the OSR originators (of which OSRIC was the end-point of several years of discussion and development, even if it was the starting point for everyone else) and can confirm that in the early stages we were completely separate from the HM/M&M/EC branch - we had no interest or involvement with any of those games or they with us. It wasn’t until after OSRIC had been published (and really after Labyrinth Lord with its more generous OGC declaration) that those guys (Jeff Rients et al) started taking notice of what we were up to and the two camps started to overlap.

It chagrins me to see Grognardia proclaimed as the King of the OSR because from my perspective he was an arriviste who just repeated and repackaged stuff that had already been said (usually with more depth and rigor) by others. He definitely brought a bigger audience to the OSR and became its main public face but I’ve never actually understood why that is - because he was already a familiar and credible industry name due to the freelance work he’d done for GDW, White Wolf, SJG and others? Because his “voyage of discovery” into the old-school scene after decades away from it (the mix of nostalgia with “oh this thing that seemed so weird and incomprehensible to me as a kid finally makes sense”) made him relatable to other people going through the same process? I always found his observations shallow and unoriginal and don’t understand why he blew up so big and why so many people held (and still hold) him in such high regard.
 
James was defrocked after the Dwimmermount debacle. He was basically MIA for awhile because of mental health issues. He seems to be doing better the last couple years.
 
It’s pretty hard to have a king when you have a bunch of different groups claiming to be the OSR that disavow each other as belonging to the OSR. Ultimately the debate on what is and isn’t OSR will only cause this :yawn: or this :irritated: because you are never going to get everyone to agree. Much more interesting to talk theory or mechanics than definitions.
 
David Johansen said:
To my mind, C&S 1e and 2e are close enough to D&D to be OSR. But C&S 3 - 5 aren't.
Click to expand...
I think C&S 1/2 are 'old school', but they really aren't OSR - they, like AD&D 1e, aren't really about 'rulings, rather than rules'. Rather the opposite in some ways, though without the drive for complete-ism that came along later. C&S expected house rules and rulings, but the game also had a lot of rules for things OSR games would expect a GM to just make a ruling on (and thus make a house rule for, by precedent, though some OSR advocates have gotten a bit upset when I presented that to them).
 
Sharrow said:
I think C&S 1/2 are 'old school', but they really aren't OSR - they, like AD&D 1e, aren't really about 'rulings, rather than rules'. Rather the opposite in some ways, though without the drive for complete-ism that came along later. C&S expected house rules and rulings, but the game also had a lot of rules for things OSR games would expect a GM to just make a ruling on (and thus make a house rule for, by precedent, though some OSR advocates have gotten a bit upset when I presented that to them).
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The fact they can’t disavow AD&D 1E really has to bug some in the OSR because it really rubs against the tenants a lot of the people in the movement proclaim.
 
Sharrow said:
I think C&S 1/2 are 'old school', but they really aren't OSR - they, like AD&D 1e, aren't really about 'rulings, rather than rules'. Rather the opposite in some ways, though without the drive for complete-ism that came along later. C&S expected house rules and rulings, but the game also had a lot of rules for things OSR games would expect a GM to just make a ruling on (and thus make a house rule for, by precedent, though some OSR advocates have gotten a bit upset when I presented that to them).
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And to a lesser extent, the full version of this, which I have released in bits and pieces so far.

1711394387517.png 1711394522525.png

The main reasons that Chivalry & Sorcery is not OSR is that it has its own history of development and its own community of hobbyists that don't overlap much with the folks who promoted, published, and played classic editions of D&D.

If anything, Harn and Harnmaster have far more considerable overlap in large part because of me and other OSR folks who used Harn materials within classic D&D campaigns and talked about it. But at the end of the day, Harn is also its own thing with its own history and hobby.
 
T. Foster said:
Great post. I was heavily involved in the OSRIC branch of the OSR originators (of which OSRIC was the end-point of several years of discussion and development, even if it was the starting point for everyone else) and can confirm that in the early stages we were completely separate from the HM/M&M/EC branch - we had no interest or involvement with any of those games or they with us. It wasn’t until after OSRIC had been published (and really after Labyrinth Lord with its more generous OGC declaration) that those guys (Jeff Rients et al) started taking notice of what we were up to and the two camps started to overlap.

It chagrins me to see Grognardia proclaimed as the King of the OSR because from my perspective he was an arriviste who just repeated and repackaged stuff that had already been said (usually with more depth and rigor) by others. He definitely brought a bigger audience to the OSR and became its main public face but I’ve never actually understood why that is - because he was already a familiar and credible industry name due to the freelance work he’d done for GDW, White Wolf, SJG and others? Because his “voyage of discovery” into the old-school scene after decades away from it (the mix of nostalgia with “oh this thing that seemed so weird and incomprehensible to me as a kid finally makes sense”) made him relatable to other people going through the same process? I always found his observations shallow and unoriginal and don’t understand why he blew up so big and why so many people held (and still hold) him in such high regard.
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Imo, two reasons, one is he is a better essayist than most other OSR bloggers. Concise and clear, at least on the surface. I found the more closely you looked at his statements the more you can see how much he spoke in sweeping, unexamined and often inaccurate generalizations.

Which leads me to the second point: confirmation bias. He told people things they wanted to hear (his strange affixing of 'Gygaxian' to things that had little to nothing to do with Gygax; DL 'ruined D&D;' that there was a supposed 'Golden Age' of D&D whose peak was always some rapidly vanishing point in the misty past, etc.).
 
T. Foster said:
who just repeated and repackaged stuff that had already been said (usually with more depth and rigor) by others.
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You just described 3/4 of the folks who promote the classic editions of D&D. Also, keep in mind that there are two detailed interpretations of how to deal with AD&D 1e initiative rules. There are multiple takes on various details of D&D's and AD&D's genesis and theory of play. Not all of them are accurate in some sense, including what Grognardia writes, but because the OSR has reignited classic D&D as a living hobby rather than as an object for scholarly examination, these things are going to happen now just as they happened back in the day.

T. Foster said:
but I’ve never actually understood why that is
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Because, at the end of the day, he is a decent essayist, authentically passionate about our hobby, and a decent person to deal with. And while he flamed out with Dwimmermount, it quickly became obvious there were other issues at play. That doesn't mean he is excused from what happened, but it does mean if he had a way more modest project that was more in his wheelhouse and capabilities, I would trust him to deliver it.
 
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sharps54 said:
The fact they can’t disavow AD&D 1E really has to bug some in the OSR because it really rubs against the tenants a lot of the people in the movement proclaim.
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AD&D 1E was grandfathered into the OSR solely because 1E fans got the whole thing going by creating OSRIC and coining the “old school revival/renaissance” phrase*, and it absolutely irks the more doctrinaire theorists who insist rules-liteness and “rulings, not rules” must be the primary defining characteristics of an OSR game. There have been many attempts to at least rhetorically exclude AD&D 1E from the OSR fold, going all the way back to Tim Kask in Knockspell magazine in 2009(ish) declaring that the sins of “modern” D&D (3E and 4E) - rules bloat, rules-lawyering, powergaming, neutered DMs, bland/generic settings, gamers as passive consumers rather than active co-creators, etc - are all AD&D’s fault and it was a tragic mistake for TSR to have ever released it.

*FWIW I made the first attested use of “old school revival” in the D&D/rpg context at Dragonsfoot in August 2004. The first attested use of “old school renaissance” came about a year later, from an Anonymous poster.
 
robertsconley said:
I will update Where the hell OSR came from post then. Thanks for pointing that out.
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I had no idea myself until someone pointed it out to me a year or so ago!

Edit: but learning that I (apparently, possibly, kind of) coined the phrase has inspired me to be more assertive in pushing my interpretations of it and calling out the later consensus understanding as drift (or, less charitably, hijacking), as demonstrated by all of my other posts in this thread.
 
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For those who don't know, both the Dragonsfoot and Enworld forums have searchable archives that date back to the early 2000s. Which is often helpful in finding out what actually happened in our hobby as opposed to what people remember happening.
 
sharps54 said:
The fact they can’t disavow AD&D 1E really has to bug some in the OSR because it really rubs against the tenants a lot of the people in the movement proclaim.
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That could be because 1e clearly goes against the supposedly core OSR principle of 'rulings not rules.'

Which is one aspect of the OSR that seemed both obvious and obtuse to me, at the same time.
 
sharps54 said:
It’s pretty hard to have a king when you have a bunch of different groups claiming to be the OSR that disavow each other as belonging to the OSR.
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Actually, that's more or less Medieval France...:grin:

sharps54 said:
What was Gygax thinking ignoring that principle when he wrote it
:shock:
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:money::takemoney::money:
 
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How many times have we circled around saying the same things :-)

At this point, it's pretty clear to me:

* OSR is a real thing

* OSR means different things to different people

* OSR is largely about D&D due to both it's origins and the dominance of D&D salted with the desire to have a "safe" rule set to reference when publishing content (largely the purpose of OSRIC) and a desire to have in print versions of D&D.

* Many if not most folks who are interested in early D&D are also interested in other early RPGs

I think the biggest thing that most folks interested in OSR can agree on is that it does not include D&D 3.x and D&D 4.
 
Endless Flight said:
I never understood why DF folks called 3E “TESTNBN” like it was some unholy abomination.
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It’s because after the “Edition Wars” board was shut down c. mid-2003 (because it was leading to a lot of acrimonious debate and sucking all of the oxygen out of the rest of the site) the board rules were changed to make discussion of 3E off-topic and forbidden, so people who still wanted to talk about it (usually to complain about or attack it) came up with that cutesy acronym to skirt the board rules.
 
TristramEvans said:
In other words, yes, the OSR is all about D&D. But in it's wake, it lifts up interest in other contemporary "Old School" games.
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A good summary. But you conflate the OSR with the associated rule systems. The OSR was a reaction against WOTC's D&D (streamlined? ROTFL). For example, Grognardia was a blog about D&D - not a blog about retroclones. I never personally even played a clone until OSE.
Voros said:
Which leads me to the second point: confirmation bias. He told people things they wanted to hear (his strange affixing of 'Gygaxian' to things that had little to nothing to do with Gygax; DL 'ruined D&D;' that there was a supposed 'Golden Age' of D&D whose peak was always some rapidly vanishing point in the misty past, etc.).
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Except that from a historical perspective clearly G1-3 did introduce naturalism into D&D (prior to this adventures had a tendancy to contain killer rabbits,, meat ball monsters covered in gravy, and giant pigeons), I sold the first Dragonlance module in disgust when I got it because it was such a railroad (and never bought another TSR module), and indeed the period up until that point has a fantastically high hit rate of classic products, whereas immediately afterwards (when their module output doubled) you get such classics as The Forest Oracle. After that it was MERP/Rolemaster for me and I didn't revisit D&D for 25 years. So there's actually a lot of truth in those statements...
T. Foster said:
AD&D 1E was grandfathered into the OSR solely because 1E fans got the whole thing going by creating OSRIC and coining the “old school revival/renaissance” phrase*, and it absolutely irks the more doctrinaire theorists who insist rules-liteness and “rulings, not rules” must be the primary defining characteristics of an OSR game.
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Except that OD&D (with the supplements and Strategic Review of course) is extremely close to AD&D. I'm sure that a majority of OD&D players used Monster Manual at the time, and all the spells and magic items can be viewed as optional extras for OD&D (that's how I use them and I'm far from alone). I'm sure many just ignore all the OTT rules (just like the hit locations in Blackmoor) such as the initiative system or weaopn speed or spell components.
Of course any movement attracts cranks, and while the "rulings, not rules" doctrine is a brain child of some strands of the OSR, it does not describe any version of D&D (even the original 3BB).

Somebody somewhere in this thread said something (which I can't now find) which reminded me that just as the OSR was given life by 3E (both as a reaction against it, and also helping it with the OGL) and given the boost it needed with the nose-dive popularity of 4E, and Pathfinder was caused by 4E, it was the success of the OSR which led to the design of D&D 5E (Pathfinder meant it was needed, the OSR showed the direction to take) and hence the amazing uptake in enthusiasm of D&D I see today. Without Pathfinder and the OSR it would likely have withered on the vine. Amusingly I've seen people who've only ever played 5E say they don't understand the need for the OSR. It's like all the people who love Tolkien-inspired fantasy or Led Zeppelin-inspired music who then say they don't see the point of the original.
 
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