What are your criteria? Is it the mechanics, the gameplay style, the sources of inspiration?
Obvious troll is obvious.
Quote from: Archangel Fascist;673529What are your criteria? Is it the mechanics, the gameplay style, the sources of inspiration?
Shitty art is usually my first clue.
Quote from: Archangel Fascist;673529What are your criteria? Is it the mechanics, the gameplay style, the sources of inspiration?
1) the system is based upon a game published before 1989.
2) the system supports old school style-play (going by the definition proposed by the old school primer)
3) the artwork is indicative of illustration styles popular before the advent of anime, video games, or CGI
5) any new mechanics introduced to the system are not narrative-based and the game does not enforce a 3rd person view of the character on the player.
6) The system supports numerous plàystyles rather than enforcing one on the players or GM.
7) the game is not simply a reprint of an earlier game by a major RPG publisher.
8) the game never uses the phrase 'social contract'
9) the game is designed to be used as a reference manual, not a novel
10) the game is written for an assumed adult audience
Quote from: Archangel Fascist;673529How do you define an OSR game?
Its an old edition D&D clone, system-wise.
If the author claims it's OSR, it probably is.
Quote from: J Arcane;673536Obvious troll is obvious.
Why does this thread count as trolling?
Quote from: Archangel Fascist;673529What are your criteria? Is it the mechanics, the gameplay style, the sources of inspiration?
The OSR game based off classic D&D mechanics
An osr game is whatever you consider to be old school but generally means anything prior to 1989. With 70s era RPGs definitely old school.
Since it is a hobbyist movement what determines what the OSR is what the participants think it is. To determine that you need to make what you consider an OSR game and see how well it sells or how many downloads it.
For most hobbyists the OSR means a classic D&D derived game.
Not to channel Richard Stallman, but we do need to try and use clear vocabulary.
Do you mean 'old school' or 'Old School Renaissance'?
In the first category you have, e.g. Randall who has been playing the same game for decades now.
In the other there's, e.g. Sacrosanct who is open to new systems so long as they retain a certain flavor.
Subtle, but different.
To that end 'has not changed since 1989' is NOT a renaissance.
Quote from: Ladybird;673577If the author claims it's OSR, it probably is.
Since OSR is merely a marketing gimmick I tend to agree.
Being actually old school OTOH, is an entirely different matter. Old school includes more than D&D. Classic Traveler is OS and not D&D related. The original Runequest game is OS fantasy roleplaying and marketed itself as very
unlike D&D as a selling point.
Quote from: mcbobbo;673595To that end 'has not changed since 1989' is NOT a renaissance.
The Old School Renaissance™ has always been really the D&D Revival. Still, in spite of itself, you're now getting new games out of it.
"OSR 2.0" are games like SWN, ACKS, AoI, et al, games based on TSR era D&D but with a lot of changes and additions.
Pseudo-OSR we have to deal with now are people using 100% new school mechanics and design methods to focus on the "dungeon experience" or "old school vibe".
Heh, odd, but it is kind of like the Renaissance, you have the revival of the Classics, the Neo-Classics, and the Poseurs who think their stuff is really better, but adopt Classical trappings to ironically capitalize on the popularity of something while still looking down upon it.
Quote from: CRKrueger;673602Heh, odd, but it is kind of like the Renaissance, you have the revival of the Classics, the Neo-Classics, and the Poseurs who think their stuff is really better, but adopt Classical trappings to ironically capitalize on the popularity of something while still looking down upon it.
Exactly
Due to low barriers of entry the what the OSR (all caps) is will be defined by those who do. This will bother those what to be precise and clear in their terms but it not a precise or clear process. It rather messy in its execution. Which in this case I view it as a strength not a weakness.
Quote from: CRKrueger;673602The Old School Renaissance™ has always been really the D&D Revival. Still, in spite of itself, you're now getting new games out of it.
"OSR 2.0" are games like SWN, ACKS, AoI, et al, games based on TSR era D&D but with a lot of changes and additions.
Pseudo-OSR we have to deal with now are people using 100% new school mechanics and design methods to focus on the "dungeon experience" or "old school vibe".
Heh, odd, but it is kind of like the Renaissance, you have the revival of the Classics, the Neo-Classics, and the Poseurs who think their stuff is really better, but adopt Classical trappings to ironically capitalize on the popularity of something while still looking down upon it.
Quote from: Exploderwizard;673599Being actually old school OTOH, is an entirely different matter. Old school includes more than D&D. Classic Traveler is OS and not D&D related. The original Runequest game is OS fantasy roleplaying and marketed itself as very unlike D&D as a selling point.
/thread
Quote from: catty_big;673578Why does this thread count as trolling?
Because its version #732 of the same goddamn thread with a question that could easily be answered by the search function, except that the OP is only asking it because he's pissed that a couple of his pet storygames were suggested not to be.
Quote from: J Arcane;673536Obvious troll is obvious.
What an incredibly short-sighted thing to say.
Quote from: J Arcane;673750Because its version #732 of the same goddamn thread with a question that could easily be answered by the search function, except that the OP is only asking it because he's pissed that a couple of his pet storygames were suggested not to be.
Got proof?
A game clearly derived from and largely compatable/interoperable with TSRD&D.
Quote from: jeff37923;673758Got proof?
Nope. You're right. I had real life stuff on my mind and thus misremembered the participants in a previous shitstorm, at least vis a vis the 'pet storygame' charge.
Still, this is hardly the first thread on this topic, and it's a question that's been answered so ad nauseum that I don't see where a Google search wouldn't've solved the matter instead of refreshing the same argument we've been having for at least the last year.
I guess I should clarify. What to you makes a game old school (not necessarily OSR, I thought the terms interchangeable)? For me, the concept is vague but I have a general idea of it.
1. Chargen is fast and easy. The idea is to get to the meat of the adventure, not develop a fourteen page backstory about how you're the exiled heir of a forgotten empire.
2. Gameplay is hard mode. Characters are expected to die. Survival is very difficult in the early stages of the game (and possibly even later on).
3. The DM's role is separate from the players' roles. The DM is arbiter of the rules and creator of the game world. The players interact within that game world and look to the DM for rules resolution.
4. The game is unpredictable This comes in the form of randomized outcomes: wandering monsters, random encounters, loot generation, critical hit tables, etc.
Quote from: ExploderWizardsBeing actually old school OTOH, is an entirely different matter. Old school includes more than D&D. Classic Traveler is OS and not D&D related. The original Runequest game is OS fantasy roleplaying and marketed itself as very unlike D&D as a selling point.
Yup. And the OSR is not actually old-school. its pseudo-old-school.
Sorry mate, i don't think you'd know old school if it hit you in the head.
Quote from: Archangel Fascist;673816I guess I should clarify. What to you makes a game old school (not necessarily OSR, I thought the terms interchangeable)? For me, the concept is vague but I have a general idea of it.
1. Chargen is fast and easy. The idea is to get to the meat of the adventure, not develop a fourteen page backstory about how you're the exiled heir of a forgotten empire.
2. Gameplay is hard mode. Characters are expected to die. Survival is very difficult in the early stages of the game (and possibly even later on).
3. The DM's role is separate from the players' roles. The DM is arbiter of the rules and creator of the game world. The players interact within that game world and look to the DM for rules resolution.
4. The game is unpredictable This comes in the form of randomized outcomes: wandering monsters, random encounters, loot generation, critical hit tables, etc.
Opinions vary, but along with these, I'd add:
* mature themed, sort of like a S&S vibe as far as the artwork (if applicable) goes.
* zero to hero character progression
* absence of special snowflake syndrome (no, not every class has to be equally powerful in every aspect of the game as every other class)
* living world that doesn't revolve around the players. I.e., it's not the DMs job to adjust encounters in the world to make sure they are all level appropriate. If the level 1 PCs insist on going into the ogre infested mountains, they are going to find ogres. Not weaklings until they reach an appropriate level to challenge ogres.
* a system that easily allows the GM to tweak or modify the rules
Quote from: One Horse Town;673860Sorry mate, i don't think you'd know old school if it hit you in the head.
I know and have played Runequest. If thats not old school I dont know what it is.
But the point is that actual old-school gaming is so wide style-wise that it means absolutely nothing. Runequest, OD&D, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Champions (just to cite some) have very little in common to justify its grouping inside the same umbrella. They are rpgs. Period.
What people call "OSR" is really TSR-era D&D clones. Thus, pseudo-old-school.
Does it cause a grognard to spill blood from his/her nose?
1) Yes
2) No
If the answer is number 2, it's an OSR game.
OSR games are based upon pre-3e D&D.
Saying the OSR is "pseudo-old school" is moronic. OSR gamers have done more research into how people played at the dawn of the hobby than anybody had ever bothered to do before. The whole idea of the megadungeon and nonlinear sandboxes came out of people wanting to know how Dave and Gary had done it, and wanting to do their own thing from that basis. A lot of what came out in the OSR, I think, had to do with people actually reading the OD&D booklets and rethinking their assumptions about D&D based on it. Of course, that's just one part of the OSR, and the AD&D and classic D&D folks have their own ideas and interpretations. But just because the OSR doesn't replicate games that are currently in print with their creators' blessings like Runequest and Traveller doesn't somehow make it fake.
Pseudo-old school is the blather at the beginning of every Dungeon Crawl Classics module about how "NPCs were there to be killed," or people talking about their game with 3e, 4e or FATE rules captures the "feel" of old school D&D. None of that is true. DCC RPG has a lot of currency in OSR circles, and it's a fun game, but that nonsense on every module is awful. And none of the modern games actually do anything but play with some of the trappings of older D&D, which is tangential to the OSR, since tons of OSR material isn't even vaguely traditional Gygaxian D&D.
The osr started with Mazes & minotaurs and Encounter Critical, and ended once everyone started thinking it was all just about D&D because they lived in their little D&D bubble.
The OSR started when D&D stop being published, and a different game with the same name took its place. It ended when people stopped realizing it was about creativity and freedom and turned it into a political position.
The role-players just whistle and roll their eyes, because they were just playing this way and these games the whole time. And then they wonder what today's youth are coming to. And then they feel old.
For me at least a good acid test is "can you use that system to run an old published adventure as-is without doing conversion work before hand." Stuff like AC ascending vs. descending is fine since that's easy to convert on the fly but anything that makes it hard to do that puts it beyond the OSR (or at least the D&D OSR) for me.
Quote from: J Arcane;673793Nope. You're right. I had real life stuff on my mind and thus misremembered the participants in a previous shitstorm, at least vis a vis the 'pet storygame' charge.
Still, this is hardly the first thread on this topic, and it's a question that's been answered so ad nauseum that I don't see where a Google search wouldn't've solved the matter instead of refreshing the same argument we've been having for at least the last year.
You're right, this is subject that has been hashed out many times before. However, I like to think that even old old discussions might be worth revisiting to see if new thoughts and viewpoints may be sifted from the new participants.
Quote from: CadrielSaying the OSR is "pseudo-old school" is moronic. OSR gamers have done more research into how people played D&D at the dawn of the hobby than anybody had ever bothered to do before
Corrected for you.
Calling this "TSR-era D&D renaissance" ( = what the OSR really is) an "old school renaissance" is a disservice to the bazillion other games that came out in the 70s and early 80s whose playstyle has absolutely nothing to do with D&D, like Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Champions, Harn, En Garde!, MERP, TMNT, Twilight 2000, Villains & Vigilantes, Ghostbusters, Bunnies and Burrows, etc.
Its like in the future someone coin the term "Golden Age Renaissance" (or GAR) to nostalgicaly refer to the 90s as that period where games really was about storytelling and "Roleplaying over Rollplaying" and LARPs and all that.... when in fact there was only ONE game that did that (Vampire), while there was tons of others that never shared this playstyle, like Shadowrun, Deadlands, Amber, Over the Edge, Earthdawn, Unknown Armies, CP2020, Everway, Heroquest, Tribe 8, etc.
So, whats actually moronic is calling this TSR-era D&D Renaissance as Old-School Renaissance.
Quote from: danbuter;673932OSR games are based upon pre-3e D&D.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;673870Opinions vary, but along with these, I'd add:
* mature themed, sort of like a S&S vibe as far as the artwork (if applicable) goes.
* zero to hero character progression
* absence of special snowflake syndrome (no, not every class has to be equally powerful in every aspect of the game as every other class)
* living world that doesn't revolve around the players. I.e., it's not the DMs job to adjust encounters in the world to make sure they are all level appropriate. If the level 1 PCs insist on going into the ogre infested mountains, they are going to find ogres. Not weaklings until they reach an appropriate level to challenge ogres.
* a system that easily allows the GM to tweak or modify the rules
I will point that while these observation are true of a large number of OSR gamers perhaps even a majority. They are not universally true. The ONLY thing common throughout the OSR (all caps) is the use of a classic edition of D&D or one of its close variants.
For example the last point
* a system that easily allows the GM to tweak or modify the rules
It not applicable to OSRIC which is designed to enable publication of support material for AD&D and to PRESERVE it. It has a lot of product identity context sprinkled throughout the book and the licensing is deliberately is setup to make it difficult to make a variant OSRIC.
This is in contrast to Swords & Wizardry which is well organized and well formatted to serve as the core of somebody's custom version of classic D&D.
My own Majestic Wilderlands supports Game of Thrones style of campaigns where the adventure comes from the conflicts between politics, religion, and culture rather than focusing on dungeon crawls.
There is weird fantasy, gonzo fantasy out there in the OSR and every mix inbetween of just about any style you may have read about in gaming. There are rules light variants and rules heavy variants and so on.
In the end all one can say what in common that everything is tied back to the use of a classic edition of D&D. Everything depends on who or what group you are talking about.
As for why it is a glorious mess is quite simply is the open gaming license and the hobbyist culture it spawned. Castles & Crusades opened the door a crack and OSRIC kicked it wide open. Everything else followed as people did their own thing their own way.
What is the OSR?
It what YOU make it to be.
So don't just talk about it do something. Play it, promote it, or publish it doesn't matter as the OSR is owned by those who DO.
Quote from: TristramEvans;673991The osr started with Mazes & minotaurs and Encounter Critical, and ended once everyone started thinking it was all just about D&D because they lived in their little D&D bubble.
Those games are built on the old D&D system...
Quote from: Daztur;674001For me at least a good acid test is "can you use that system to run an old published adventure as-is without doing conversion work before hand." Stuff like AC ascending vs. descending is fine since that's easy to convert on the fly but anything that makes it hard to do that puts it beyond the OSR (or at least the D&D OSR) for me.
It wouldn't work for me. I can convert just about anything to just about anything else. I have played old school modules in just about every system I have ever used.
Quote from: TristramEvans;673991The osr started with Mazes & minotaurs and Encounter Critical, and ended once everyone started thinking it was all just about D&D because they lived in their little D&D bubble.
Do you have google searches or links to back this?
Because all I find is the use of OSR referring to the revival of classic D&D that started with OSRIC.
And OSRIC was a reaction to Castles & Crusades not being AD&D reborn.
Maze & Minotaur and Encounter Critical are appreciated by many associated with the OSR (like Jeff Rients) but those were standalone projects.
The OSR began with games like Castles & Crusades, Basic Fantasy, and OSRIC.
Folks don't have to take my word for it you can look at links from my blog here (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/where-hell-old-school-renaissance-come.html) or sort the Hoard and Hordes spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar9Wm_5gI_1TdGlyZHpwRHFoU2pEMng0NkhqTlJEYmc#gid=0) by date.
Quote from: danbuter;674047Those games are built on the old D&D system...
In the same way that all old school games were, up to and including Warhammer 1st Edition. There were some experiments that laid the groundwork for 'modern games, like MSH & 007, but D&D's mold was followed pretty closely for the first ten years of the hobby post-white box. Doesn't mean the game needs to be 1) a copy of D&D's implied pulp fantasy setting, nor anymore specifically a pseudo-clone of D&D than C&S 1e.
Sorry, but I dont agree with you there Tristram.
D&D, Runequest and Traveller are radically different games not only in mechanical bits but also on spirit (which could be said to be the consequences that flow from those mechanical bits, really). So, I dont think the "D&D mold" was followed by its subsequent games. Like, at all. In fact, I think subsequent games tried more to separate from that mold purposefuly than to be faithful to it.
What lead us back to my first point:
The late 70s/ early 80s were extremely diverse in playing styles. Trying to picture it as a "monostyle" sounds obtuse to me. Its like trying to picture the 90s as the Age of Melodrama, when in fact this trend was totally insular to the Vampire crowd and not shared on the lightlest with the crowds of Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Over the Edge, CP2020, Paranoia, Unknown Armies, Deadlands, Battletech, etc, etc.
Quote from: silva;674093The late 70s/ early 80s were extremely diverse in playing styles.
Having gamed back then I would say this was accurate. The big changes from my viewpoint were the Campaign Arc which really got going with Dragonlance. And the emphasis on dramatic roleplaying that Vampire tried to do.
Quote from: silva;674093Its like trying to picture the 90s as the Age of Melodrama, when in fact this trend was totally insular to the Vampire crowd and ...
Most of the vampire campaigns I ran across were run like Monsters with superpowers rather than as melodramas as the books suggested.
Old school games had varying characteristics and multiple playstyles were the norm. Playstyles were not so connected to system as the era of the consumer based gamer hadn't fully blossomed. Tables playing the same published products were doing different things with them.
Its easier to pick out "new school" elements than it is to try and pin down everything old school.
If the game involves GNS and you aren't talking about vitamin supplements, you might be new school.
If your gamebook refers to scenes, you might be new school.
If you can't fit your character on a sheet of notebook paper, you might be new school.
If character death occurs so infrequently that you don't quite know how to handle it, you might be new school.
If common sense is detrimental to your success due to rules, you might
be new school.
I've been in a weekly Advanced Fighting Fantasy campaign for about the last five years. It's a British game made in 1986, it has skills but no classes or levels, it isn't zero to hero, it can be quite deadly if you're not careful. It has a mostly unified mechanic, and what actually makes sense is more important than what the rules state. It's old school as far as I'm concerned.
Quote from: silva;674023Corrected for you.
Calling this "TSR-era D&D renaissance" ( = what the OSR really is) an "old school renaissance" is a disservice to the bazillion other games that came out in the 70s and early 80s whose playstyle has absolutely nothing to do with D&D, like Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Champions, Harn, En Garde!, MERP, TMNT, Twilight 2000, Villains & Vigilantes, Ghostbusters, Bunnies and Burrows, etc.
Its like in the future someone coin the term "Golden Age Renaissance" (or GAR) to nostalgicaly refer to the 90s as that period where games really was about storytelling and "Roleplaying over Rollplaying" and LARPs and all that.... when in fact there was only ONE game that did that (Vampire), while there was tons of others that never shared this playstyle, like Shadowrun, Deadlands, Amber, Over the Edge, Earthdawn, Unknown Armies, CP2020, Everway, Heroquest, Tribe 8, etc.
So, whats actually moronic is calling this TSR-era D&D Renaissance as Old-School Renaissance.
There are two problems with this.
First: the popular, well-remembered games from the 70s and 80s - Runequest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Champions - are still around, in editions that are much closer to their original incarnations than 3.x D&D or 4e D&D or D&D Next is to any TSR D&D. If Traveller New Era had become the official and only Traveller for the last 20 years, then you might have an OSR-type game that mimics Classic Traveller and another that mimics MegaTraveller, and so on. But you've got Mongoose Traveller and Traveller5. Likewise, Runequest has had two editions of MRQ, Legend, and Runequest 6. Call of Cthulhu is going into its 7th edition, but the 6th had been only incrementally updated from the early days. Champions and HERO have been around. The point is, for most games that were reasonably popular, there's no room for an OSR for them, because they are still around and recognizable.
Second: D&D and AD&D were bigger than every single game you mentioned, combined. Probably bigger than each by an order of magnitude or more. In an OSR that is maybe several thousand people large, there actually are people who like other games. The games that lots of us like are the ones I mentioned in my first point. The rest are liked by, maybe, one percent of the OSR. So if someone made, say, an En Garde! clone targeted at the OSR - maybe they could expect a couple dozen sales.
Third: there
are attempts at clones of non-D&D games, such as Mutant Future which is Metamorphosis Alpha / Gamma World, or ZeFRS which is TSR Conan, and talk of doing ones like Boot Hill. The thing is, non-TSR games don't get a lot of attention because they're either supported, not popular enough, or licensed.
What this means is that the D&D-centrism of the OSR is not accidental, it's pretty much what is inevitable when you have a community around older games, and all the other popular older games are still supported.
And seriously, Bunnies & Burrows? Moronic.
Quote from: silva;674093Sorry, but I dont agree with you there Tristram.
D&D, Runequest and Traveller are radically different games not only in mechanical bits but also on spirit (which could be said to be the consequences that flow from those mechanical bits, really). So, I dont think the "D&D mold" was followed by its subsequent games. Like, at all. In fact, I think subsequent games tried more to separate from that mold purposefuly than to be faithful to it.
What lead us back to my first point:
The late 70s/ early 80s were extremely diverse in playing styles. Trying to picture it as a "monostyle" sounds obtuse to me. Its like trying to picture the 90s as the Age of Melodrama, when in fact this trend was totally insular to the Vampire crowd and not shared on the lightlest with the crowds of Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Over the Edge, CP2020, Paranoia, Unknown Armies, Deadlands, Battletech, etc, etc.
I think we're saying the same thing in different ways. When I used the phrase 'only in the same way...' that was an indication that I didn't think the games had anything to do with D&D besides sharing a paradigm of early gaming, wherein common features like the six-attribute block, random roll charge, and GM as referee/judge with rulings vs rules inherentlyassumed, not that I think C&S is any more a D&D clone than any other RPG. I would say EC bears as little resemblence to D&D as Traveller, whereas Mazes&Minotaurs is a pre-osric system that takes a format from D&D but is a game into itself rather than aD&D pseudo-clone or hybrid as was suggested.
Quote from: Archangel Fascist;673816. . . I thought the terms interchangeable . . .
They're not. (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2013/03/osr-v-osr-reply-to-eric-tenkar.html)
Quote from: estar;674032It not applicable to OSRIC which is designed to enable publication of support material for AD&D and to PRESERVE it. It has a lot of product identity context sprinkled throughout the book and the licensing is deliberately is setup to make it difficult to make a variant OSRIC.
It makes it more difficult to legally PUBLISH a variant, but it makes it no harder for the GM to modify the rules for his game than it was for a GM to do so for AD&D itself.
I think an OSR game needs to be easy for the GM to modify for his campaign without having to worry that his change to combat effectiveness is going to have some unforeseen effect on the amount of water a character needs to drink (or some other apparently unrelated things) because the rules are so tightly interwoven that any change is likely to have side-effects in apparently unrelated areas of the game because the rules are so tightly interwoven. (1e vs 3.x, for example).
An OSR game is a game based directly on the rules-systems of old-school RPGs, usually D&D.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;674625They're not. (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2013/03/osr-v-osr-reply-to-eric-tenkar.html)
"OSR vs osr" is what I think is what actually is going on as well.
Good writing on that one. :hatsoff:
Quote from: estar;674106Most of the vampire campaigns I ran across were run like Monsters with superpowers rather than as melodramas as the books suggested.
and the designers were famously so disgusted at their customers that they wrote the Diablerie: series of modules to ironically mock them while cashing their checks.
Quote from: CRKrueger;675299and the designers were famously so disgusted at their customers that they wrote the Diablerie: series of modules to ironically mock them while cashing their checks.
That adventure truly SUCKED.
I think it should also be acknowledged that Encounter Critical was written as a joke.
Quote from: jeff37923;675315I think it should also be acknowledged that Encounter Critical was written as a joke.
Indeed, though a joke that served as a bridge between dismissing games as 'fantasy heartbreakers' and seeing how much fun and creativity was present in those early games without the rules-glut, metaplot, and pretententious wankery that became the industry standard in the 90s.
Remember 'storygames' grew out of a joke as well.
Quote from: silva;674023Corrected for you.
Calling this "TSR-era D&D renaissance" ( = what the OSR really is) an "old school renaissance" is a disservice to the bazillion other games that came out in the 70s and early 80s whose playstyle has absolutely nothing to do with D&D, like Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Champions, Harn, En Garde!, MERP, TMNT, Twilight 2000, Villains & Vigilantes, Ghostbusters, Bunnies and Burrows, etc.
This very shit keeps getting rubbed in our faces as if it was somehow the fault of us D&D-OSR-ers. As if we had some sort of
no coloured people or other game systems rule for our club.
It ain't the fucking case. If the fans of all those patently non-D&D old school games got off their asses, started doing cool stuff like retroclones of out-of-print systems or new fan-made modules for Runequest or taking Classic Traveller's rules and adapting them for fantasy gaming
and decided to label all that as "OSR", we would welcome them with open arms.
But they're just not doing it, and it has nothing to do with
us. I don't know whether their inaction is because these fandoms don't have the critical mass to get something started, or because they have a lack of creativity or simply because they're having their own small and obscure movement and don't want to associate with D&D - whatever it is, it's their choice, not ours.
The OSR
is open and universal in that any old-school RPG is welcome. If aforementioned old-school RPGs decide not to visit, that doesn't make us any less welcoming and universal. THEY are the ones doing themselves a disservice but not having a renaissance; we're not keeping them down or outside in any way.
You are wildly misinformed Premier. Check out the thread 'where are the other love letters?' from earlier this week. Other old school games kick started a renaissance online well before D&D clones popped on the scene, and continue to be supported with vast online communities.
The OSR is a loosely-affiliated group of people who use one or more internet vehicles (email groups, messageboards, blogs, facebook, and most recently google+) to market, shill, and otherwise attempt to sell stuff we've written. We succeed in small quantities (a few hundred or, if wildly successful, a few thousand), and we're mostly selling to each other. The OSR is divided into cliques, factions and splinter-groups of amazingly small size along battle-lines of such extreme triviality that we make a disagreement among fashionistas about hemlines look profound.
Other characteristics of the OSR are:- (1) an obsession with feminism and particularly with portrayals of women's armour, in repetitive and immensely long discussions that never involve any women at all; (2) a passionate love affair with the gonzo, which is OSR-speak for genre-bending; and (3) the tendency of its opinion leaders to burn out, flame out, flake out and embarrass themselves hugely.
OSR games are games produced by and/or identified with the OSR. Theoretically, they draw from or have their roots in the first wave of role-playing games from the 1970s and early 1980s. There's no broad consensus about any other criteria.
There are two definite "pyramids" within the OSR about OSR-games.
First, there's the pyramid of old-school-ness, with the actual 1970s games at the top of the pyramid, the faithful retro-clones one tier down, and then an ever-broadening base of games that deviate further and further from the One True Gygaxian Way.
Second, there's the pyramid of hip-ness, with the games that have the most current OSR-hipster appeal at the top of the pyramid (LOTFP, ACKS, DCCRPG etc.), and then lower tiers that deviate further and further from the Ultimate Hipster Appeal.
By all the natural rules of social movements, the OSR should be fragmenting and disintegrating by now. This is not happening because there are several important factors that keep us together. For example, we're all united in our utter hatred of RPGnet, our love of Firefly and Doctor Who, and our vague fantasy that one day we might get to impregnate Felicia Day.
Quote from: jeff37923;675214Good writing on that one. :hatsoff:
Thank you very much - 'preciate it.
Quote from: TristramEvans;675341Other old school games kick started a renaissance online well before D&D clones popped on the scene, and continue to be supported with vast online communities.
Very true.
Quote from: P&P;675346The OSR is a loosely-affiliated group of people who use one or more internet vehicles (email groups, messageboards, blogs, facebook, and most recently google+) to market, shill, and otherwise attempt to sell stuff we've written. We succeed in small quantities (a few hundred or, if wildly successful, a few thousand), and we're mostly selling to each other. The OSR is divided into cliques, factions and splinter-groups of amazingly small size along battle-lines of such extreme triviality that we make a disagreement among fashionistas about hemlines look profound.
Other characteristics of the OSR are:- (1) an obsession with feminism and particularly with portrayals of women's armour, in repetitive and immensely long discussions that never involve any women at all; (2) a passionate love affair with the gonzo, which is OSR-speak for genre-bending; and (3) the tendency of its opinion leaders to burn out, flame out, flake out and embarrass themselves hugely.
OSR games are games produced by and/or identified with the OSR. Theoretically, they draw from or have their roots in the first wave of role-playing games from the 1970s and early 1980s. There's no broad consensus about any other criteria.
There are two definite "pyramids" within the OSR about OSR-games.
First, there's the pyramid of old-school-ness, with the actual 1970s games at the top of the pyramid, the faithful retro-clones one tier down, and then an ever-broadening base of games that deviate further and further from the One True Gygaxian Way.
Second, there's the pyramid of hip-ness, with the games that have the most current OSR-hipster appeal at the top of the pyramid (LOTFP, ACKS, DCCRPG etc.), and then lower tiers that deviate further and further from the Ultimate Hipster Appeal.
By all the natural rules of social movements, the OSR should be fragmenting and disintegrating by now. This is not happening because there are several important factors that keep us together. For example, we're all united in our utter hatred of RPGnet, our love of Firefly and Doctor Who, and our vague fantasy that one day we might get to impregnate Felicia Day.
You should post more.
Quote from: TristramEvans;675327Remember 'storygames' grew out of a joke as well.
I have never heard this before. At risk of thread derailment, please tell me more.
Quote from: jeff37923;675448I have never heard this before. At risk of thread derailment, please tell me more.
Well, IIRC Sorcerer was originally supposed to be a parody of what Edwards thought D&D games were like.
Nah, that was Elf or whatever it was called.
Quote from: jeff37923;675448I have never heard this before. At risk of thread derailment, please tell me more.
(http://www.rpg-resource.org.uk/images/articles/914/baron-munchausen.jpg)
This would be the first story game to identify itself as an rpg. Ultimately is a drinking game that largely parodies RPGs.
Quote from: TristramEvans;675341You are wildly misinformed Premier. Check out the thread 'where are the other love letters?' from earlier this week. Other old school games kick started a renaissance online well before D&D clones popped on the scene, and continue to be supported with vast online communities.
Oh, make no mistake, I'm aware of those. Well, some of them. My point is that if they decide to run their own renaissances on their own without affiliating with the OSR in any way (and I believe it would be good to have more ties between all these revivals)... that's
their call, and not something that
we should be blamed for.
Quote from: TristramEvans;675484(http://www.rpg-resource.org.uk/images/articles/914/baron-munchausen.jpg)
This would be the first story game to identify itself as an rpg. Ultimately is a drinking game that largely parodies RPGs.
Now this I have seen before and I never saw it as a RPG parody, but as you said, a drinking game of storytelling.
Like games, eh? Saynomore, saynomore, squire! A certain trademark, you know what I mean, eh, no need to say it, a nudge is as good as a wink to a blind bat, righto?