Peter Berbegal at BoingBoing posts an article about the OSR.

Addendum: Pundy gets (screen)name-checked: "The biggest criticism of OSR, voiced by bloggers such as RPGpundit, is that what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do was create something new that would rattle the cages of the hardcore wargamers and make games something that were more open, less restrictive. Today’s old-school misanthropes are merely holding fast to something without any kind of creative impetus to push roleplaying into new territories. In this respect, OSR is itself a kind of fundamentalism. OSR gamers counter this by arguing innovation in D&D has merely meant more rules. And more rules means less wonder, less imagination."

Quote from: Black Vulmea;652352Peter Berbegal at BoingBoing posts an article about the OSR.

Relevant part from the byline, towards the end...

QuoteMaybe we don't need to keep looking back. Is the spirit of OSR really just a bunch of throwback nerds, staring into the abyss? The biggest criticism of OSR, voiced by bloggers such as RPGpundit, is that what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do was create something new that would rattle the cages of the hardcore wargamers and make games something that were more open, less restrictive. Today's old-school misanthropes are merely holding fast to something without any kind of creative impetus to push roleplaying into new territories. In this respect, OSR is itself a kind of fundamentalism. OSR gamers counter this by arguing innovation in D&D has merely meant more rules. And more rules means less wonder, less imagination.

Quote from: jhkim;652357Relevant part from the byline, towards the end...

Beat you by a minute!

Make sure you read down into the comments.

I'm sorry my opening post is so barebones, but I'm trying to do two things at once, and I now I need to take off for the afternoon. I'll post a more substantive reaction later.

Addendum: From the comments, by someone named Ean Moody - couldn't pass this by. "I'm sorry, but as a person who spends their life designing interaction systems I have to disagree.

"Context is a huge driver of human interaction and attitude. Whether we're conscious of it or not, our actions are impacted by the reinforcement we receive from our environment. In the context of a game one of the strongest environmental factors is the rules. It isn't whether they "allow" roleplaying, it's how they interact with the choice to do so, and which player actions they tend to encourage, punish or ignore. Interestingly, most of the time you don't even need to punish an action to discourage it: all you have to do is ignore it while rewarding other alternative actions. People will see not being rewarded as a punishment, and react as such.

"To me a great example of this in D&D is combat, and how it creates a roleplaying vs min-maxing dichotomy. The aggressive, detailed, strict rules governing combat are at direct odds with the goal of exploring characters and creating a welcoming play experience: your backstory, clever characterization, and interesting concept don't mean shit if you don't have the stats to survive a fight.

"Within the game world, these combats are the most common place where your character can be killed. They exert a sort of darwinian pressure on character designs: ineffective characters die, optimized characters live. After you've seen your fourth quirky wizard/cleric hybrid concept die, while the greataxe-wielding fighter is still kicking? It kills people's desire to break the mold and do interesting things. Even individual actions can be punished for being unoptimized: trying to circle someone, slip between enemies, dive tackle, or trip someone provokes punishments: extra checks, attacks of opportunities, etc. Staying still and wailing away with standard attacks makes you much safer, and over time players will start to avoid those actions that "punish" them.

"In the metagame there's another kind of pressure that forces combat-optimized designs: time. Combat as it's structured in D&D can make even a simple fight take an hour or more. Longer fights take even longer, and after a bit players will want to contribute just do do SOMETHING. Making a pacifist character or one who prefers not to get in the thick of fighting simply isn't an option if you actually want to contribute to the majority of play. Combat is equally deadly for everyone (see above) so even though the rules don't "force" you to focus on combat, they will punish you with either boredom or death if you don't put enough focus on it.

"Contrast this with a system designed to encourage interesting play and unique characters, your FATE and Savage Worlds and similar systems. Those rules reward tying your character's flaws and concepts into the mechanical parts of gameplay, and I've personally witnessed how that shift can change a player's entire style of play and shift them from mix-max-y rules lawyers into roleplaying thespians. The player was the same, the setting was the same, but changing the rules' reward map around created an entirely different play experience."

Now I really, REALLY gotta go!

Quote from: Black Vulmea;652352Today's old-school misanthropes are merely holding fast to something without any kind of creative impetus to push roleplaying into new territories. In this respect, OSR is itself a kind of fundamentalism. OSR gamers counter this by arguing innovation in D&D has merely meant more rules. And more rules means less wonder, less imagination."

Kudos to the Pundit for making BoingBoing, that's a fairly heavy duty site.

The adherents of shared narrative gaming have always struck me as being far more misanthropic than anything in these parts. I would translate that comment as "doesn't agree with my stunted rage filled worldview, so imma paste it with the broadest brush I can find".

And so to the substantive point: the OSR is largely characterised by a GM-centric point of view, to whit the GM acts as the interpreter of the rules and setting, and operates on that basis; this requires a simple set of rules, otherwise it would be impossible, or at best very difficult. More rules therefore are anathema to the OSR mindset, reducing as they do they ability of the GM to act as a setting-rules nexus.

In short, the OSR needs simple and therefore not very comprehensive rules.

So it has zero to do with fundamentalism, being simply a feature of a particular playstyle. That is all.

Quote from: jhkim;652357Relevant part from the byline, towards the end...

To answer the question, yes- very much so.

What's interesting is that their driving concerns are almost identical to those at the Forge (hatred of the current gaming style). But where the forge set out to remake the hobby, they went in a different direction- they crawled under the oldest rock they could find to hide.

There are fundies everywhere, despite protestations from everywhere.

I don't give a fuck about the Forge except to say that it's founder is a mental cretin of the lowest order, oh and also GNS sucks.

Looking over at my AD&D books, I see they're still fun to play.

Article ranking on a scale of Fuck You to That Wasn't Terrible: "meh."

AD&D will keep being played, despite the protestations of the usual suspects, like gleichman there.

Quote from: The Traveller;652363So it has zero to do with fundamentalism, being simply a feature of a particular playstyle. That is all.

Some of Pundit's rants and forums like K&KA stand to contradict this statement.

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the times.

Note that the Pundit became part of the OSR when he published Arrows of Indra.  He had a firm idea of how the classic mechanics can be used, write it, and got it published. What everybody see of the OSR is the results of dozens even hundreds of individuals doing just that.  The fact that much it is so retro is result of the popularity of classic D&D and the fact Wizards did little to cater to that audience. But for every "retro" work, there are more doing their own thing.

Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652369Some of Pundit's rants and forums like K&KA stand to contradict this statement.

So how this impacts you if you choose to publish, or blog something for older D&D?

The extremists (of whatever stripe) would only matter if they were gatekeepers. There are none in the OSR. Most of the classic rulesets are under open licenses. Print on Demand is easy to setup, as well as selling on RPGNow.

The real fundamentalists of whatever stripe aren't those playing, however wrong we may find their playstyles, they're the ones not playing but just theorising.

With the storygamers this was exemplified by the GNS theory crowd, including Uncle Ronny himself.

With the OSR guys this is exemplified by James M and various OD&D collectors, engaging in talmudic readings of the rules, Holmes vs Moldvay Basic differences, "let's read through the books of Appendix N, oh and this book should have been there, too," etc.

When you're sitting at your keyboard jerking off, you can be dogmatic about things. Once you're at the game table asking someone to pass the cheetos, you tend to relax a bit. And thus we find game groups playing Burning Wheel one month, and Hackmaster the next.

Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652369Some of Pundit's rants and forums like K&KA stand to contradict this statement.

He's always had good reasons for his points and argued them logically, taking on all comers. Perhaps the more hysterical among the audience are unable to seperate invective from argument and reacted accordingly, but here we have some yahoo branding the OSR 'fundamentalist', not unlike the Taliban.

And you fucking idiots have a problem with me calling them right wing.

Quote from: estar;652372So how this impacts you if you choose to publish, or blog something for older D&D?

The extremists (of whatever stripe) would only matter if they were gatekeepers. There are none in the OSR. Most of the classic rulesets are under open licenses. Print on Demand is easy to setup, as well as selling on RPGNow.

It doesn't. My point is that you can't deny where people get the fundamentalism impression from.

This article is a pretty good read, actually.

Quote from: The Traveller;652374He's always had good reasons for his points and argued them logically, taking on all comers. Perhaps the more hysterical among the audience are unable to seperate invective from argument and reacted accordingly, but here we have some yahoo branding the OSR 'fundamentalist', not unlike the Taliban.

And you fucking idiots have a problem with me calling them right wing.

Sensationalism rarely has adequate reasoning or logic. Take your last sentence, it's just silly and you look silly because of it.