Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652377Sensationalism rarely has adequate reasoning or logic. Take your last sentence, it's just silly and you look silly because of it.

And yet somehow it stings because it has the ring of truth, doesn't it.

Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652375It doesn't. My point is that you can't deny where people get the fundamentalism impression from.

Sure and it been there since Day 1. It only gotten worse as the OSR has grown so large that what a person's thinks what it is about is dependent on what slice of it he sees.

Quote from: The Traveller;652379And yet somehow it stings because it has the ring of truth, doesn't it.

Not really. I think you're ascribing motives to justify a point in your own head but that's as far as it goes, to be honest.

Quote from: estar;652381Sure and it been there since Day 1. It only gotten worse as the OSR has grown so large that what a person's thinks what it is about is dependent on what slice of it he sees.

Okay but that is besides my point. I agree with you, for what it's worth.

So, come on, OSR Fundamentalists, give us an inside scoop. When are you planning to attack WotC/Hasbro headquarters, and how? While bombs may be a bit overused, I'd personally suggest a gargantuan, stone - cut D20 being dropped from an airplane.

Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652382Not really. I think you're ascribing motives to justify a point in your own head but that's as far as it goes, to be honest.

I'd go into it further but the mods have proscribed that particular topic, unfortunately.

Note I have no particular interest in the OSR, playing OSR games, or defending the OSR on its own merits. I just don't like dickheads, and the OSR guys seem to be simply having a good time enjoying themselves.

Is that clear enough or do you need a picture drawn in crayon?

I feel sad that what I got so far was "innovation" is strictly to mean core system mechanics in a tightly focused context. It feels like an abandonment of the other pivotal aspect of RPGs, the setting, the world of imagination, into a sort of fungible and disposable commodity. I will reread to see if my initial impressions are wrong, but it it sounds like a terrible trade-off of the immersive element for greater noise interference with the game signal.



What of those who saw RPGs' settings as the selling point? Some of the fondest memories shared with other gamers are TSR worlds and how we ran them. To see OSR revisit this well with new settings and setting-inspired tailored sub-systems should be noted as a joyful expansion of options. To see only fundamentalism seems a shallow assessment.

No one is saying people shouldn't experiment with system mechanics. I just hear OSR people uninterested in conversion to other people's fascination with system. They want to be respected for not sharing the same interest in system core design as others not sharing the same interest in setting design. At least that's what I see.

Quote from: One Horse Town;652366There are fundies everywhere, despite protestations from everywhere.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;652373The 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.

These two have it.

Quote from: The Traveller;652386I'd go into it further but the mods have proscribed that particular topic, unfortunately.

Note I have no particular interest in the OSR, playing OSR games, or defending the OSR on its own merits. I just don't like dickheads, and the OSR guys seem to be simply having a good time enjoying themselves.

Is that clear enough or do you need a picture drawn in crayon?

At this point, you're just talking past me. I have no idea what assumptions you're having and it's pretty difficult for me to follow you, sorry.

Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652389At this point, you're just talking past me. I have no idea what assumptions you're having and it's pretty difficult for me to follow you, sorry.

Apology accepted, on all counts.

Quote from: estar;652370Note 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.

My first introduction to OSR was exaclty what your describe. The person who introduced me had strong opinions on mechanics old and new, and the thing he liked about so many of the old school products out there is they take the core game but improve on it in interesting ways he often agreed with. So in many cases it was a blend of old with new that created something different yet familiar. When Pundit proposed Arrows of Indra, and when I actually started seeing bits of the manuscript, that is what I found impressive about it.

I have to say, my experience publishing an OSR game, as a publisher that has mostly made very non-OSR games, has been positive. There are so many different voices out there with their own point of view giving me feedback. I have not been hit by any gatekeepers or fundamentalists at all.

Good article.

By the time the term OSR was cointed, the OSR was already becoming a Forge-like movement, characterized mainly by a narrow definition of what 'real' D&D entailed, excessive navel-gazing, and an emerging group identity that tried to present a united front to its forum-foes.

A few years ago I concluded it was doing more harm than good when I read the campaign journal of local DM who wanted to run a B/X D&D game the way 'it was supposed to be run.' When his players (who had all played B/X and AD&D back in the day) didn't get onboard with hirelings, pursue rumours as enthusiastically as the DM wanted, or map the mega-dungeon properly, the DM wound down the campaign and chalked it up as a disappointment. OSR forums had planted so many notions of playing D&D 'the way it was intended' that ran against the very spirit it was trying to preserve. All you need to find out who people used to play D&D is to read pre-2007 posts on Dragonsfoot of the Necromancer Games site.

Add to that a suspicion that a lot of posters on OSR forums are indulging in revisionist history about how they played in order to fit in with the orthodoxy (early Dragonsfoot forums show far more diversity in how people say they played), and I frankly don't have much use for it altogether. Mazes & Minotaurs is about the only real notable game to come out of the OSR, and it was designed and put out there independently of the movement.

Quote from: The Traveller;652390Apology accepted, on all counts.

If that is your comprehension of anything I've said, then I don't understand why you just don't have these tiffs with yourself. You just look really silly self-projecting like that.

Quote from: Kanye Westeros;652394If that is your comprehension of anything I've said, then I don't understand why you just don't have these tiffs with yourself. You just look really silly self-projecting like that.

I'd imagine that's only one of a great many things you don't understand.

Quote from: Opaopajr;652387What of those who saw RPGs' settings as the selling point? Some of the fondest memories shared with other gamers are TSR worlds and how we ran them. To see OSR revisit this well with new settings and setting-inspired tailored sub-systems should be noted as a joyful expansion of options.

Agreed 100%

I really, really miss that stuff.