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Author Topic: It's a big club, and you're not in it.  (Read 1953 times)

Jam The MF

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It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« on: September 15, 2022, 03:53:02 PM »
In regard to WOTC, and by association Paizo as well; it is worth the effort to point out that in all matters both future and present, new players will always be given priority over the old guard.  At best, the old guard will be offered a token nod of the head or perhaps a passing wink of the eye; as the industry leadership marches quickly toward rainbows, glitter, and unicorns.

Remember: it's a big club, and you're not in it.

The OSR is the home of the Old Guard, in gaming.
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Effete

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2022, 04:07:23 PM »
Their business model is making money first and making good games... well, probably fourth or fifth.
New players has ALWAYS been their bread & butter. Older customers typically drop off their purchases after a few books, being content with what they already have. Once this hit a critical level, it's "New Edition" time!, and the cycle starts all over again.

The accessibility, compatibility, and affordability of the OSR are major features that I'm surprised haven't garnered more attraction, especially in light of the stupidity flooding the hobby in recent years.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2022, 04:26:23 PM »
OSR is for the old guard. Which is also a club. Just a small one. Expect screeching tirades for the smallest deviations from dogma. Arbitrarily and unevenly, but absolutely.

OSR is also not a single company. If I still liked Pathfinder, I could always play the pathfinder I liked, just like the OSR-ians play the old editions they like. If a OSR company goes woke for whatever reason, its not going to get ejected from the multiverse.

rytrasmi

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2022, 04:31:38 PM »
Tourists gravitate to what’s popular. Look at the throngs who stand in line at The Louvre to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa when the place bursting at the seams with amazing art.

The strength of the OSR is also its weakness: independent cells of systems and gamers with no central authority. A constellation like that has no marketing department. Goodman’s Road Crew concept would work for the OSR as a whole, but who’s going to organize that?

Something that one person can do to help chip away at the monopoly is to run public OSR games. Get the word out by directly introducing people to these games.
The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
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FingerRod

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2022, 04:46:35 PM »
Only select products should consider me their primary demographic. And TTRPGs aiming towards teenagers or early 20’s is smart business, period. That does not mean that I am automatically out of the club. There is a little bit of responsibility, on my part as an aging adult, to recognize that.

And honestly, fuck the OSR. It is in the late 3rd quarter, if not the 4th, of its current cycle. It has no semblance of a definition, and I’ll cite literally any thread that tries to do so as evidence. And if defining a ‘movement’ is not important to you, fine, it has been infested by identity politics and sex pests that are absolutely miserable cunts to be around.

The final nail going into the coffin is that, in general, and Pundit and a few others are the exception here, the products are garbage. Form over function, hot, smelly garbage.

PulpHerb

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2022, 04:51:08 PM »
Tourists gravitate to what’s popular. Look at the throngs who stand in line at The Louvre to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa when the place bursting at the seams with amazing art.

Newbies also gravitate to what is popular and what is current. In the 90s when I was active in the NE goth and industrial scene we got a lot of kids who became interested via Nine Inch Nails, which many (most?) hardcore rivetheads considered pop-industrial at best. Running them out as tourists without listening, which some people wanted to do, is just as counterproductive as giving the same amount of energy to anyone regardless of the level of interest of they showed in going beyond the beginning.

Or to use your example, at least a few people standing in line to see the Mona Lisa see something else while waiting and start wondering, "what is that? is there more like it?"

The reality is D&D has long been, and probably always will be, the Nine Inch Nails equivalent in RPGs, with possibly a brief period when Vampire et al were. To the degree I care about One D&D it is in how it might break the connection to those "give me more" newbies to avenues to explore the larger hobby.

David Johansen

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2022, 11:26:04 PM »
In a perfect world there'd be an accepted alternate standard with a tight core and lots of room for people to customize it.  Somewhat like Cephus Engine is to Traveller.  It would have an open license and a compliance clause.  Because I'd dearly like to see roleplaying break free from the D&D brand dominance.
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Rob Necronomicon

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #7 on: September 16, 2022, 05:13:18 AM »
Remember: it's a big club, and you're not in it.

The OSR is the home of the Old Guard, in gaming.

Indeed! But I'm happy not being part of "their" club. ;D
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jeff37923

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #8 on: September 16, 2022, 06:33:34 AM »
In regard to WOTC, and by association Paizo as well; it is worth the effort to point out that in all matters both future and present, new players will always be given priority over the old guard.  At best, the old guard will be offered a token nod of the head or perhaps a passing wink of the eye; as the industry leadership marches quickly toward rainbows, glitter, and unicorns.

Remember: it's a big club, and you're not in it.

The OSR is the home of the Old Guard, in gaming.

The OSR is definitely not the home of the Old Guard in gaming. The OSR can be just as stupidly exclusionary as WotC and Paizo, and will suffer the same fate as those clowns by being so.

I'm happy to just go my own way while pointing out their hypocrisy.
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Tallifer

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #9 on: September 16, 2022, 08:19:32 AM »
When I first started playing Flailsnails on Google Hangouts in 2012, the OSR seemed focused on old school gaming for grognards and like-minded afficianados and open-minded gamers. Since then I have been witness to a sad splintering in my circles: one part of my friends and gaming acquaintances has decided that they need to be as cool and woke as WotC, and while they still play retroclones, they censor players and create worlds a little too anachronistic for me. I still play with both sides separately, but they usually cannot play together.

The Spaniard

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #10 on: September 16, 2022, 08:58:48 AM »
In regard to WOTC, and by association Paizo as well; it is worth the effort to point out that in all matters both future and present, new players will always be given priority over the old guard.  At best, the old guard will be offered a token nod of the head or perhaps a passing wink of the eye; as the industry leadership marches quickly toward rainbows, glitter, and unicorns.

Remember: it's a big club, and you're not in it.

The OSR is the home of the Old Guard, in gaming.


The OSR is definitely not the home of the Old Guard in gaming. The OSR can be just as stupidly exclusionary as WotC and Paizo, and will suffer the same fate as those clowns by being so.

I'm happy to just go my own way while pointing out their hypocrisy.

In your opinion, who is the Old Guard?  Old TSR guys like Kask, Mentzer, etc? 

I would argue that if being exclusionary meant keeping SJW's out, I'm all for it.  They're the touch of death.  Let them in and the whole thing becomes infected.  It always becomes political, they can't help themselves.  They're somehow compelled to find a victim or play the victim.

ForgottenF

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #11 on: September 16, 2022, 09:09:04 AM »
It rather depends on what you mean by "home".

As far as an RPG "scene" goes, you could do worse. If you're over the age of about 28 and your literary influences are more Holger Carlson than Harry Potter, then yeah, you're likely to find more like-minded players if you hang around the OSR.

As far as games go, the OSR is largely for people that want to play slight variations of B/X D&D. Yes, there's some variation, and yes, some people are trying to morph that template into something meaningfully different, but when the Pundit talks about it being an avant-garde design movement, that's starting to ring increasingly hollow to me.

Personally, I do mostly play with grognards and the occasional premature curmudgeon like myself, but of the four games I've joined in the last year (five if you count that one of my games changed system), only one of them has been what most people would call an OSR game.

VisionStorm

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #12 on: September 16, 2022, 09:28:14 AM »
The OSR being the answer to everything is just a religious mantra around these parts, not an objective reality that can be measured or demonstrated. There's plenty of SJW game companies in the OSR, and plenty of deviation from the sacred old rules as well (not that I mind). Sine Nomine (SWN/WWN) is often heralded as one of the greatest exemplars of the OSR and that's basically 3e core rules fused with elements from Traveler and a few nods to older D&D (still decent games, just not sure how compatible to old school D&D they truly are). It's basically just people staring at clouds and seeing what they want to see.

rytrasmi

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #13 on: September 16, 2022, 09:30:39 AM »
I think we’re having like 3 separate but overlapping conversations in this thread depending on one’s definition of OSR.
The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry my friends
Be merry

Armchair Gamer

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Re: It's a big club, and you're not in it.
« Reply #14 on: September 16, 2022, 09:52:06 AM »
OSR has always been divided between "old RPGs" and "old D&D" (and what qualifies as 'old' in both categories has also been in dispute), and now seems to be moving towards "non-WotC/Paizo D&D."