Quote from: RPGPundit;837033Yeah, Edwards is absurd.

Yes, but his attacks are all against White Wolf (or 2e AD&D) 'Illusionist' play, Dragonlance railroading, choices-don't-matter, publisher metaplots et al. Of modern era stuff the Paizo Adventure Paths would be directly in his sights, whereas a pure Gamist OD&D game would not be. He does dislike and misunderstand how simulation, gamism and drama can interlock and mutually support each other, which is what I'd tend to think of as classic D&D gaming, but his Forge/Indie movement wasn't a direct attack on that, it was a direct attack on '90s White Wolf gaming.

Quote from: S'mon;837058Yes, but his attacks are all against White Wolf (or 2e AD&D) 'Illusionist' play, Dragonlance railroading, choices-don't-matter, publisher metaplots et al.

Which are all examples of things I'd expect the OSR guys would at least tacitly approve being attacked.

Quote from: S'mon;837058Yes, but his attacks are all against White Wolf (or 2e AD&D) 'Illusionist' play, Dragonlance railroading, choices-don't-matter, publisher metaplots et al. Of modern era stuff the Paizo Adventure Paths would be directly in his sights, whereas a pure Gamist OD&D game would not be. He does dislike and misunderstand how simulation, gamism and drama can interlock and mutually support each other, which is what I'd tend to think of as classic D&D gaming, but his Forge/Indie movement wasn't a direct attack on that, it was a direct attack on '90s White Wolf gaming.

He wrote an RPG "Elfs" specifically to satirise and poke fun at old school D&D, to bury it by laughing at it.

Here's a quote from him at A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons:

QuoteNo wonder people either idealize or vilify their youthful experiences playing D&D. On the one hand, it was you and your best-est friends, working something out together and arriving at (quite possibly) your first-ever Social Contract with other people, completely isolated from adults-approved activities. In other words, you remember it fondly not because the game itself was good, but because it wasn't - you remember your repair of it at the Step On Up and Challenge levels, and the good moments, however common or few they were, were all triumphs.

You see, we're all deluded if we think we enjoyed playing D&D. Ron knows best. Let's play one of his approved games.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;837067He wrote an RPG "Elfs" specifically to satirise and poke fun at old school D&D, to bury it by laughing at it.

Here's a quote from him at A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons:



You see, we're all deluded if we think we enjoyed playing D&D. Ron knows best. Let's play one of his approved games.

I've played Elfs. It didn't make me less interested in old-school D&D, just taught me that mechanics don't have to assume people wouldn't be playing the game for laughs:).
In that regard Ron Edwards helped my appreciation of old-school D&D, the opposite of the guy who first tried to run AD&D2e for me and a group of my friends;).

Quote from: S'mon;837058Forge/Indie movement wasn't a direct attack on that, it was a direct attack on '90s White Wolf gaming.

Bingo. But they had no one but themselves to blame for being under WW's heel, figuratively speaking. They bought into the WW illusion, then they rebelled against it.

The OSR was much more a reaction to WotC changing the game.

Quote from: Arminius;837111The OSR was much more a reaction to WotC changing the game.

Wasn't the success of Pathfinder a reaction to that as well?

Quote from: Simlasa;837114Wasn't the success of Pathfinder a reaction to that as well?

Yes, and I'm referring to PF as "the OSR of the 3e fans".

Absolutely, although of course only post-4e. And I think PF also had some impetus not only in the mechanical changes but the change in the license from d20 and OGL (the two related licenses for 3.x) to GSL (for 4e).

The OSR I think has roots going back to the 3e era, though I'm not sure when the abbreviation was coined. Apparently OSRIC was released in 2006, and Dragonfoot was a hotbed of anti-3e reaction going back to...?

Quote from: Arminius;837118Absolutely, although of course only post-4e. And I think PF also had some impetus not only in the mechanical changes but the change in the license from d20 and OGL (the two related licenses for 3.x) to GSL (for 4e).

The OSR I think has roots going back to the 3e era, though I'm not sure when the abbreviation was coined. Apparently OSRIC was released in 2006, and Dragonfoot was a hotbed of anti-3e reaction going back to...?

Yeah, but it's still a reaction to WotC abandoning a previous edition, and changing the edition's assumptions. As such, it's not meaningfully different whether it was a reaction to 3e, 4e or even 5e:).

And yes, systems that are trying to be OSR for 4e fans have already appeared, though I think they're based on the OGL;).

Quote from: Arminius;837118The OSR I think has roots going back to the 3e era, though I'm not sure when the abbreviation was coined. Apparently OSRIC was released in 2006, and Dragonfoot was a hotbed of anti-3e reaction going back to...?

Not sure about the abbreviation, but it's commonly accepted that the phrase itself (though not yet capitalised) was first used here.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the role of C&C, and more importantly, C&C as a symptom of "old school demand" in reaction to 3.x. C&C was published in 2004, so that pushes things back a bit.

EDIT: to push it back a bit further, though more in adventure design than in mechanics, the DCC modules apparently date to 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idylls_of_the_Rat_King

Quote from: Arminius;837111The OSR was much more a reaction to WotC changing the game.

From D&D 2E to D&D 3E, i.e. it was a reaction against AD&D 2E going out of print.

Quote from: Simlasa;837114Wasn't the success of Pathfinder a reaction to that as well?

That was a response to the move D&D 3.5E to D&D 4E.

Quote from: Arminius;837118The OSR I think has roots going back to the 3e era, though I'm not sure when the abbreviation was coined. Apparently OSRIC was released in 2006, and Dragonfoot was a hotbed of anti-3e reaction going back to...?

People played old school D&D from 1974 to 1999. In 2000 they brought out Magic the RPG. Dragonsfoot has been going since at least 2002. The term "old school renaissance" dates from 2005. Then OSRIC in 2006, and it's been OSR ever since.

So "old school" roleplaying never went away, there was just a dip and a resurgence in popularity.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;837067He wrote an RPG "Elfs" specifically to satirise and poke fun at old school D&D, to bury it by laughing at it.

Here's a quote from him at A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons:


You see, we're all deluded if we think we enjoyed playing D&D. Ron knows best. Let's play one of his approved games.

No, he's not saying 'we're all deluded if we think we enjoyed playing D&D' (that is a charge he levels vs 'brain damaging' Illusionist on-rails play) as children in the old school style. He's saying we're deluded if we think the rules were good, that we in fact derived enjoyment from fixing the rules and making our own fun. Edwards believes rules should define the play experience in a way that is anathema to OSR, and I certainly disagree strongly with him, but it's important to understand that this is not contempt for OD&D in the way he has contempt for post-Dragonlance play. He sees it as an immature form of play I think, but not a fundamentally broken or dysfunctional mode of play.

Quote from: Arminius;837111Bingo. But they had no one but themselves to blame for being under WW's heel, figuratively speaking. They bought into the WW illusion, then they rebelled against it.

The OSR was much more a reaction to WotC changing the game.

Sure, I agree with both your points. People wanted "story" in their games, and ended up with the pre-written story where their PCs no longer mattered at all - either they were replacable cyphers or in the worst cases they were onlookers while NPCs did the cool stuff. This mode of play is still common today; most Paizo APs are structured as pre-written stories, and most seasons of WotC's Encounters program are literally scene-by-scene stories where the players just roll dice.

Funny that OSR never rebelled against what had been the dominant mode of play in the '90s - indeed 3e in 2000 was itself trying to move away from railroad/illusionist play with its "Back to the Dungeon!" mantra. Instead OSR was specifically a rebellion against the mechanics - "character building" and suchlike - of 3e, and 3e's general tone of 'Player Primacy, GM Subordination' in 3e - but that tone was itself a reaction against railroady '90s play where players felt helpless in the hands of the GM's plot. But the result was that the OSR in delving back into history discovered pre-2e (and especially pre-1983!) modes of play that had long been lost. I find it slightly amusing that the initial Reactionary sites like Dragonsfoot are centred on the module-based play of the '80s, and often don't get along well with OSR purists who are looking for the original pre-module modes of play that were really already dying out when the 1e AD&D DMG was published in 1979.

Quote from: S'mon;837210No, he's not saying 'we're all deluded if we think we enjoyed playing D&D' (that is a charge he levels vs 'brain damaging' Illusionist on-rails play) as children in the old school style. He's saying we're deluded if we think the rules were good, that we in fact derived enjoyment from fixing the rules and making our own fun. Edwards believes rules should define the play experience in a way that is anathema to OSR, and I certainly disagree strongly with him, but it's important to understand that this is not contempt for OD&D in the way he has contempt for post-Dragonlance play. He sees it as an immature form of play I think, but not a fundamentally broken or dysfunctional mode of play.

It's splitting hairs. He still thinks we are deluded. He still thought it was terrible. He still spends a lot of time insulting and belittling everything or claiming credit for it.

As an aside, my thoughts on Dragonlance can be summed up by - I bought DL1, read it, sold it, and didn't buy another TSR product for 25 years!