I now have a perverse desire to design a Forge-style game called OSR Taliban!.

Quote from: talysman;758583... although there's a bit of re-interpretation of even these behaviors going on. It's all about seeing some focused, passionate behavior in a couple individuals and choosing to read a hostile motivation into it. Those guys aren't just picking a range of what they want to play... they're forcing everyone else to play the same way! They aren't just singling out late edition mechanics as reasons why they don't play more recent editions... they are rejecting innovation! They aren't just studying the original rules and contemporary commentary to see where they might have diverged from what we think the rules say, or looking for lost rules that might be interesting... they are turning original D&D into a religion, with Gary and Dave as prophets!

I think where the term comes into play is that some people get really hostile when you go against group think.  I loved AD&D as much as others, but I'm not fond of some of the memes coming out, or the outright intolerance portrayed on some of the message boards--it's like you can't just like AD&D, you have to HATE everything else.

I guess it depends on how people behave.  My test is how you treat people who think differently.  If you call a person who plays the newer version of D&D "3tards" or "4ons" or whatever insult, you've failed the test and are kind of engaging in the intolerant behavior.  I also think the grognard faction deserves more criticism because they are the older gents--the people who should know better and be more mature--I can forgive a twenty-something but it's hard to be forgiving of a 50 year old person who should have the maturity and perspective to understand that it's not that important in the scheme of the world.

And yes, OSR Taliban is also taking things to the extreme...but there is a sort of fundamentalist attitude sometimes from elements of the OSR...so maybe a more polite term is apt for that.

Quote from: Marleycat;758416Best I know is WotC boards by Polaris and Gatt but I'm convinced they're trolling on purpose more then anything else at this point. I really don't see actual extreme OSR guys posting anything on the open sites.

Isn't Polaris the one who's always going on about the math?

Quote from: cranebump;758624Isn't Polaris the one who's always going on about the math?

Yeah. I am not sure he actually plays because all he does is go on for pages setting up white room scenerios. It's kind of like watching these guys trying to create PUN PUN for 5e using multi-classing. It's silly because multi-classing is only an option. So in alot of games neither the white room scenerios or multi-classing edge cases will ever be an issue. You know, for people actually playing the game?

Quote from: Haffrung;758554The tenets of the OSR Taliban only became codified when people on certain forums started parsing the reports of Gygax and trying to systematize very early D&D play modes. That's why Taliban is such an apt turn - it isn't standard conservatism, but a very virulent strain that hearkens back to the ideals of a past that never was. The OSR Taliban turned old-school discussion from how people actually played to how people should play.

To be 100% fair, both the worshippers of the early versions of D&D and the idolaters who hate it are loving or hating the D&D that's in their head, because most of them never played it back then, they're too young.

So what you have on the one hand is guys like Jmal trying to divine the old school experience and people rallying around that, then you have the guys hating and talking about stuff they have zero experience with, just echoing purple prose.

Then you have guys like Benoist, who decided to just actually read the rules and decided he liked what it said.  Now after years of being told he's essentially insane for thinking he had IC immersion in his roleplaying and that he was constructing a story whether he knew it or not, and that he was brain damaged, and that all problems that surfaced in 3e were present all the time in 1e, that choosing a dagger instead of shortsword is charop, that 13th Age is what D&D promised but never delivered and all the other 100% pure horseshit sane people have to choke down if they are engaged with this hobby on the internet, he could get pretty damn angry.  Getting labeled OSR Taliban for suggesting that the box was an incomplete box for not including chargen was a bit of a stretch.

Liking Unearthed Arcana or disliking Unearthed Arcana is an opinion.

Pointing out that classes like Barbarian, Cavalier, and rules like Weapon Specialization can fundamentally change the nature of the game is pointing out a fact.

Claiming that UA is a non-sacred text because Gygax published under extreme duress and torture because he needed the money is getting towards OSR Taliban.  I've never heard anyone say that on THIS forum.

Pundit started this thread due to an unfortunate incident that happened on his blog and probably shouldn't have.

Quote from: JRT;758620I think where the term comes into play is that some people get really hostile when you go against group think.  I loved AD&D as much as others, but I'm not fond of some of the memes coming out, or the outright intolerance portrayed on some of the message boards--it's like you can't just like AD&D, you have to HATE everything else.

JRT, any intolerance you perceive is not due to your having a lack of hate for editions other than AD&D, it's for coming on a board and lecturing people about AD&D when you freely admit that you don't play the game (or any RPG as far as I know) and never have.  You just enjoy reading them.

I don't know why this is so hard to understand. I wouldn't presume to go on a classic car restoration forum and lecture hot rodders on the basis of having looked through a Chilton's once, either, and it's basically the same thing.

Pinning any resulting flak on whether or not those hot rodders are generalists or lovers of a specific brand of car is completely missing the point.

Quote from: CRKrueger;758538Remember also the OSR "One True Wayism" really only came about defensively as the new school and cool kids felt it necessary to tear down, denigrate, marginalize, and insult everything that came before as something only the RPG version of Archie Bunker played.

This is true.  I had seen other game forums completely take a piss on DnD and when 4th edition came they really started to piss on older editions.  Hell even White Wolf join the fray when they did that "Graduate to a better game" advertisement for Exalted second edition.

Hell even in this day I see world of darkness writers still dissing on dungeons and dragons along with the people playing those games.  Even the writers of exalted 3.0 who had possibly one of the best cases why you should NEVER put money into kickstarter took a chance to insult warhammer 40k.  Yet they are the ones in the hot seat because CCP fuck them over.

Giving up discussing RPGs online was one of the wisest decisions I've taken.

I know you can't just give it up because its your job pundit, but these things seldom end in something productive.

Best to just enjoy the game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;758628So what you have on the one hand is guys like Jmal trying to divine the old school experience and people rallying around that, then you have the guys hating and talking about stuff they have zero experience with, just echoing purple prose.

Then you have guys like Benoist, who decided to just actually read the rules and decided he liked what it said.  Now after years of being told he's essentially insane for thinking he had IC immersion in his roleplaying and that he was constructing a story whether he knew it or not, and that he was brain damaged, and that all problems that surfaced in 3e were present all the time in 1e, that choosing a dagger instead of shortsword is charop, that 13th Age is what D&D promised but never delivered and all the other 100% pure horseshit sane people have to choke down if they are engaged with this hobby on the internet, he could get pretty damn angry.

I'm fine with divining the origins of the game. In the mid-90s, long before the OSR or internet forums about old-school D&D were a thing, I made my own lonely investigation into Gygaxian dungeons, with access only to the original Greyhawk supplement, a photocopied Blackmoor, and old Strategic Review and Dragon magazines. I even created my own megadungeon with a town sitting right on top.

So I get the appeal. I don't hate early Gygaxian D&D. What I dislike is being told by guys who have read the Old School Primer and hang out on old-school forums that I wasn't playing right when we cleared out the Caves of Chaos, or that you really need to track provisions and use hirelings to play old-school D&D, or that there's no way you should have three +1 longswords by the time you're level 5. If people want to model their game after a campaign played in Lake Geneva from 1975 to 1977, then fill your boots. Just don't pretend that's anything more than a preference, or that it was the standard approach to the game by the time the Holmes Basic set was flying off the shelves, let alone AD&D.

pffft, its "OSR Nazis"! Taliban is such a hipster term.

Boys, boys!  This isn't so hard!

You're ALL wrong!

Quote from: Haffrung;758648So I get the appeal. I don't hate early Gygaxian D&D. What I dislike is being told by guys who have read the Old School Primer and hang out on old-school forums that I wasn't playing right when we cleared out the Caves of Chaos, or that you really need to track provisions and use hirelings to play old-school D&D, or that there's no way you should have three +1 longswords by the time you're level 5. If people want to model their game after a campaign played in Lake Geneva from 1975 to 1977, then fill your boots. Just don't pretend that's anything more than a preference, or that it was the standard approach to the game by the time the Holmes Basic set was flying off the shelves, let alone AD&D.

It seems to me that around that time, there were two major groups of people playing D&D - the old grognards, and the kids that picked up various Basic sets - let's just call them "munchkins".

Now, I'm definitely a part of that latter group, and I'm 42.  So there's not really a bunch of people in the former group around any more.  I was lucky enough to get to play with a parent of a friend that had been running a game since the earlier days.  And it was illuminating.  How they viewed RPGs was pretty much totally different than the interpretation I had gleaned from the games I had bought when I was twelve.

And don't get me wrong.  How us munchkins interpreted D&D led to a bunch of cool stuff.  There's nothing "bad" or "wrong" about it.  But let's also not delude ourselves that we were playing the same game (in any meaningful sense) as the grognards at the time.

Personally, I'm happy that the OSR is rediscovering and reinvigorating that style of play, because it was a pretty damn cool way to run the game.  And, regardless of what you want to call it, it's worth pointing out as a separate style of play, and one that's probably closer to the style of game that the rules were built around (and that closeness makes the rules work with a lot less friction, to be honest).

And yeah, if you're not tracking provisions or using hirelings, you're probably not playing the game in the manner that the rules were built around.  So fucking what?  And if you're talking to a bunch of folks that are talking about that style of play, yeah, they're gonna say "that's not really what we're talking about".  Again, so what?

Quote from: EOTB;758633JRT, any intolerance you perceive is not due to your having a lack of hate for editions other than AD&D, it's for coming on a board and lecturing people about AD&D when you freely admit that you don't play the game (or any RPG as far as I know) and never have.  You just enjoy reading them.

I think you're making a few assumptions.  First of all, this is not just based on my experiences with the Alehouse and elsewhere, it's based on observing the behavior on several different forums over the last 10 years.  

The main thing I notice in regards to the "hate" is one hypocritical rule I see on many of the forums--nobody can make fun of the games the forum is dedicated to, but you are allowed to blast, belittle, etc., the "enemy game".  To me, that seems wrong, especially if you're trying to lead by example--and if you started an exclusive community to do that, why engage it the same behavior.  I have yet to see a forum dedicated to classic gaming where the rules would be applied equally (don't bash anybody's game, keep it civil, etc.)

It could just be a magnification of on-line personas where I think in real life most of the people are probably a lot nicer than they come across.  But still, I don't think it reflects very well on the hobby.

(And to be clear, even people who don't get enjoyment out of the act of tabletop gaming can enjoy it in other ways, and making fun of them for that is, to me, akin of making fun of a homosexual person because he doesn't have sex "the right way".  Unless you are debating the act of gaming, there are other things both people can debate and have common interest, since even the gamers read the books, appreciate the art, etc.)

Quote from: CRKrueger;758628Claiming that UA is a non-sacred text because Gygax published under extreme duress and torture because he needed the money is getting towards OSR Taliban.  I've never heard anyone say that on THIS forum.

Yeah, that's an example of the extremism I see.  I've seen people accuse him of not writing Lejendary Adventures because they didn't like it and they can't believe the same man who wrote AD&D wrote that--but if you analyze the text patterns, etc, it's pretty much him.  

Maybe Gary did change, and his writing patterns and themes drifted from what you originally loved.

But perhaps also you changed as well and the same magic you felt reading a new work by Gygax in 1980 doesn't feel the same in 1993 or 1999...

Well, if I keep getting fun, new OSR content, along with a snazzy wardrobe, you can call me OSR Taliban! Dressing up as a Pac Man ghost sounds like fun.
:cool::cheerleader: