The OSR can either be a golden age in design and play, or it can be a Cargo Cult of make-believe purity for a misunderstood past.

Having observed this spat on Twitter, my opinion is "a pox on both your houses." 

I love both!!! 

Still tilting at that messaging medium I see. God forbid folks should do what they want with the freedom they have.

All this over being called neener, neener, by Stuart Marshall.

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/a-working-definition-of-the-osr/msg793856/#msg793856

The Post that Started it all
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/old-school-rocks-retro-clones-suck/msg282499/#msg282499

Rob's Note: It surprising how much neener-neener-neener was used on this site.

Another Rob's Note: You done good work, but this way of marketing your shit is bullshit. Normally arguments should be discussed on their own merits but in your case for whatever reason you continue to feel need to denigrate elements of the OSR in order to market your own material. And this been going on for over a decade and it is as lame today as was then. 

Quote from: estar on October 24, 2014, 04:13:36 PM
Getting close to the source of the issue.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281177Ok, I'm going to come out and say it. I love old-school, and old-school gaming, but basically, I think retro-clone games suck ass. OSRIC; Labyrinth Lord, etc., they're all pointlessly stupid.

If you want something classic, why the fuck would you go with this? The originals are all still out there ( you can get the RC pdf for $5), and there's NOTHING in any of these "clones" that make them more worthwhile than the original.

If, on the other hand, you want something with "old school" sentiment, but not actually old-school rules, then again why the fuck would these be any good to you? Why not just go for a game (like, say, "Forward... to Adventure!") that manages to capture the old-school feel without having to just be a cheapass ripoff of an actual old-school game, and presents new elements and a modern rules-design sensibility without being hassled with trying to balance that with trying to look and stay close enough to "AD&D 1e with Unearth Arcana rules but without Cavaliers" or some shit like that?!

Ok, there's my ranting for the day. Discuss.

The Pundits response are calm and reasonable including this one.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281902Again, I'm not saying they're evil or damaging to the hobby, I'm just saying that I personally don't like them.t

And then oh man there was this.

Quote from: My game's more popular than your game. 

Also, neener neener neener.

Later in the thread FtA! marketing gets discussed.

I posted this (below) on the youtube channel, but I was not aware of the "history" behind the video.   I'm absolutely with  @estar (Rob)  here- there is room for everything, and nerds getting in arguments over one make believe faerie and elf game vs another make believe faerie and elf game is pretty ridiculous.

While I prefer for people to give us "fresh takes" on D&D (As below), I  still love  S&W WB , Iron Falcon, and other clones I own. They have served me well over the years including introducing many Kids to RPGS over nearly a 10 year run with my Son and his friends. I love straight up Whitebox in particular for a non no nonsense fast to set up and get alot of play time in game.

QuoteWe had little to no access to 'zines like Alarums & Excursions or The Dragon when I was starting out, that was later around 1980 and beyond. So when the Basic Holmes book and MM first showed up we were really excited about AD&D coming to fruition. By the time the DMG was a couple months into release, 4 out of the 5 of us in our group had decided to go back to OD&D picking and choosing some bits from AD&D we liked (increased HD, spells, magic items, etc). By this time the library and afterschool clubs were becoming a thing and we started to see the rules lawyers and purists as we would fill in as a DM, or jump into a pickup game cos the normal group members couldn't make it. etc. So while I was extremely happy to see S&W & other "clones" to harken back to TSR era games, I'm way happier to see the "inspired bys" systems that try to take the game somewhere else- Just like everyone did before the Hobby became a big business. Whether they are a Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, or Ruins of Arduin, or something modern like Dungeon World and 13th Age with their nods back to a "D&D construction Kit"- I'm glad to see people going somewhere else instead of regurgitating the same old shit that's been around for nearly 50 years. These "inspired by" games are in the spirit of the original game and other games of that time (T&T, RQ, Arduin, etc)- a time when it was assumed, and you were actually supposed to do things your own way and let your setting inform your ruleset- Most of the output of Wizards, Paizo, and similar are game systems to be adhered to and mastered and where systems are there to inform your setting.....A "shared experience". Blech. Screw that.

The OSR movement will be stronger, if there is an atmosphere of respect; and a clear explanation to newcomers, which titles represent the earliest play styles, and which are gonzo takes on the original frameworks.  Make it easy for newcomers to dip their toes in the waters of the OSR.

I really like the idea of the OSR going with new ideas and being a non-profit like the original designers. Where I differ is that I don't want to get stuck with some of the baggage that Pundit likes (the six abilities, d20 vs AC, saves, etc.), as I played early games despite their rules, not because of them.

IMHO - There is a lot of talking past each other here.

Jeffro's basic stance is not controversial at all:

"Hey I played AD&D RAW reading the books carefully, and was able to re-create the 1:1 real time campaign paradigm St. Gygax talks about on pg. 7 of the AD&D PHB. And it is awesome...!" 

Hey, great. I think that even if you don't run a 1:1 real time campaign there are a lot of things you can learn from it and apply to the standard conventional home game to enhance your play.

But then he has gone and followed it up with: "...annnd if you don't play D&D with 1:1 timing they way it was done by St. Gary back in the day then you are playing a fake version of D&D..."

I don't think that he can act surprised that some of the cool things about the 1:1 play paradigm get completely drowned out and ignored in all the noise that comes from people reacting to the whole "...you are playing a fake version of D&D." he tags on at the end.

And of course people are almost exclusively reacting and talking about the whole "..anything less is fake D&D", and not the awesome bits of the 1:1 play paradigm he re-created.

He's hamstringing his own message here just a bit...


Of course the real mystery is why the fuck I made a twitter account to jump into this mess... yeeessshh WTF did I do..

This was a great vid.

I'm definitely of the later camp. The innovation that's been happening over the last few years has been fantastic.

I actually don't like Dungeon crawling or high-level characters loaded with magical items and infinite hit points. That's one of the reasons I left D&D years ago. In fact, I don't even like D&D in its original form per se, but it led to the OSR which I love, so happy days.

"The OSR" is garbage, and always has been.

"The OSR" is a hangout for craven has-beens and never-will-be's whose first brush with RPGs of the old school was either a late 90s purchase of the Rules Cyclopedia, arguably one of the driest and dullest and least-fun role-playing game books ever published, or they're true game tourists who saw a bunch of ripe sucks willing to throw down some hard-earned greenbacks for something, anything, that promised them it could be just like 1982 in their unairconditioned garage or moldy basement, one more time.

The soi disant "Old School Gaming authorities" seeped out of nowhere in the early 2010s, sneering and preening about how they had somehow cracked the code of Appendix N, or only that by engaging in the most ridiculous, reductive stripping down of D&D to some kind of ur-role-playing game supplemented by their own awful forays into so-called "weird fantasy" (which seems to be some kind of race to the bottom of usability in terms of presentation and content). 

Of course, I couldn't lay all of this at the feet of the hacks and con-men without mentioning the orbiters who enabled this bullshit, and seemed to fill my PMs and emails with wonderful recommendations and queries as to whether or not I had played Carcosa or Maze of the Blue Medusa or Lamentations of the Flame Princess or whatever other precious precious scat that just might have a gold cufflink embedded in it so here's a spoon and get digging was shat out in blessedly limited print runs this past convention season.  No no, the blame for the creation of these astroturf-bound (hidebound is far too organic a term for this flim-flammery) "gAmInG lUmInArIeS" (alas that there isn't a font set that lets me more accurately heap my utter contempt and disgust on that very concept) must rest evenly across all of their narrow, pimply shoulders equally.

And so we come to it.  DAS OSR is so self-serving, so self-fellating that it's bent around into a donut shape. 

You wanna know where the real old-school is?  It's right here.  It's me, baby.  I was doing my thing and creating classic AD&D modules by hand, putting them out there, when the all-clown circus that has labeled itself the Federal Government Bureau of Classic D&D were all off doing charop wankery with d20 rule systems and curling their lips up at even the very notion of playing AD&D or OD&D.  I look at my buddies over at KnKA, then I look out at the body of navel-gazing lint pickers who've tried to decode classic RPGs and create some kind of ridiculous "authority" on classic gaming, and I tell the latter group: where the fuck did you people just blow in from?  Because we were already here.  I don't care if anyone "shows up late".  Nobody on this forum was hanging out in Lake Geneva in 1973/'74.  What I do care about is this crowd of dimwits who strolled in and acted like they were the papacy of classic D&D (and other games)

All I can say that I been letting players trash my settings since late 1978 starting with Holmes and going over to AD&D when the DMG was released in 79. Everything I did in the ensuing decades refereeing wise stems from that. That about as old school as anything and I was pretty much out of step with my peers in that regard. Going left where most in my neck of the woods went right.

You wanna know where the real old-time is? It all of us back in the day. And we were not all in lock-step unison as to what we did with the D&D/AD&D. Even in the rural town I grew up in.

I did not know that Gary Gygax didn't play his own version of AD&D.  To think of it, all those books, all those rules, were all a bunch of B.S. just to make money. 

All I know is that I came out of watching this video absolutely excited and freshly inspired to do my own crazy shit in an OSR framework.  Not that I needed anyone's permission, it's just nice to step back and celebrate the possibilities in taking the framework and running with it. Thanks for posting this video!

Quote from: estar on August 18, 2021, 12:44:20 AM
You wanna know where the real old-time is? It all of us back in the day. And we were not all in lock-step unison as to what we did with the D&D/AD&D. Even in the rural town I grew up in.

Bingo.

Quote from: thedungeondelver on August 18, 2021, 12:24:49 AM
"The OSR" is garbage, and always has been.

"The OSR" is a hangout for craven has-beens and never-will-be's whose first brush with RPGs of the old school was either a late 90s purchase of the Rules Cyclopedia, arguably one of the driest and dullest and least-fun role-playing game books ever published, or they're true game tourists who saw a bunch of ripe sucks willing to throw down some hard-earned greenbacks for something, anything, that promised them it could be just like 1982 in their unairconditioned garage or moldy basement, one more time.

The soi disant "Old School Gaming authorities" seeped out of nowhere in the early 2010s, sneering and preening about how they had somehow cracked the code of Appendix N, or only that by engaging in the most ridiculous, reductive stripping down of D&D to some kind of ur-role-playing game supplemented by their own awful forays into so-called "weird fantasy" (which seems to be some kind of race to the bottom of usability in terms of presentation and content). 

Of course, I couldn't lay all of this at the feet of the hacks and con-men without mentioning the orbiters who enabled this bullshit, and seemed to fill my PMs and emails with wonderful recommendations and queries as to whether or not I had played Carcosa or Maze of the Blue Medusa or Lamentations of the Flame Princess or whatever other precious precious scat that just might have a gold cufflink embedded in it so here's a spoon and get digging was shat out in blessedly limited print runs this past convention season.  No no, the blame for the creation of these astroturf-bound (hidebound is far too organic a term for this flim-flammery) "gAmInG lUmInArIeS" (alas that there isn't a font set that lets me more accurately heap my utter contempt and disgust on that very concept) must rest evenly across all of their narrow, pimply shoulders equally.

And so we come to it.  DAS OSR is so self-serving, so self-fellating that it's bent around into a donut shape. 

You wanna know where the real old-school is?  It's right here.  It's me, baby.  I was doing my thing and creating classic AD&D modules by hand, putting them out there, when the all-clown circus that has labeled itself the Federal Government Bureau of Classic D&D were all off doing charop wankery with d20 rule systems and curling their lips up at even the very notion of playing AD&D or OD&D.  I look at my buddies over at KnKA, then I look out at the body of navel-gazing lint pickers who've tried to decode classic RPGs and create some kind of ridiculous "authority" on classic gaming, and I tell the latter group: where the fuck did you people just blow in from?  Because we were already here.  I don't care if anyone "shows up late".  Nobody on this forum was hanging out in Lake Geneva in 1973/'74.  What I do care about is this crowd of dimwits who strolled in and acted like they were the papacy of classic D&D (and other games)

Dude, take your ouroboros of fellatio and shove it up your ass. While you are busy screaming "Get Off My Lawn" there are people enjoying Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, and Old School Essentials. Maybe if you actually played more often, you wouldn't feel so constipated and cranky.

Go Play!