Thursday, October 16, 2014

My Turn to Define the OSR

Tenkar posted a blog about this review of D&D 5E which in the course of being written tried to define the OSR, albeit from a relatively uninformed outsider's perspective, and the review included a throw-away line toward the end which said that D&D 5E proved the OSR didn't exist. Naturally the OSR rose up like a vengeful revenant and engaged in righteous anger to correct this issue. Including me, I admit! But the author of the piece, Andrew Girdwood, did respond to me and others and was basically clarifying/backing off on assertions that I gather were not taken as intended. In the course of my responding, I accidentally defined the OSR (from my perspective) so in the timeless tradition of OSR and hybrid blogs like my own I decided to immortalize that definition here:

I think the OSR community is best defined as a group of people with a common interest in the style and methodology of role-playing games exhibited in the formative years of the hobby. It covers a lot more than D&D in this sense (I am a big fan of Chaosium systems such as Call of Cthulhu and Runequest, for example, both of which are archetypal examples of OSR gaming from back in the day). I think attempts to define the OSR in the context of game design fail because there was no consistency in design back in the day, either; but there definitely was --and is-- a community that appreciates the "feel" of that era and replicates it with contemporary retroclones and new systems (edit: as well as the original games). About the only certainty I can say is that game systems and styles which focus on more progressive mechanics such as FATE are definitely not typical of the OSR methodology, chiefly because these more story-based/collaborative systems did not exist in any form back in the seventies and early eighties.

I think the only way to define the OSR is for EVERYONE to write down their short definition of the OSR, then someone like Dyverse collates it somewhere forevermore and fires a print copy into the Sun. Then and only then can the topic rest easy, for the Sun is the OSR definition's only weakness, unless you also happen to have a +5 vorpal long sword. That'll work too.

7 comments:

  1. Other blogs type, Dyvers Blog Kills!!

    I am having trouble, still, understanding why everything has to have a pigeon holed definition. Mr. Girdwood backed off because he got the attention he desired just without the connotation he hoped for.

    Old School is Metal. Old School is being accompanied by a party of Meat Shields. Old School is using my pig sticker on orcs during recess in 7th grade at St. Joan of Arc Catholic School which, by the way, is my Old School. Old School is Now, gathered around the living room with my wife and kids, DMing them through all kinds of shit that will give them nightmares for a week using 5th Edition, B/X, Dragon Age, Lands of Adventure or Dungeonteller or Blueholme.

    Make sure Charles gets that on his Sun bound list, please. Fine post, Deathbat.

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  2. I think your definition what OSR means was helpful. I think it's helpful because it takes the community aspect for it - describing those traits and uses the community would hope for; rather than rules, tropes or mechanical requirements a game might have.

    Andrew Davis - I sought only to clarify that I didn't mean the OSR community does not exist. I scratch my head that was the conclusion readers came to, but hey, my clarification should help.

    In my latest reply to Tenkar I main that I believe arguments like "OSR is about games not being pretentious" is a straw man of an argument because no game sets out to be pretentious. "OSR is about sand box adventures" is equally just playing with scarecrows as plenty of "new" games are similar.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by and replying!

      One thing I will say about the OSR is that it is absolutely defined by its community, in the sense that you can always point to someone and his/her blog and say "that guy's hip deep in the OSR." However, within our community we have specific people always obsessing over very specific definitions of what the OSR is (cough RPGPundit cough) and sometimes purposefully, other times accidentally alientating other members of the community. And in the end, that's what I feel is the strongest proof that the OSR is a community of people who all fall into the same little overlapping corner of the venn diagram of gaming: none of us can ever quite agree on an exact definition, but we all know it when we see it.

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  3. So far the OSR definition I have enjoyed most is the roll-up table at Greyhawk Grognard http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2014/10/what-is-osr-definitive-answer.html

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  4. The "style and methodology", eh. As if there wasn't a huge range of styles and methodologies then, and there isn't just as much variety now. You say it yourself, there was no consistency in design then, and I'd argue that there was just as little consistency on how people played the game(s). Nor do I think there's any reason people couldn't use Fate for some things which are often found in nominally Old School games, such as player-driven hexcrawls (though my game used regions rather than hexes). Stick to a definition of OSR based on games that imitate early versions of D&D, and things will be a lot easier - it does seem like most of what's written is about that, after all. Extend the definition to include mechanics and gaming styles from other games from the 70s and 80s and you're being so inclusive that it's hard to exclude anything but a tiny minority of games.

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    1. That's exactly my intent--and point--though. I really personally do not like defining the OSR by D&D alone, and dislike the notion that the OSR is primarily driven by D&D. The fact that D&D had a sufficiently large identity crisis in the 00's to warrant a surge in retroclones doesn't negate the fact that existing fans of other old school systems were already in the thick of it. Also, I really do prefer a more inclusive definition....for my purposes....and find the highly exclusive "70's club" concept of the OSR to be the main reason any of us find the whole notion of defining the OSR to be an annoying thing in the first place. It really, absolutely isn't just about D&D, and especially not just about OD&D. And if it is, then I guess I'm not "OSR" then. And in the OSR bloggosphere I know quite a few people would say that's correct. But they would also be wrong.

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  5. Actually....scratch all that above. I have had a bit of an epiphany about this and now think maybe it really is easier to define the OSR as a medium for classical D&D revivalism. Will discuss in a formal blog post soon...

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