I don't think anyone can claim that I'm an "at the cutting edge" blogger or gamer. I'm a tired, aging grognard. Content to grumble away in my tiny corner of the internet, barely beyond an echo chamber. I am alternatively amazed and intimidated at the opinions out there in gaming land. Occasionally I come across something I agree with heartily, more often with stuff I just find mildly entertaining or useful and then there are times like this. Times when someone engages me so profoundly on an intellectual level I just have to reply. Consider me behind the times, but I just came across Marcia B.'s The OSR Should Die post.
Wow. If nothing else this writer is clearly intelligent. I wondered as I read on if she was a philosophy grad student, or doctor of sociology, or simply a polymath. I was impressed not only with the knowledge she brought to bear in her gaming analysis, but her erudite writing ability. Following her arguments was a bit of a challenge, and for some time I shifted my opinion on exactly what her theme or thesis was; and now I'm not sure one can reduce her essay to only one thesis.
I mean clearly her point is that it is time to give up the rather useless term OSR; but it goes deeper than that. It was near the end of her essay where she talked about nostalgia, that I thought I might have a grasp on her motive.
"The banner of old-school play was upheld by too many groups with too many desires which overlapped and contradicted and crossed paths and diverged again. None of them held onto the banner because it was necessarily accurate for themselves or because they were its rightful owners, but because the banner is a signifier of a desire to return to the past ... As such, it doesn’t really signify anything as much as it acts as an ideological rallying call to return to some tradition." -- Marcia B.
So much is being said here. Marcia has developed an argument that OSR as a term is a false objectification. There is no definitive "OSR", but rather a term which people use to hang their desires upon. Ostensibly a desire to return to the past. However, as Marcia also points out, this return to the past is a mythic past not rooted in reality per se, at least in many cases. But in terms of object oriented ontology it is possible to give object status to abstract concepts such as the OSR. The trick is in examining whether such a term deserves status. But in the paragraph above, Marcia clearly objectifies the term as an "a signifier of a desire to return to the past," and "an ideological rallying call to return to some tradition."
What had originally spawned the OSR, grognards pining for new AD&D material, was perhaps really never a desire to return to the past as much as a desire for support for their preferred edition. Now, she acknowledges, and I agree that many of us in the group, and I count myself as one, did long for the past. But practically speaking we simply wanted TSR back producing new 1e material. I myself wrote extensively on the golden age of TSR and imagined what it's return would look like. And in this sense, the "tradition" is very clearly marked as how the industry supported 1e and how we played and are continuing to play AD&D. In this sense a "preserved" past.
Now Marcia, it seems to me, will go on to assert that the tradition itself is illusory. Not of the sort imagined by current OSR creators and producers. And I also agree here. The current state of what people call OSR has so developed and extended the game and its concepts that it has ranged far and wide from a "way" the game was played in the past. This was because in the development of the old school idea several things occurred.
Many who might have played AD&D in their youth began to realize they weren't playing RAW back in the day. And the more they came to grips, as critically thinking adults, that the AD&D rules were a little challenging to play RAW, they realized the games they recalled as youth were not exactly concordant with the AD&D ruleset. This led some back to Original D&D on a quest to discover the real roots of how they played. Now in some cases this arose organically. For instance, I never played OD&D. But I was taught to play by four gamers who had all cut their teeth on OD&D. So a lot of my playstyle of AD&D had been influence by an OD&D playstyle (or at least a playstyle based on the OD&D ruleset). I didn't really understand this until I processed my own renaissance (literally rebirth).
However, as many of us grappled with this distinction in reconciling the actual AD&D ruleset with what we recalled from our youth, OD&D didn't quite seem to fit either. So quite a few retreated to B/X. Now I owned B/X Moldvay-Cook but back then I could clearly smell the differences and never actually played that version. So like others, B/X didn't quite seem the right sized hat either.
Now, a sizeable group of grognards had never really shifted to AD&D when it came out. Their introduction to D&D was through a different route. Either Holmes, Moldvay Cook initially, or they migrated from 0e to Basic as it was closer in spirit to the 3little brown books. Even if they tried AD&D, the fact was they preferred the Holmes, or later Moldvay-Cook or even the quite late Mentzer BECMI version. I sort of envied these players for awhile. They were actually closer to OD&D than my AD&D was, and enjoyed that free wheeling style so indicative of classic play. And it doesn't need to be said that it was easier to emulate the old style of play with the basic/original rules. But where was the right version for me?
So you had players from the mid 70's to the mid 90's who were all not sold on 3.5 and were pining for something else. It was as much exploration as it was emulation. We were looking for the feel we recalled, and it was rarely embodied in the full rulesets we were now reading. Yes, you had those fully satisfied with AD&D RAW, or having came to terms with its more arcane rules and were vibing away with it. You also had those who were playing Original (0e) and Classic (Basic). But many still did not have a home.
It was these originals who began toying with rulesets and creating simulacra of the old games. Some in an effort to capture the "feel" of the past. Others who were taking 0e's injunction to heart by "imagining the hell out of it!" Thus you have the rise of the OSR as Marcia seems to be picturing it. You still have all of these gamers who might be said to fall within the general moniker or label of OSR, but you also have an entirely new crop drawn by the fertile ground for creativity and invention that found a home within the movement. This was due in part to the efforts of old school proselyters, and others just wondering what all the furor was about. Some damn fine product has been produced that fits all over the map as regards "old school" Beautiful, crazy, weird and gobs of fun in some cases. Also, controversial, edgy and offensive to whichever group chose to take issue.
But this elucidation is not Marcia's point. For you see, this grand crazy carnival that tends to be labelled "old school" is not all that old school anymore. It isn't rooted in the past. And even if it is in some cases, this past is also emblematic of all sorts of unsavory elements that have impeded the OSR's success. She spends more than a few words on the effect of Zack Smith's crimes on the OSR as a brand. There is an implied problem also extant in the "past" many of the OSR proponents seek to enshrine. We all know the subtler controversies heaped upon fine veteran gamers like Ed Greenwood and other younger gamers like Alexander Macris and the list, which goes on, is truly, lamentably, long. Not to mention Wizards choice to distance itself from controversial content. And the travesty of the subsequent roasting and cancellation of the very founders of the hobby itself. So the move away from the idea of "old" seems multilayered and nuanced in the extreme.
I am sure that there will be those who may see in my analysis of Marcia's excellent essay a slanted perspective, if not outright wrong headedness. But ultimately what I am positing here is that Marcia's purpose may be more about redeeming the OSR than letting it die.
As first Marcia points out that because the OSR means so many things, it is useless as a term and therefore we should jettison it--it should be allowed to die. But moreover that the term is rooted in a false notion of the past, and therefore not in the past at all. She elegantly outlines that the developments of the OSR designers are only peripherally connected to a past playstyle and in truth could be called a new playstyle. A creative development that only has a tangential relation to the past if any. If we can jettison the term and its false connection to the past we can free ourselves of all the ugly baggage that it might entail.
The other possibility is that some feel constrained by OSR assumptions of one camp or another. Must it be rules light? c.f. OSRIC Must it rely on player skill? c.f. Classic Fantasy. And on and on. The sheer variety of works that have been produced by the OSR mitigates against such an assumption. As does the supposed desire to remove ourselves from problematic material. c.f. LotFP. Would abandoning the term OSR free our constraints, that also appear not to exist?
I suggest the same thing has happened to the term Dungeons & Dragons. I've argued this very point on my blog in the past. What "is" Dungeons and Dragons. At one point I actively argued that no game past 2e could rightly be called Dungeons & Dragons; the mechanics having been usurped by the d20 system. As my arguments progressed in various essays I grappled first with the fact that Original Dungeons & Dragons was also technically a very different animal, and that AD&D had been such a development that it might fundamentally differ from the original. Then an astute friend pointed out that we must admit that the term Dungeons & Dragons was an IP, and that anyone who owned the IP had the proper right to call their game Dungeons & Dragons. And further still my thoughts developed to consider the fact that playstyle could vary so much, especially in Original and Classic (Basic/Expert), that one's experience of Dungeons & Dragons could vary considerably even within the same edition.
Why the deep concern over terms and definitions? Methinks thou protesteth too much. But such is grist for the philosopher's mill, and the OSR has also been the birthplace of deep and meaningful gaming philosophy. Why does it matter? Well, because it does. But also, such battles inevitably rest in not only foundational ontologies, but in ethics and metaphysics. Is it "right" to include games I don't like in a term I identify with. Well, to those of us more progressive thinkers who still read Marion Zimmer Bradley, enjoy JK Rowling and still buy Zack Smith's gaming material, and to those who don't and won't, such issues are clearly relevant ethically. What is D&D smacks to me as much of metaphysics as it does of ontology. As does what is the OSR. Humans are inherently a philosophical race, I mean we invented it after all. Or re-discovered it if your preferences run to Plato. The nature of things we love and seek to understand just flow in those channels.
So what's my view? Well, I'm a lot less comfortable with absolutes these days. Marcia herself leaves to other writers and perhaps gamers to figure out what to do about it. But my opinion on Marcia's essay is, beyond the fact that it is a well written philosophical powerhouse, that she is calling less for the death of the OSR and more of a redemption of it's potential to a true renaissance broken free from the chains of its medieval scholasticism. She never decries the brilliant prolifera of its creativity, it seems instead she yearns for freedom to allow gaming creativity to grow past it's roots. I think others have already embraced the concept, hence the terms like New School Revival, New School Gaming and the like. While such a change is laudable, and a veritable fact, the rumors of the OSR's death have been greatly exaggerated. The OSR is and will continue to go strong, as exactly what Marcia objectified it as, "a signifier of a desire to return to the past," and "an ideological rallying call to return to some tradition."
Aren't we lucky to have such a deeply rich hobby.
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