OSR What Has Caused the OSR Revival?

[Desdichado]

I guess what i don't like about this is it is kind of dismissive, and suggests you know more about what drives our interest in older editions than we ourselves do. I am sure there is a notalgia factor for me, in terms of flavor especially. But my initial resistance to running AD&D was my memory of the mechanics is they didn't work as smoothly as 3E, but in actual play i was pleasantly surprised how well the mechanics did work. So i don't view it as i am enjoying mediocre mechanics because nostalgia is carrying me through them.

I think it's fairly safe to say that having as a hobby, the playing of a game where you recreate a romanticized view of the Middle Ages, mythology and folklore, then nostalgia plays a role. The entire fantasy genre, to a great degree, is based on a precept of nostalgia for a time that was percieved as having aspects that were simpler, better, or at least more exciting than the current one.

 

[Desdichado]

Well some OSR fans do not like 3rd ed but I did not see much negativity towards OSR from the 3rd ed fans as most of them seemed to have played OSR games.

I did. A lot of it. With the exception of the brief period when 4e was still unreleased, but details were starting to come out of it and then a little bit beyond, almost all of the acrimonious factionalism I've seen has come from OSR-style posters.

This was back in 2001/2002 though 2007/8 caused a mass splintering it seems.

It's ridiculous to talk about OSR fans in 2001/2, because the OSR is a more modern movement than that. The OSR coopted a lot of Dragonsfoot-type older edition fans, though. But you can't talk about an OSR before, at the absolute earliest, the release of Castles & Crusades. And I think that's stretching it; it's some point after everyone realized that OSRIC was going to fly after all that the OSR congealed out of pent-up demand.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think it's fairly safe to say that having as a hobby, the playing of a game where you recreate a romanticized view of the Middle Ages, mythology and folklore, then nostalgia plays a role. The entire fantasy genre, to a great degree, is based on a precept of nostalgia for a time that was percieved as having aspects that were simpler, better, or at least more exciting than the current one.

I think that is a questionable conclusion to draw on both counts. Heck I majored in history and it had nothing to do with nostalgia for me (especially since i was not alive for the vast majorty of periods we studied). I don't know, assigning motivations to people, when you don't know anything about them beyond they play D&D, is flawed. For me, i have gone to RPGs and different editions of rpgs, for different reasons at different times. But nostalgia has never really been a factor.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The entire fantasy genre, to a great degree, is based on a precept of nostalgia for a time that was percieved as having aspects that were simpler, better, or at least more exciting than the current one.

I don't think it is. It depends on the setting. I like medieval fantasy because it is usually set in a period with less stability, where life is more challenging and harsher than today, so it is great fodder for adventure, plus it is exotic to visit vaguely historical analogs. I don't see these historical periods or their fantasy counterparts as "better" in any way. Frankly a world without plumbing, vaccines, anti-biotics, and filled with dangerous monsters, seems like a terrible place to live compared to the modern world.

 

[Desdichado]

Given the strong DIY ethos among OSR DM's and cross-pollination between the clones & TSR era rulesets, the idea of a "dominant" OSR game kinda misses the point of what a lot of people are doing. I own print copies of 9 retro & neo clones and usually run 1e, S&W or my own version of OS D&D, which cribs from multiple sources. All in all, that's not atypical.

Hearing DM's saying things like "Well, I'm running S&W right now, but it's so heavily houseruled and mashed up with other sources, that I don't really call it that, anymore," is par for the course.

I said that for my 3e game. I'm maybe a bit of an odd case. I'm not old-school, but I am old-fashioned. I have no interest in systems from "yore", and I'm not even very interested in specific D&Disms, but my playstyle is very firmly rooted in that mash-it-up, do it yourself, GM ruling based game. In terms of tone, B/X has always been the closest to what I wanted, of any D&D game. But I still never liked the rules, the arbitrariness, the specific D&Disms, etc. of B/X. I was "done" with D&D before 2e came out, rather than because of 2e, as was commonly voiced near the launch of 3e.

3e worked quite well for me, but I had to ignore a lot of the examples of how to do things like calculate DCs and whatnot. I always saw them as samples of what kinds of things to think about, not "laws" that needed to be strictly followed. In fact, I frequently scratched my head at all the comments that people, who otherwise seemed to approach my own tastes with regards to playstyle, couldn't make 3e work for them.

What finally drove me away from 3e were things that I never liked in the first place, and finally had enough of, but many of them were inherent in earlier versions of D&D to some degree as well. Tactical minis combat? Tired of it. Not what I want. The magic system? No interest. Not my idea of enjoyable fantasy. The focus on dungeon-crawling? Never want to see another dungeon again.

To me, it was the very D&Dness of the 3e system (and its derivatives, like 3.5 and Pathfinder) that turned me off. Therefore, my interest in the OSR wasn't likely to be very high, because my disenchantment with 3x D&D was completely different than the disenchantment that led to the OSR. But I did, however, see an awful lot to like about the "old-fashioned"-ness of the OSR, even as I had no interest in the "old-school"-ness. The DIY attitude was always how I ran, and the stripped down rules started to feel more and more attractive as an easier way to get there.

In the end, I settled on m20 variants as my system of choice, probably for the foreseeable future. 4e only magnified the aspects of 3.5 that I already didn't like, and Pathfinder took aspects of 3.5 that I didn't necessarily like but didn't necessarily mind either, and made them more burdensome to excise or ignore. The OSR was full of games that harked back to games that I never liked in the first place, often with rather smug harangues on how the hobby should be done (Matt Finch's OSR primer, as well as lots and lots of posts on Grognardia and lots of lots of posts by OSR fans here, frankly, which contributed to my lengthy hiatus from the site.) m20 is an interesting system, because it has a lot of d20 in it, but it has a lot of OSR in it too. I still find the OSR a fascinating movement within gaming, even if it isn't really my cup of tea, so I tend to keep half an eye on what's going on in that regard.

 

[Desdichado]

I think that is a questionable conclusion to draw on both counts. Heck I majored in history and it had nothing to do with nostalgia for me (especially since i was not alive for the vast majorty of periods we studied). I don't know, assigning motivations to people, when you don't know anything about them beyond they play D&D, is flawed. For me, i have gone to RPGs and different editions of rpgs, for different reasons at different times. But nostalgia has never really been a factor.

That's because you're using too constrained a definition of nostalgia, so as to specifically exclude certain aspects of it. Possibly, although like you say, I don't want to assign motivations to you, even though you (and others in this thread) have specifically already said this, because of the perception that nostalgia is a "dirty" or dismissive word.

This is, however, incorrect. Walt Whitman and all his compadres from the Romantic Era of literature, art, and music in the 19th century, would have disagreed.

I don't think it is. It depends on the setting. I like medieval fantasy because it is usually set in a period with less stability, where life is more challenging and harsher than today, so it is great fodder for adventure, plus it is exotic to visit vaguely historical analogs. I don't see these historical periods or their fantasy counterparts as "better" in any way. Frankly a world without plumbing, vaccines, anti-biotics, and filled with dangerous monsters, seems like a terrible place to live compared to the modern world.

You kinda contradicted yourself. You said it was more adventurous and exotic, therefore exactly demonstrating my point. I'm not saying you would want to actually live in a fantasy setting. That's not what nostalgia means either.

 

[Ratskinner]

If they did WotC would probably have most of the market on lock down but we'd have who knows how many editions of "DnD". I could just see it now a whole shelf of core dnd books "Classic", "lite", "gritty", "tactics", "MAX", "X-TREME!!!!!!"...

Would that make Maztica "Chipotle D&D"?

 

[Bedrockgames]

That's because you're using too constrained a definition of nostalgia, so as to specifically exclude certain aspects of it. Possibly, although like you say, I don't want to assign motivations to you, even though you (and others in this thread) have specifically already said this, because of the perception that nostalgia is a "dirty" or dismissive word.

This is, however, incorrect. Walt Whitman and all his compadres from the Romantic Era of literature, art, and music in the 19th century, would have disagreed.

You kinda contradicted yourself. You said it was more adventurous and exotic, therefore exactly demonstrating my point. I'm not saying you would want to actually live in a fantasy setting. That's not what nostalgia means either.

I don't see a contradiciton. I am using nostalgia as people who invoke it to critique or explain the OSR mean it (as a way of revisiting their childhood, through the game they grew up playing), or romanticising the past. Your useage seems much more expansive than that and emphasis the romantic period useag of the word. By the definition pretty much every rpg is built on nostalgia, and OSR is built on it no more than pathfinder. So it becomes somewhat irrelevant to the discussion. However i am not going to engage you in semantic debate here.. We disagree of definitions and useages.

What I am talking about is people claiming someone likes old school games because it reminds them what it was like to be a kid growing up in the late 70s to 80s playing D&D and/AD&D. That is hat nostalgia usually refers to in these discussions.

 

[Ratskinner]

Probably because it is inherently a do-it-yourself type of movement, such that folks appreciate the subtle differences. Couple that with the fact that almost all of them are freely available, and, well, why not go with the odd little niche version instead of whatever percieved standard?

I think there is a lot to that..to the point where a lot of OSR folks I know are inveterate tinkerers. I'm in a group now that usually plays one form of OS or another....in the last campaign I doubt we went four consecutive sessions with stable rules.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You kinda contradicted yourself. You said it was more adventurous and exotic, therefore exactly demonstrating my point. I'm not saying you would want to actually live in a fantasy setting. That's not what nostalgia means either.

It is besides the point, but that isn't what I said. I said it is a great fodder for adventure. So is zombie apocalypse, so is the mafia, and so is counter-terrorism. Historical periods are great fodder. Fantasy is great fodder. The future is great fodder. The modern age can even be a great place for adventuee. What other periods provide is a change of scenery, something less familiar. It is about useing these as venues for fun, because they are different, interesting and have grokable conflicts. Nothing to do with sentimentality. You are attributing motives and desires to me that i just don't have.

i should probably add, most of my games are set in modern mundane venues, not medieval fantasy.