OSR A Historical Look at the OSR

[Thomas Shey]

Why would you care?

Because it claims that the things I like from that period are somehow "not old school" for one; it claims exclusive use of a term that they don't have the right to.

I understand a lot of stuff, I understand why there are pronouns, why black lives matter, why a vaccinne is a good idea. But I don't understand how people can go into someones private forum and say "hey these guys are gate keeping ! this is terrible, stop them ! ".
Who cares what 10 people are doing with D&D or 100 or 10,000. It doesn't stop you from playing the game in absolutely any way you like. If they want to define OSRMYWAYDnD as the only way to "properly play D&D cause thats what Gary Gygax wanted" then let them, it doesn't encroach on YOUR freedom. Their narrower definition sounds cooler and probably more like how we played as kids, but even if they don't invite me, Im ok with it. When I played D&D 30 years ago I didn't go looking for approval on how I played, I just decided and thats what we did. So bizarre all the "gatekeeping" hysteria.

If you don't understand why its annoying to have people telling you that the way you played wasn't the "right" way to play, I'm not going to be able to explain it to you, but my annoyance about it is also not dependent on your acceptance.

 

[teitan]

Forking this tangent over from the Full and Glorious History NuTSR thread for possible further discussion, and to share the series of blog articles about the history and evolution of the OSR movement and the term OSR, from last year. There are five of them, the first coming out almost a year ago, and the fifth and final installment just last month. I think I first encountered them last week, and I trolled back in this forum a bit and didn't see a thread about them.







Yup.

In brief:

Old School as a descriptor is applied to a lot of games, mostly relative to the perspective of the speaker. I've seen "anything prior to the release of 3rd edition D&D" used, but even 3rd ed is more than twenty years old, at this point! Some folks go back a bit further, and describe Old School games as anything published prior to 1990, which seems pretty reasonable and admits the initial release of 2nd ed AD&D (but not its later Skills & Powers and related expansions), but cuts things off like Vampire: The Masquerade and the rest of the Storyteller wave, and other 90s games which specifically pushed back against older tropes. But also admits classic games like Traveller, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulu, West End Games' Star Wars, FASA's Star Trek, and a whole lot of other older stuff. Some folks, however, will complicate it further by using the word "School" to admit in newer games which are modeled on or attempt to replicate the feel or play dynamics of these older games.

OSR (Old School Renaissance, Old School Revolution, or Old School Rules, in my observed descending order of popularity) is an even slipperier and more capacious category, often used to refer to the post-3E movement of play valuing and exploring the above older games, and retro-clones thereof. PLUS often used also brand new games again attempting to replicate or capture the older play dynamics, "look and feel" of old games, even if with new mechanics. PLUS used even more profligately as a marketing label for anything which apes the trade dress, art, or tropes of old school games (you see a lot of crappy 5E modules marketed as OSR because they have dungeons or whatever, even if they clearly weren't designed for OSR play).

IMO the below series of posts accurately describes the history of the OSR and the usage thereof. Long story short, the term originally referred only to pre-WotC D&D in reaction to 3rd (and later) edition(s), but the usage has blurred and broadened.

As a finer-grained distinction, there is also (going back to the early parts of the OSR movement, starting around 2005 or so) the debate over when the D&D Old School ended. Some folks include 2nd ed AD&D due to its large degree of compatibility with 1st ed, but I'm generally in the camp that considers the old school to have largely ended once the Hickman Revolution launched in TSR with products like original Ravenloft and especially Dragonlance. Dragonlance was more or less the beginning of the Adventure Path concept, and essentially the point at which old school exploration and treasure hunting-centered play really left the spotlight, and heroic adventure questing/fantasy novel emulation became the more central focus of D&D design and play. In this interpretation, the Old School of D&D was basically the first ten years, around '74 to '84.

A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I

Old-school Renaissance / OSR theory and design.

osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com

I don't think the adventure path concept started with Dragonlance though. D&D as a sort of story game kinda, sorta, sure but that was long before even Ravenloft. The T1 and then GDQ series were a proto-adventure path, especially GDQ with the Drow being the villains behind the Giants and then the descent into the underdark leading to the Vault of the Drow and the Demonweb Pits. Against the Slavelords was another adventure path and adventurers leveled much slower back then and they took much longer to play through than the average campagin today. Going from 1-5th level in 1e or OD&D was a major feat that could take well over a year for a fight, let alone a wizard player character while in 3-5e era it becomes an increasingly accelerated experience to get to the "sweet spot" or to emulate the sweet spot in all levels with flattened math while trying to escalate power levels.

The main difference in the modern adventure path vs the classic style adventure path is what the game seeks to emulate. 0e, B/X/BECMI and AD&D 1e were much more resource management games that allowed for storytelling elements to be incorporated and excelled at dungeon crawls and hexcrawls while 2e was a square peg resource management game hacked into a several storygame based settings thanks to the success of Dragonlance and Ravenloft while Forgotten Realms secretly craved to be a hex/dungeon crawl setting also forced into the storygame genre because of the success of the novel line. FR always seem to tell better stories with a smaller scale than the constant realms shattering events. Even 3e & 4e were better as dungeon/hex crawlers than as storygames and leaned into this old school sense in the early days of 3e with the "back to the dungeon" concept and the first "adventure path", the Ashardalon series of extremely loosely connected modules. 5e is really the first D&D that has been able to be a story game while also supporting hex/dungeoncrawl play without a jarring shift in how the game plays. It's a chameleon game where many optional rules are able to be turned off and on in mid campaign or session with minimal impact to the experience, with the right DM enhancing it when necessary as opposed to it being a continuous distraction. It's the first edition designed with that adaptive design completely in mind because it was designed with modern styles as well as OSR approaches in mind, as laid out by Mearls and Cook in the early days of the NEXT playtests while 3e was designed as a back to basics approach, 4e was designed to play to 3.5's strengths, and weaknesses. 5e seems to homogenize all those experience and also allow for the grand adventure game that emulates a fantasy novel and allows the rules to get out of the way when necessary. It can do old school but not as well as 3e did old school without a lot of bits and bobbles turned on but it can do it and do it very well.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Because it claims that the things I like from that period are somehow "not old school" for one; it claims exclusive use of a term that they don't have the right to.

But that's kind of an odd way to look at it.

One of the less-than-fun aspects of discussing things on the internet is that people tend to get caught up on arguing about the terms that other people are using to describe something, as opposed to trying to engage with the substance. It can be frustrating, because usually these terms are devoid of their actual meaning- they are terms of art. On the other hand, understanding what those terms mean can be useful. If that is too abstract, I'll provide a simple example-

If someone uses the term "railroad," then it would be really weird for someone to say, "How dare you use the term railroad. I've ridden on railroads. I like Amtrak. You shouldn't be using that term for your silly roleplaying games. You have no right!" Weird, right?
On the other hand, people can have genuine (and occasionally frustrating) conversations about what the term "railroad" means in relation to RPGs.

When people are trying to define their own style of play, or preferences, or they are making a call for others to engage in a similar style of play, they will often come up with names for it- "Skilled Play," or "Fiction First," or "Story Now," or "OSR (Old School Renaissance et al.)," or "FKR (Free Kriegsspiel Revolution)," or any one of a number of phrases.

Now, as I am sure you know, it is nearly impossible to have a conversation about any of those phrases without someone saying a variant of, "How dare you! My game has skill/fiction/story/is old school. It is gatekeeping/badwrongfun/evilmeanines to exclude my game from your definitions!" In the extreme, you even have people quickly googling free kriegsspiel to "prove" that newer games aren't, in fact, the exact same as the Prussian war game developed in the 1800s.

All of which misses the point. People are trying to use descriptive terms to typify certain commonalities. This is a common thing- film noir, the space opera, spaghetti westerns, bildungsroman, sword-and-sandal, dying earth, surrealism, musique concrete, melodic metalcore, space age pop, etc.

People understand that OSR generally refers to a specific set of games and a specific movement- of course, like any genre definition, it is very difficult to police the boundaries. Some things obviously count, like OD&D and clones of OD&D, some thing obviously don't count, like 3e or BiTD, and others show that the boundary gets blurred.

But if you are attached to the idea that your style of play, whatever it might be, deserves special mention- start your own movement. Come up with a name. Older School. Retro Play. Heck, you can call it .... The One True Shey! That would be pretty cool!

It just seems truly odd to me (based on prior conversations I have seen on the forum) that there are so many people invested in telling other people what they are allowed to call their own styles of play. There is a colorable difference when people are using pejorative terms to describe the way other people play (for example, it is unfortunately common for some to describe how others, but not themselves, play as "Mother May I") but it's always odd to me when people demand the right to name other things that they are not doing. IMO, etc.

 

[Aldarc]

If someone uses the term "railroad," then it would be really weird for someone to say, "How dare you use the term railroad. I've ridden on railroads. I like Amtrak. You shouldn't be using that term for your silly roleplaying games. You have no right!" Weird, right?
On the other hand, people can have genuine (and occasionally frustrating) conversations about what the term "railroad" means in relation to RPGs.

...said no one ever. I'm afraid that the implausibility of the bold derailed your weird railroad hypothetical.

It just seems truly odd to me (based on prior conversations I have seen on the forum) that there are so many people invested in telling other people what they are allowed to call their own styles of play. There is a colorable difference when people are using pejorative terms to describe the way other people play (for example, it is unfortunately common for some to describe how others, but not themselves, play as "Mother May I") but it's always odd to me when people demand the right to name other things that they are not doing. IMO, etc.

I agree if other people aren't doing these other things, but there are also many overlapping circles of activity of people who are playing more than one game (e.g., D&D) or style of game/campaign (e.g., sandbox, adventure path, story now, neo-traditional, etc.).

IMHO, one of the benefits of terms - and I do think we agree on the nuissance of arguing terms (particularly once people start pulling out dictionary definitions) - is that it does make recommendations easier to make, including games that some people should avoid. Terms often play a part in these game recommendations, such as Kevin Crawford's Stars/Worlds Without Number having tools for empowering OSR-style sandbox play.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

...said no one ever. I'm afraid that the implausibility of the bold derailed your weird railroad hypothetical.

Spoiler: just for the Amtrak

Well, there's one person.

I agree if other people aren't doing these other things, but there are also many overlapping circles of activity of people who are playing more than one game (e.g., D&D) or style of game/campaign (e.g., sandbox, adventure path, story now, neo-traditional, etc.).

IMHO, one of the benefits of terms - and I do think we agree on the nuissance of arguing terms (particularly once people start pulling out dictionary definitions) - is that it does make recommendations easier to make, including games that some people should avoid. Terms often play a part in these game recommendations, such as Kevin Crawford's Stars/Worlds Without Number having tools for empowering OSR-style sandbox play.

Good point! It's certainly true that if someone says that they are looking for "OSR-style sandbox play" then there is generally a shared understanding that makes it easier to recommend, just as if I were to recommend Drive to someone looking for a decent neo-noir.

 

[Aldarc]

Spoiler: just for the Amtrak

Well, there's one person.

It's a cry for help disguised as feigned positivity.

 

[Aldarc]

Good point! It's certainly true that if someone says that they are looking for "OSR-style sandbox play" then there is generally a shared understanding that makes it easier to recommend, just as if I were to recommend Drive to someone looking for a decent neo-noir.

I will add that I do agree that discussion of terms and the like should hew a little closer to being descriptive rather than prescriptive, the latter definitely being a problem path that leads to insinuations of "badwrongfun" or "one true way."

 

[Deset Gled]

...

Now, as I am sure you know, it is nearly impossible to have a conversation about any of those phrases without someone saying a variant of, "How dare you! My game has skill/fiction/story/is old school. It is gatekeeping/badwrongfun/evilmeanines to exclude my game from your definitions!" In the extreme, you even have people quickly googling free kriegsspiel to "prove" that newer games aren't, in fact, the exact same as the Prussian war game developed in the 1800s.

All of which misses the point. People are trying to use descriptive terms to typify certain commonalities. This is a common thing- film noir, the space opera, spaghetti westerns, bildungsroman, sword-and-sandal, dying earth, surrealism, musique concrete, melodic metalcore, space age pop, etc.

The flip side to this type of argument is that a group can't just appropriate a term that's already in use and expect the rest of the world to respect the new usage as unique. "Old school" has a well defined meaning that is easily applicable to D&D. Knowing that, trying to say "Well, when I say old school what I really mean is..." in a way that excludes someone else's definition of old school gaming is just trying to use linguistics to justify a One True Scotsman argument.

Also, specificity and rarity matter. Getting into arguments about the English definition of "old school" and "kriegsspiel" are extremely different discussions, just as debating the film definition of "western" and "Czechoslovak new wave" would be. Also, there could be talk of "old school" vs. "Old School", but that's assuming a level of grammar and editing consistency that you just can't expect to find on the internet at large.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The flip side to this type of argument is that a group can't just appropriate a term that's already in use and expect the rest of the world to respect the new usage as unique. "Old school" has a well defined meaning that is easily applicable to D&D. Knowing that, trying to say "Well, when I say old school what I really mean is..." in a way that excludes someone else's definition of old school gaming is just trying to use linguistics to justify a One True Scotsman argument.

Also, specificity and rarity matter. Getting into arguments about the English definition of "old school" and "kriegsspiel" are extremely different discussions, just as debating the film definition of "western" and "Czechoslovak new wave" would be. Also, there could be talk of "old school" vs. "Old School", but that's assuming a level of grammar and editing consistency that you just can't expect to find on the internet at large.

That's just ... incorrect. In my opinion. It's certainly not the No True Scotsman fallacy (which is a bizarre way to put it?).

Look, let's start with the obvious- this started not with "Old School" (something that is old fashioned or traditional) but with OSR. Which was a modern movement (a Renaissance or a Revolution) that was looking back to certain games.

If you really want to spend your time arguing with people over their own definitions for their own games, feel free to. But not only is that not productive, it's deeply aggravating. Seriously- if someone wants to say they are playing "Story Now," I don't try to forumsplain to them that they are gatekeeping all story games from everyone else, and they have to let in my OD&D game because we have stories too. That would be jerk behavior from me. Not gatekeeping on their part.

 

[Deset Gled]

Look, let's start with the obvious- this started not with "Old School" (something that is old fashioned or traditional) but with OSR. Which was a modern movement (a Renaissance or a Revolution) that was looking back to certain games.

I don't understand why Old School isn't obviously an important part of Old School Renaissance. Names matter. If a game was called Gygax Renaissance, 1e Renaissance, or TSR Renaissance, these would all be synonyms with overlapping Venn diagrams of included rules/playstyles, but the name would communicate very different things. The OS in OSR is intentionally casting a wide net.