OSR A Historical Look at the OSR

[Snarf Zagyg]

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.

This is exactly what I was discussing. There is nothing more aggravating (IMO) when you're trying to have a conversation than the person who barges in and says a variant of-
"How dare you call it Skilled Play? My game is skilled!"
"How dare you call it OSR? My game is old school!"
"How dare you call it Story Now? My game has stories!"

Etc. Because they immediately turn things into an argument about definitions, instead of a conversation about playing the game.

You obviously either don't understand what I was saying, or don't agree. And that's fine. But I already explained this in the prior post, and given my dislike of arguing about terms of art, I am pretty sure I'm not going to get caught up in an argument about the appropriateness of arguing about terms of art.

If you think you are defending all that is right and good by having people agree with your definitions for the games that they are playing, carry on. You know how I feel.

 

[Deset Gled]

This is exactly what I was discussing. There is nothing more aggravating (IMO) when you're trying to have a conversation than the person who barges in and says a variant of-
"How dare you call it Skilled Play? My game is skilled!"
"How dare you call it OSR? My game is old school!"
"How dare you call it Story Now? My game has stories!"

Etc. Because they immediately turn things into an argument about definitions, instead of a conversation about playing the game.

Isn't discussing the definitions of OSR the reason d'etre of this thread? Who do you think is barging in on who, in this scenario?

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.

Also, has anyone ever decided what in particular makes a game "old school"? Is there a cut-off date (do late 80s count)? Is there anything ruleswise that's a necessary thing?

As I can state from experience, oh dear gods is that a can of worms.

Want a nice tussle in the wrong places? Ask whether Old School is limited to D&D, and then stand back.

Yup.

In brief:

Old School ...

OSR (Old School Renaissance,...

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. ...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Isn't discussing the definitions of OSR the reason d'etre of this thread? Who do you think is barging in on who, in this scenario?

Thank you for quoting the history of the thread. That is always an effective way to persuade people, and completely unexpected. Might I suggest providing some dictionary definitions? Well, that was sarcastic- to be clear, I don't find that very helpful.

I would suggest that you read, again, my original post. It's on this page, so you don't have to look back very far. It's a response regarding a specific comment. If you feel the need to continue arguing to assert you are right, feel free to do so. If you think that you resemble the hypothetical people that I believe "barge in" to conversations to try and turn them into arguments about definitions, then either you do or don't. That's not my call.

Feel free to put in the last word.

 

[Mannahnin]

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.

Old School

...


OSR (Old School Renaissance,...

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. ...

I thought I made a reasonably clear case (and the linked articles documented) that these are three different, but related, things. The central term under discussion in the series of articles is indeed OSR, which has multiple different conflicting meanings, at this point, to the extent that it has become much less useful and descriptive as a name. The articles discuss how the term originated and how its usage has mutated and become vague.

I'll never dispute that (e.g.) RuneQuest, Traveller, or Chivalry & Sorcery are Old School games. But I think it's stretching the bounds of the term OSR a bit to include them in that movement, due to their mechanical incompatibility and arguably different play styles from Old School D&D. But I think there's at least some argument for including them, as part of OSR as a movement of revisiting Old School games more generally and seeing what we we can recapture and what had value in those games' play.

Of course, it follows that for Old School games which have continued in print into the modern day, I'm more dubious about it. Call of Cthulhu, for example, which is an active, current game, which has seen several editions over the years but is not all that much changed. How can you have a rebirth of a thing which never died? A big part of why the OSR exists at all is because there were years-long periods when older D&D books were unavailable legally even as PDFs. That need created the retroclone movement, to bridge that specific gap. There was never the same need to retroclone RuneQuest, say.

Moreso, new games which don't actually emulate the play style of Old School D&D, I think, are misnamed when people label them OSR, whether that's (e.g.) Dungeon World or Torchbearer or Troika! Troika! is an interesting case because I think it's a really neat game, and it being built off the old Fighting Fantasy Gamebook mechanics gives it a definite Old School heritage, but I don't think it's built to play much like Old School D&D.

I don't have a bit of a problem that they want to have a definition for a particular play style; I care quite a bit that a lot of them either by implication or outright saying so suggest it was The Way Things Were When The Game Was Played Right, both in privileging the style over others present at the same time (and thus just as right to call "old school") and over generalizing how common it was. And that's over and above the baggage they sometimes bring in with it.

I can sympathize with this quite a bit, but do we need to import that grievance into this discussion? Apropos of this, I notice in reading The Elusive Shift yesterday that the cautionary term One True Way first showed up at least as early at 1976.

I, for one, am not saying "When The Game Was Played Right", as I'm not opining that there's one right way. And absolutely, you're correct that there were varying styles right from the beginning.

I do think that the OSR tends to focus more on a particular style (or perhaps close family of styles), the perhaps more wargame-y, "story is what happens when you talk about the game afterwards, not something the DM scripts aheads of time" approach, perhaps because the perception is that the prominent alternative of focusing on story and narrative become the dominant play style sometime in the 80s. By the time 2nd Ed AD&D came out, it was clearly the dominant form, sometimes referred to as "Trad", now. Part of the point of the OSR wasn't to say "Hey, new games are bad!", but rather to ask, "Hey, did we lose something fun when we moved away from that particular old style?" and "If we examine the old rules from the standpoint of what they functionally support, is there actually good design there that has since been abandoned, as it was seen as not supporting the kind of play the hobby largely moved on to?"

 

[Jack Daniel]

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.

Nobody deliberately named the movement "OSR." It was a mere accident of recent hobby history, and it's as unfortunate and potentially misleading/divisive a name as "roleplaying game" itself. (e.g. I would personally much rather "fantasy wargaming" had stuck, or "tabletop adventure gaming" had been coined much earlier than it was.) But we're stuck with both terms for the foreseeable future now (and not least because of the delightful and difficult-to-quit visual pun between "OSR" and "TSR").

For my part, I would gladly give ownership of "old-school" over to whomever wants it (NuSR/DIY/artpunk designers, gamers who just want their love of old-school but non-D&D games validated, even gamers who hate the OSR play-style and want to brag about their early adoption of trad techniques) in favor of a more precise "70s Gygaxian Renaissance" or "Lake Genevea Renaissance." But — again, because those TSR-looking OSR logos are just so darned catchy and iconic — I seriously doubt that anybody else will ever be on board with me.

The point is, blaming OSR enthusiasts for their use of "old-school" is neither fair (because it's not their fault) nor productive (because it's futile).
EDITING TO ADD: Or, to cast things in a less fatalistic and more constructive light, if you think that that your particular definition of "old-school" has merit enough that it ought to overturn the accepted vernacular, perhaps consider what you could do to make it happen. What could you contribute to the wider gaming community to make gamers agree with you and want to play games your way?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I can sympathize with this quite a bit, but do we need to import that grievance into this discussion? Apropos of this, I notice in reading The Elusive Shift yesterday that the cautionary term One True Way first showed up at least as early at 1976.

I, for one, am not saying "When The Game Was Played Right", as I'm not opining that there's one right way. And absolutely, you're correct that there were varying styles right from the beginning.

I do think that the OSR tends to focus more on a particular style (or perhaps close family of styles), the perhaps more wargame-y, "story is what happens when you talk about the game afterwards, not something the DM scripts aheads of time" approach, perhaps because the perception is that the prominent alternative of focusing on story and narrative become the dominant play style sometime in the 80s. By the time 2nd Ed AD&D came out, it was clearly the dominant form, sometimes referred to as "Trad", now. Part of the point of the OSR wasn't to say "Hey, new games are bad!", but rather to ask, "Hey, did we lose something fun when we moved away from that particular old style?" and "If we examine the old rules from the standpoint of what they functionally support, is there actually good design there that has since been abandoned, as it was seen as not supporting the kind of play the hobby largely moved on to?"

It's funny, because you already had, in the 70s, Lewis Pulsipher (and others) trying to get people to play more dungeon crawl-y traditional, and less story-driven. Plus ca change.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To me the OSR is a movement that started in the 2000s, when you had a renaissance in old school gaming (particularly with things like retro clones). But it has had several waves of development too so I think you can speak of 1st wave, 2nd wave, etc.

I was on the periphery of it but never fully invested in the whole retroclone thing. For me I just started going back to the classic books around the same time and found there was a lot in the OSR that I could draw on for my table (for me it was less about system and more about approaches to campaigns and adventures). I think fundamentally it is a 'lets not throw the baby out with the bath water" approach----not one true way, but going back and looking at what systems, tools and techniques are useful that may not have as much currency anymore. There was a time prior when if you mentioned AD&D or the old books, people would joke about them in a negative way (with the widespread assumption that the old games were clunky and kind of nonsensical and that newer iterations had streamlined and improved things). OSR is about not leaping to that conclusion and examining those things and see if you prefer them, if you can make use of them. For me a lot of it was about more open adventure structures, leaning into it being a game, etc. And I also found when I went back and tried old systems (for instance 2E to run Ravenloft, I was surprised how going back to that system, rather than playing it with 3E which is what I had been doing for years, instantly brought the old feel of play back that I loved (and had previously just chalked up to nostalgia).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can sympathize with this quite a bit, but do we need to import that grievance into this discussion? Apropos of this, I notice in reading The Elusive Shift yesterday that the cautionary term One True Way first showed up at least as early at 1976.

I think a couple of OSR proponents already have, which is the only reason I mentioned it.

And yes, this problem was visible--rather early.

Regarding your post about OSR applied to other games--I can see an argument for not using it to apply to games still in publication (which pushes my example of Cepheus Engine out), but how about retroclones of Gamma World or Marvel Superheroes, both of which exist, and both of were out of print at least as long as most of those early editions of D&D? And which arguably also have distinct playstyle differences?

I, for one, am not saying "When The Game Was Played Right", as I'm not opining that there's one right way. And absolutely, you're correct that there were varying styles right from the beginning.

You'd think they were trivial or minor offshoots to hear some talk about it.

I do think that the OSR tends to focus more on a particular style (or perhaps close family of styles), the perhaps more wargame-y, "story is what happens when you talk about the game afterwards, not something the DM scripts aheads of time" approach, perhaps because the

Honestly, that's what I mostly feel is true, but that doesn't mean having some structure to what a campaign is about is somehow outside the bounds. Yes, early games tended to be more sandboxy, but its not a binary thing here.

perception is that the prominent alternative of focusing on story and narrative become the dominant play style sometime in the 80s. By the time 2nd Ed AD&D came out, it was clearly the dominant form, sometimes referred to as "Trad", now. Part of the point of the OSR wasn't to say "Hey, new games are bad!", but rather to ask, "Hey, did we lose something fun when we moved away from that particular old style?" and "If we examine the old rules from the standpoint of what they functionally support, is there actually good design there that has since been abandoned, as it was seen as not supporting the kind of play the hobby largely moved on to?"

The problem is it also tends to get bundled up with support for structural things that didn't really have anything to do with that playstyle per se. As an example, the really soggy attitude you get on some OSR proponents about anything but random character generation. That's got nothing to do with whether your doing sandbox style play or the early quasi-caper play.

Now, not everyone in the OSR feels that way; Kevin Crawford is willing to accept to arrays for example. But there's a lot of odd attachments that don't seem to have anything related to any particular style so much as just general resistance to anything that came after the period they call back to.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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-

I'd suggest they get caught up in that because people weaponize their use of terms elsewhere in the discussion. So they can deal with it upfront, or deal with it later.

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.

Note its not "OSR" I object to the use of (with the qualifications I've made about discussing some retroclones). But the staking out doesn't stop there, but with the broader term "Old School". At the point you want to limit that term to talking about just D&D, yeah, I'm gonna argue with you. And that's not a hypothetical, because as I noted earlier, I've seen people do it in venues that specifically applied that term more broadly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Note its not "OSR" I object to the use of (with the qualifications I've made about discussing some retroclones). But the staking out doesn't stop there, but with the broader term "Old School". At the point you want to limit that term to talking about just D&D, yeah, I'm gonna argue with you. And that's not a hypothetical, because as I noted earlier, I've seen people do it in venues that specifically applied that term more broadly.

It's not really worth the argument. IMO.

Give you an example- if someone says that classic rock is Zep, I'd agree. If they say that classic rock is Nirvana, I'd disagree.

...but they play Nirvana on classic rock stations. Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam ... all that is classic rock.

And yet, it still doesn't feel "classic rock" to me. I might understand that the music of rebellion today, becomes the muzak of the elevator tomorrow, but it will never feel correct to have Nirvana or the Pixies in the same group as the Beatles and the Doors.

The issue isn't really definitional- it never really is. What is "old school" is going to be incredibly subjective. I am quite sure that there are people playing today, who have only played 5e, that will probably think that 3e is "Old School". Or, to move away from D&D, I wouldn't doubt that there are people who say that Traveler is old school, and Star Frontiers is johnny-come-lately.

In the end, the only real issue is are we trying to use our words to come to a better understanding, or just to argue? I prefer, generally, understanding. If someone wants to say that the only "Old School" is an OD&D dungeon crawl, more power to them. I'm not going to argue with them, but I might choose to play other games of la vieille école that aren't beholden to their narrow conceptions.