How is Old School not at least related to nostalgia?

[Doodles]

It's not about nostalgia. It's about good, sound rules sets!

 

[Mercurius]

Ha! Nice one, grodog. One more thing to add in, which in your (excessive? ) erudition you somehow missed: who the person is that is using the word or phrase. In other words, what is my relationship to nostalgia, child-like wonder and Romanticism? Well, I will tell you:

I am a card-carrying Romantic (in the big R usage of the word that I assume you intended), a junky for wonder, and probably overly nostalgic (or so my wife tells me, who is less nostalgic than I). So if I am using any of those terms pejoratively--which I am not--then I am denigrating myself more than anyone else.

 

[grodog]

Ha! Nice one, grodog. One more thing to add in, which in your (excessive? ) erudition

Long-winded, perhaps?

you somehow missed: who the person is that is using the word or phrase. In other words, what is my relationship to nostalgia, child-like wonder and Romanticism?

Not having read (m)any of your posts before, I didn't want to judge you, per se: I really was trying to look at the language without implying personal criticism. I may not have suceeded, however

Well, I will tell you:

I am a card-carrying Romantic (in the big R usage of the word that I assume you intended), a junky for wonder, and probably overly nostalgic (or so my wife tells me, who is less nostalgic than I). So if I am using any of those terms pejoratively--which I am not--then I am denigrating myself more than anyone else.

Yes, I haven't had a chance to reply to your reply to PC yet, but I wanted to say that I didn't think that you were necessarily using the term negatively, but that I think the term itself carries strong negative connotations, and that reading some of the quasi-kneejerk responses in the discussion seemed to reinforce that (for me, at least).

I think your clarifications in your response to PC seem spot-on to me, and hopefully folks will be able to step back and look at the term a little more objectively. Perhaps.

In any event, I'm curious now about your close linking of Romanticism with nostalgia, in terms of gaming. (We can all wax poetic about Wordsworth and Keats and childhoods lost some other time ): can you elaborate more on that please? I can buy the linking of nostalgia and Romanticism on some levels, but I'm not sure then how aspects of Romanticism/nostalgia fit into the gaming.

 

[Hussar]

Yup, and maybe it isn't necessary. Or rather, maybe naked "objective truth" (whatever that is) can only be experienced when clothed in subjectivity. At the least it gives it flavor.

Well, you are absolutely right in that objective truth is by and large an unattainable goal. However, it should always be the goal when trying to discuss something.

Grodog, I can see where you are coming from. And, yes, I agree that the term, while possibly neutral, carries so much baggage that it's generally not used that way. That's the unfortunate thing - because it's yet another hot-button phrase, it generally becomes just another mode of arguement, rather than discussion.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Well, you are absolutely right in that objective truth is by and large an unattainable goal. However, it should always be the goal when trying to discuss something.

Grodog, I can see where you are coming from. And, yes, I agree that the term, while possibly neutral, carries so much baggage that it's generally not used that way. That's the unfortunate thing - because it's yet another hot-button phrase, it generally becomes just another mode of arguement, rather than discussion.

No, I'm sorry, but this is Abuse. Argument is down the hall, on the left.

The Auld Grump

 

[Treebore]

I played in a 1E game at Gen Con. Did I play for Nostalgia? No. Did I play because I play 1E regularly? No. I haven't played 1E for at least a couple fo years.

I played in the 1E game for the same reason I played it back in the day and why I play RPG's to this day, it was fun. Lots of fun.

Nostalgia had nothing to do with it. "Fun" had everything to do with it.

Does that mean I don't have nostalgic moments reflecting upon great old games from my all too much younger days? No, I fondly recall those days as often as I can, they are good memories after all.

 

[Ariosto]

If it's not a thoughtlessly dismissive "hazy rose-colored glasses" characterization, then it raises the obvious question:

Why would someone be nostalgic for something?

Nostalgia, in my experience, is for "the good old things". I don't come across people waxing nostalgic for what they consider worse, for what they're glad to have left behind.

By that light, it seems to come right back to the same reasons people have who lack the backward-looking component, including those who not only do not care but do not even know about the history.

People play to have fun!

 

[Doug McCrae]

From a gaming marketing POV, being regarded as a nostalgic product is also a subtle criticism

Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics series is marketed specifically on the basis of nostalgia.

"Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back."

One could hardly get a clearer invocation of nostalgia than the phrase "Remember the good old days".

 

[billd91]

One could hardly get a clearer invocation of nostalgia than the phrase "Remember the good old days".

That's true, and nostalgia isn't necessarily a bad reason for playing. But the point is it's not the only reason and, often enough, it's not a reason at all. And for those of us who do put a bit of old school touches in our games, I'm sure many of us would appreciate people not ascribing that reason to us or believing that nostalgia has to be involved.

 

[Mercurius]

In any event, I'm curious now about your close linking of Romanticism with nostalgia, in terms of gaming. (We can all wax poetic about Wordsworth and Keats and childhoods lost some other time ): can you elaborate more on that please? I can buy the linking of nostalgia and Romanticism on some levels, but I'm not sure then how aspects of Romanticism/nostalgia fit into the gaming.

This is a huge topic but one of interest to me and it will be difficult not to "wax poetic" to explain where I am coming from, but I will try not to overly indulge. First I would say that nostalgia is almost like a smaller, microcosmic version of the "Romantic longing" for the mythological Golden Age, which exists in all world mythology, before the Fall. I don't think this has to be past-oriented, however, as it could be a longing for a brighter future, a New Age to come. We could de-materialize this a bit and say that the Romantic urge is related to the spiritual quest for liberation or awakening, a deeper immersion into life. Nostalgia, then, is a kind of mundane glimmering of this, akin to the tip of a very large iceberg.

J.R.R. Tolkien is about as Romantic as you can get. There is a sense of loss in the LotR, of the ending of an ancient, more magical, age and the beginning of a newer one without elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. This is not to say that greater ages could not occur in the future, but that at the time of the LotR it is sort of a transitional phase from Myth into History (Tolkien himself said that he meant the LotR as quasi-historical, or rather that he would chronologically place it at around 6,000 BC, which works with Plato's date for the sinking of Atlantis/Numenor in approximately 10,500 BC).

One could argue that the engagement with fantasy worlds is inherently nostalgic and even Romantic. But it probably goes without saying that the primary (at least surface) reason people play RPGs is because of plain old fun. It is enjoyable. But then the question, why is it enjoyable? This again varies with the individual and I think many are into it mainly for the tactical aspects, the "gameness." But for others, myself included, I think there is something else going on, which relates to my notions of nostalgia and Romanticism (I would actually argue that the vast majority of gamers have at least some inkling of this). To illustrate where I'm going with this, let me quote one of my favorite authors, David Zindell, from this Locus article:

"I really believe there are very few true atheists. I used to think of myself as one, until I realized that the God I was protesting against and said didn't exist was a religious God, it wasn't this feeling of wonder. 'Filled with wonder' to me is another name for a sense of God. If you lay down on the grass on a summer night when you're 10 years old and look out across the stars, and think about how big the universe is, and the countless beings that are there, and you're just taken out and away from yourself into something greater, that is a mystical feeling, and that feeling is a sense of God. I had that as a child, and yet I thought I was an atheist."

I can't really say it better than that. I think one of the primary reasons adults are interested in Fantasy (which I capitalize to imply the broad field of any kind of imaginative activity related to the fantastical, whether reading, writing, artwork, RPGs, etc) is to try to capture, or re-capture, this sense of wonder, which is akin to a sense of "God." When we are children before our own "Fall", which happens with the awakening of sexuality between around 12 and 15 (although sometimes earlier these days), we are awake to this wonderment, this Mystery. But then we lose it. My feeling is that we can, and really should, not only reclaim it but bring it alive in a new way, through our own engagement, our own activity of imagination--and without losing any of the new wonders of adulthood (like sexuality).

So I think that for many, if only on some very sub-conscious level, this yearning for wonderment, the Mystery, for God even, comes through playing RPGs, which is a creative activity that plays in the fields of imagination and, if you're lucky, stimulates that sense of wonder. For me it is harder to find it in the act of playing an RPG unless I have a really terrific DM (which I don't think I've ever really had). For me this comes mainly through my own creative practices, mainly writing, which is composed of world-builiding, myth-weaving, and story-telling. I get glimpses of it in certain writers--Tolkien, Le Guin, Zindell, Kay, Erikson, Moorcock, and a few others. But the most profound moments come through my own creativity.

There is much more to say but I've probably gone on way too long and I'll leave it there for now.