My Response to the Grognardia Essay "More Than a Feeling"

[Keefe the Thief]

I raised the comparison to moral values because when "the end justifies the means", the end typically is a moral imperative.

It appears to me that the rationale for insisting on telling people (or saying of them) that their views are "just nostalgia" is of that kind. It is the sort of propaganda employed in politics when it is considered that victory for Our Side is more important than any respect for inconvenient facts. Don't let the facts get a hearing! Drown them out with appeals to emotion; dismiss the message by attacking the messenger.

Saying "it´s just nostalgia" is a personal attack now? Who would have known. Well, i like my nostalgia, oysters nonwithstanding.

 

[Ariosto]

Well, i like my nostalgia, oysters nonwithstanding.

That's just because you're German; otherwise, you could not possibly like your nostalgia!

 

[Keefe the Thief]

That's just because you're German; otherwise, you could not possibly like your nostalgia!

You know, i think you´ve hit a spot there. I´m constantly searching for an answer why there isn´t a retro-movement comparable to the D&D-one in Germany. I could jump to a couple of conclusions, but it leaves me baffled.

Anyway, is this the right spot to pimp my "Lets Read" thread over at RPG.net, wherein i read The Dark Eye, first Edition, 1984 (or oTDE, if you like)?

 

[Intense_Interest]

I raised the comparison to moral values because when "the end justifies the means", the end typically is a moral imperative.

It appears to me that the rationale for insisting on telling people (or saying of them) that their views are "just nostalgia" is of that kind. It is the sort of propaganda employed in politics when it is considered that victory for Our Side is more important than any respect for inconvenient facts. Don't let the facts get a hearing! Drown them out with appeals to emotion; dismiss the message by attacking the messenger.

You have yet to show any "facts" towards any of your conclusions in this post, and are in your way, by comparing a straw-man's dismissal of "old school" gaming to Machiavellian politics, committing the same appeal to emotion that you accuse others of doing.

Hobo and others have stated the fact that there has yet to be a solid, justified metric for the extant grouping of "old school gaming" as anything other than having been printed before 1985. In response, you accuse them of clouding the water and making aspersions that simply haven't occurred.

The Old School Revival is a aspect of a culture- there exists a cohort, "grognards" that share information and philosophy enough that an interested player/designer/game-master can quickly find and sift through many schools of thought and arrive at their own conclusion. This has more to do with the growth of Web 2.0 and the "blogosphere" than a rebirth of ancient Role-Playing tropes in a new audience.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's just because you're German; otherwise, you could not possibly like your nostalgia!

I am not convinced that nostalgia is strong in us Germans...

Though... Neue Deutsche Welle FTW.

Spoiler

(But I like the new German bands, too...)

 

[rounser]

This has more to do with the growth of Web 2.0 and the "blogosphere" than a rebirth of ancient Role-Playing tropes in a new audience.

No-one was claiming the audience was new. Of course it isn't, there's no marketing to push older editions and clones and they aren't even on shelves at stores. WOTC holds nearly all the cards here, except for word-of-mouth and grognards directly introducing new players to their games.

I suspect that the timing of the boom in oldskool revival has everything to do with a backlash against 4E and an unwillingness to return to 3E. What does that leave? Old editions and derivatives thereof, because 5E happens not to exist yet. It seems conspicuous to me that you don't mention this elephant in the room.

 

[Ariosto]

Evidence concerning the art of propaganda and how it is used is amply available. I laid out logical fallacies in the line of dismissal in previous posts.

It is beside the point whether Hobo considers the common ground others find with each other to have a "solid, justified metric". The solidity or justification is a matter of opinion, and it is the opinion of those who choose to form such a relationship that counts. Should it be up to outsiders to determine whether the association of players of different games here at ENworld is "justified"?

 

[Intense_Interest]

I suspect that the timing of the boom in oldskool revival has everything to do with a backlash against 4E and an unwillingness to return to 3E. What does that leave? Old editions and derivatives thereof, because 5E happens not to exist yet. It seems conspicuous to me that you don't mention this elephant in the room.

Why would I have to mention it? I don't care nor find necessary to relate how people compare "oldskool" to Piazo/4E games in reference to this argument. Neither you nor I can show exactly what causes someone to access this "Grognard" culture, and any attempts to tie one factor (Web 2.0 and Blogosphere) to another (the release of 4E) is begging the question, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, or simply someone attempting to flame the fires of an edition war that doesn't (yet) exist.

People can come to want to play certain "oldskool games" because of a hate for Hasbro subsidaries, a need to find players in their area, or a desire to find one element of a game that they haven't found in other publications. None of which actually shows that "oldskool gaming" is anything but a tightly-connected subculture diseminating information amongst themselves in a public forum. People that don't want to play the current edition could have "really wanted" to play Traveller, GURPS, or White Wolf, but couldn't find the proper information or advertisements for it, and instead found that OD&D had an active representation and attached themselves to it.

"Oldskool" is an advertising cohort, nothing less, nothing more. Yes, 4E is different from those games in some ways and similar in others, and we could dicker over the number and quality of those differences forever. But just because WotC released an edition doesn't mean that the old school revival benifited.

 

[Ariosto]

As to "anything other than having been printed before 1985": I guess you're not aware of how much "old school" material has been published just since 2005.

 

[rounser]

But just because WotC released an edition doesn't mean that the old school revival benifited.

Why not? The timing is an extraordinary coincidence if they're not actually connected. There's certainly enough potentially objectionable material in 4E to trigger such a backlash in existing fans of D&D.

Why would I have to mention it?

Because you're weighing in on a side of the argument suggesting that blogs and nostalgia are the reason for the resurgence. I'm just pointing out, as I said, the elephant in the room with respect to such claims.