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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 9691284" data-attributes="member: 2205">The OSR is, essentially, three big patterns on a scatterplot that kinda overlap sometimes, but are clearly recognized as different clusters: 1) those who believe that the OSR is based on recreating old rules, or at least creating similar rules to old D&D. This movement is centered on retroclones and rather modestly modified versions of retroclones.2) people who believe that the OSR is a playstyle manifesto, a neo-retro reimagining of some oldish-feeling ideal of play. Some of this is pretty legit, and the OSR playstyle is certainly a valid playstyle even if it isn't exactly as old-fashioned as some like to paint it as, but the fact that people in this camp can end up championing games that bear little resemblance at all to D&D certainly rubs the people in the other cluster the wrong way, and they wonder why they want to claim the label if they're really interesting in doing other games entirely.3) the kumbaya big-tenters who don't understand why the other two groups can't just get along, and the OSR is whatever you want it to be, and if you think that you're OSR, you are, even if you're actually playing some Forgey game or something else that's no relation to D&D at all.Given that I don't identify as any strain of OSR, but I'm sympathetic to some of the goals of each of the patterns on the scatter plot, I find these kinds of discussions interesting and even entertaining without really have a horse in the race. But if someone were to ask me what I thought, I'd say that the first group is what I'd prefer to call the OSR, the second group I'd prefer to call the NSR, and the third group needs to let it go.</blockquote>

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