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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9413010" data-attributes="member: 7045072">Here's the thing though... OSR play and B/X play (Not BECMI - because play style is the major difference) is a style focused on exploration. Combat, intrigue, and puzzle solving are all part of it, but in general it's about what I like to phrase as "The procedural navigation of a fantastical space."  The other aspects of play support the exploration and discovery involved in it. Plus and again ... King's Festival is boring.Now you are right that the "OSR" is hard to pin down, and really not worth it. I do want to comment though on the place of nostalgia within it. You are correct that for a few OSR folks strict emulation of older games and systems has long been their goal. "Playing like Gary Did" and all that nonsense.  I say nonsense because that's the fundamental trick to nostalgia - just as it was for homesick Swiss mercenaries when the term was coined. You can't actually get back to the past, you can't return to your own even, (same river twice blah blah blah...) because the present and everything else has intervened and changed you, but also because nostalgic pasts are by definition idealized. Most of us (I hope) aren't actually yearning to a game of D&D in a 1980's wood paneled basement with a bunch of 12 year olds on Summer vacation ... we're yearning for the simplicity of youth and the fun of discovery and creativity that these memories evoke, or that we have assigned to the idea of rec-room, youth D&D even if we never experienced it.Now practically that means that efforts at nostalgic recreation are never actually the same as the thing they want to recreate.  If we want to use nostalgia productively we can recognize this and examine the nostalgic impulse rather then fruitlessly trying to recapture a lost time through rote repetition.  I'd like to think that the relationship between the more successful (and the OSR has been successful) part of the OSR and nostalgia is this one: examining old rulesets and memories to decide on what elements of play one wants to create/capture and how they might do it? Basically asking "Why was that old game so fun?"For many, especially in the most productive and formative years of the OSR (roughly 2012 - 2017 by my estimation) this nostalgic aspect was about using old simple systems for A) online play (to overcome the grownup issue of not having time to play, and gathering up a community of fellow players easily for campaigns and drop in tables etc.) B) capturing some of the wonder that fantasy had when we were young - which often meant stepping away from tired Gygaxian vernacular tropes (orc holes and +2 swords etc) for weird ideas and weird spaces that the players had to figure out as they played. This last one I think is a big distinction between OSR and actual 1970's/1980's play. The simplicity of B/X was a perfect shared springboard because of its adaptability and approachability, allowing the OSR author or referee to create their own strange worlds with a sharable and comprehensible baseline. Things like Deep Carbon Observatory and Anomalous Subsurface Environment to me are quintessential OSR adventures. I could obviously go on. I will stop. Here's a link to some more ideas on how exploration works in old systems from my current blog that might help explain my position on B11:[URL unfurl="true"]https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/p/the-classic-dungeon-crawl-theory.html[/URL]Note that the blog name is a specific reference to nostalgia, and it's dangers.Also yes, my dislike for it is largely that it is boring. I think this is more then just taste though - boring setting, by which I mean "vanilla", The Forgotten Realms, or Gygaxian vernacular fantasy stifle the imagination - they teach the referee to look to cliches for world building and adventure design rather then to imagine their own fantastical settings. This is partially because they are so "full" - almost every detail is already written, and new ideas are often precluded by the established.  I think it's something bad to teach new players and referees.  Better a scenario filled with mysteries and hints that the players and referee can fill in themselves.</blockquote>

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