Coins & Scrolls Reminder

Someone was asking me about OSR random tables that were all the rage in the 2010s. Reminded me of this blog, which has some incredible content (eating dungeon monsters table is my fave and a must for any fantasy campaign).

Happy reading!

OSR Style Problems, Stormbringer, and D&D

Ben from Questing Beast just did a deep dive with This video about OSR style gaming. I think one of the reasons Stormbringer has lasted as long as it has with minimal changes is because it meets lots of the requirements he outlines.

Is Stormbringer OSR?

First, he notes the characteristics of an OSR style game:

1) The System Needs to be Incomplete

(As I've noted, original Stormbringer is almost rules lite in its lack of rule minutae)

2) System Supports Rulings via Disconnected Rules

(Elementals, Elan, Demons, all pretty disconnected and again rules lite)

3) System Has A Way To Resolve situations

(skill system)

Stormbringer's Crunch

Ben also notes that 'crunchy' systems don't allow OSR style gaming, but what do we mean by crunchy? Crunch, in my estimation, implies two things:

1 - There is a number or stat for everything

(Contrast the statted out Arioch of D&D's Deities and Demigods, who is a 10th level Bard for some reason, versus the paucity of stats for any god in Stormbringer)

2 - All effects have been laid out, leaving no room for interpretation (ie rulings)

(In D&D, all Arioch's attacks and abilities are clearly spelled out, conversely making him more limited in power. In Stormbringer, summoning an avatar of any Chaos lord makes them have all attributes at 10 x that of the summoner, with SIZ and shape at will, and as we are told, "Lords of Chaos may accomplish anything up to the destruction of the world... by fiat." This means power is effectively unlimited, as a god should be.)

Deities and Demigods shows up the difference in the D&D and Stormbringer / OSR mindset. In the Melnibonean Mythos section, all gods are given stats. This means they are killable.

"To a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Hit points imply combat, and feats & powers limit action to what is on the character sheet.

By this metric, Stormbringer 1E Elemental rules are very OSR, while demon rules become less so from 1E to 4E and its laundry list of powers, which is a very 90's thing.

Stormbringer has accumulated some crunch as it aged, witness the jump from 1E rules lite demons to 4E catalogue of powers demons, and Elric! spells. But this still pales in comparison to modern D&D.

Rulings Not Rules

Next, Ben asks, "How do you support the rulings not rules principle at the adventure level? You give players problems that can only be solved with innovation." He also notes, "I've noticed that fairytale and mythology frequently contain great examples of these types of problems."

What Ben has hit on is the narrative aspect of old school gaming. This is the influence of the source fiction, where triumphing comes from being inventive, not just the game of whittling down hit points of enemies. Moorcock's stories are very mythic, witness the golem Aubec defeats by showing it its own reflection, or how Elric uses elementals to escape the Sack of Imrryr, which is emulated in the Elemental rules' lack of heavy simulationist crunch. In game design, I think we forget the source fiction to our detriment. Part of the reason D&D went down the crunch for crunch's sake road is that it made its own (to me) lukewarm settings that I never got into, and that had no guiding narrative constraints for its designers. Thus D&D became its own game-narrative genre unto itself, an ouroboros eating its own tail.

This may be why Dragonlords of Melnibone failed - it is hard to have Moorcockean mythic stories in a game of preset feats and spells.

Zeroing in on OSR Style Problems

Ben then resumes OSR style problems according to the venerable Goblin Punch blog:

1 No easy solution

2 Many difficult solutions

3 Requires no special tools

4 Can be solved with common sense

5 Isn't solvable by ability on character sheet

Here is where Stormbringer falls down a bit. As I have noted, original Stormbringer is schizophrenic. It has stats and skills for characters, but none for Elementals. Some of its published scenarios are nothing more than reskinned D&D dungeon crawls, but even the starter adventure, Tower of Yrkath Florn, has hints of the mythic OSR style in it. The demon trapped in the tower can be bypassed, fought, or bound, depending on what the players feel they could or should do. This is a stark difference from the norm of monster = combat from other games.

Another way to express this dialectic is "Is the GM a computer, or is he a philosopher? Are the players bean counters, or fellow storytellers?" Stormbringer's inherent mode of combat = avoidable, emulated in the lethality of rules and inspired by the source material, pushes this question to the fore.

Ben calls the  principle "Create Problems Without Solutions" and notes that it is the players' job to find solutions, with or without GM help. Readers may remember I touched on this in my Moorcock bestiary, in which I changed the Kay from boring Kobold stand ins to mobs of psychic crabs, and wrote:

"How can the PCs defeat an innumerable enemy? I don't know. That is their job to figure out. Maybe their sorceror-noble can call on the Lord of Crabs, or use flaming oil, or start a Cajun crab cook up."

I agree with Ben when he notes, "For me as a game master, I just love seeing players find a way to bypass these OSR style problems." In my Laughing Tower playtest, young players unfamiliar with Moorcock / Stormbringer tried to emulate skills by rubbing mud on their face for camoflauge, while older Moorcock-loving players interacted with NPCs in unforeseeable ways to get what they wanted.

Conclusion

I agree with Ben when he notes, "Anything that gives you a numerical bonus is not an OSR style tool. What you want are tools that allow innovative problem solving, that stretch the brain." Stormbringer has tons of such tools in its Exotic Treasures section, all ripped directly from Moorcock. But its Elementals, though lacking hit points and other crunch, provide very flavorful yet unpredictable ways to solve problems.

As Ben says, "If OSR problems are problems without solutions, then OSR tools are solutions without problems." And this is a lot easier to do in Stormbringer than other games, due to both its system and source fiction. 

For this reason, in my next Stormbringer post, I will be looking closely at how the game mixes a minimum of stats with a modicum of narrative options in its Virtues vs 1E Demon rules, a dichotomy of power I have unfairly overlooked for decades.

Why I Walked Away From An OSR Game Offer

Last week, I got offered a spot in an OSR game an old friend was running for his nephews & nieces.

When I stated my preference of 3D6 down the line, I was laughed at and told to roll 4D6, drop the lowest, and arrange to my liking.

I walked away.

What even is the point of playing a broadly competent but unremarkable character?

Why don't you just play 4E, grab your 18, 18, 17, 17, 16, 16 array, and pretend to roleplay when you're just doing an analog simulation of a CRPG?

Am I out to lunch?

Here, let's compare two characters to see which is more compelling to play.

4D6 Drop Lowest

2, 3, 3, 2 = 8

2, 2, 4, 6 = 12

2, 6, 2, 2 = 10

6, 2, 6, 5 = 17

3, 5, 6, 5 = 16

2, 5, 6, 1 = 13

So, you'll either put the 17 in STR for a Fighter or INT for a Mage, 16 in CON for HP or DEX for an AR boost, dump 8 in CHA and call it a day. Other stats go wherever. Ho hum, another Murderhobo. And everyone else in the party will have the same cookie cutter stats, unless they got super unlucky and become the object of derision / scorn, or so high they are envied and reviled. Because we don't play for the individual in OSR / NSR, we play AS A PARTY.

3D6 Down The Line

STR 3, 6, 4 = 13

CON 5, 6, 1 = 12

DEX 4, 3, 5 = 12

INT 6, 5, 1 = 12

WIS 5, 2, 6 = 13

CHA 6, 3, 5 = 14

Wow, got super lucky! No really 'hopeless' stats (a moniker I hate, as I just consider a low stat a roleplaying hook), but that 14 CHA tips me towards taking a Bard, which I LOVE doing in older editions. This gets my juices flowing to see how this character will interact with others with similarly evocative stats.

And that is why I said no thanks.

Who am I?

 A friend sent me a huuuuge osr bloglist.

This is how they described my humble tomb:

"Deconstructive game (re)design, wonky inspirations."

Sounds good!

What did they make of your blog?

List is HERE

Get Thee To Friend or Foe Dot Com

 Just stumbled on THIS great OSR resource site.

Lots of great stuff I ran into years ago but lost when I changed PCs.

Cheers!

Cavegirl Gamer's OSR Dueling

 Years behind, but just found this gem:

HERE

Farewell OSR, Welcome NSR!

I don't think this blog is OSR any more. That's because I don't think the OSR is OSR anymore.

Let me explain...

To me, the OSR was three things:

1) An anti corporate movement

First, it was a response to what many saw as a step away from the games we love, through both the churning out of over-priced and increasingly complex new editions, as well as the unavailability of many out of print games people still loved, but were no longer supported.

WotC ironically ushered in the era of retroclones and tinkering with old systems with its Open Gaming License. I suppose they didn't see the harm in losing a few old neckbeards to older editions, and thought like a D&D fanatic friend of mine, who said about anything pre-3e "Who'd wanna play that old garbage?"

It was ironic that OSR consulting would lead to 5e, which has now become a corporation juggernaut whose marketing and production puts the splatbook excess of 2e and small press explosion of diminishing returns that was the d20 glut to shame.

The result of this corporate media 5e saturation is the rise of anti-5e Facebook groups and gradual disenchantment with 5e and profiling of other, new indie games by D&D Youtubers and RPG podcasters.

2) It was a DIY creative movement

In the Halcyon days of the movement, OSR meant high quality passion projects. Look at the Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope, Telecanter's Receding Rules, and Chogwiz just to name a few. They churned out content of amazing quality, and showed what motivated bloggers could do. Few of those old craftsmen OSR blogs are still around, with exceptions like Tao of D&D, and modern blogs offer mostly 5e reviews and mods (How to build X character from a movie / anime in 5e).

Even EN World has started musing about the drop in quality of 'D&D articles.' This is what happens when corporate media takes over coverage of a hobby and begins churning out soulless listicles to lure in young customers who don't know other games.

3) It was a diverse and inclusive movement

The early OSR was very diverse in its tastes, and if half of OSR blogs focused on older editions of D&D, the remainder looked at other TSR games (Top Secret, Star Frontiers), IP like 007, or cult hits like Unknown Armies. One of my favorites was the sadly gone Mesmerized by Sirens, which made a point of ferreting out old and obscure games.

The early OSR was also diverse, and featured women bloggers like Akrasia, and bonafide porn starlets throwing off stigmas and chucking dice. There was very little politics and polemics, but gradually these increased to be the deafening rumble of misogyny and attacks on leftist strawmen that we sadly see too much of today. When a blogger writes pages and pages insulting and belittling others instead of writing about games, it is time to head for the door.

I'm not the only one who is thinking this. Although I've had this post in mind for a while, the venerable Alex Schroeder has beaten me to the punch and also gave up the OSR moniker.

So does this mean I am shuttering this blog? Far from it. I'll keep chuggin away at my tinkering with old games, weird musings, and introdcutions of the newer games that now beckon to me from my shelf. I suppose changing the O to N won't make much of difference...

... but it'll feel right. And that is all that matters.

WELCOME

NEW

SCHOOL

REVOLUTION

High Praise

I am honoured.

DYVERS has just put out his 2019 list of OSR blogs, a much needed mnemonic for this scattered and ethereal non-community. It is a must-read filled with the creative voices of OSR bloggers linked only by our love of playing old games and bursting inspiration to write material for and about them.

And despite my low output as of late, this humble blog has made the list again. Being named in such esteemed company alone is high praise, but DYVERS has also touched me with his kind words. He writes,

Tomb of Tedankhamen: Chief Broom has been writing this old school fantasy blog for years and in the process, they have staked out a territory of dark fun that I can’t get enough of. Lately the author tends to like to mash up various systems and ideas, like Call of Cthulhu and Gumshoe, to create something fun and new. I’m not entirely sure that all of their ideas work, but they are intriguing enough that I often wish I were friends with Broom in real life so the two of us could play all the strange amalgamations they come up with each week. Just a fun blog that too many people miss out on. Well worth checking out. Updates: Three times in 2018, already triple that amount in 2019.

Dyvers' words have inspired me to try and produce more, and I have just read my entire library of backlists to retrace the conducting filament he sees in it. I hope to get another few posts about before year end, and return to full posting and gaming during the spring break. If I get around to running an online game, DYVERS will indeed be welcome to play.

The entire list can be found HERE. Do give it a read.

Swords of the Serpentine, rules bloat, and storyfying D&D

I just finished my Swords of the Serpentine (SotS) playtest! The designer, Kevin Kulp, tweeted out the blurb I sent to Pelgrane. Good stuff!

I loved SotS's focus on simple mechanics that allow player choices to shape the story. A lot of the advice on getting players to provide setting details are practices that I have already used for years, such as having players create atmosphere by having them recount travails of long journeys. It is just nice to see these techniques as an official part of a game. These narrative practices are backed up by mechanics, such as attributes that represent both a value, as well as a pool that can be spent to affect rolls or buy story effects.

In SotS, you use a handful of Investigative and General abilities to shape the world, and thus the story. This allows the game to retain a lot of the simple magic of fantasy roleplaying, which I found dwindling away when I played 3E and 4E briefly. The feel of freedom created by exchanging long lists of KEWL POWURZ for simple narrative mechanics replicates well what Dr Bargle called the Pathetic Aesthetic of the (original, pre 5E) OSR.

I think SotS will be a great antidote to the rules bloat seen in the progression of D&D over editions. With the inclusion of Proficiencies, then Feats & Abilities, D&D killed lots of the magic of play for me by trying to mechanically codify all actions with new rule subsystems. 4e went too far with rules for my taste, while 5e seems a step back to the rulings over rules mode of the original, pre 5E OSR movement.

That said, old D&D and other FRPGS were far from perfect. The OSR added lots of much needed shot of improvisational freedom to gaming, a thing which was lacking when I started playing back in the 80s, when a cult of TSR 'sanctioned' rules defined how many played and ran the game. So instead of going into SotS here, I'd like to think about ways retroclones can be storified in SotS style to promote improvisational DMing and emergent play.

BETTER PRIME REQUISITES

First, the Prime Requisite (PR) of each class serves as 1) an indication of free actions, for which no roll is needed 2) a value for difficult skill tests, and 3) a pool of points to be spent for story effects.

For fighters, Strength is the PR, thus any minor action involving Strength does not require a roll but succeeds naturally. For instance, climbing a rope, lifting a barrel, or doing anything a strong person could requires no roll to succeed for a Fighter, whereas other classes would have to make a simple roll. Also, any Strength based action requiring a difficult test for other classes would only require a simple one for Fighters. For example, breaking down an iron door, holding onto a dragon's back, etc. Note that I use d20 resolution for simple tests and d100 for difficult ones, but other DMs are free to use their own system.

Finally, a Fighter player can spend a point of Strength to earn a story effect. Note that this spending doesn't reduce the Strength value for tests, but instead is a limited pool of points that only regenerates after the adventure ends, even if it runs over several sessions, forcing players to spend points wisely. Players are encouraged to creatively narrate the effect, and DMs should refuse boring or unimaginative uses. For instance, a buy of 1 point  could allow an unarmed fighter to bend farming tool into a sword for one encounter, or intimidate 1 NPC / monster, or hold onto a ceiling and stay out of sight as a too powerful foe passes.

Other classes can do the same with their PRs. Dexterity for Thieves, Intelligence for Magic Users, and Wisdom for Clerics would offer similar benefits and opportunities to shape the story for players of these classes. Doing so uses the pre-existing attribute system without bloating the rules with ultimately limiting Feats or other subsystems, and instead offering players the chance to use their imagination to shape the story in ways that will surprise and entertain all at the gaming table.

PS: If anyone wants to hear how running SotS went, drop me a line!

News & An OSR Hidden Gem

Aloha!

Real Life has been on an upswing lately. In the past 2 years, I've traveled for presentations (Valencia in Spain, Lexington KY and NYC), churned out some high level publications (see my discourse analysis of Gudetama in Japan Forum this month), and just made professor at a nice little seaside university in beautiful Kobe.

                                                        Seaside office view makes all the work seem worthwhile

Life is good again, at last!

However, my inner life has paid the price for all this success. I hope to get back to gaming, martial arts, & music with the reduced course load. As ever, I am bubbling away at sociological research on the side as well.

Lurking around the OSR today I found THIS gem. It is the unique creation of an ex RPG.net poster. There is art, philosophy, and gaming related links therein, including a Venture Bros 1 page rpg.

Enjoy!

As for this blog, I have a HUGE backload of posts to clean up and spit at you, but I surmise I won't get much of that done during the semester (Japanese uni start in April to July, then again in September to January). Expect an uptick in posts in summer, as well as next spring.

D&D Album Covers

I think AJJ's The Ghost Mice Split cover looks totally like an OSR art piece.

Any idea who did it?

Listen HERE

Old School OSR

Remember the OSR when it started?

When it was nameless?

When you copied and pasted every cool idea or table because you’d be afraid it’d all disappear?

When there were a few cobbled together D&D hacks but no true retro-clones yet?

When the Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope or Chogwiz were your daily reads?

Before anybody had made a dime off the thing?

When people who disliked 4e were considered lame or behind the times?

When rpg.net was still readable?

Before Pathfinder existed?

When Gary and Dave were still alive?

When people wrote as much about Traveler or Stormbringer or GURPS as they did about D&D?

When people fretted about the OGL and what WotC would do?

Not saying anything is better or worse, just remembering a time, like an old fragrance that is lost.

Is it too early to be nostalgic about a movement based on nostalgia?

March Madness - Non-D&D OSR Blog Challenge

No doubt about it, D&D dominates the gaming scene old and new. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as D&D is a solid game (both in terms of system and genre) with an enormous fanbase. It serves as a ‘lingua franca’ for the gaming community, much as English serves as a global language for the world. As Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Make no wonder then that D&D has captured the hearts of so many for so long.

But just as English isn’t the only language and just as its hegemony causes others to be forgotten, D&D blots out many other worthy games. Although the OSR has made great strides in bringing old editions of D&D back into circulation and discourse, it has largely failed to do the same for other lesser-known old school games. Although fans diligently create materials and run sites for Traveler, Star frontiers, and MSHAG, I feel that there is a desire and need to unearth more obscure games, as evidenced by blogs like Mesmerized by Sirens, and the proliferation of non-D&D posts on OSR blogs.

I seek to encourage this widening of the OSR spotlight by throwing down the gauntlet of an RPG blog challenge about games other than D&D. I participated in a 30-day challenge last year and had a great time, but also felt really limited by its adherence to D&D, and a little lost because it demanded knowledge of the terminology from later editions that I did not have. I also participated in MbS’s Obscure RPG Appreciation day, which I found inspiring and enlightening, and learned about the lost siblings of D&D. Although I celebrated D&D’s recent 40^th birthday, I’m all blogged out about the game and thus didn’t participate in the challenge.

In this vein, I have created a 31 Day Blogging Challenge for March that asks questions on a wide range of genres and systems, and I hope that we can introduce lots of great games (and a few terrible ones) that are not as well known as they should be. Although I hope primarily to hear of older games, I have left the questions vague on the age of games so as to encourage younger bloggers or hobby latecomers to contribute as well.

Because participating in a 30 day blog challenge takes up so much time and energy, I’ve decided to publish my questions here well in advance of March to give those interested a chance to reflect and start writing drafts of their posts. I hope to see other blogs take up the challenge, and will be posting reminders as March draws near. I hope you will contribute to this widening of OSR perspectives and look forward to learning and reading much from the participants.

- Tedankhamen

March Madness 31 day Obscure Game Blogging Challenge

1 What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?

2 In what system was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?

3 Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?

4 What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?

5 What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?

8 What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

9 What superhero RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

10 What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

11 What post-apocalyptic RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

12 What humorous RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

13 What horror RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

14 What historical or cultural RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

15 What pseudo or alternate history RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

16 Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details.

17 Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?

18 What is the crunchiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

19 What is the fluffiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

20 Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?

21 What is the narrowest genre RPG you have ever played? How was it?

22 What is the most gonzo kitchen sink RPG you ever played? How was it?

23 What is the most broken game that you tried and were unable to play?

24 What is the most broken game that you tried and loved to play, warts and all?

25 Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?

26 What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?

27 What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details.

28 What free RPG did you enjoy most? Give details.

29 What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain how.

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

OSR Planet replacement

I found it!

This site scratches my itch. Nice work Jaap!

http://nirdday.blogspot.jp/

Mystery Solved

It seems Alex took down the OSR Planet due to some complaints about copyright mumbo jumbo.

I guess some may have valid gripes, but it just seems to me another case of some folks peeing in the water and poisoning the well for everyone.

Oh well, thank you for the hard work Alex. First Eternal Keep, next Old School RPG Planet - looks like anything nearing a community forum gets destroyed. Is this some natural OSR cycle of creation and destruction I wonder?

OSR Planet Takeover?

Is it just me or has the Old School RPG Planet website been taken over by RPG Bloggers?
I suppose it is a free site so no cause or right to gripe, but a head's up would have been nice.

Oh well, the layout is a bit commercial, but is also clear and has categories that may steer traffic a bit more.

Wonder what happened?

Perfunctory Dyvers Response

So anyway, everyone's talking about Dyvers' list of OSR blogs. Might as well jump on the bandwagon.

Charles Atkins' list of OSR blogs with mini-reviews is one of those ideas so brilliant in their simplicity you slap your forehead and wonder why you hadn't thought of it first. More importantly, OSR blogs are sometimes like icepans (as a Newfoundlander, I am familiar with those miniature icebergs and icebits that rime my arctic island homeland), old ones submerging and news ones rising, disappearing and reappearing, being sometimes solid and others treacherously transitory. It is good to have a guide like Dyvers to what is out there and where to aim your feet (or clicks in this case).

Like any blogger, I get a kick (what psychiatrist Eric Berne would classify as a 'stroke') from other people reading and responding to my blog posts. Atkins' review of this blog is refreshingly positive:

Tomb of  Tedankhamen A relatively new OSR blog (it started in March of 2013) that has lost a bit of steam due to the author's attempt to get through his thesis papers. I'm hopeful that once their through with the academia side of things that this insightful blog will pick up steam and continue to look at those little words that bother us all so much: like railroad, profile, and like. Updates: About five times a month.
 .
Finding your voice as a blogger takes time for most, and although Atkins' review focuses on the semantic exercises I sometimes indulge in, I don't see myself as limited to those, but will continue to write whatever pleases me. Instead, Atkins' identification of what works on my blog implies I am finding my voice and subjects that both I and others find worth writing and reading.

And that's what it's all about isn't it?

Good job Charles, keep it up!

PS: I have a few months before the (hopefully) final chapter of the dissertation, so expect more posts in the near future.

Thanks for the Swords & the Sorcerors, FGG and Tenkar

As snowed in under thesis writing and parenting as I am, it was incredibly nice to get a gift.

I am talking about Swords & Wizardry Complete, which Frog God Games has generously offered as a free PDF for meeting its Kickstarter goals. I suppose it would be equally apt to thank all the contributors, who by the act of supporting FGG and purchasing S&W have also made it available to all of us lurkers, faraway exiles & foreign folk, and cheapies.

Heartfelt thanks to you all.

I'd like to give a special shout out to Tenkar, who has become the Johnny Appleseed for S&W.

Cheers man. You have inspired me to contribute more after I crawl out from under these real life rocks.

SURVIVING OSR BUTTHURT & TWO TROLL QUESTIONS

So I am in ‘OSR Lurker’ mode as a few Real Life deadlines and challenges have jumped up on me, and the other day I dropped two innocuous questions on the blog of one of the OSR leading lights, “What do you get out of D&D?” and “Are all the different books & editions just grist for the mill?” To the first query I got the snide-sounding “Some of your questions make no sense.” I resisted the urge to reply in a snarky way “What word are you having problems with? Maybe a remedial reading course would help.” To the second question I got “I keep the good and drop the bad.” A blindingly obvious answer, to be sure, and also obviously impossible for us humans, as the plethora of heartbreakers, Synnibars, WTF D&D and failed Kickstarters attest.

Basically, someone just tried to OSR butthurt me. Who? That’s not important, I won’t call out anybody, but I am sure Google will help you if you want to now. Prepare to be unsurprised. The more interesting question is why, and by answering this we can also uncover some rules to help us survive the inevitable OSR Butthurt when it happens to us.

REASON ONE – None of us are friends, all of us are strangers

Responding to blogs is a funny type of interaction in two ways. First, we have no qualms starting an online conversation with a person we’d never talk to on the street, or one whose house we’d never think of entering. Commenting online disarms us against strangers, we let our guard down thinking they will be courteous and kind when we may have just inadvertently challenged a major tenet of their belief system and set them into attack mode in their own territory. Add to that the fact that the emotionless & contextless nature of leaving online comments is like trying to teach the lyrics of a song with a kazoo in your mouth, then the possibility of misunderstanding and conflict is obvious.

Remember, none of us are friends, all of are strangers, and the chances we will misunderstand or argue are greater than those that we will get along.

REASON TWO – All of us are trolls at one time or another

I dimly remember making a positive comment about a blogger a few years back to which my butthurter objected. The details elude me now, but I remember not saying anything abrasive, and quite oppositely trying to calm down or show support for someone who had been riled up. Although this incident was unimportant to me, the OSR leading light seems to have remembered and decided to shoulder a chip and exercise a grudge against me.

Which, if you think about it, is pretty sad. Holding a grudge about an insignificant comment about roleplaying games for years is a terrible waste of a person’s energy and emotion, and brings me to my next point:

REASON THREE – The Smallest Thing In Real Life Is Bigger Than The OSR

Right now, I blog to let off steam and have a quasi-creative hobby while I finish a PhD on US economic discourse (don’t ask), look for a new uni to work at for the next 4 to 5 years, and simultaneously raise my beautiful 4 month old son.

The OSR and my blog is pretty far down my list of priorities. I enjoy the boundless creativity of many fine blogs out there, the amusing personalities and insightful comments, and even the scandals and flamewar of the week. But I never take any of it seriously. Sadly, over the years the OSR has lost some great biggies (ChogWiz and James M to name a few), and doubtless an uncounted number of unknowns to its frequent waves of drama. Me, I’ll take the good and leave the bad, just as my butthurter advised me.

REASON FOUR – Don’t Monetize Unless You Can Deliver the Prize

This last one has nothing to do with the incident that inspired this post, but as I have resolved not to charge for any material I produce, I thought I’d say a word about the OSR as business. I admire the heck out of people who do great work and deservedly make a living off the OSR in particular and RPGs in general. But there are far too many out there who think game design is a quick, fun job. A quick glance at Tenkar’s list of failed Kickstarters sadly reinforces this reality, and I for one both admire Tenkar for holding people’s feet to the fire while at the same time feeling what a great waste of his time and talents it is to keep the list updated.

Ask James Raggi – he may personally be having fun producing LoFP, but he’s also working his arse off. The two aren’t incompatible, but like any creative endeavor you can’t succeed in games without hard work.

TWO TROLL QUESTIONS

Finally, in a non-sarcastic way I’d like to ask you dear readers the same two questions that set off the OSR bigwig: “What do you get out of D&D?” and “Are all the different books & editions just grist for the mill?”

For me, D&D is both pleasant nostalgia for the games of my youth, as well as a great mental exercise that takes my mind of the depressing things I find in my thesis. Economics is starting to look like the greatest scam ever perpetrated to me, so the idea of bashing down doors and braving monsters and traps for gold is refreshingly pure and simple.

I’d have to say that with the exception of the Midnight campaign setting, which I L-O-V-E, I enjoy the mishmash of anything pre-3e. I have tried 3e and 4e, and maybe if they hadn’t been sold as D&D I would have liked them more, but playing them after years of 1^st and 2^nd edition was like switching to new Coke or Crystal Pepsi. Might have been fine if I hadn’t known better, but once you taste that classic stuff, new is not always better.

OSR Backwaters & Hidden Byways

Ever notice that the OSR has some hard to find backways and forgotten byways? 

Usually OSR Planet is my gateway site to the OSR (since Eternal Keep went… strange), and after some link-wandering I find myself in uncharted territory. It’s like that old Sesame Street cartoon where the kid went for groceries and stumbled into progressively alien neighborhoods, then had trouble finding her way back home.

 

A loaf of bread, a stick of butter…

False Machine is one of those sites. Sometimes it shows up when I surf, sometimes it doesn’t. The content is good and has really wowed me. Ditto Elfmaids & Octopi, who now is in the fold of OSR Planet so to speak and more accessible.

This is another great thing about the OSR. Some of us sign up for sites like OSR Planet, some don’t; some publish for pay, some free, some not at all. Some would call themselves an OSRite, others not.

And that’s cool. It would be a drag if we all set up identical shops on the main drag and lost the joy of stumbling into hidden corridors and unused alleyways.

That’s what the games we play are all about.