I was rooting around on my hard drive, and found this image. I can't remember why I created it now; probably for a blog post that never actually happened. Or maybe I originally meant it to belong with this post and didn't add the image?
I'll copy/paste and edit the relevant portions of that post here:
I've read some more OSR theory discussions, and it seems that most people who pay attention to this kind of thing have all come to similar conclusions, although the labels differ somewhat. That is, that there are effectively three groups that are all somewhat associated with the OSR, and a least sometimes take on that label. The labels that I used to prefer are OSR, OSR adjacent, and NSR. However, given that the OSR adjacent and NSR believe themselves to be part of the OSR too, and identify as such, I haven't found that those are as likely to stick. I've seen a clever way of differentiating between the three main camps by utilizing three different interpretations of what the R in OSR stands for, which maybe would work a little better. I've mentioned them briefly before, but there they are again:
Old School Revival: the "original" OSR, focused on getting the retroclones out so that the original rules could still b used (albeit in rewritten "cloned" form) and new modules utilizing those rules could be published by referring to these clones. Although initially focused on 1e AD&D stuff, i.e. OSRIC, in short order Sword & Wizardry (OD&D) and later Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord (B/X) were developments here too, bringing the full gamut of retroclines, more or less, into prominence. Once these four were out, the retroclone "need" was largely filled, and this original branch of what the OSR was gradually faded from prominence. Subsequently, two things happened: 1) WotC, recognizing the demand, made older materials available for sale as relatively reasonably priced pdfs or PODs, and 2) OSE (and to a lesser extent the Hyperborea AD&D clone) swept in and seems to have largely sucked the wind out of the sails of every other retroclone. By 2012, this movement within the OSR largely got everything that it wanted, and therefore is not a major movement anymore in the community. No doubt many people who associate more with this idea still play in the OSR space, and buy OSR products, especially new modules and adventures, but there is little talk of exciting new retroclones, and little effort that I'm aware of in pursuing the goals of the Revival portion of the OSR. Many online commentators speaking ~2012, called the OSR "dead" meaning that the community, having gotten what it wanted, went quiet and had no more need to discuss already achieved goals anymore.
Old School Renaissance: As the OSR got more and more into things beyond just the retroclones, it started to coalesce into a number of "this is how you play OSR style" philosophies. As many have pointed out, this is not a faithful recreation of how everyone played in the 70s and early 80s, but it is perhaps a romanticized recreation of at least one playstyle that had been underserved since, oh, probably the early to mid-80s, in many ways. The OSR community started focusing in on the simpler, older games, deliberately cultivated contempt for game balance, mechanical vs diagetic solutions, and a number of other things that would have been pretty seriously at odds with how most people played in in the 70s and 80s, and then also started diverging in tone and theme. This is the origin of the OSR playstyle, which differs, as noted, from classic playstyle or the more hegemonic trad style that's been in vogue since the early to mid-80s. But with the collapse of the OSR blogosphere (largely) around where the OSR was going, the pulling of the plug on Google+ where a lot of this activity was, and the collapse and cancellation of at least one of the most prominent purveyors of this version of the OSR, a lot of people considered this to be yet another "death of the OSR" or rather, that this briefly faddish phase of the OSR became much more quiet and no longer dominates the headlines, such as they are, in the OSR community. "Dead" of course, doesn't mean that lots of people don't play retroclones in the OSR playstyle, just that there isn't anything really new or exciting that is dominating the headlines online anymore.
Old School Revolution: One perhaps inevitable side effect of changing the OSR from a discussion on the mechanics, i.e., the old rules and retroclones which replicated them, to a playstyle and philosophy on how to game, is that eventually, OSR started to become—ironically—divorced from the very rules and mechanics that it was created to champion and bring back. While I like the idea of calling this the NSR, the label has had limited currency, and most OSR communities continue to talk about OSR products of this category as if they were actually the OSR. I kind of disagree, but since I don't identify as any kind of OSRian, just a sympathetic para-OSRian who's more old-fashioned than old skool, maybe it's a little cheeky of me to play gatekeeper to the label. I'm not sure exactly at what point this launched, but there are a lot of games, most of them very niche, and very... "why bother" quite honestly, alongside a handful of games that have become tentpoles, if you will, of this subcommunity within the OSR. All of these are defined by their adherence to the OSR philosophy, to the extent that that's really a well codified and accepted philosophy, while simultaneously deviating significantly from the mechanics and rules of older D&D and the retroclones. Many of them, ironically, bring in a great number of "storygame" affectations, like player-facing rules, meta-currencies to allow players to influence the emerging narrative, etc. Some of the tentpole properties include Into the Odd, or Morg Borg, Black Hack, Cairn and maybe Knave. There's many others, but I'm putting forward just a handful of the more prominent ones. It's also possible that OSR-themed games that hew closer to 5e (deliberately) like ShadowDark or Five Torches Deep also fit here, although I think many OSRians would be more comfortable suggesting that they like a lot about those games, but don't really consider them OSR. But that gets to the final group, for which I have no label.
Other: This group is games that may not have any connection to the OSR at all other than that OSR fans may also like them, or that their creators hope that OSR fans like them and hope to sell to them. While the former is fine; maybe games like Dragonbane fit here, the latter is just a cheap marketing gimmick, and definitely cause for more than usual caveat emptor on the part of the OSR fans looking at such a product.
Maybe its a good thing if the OSR "dies". As a community, it doesn't seem particularly innovative anymore; even the NSR or OSRevolution's innovations are mostly overstated. And that community is particularly toxic too. Then again, most online communities are.
As I've said many times before, I'm not old school, but I am old-fashioned. None of the OSR communities are really doing what I'd want them to do, in theory, but I am sympathetic and somewhat adjacent to what they're doing. I've never really loved the old rules, and I do have a number of quibbles about them; I'd want them to be significantly modified, so I'm not really on the Revival camp. However, the Renaissance camp goes a lot into gaming philosophies that I disagree with, and the Revolution camp builds on those principles that I disagree with.
However, if you ditch the principles, then you can potentially end up with systems that I kind of like in the NSR or Revolution side. So I guess my preferred game is parallel to all of the three OSRs. But in terms of community, I find that the revival folks are the ones I'm most likely to get a long with, and the renaissance guys have some interesting ideas. The revolution might be more interesting from a system standpoint, but I find that community pretty intolerable, even when I might find some of their ideas for mechanics interesting, here and there. And honestly, they're not doing as much that's interesting as I'd like.
No comments:
Post a Comment