Friday, September 20, 2013

OSR I want to like you.

I really want to like the OSR movement. Honestly I do. I've really enjoyed some of the product that has come about because of it and met a few really cool people that are pushing the whole idea. But there always has to be that bad with the good. Sometimes the bad just comes forth a little more than anything else. Here's one of the negatives that I've seen rise lately.


Out with anything new. A new game comes along and people pick it apart. But not based on what it does wrong, but on what it does different than a decades old game system. More recently I've seen several OSR minded people rag on Numenera (yeah yeah I know....) because 'they could've simply used a retroclone system and accomplished the same thing, or being unneeded and could've just been a supplement for -insert their favorite OSR game-.

I'm sorry but some of us like new things every now and then. Change can be good, interesting and a pleasant change from the norm. But all to much do I see folks railing on others for liking something that doesn't fall into the old school rule sets. Basically they don't like it and you shouldn't either.  Way to much 'one true wayism' and it feels like dealing with all the other egotistical pundits that thrive on splitting the hobby nowdays.

I like my old red box DnD. It's what I usually use when I run fantasy games. But no way do I think it's the end all be all of game systems for everything. Nor do I think the same for any game system out there what so ever. But apparently that way of thinking isn't all that welcome among some OSR circles.

Ah well just my two cents on the subject. It's probably different than your two cents.... you may have Canadian pennies, or I may have a wheat penny and one of the newer shield ones why you have two others. Or maybe you use yen.....

6 comments:

  1. Sorry you're running into that; that's bullshit.

    My personal take may well be "ech, I'll skip $NewThing, I can do that with B/X," but that's because I like B/X a lot and I don't like learning new systems all that much.

    But someone having fun with Numanera or Dresden Files or Torchbearer or what-have-you? More frickin' power to them.

    To me the cool thing about the OSR as a group has been the idea that "hey, these old systems let us do a lot of cool things in a way that we prefer; maybe we shouldn't toss them out yet."

    That's got nothing bad to say about new systems, and people who extrapolate that in are bringing their own assholeishness into the discussion. Fuck them, play what you like, and roll crits. That's the true OSR way. :)

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    1. There are a lot of good folks in the OSR community, I follow a few blogs and have bought a few really good books. I just wish a few more would stand up and tell some of the others to dial it down off of eleven a bit. To many with the 'OSR or NOTHING for everyone!' mentality get heard to often.

      I also like converting stuff into the older systems as well. Heck for a while a few of us were bouncing ideas around on how to transfer Cyberpunk 2020 into BECMI. But I also like some of the newer systems and ideas that come around.

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  2. I love RPGs. I love my B/X D&D (which is why I'm known as part of the OSR, because I write and publish B/X oriented material), but I love my 3.5 D&D, and I love Fiasco, World of Darkness, Lacuna Part 1, and a bajillion other games.

    Then again, because I love these "new fangled" and "story game" games, I've also been called out as a "traitor to the OSR".

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    1. See that's what I don't get. Calling you out as a traitor is extremely counter productive to the movement. We can all like different thing and if some of the overlap then that should be good instead of what doesn't match up being bad.

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    2. Exactly. But then again, whoever it was was hiding behind a screen name and is most likely not one of the OSR bloggers.

      Honestly, I'm not an OSR guy. I just write OSR material. I also play a lot of other stuff that is new and shiny.

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  3. My problem isn't with any particular system new or old. My problem is sitting around a table with others who have long left junior high years ago, but their play style hasn't changed. I'll play B2 Keep on the Borderlands all day long, but I may want to approach the whole adventure a bit different then I did when I was eleven. So yes, I get annoyed at other players when they reject ideas because it doesn't include boldly marching through caverns and lining up trading die rolls to see what is left standing. I never tried figuring out how the Keep got its food. I never tried to spend weeks performing recon on the caves. I never tried to light the whole dam forest on fire and create some new settlement land.

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