Recently there was a survey passed around about the OSR communities/movement/brand whatever. Now I gave up half way through it due to the length and relative trivial nonsense of some of the questions. But I did notice something interesting coming up in discussions afterwards.
There have been several folks sharing their negative interactions with other OSR people and communities. Things that they've seen or were done to them personally. Which is a good thing to talk about as it gives everyone the ability to see stuff from every angle and discover why some people are a bit taken back about the OSR overall.
Of course that's not what happened most of the time. Occasionally open talk happened, but on a more frequent basis something else did. The complaints were ignored, told by others "Well I've never seen that happen" or openly told they were making stuff up.
What this would have been is a very opportune moment for people to share out the positive OSR circles where things like this don't happen. But that hardly happened most of the time. They were given some rough thoughts about finding the more artpunk DIY groups... but not actually telling them were these groups were. If I were to be the owner, moderator or member of a very friendly and open OSR group I damn sure would have been sharing it around during all this.
So why didn't that happen? That's a very important question right there.
Either they don't know of community spots where there aren't toxic shitbags ruining it occasionally for other people. OR they are afraid to give out the spots because they are worried the toxic shitbags they know are out there will also move in.
I took the poll and thought it was generally a bit pointless.
ReplyDeleteI also read some discussion about it on forums. There were the same voices that always want to claim the OSR is substantially 'pompous and arrogant' or purely 'nostalgic'... others arguing over whether or not it is limited to D&D.
I've not experienced the nastier elements that some want to ascribe to it, and I'm not generally a fan of D&D, but I have liked a number of OSR offerings, if only because they're usually low on rules-specific content and I can use them for other things than D&D.
I ran into several of the assholes earlier on with the OSR and that pretty much painted my view of the whole thing. Especially since so many others basically stood on the sidelines and said nothing about the assholes among them. That and the heavy doses of 'one true wayism' are really a lot to handle.
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