Looking Back on the OSR

What better way to celebrate my return than to offer a sort of retrospective of the whole RPG scene and where I fit into it? In this weird world where D&D is more popular than it's ever been, I nevertheless feel increasingly isolated with where I like to place myself in it and the kinds of games I like to play. Also, since the death of Google+ and the fracturing of the RPG social media machine, I have had a difficult time surmising the current state of things with respect to RPGs in general, much less the Old School community. Twitter as a platform is far less functional and navigable than it used to be, and I have since deleted my Facebook account for a wide variety of reasons, my mental health being the most important. So, there are many people I used to talk to on a regular basis who I now have no idea how to contact, and I have no idea what they might be doing these days. And although I plan to summarize a few key events that occurred while I was removed from the hobby community, I undoubtedly missed something. Mindful of this ignorance, let's take a look at how I understand the "Old School" D&D scene on a macroscopic level before I inevitably find myself deep in its sweet clutches once again...

The OSR, Whatever That Is (Was?)

First, a definition. The "OSR"—at least at the time of my departure—had meant a great many things even during the span of time that I considered myself deeply entrenched in it. This is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that there persists debate as to what the "R" even means. "Old School Renaissance" is the most common I've come across, with "Rules" and even "Revolution" being alternatives. I think its formation can easily be traced back to the acquisition of D&D by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and the incorporation of the fundamentally different 3rd Edition mechanics. Interestingly, the 3rd Edition also produced the Open Gaming License (OGL), which allowed for not only third-party creation of modern D&D content, but also the creation of content related to earlier editions of D&D.

Where I'm going with this observation is this: the thesis that there are generally two different populations that make up what would eventually become this "OSR" philosophy/community.

Initially, this "old school" crowd merely contained the population who refused, for one reason or another, to adopt the newer edition(s), instead sticking with the editions released by TSR¹. Not long after, it also included all the newer content (games and modules) that were released under the OGL, and these creations had fans in their own right. But still, you could say that this is the "nostalgia" camp, since their initial RPG experiences were crafted in the context of TSR D&D.

Eventually, there became an ever-growing population who had been introduced to D&D as it had been reborn under the WotC banner. They then discovered—through whatever means—the older editions and began to play those as well, and in some cases exclusively. Naturally, this tends to be a younger audience, coming into RPGs after the year 2000, when 3rd Edition hit the shelves.

Note that I, myself, am in a relatively unique position, or so I believe. My first experiences with Dungeons and Dragons were thanks to reading Bill Amend's FoxTrot comic strip in the mid-90s. After hearing nerd extraordinaire Jason describe D&D to his sister Paige, I thought it sounded like such a cool experience, let alone a cool game. I eventually convinced my dad to get me the 1994 Black Box, followed by the Revised 2nd Edition Dungeon Masters Guide, which I would read through while eating breakfast cereal. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that a lot of the rules I needed were in the Player's Handbook, which I couldn't find for a long time (since this was before online bookstores existed). Although the earlier edition captured my imagination, it wasn't until when 3rd Edition came out in high school that I found people who were into the game. Effectively, I can kind of claim membership of both of these subgroups that gravitate towards TSR-era D&D.

The Social Problem

Let's fast forward a few years. Facebook came out while I was in college, back when it was only open to college students. I remember thinking that it was a bad idea to open it up to the general public, and oh boy, was I correct. Since then, generally speaking, I have seen all manner of social media algorithms create hyper-focused self-reinforcing communities on their respective platforms. Echo chambers, polarization, and siloization are some terms that I am thinking of using here, although I hesitate since I have not studied social media dynamics academically, only as an attentive yet casual observer.

At least in the context of the US, there has been an ever-strengthening tendency of social polarization. On one extreme, you see higher concentrations of radical bigotry and hard-line social "conservatism." On the other side, I see well-meaning social progressivism, albeit too often in the framework of a hyper-morality competition that becomes absolutist and self-sabotaging. This is about as political as I want to get, as the tightrope of language is thin, and I have never been excellent at choosing the right words to convey my meanings with surgical accuracy.

Actually, scratch that. I had checked out well before the rise of the bizarre, perverse conspiracy cult of Anonymity centered around a letter between P and R. That's right, I'm treating it like Voldemort because I don't want Blogger to associate this blog with that terminology in any way. I have no knowledge of how that real-life fringe has affected RPGs, and for the moment, ignorance is bliss.

Back to the polarization aspect: an obvious correlation is that the bigotry side of our US society tends to consist of older, white, cisgender and heterosexual males, while the opposite side is younger and, broadly speaking, more diverse.² It follows that the OSR community is similarly divided, due to the generational gap between those who are members through nostalgia versus those who are members via discovery. Nevertheless, for many people who have not explored the older editions or who cannot understand the appeal, the preference for older D&D editions is easily written off as nostalgia, and is synonymous with old, likely bigoted, white men.

Certainly those of us who are trying to reject this association are not helped by the flood of problematic news that continues to come out about the older generation of gamers and creators. (Ex: 1, 2, 3.) Fortunately, I can say that during my run in the RPG circles, I made a lot of new friends of various sexualities, genders, and ethnic backgrounds, and most of them I met through playing older editions of D&D, or games that were inspired by them. What's more, I made more such friends than when engaging in all my other hobbies combined (including board games).

Evolution of the Label

As the OSR evolved, it began to be less about the D&D game system, and more about the ethos that the older editions represented. TSR editions of the game had fewer rules overall, and the farther back in the publication history you go, the poorer the organization and layout tended to be. As a result, there were fewer rules to cover every possible scenario that arose in play, and when those rules did exist, they were not always easily found. While there were times that this created some disastrous social outcomes, particularly amongst kids who are not always the best at fairness, the contemporary take from within the OSR is that this leads to greater freedom on the DM's part to be creative and make rulings that adapt to the fiction at hand.

Gamemaster inventiveness and homebrew hackery led many who identified with the OSR to experiment with new settings, game mechanics, and original game systems, all with the intent of facilitating better gameplay at the table with a DM who could be entrusted to fairly adjudicate the gameplay. Interestingly, an "opposing" group of new RPG design with direct narrative-control mechanics (e.g., Fate) likely also had its genesis in early D&D games, albeit ones where the social contract had been violated and the DM could not be trusted.

By the time I had decided to abandon the RPG hobby, I was constantly observing new content coming out from the OSR community, and hardly anything was even remotely related to D&D. The idea had evolved far beyond an association with a particular era of D&D rules. Instead, you could easily call it a DIY freeform RPG community with a shared genesis point. 

Where I Am Now

Within the last few months, I hesitantly accepted an invitation to a fortnightly 5th Edition game. As a matter of fact, we have our next session this evening. I know about half of the players, including the DM, personally. However, what has me plunging myself back into the hobby and into this blog is the fact that one of the players has expressed interest in running a 2nd Edition AD&D game. But all this was covered in the last blog entry. My biggest challenge will probably be resisting the temptation to let loose my inner DM and start up a third game. There is no way that the current group could accommodate a third game, and even I have little free time to dedicate to running a complete campaign, even one as lightweight as Megadungeon Madness.

So, I will sit here and roll dice as a player in the meantime. It is good to have my paper, pencil, and polyhedrals again. My hope is that when I do get around to wanting to run a game with an older edition of D&D, I will not get much pushback from a community so fully immersed in the most recent edition and its modern tendencies.

Thanks to my initiative of separating myself from a toxic social media addiction, I do not know if the OSR is still going strong. And if it is, I have no idea what it looks like now. If you are a content creator who I know from my previous foray into the world of OSR creativity, please reach out. There are a lot of good friends out there who I wonder about these days.

1: Here I mean the original company founded in 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye, not whatever entities may have recently been battling over the TSR trademark.

2: Note that I don't mean to imply ageism. These are very broad trends. There is no shortage of problematic or bigoted people in the younger of the two camps. I also know that there are also many inclusive, open-minded people in the older camp.