My wife is lying on the sofa, with the common cold, or so we hope. The tests have been negative, so far. I’m making backups. Every day is a good day to make a backup.
It hurts me to see that I like old school games, that is: stuff that is mechanically close to classic D&D, and plenty of people who are wrong on the Internet appear to like those games, too. The OSR being something that anybody can claim for themselves begins to be a burden on me.
I feel like those people demonstrating against COVID19 measures here in Switzerland. I think they are wrong, but it’s their right to disagree. Sadly, Nazis are joining all activities that promote distrust in the state, and so we have demonstrations for this and that, and sometimes there are Nazis or other vile people joining these events, distributing their leaflets, spreading their hate, sowing their seeds of doubt. And I tell myself: there must come a point where a legit event is poisoned by association with vile people.
I guess I’m just slow on the pickup, sheltered and safe, cocooned against the vagaries of life.
The problem is, of course, that if anybody can pick up the label and apply it to themselves, then anything can happen. Which is why the organisers of demonstrations must start thinking about having a team of people to make sure that the vile ones don’t join. But can we do that on the Internet, with the OSR label? We cannot.
What seemed so empowering in the past becomes a legacy.
There comes a point where you need to stop making excuses for something that’s hurting you and cut it out of your life. I hit that point about 18 months ago, and have been trying to distance myself from the OSR and my past with it since then. – On The OSR And My Relationship With It
On The OSR And My Relationship With It
I am sorry Cavegirl has to go through all that. 😟
Like Cavegirl, I’d like to end this blog post with “a message to any of the people responsible for that shit who might be reading this: Fuck You.”
#RPG #Old School
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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I think I’m feeling a sort of turning point in my association with the OSR. I felt like I shared some values with a lot of people, and that felt liberating. I was not alone. But slowly, year by year, it feels like there’s more baggage to pick up and it starts feel like a burden.
I’m collecting the comments I liked on this page. – 2016-01-19 Innovation and the Old School Renaissance
The OSR is a collection of people interested in publishing, playing, and promoting classic D&D along with whatever else happens to interests them. – 2016-01-24 Rob Conley on the OSR
But why are people writing about the OSR? It’s because of bitter fighting on social media, as far as I can tell. It’s the culture war, again. – 2018-11-18 What I love about the OSR
As I was reading the blogs, I noticed that I wasn’t alone in my liking of both old school and indie gaming. – 2019-02-16 OSR & Indie
I don’t think there is much of a point to draw a line between somewhere when I am clearly all over the place. – 2021-12-17 OSR History
2016-01-19 Innovation and the Old School Renaissance
2016-01-24 Rob Conley on the OSR
2018-11-18 What I love about the OSR
Anyway.
– Alex 2022-03-18 16:18 UTC
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I find Social media makes people worse. The people who engage with it a lot are often sad and I cant read it because it becomes fruit of the poison tree.
I also think humans now crave division and drama lines, this is social media but deeper than that I think.
I like your work and OSR things but avoid everything else related to it. I think Kevin from Stars without and worlds without number is a good example of this.
I try to stick to what you created. The blogs and podcasts and setting/module things.
Recently I have been using ktreys d100 tables and wilderness hexes!
I found this through your stuff thanks Alex!
RPGs have got me through this tough time and you are part of that
Thank you!
– Oliver 2022-03-18 17:50 UTC
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Thank you for the kind words! 😀
I don’t know about social media making people worse. I’m on some social media … then again who knows, perhaps I’d be a nicer person in an alternate universe. 😆 I’ve gotten a lot out of social media. I learned a lot.
On Mastodon, @rayotus suggested “people not labels” and I’m not sure what to think about that. Your comment goes in the same direction: I like what Alex is doing, and what Kevin is doing, etc. Perhaps that would work.
I guess my thinking used to be that I like labels as short hands: “I like Moldvay D&D” is self-labelling my preferences. I don’t know Mr. Moldvay, I don’t know how he runs his games, and you and I also don’t share any personal experience with any referee we could reference. I used to think that refusing labels makes it unnecessarily difficult to talk about preferences.
Anyway, that’s why I like self-labelling, in theory. Until people I don’t like show up. 😅
But then I look back at pages like 2009-05-25 B ⁄ X Affordances where I end up defining what I like using a longer essay because apparently the label “old school” only *seems* to explain something. In the end, I had to write a longer blog post anyway.
I guess you and Ray are right.
– Alex 2022-03-18 19:36 UTC
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I just removed my own blog from the Old School RPG Planet and the Indie RPG Planet. I’m just on the regular RPG Planet, now. And that means there’s also no point to keep using the Old School tag going forward.
– Alex 2022-03-18 23:09 UTC
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Here is something interesting I found on the “DIY & dragons” blog regarding scene formation and dissolution.
I recently read Jennifer Lena’s Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music, and although Lena is writing solely about music, it’s not hard to think that her model might do a pretty good job describing other kinds of creative communities, potentially including tabletop rpgs. – Avant-Gardes, Scenes, Industries, and Traditions in Jennifer Lena's "Banding Together"
Avant-Gardes, Scenes, Industries, and Traditions in Jennifer Lena's "Banding Together"
– Alex 2022-03-19 07:42 UTC