For a few years, I was very enthusiastic about the Old School Renaissance (OSR). I stopped using the label in 2022. The main reason being that I kept hearing people complain about members of the Old School Renaissance. I’ve seen a few bloggers I disagree with, and didn’t think much about it. But over the years, I started to wonder: perhaps I was simply not seeing the bullying because I wasn’t being targeted – which didn’t mean that it wasn’t happening. It just meant I wasn’t seeing it. And if the thing you associate with keeps attracting the attention of the wrong kind of people, and you can’t see them, and you can’t stop them, then it seems to me that I need to be the one to leave the thing I used to associate with.
For some context:
2018-11-18 What I love about the OSR
2022-03-18 Self-proclaimed association and the pain it brings
Anyway. I still like classic D&D. Check out Halberds and Helmets if you’re interested in my house rules.
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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“And if the thing you associate with keeps attracting the attention of the wrong kind of people, and you can’t see them, and you can’t stop them, then it seems to me that I need to be the one to leave the thing I used to associate with.”
That seems to leave you wide open to what in Illuminati (the game) is called a “whispering campaign”. You hear allegations but you see no evidence, yet you assume guilt.
I think the issues you mention are associated with certain sites, not the OSR generally. Or even at all, any more than any other gaming crowd; gaming crowds do seem to attract a lot of opinionated people.
– Thomas Worthington 2022-08-04 13:34 UTC
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That’s true. But I’m not just hearing people say that they heard this and that, I’m seeing people quitting. That is a stronger basis, specially if I’ve enjoyed what they were doing online for a while – a kind of one-sided trust building. Furthermore, this is not a court of law, so the language such as “evidence” and “guilt” does not apply. There is nothing these people could present that would count as evidence, online, in such one-sided relationships as bloggers and social media presences, there is no way to establish guilt, no way to judge people, to punish people. All we can do is navigate the social space. And that is what such social spaces are: built on reputation, hearsay, gut feelings, the flimsiest of impressions, but also with the flimsiest of consequences. I’m trying to no longer tag my blog posts as “old school” and rather name the things I’m talking about, like the reaction roll, group initiative, descending armour class, and so on. A far cry from what consequences await us in a court of law.
The alternative would be to never respect reputation, to never listen to hearsay, to never trust your gut feelings, to either be oblivious to the pain you still see claimed around you, or to spend what little time you have on this planet investigating claims and counter claims like a hobby investigator, getting uncomfortably close to both accuser and accused, violating the privacy of some and being an obstinate stickler to rules meant for a different context, turning into the very caricature I’m trying to avoid, risking to surround myself with people I share no values with as the people I do share values with are leaving.
Given the choice between this Scylla and Charybdis, I prefer to disengage.
– Alex 2022-08-04 13:50 UTC
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I like this post:
What do we do about the assholes? … Contribute. Make something. Write something. … A drawing. … Interact and encourage the people who make positive stuff. … Share positive stuff. … I would like the culture of the OSR to be net positive. – Let Us Talk About Assholes In the OSR.
Let Us Talk About Assholes In the OSR.
– Alex 2022-08-04 19:36 UTC * 2011-01-21 With Kids * 2009-08-23 Old School Flyers