The State of the OSR Nation, part 1

In this series of posts I am going to discuss, as I see it, the current state of the OSR – the Old School Renaissance. If that term offends you – and it both amuses and saddens me that there are still people using the phrase “the so-called OSR” – feel free to translate the acronym as Old School Rules or something similar, if it makes you feel better.

Without a doubt the OSR has changed somewhat over the last 18 months or so. This is unsurprising as it has been evolving since its foundations. As such, I think any essay on the current state of affairs would read better if prefaced with an explanation of the what, when, where and how of the OSR.

The OSR doesn’t attract the same level of ire and criticism from some corners of our online community that it did only a few short years ago, although the sentiment can still be found popping up on various blogs and forums. Most of these folk tend to have a very limited view of what the OSR is and isn’t. Most of them over-simplify the origins of our scene and clearly seem to lack an understanding of the various ingredients that went into the mix that resulted in the OSR.

Firstly, here’s what the OSR isn’t...

The OSR isn’t about people who never stopped playing D&D. Now and then you’ll come across someone who says the OSR is crap because there can’t be a renaissance if they themselves never stopped playing the game. These folks are so insular that they have little idea of what has actually been happening in the online old school scene over the last decade or so. Don’t take them seriously.

Neither is the OSR purely made up of people new to old school gaming or coming back to it after falling out of love with WotC D&D. Sure, some of us fit this description, but others have been playing the original game right from the start and have never stopped doing so.

The OSR isn’t just about bloggers, although to hear some people talk on a couple of the forums you would think that was the case. Blogging has been and is a big part of it, but simply that – a part of it.

Nor is the OSR solely about people on forums. Quite hilariously I’ve read posts by a handful of disgruntled types on a particular old school forum who regularly pour scorn and hatred upon “The OSR” on the one hand, while claiming to be the “true OSR” on the other. Amusing stuff. Of course it’s hard to know what’s happening around you when your head is lodged firmly up your own arse.

The OSR isn’t just about D&D, but it mostly is. If that chokes you, get over it, it’s just how it is. It’s not a criticism of your favourite game. It’s simply what the focus of the OSR thing has largely been.

The OSR isn’t all about making money through publishing, but neither is it only about giving stuff away for free. Some people get hung up on one or the other, especially those who prefer the “revolution” label over revival or renaissance. The OSR is a bag of mixed nuts I’m afraid.

So what is it then? A quick history of the OSR...

The OSR is primarily about hobby publishing and the community that surrounds it. And it’s mostly based in the online old school scene, although some manage to identify with it while maintaining minimal online presence. The online old school community is of course much bigger than the OSR. The latter is simply a part of the former.

Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR in 1997 and released 3e D&D in 2000. The era of TSR D&D ended and the new school WotC D&D began. Ignoring pointless arguments over whether 2e AD&D is or isn’t old school, the core rules of official D&D changed and a large section of the D&D fan base dumped the company and went it alone – the beginnings of the old school community.

Many of these people found a home at the Dragonsfoot forum, with its 1e AD&D focus. Various other old school forums hived off DF, but the only notable remaining one is the Knights & Knaves Alehouse, home of those who consider themselves truly hardcore, I believe.

In 2004, Troll Lord Games took the OGL and SRD of what was now 3.5e D&D and produced Castles & Crusades. While not a retro-clone as such, it was intended to be a game that had a TSR D&D feel, but with some WotC D&D modern sensibilities. While some old school gamers were won over by the mix, a great deal many others wanted something more pure in a newly published game. What Troll Lords did give us, however, was the understanding that the OGL could be used to reverse engineer TSR D&D from WotC’s SRD.

Blogging had become a popular activity, but the old school scene was slow to adopt it. It really started to take off in 2005. Few old school blogs date back any earlier than this, but once the strengths and uses of this new tool became obvious, old school blogs began popping up like crazy. While not impacting the forum scene hugely, a large number of old school gamers moved their online presence from the forums to this new medium, for a variety of reasons. Blogging certainly began to dominate the old school scene, to the bitterness of some.

It was in 2005 too that, according to Rob Conley I believe, the first traceable use of the phrase “old school renaissance” can be found. It was used on a DF forum thread by an anonymous poster. This wasn’t when the scene was born, but it was certainly the beginning of our self awareness.

Finally, around this time Print on Demand publishing – that is, cheap and easy professional publishing for amateurs – became widely available and used, and on a global scale, most notably Lulu, which had begun its life in 2002. Throw into this mix the easy to use tools of desktop publishing, with plenty of free "Open" variations available, and suddenly any bugger could publish and if they did it right, to a standard equal to much of what was being produced by professional gaming companies.

Of great excitement to many was the publishing of OSRIC in 2006. Said to be the first “true” retro-clone, it was in reality an expanded Player’s Handbook, rather than a clone of the complete Core rules of 1e AD&D. It was, however, a gamble that paid off. A bitter feud arose during its development between the supporters of OSRIC and some of the C&C crew, with the latter predicting that WotC would rain down legal fire and brimstone on the old school scene, consequently spoiling it for those who did the “right thing”. That didn’t happen of course and we know from the last few years that many who are currently employed by WotC are very interested, in a positive way, in the developments within the OSR over the last several years.

So, the retro-clones were born, a sub-section of the OSR it’s true, albeit a rather large and dominant part of it. The first complete, true clone was published in 2007, Labyrinth Lord, followed in 2008 by the “near-clone” of Swords & Wizardry. And of course we’ve seen a multitude of variations published since then.

Over the next few years the major events and trends within the OSR included the nomination into mainstream gaming awards of various OSR products, with some even winning such awards, despite being in competition with big companies such as WotC. The magnitude and impact of this shouldn’t be underestimated. And then there was the exploration of the various elements that made a game “old school”, ideas such as megadungeons, sandbox play, etc. Much of this investigation was carried out on the blogs.

And now that brings us up to the recent past of the last couple of years. In the next post I will explore those things that have occurred and affected the OSR over the last year or so. Hopefully the above will provide good context to what will follow, making it easier to understand where we are at and why.

Quality OSR Video on YouTube - Grognard Games!

If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend you watch the first video on the new Grognard Games YouTube channel. Just from this opening video it promises to be a wonderful ride by a bunch of people who are as passionate about old school gaming as we are.

Sad to see some hair splitting in the comments, but that's to be expected. And yes, he did hold up the Basic rulebook from BECMI and call it "B/X", but give the guy a break - we all know what he meant. I've subscribed to the Grognard Games channel and look forward to seeing future videos and discovering who else is on the team.

Blogs vs. Forums vs. G+

Over on his Dreams in the Lich House blog, Beedo asked the following:

“What kind of things do you do differently since you've encountered the blogosphere?  The internet often seems like tribes of angry folks yelling at each other across a room, and no one ever changes their mind.  (See also, Edition Wars et al).  I've changed my mind about some things.  How about you?”

I started writing a comment and then realised it was getting too long, so I’ve decided to turn it into a blog post instead. Here goes...

I don't know if the blogosphere has changed my mind about anything, but it's certainly made my involvement in the online scene a greater pleasure. And it most definitely has given me a wealth of valuable tools for my game.

After a number of years of hanging around various old school forums I began to despair of the negativity that dominated (and in a couple of prime examples still dominates). It was usually a noisy minority – the Mouth of Forum, but we all know how "they" can spoil it for the regular majority. Let’s face it, involvement in the online scene quickly loses its fun when having to deal with the needless negativity and unwarranted aggression and rudeness of those lame types who either lack social skills or simply get their kicks from being a wanker.

When blogging began to become popular around 2005, I found a way to continue interacting with folks online without having to put up with the idiots. As an added bonus creativity and good ideas were more highly concentrated. No longer did I have to wade through 45 pages of forum thread to find the gold amidst a mountain of waffle. The Mouth of Forum tended to avoid blogging since they lost the captive audience of the forum. Idiot bloggers end up with no followers and no one interacting with them – and when you’re a shit-stirrer, where’s the fun in that?

A strong community developed around blogging that has, on the whole, being rather positive. It’s stood the test of time and proved the critics wrong over and over (I won’t bother going down that road to explain).

Then came G+, which has had a definite impact on blogging in some respects, but hasn't been the death knell that some predicted. Much of the online conversation that was occurring in blogging comments has now shifted to G+, but that hasn't impacted on the continuing creativity being posted on blogs. Blogging hasn’t been weakened. Some think blogs are ephemeral, although personally I think that extends only to poorly organised blogs. A well organised blog is a pleasure to behold, especially one with links to creative content, popular posts, etc. A bit like sticking a table of contents at the front of a book, it makes a hell of a difference. G+ on the other hand, from what I’ve seen so far, is primarily a tool for conducting conversations, and in that it excels.

The three different types of medium - forums, blogs and G+ - all have their strengths and weakness, with none of them completely replacing the other two.

Forums are good places for conversation, but for some reason tend to fall prey to attention-seeking spoiled brats, unless strongly moderated. I’m not really sure why this has been the case. They are a good place for creative content, but it soon becomes buried under pages of forum threads of “what are you reading now” and “here’s another Bard variation”, and so on. And let’s be honest, most forum search functions are pretty crappy, making retrieving information hit and miss at best, often almost impossible.

Blogs are not so good for carrying on conversation, although some fascinating ones do occur, but the moderation aspect tends to be stronger and so the Mouth tends to stay away. Empty conversation will often receive little or no reply, but that’s a bit like survival of the fittest, isn’t it? Creative content is more easily distilled into one place, but requires the blogger to be organised for the reader to have ready access to it. I do find the search function on blogger blogs to be very good on the whole.

G+ I discussed above and so won’t go over it again. I have to confess I haven’t made time to use G+ properly and may never end up doing so.

So Beedo’s post today made me realise once again that overall, for me it's the blogs that have had the greatest impact upon my game and my DMing style. I've found and used more gold from blogs than I have ever discovered in forums. And in the main, I've had vastly better interactions with fellow gamers on blogs*, something that has made this hobby a much more enjoyable activity. 

I encourage you to visit Beedo's blog post and tell him what, if anything, you do differently because of blogs.

*Although it goes without saying that Finarvyn’s Original D&D Discussion forum is the cream of the crop that has miraculously stayed largely free of the depravations of the Mouth of Forum, while at the same time being one of the lightest moderated forums out there. And the creativity that is posted there makes it an exciting place to hang around.

The World's Most Boring Response to the #7RPGS Meme

Apparently there's a G+ conversation going on about your seven most played/GM'd RPGs. With all honesty and no real shame I present mine, in rough chronological order:

1. Holmes Basic D&D Rulebook

2. AD&D 1e

3. B/X Moldvay D&D

4. BECMI D&D

5. AD&D 2e

6. Labyrinth Lord

7. OD&D

You know the guy that goes to restaurants and orders steak every time? You know how people scratch their heads and rail at him to try something new, but he simply smiles and replies "but I like steak"? Well I guess when it comes to RPGs I'm that man. It's not that I'm not open to new ideas for my D&D games, I happily introduce new elements into my games all the time, but after 30+ years of gaming I'm still having great fun with D&D.

FREE 65-Page Magic Supplement - Theorems & Thaumaturgy

After over a decade hanging around the online scene, as well as being passionate about the OSR, it’s probably fair to say I’m pretty jaded when it comes to new releases for the TSR versions of D&D. However, Theorems & Thaumaturgy ticks all the right boxes and has impressed me no end. It is, for me, a wonderful example of what amateur and self-publishers could and should produce, if only they put a bit of effort in. I know some professional publishers who could learn some lessons from it too.

As the title of this post says, Theorems & Thaumaturgy (T&T) is a 65-page magic supplement. It was written by Gavin Norman of the blog, The City of Iron. Being a supplement for the Moldvay D&D retro-clone, Labyrinth Lord, it is obviously also compatible with any version of TSR D&D and subsequent clones. First I’ll talk about what’s in it, and then why I like it and hold it in such high esteem.

Content

Within its pages, T&T has three new magic-user classes, two variant classes, a selection of themed magic tomes, optional rules for magic-users, new monsters and magic items, a wonderful section consisting of samples of memorised spells for spellcasters, and an alphabetical listing of spells found both within T&T and LL’s Advanced Edition Companion (AEC).

The three magic-user classes are Elementalist, Necromancer and Vivimancer. Besides the class description, each also has a selection of new spells. So while the elementalist has “spells in common with both magic-users and druids, as well as some cleric and illusionist spells”, there are also 36 new spells for the class. The necromancer (magic-user illusionist and cleric spells) has 67 new spells, and the vivimancer (magic-user and druid spells) has 60 new spells. That’s a big heap of new spells to add to your campaign, whether or not you use these classes.

The helpful Introduction describes the vivimancer as having some overlap with the druid class, but adds “druids act as sacred protectors of the balance of nature, and are thus inherently and strictly neutral in alignment, vivimancers have no such philosophy, being simply versed in the arcane manipulation of the forces of nature”. I have a player who obsessively plays a druid almost every campaign. I’m tempted to allow this class in the future just to rock his boat.

Finally, at the end of each class description is a spell list, with both the new spells and those from the AEC. I’d probably prefer this list before the spell descriptions, but that’s personal taste. The classes are simple (this is Basic D&D, not AD&D) and so I like them very much.

Then come a couple of variant classes. The expanded illusionist is just that, an expansion of the AEC illusionist to have spells of up to level 9, rather than stopping at 7^th level. This consists of six new spells each of levels 8 & 9, as well as a bonus four spells of other levels.

The Fey Elf variant, remembering that race = class in LL, adds “a bit of fairy tale magic to elves, to give them a different flavour and different spell-casting abilities than that of the standard magic-user”. And I think Gavin does a good job of achieving that. The variant comes in both Basic LL and AEC flavours, and adds a Sorcerer class for fey elves only. Fey spell-casters use a mixture of magic-user, cleric, druid and illusionist spells, as well as four new spells. This variant would work extremely well in a campaign that borrowed heavily from Jack Vance’s Lyonesse series, or something similar.

And because 167-odd new spells is simply not enough, Gavin gives us even more in the next section – Tomes – themed spell books. Along with suggested rules (which he offers in pretty much every section of T&T), Gavin has produced another 66 spells (which brings us to a total of around 233 new spells in this free supplement, if my count is correct).

These themed tomes are suggestive of schools of magic, should a DM want to go down that track. They can certainly be used simply to turn that plain old vanilla magic-user into one with a distinct flavour. The names of the tomes are a good indication of what you can expect, so that there is:

• The Book of Deceptions, 
• The Book of Figurines and Puppets, 
• The Book of Meta-Magic, 
• The Book of Pranks, 
• The Chronomancer’s Workbook, 
• The Dimensional Treatise, 
• The Prism Codex, 
• The Tome of Ooze and Slime, and 
• The Tome of the Spider Mage

Within the Appendices can be found optional rules for magic-users. It’s all simple but useful stuff – detecting magic, cantrips, magical affinities, additional spells per day, easier scroll creation, no duplicate spells, limited high-level spells, and complicated high-level spells.

Next up are 19 new monsters and 13 new magic items. The monsters and magic items are a good fit with much of what has gone before in T&T. All are useful as far as I’m concerned and not just same old-same old padding for the product.

Another very useful feature is the “Example Memorized Spells”, with a page each for elementalists, fey elves, illusionists, magic-users, necromancers, and vivimancers. Each page consists of four individuals and the spells they have picked at each level, from 1^st right through to 10^th level. This is a handy tool for quickly producing memorised spells for an NPC. It would also be very handy for that NPC who is the nemesis of the adventurers, the one they just can’t kill and keeps popping up again later on at higher levels.

The book ends with an alphabetical list of spells contained both in T&T and the AEC, with the respective page numbers listed. This is only really handy if you are using these two volumes in your campaign.

Format

I like how Gavin has put this book together. There are so many little touches that make T&T look like a professional product, like a book in which the publisher actually cares. Too many books published both professionally and by amateurs are a formatting mess, or lack any sense of visual nicety. One modern gaming company has the rights to re-release, and add to, a couple of British 80s RPGs, but their products look like they’ve been put together by a computer illiterate. It’s lazy, it disrespectful to the original authors, and it treats the customers with contempt. It screams "we want your money but will give you sub-standard product in return".

In contrast, Theorems & Thaumaturgy shines. The text is justified, not lazily left-aligned, which makes it easier on the eye and for me, easier to read. It’s in two-column format, except for spell lists which are in three columns. In fact, anyone familiar with Dan Proctor’s LL products will feel very much at home here. And there are some nice little touches like the decorative elements framing the page numbers and illustrated section headers.

Speaking of which, amazingly, for a free product, rather than fall back on clip art or have no art at all, Gavin has purchased art from not one, but two artists – the familiar Kelvin Green and the new-to-me Cadanse D. [CORRECTION: Gavin left a comment below in which he says both artists donated their art, free of charge] The artwork of both artists fits together nicely and Cadanse D’s work in particular is reminiscent of the artwork of Aubrey Beardsley, very apt for the subject matter. All up there are 25 pieces of art in this book, which is a pretty good ratio to the page count.

Oh and I couldn’t help noticing, and perhaps it’s just me, but I swear the figure on page 20 could be Zak S, while the one on page 27 could be his girlfriend Mandy (link NSFW).

I think a lot of publishers could learn a thing or two from what Gavin has done here.

The Business

As I’ve said, Theorems & Thaumaturgy is FREE. You can download the (6.2 mb) pdf by clicking on this link. Gavin is also selling paperback and hardcover versions through Lulu, at cost. Yep, he’s not making a cent from this. Personally I think he deserves some reward for what I believe is a fantastic supplement for the game. As such, the very least I can do is write this review and say a big THANK YOU to him.