OSR Does "Old School" in OSR only apply to D&D?

Mannahnin said:

I invite you, once again, to explain your criteria or definition.

I don't think golden age, silver age, etc. apply to RPGs in general, but I'd be interested to hear a case made. I think I've seen James Maliszewski apply them to different periods of TSR's history specifically.

When I first got onto Dragonsfoot 2nd ed AD&D was definitely not considered Old School D&D by that crew, but the consensus has shifted in the last 15 years or so from what I can tell.

I don't think it's useful or accurate to confine our use of the term Old School in referring to RPGs to, say, the first 5 years/10% of their existence.

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I am not sure exactly what year it would be, but sometime in the 80s RPGs went from being a hobby cottage industry to a viable publishing category (even if a small one). That happened in large part due to the ubiquity of desktop publishing. That is the start of the Silver Age, IMO. I think the d20 glut and crash, and how it fueled a lot of indie games from the Forge, is probably another line of demarcation. I am less confident about calling the start of the "Modern Age." A lot of people would align it with 5E but I am not so sure. I might align it with the rise of Actual plays, which was parallel to 5E but not because of it (although the reverse might be true).

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Hilarious to think anyone could look at 2E and say "whoa, that's way too many radical changes to be lumped in with 1E," then or now.

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"This game is way too coherent to be Old School."

Reynard said:

"This game is way too coherent to be Old School."

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Is Traveller not a coherent game? How about RuneQuest?

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

I would love to see a world full of oWoD remixes.

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You could do a Lasers & Feelings hack called GothicPunk. One stat measures how goth you are and that’s for the social and spooky stuff. The other measures how punk you are and that’s for rebellion and kicking ass.

Reynard said:

I am pretty sure for most OSR folks, only OD&D, AD&D pre-OA and B/X are "Old School"

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Like I said "a lot of nerve." They can make an argument of sorts for only those applying to OSR, but when you don't get to call games like Traveller or RuneQuest "Old School" because people only want to apply it to D&D, that's arrogant as can be.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Hilarious to think anyone could look at 2E and say "whoa, that's way too many radical changes to be lumped in with 1E," then or now.

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It was absolutely a thing back then, though. Even though it was in my "D&D can pack sand" period, I was seeing a lot of discussion of AD&D2 by AD&D1 fans that was super soggy about it.

Mannahnin said:

Is Traveller not a coherent game? How about RuneQuest?

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I was making a specific joke about AD&D 2E "not making the old School cut" because the only substantive difference between it and 1E is presentation.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Hilarious to think anyone could look at 2E and say "whoa, that's way too many radical changes to be lumped in with 1E," then or now.

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Exactly.

Worrying about the impurities of 2E is a certain kind of Post-OSR revisionism.

When the 2E "Complete Fighter's Handbook" came out in 1989, my friends and I had already been into D&D for 7 years - which is a lot when you're a kid, but we weren't suddenly concerned about a new addition. We just took the Handbook to be a supplement that gave more optional rules for fighters, much like the Unearthed Arcana or even AD&D PHB (We'd started with Moldvay B/X and just built off of that for everything). The rules didn't clash with the ones we were using.

Now some might have had a more taxonomical obsession with editions even then, but no one I played D&D with from 1982 to 1995 did. It was all just D&D and it all fit together (rather messily but it fit).

Reynard said:

I was making a specific joke about AD&D 2E "not making the old School cut" because the only substantive difference between it and 1E is presentation.

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I getcha. Though their initiative cleanup and unarmed combat cleanup did make those sub-systems much more comprehensible and rational.

Gus L said:

Exactly.

Worrying about the impurities of 2E is a certain kind of Post-OSR revisionism.

When the 2E "Complete Fighter's Handbook" came out in 1989, my friends and I had already been into D&D for 7 years - which is a lot when you're a kid, but we weren't suddenly concerned about a new addition. We just took the Handbook to be a supplement that gave more optional rules for fighters, much like the Unearthed Arcana or even AD&D PHB (We'd started with Moldvay B/X and just built off of that for everything). The rules didn't clash with the ones we were using.

Now some might have had a more taxonomical obsession with editions even then, but no one I played D&D with from 1982 to 1995 did. It was all just D&D and it all fit together (rather messily but it fit).

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[raises hand]

I started with Mentzer Basic and then Cook/Marsh Expert, a copy of Supp I: Greyhawk a friend of my parents gave me, and pretty quickly at least one AD&D 1E book (which might have been Unearthed Arcana), but sometime after getting my Basic and Expert books I started reading Dragon and pouring through statements by Gary and others to sort out and differentiate them and figure out why stuff didn't line up quite right or some books had different and additional weapon and spell and monster stats.

At the beginning of the OSR Dragonsfoot was very firm about (and still is branded as) being the home of 1st edition AD&D, and 2E was definitely seen, for at least another ten years, as a newer-school, Williams-tainted, encroacher. Permitted in its own sub-forum but with clear boundary lines drawn. It didn't earn 3E's epithet of TETSNBN (The Edition That Shall Not be Named) or 4E's YAETSNBN, but not really the purestrain original stuff.

In thinking about this topic a bit more I suppose some of it comes down to what you see as the goal of the OSR?

Was it primarily about rediscovering and figuring out how to play old games as they were meant to be played .. A revival or even return (RETVRN?)

or

Was it primarily about playing old games and iterating on them building off the past creatively and exploring odd dark corners of the RPG past for ideas and ways of doing things that can make something fun and based on or inspired by older things but really the OSR's own ... A Renaissance perhaps?

While obviously the OSR contained elements of both - at different times and among different groups one or the other predominated - I primarily focus on the second and find it far more interesting. Interestingly these two OSRs mirror the scholarly literature on nostalgia as a cultural and psychological phenomenon. The first tends to link up with restorative nostalgia, an impulse brought by dissatisfaction with the present and a sense that things used to be better. This can be psychologically healthy on an individual scale (nostalgia generally is) as it encourages alienated and unhappy people to reach out or find things to do that they like. It's also a bad but effective basis for a social/political movement as it has psychological appeal but requires creating a narrative of rupture form the idealized past, and presenting the goal of a return (which is impossible). At this point is usually falls into blaming some group of people for the rupture and also any failure to achieve the impossible nostalgic ideal. It can get ugly...

Reflective Nostalgia doesn't have the same psychological hit as restorative, it tends to be a slower looking back to look forward sort of thing. It also helps one build on one's remembered past and adapt what made one happy to the present reality.

E.G. If you find yourself at 40 looking back at a childhood sports hobby and thinking "I used to be a sports star! I was the king of my high school!" and then go and try to do all the things you did as an 18 year old athlete it tends to be disappointing (and lead to knee injuries). This is restorative nostalgia, and people with a lot of investment in the nostalgic ideal will usually blame someone because they aren't 18 anymore and have a beergut/bad knee - their family, thier job etc. Reflective nostalgia would instead ay "I used to be a sports star!" and then look at their present and think about what they liked about the nostalgic past and how to get it in the present - maybe it was the community of the team sport or the physical fitness - but as an out of shape 40 year old you can't just join the varsity team or try out for the NFL. You instead can look for teams you can play on and go to the gym, reconnect with you childhood friends etc.