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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 28, 2018 13:54:29 GMT -6
Over on Facebook, in an OSR Gaming group, I posted a link to my lastest AD&D blog.
A guy left the comment that AD&D is not part of the OSR, that the OSR only includes OD&D and its supplements, and he was tired of everyone trying to force other stuff into it.
A friend and I tried to point out that the OSR BEGAN with OSRIC, which was a clone of AD&D, and includes Labyrinth Lord, which is a clone of B/X, and both are part of the OSR.
Nope, he said. Those are just, "Someone's attempt to sell "their" version of AD&D, but aren't OSR. OSR is just a marketing term, anyway."
I just...I can't even.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2018 22:58:24 GMT -6
One guy's definition is just as good as any other. There has to be some limit as I've seen Vampire: The Masquerade described as an OSR game.
The "OSR" existed for years before OSRIC was written. It might not have been called by that exact term, but it was the same thing. The OSR was better before OSRIC came along as it wasn't focused on slavish devotion to compatibility with one specific (and unchanging) ruleset.
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Post by hamurai on Dec 29, 2018 1:34:06 GMT -6
I imagine folks who weren't there at the beginning of the OSR (for me, it started with OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord, which I discovered at the same time), the term OSR means different things. Many folks I play with focus on the OS in OSR and say if it's and old game it's part of the OSR. Incidentally, all of them believe the "R" to stand for "Revival". Reasoning, if we play old games, we revive them, so it's OSR. I guess that's how you can include Vampire in the OSR, too. Or Mechwarrior. Or the old DSA/The Dark Eye editions. Pretty much anything, really. But there's no "official" definition (yet), so let people define it for themselves. And don't get upset.
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Post by Falconer on Dec 29, 2018 2:00:39 GMT -6
I agree it’s a little open to interpretation, but in general I side with thegreyelf. The “R” in OSR means renaissance or resurgence, which suggests a temporal surge in interest. In the early 2000s, interest in TSR-era D&D was decidedly niche. Those of us on Dragonsfoot or Pied Piper or Gene Weigel’s Dungeon or Grognard’s Tavern were chugging along with our interest in old school gaming, and perhaps laying some groundwork for the eventual articulation of old school principles which contributed to the renaissance or resurgence, but there was at the time no renaissance or resurgence per se. This phenomenon did not take place till the 2006 release of OSRIC, and was not in full force till 2008, at which point all of the following events had occurred: the creation of this forum, the release of Mythmere’s Swords & Wizardry and Old School Primer, the release of the actual OD&D PDFs, the death of Gary Gygax, and the discontinuation of 3e. In 2008-09 you could buy dozens upon dozens of indy old school D&D modules. I know I couldn’t keep track of all the releases. Which had never before been even remotely the case. At any rate, the OSR surely encompasses both OD&D and the early years of AD&D 1e (and their clones). To me it would be quite novel to suggest otherwise. I certainly wouldn’t draw the line there, exactly, but, that would definitely be the barest minimum. For heaven’s sake, where does “Appendix N” come from? I have no idea what to make of the remarks about “slavish devotion” and “unchanging” rulesets. I am sure both before and after OSRIC came out there was and is plentiful divergence of preference when it comes to using the 3 core AD&D books vs. expanded (i.e., UA+) vs. homebrew variants. If anything, we now have way more variety than ever in AD&D, vis a vis Dangerous Dungeons, Monsters of Myth, AD&D Companion, Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Usherwood Adventures Expansion, A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore, and more than I could ever name.
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Post by Finarvyn on Dec 29, 2018 8:33:12 GMT -6
At any rate, the OSR surely encompasses both OD&D and the early years of AD&D 1e (and their clones). To me it would be quite novel to suggest otherwise. I certainly wouldn’t draw the line there, exactly, but, that would definitely be the barest minimum. Old School is clearly a philosophy, and the OSR is supposed to be a return to that philosophy. I guess there could be some debate about which philosophy one is supposed to return to, but the point (for me, at least) is a move away from 3E/4E and towards 0E/1E. Breaking the OSR into OD&D versus AD&D seems a little petty and elitist for my liking, even though my group at the time had an OD&D/AD&D split. No matter how you look at it, AD&D has little in common with 4E and a lot in common with OD&D. Just my two coppers.
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Post by Falconer on Dec 29, 2018 9:47:13 GMT -6
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Post by howandwhy99 on Dec 29, 2018 12:42:34 GMT -6
D&D was originally based on widespread game theory used to design wargames, boardgames, and other strategy games. D&D was special, well for many reasons, but one was its ability to incorporate other game designs into its own and still hold their validity. Throughout those early decades storytelling was decried as not gaming because narrative culture had absolutely no crossover with gaming culture. A DM was not supposed to tell his players a story, but present them a game. No one even dreamed about D&D or any early RPG as collaboratively improvising with the game's "author". DMing was the opposite of improvising. Roleplaying had nothing to do with character personality.
We are currently in an alternate reality where no one remembers the hobby of gaming much less D&D, but I believe there are those who want something closer to an actual game and a return to RPGs as a gaming hobby once again.
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Post by Zenopus on Dec 29, 2018 15:13:12 GMT -6
Generally it's not good practice to bring up arguments from other social media over here. I think we've got better ways to spend our time than trying to correct every stray FB misconception. Plus "what is the OSR" has been already been debated ad infinitum (nauseam?).
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skars
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Post by skars on Dec 29, 2018 16:13:54 GMT -6
Generally it's not good practice to bring up arguments from other social media over here. I think we've got better ways to spend our time than trying to correct every stray FB misconception. Plus "what is the OSR" has been already been debated ad infinitum (nauseam?). <Snip> This. No offense intended, but this thread comes off as "policing the scene" and I think that energy is better spent creating game content or painting minis or something...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 11:47:14 GMT -6
if you ask me, if you aren't playing with the actual original three booklets, nope Pdf's don't count, you're just some trendy anti OSR loser. (stepping away from all things flammable.)
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Post by delta on Dec 30, 2018 22:42:37 GMT -6
Anywho, this stuff can be frustrating, and I sympathize. People with the most time to spend trolling internet boards are frequently the least-informed.
Admittedly I've always been wary of identifying myself with the OSR label because I felt these kinds of schisms were on the horizon.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2018 5:41:01 GMT -6
What others above me have said: While this isn't specifically something that we as the mod team tend to police, in general, please don't bring arguments from other platforms here. (Unless it's immediately relevant to our community, of course.) Communities like ours here differentiate themselves through the fact that "we" don't come free with a creating another, unrelated social media account; that little extra action usually already filters out people who are less connected to the hobby than we are. On social media, that filter doesn't exist. Can we maybe just collectively agree not to waste our time with this, in the future? - No offense, anyone, but picking random social media comments on anything, and to rate them based on facts, and general, intelligent content is as - honest to God - HILARIOUS as it is ultimately unrewarding. At best, we have a laugh; at worst, we bring some unnecessary argument over to our own turf. Now, that said, not that there isn't a lot of stupidity out there that makes my heart sing "A Spoonful of Sugar".
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Post by Melan on Dec 31, 2018 6:02:17 GMT -6
I believe the ideas behind old-school gaming's identity, relevance and features are sufficiently well established by now. There was a time it needed defending and outlining, but that work has been done. The burden is now on others to bring new arguments to the table. We should simply strive to act as good stewards of the game style we enjoy, and I think that should be enough.
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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 31, 2018 7:26:11 GMT -6
Sorry. I didn't realize that was going to be controversial because the statement in question (that first edition AD&D doesn't count as old school) was SO extremist-ludicrous. Mods, please delete this thread. I shouldn't have started it to begin with.
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Post by Finarvyn on Dec 31, 2018 7:37:44 GMT -6
I think we're okay here, Jason. Heck, I even contributed to the thread above (in post #5, I think). No need to delete or apologize. I might have had issue with it had you posted a link, because that might be more like trying to get one board to fight another, but your post was general enough it could have been "I was talking with a friend the other day and he said..." and gotten the same effect. I agree with the Mod team in that we don't want to have folks starting threads just to cause fights, or contribute to threads just to throw gas on a fire, but I'm not sure this topic was enough of a problem to get upset about. Anyway, to me it was an interesting topic of conversation because I find it interesting that "the OSR" (whoever that is) is constantly trying to define itself. For me the OSR is a move back to OD&D (or it would be if I had ever left) because OD&D is my gaming roots, but I can see others who would say that the OSR is a move back to AD&D or maybe even the gray-area which is 2E and I wouldn't really have issue with that because all of those versions are prior to the monstrosity which is 3E. I don't want to delve into "edition wars" about 3E, but I suspect that most of us here would agree that 3E marks the main change between "old" and "new" and so anything prior to that could fit the "old school" vibe to one degree or another. We ought to be able to discuss this stuff rationally and without mud-slinging, right?
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Post by Finarvyn on Dec 31, 2018 8:01:03 GMT -6
One guy's definition is just as good as any other. There has to be some limit as I've seen Vampire: The Masquerade described as an OSR game. I missed this statement the first time around. This gets into the heart of the question of what "old school" really represents, and to me it's not just "old games" but more of a philosophy. I typically use OD&D/AD&D as my starting point because I lived through those first. When game systems changed the basic concepts behind OD&D/AD&D I felt those were "new fangled" ideas, even if now we look back and realize that they happened 30 years ago. If a game seemed really "new fangled" to me at the time (dice pools from Vampire, for example), I have a hard time defining them as "old school" because it feels so revisionist to me. No, Vampire was a funky system at the time and was nothing like OD&D/AD&D. I have the same basic problem with RuneQuest because they scrapped the level concept and went to skills, even though otherwise the game feels a lot like OD&D/AD&D and came out in 1978 or thereabouts. RQ still feels like that "new fangled" game system where they changed levels; at least it does for me. Now I'll admit that RQ is a gray area (as is T&T, another old game with new ideas) so at the heart I probably am a D&D-snob where if it's not D&D it's not "old school" enough for me, but no matter how I look at it I can't see Vampire as an "old school" game. That may be my own bias, and it may not reflect opinions of others. Just my two coppers.
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Post by rsdean on Dec 31, 2018 9:07:03 GMT -6
I have the same basic problem with RuneQuest because they scrapped the level concept and went to skills, even though otherwise the game feels a lot like OD&D/AD&D and came out in 1978 or thereabouts. RQ still feels like that "new fangled" game system where they changed levels;.... so at the heart I probably am a D&D-snob where if it's not D&D it's not "old school" enough for me ... So, I graduated from high school in 1978. I had six RPGs in my collection at the time ... OD&D (because AD&D wasn't finished yet), Metamorphosis Alpha, Empire of the Petal Throne, En Garde, Traveller, and Superhero 2044. Traveller was already playing around with skills, and MA had dropped levels despite being strongly related to D&D mechanically. 2044 was a bit of a mess, but had a point buy system, as I recall, so a lot of later mechanics got started pretty early...
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Post by Finarvyn on Dec 31, 2018 9:29:04 GMT -6
I had six RPGs in my collection at the time ... OD&D (because AD&D wasn't finished yet), Metamorphosis Alpha, Empire of the Petal Throne, En Garde, Traveller, and Superhero 2044. Traveller was already playing around with skills, and MA had dropped levels despite being strongly related to D&D mechanically. 2044 was a bit of a mess, but had a point buy system, as I recall, so a lot of later mechanics got started pretty early... Oh, no doubt. I played a lot of MA (no levels) and little black book Traveller (skills) back in the day as well. My point was mostly that such things didn't "feel" right to me even then. I would never argue that Metamorphosis Alpha and the original Traveller weren't "old school" because they were clearly there in the early days, so it's not just age or specific mechanics. I think that's part of my problem in defining "old school." I had a similar discussion with my wife about "fast food" and we had a hard time pinning it down, even though we both knew what we thought "fast food" really means. She tried to define it as "served with French fries" but a lot of upscale steak houses will serve fries so that can't be it. I wanted to define it as "served without a plate and metal tableware" but Steak & Shake serves greaseburgers on glass plates so that can't be it. It's not as easy a definition as you'd think, trust me. In the same vein, "old school" is hard to pin down. Some thoughts on what might bias each one of us: (1) When did you start playing? (2) What games were you exposed to at the start? What games later on? (3) What does everyone tell you is an "old school" way to play? Gronan might argue that "those newfangled supplements" are crazy stuff and not old school. (Secrets of Blackmoor made such a statement, totally tongue in cheek.) If you started with 4E, then 3E seems pretty old school. Even on this very OD&D board there are some folks who have played for decades, others who have found it recently. With this in mind, as we each come from a different background and different set of experiences, it's no surprise that there is no definitive "old school" within our community.
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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 31, 2018 10:21:33 GMT -6
I think we're okay here, Jason. Heck, I even contributed to the thread above (in post #5, I think). No need to delete or apologize. I might have had issue with it had you posted a link, because that might be more like trying to get one board to fight another, but your post was general enough it could have been "I was talking with a friend the other day and he said..." and gotten the same effect. I agree with the Mod team in that we don't want to have folks starting threads just to cause fights, or contribute to threads just to throw gas on a fire, but I'm not sure this topic was enough of a problem to get upset about. Anyway, to me it was an interesting topic of conversation because I find it interesting that "the OSR" (whoever that is) is constantly trying to define itself. For me the OSR is a move back to OD&D (or it would be if I had ever left) because OD&D is my gaming roots, but I can see others who would say that the OSR is a move back to AD&D or maybe even the gray-area which is 2E and I wouldn't really have issue with that because all of those versions are prior to the monstrosity which is 3E. I don't want to delve into "edition wars" about 3E, but I suspect that most of us here would agree that 3E marks the main change between "old" and "new" and so anything prior to that could fit the "old school" vibe to one degree or another. We ought to be able to discuss this stuff rationally and without mud-slinging, right? Fair enough; thanks!
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Post by bigjackbrass on Dec 31, 2018 11:24:16 GMT -6
This quote from Douglas Adams comes to mind at such times:
"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
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Post by geoffrey on Dec 31, 2018 13:46:52 GMT -6
I like what Smon wrote a few weeks ago on dragonsfoot: "Dragonsfoot, in general, is OS not OSR - it's continuity not Renaissance. It's not 1400 AD Florence & University of Bologna, it's the AD 1400 Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire. 1453 comes when the last 1970s gamer dies off."
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Post by talysman on Jan 1, 2019 12:23:05 GMT -6
Many folks I play with focus on the OS in OSR and say if it's and old game it's part of the OSR. Incidentally, all of them believe the "R" to stand for "Revival". Reasoning, if we play old games, we revive them, so it's OSR. I guess that's how you can include Vampire in the OSR, too. Or Mechwarrior. Or the old DSA/The Dark Eye editions. Pretty much anything, really. Good point. Some people focus too heavily on the "old" in "old school". When 5e came out, I remember people claiming that now 3e is OSR. They seem to have missed the essential fact that in other subcultures, what is defined as "old school" does not update with the times. People who talk about old school funk or old school rap don't suddenly update the definition when a new song comes out. I had a similar discussion with my wife about "fast food" and we had a hard time pinning it down, even though we both knew what we thought "fast food" really means. She tried to define it as "served with French fries" but a lot of upscale steak houses will serve fries so that can't be it. I wanted to define it as "served without a plate and metal tableware" but Steak & Shake serves greaseburgers on glass plates so that can't be it. It's not as easy a definition as you'd think, trust me. "Fast food" and "old school RPG" are ad-hoc conceptual categories, which means they have a definition but the boundaries are fuzzy. Context is important. In your "fast food" example, there's a general concept of quick prep/quick serve meals with a minimum of frills, but in some cases people are looking for a particular kind of food typical of fast food (fries) and in others they are looking for fast service with disposable utensils. It's when you try to force two or more contexts together at the same time where you get the problems. Similarly, when discussing the broadest definition of RPGs, "old school" might refer more to the way games were written and designed "back in the day", with cheap production values and little to no emphasis on story or fancy meta-mechanics... but in contrast, people discussing "old school" in the context of the history of D&D specifically mean "the way D&D use to be played before everything changed". The term "OSR" clearly arose in the D&D context, specifically being prompted by Castles & Crusades and OSRIC, so "old school" clearly means "pre-WotC D&D" in that context. It's still fuzzy, and people get confused when an "OSR" blogger voices an opinion on a specific TSR-era edition of the game or talks about a non-D&D game (as if OSR bloggers aren't allowed to talk about other games they played without those games being redefined as OSR games.) In general, I agree with your early point about OSR being a philosophy, although what that philosophy is may not always be clear. I say it's about fiction over system, but a number of people disagree with me on that. There's a common bag of tricks used in old school D&D, but just because a game uses a few of those tricks doesn't mean it's necessarily old school, nor does it cease to be old school if it adopts post-TSR tricks. It's more about whether it's using any of those trick in a way that emphasizes that philosophy, that whole style of play. In a way, the OSR is really a conversation about why we prefer old D&D to new D&D. What we say changes over time or as our individual tastes change, but the central point never changes.
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Post by derv on Jan 1, 2019 13:29:09 GMT -6
I'm genuinely curious how many consider the OSR moniker relevant anymore?
It's odd, I feel like the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction. The boiler is leaking and the steam is spent. That's why the definition continues to expand and many of the early voices have retreated to their alcoves. They said/did what they wanted to say/do.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 1, 2019 14:18:02 GMT -6
Part of the problem may be that the notion of a "return to OS" is a great one, but once a group takes the OSR label and tries to run with it then it becomes "their" cause instead of a group movement. Someone did a logo, then someone disagreed with something bearing the logo, and suddenly there are "factions" within the OSR, and so on. A great idea and a call to follow a philosophy became politicized somehow. Most players who play newer games seem to have a great time when I introduce them to OD&D. That tells me that the base message is a good one. On the other hand, when someone asks "are you in the OSR" suddenly folks back away and get defensive. Some disconnect there.
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Post by Falconer on Jan 1, 2019 18:55:46 GMT -6
I'm genuinely curious how many consider the OSR moniker relevant anymore? I do. If someone puts out an OSR dungeon (or class or artifact or spell), I know I can use it in my game without conversion. Seems pretty handy to me. Either other people are overthinking it, or I’m naive. I have no idea.
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Post by talysman on Jan 1, 2019 19:36:58 GMT -6
I'm genuinely curious how many consider the OSR moniker relevant anymore? I do. If someone puts out an OSR dungeon (or class or artifact or spell), I know I can use it in my game without conversion. Seems pretty handy to me. Either other people are overthinking it, or I’m naive. I have no idea. Agree it's relevant, or should be. It's just that there are more people slapping the name "OSR" on products who believe it's just a marketing term, or that it means "deadlier dungeons" or something like that. So, you have to watch out for products that aren't really compatible with OD&D, AD&D, B/X, or BECMI and their clones.
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Post by derv on Jan 1, 2019 20:11:39 GMT -6
I do. If someone puts out an OSR dungeon (or class or artifact or spell), I know I can use it in my game without conversion. Seems pretty handy to me. Either other people are overthinking it, or I’m naive. I have no idea. Agree it's relevant, or should be. It's just that there are more people slapping the name "OSR" on products who believe it's just a marketing term, or that it means "deadlier dungeons" or something like that. So, you have to watch out for products that aren't really compatible with OD&D, AD&D, B/X, or BECMI and their clones. I recall this being part of the original motive for OSRIC. It strikes me as marketing through Category Management. So, OSR isn't really a philosophy or a movement. It's more of a label. I'm not sure of it's effectiveness. You will find most OSR products on RPGnow almost always have a specific game system or two attached with the OSR label. This points to it's broadness and ambiguity as a category. When a label loses meaning it's value starts to come into question. Maybe we aren't there yet, but...
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Post by robertsconley on Jan 1, 2019 20:20:01 GMT -6
My opinion is there is a group of hobbyists who primary interest in playing, promoting, and publishing for classic editions OD&D. That this group existed prior to the introduction of OSRIC and Basic Fantasy and continues to exist irregardless of its label. That the label OSR was adopted by many, including myself, to describe this group.
That members of this group including those who publish material have other interest within the RPG hobby. That these other interests gets support as well. However the only general statement one can make about this is "It depends on who you are talking about."
That the other older edition RPGs have a very different history of hobbyist and official support. Two of the most popular outside of classic D&D are Classic Traveller and Runequest 2nd and 3rd edition. Due to their history and circumstances they never had a lull period like classic D&D did. Nor did they had the nifty of hack of using the d20 SRD, and omitting the new machince, to create rule sets and references that allow individual publishing material nearly 100% compatible with the original edition.
Runequest eventually got the Mongoose Runequest SRD and Traveller the Mongoose Mongoose SRD. However due to ongoing support by Chaosium a Runequest renaissance never got much traction outside a few specific publishers like Design Mechanism. Traveller in contrasts is experiencing a renaissance due to misstep by Mongoose in their 3PP program which led to the Cepheus clone. However Traveller is both about a set of rules and a setting, the Third Imperum. So while Cepheus has an impact it not quite the same as the OSR and classic D&D.
It is also my opinion is that the OSR is not a style of play or a design philosphy. There are large subgroups within the OSR that share similar ideas. However the fact that most of the OSR rests on open content means individual can and do whatever they think is best for the material.
Open content, the fact no large publisher or group grew to dominate the OSR, and the low barriers for content creation and distribution as a result of digital technology created a ever changing kaleidoscope of groups and individuals involved in the playing, promotion, and publishing for classic editions of D&D.
The OSR is perhaps the best example we have of what true creative freedom looks like.
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darien
Level 4 Theurgist
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Post by darien on Jan 2, 2019 15:19:54 GMT -6
To me, there is a difference between OSR and simply Old-School gaming.
OSR is specifically TSR-era D&D or games that are mechanically in the style of TSR-era D&D.
Old-School gaming is a lot more broad, vague, and subjective.
I consider stuff like Boot Hill, Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, RECON, the Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book, and the first edition of Vampire: The Masquerade to all be Old School, but they are not OSR.
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Post by thegreyelf on Jan 2, 2019 17:13:13 GMT -6
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