An opportunity surfaced to talk about how our campaign differs from the common notions of old school play, so I figured I'd use it as a springboard to publish some thoughts about our campaign in 2023.
A recent PBS Newshour posting by journalist Christopher Thomas had an interesting bit about the OSR -- Old School Rennaisance, Old School Rules, or Old School Revolution, depending on who you ask -- in a larger article about inclusion in D&D. Quoted below, from the article:
But even within these gaming communities, there is some friction. Old School Renaissance, or OSR, is a gaming movement whose players claim they are “against outside politics permeating their game space,” said Dashiell. These players support the use of traditional fantasy tropes in game design, such as the existence of “good” and “evil” races with no nuance. OSR gamers are often seen as the old guard of tabletop gaming and tend to idealize the past, which “defaults to a white, masculine worldview,” Trammell said.
The people cited here are Steven Dashiell, a postdoctoral fellow at American University, and Aaron Trammell, an assistant professor of informatics at UC Irvine. Dashiell in particular seems to have written at length about concepts like race in roleplaying, and drawn a lot of conclusions from people who post in publicly accessible Facebook groups. Trammell writes about race in roleplaying as well, with a clear background in the Rules Cyclopedia. I can see why these two were cited in an article largely about race in roleplaying and inclusivity at the table. I can also see where people would immediately say HEY, THAT'S NOT MY OSR!
I think, however, the specific quip about the OSR players being "against outside politics" comes instead from the discussion surrounding a tweet by Troll Lord Games, creators of Castles and Crusades.
A quick note to remind everyone at TLG, that Troll Lord Games has a “games only” philosophy. We leave all the discussions in which society enjoys to engage, to others. They have no place here. This is a place to belly up to the table with our friends & enjoy games.
— Troll Lord Games (@trolllordgames) December 28, 2022
The comment is pretty close to the common online discourse of "I don't like politics in my games." In this instance, politics is code for "anything that is controversial to my worldview." Far too often, the things that are controversial to a vocal online troll's worldview are the human rights of others.
Here's the thing, though -- I actually agree with "I don't want politics in my games" to an extent. I don't want the bad politics in my games. And when I mean politics, I mean real world politics that I have to deal with all of the time. Parn does not have a big bad evil guy taking away the reproductive rights of the kingdom. Parn does not have elected officials to refuse to concede to the will of the voters and seeking to usurp the governance of the land. Parn does not contain large factions seeking to strip away the human rights of others. And, unlike many of the early Gygaxian D&D works referenced by Trammell and Dashiell, Parn does not contain emphasis on racial division, otherness, or bioessentialism.
When we decide to roleplay in Parn, we are looking for escapism that does not remind us of our fights in the real world. Many of our real world problems are already solved for us in our game world before we are going on fantasy adventures.
Food and housing insecurity are prominent features in our real life. Parn is rich with food; nuts, berries, grasses, roots, fruits, vegetables, fish and game. Housing has been revolutionized in the past 35 years with the introduction of new magic that quickly and efficiently excavates or builds shelter. By default, no person within Parn is going hungry or homeless. (Mechanically, this means starvation rules will rarely, if ever take effect outside of delves.)
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| A magical revolution inspired by Minecraft and Dragon Quest Builders |
If you've ever traveled in the US, you may see how utterly inhospitable any given area is to people who aren't from around here. The towns of Parn contain plumbing, communal wells and water pumps, event spaces, and plenty of public bathrooms.
Parn is full of diverse people allowed to travel and settle where they wish, trade with who they wish, and generally people have a collectivist mindset. They are not restricted by housing covenants or zoning. There are no sunset towns in Parn. Kermit with a shotgun does not tell you that town is "back the way you came." The people of Parn are welcoming, almost always offering shelter to travelers in their own dwellings (something that I hear was pretty common before inns became an industry.)
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| The Red Queen from the movie Resident Evil |
As a society that has only had mainstream magic available for thirty five years, the majority of the conflict comes from the growing pains of these new magic users. The main point of conflict in our world comes from artificial intelligence; magic, combined with spell permanency, creating problems within the world bigger than individual characters. (Other points of conflict involve "what if ghosts were real?" and parallel dimensions... that will probably be a different blog post at some point.)
I don't mind games that deal with really heavy stuff -- stuff that we should be aware that many are viewing largely from a point of suburban privilege -- but Parn takes a distinctly different path than what has come before it.
I am not the "old guard." I am a millennial who started D&D in 2nd edition by borrowing books from the library and dreaming about the day I'd be able to play. I don't tend to idealize the past (though I do like procedural games more than narrative, scene-based games.) I'm not stuck in Gygaxianity, I'm hacking the game to bits and using the skeleton to explore new fantasy space. And there are plenty of other people like me as well, stripping the Gygaxian chaff and finding the best way to better themselves, their communities, and their game.
The purpose of this blog post is to change the narrative.
The original games are the Old School Rules.
The first forays into reinterpretation and hacking in the G+ era were the Old School Renaissance.
We are the Old School Revolution.
This is a good write-up.
ReplyDeleteA big part of the issue is that people take a lot of stock in the rules or content as written - which can be seen as an issue if there is racism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry in general I guess - baked into the rules or content.
Keeping that fictional can be hard when the subject is so critical in real life.
Identifying which is and which isn't is an issue here as well - the amount of speculation of media is exploding in popular culture - with video essays, twitter lore feeds, people writing fanfic and making fan art, and all kinds of theories and videos all about facts and "did you know" style content.
This can lead to a lot of misinformation, misreporting, and just a general blurring of intention on the part of the media's original producer.
The amount of theories on just Game of Thrones for example, is a great indicator of this - same with dark souls.
And when people theorize and ascribe meaning - often the content producer either has not made the intended meaning clear, or known - or has not been asked.
In some cases, I imagine the people speculating haven't even looked or asked for answers beforehand.
That is how some of this article feels - somebody ascribing meaning because they didn't thoroughly read and talk and investigate - or like you said - had to deal with vocal trolls that say and do horrible things - like RPGPundit, Venger Satanis, ETC.
These clowns, the vocal trolls, they don't care about human rights or rules of engagement - and they are squirming and worming everywhere the OSR is - causing problems. (Pundit was part of 5e development for pete's sake!)
On the PBS article on twitter - they descended in droves to protest it - not thinking about how they look, or why they don't really have much to say, by in large - a horde of middle aged white men who grew up on D&D yammering when it gets called potentially racist or bigoted - when they themselves are the jackelopes retweeting trump and peterson and general political nonsense.
I agree with you - I wish people could or would leave politics out of the game, and out of game spaces - but people on either side make a big deal out of things - and oftentimes their politics have much more seriousness than games - so often they have to be addressed, especially when they use their game accounts or blogs to talk about their politics and social values.
From the viewpoint of these (admittedly foolish) authors or contributors to the PBS article, the calling out and addressing of racism is more important than the preservation of old D&D.
However
I still think that exploration of, recognition of, and addressing of really heavy issues is important - and can be crucial in people's development and progress.
The key thing becomes, as you said "I don't mind games that deal with really heavy stuff -- stuff that we should be aware that many are viewing largely from a point of suburban privilege"
But that ignores people who did not come from privilege, the minority of RPG people, at least I assume so.
There still is people of all walks who care about and interact with the OSR - and that needs to be fostered - and villainizing the entirety of the OSR was a dumb way to do that - if they had named names maybe people would have been able to get somewhere.
Most of what I write or want to manifest is just an idea, and I think a lot of heavy stuff can start as simple ideas or questions - then pushing the idea further and further to attempt distilling how and why it would logically happen, and what would result.
That can lead to touchy things - and keeping in mind that what I want is not what everybody wants is key - but to claim that the OSR is trying to keep magical species around as an analogue for real-world racism is informed, at best, by a vocal contingent of known problems in the space - and I wish people would try and oust them in a more concrete way.
Thanks so much for the excellent response - hope this made sense
I had a lot to say - and I guess I might as well say it here and see what you think!