Survey #5: The OSR Survey

Yes, yes, I am doing all of this stuff out of order. I reject your quaint notions about so-called "ordinal numbers," entirely! Here, then, is the survey:

LINK TO OSR SURVEY

For those who are interested in learning "Why do you have an OSR survey, anyway, Johnson?" a bit of background about this aspect of my research.

Clearly, the Open Game License (OGL) issued by Wizards of the Coast in 2000 opened the tabletop RPG world to a variety of results, some anticipated and some not. I won't go into that, beyond saying that it gave rise to what some call the Old School Renaissance (or Revival, or whatever), the OSR. At the risk of raising old controversies, let's look at how the term OSR, itself, is a point of contention.

Some posters on a recent thread at Dragonsfoot made mock of the very idea that a thing like the OSR even exists, attributing it a vast and ongoing delusion among various unnamed Personalities & Poseurs that their contributions to the so-called movement, matter. I'm engaging in a bit of hyperbole, here, but not by much. Poster Saunatonttu and Moderator skathros were particularly adamant in dismissing the very idea of a real thing called the OSR, the former saying:

Dragonsfoot is pre-"OSR" and it will be here when "OSR" has ended. DF was never built on the egos, posturing and other miscellaneous activities the "OSR" cretins engage in. DF was one of the things that carried the torch during the "dark ages" of OOP gaming and places like this (and people like those who published free stuff and talked about D&D on newsgroups, AOL and the early forums) are so often sadly forgotten when the "OSR" types start polishing their OSR Of the Year Awards and congratulating eachother on how they invented and saved OOP gaming.

No, Mr. OSR, you did not. You just added scene politics and posing to it and slapped a price tag on the product.

and the latter:

I very much agree with Sauna. Df along with DF publications and things like OD&Dities are the elements i thought would be kept in the OSR. What I mean is, i thought the OSR would continue the tradition of supporting OoP D&D. In the beginning, it seemed that this whole movement (for lack of a better term) was going in that direction. OSRIC and LL were there to give folks a legal way of supporting 1E or B/X, and with their availability to purchase, it gave the added bonus of preserving the rules (in as much as legally feasible). So, in the beginning, it was all about supporting and preserving. Why, because just like DF, the fine folks that brought us LL and OSRIC thought the original were good enough to merit such support. And then things started to change. People decided the rules needed changing and started offering up their house rules versions. They weren't adding to the game we loved, they were changing the rules of the game we loved. I remember thinking, wasn't this what WotC did? After that, the OSR decided to go in it's own direction, far removed from the ideals of preserving and supporting OoP D&D. And no, "can be used with any OoP version of the world's most popular roleplaying game" stamped on the cover doesn't cut it. Now, it's just a bunch of guys making their own games and putting it up for POD sale. Its become a completely meaningless term whose only purpose is to give a sense of belonging to a handful of folk who think they can do OoP D&D better than OoP D&D

It's an interesting bit of rhetoric, here. On the one hand, there's the "originalist" appeal from Saunatonttu, which (a) claims temporal primacy for DF and (b) attributes the very term OSR to unspecified bad actors, out to more or less hijack the non-existent "movement" for personal gain and ego inflation. skavros goes a bit further, making the claim that the "true" movement was about supporting and, more importantly, preserving gaming in the old styles and under the old rulesets. This appeal is a variation of Saunatonttu's originalist appeal, except that it is more interested naming the functions of the "movement" and claiming a purity of purpose for those involved in support and preservation (i.e., Dragonsfoot) rather than those who would monetize their own "houserules" version of the hobby.

Collectively, these statements could be reduced to the following base arguments:

• There is an origin to what people call the OSR, and it has nothing to do with so-called OSR blogs, products, and so forth, nor with the preening poseurs who flog the OSR "brand" at every turn.
• The people who originated the movement to support and preserve the hobby's connection to older rulesets, prior to the OGL and what followed, are the true hearts. Those who came later are charlatans who seek only self-aggrandizement, and hucksters out to make a buck from selling old wine in new bottles.
• Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC are different, because they sought merely to preserve the True Text, instead of bastardizing it with unneeded content (e.g., houserules). The others, well, they're heretical texts and probably should be burned.

Essentially, being there first grants not only primacy in order of appearance on the "scene," but moral primacy and moral authority to separate the sheep from the goats, as it were. Basically, it's argumentum ad hipsterem (i.e., They were still into this shit when it was still underground.).

Nonetheless, it's still a rhetorical fallacy, because temporal primacy (I was here first.) is not equivalent to moral primacy (I'm the source of real knowledge about what is right.), unless we accept the unstated premise, "Being here first grants me the authority to tell you what is best." That, right there, is an assertion of power and description of ownership of something that, frankly, is the commonwealth of those who inhabit a cluster of discourses and practices related to gaming under old rulesets and their variants. The Old Game, basically, cannot be owned, even by those who claim temporal or moral primacy. The very fact that the OGL exists, suggests that such authority must be granted by an external authority (e.g., WotC). It's a very theological sort of argument, in that we're dealing with an argument about what is the True Scripture and who are the True Prophets thereof, with some attention directed as rooting out heresy and blasphemy. Funny Thought: What if I ran Dark Heresy: OSR Wars? What would that look like?

The rest of the thread degenerated into what became a very ugly Internet fight between +Zak Smith and a variety of people on the thread, until the mods shut it down. I understand that some people in the OSR, broadly defined to include DF and the Google+ community, think Zak's a blowhard and an asshole. I don't fall into that camp, but I'm not here to adjudicate that point. In truth, Zak's Escapist web series, I Hit It with My Axe, is the reason I even became aware of this OSR thing in the first place. After seeing that, I read his blog (all of it, every entry), and was blown away by it. I followed from his blog to others' blogs, and more or less figured out that this is A Thing I Like. So, I might be a bit biased.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I find it difficult to agree with the idea that the good folk of Dragonsfoot are in a position to put boundaries around My OSR experience, or to limit what about the OSR is good or valuable, or to determine who can speak for the OSR. I find it amusing, frankly, that those who attempt to do so are reduced to the ur-hipster bullshit argument, "I was here first."

The larger issue, as I see it, is the discussion about what the OSR is, if it even exists (Spoiler: I think it does), and what it is for. Ultimately, what the OSR is can only be determined by asking everyone who sees themselves as part of it. That's what this survey is about.

A few provisional observations:

• The OSR is not so much a movement as it is an accumulation of talk and practices, a discourse formation, one that has a variety of elements, purposes, spectra of relevance to each other, and so forth. It's easy to categorize this stuff as OSR, because it coexists in time and is linked consistently to a small number of topics and genres of discourse, but not so easy to make all of the parts of it "fit" into a coherent whole, because no one person or group controls the content of it.
• Some people get really pissed off when other people disagree about their particular interpretations the OSR (Yeah, not the biggest surprise, I know).
• Even if I got everyone in the OSR to tell me what the OSR is, the answers would contradict each other, talk past each other, unnecessarily restrict or expand the boundaries of the "movement" (or whatever it is), and otherwise present itself as a sloppy mess. That's good. That means there's something real there.
• Whatever it is, the OSR creates consequences. It may be consequential in the sense that it might have fueled the development of D&D Next and the reissues of a lot of old TSR/WotC products, to whatever extent is did so. It's also consequential in that there is cultural productivity happening. People are making things, doing things, and talking about things related to the OSR. It's an interesting time to be gaming.

My Research on Gaming

Hello, readers! About a year or so ago, I mentioned that I might be doing some research related to table top RPG gaming (and gamers). In this follow-up post, I have a bit of good news, and a request. First the news.

As some of you may know, I am a college professor by trade. Recently, I made a decision to pursue gaming and simulation as one of my research areas. Prior to beginning my research, I was required to go through an institutional review board (IRB) for research on human subjects. Basically, I had to tell the IRB what I proposed to do, to whom I proposed to do it, and how I would go about doing so. There also was the requirement that I have a plan for gaining consent from the people participating in my research, and a plan for storing securely the data resulting from the research. At long last, that process is complete, and my project has been approved. That's where you come in. You have the opportunity to be "human subjects."

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting a series of surveys about gaming, on this site. I also will post them on the Google+ community. I hope to gather information about you, what you play, how you play it, how you interact with other gamers in the various communities of which you are part, and what you get out of the experiences you have (and have had) through gaming.  I'm interested in learning a bit more about the people who form the OSR community (however you choose to define that term) about their gaming activities and the context(s) of those activities, and am particularly interested in learning about how social mediation plays a part in your gaming experiences. This particular conjunction of old-school gaming and new media is a peculiar thing. It both fascinates me, as a cultural phenomenon, and has been the source of many new and wonderful friendships. I'd like to learn more about other folks' experiences in that regard, as well.

In order to gather that information, I have constructed a long list of questions. Because it's so long, I've decided to break the questions down into several surveys, so you don't have to spend a couple hours at a time answering my incessant questions. They will be broken down by themes, as much as they can be. Not all of them deal with the OSR community or with online gaming. Some will explore your aesthetic preferences for games and game art, your gaming biographies, and other such things. The goal is to get the best and most accurate picture of my research participants as is possible.

The goal of this research is publication of articles (and maybe a book) about what we do and how we do it. The information you provide will be anonymous, unless you wish to be identified. I wanted to include that option for those whose existence as public figures is an important part of  their professional lives, and who might benefit from having their names included in this research. Again, this is completely optional, and the "default" mode will be to protect your identities by keeping you anonymous.

Please take part in my research, if you can. Also, when you see I've posted a new survey, help me spread the word to as many potential "research subjects" as possible by sharing my Google+ survey requests with people in your circles. I would very much appreciate it, personally, and your help in this regard will enhance the quality of the information I get.

Thanks for reading, and watch this space for updates.

(Yet Another) Review: Ambition & Avarice

With all my peeps up at GenCon, gaming has been a bit sparse of late. On top of that, the school year is revving up again, and I'll be returning to the classroom after a three-semester absence for administrative work. Take those things together, and I haven't had much to post on the blog, lately.

However, I recently received my copy of +Greg Christopher's Ambition and Avarice, and wanted to provide a quick review and some editorial feedback for Greg (not solicited, but hopefully recognized as a good-faith statement on my part).

Given the sheer number of D&D-like products that have been produce by the OSR community over the last few years, any new offering in the "original fantasy" genre would have to do a few things differently, and Ambition & Avarice does so.

Characters

The first difference in A&A is the available player character races, which include "barbarian" races like Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Lizardfolk, among others. This opens up the ranks of player characters to characters taht could take your campaign in a vastly different direction. Here, we have "monster" races, and the ability to figure out what makes a "monster" campaign work differently from a campaign with only the "normal" races included--Or, perhaps, exactly the same: We're all murder-hobos here, after all. It's also nice that the different races actually manifest unique traits, with real in-game mechanical effects. For example, Dark Elves are good with poisons and with lock-picking. Dwarves are good at recognizing unusual stonework and finding traps.

A&A's take on the "normal" player character classes is also pretty cool. The game dispenses with clerics entirely, making them another sort of mage. Frankly, I like that approach. Even though a play a cleric in many games, I've never really understood why clerics had to be a separate class. They're magic users, pure and simple, but their magic is in a particular vein. Hence the Priest, Shaman, and Cultist magic using/religious classes, each with its own particular twist on the magical and the religious. This is true across the selection of classes provided. Something particularly new, though, is the notion of class-specific "companions"--henchmen/followers in the player character's service. These are mechanically intrinsic to the class itself, and not something related to 9th level domain play, as in D&D. I like this a lot, as it makes explicit the ways in which one learns the trade of fighter or priest or thief, and makes the PC a bit more... heroic in tone.

Updated Game Rules & Mechanics

Greg's take on the regular ways of accomplishing combat, magic, and dice rolling mechanics, generally, is somewhat different from normal. Yes, it's still a combination of d6 and d20 mechanics, but articulated in a way that is updated and somewhat more rational than the Original Game and its closest imitators. I'm not going to enumerate every single instance of this, as A&A has revamped a lot of the mechanics for doing what we do when we loot a dungeon. Here are a couple of brief examples.

Some mechanics are aided or focused by specific items of equipment. For example, a crowbar makes it easier to force doors. A helmet makes it easier to survive "blast" effects.

There are a lot of these little things, many of which are only modest changes to how things work in other games, a focused exposition of the results of this particular author's experiences as a GM. They may work differently from "normal," but you get the sense that it's not just because Greg's trying to do it differently just to make it different. Rather, it seems to be the result of what he's learned and how he makes things work better, an expression of his particular wisdom. While not everyone would reach the same conclusions in house-ruling their own flavors of D&D-like games, this ruleset does a nice job of articulating his approach in a clear, well-organized, and explicit way. It's worth reading in full, even if you're an experienced OSR player/GM.

Equipment Lists are Cool

The equipment lists included in this game are actually a lot of fun. They are extensive, specific, and really seem to be oriented toward making players think about what they carry into a dungeon and why they carry those things. Every weapon, armor, or equipment item is not only listed, but explained in ways that make their potentials clear. Again, sometimes these potentials even include linkage to specific types of die rolls are other means of achieving in-game mechanical effects. I think that this sort of thing would be particularly useful for GMs and players who haven't really played an old-school fantasy game, and need to make the shift in their thinking about how to approach such games differently from, for example, 3.x and 4th edition D&D. It's a small detail, but one of those things that makes explicit what many old-schoolers leave implicit. It helps to articulate the difference between these approaches in a way that makes clear that thinking and resource management (and interacting with the environment in general) are important to successful gameplay.

GM Advice

"The Judge," Christopher's take on how to be a GM is one of my favorite parts of the book. He does a great job of articulating what is different about the OSR approach, including discussion of railroading (and why it sucks), maintaining objectivity, the importance of randomness and unpredictability, and articulation of some important basic principles for world-building and sandbox play, and different ways of thinking about "dungeons" as spaces for play. I also like the section in this chapter that deals with "tropes," those narrative devices we use to create a sense of narrative frames and the characters' places in them. There's a lot more to this section, and I encourage you to take a look at it.

He also provides a sense of the reasoning behind his advice, and I think this really adds a lot of value to the product, especially for those players who are less experiences with Old School styles of play. However, even experienced players and GMs will find something to consider and/or use in their own games, in most cases.

Layout and Design

Ambition & Avarice fills a brief and useful 97 pages, including spell listings (though there are no monsters included, which tends to depress the page count a bit, certainly).

The content itself is well organized and features a detailed table of contents. There is no index, though probably a book this short doesn't necessarily need one. Use of color and tables helps to present summary information in a easy-to-spot and digestible manner. You won't have to scour this manual to find out what cool things your character's race or class furnishes, for example: They leap right off the page.

The artwork is black and white, and features line drawings of thematically appropriate content. I like its simplicity. While it's not sophisticated or complicated (or completely overwrought, for that matter), it provides a sense of thematic unity with the textual content. It provides "flavor" more than literal illustration of the textual content.

Editing (My Only Beef)

The only real negative thing I take away from A&A is poor editorial execution. As I read through the text, the number of typos and malapropisms was a bit startling to me. Now, mind you, I'm sort of a stickler about this stuff, as I edit a lot of people's work, so understand that this is something that bugs me a lot more than it might other people. That said, I was pretty disappointed at how poor a job was done in proofreading the document. Prime example: "it's" is not a possessive form; it's a contraction of a pronoun/verb pair. It's important to make that distinction correctly.

Little problems like this are minor, certainly, but after you've seen them ten or so times in the span of two pages, they start to seem like much bigger problems. I've given +Erik Tenkar shit a couple times about this (and, look, he was one of the proofreaders! Hehe hehe...), so it will come as no surprise that this is what I choose to harp on. I make plenty of mistakes, myself, but there's a big difference between doing so on a blog and in published works for which you charge money.

I think it's a good ruleset, and I think the price he's charging is very, very reasonable. Certainly, I don't mean to shit on this product because of the typos. That said, I find them distracting and I think Ambition & Avarice would be a much better product without them. I hope that Greg will take the time to fix these errata for future editions of the book. Given that it's a print-on-demand product, there's no reason not to do so. Hell, I'd be happy to go through and make another editorial pass for him, if he'd like, so I'm not just complaining.

Summary

• Neat book
• Decent art
• Well worth the price of admission
• Great starter game for people new to OSR
• Some interesting new takes on old mechanics that could be useful to experienced GMs and players
• Please re-edit this thing, and be a bit more careful next time.