I've only been into the OSR for a short while, but I've found it one of the most welcoming communities. From what I've experienced, the game and rules come first, everything else is secondary. It's very refreshing. I've been playing ADnD,BECMI ,Mork Borg and DCC for a couple of years now.
You bring up an excellent point. I've found far more positive and constructive feedback from the OSR community... especially the Basic Fantasy gang. Great gamers.
@@carrotsongRPG I'm currently running a short campaign with young cousins of mine in Basic Fantasy, and they love it. Some of the help, and ideas I got from the community was priceless.
The OSR is a very welcoming community, it's fantastic.
17 дней назад
Give it a couple years and it will be filled with actual crazy people who demand you remove interracial couples. Like what happened to normal D&D. Don't welcome freaks, racists, and communists into your communities. Ez
One thing you didn't mention, Jeff, is that a lot of OSR games are better for hex crawls and dungeon crawls, than a lot of the newer rules sets. You touched on time management, and a lot of that is about resources. If you're in a dungeon for days you need to know how long your torches are going to last and how long your food and water are going to last. That's a big part of OSR in most forms.
I think it shows better in hex movement where you need to plan out an expedition that must endure weeks of travel and exploration and you won't be able to easily nip back into town. You need to budget payment for any goons you hire. When they explore a shallow dungeon with one or two floors they can usually head back to base camp and their supply dump. When you spend days in the dungeon it matters more. An effect in Esoteric Enterprises, with it's modern day setting, is modern battery flashlights. A cheap flashlight I can pick up the store can light up an entire room for half a day easily and replacement batteries fit in my pocket. I am not a fan of easily available permanent magic like Perpetual Light. A magical light that last a whole day is worth a level 2 spell slot, but not a spell where a bloke can sit around and churn out permanent lights.
Some newer games have started to rediscover how fun it is to walk around a regional map and see what happens. Mutant Year Zero has squarecrawling by default, you need to get out into the zone on expeditions to haul stuff back for the village. Resources unavailable in the village can be found out there. You build up the village or donate stuff to it to make it stronger.
RPGs initially spun off from wargames, and I've heard that wargame players in the '70s tended to skew conservative. That makes sense, since many of the players were apparently veterans and others who saw wargames as a way to celebrate military history. However, a conservative in the '70s wasn't necessarily like a conservative today. In terms of the makeup of the OSR, I think Jeff's got it right. If you live in a bubble of super progressive discourse, you might be shocked at the number of conservatives you find in the OSR, but the extremists are mostly on social media. There are a couple of prominent right-wing OSR designers who make a lot of noise in places like Twitter and RUclips and make people think the entire OSR is like that, but that impression is misleading.
The impression isn't misleading, the impression is dishonest. The OSR is full of right wing extremists in the same way that there was an insurrection on January 6, that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a haven for Neo-Nazis, that Florida not wanting 5 year olds told there was no such thing as boys and girls was "don't say gay", etc. We live in a left wing society where anyone who isn't a secular progressive is considered far right. The easiest way to demonstrate that is to point out how according to mainstream media and public discourse the ONLY right that exists at all is far right. "Far Right" just means you aren't a progressive Democrat nowadays. Anybody who is a member of the Republican party is automatically assumed to be a racist homophobe. The only sense in which the OSR is far right is that OSR character sheets don't have a space for personal pronouns. The people labelling the OSR far right are the same people who think Thirsty Sword Lesbians is cutting edge roleplaying and who discuss whether orcs are supposed to be black people ironically unaware how they are the racist ones for even bringing up the question since the notion never even occurs to anyone else.
@@kevinrsmith2947 Gygax and co had a divide with older wargamers who thought fanciful adventures with trolls and elfs lacked what they liked in good old military simulationism.
@@kevinrsmith2947 A lot of wargamed I personally like are built on war as extension of politics. The direct armed conflict is secondary to or in support of the political resolution. In "All Brushes Burning" you play Finnish parliament sessions as the country escalates and polarizes.
Jeff, I am one of those right of center people that you referenced. I am going to bookmark this video and show it to anyone who is interested in learning about the OSR, but has the same questions that you brought up in the video. Thank you. You have also earned a sub from this old grognard.
Our fear over here wasn't too many people but too few. A bunch of us feared that we'd go the way of Märklin train hobbyists and become a gathering of aging collectors. People who were growing older with more economic muscle in the hobby but without enough growth. So my big concern is always "How can I get teenagers interested in this old thing?" And that is a lot harder to do if I settle down into a little private group with just my same-age mates. They're going to have jobs in other towns, kids etc.
I use three categories for describing what the OSR means: Old School Revival = Playing the older editions of ANY TTRPG (this means not just D&D older editions). Old School Renaissance = Newer game built off of an older game’s system. This is the most common OSR example. Old School Roleplaying (Rules) = Playing in the style of old school gaming. Ie. Hex / Dungeon Crawls; resource management; lower survivability at low level; more DM / GM focus - rulings over rules. I agree with you 99% on these points.
@@baileywatts1304 Traveller and Tunnels & Trolls and a few others sort of developed in parallell. GDW always feels like they had their own little hard sci fi corner. While Tunnels & Trolls and Metamorphosis Alpha were a bit more adjescent.
"If you're going to swim in the toilet, you're going to bump up against shit." My favorite line that I've ever heard you utter, Jeff. Another fine video.
@@SusCalvin The 4chan I know of hates everyone, left or right is meaningless to them collectively. Given the shit on /D/ you'd think they'd love the left, on /tg/ you'd think center right, but on /Pol/ you can't tell what the heck is going on.
I love that the FIRST thing you mentioned is the difference between the modern approach of players using "skills" versus old school way of players using their own wits and thinking to solve problems. This has had a huge effect on "the game" and player expectations. The way I solved this (for my preferred way of running the game) is to remind players that when I ask "what do you do?" they don't need to mention or choose a skill -- that's my call as DM and I'll let them know if I want them to roll a skill check. Instead, I ask them to "tell me the story" or "describe" what/how they're doing as if it were a movie or tv show. If they need to roll a check I'll tell them. This has helped me keep the style of game I like to run, while still allowing players to use (and design their characters for) the ruleset.
I noticed that Mutant Year Zero had rediscovered hexcrawling. Old Mutant was inspired by Gamma World and featured a lot of wilderness expeditions but without the OSR hexcrawling. In MY0 you "squarecrawl" out from your safe village, find threats and encounters and resources which you bring back to the village. The village is your semi-safe zone among 300 others but also falling apart. They aspired to a loop where resources from outside build up the village as well as your PCs power.
One of the greatest differences is that New School sees an idealized form of themselves in their characters while Old School players see their character as a playing piece or an imaginary friend. Another big difference is that in New School, there's a segment of players that wants to explore how all the different parts of character creation come together to form powerful, or unexpected combinations of feats and abilities. They want a dip here or there into a class to get an ability to form a combination with an ability from another class. That wasn't ever a part of Old School gaming. If you were going to dual class a character you were dual classed from day one to the last day of the character's career. Character creation didn't become part of the game itself until 3.0. Crafting really wasn't a part of Old School gaming. That has come into a game from video entertainment. A couple of OSR games not mentioned are Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, even Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1E. These games are well supported with adventures and suppliments.
Yeah, it's like Marvel movies versus gritty existentialist 70's films. Where the characters are basically anti-heroes and are probably doomed from the jump.
New school RPGs can have terribly weak characters. Fiasco is a story-focused RPG where spectacular failiure is the goal of the game and making your hapless PCs stumble forward in a farce is expected.
WFRP is pretty new school. You play adventures with an act structure, a plot and such. You are wandering bums, but not to the point where you go where you please. I can play a WFRP adventure and recognize it as a narrated plot thread. A lot of the older adventures have surprisingly little combat, you can spend a lot of time chatting people up and investigating fools. Combat still happens, but even a small fight with two fools with daggers or a bloke in ambush with a crossbow is nasty. There is no mechanic for building things in most OSR games but approaching a dungeon as an engineering problem can be fun. Then you get some use of those 10 labourers you brought as they build you a temporary bridge or dig down to the second level or clear a tunnel. It's not a video game crafting system, but you see a problem that requires a tool. One of our proudest moments was the invention of a ten foot pole with attachable ends. Ten foot rake, transform into ten foot hook!
There's also "Original Edition Campaign" by Erik Johansson. Or even the very recent "Blue Flame, Tiny Stars" by Stephen Wendell As a way to give the uninitiated a frisson of those heady old school days.
Great job, Jeff! You really hit so many highlights in an accessible, approachable way. Modern and OSR both have lots of great points. And lots of folks mix & match. (Also best summary of 4chan, LOL)
Vampire the Masquerade is one of the first new school games I can recall. Vampire was a lot better at how power cliques and relations inside a city works. Instead of a few simple factions like "The gate wardens" or "The court" or "The thief guild" you got a mess of relations between individuals and little cliques who had stagnated and stewed over centuries. Understanding who could do what to whom was as important as getting vampire powers. I probably wouldn't loan the superhero system itself, but a relationship chart of a city has been helpful this far. If the PCs want to beat up some fools I can see who comes to their surprise aid or who gives them unexpected advice. Everything is more intimate at a city scale where everyone is less than an hour's cab ride from eachother.
There are left and right wing extremists in every hobby, game, interest group, etc. But in many places, the fear of these people are strawmen being used to attack the hobby, game, or interest group as a whole with a wide brush.
I will say one thing though, I've played in games with people who could be considered to be 'far-left' before, and it's never been a problem. Like, a communist is not going to disrupt your enjoyment of the game, whatever your views are on their ideology. On the other hand, if you've got someone who isn't willing to play with racial or sexual minorities for example, that's not something that can be ignored. All that being said, I don't think the OSR has many of either type in the community.
@@spacemanproletariat4279 Funny you say that, given the many examples one can find of far-left whackos being extremely exclusionary in who they game with.
Have you ever noticed, too, that people crying for moral outrage against a given group are almost always ignoring the same outrage in their own group... and are often the same people perpetuating those same sins within it?
That can be true but you’re just sweeping an issue under the rug with statements like this. OSRs are a lovely community in general and a fun time with friends but you can’t really ignore the presence of extreme right wing people who infest it because they think modern TTRPG communities have gone “too far” with being nice to women and minorities.
@@jaksida300 True, but here in my city, quite a liberal one, I run into the opposite problem. I went to OSR to run away from those types who mainly play 5e. It might be the same with some others
I think this is only the second video of yours I've seen pop into my feed (the first was "do I still feel welcome in the hobby"), but I've subscribed based on how well you addressed this. I hadn't even heard of OSR until this video but the headline including "is it filled with right wing extremists" caught me. I'm a nearly 45 yo, who's also very liberal. Thank you for clearing this up for everyone. I did want to point out though that, based on your idea that the OSR is more of a philosophy than mechanics, I'd argue that any system could be run as such. I run a 5e game. I don't allow my players to look at their character sheets to decide what they need to roll against, I have them tell me their ideas of what their character intends to do and then ask for the check I decide they need to roll. My games are gritty and lethal. I have some players that invest in deep back stories and some (like myself when I play) who don't and the character takes life as they play. But I've found the players that create deep back stories take great delight in that creation process and often have a backlog of wonderful characters they've already created and never had the chance to play. So, my $0.02 on this is much more along the lines of... It's a philosophy and mindset in the storytelling and playstyle than a system or systems. PS Yes, 5e content can be found in PDF format... If you know where to look. To close though. Great presentation, I love how it feels like we're having a conversation rather than so many content creators out there trying too hard to be entertaining. It's one of the reasons I love watching Colville's videos. Best wishes, I'm going to go dive into some of your other videos now
Hey, thanks for the video. I recently got into the OSR to help me with my own TTRPG game system and started to get a bit... worried after scanning through the internet. This puts a lot of things in perspective. I'm soneone who can seperate the art from the artist in MOST cases. Sometimes though... lol
I've picked up Five Torches Deep and love how compact it is. Under 50 pages. Shadowdark is interesting and the starter kit is free. The Kickstarter for Shadowdark has surpassed $800,000. Both of these games are D20 based, so there's some 5E in it but it is more deadly and fun.
Around here we aren't two separate communities. There's too few of us to have separate communities. I don't think of myself as part of the separate Delta Green community. You can test out Apocalypse World, Tales From the Loop and OSE.
@@SusCalvin Nah, PBTA are narrative games. They break the fourth wall as you don't play a character diegetically. You have tools to alter the outcome and the setting like a Deus Ex Machina. Storygames are their own category. They're not RPG. A community can only be specific game related. I'm part of the DCC community, but that's it. There is no RPG broad community and no Tabletop Game community, no more than Entertainment community. That's nonsense.
@@theeyewizard8288 I mean we are not separate camps. The bloke I play Dolmenwood with still plays PbtA stuff in another group. And another has some long term Numenera thing etc. Its a niche hobby in a small region. Original AW can be nice. It is hard and direct. You are not mucking around with abstract fate points. I am not sold on the relation meter. Things are a lot more defined by the improvisation of the DM.
The question is incomplete. The second part of the question is: What is 5th edition, and is it full of Left Wing extremists? The answer to both questions is of course. No. But some on the left who either play or go on forums about fifth edition and call themselves RPG Community, (even if they don't play), accuse those who play OSR for being hard right extremists because they either: Go to church. Are married, Are heterosexual, Believe in biology as a science, Would like some limited checks and balances on the boarder of their country to govern immigration. Do not want forced diversity.for example the UK is 12.5% non-white, (ukgov), yet ask for 24% representation for black people, who are about 3.5% of the population. Express demographics. Such as there were and are lots of white people in Northern Europe. The above things to some on the left are characteristics of fascism. Which of course they are not. Yet thinking that tells you about those on the left, and are expressions of their political ideology.
You recommended Castles and Crusades as one of your OSR titles without anything "Weird." A note to viewers is that the Humble Bundle is currently offering all of the C&C ebooks for like 25 dollars. They've ran a few RPG ebook sales since the OGL debacle, notably a pathfinder one that sold over 100,000 copies.
When asked to play in my games I tell them up front my games are not sexualized or politicized games. That weeds out a lot of the fringe crazies on either side.
The closest thing I've had to a sexualized game was the sex moves in Apocalypse World. If two characters are sleeping together, it triggers a relation effect. You don't play out exactly what they do. But we have flirted, married and such in OSR games. Drunk dungeoneering bums serenading people from under a window and such. A fun detail: Over here, we didn't have the satanic panic in the same way. They were a lot more spooked by violent culture. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the like. The censors would be a lot tougher on a movie scene where a child was threatened with a knife than sexual content. The free churches who did pick up the satanic threat were considered as kooks and that aspect never rolled off.
You're a right wing extremist if you hold SOME mildly conservative views, according to Twitter. People just don't know what certain words mean anymore and it's becoming a real problem... Great video! You earned yourself a sub!
You're also a right wing extremist if you don't hold EVERY EXTREME VIEW POSSIBLE from the left. Look at J.K. Rowling, she's a liberal on every issue but ONE and they're trying like hell to destroy her.
I think they run into some weirdo who think jokes about teenage suicide is cool, edgy wannabe conservatism. And if that weirdo stands unopposed, they get to define what new wannabe conservatism is.
@@AverageTESEnjoyer5783 I think the big upcoming conflict is who gets to define themselves as real conservatives. It is a lot harder to deal with your own radical fringe.
I started playing in 1980, and I never left. So I tried some modern D&D but the game was way too mechanical and I did not like it. OSR is normal to me.
I started playing RPGs in the early 80s. So I'm in that demographic. I recently accidentally stumbled down the osr rabbit hole a few weeks ago while looking for some information . There is a presence of older hostile gamers who do openly wear "conservativism" as a badge. What I found was that it's largely a group of older people who are afraid of change. They like osr because it's what played 30+ years ago. They don't like the direction rpg companies are taking things with "inclusiveness". Many are very openly hostile to ideas like pronoun use, gender and sexuality identity. They are genuinely bothered and threatened by it. Some are very open about their religious and political views and bleed that into their channels. These views are very direct and openly hostile to things like I mentioned above. Things like gender identity scares them and they don't want it out in the open. They largely see it as forced on them. They don't like diversity, they see that as forced as well. As a group they see these things as an oppressive force taking away their freedom. I'm not exactly sure how respecting and acknowledging others takes away anything... But that's how they spin it. So imho, I saw a lot of amateur extreme political pundits who mask it with veneer of osr and blame the wider community for corruption of the hobby. They want to go back to the good days when gender and race topics were kept in the closet. Now, that's not all by far, but it's a sizable community.
OSR is fantastic, gorgeous and refreshing. It bring me new passion for role-playing and fantasy. And if right-wing "extremists" love it, is because they are "right", so they are fantastic as well.
I like your kind of liberal. Thanks for a great perspective. Hopefully people play the OSR or whatever flavor of RPG they enjoy for fun and fellowship, not political or social dogma.
honestly? this whole red vs blue debate... it's just a dog and pony show to distract people from discussing the issues. Left right? that's not how the Book defines good and evil.
@@marhawkman303 Are you really using this as a platform to preach Christianity? I really hope that's not what's happening cause that would be disgusting.
@@Flammiedrum Paranoid much? the mere mention of the Book during a discussion about morality and you cower like a vampire? I was simply mentioning that the left/right political strife.... is abhorrent to scripture. When you look at them from the perspective of the Word... they're differently wrong, and neither is worth supporting. But the key thing here is that, letting the political pundits con you into playing their red vs blue game means you lost already. It doesn't matter if red wins or blue wins, WE LOSE! THAT is what I was talking about.
One thing to keep in mind is that many people don't really become more conservative as they age; they just stay where they were when they were young. What used to be liberal 30 years ago is social norm nowadays. So many older folks "seem" conservative, but in reality at some point they just stop accepting further change (even if that change is "for the better"). As to the rules and mechanics themselves... I dunno. I myself am hardly a yung'un - I started with the basic D&D black box and definitely have some nostalgia goggles for the "Rules Cyclopedia" era of Basic D&D - that one book led to so much fun and adventure - but I also really like a lot of things from more modern approaches. I played a lot of AD&D 2E and then 3E and returned recently for some 5E. I in fact think there is very little mechanically in the newer rules that keep them from being played like the older ones - it's mostly a matter of player expectations. For my part, I like aspects of both. A lot of what newer editions have added is stuff we wanted or were house-ruling back then. And I hated that XP was tied to treasure. Made no sense then, makes no sense now. I do like a nice crunchy dungeon crawl on occasion though. I dunno. I like the nostalgia. I miss the Cyclopedia days and was tickled pink that they cleaned up a super nice PDF of it. But I like wargames and journaling games and everything in between.
I always found it funny as a European how Americans are so focused on so called "Right wing extremists" in the hobby while gleefully ignoring all the "Left wing extremists" who are much more prevalent and a lot more aggressive, personally I try to avoid both like the plague and haven't found neither of them in the OSR, hope it continues this way.
You can never go far enough to the left. Every six months or so they have to leapfrog one of their compatriots by implying their takes are too retrograde.
@@TravisWilliams_ It's not even the politics (I frankly have no idea about the differences between dem and rep aside from them hating each other) but the highly aggressive and bullying prone attitude of these assholes.
In general, Europe is more left-leaning than the US. Take, for example, the fact that the US never had a really influential Communist movement (closest we came was in the 1930s) and that it's only recently become somewhat acceptable to call yourself a "democratic socialist" here. Now, the TTRPG hobby skews somewhat more educated than the population as a whole, so there are more liberal RPG players. Also, like the small number of right-wingers in the OSR, a small number of left-wingers have used social media to make their numbers look bigger.
Great video! As a lifelong gamer, I've learned it's best to ignore the opinions of people who don't play at my game table. As a working professional in the industry, I make games for others. But I also get the privilege to make games for me and my friends. I've learned to look past the politics. What matters the most is how the dice fall and the stories we tell together.
Thanks for sharing Daniel! Drop me a line if you'd like to get word out about your latest edition of Zweihander and other the RPGs you've recently launched. ~ Jeff
I dunno man, I'm seeing TONS AND TONS of a DIY, almost punk-rock aesthetic and attitude in the OSR. Lots of creativity, people making their own highly personalized games and settings in pretty much zine form (pdf or printed) and sharing them for free or cheap. Its refreshing and exciting. I haven't sensed too much of a right wing vibe in it, and even if it were there, the OSR is all about playing YOUR game YOUR way anyway. Noone can stop you from doing that. The OSR is a beautful thing right now. WOTC probably haaaatttttes it for obvious reasons. It's letting the cat out of the bag, which is that AHEM Dee Un Dee is an extremely highly customizable game and you don't have to pay WOTC continuously every few years for the rest of your life to play it.
Actually, OSR isn't even a blot on WotC's radar and the company (and Hasbro) couldn't care less about it outside of anyone who stays outside the SRD or - now - Creative Commons as far as copyright.
@@Thegaminggang Interesting. Yeah I was just going on gut feeling, I had no industry evidence that WOTC hates the OSR. Thanks for the insight, I guess it's easy to forget how massively mainstream D&D is compared to let's say, Shadowdark or similar.
I agree with your explanation! I've always looked at the OSR as just a different style of play than the current iterations of D&D. For years, many have been trying to mod the playstyle into new editions. It's spawned other rulesets that have great ideas and approaches and even revitalized older editions of D&D. Personally, I like to homebrew just about everything to fit the group I'm playing with. So I like very open rulesets. I really disdain the hate marketing that has flooded the hobby. D&D has always had mismatched players that bond over adventures and often became friends... even if we didn't agree about sports or politics. Our differences are the spice of life.
I think the philosophy is more important than the mechanical differences between the osr and new school. OSR gaming is a little more folksy and working class, and newer games are more about being a super hero living out a power fantasy, and clearly that second school of thought is still, by far, the dominant one. As a DM though? I get nothing out of the modern game because even at first level the characters are essentially protaganists in a videogame.
@@phaedruslive Old-school wasn't universally averse to high-powered characters. Every single official method of creating a character for AD&D 1e was high-powered, with 4d6 drop the lowest being one of the weaker ones.
I would have to find my copy of the 1e DMG, but I'm pretty sure people only used 3d6 because the DMG was the last book out and they kept doing character creation like OD&D. Gygax explicitly said in the DMG that characters should have two 15s to be viable, and that's not likely with 3d6.
@@kevinrsmith2947 Method I in the DMG is 4d6, arrange. The narrative around '3d6 down the line' should have never truly applied to 1e/2e. For something like b/x, it makes sense as the modifiers aren't as high. People, over time, have tended to conflate the systems.
People are constantly talking about Right wing this and right wing that . Is it right leaning ? its terrible ! . Im just a normal person wanting to play games and everyone in the local 5e communities are dropping prounouns left right and center , we have safety words and they got used 3 times a game because they didnt like the sword slicing someone ..... ( Time out for 3 minutes ensued whilst the other people coddled them like a 3 year old ) Also i was called " Racist " for having a character that wouldnt deal with halflings ( Due to his backstory ). If you ask me the language and freedom of expression being targeted there is more dangerous an ideology then anything ive seen in OSR /OSE community . We just turn up and play a game and all mutually have fun without policing language , WHAT A CONCEPT !
@@Thegaminggang I googled to find out what you're talking about , and your talking point is a small percentage of people using an emote that is used all over twitch and gaming alike for right wing whistles ? . This is bottom of the barrel , whats next ? me using the OK hand gesture in my PADI diving certification a right wing gesture too ? . It really is mentally ill thinking
@gonnahavetotakeyolyf You're statement is spot on and factually true. Your avatar has nothing to do with your statement. There's a big majority of players that are tired of the pronoun police,and the whiny, easily offended 'adult children'. The great thing is, they can be asked to leave your table for for being a disruption to the other players.
Contrary to popular belief, lefties tend to be far less welcoming to those who disagree, so the OSR tends to be more welcoming than the DnD community. OSR is a big tent, unlike DnD which excludes those who arent on board with prog politics
OSR Renaissance: Rebirth of something new. Taking something old and making it newer. Newer packaging, minor tweaks. A new game with old features simplified, perhaps adding a few tweaks that either make it read better and tweaks in formatting, mechanics. But 80% of the core mechanics is still present. OSRIC. For Gold and Glory. Basic Fantasy (revival and Renaissance). Lamentation of the Flame Princess. Lion and Dragon.
This is a great video, well thought out and expressed. I will just say that I finally quit MeWe because some of the RPG accounts I was following were griping about the new D&D movie being a "misandrist girl-boss flick." It was the final straw; one too many reminders of who I was rubbing virtual elbows with :)
Willing to give it a chance, but the director and writers put their feet in their mouths by saying that’s exactly what their intent was with this movie. So your former game buds arent wrong with that assumption.
@@cocoablack73 Nah, they are wrong, as the interview was dumb and badly worded but was tongue in cheek and (stupidly) meant to get attention. Also anyone who uses “misandry” in a serious way is 100% avoidable in my experience.
I haven't used MeWe in a few years. It seemed like it was just becoming the gathering place for extreme conservatives who ran afoul of Facebook's moderation.
@@maxpocalypse I cannot speak for the movie. People do overreact as frequently as they don't. However, to claim misandry isn't a real thing that men face on the regular is just dishonest. And in itself, a bigoted position to have.
None of this was ever an issue or even a discussion in the 'old-school' days, until recently. Everyone from all walks of life, race, gender, etc. played D&D. Some of the best selling modules were written by women, and people from minority cultures that worked for TSR. D&D has always been inclusive, from the writers, down to the players.Not sure what all the hub-bub is for.
Yup tbh I mostly blame people at the big companies who got in adn spread this trash around, now we have "safety rules" and people trying to push their own modern day stuff into fantasy setting that has nothing to do with it.
RPGs have historically been characterized by intense gatekeeping. Perhaps not to a greater extent than other nerd hobbies but you not knowing this doesn't make it less true.
It has infused into almost every aspect of life now. It probably started when someone decided the best way to win on a debate over tax rates, safety nets, minimum wage, etc was to claim the other side were "pedos who wanted to destroy the country". Now a dispute over public education dollars becomes a fight against evil for your very survival. Then all the hate and fear that comes with that.
Good video. I havent seen this channel before, but I think you have a new subscriber. I'm more of a wargamer than an RPG guy, but I like your style. Would you consider Mork Borg OSR?
Welcome aboard! As for Mork Borg being OSR? I would say no. Not because it isn't similar mechanically but because it doesn't have an OSR mindset IMO. ~ Jeff
The GM never kills players, the world does. I personally don’t like death at zero hp though, then you can never be knocked out. I think some negative or any negative value should be agreed on.
far as im concerned play what you like, encourage others to do the same, dont put anyone down for liking what they like, kinda like real life, be kind and have fun
OSR that intrigues me most is the followers, henchmen, and hirelings. The responsibility over people that are willing ti sacrice for our cause. That should sway decision on the safety of those whom are less capable, however essential to our party's success. When players have to consider the well being of others for character progression. This is where a broader view point to a murder and loot progression system. Its tough for someone with opposing ideology to relate. I am glad that this concern is being addressed. I believe that there is more in common when ideas are exchanged. Before stances on political view points are exchanged to compare opposition.
I think it all comes down to letting us all take a breath. Treat people with respect even if at times our world views are not all the same. We can be fun gamers adults and even teens too and just role up a D&D Character or a Sword and Wizardy RPG Character or play a game of OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and many other wonderful fun OSR and non-OSR like Pathfinder 2nd Edition products. I am a Moderate Conservative in life but I play with gay left-leaning and right-lean friends the biggest arguments are over the rules sometimes (Understanding rules in books can be a challenge) and food and drink choices to spoil the GM wish to thank him for all the fun he creates and a safe fun escape from paying this months rent, phone bills and other real-world worries and then we all give high 5s and laughs and look forward to the next game. My experience with most of the OSR is that is filled with people with new and fresh ideas and creativity not old worn-out ideas. Give it a try then decide to go into it with a positive approach anyone is welcome at my OSR game.
One of the worst parts of older books is the lack of editing experience. When you read them it as like reading someone's stream of thoughts as they describe things they don't quite have the words for yet. Concepts that are pretty simple look much more daunting than they need to. I think this reflected how AD&D 2e was written. We're tired of writing FAQs and answering stuff in Dragon, let's make a brick of a book where rules for all we can think of are in there somewhere. Someone might ask for climbing speed rules at some point.
@@trioofone8911 Reading the OD&D books is hard. Not because the rules are hard, but because they are made by people who have not yet picked up editorial skills. Things are always a little more wordy and convoluted than necessary.
I can definitely respect the ideas behind the OSR, that style of gamedesign will 100% enhance some people's enjoyment of the hobby and there's nothing inherently political about it. Buuuut any time i interact with that side of the ttrpg community i always run into weirdos... Like when i went to a Dragonbane forum and saw entire threads bemoaning how the main character in the recent novel being a woman was Free League "falling for woke ideology" and how they're mad that being a woman doesn't give you negatives to strength. Or when i was in a discussion about homebrew material from another system being translated into another language and someone was disappointed that the conversion didn't keep the old name of the monster, which in the original language was like...real goddamn close to just being a straight up racial slur. I mean akin to calling your orcs "blackies" or something like that. I just wish the OSR would chill out about fighting so hard to keep even the shitty aspects of the old games. There's a phrase in fashion, "Vintage style, not vintage values". You can keep all the cool, fun stuff without dragging in the political bullshit that used to be attached to it.
Players thinking women should have negative modifiers to strength compared to men is based on them wanting a realistic biology of men and women in their game. Men and women are not equally built strength wise. Transgenders entering womens sports are constantly proving this. The physical standards in the military are lowered for women. I don't think it's something for people to be upset about. Certain players want more realism.
@@pewprofessional3181 Sagas of the Icelanders is a game where men and women are effectively different roles. The game system gives you different tools to function in the honour system of Iceland. Everyone can stab a fool with a sword but what is honourable or not is hard to escape.
@@pewprofessional3181 There are RPGs with extreme realims, or at least who try to. Be prepared for bleeding rates, disease chance, hit locations and shock saving throws. These games are not very fun unless you like the additional clunk.
I know this is an old video now but I really appreciate your take on the RW extremist thing. I remember the satanic panic actually and even had family members try to pray over us for playing DND at a family reunion one time, which almost funny in hindsight decades later but I digress; it troubles me when people in the TTRPG hobby act with the same motives and hate that we used to experience just for playing the damn game, but like you said it's fortunately not an especially common problem, and I'm a Wobbly who enjoys OSR style gaming a lot, I even ran 3.5/PF in as close a style to 2e as possible back in the day when 3rd or 3.5 was new, so I also agree with you that the spirit of OSR can transcend specific rules, I've played around with a system I discovered recently called fictive hack which reminds me of 2e A LOT and have been wanting to check out dungeon crawl classics since I'm still so familiar with the 3.5/d20 style of rules. Great video!
The satanic fear wasn't as big here. There was some free churches who picked up some of it, but they were way out in the margin from the lutheran state church and considered to be kooks. Their big fear was violence. There was already censorship of violent movies, and foreign imports like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" had spooked people. Especially violence involving, directed against or near children was freaky. This game shows up where kids are not just watching violence, but interacting in violent conflicts. They had a hard time grasping "commercialism". To them, the concept of a saturday morning tv show that was half toy ad was something highly suspect. That part didn't lead to censorship of RPGs, just treating it as low-brow culture.
I think you handled the topic very well. I feel most of these tellings and denunciations come from folks of more "modern" systems that feel offended by people with decades of expertise because they already figured out a better way to do it but have no other argument to get rid of the past. Also there are a lot of non-gamers who have no idea what we're doing in the hobby. To me it's a privilege to learn from those Refs and its astounding how often I go back to learn something new to me.
Also, the culture of mainstream roleplaying is so far left that you can't even counter with "Well, 5E seems like it's full of tankies" because they don't see those stances as being weird and extreme.
@@phaedruslive I mean, clearly anyone who is against running over unarmed civilians with tanks, who opposes wiping out whole populations by working them to death in gulags, or who is in favor of free speech is obviously an evil fascist. Only a right wing extremist would deny that!
The original books are written strangely, I think the most common fault in them is people with more enthusiasm than editorial experience trying to make themselves clear. It made what could have been easy concepts look more daunting than necessary. I like how early GW assumed that we could sort things out and wouldn't need an FAQ letter.
@@phaedruslive I know marxists, and the USA doesn't have anything close to a marxist party. You got a slightly more conservative-liberal free market party and a slightly more center-liberal free market party. I'm personally interested how you would deal with something like christian democracy. If you took conservative family values and married it with a conservative welfare system. A lot of conservatives here are not Reagan/Thatcher people who love a free market above all.
I think one component of OSR that is really important to a lot of people is broader TSR era compatibility even more so than a "mindset". That's why DCC's status as an OSR game is controversial (even if we all love that game) because the 3e chassis is very obvious.
One thing I liked in DCC was the level 0 to level 1 mechanics. Testing out the level 0 funnel approach to a starter dungeon with a crew was a special experience. They got five level 0 chumps each, a total of 25-30 people. They only commented that it wasn't hard enough when 20+ bums survived.
When it comes to what a right wing extremist is, I recently read a book called the reactionary mind by corey Robin. From the Wikipedia summary Robin argues that rather than being about liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power. For right wing extremists, from Edmund Burke reacting to the French revolution to now, there is this unassailable hierarchy. Not one that they want to create, but one that is inevitable, unquestionable. Kind of like monday, there's got to be a first day of the week. During Edmund Burke's time it was divine right of kings, in the early 20th century it was eugenics and phrenology. Now you hear Internet weirdos talk about wolves and greek letters. There is a natural sorting of people into this hierarchy and they believe themselves to be, at the very least, not at the bottom. For the right, there's always a bottom. There has to be. Liberals and leftists who want equality, a flat hierarchy or a one person one vote democracy, are subverting the natural order, and to right wingers, would put them at the bottom. Because the right wingers, the hierarchy is inevitable, someone has to be at the top, and it's not who they would like. Any kind of attempt at spreading the wealth around or sharing the same space as the people they think ought to be on the bottom is seen as an attack on them because equality means they are inherently at the bottom. Logically it should mean they are at the top too but they don't see it that way because the top is an uncontestable sovereign and that has to exist and they know they aren't them. Anyway that's my definition. As to why you see a lot more of these people in the osr space, I would attribute it to nostalgia being a frequent rhetorical tool and propaganda for the right. Anyone in the world can be nostalgic. It is not right wing, it is merely an emotion. But they remember a world of their childhood where the world was simpler, except of course, that as children during their childhood, of course the world is simpler.
Considering how little you can veer off the leftist path and suddenly be denounced by your erstwhile "allies", I would take claims of "right-wing extremism" with a pinch of salt. A former friend denounced me and said that he felt ashamed for appearing in the credits for the same game as me (we both wrote content for a popular RPG) just because I challenged his views on politics. The playground is huge; there should be room for everybody who want to play.
What did you manage to do? Over here, the war is making everything more tense right now. Fools who joked about how Putin would save us from political correctness are trying to pretend it was just a joke, bro.
I think we must be careful to keep fascists out. I think there are certain elements in the OSR that are attractive to them. They tend to latch on to hobbies and aesthetics that are traditional. They thrive on creating myths about a sort of mystical past when everything was better before they use that as a reason to exclude marginalised groups. We don't want the OSR to become like the old nordic religions that have become so overtaken by neo nazis that people with a deep connection or interest in them shy away from being open about it to avoid being linked with them. Fascists systematically try to find hobbies and cultural niches they can use as recruitment grounds.
@@AnonAdderlan Whataboutism isn’t helpful whenever people try to address Neo-Nazis and fascism. It doesn’t add to the conversation and only serves to add noise. How fascists infiltrate hobbies and the rhetoric they use is very different to how other unsavoury groups do.
Some fools managed to walk around Roblox with an avatar that linked to an antisemitic tract on RUclips. So I'm not surprised they show up in other hobbies.
There were completely unbalanced dnd modules, but tsr usually took time to make sure a reasonably equipped party would be ok. Whereas Tegel Manor was all over the place and it's difficult to fit it in to a long running campaign.
When we tried Tegel Manor it was incoherent but fun. We found a saphire plough under a bed. Some statue leered at us. It was hard to make any sense of the whole, but it was weirdly fun.
"Is OSR filled with right wing extremists?" Have people completely lost their minds? Seriously that's what your worried about? Everyone has their own beliefs and if you start looking at everyone through their political affiliations, and only want to play with "your side" you will become a narrow minded idiot. Judge people by their actions not your own preconceived ideas, and that goes for everyone. Somebody should have taught you that when you were a child, maybe go tell your parents they failed. That might seem kinda harsh, but that is an asinine question.
Interesting as OSR go beyond the realms of USA. I’m American living in UK playing with Australians (where I previously worked) so to have someone boil down the community to just the USA and right wing extremism is in of itself just plain wrong
I love OSR. I hate politics. I respect your observations and you make great points. But I just want to explore a dungeon, or maybe make a Beholder feel bad about itself. If I were at a game where a player/GM made a table political, I'd pay my share for the pizza and leave.
All you need to do in order to answer this question is to filter comments by "newest". Pretty much all of them contain some form of far right narrative. I cannot say whether they do that out of hatred or ignorance, but it's pretty undeniable something is going on. It's sad. I don't think all of those comments are made by people of the OSR community and I also believe that the OSR isn't inherently tied to right wing extremism. I just think that it's a tool that fits nicely into their ideology, as everything that's new is also "woke". Gods, I hate what this word has become. Pretty much anytime it is used, it is to distort reality.
Really liking this channel. I love your presentation. For me, "rulings over rules" is an often misused or misguided phrase. To me, it doesn't mean "ignore the rules and change them on the fly" it is more of a game design philosophy- keep the rules simple and light, provide a framework but you don't need a rule for everything. The GM is there to make rulings when the rules don't cover it or are ambiguous. I also agree with "rulings over rules" when the GM doesn't know, or can't remember a rule. I play mostly 5e now, but I apply that same philosophy. I'm not going to stop play to look up a rule unless it's really, really important. As an old dude DM with a family, full time career and other obligations, I simply don't have time to immerse myself in the game the way I used to and so I don't know every rule. In fact, I actually don't mind if a player during play reminds me of a rule I forgot. In fact, most of the time I appreciate it. I don't consider that "rules lawyering".
I enjoy OSR games. Apparently I am a "right-wing extremist" too (or so I'm told), although back in the 90s I was a left leaning centrist and I haven't really changed my position on anything since then. Make of that what you will, internet. Maybe modern gaming is full of left-wing extremists who can't tolerate anyone who thinks differently?
There is a lot I disagree with in centrism, but mostly because the libertarians took over that niche here. Anyone who takes the centrist position assumes they are the normal everyone else must gravitate around. It gets trickier when a lot of different people all claim the center.
Bit late to the party here. Still, it is shocking that politics seems to overwhelmingly involve itself into so many facets of life in the US. It is a game of make believe with a bunch of likeminded geeks, nerds and if you are lucky absolute muppets sitting about a table pontificating over esoteric rubbish that would have your average 1970's / 80's pearl clutcher calling the local priest. It is both the easiest and hardest of games to explain to others, the absolute hardest to have them understand without experience - and I have had people try to explain Australian Rules to me, and honest to god that aerial ping-pong prancing rubbish is an open book in comparison to a table top role playing game to 'outsiders'. It is the pinnacle of gaming excellence, pulling from the entirety of human evolutionary drives to tell collaborative stories. It is both weird and absolutely wonderful... but political? That bit breaks me a little.
My gaming group is in the 30-60 year old range and we're definitely pretty left-leaning. heh I do now how people tend to turn more conservative as they age, though. Definitely hasn't affected me, though... if anything, I think I became more liberal as the years have gone on. lol I love a ton of the OSR games out there. :-) Thankfully, I have managed to avoid these right wing extremists in my travels, but I obviously believe they exist. Like you said... do go on 4chan! lol
@@soniaiboyako4023 What the Book tells you is to never bring an accusation without evidence. If your evidence doesn't go beyond "this is what happened to me".... having experiences isn't unique... everyone has them. Why should I treat yours any differently than someone else who gives me the same level of "evidence"? Which is the problem with your dismissive attitude. If I'm in a position where I have to choose A or B.... pulling that "how dare you dismiss my life experiences" card is gonna make me question if you made it all up. why? because it signals that you had nothing but your "word of honor"... IE... talk. and as we all know "talk is cheap".
@@marhawkman303 absolutely no one is asking you to be the one "treating" random people's experiences any type of way though.. and you don't have any evidence yourself that their experiences are false or that they only happened once - since that seems to be your issue (something happening once means it's okay to you i guess). "talk is cheap" refers to boasting and pretentiousness, not just communicating... good grief
@@sungeziefer7421 It might help with some examples of old school games that were narrative-driven. WFRP 1e adventures are written in such a way that I can see them as narrative acts. You are wandering bums on the road but each adventure is a narrative where you need to buy into a plot. Combat is highly lethal but older adventures have surprisingly little combat. And when combat happens, it's story events like a legal duel, three blokes who will ambush a coach or a very confused demon. Even a small combat encounter has weight. White Wolf managed to draw a lot wider crowd than grognards in dungeons. Vampire was a lot better at describing social-political relations among an urban subculture. Understanding who was feuding with who over what and how to leverage that for support when the time came to whack them was as important as growing your personal power. A WoD city is a relation web between cliques and cotteries and individuals. Instead of making a long list of shops and describing three to five rough factions.
@@SusCalvin It maybe in your specific group, but in general - no. D&D Basic (also Gamma World, Star Frontiers) were dungeoncrawls were the characters narrative did not interest anyone. Neither were the adventures. I can say, because not only I was gm'ing all the time in the 80', but also that was my major gripe with the existing RPG's at that time. Interestingly Germans biggest RPG "The Dark Eye" started becoming so popular, because they had a narrative from the start, even if there were a dungeon crawl as it first adventure. The starting adventure is so popular that it is now getting its own beer mug for its 40th anniversary. Also another German RPG Midgard (1982) had dungeoncrawls, but even they had more narrative than the major brands (it was Tolkiens Middle Earth). But still in these days characters were on the tear-off slip. (Which Goodman Games still offers as major OSR distributor). About WFRSP, I gm'ed all four editions and played them, and to be true, it was always an awful experience. I know there is large fan base, but I sold last week my latest edition and I am glad about it.
@@SusCalvin Addendum: One of my favorite Adventure trilogy "Desert of Desolation" was changing point in the RPG history because it was the first with a narrative. I think Prof. Dungeonmaster has mentioned it in a video about it Ravenloft.
An RPG table is a great place to spend time with people who are politically different from you. I lean very right, but my table leans very left. We rarely talk about politics, but I will apply more conservative values to my in game actions, while other players apply left leaning ideas. I'm always right, so it's a great teaching tool for them. 😛
RPG gaming is gaming and people are people. Some, like me, prefer the old school simpler, grittier style of play. It has nothing to do with personal politics or cultural preferences. We all need to stop tagging people we disagree with using pejorative labels. C’mon folks we can do better, and just have fun. A little tolerance goes a long way. 👍🏼
I think the key word to describe the OSR is reactionary. It is a reactionary movement against the current state of D&D offered by Wizards of the Coast, encouraging a return to older traditions. As such, you can expect to find communities around it which are reactionary also- so, a highly skeptical conservatism, often naively so. Anyone too bothered by this state of affairs has divided off into what is called the NSR or NuSR, an explicitly left-wing faction which rejects corporate D&D but has no attachment to older games. Still- the vast majority of the OSR in any case will be that vague "normie" liberalism you would expect to find among nerds online.
Grumpy reactionary here. Definitely on the OSR train. There’s plenty of room at most tables, and if not, there’s always the option of putting together your own group. I wanted a specific flavor, so I made fliers and put them up at the local gaming shop. The graphics were scans of swords and barbells. Conan references in the text. They looked like fliers for a basement show. It took some time, but eventually a group formed who aligned with this aesthetic and the accompanying set of interests. I chained a heavy kettlebell to the bay door of the space where we play one night. Real-world strength check to enter. Literal gatekeeping, with a sense of humor. You could just as easily make a flier with your preferred pronouns on it and filter out the folks you don’t want at your table (me). Lots of room in this hobby for everyone. Just find the right table, or put in the effort to create one. If you’re bothered by how other people play games, and act like it affects you personally… you might want to take a deep breath and recalibrate.
This is the greatest thing I've ever read. Conan, OSR, old school strength training, and metal are some of my favorite hobbies. Well and also pistol and rifle shooting and smoking meat.
A smaller hobby around here means we can't divide ourselves into little groups as much. I have friends who try to be picky about people, and they get a lot less activities together than my friends who happily talk to any dunce who doesn't outright insult them. If I was to start filtering people that hard, it would be down to me and a handful of chaps. And that's a little clique, not a community. And an aging clique at that.
@@SusCalvin a little clique, or an adventuring party? It doesn’t take many people to have a fun experience at the table. Everyone can choose how much to filter people out. I don’t live in a big town at all. It’s still possible to have a table of people who you actually like. Mine isn’t homogenous at all. A wide array of political leanings, religion, etc. but we share enough of our values to make the game enjoyable and drama-free.
Historically WOTC effed over the hobby and the industry some twenty years ago re licenses and it meant a fracturing and constructive innovation, fresh restatements of older editions of 'the game' of D&D - there are bound to be opportunists/extremists to glob onto this get their own ideologies across in their products (either side of the political spectrum) - denial of this is a mistake. Having said that, I'm not enamoured of nostalgic notions of what is 'the only way to play' OSR 'properly' that is sometimes the discourse on social media/other online spaces, it often gets used as an exclusionary tactic when some groups find out about your politics. Just passing on my experience with using online VTTS like Roll20 over the years. I just want to PLAY. OSR, 5e whatever. Great stuff on the OSR as a playstyle, game design and running philosophy over mechanics though, thanks for this breakdown video.
Politics needs to stay out of gaming and everything else. I think it's going to be a factor with online gaming but local gamers political leanings should be put aside.
I’ve been role playing for 40 years and never run into a problem. My rule is don’t play with jerks and don’t talk politics during a game. Why would you? You’re playing to escape. Knowing the political persuasion of fellow players defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
I think I never stopped being old school playing any ttrpg. D&D kept reinventing itself and I pretty much stopped playing it after 3e. Even though I have 5e I seldom play it. I go with older game systems and a lot of the time I play or run games in the Palladium/Rifts megaverse because they knew how to stop the upgrades while still ahead. The rules didn't change much between 1e and 2e and they just added new campaign worlds. WotC really ended up screwing a great RPG system up.
I would say that in OSR games the things on the character sheet had been also very important, but they were not in the form of ready to use powers but in the form of tools which then required on top of having the right tools (like certain spells and equipment, or resource management in general which you mention in the video as well) the ingenuity of the players. Either way, I don't like ableism much and thus both style are abhorrent to me, but the hobby is very much shaped by that ableism that was early on introduced, that it s all about what people can do (character or players) and very little about who the person is (which was only compounded by the lethality of those early games). I think regarding rules, that is why there is so much of an emphasis on streamlining rules these days in modern game design, so that all the rules are easy to memorise since they all follow the same design principle. And people notice that painfully if some special rules are the outliers which have to looked up when needed. I like games powered by the apocalypse in that regard, since the basic rules format is so simple that I feel like I read it once and know how it works and never have to look up anything again, because it is so streamlined. And that super streamlined approach is what I am going for in my own system design. Extremist are indeed rare, but I would not limit the problem within the OSR just to the very extremen, but many reactionaries that might not be an issue for you, but that still could hold problematic views. As queer woman with a mixed ethnical background, I can tell you, I experience quite a lot of shit, and I am not going to 4chan. Some times you might not even notice problems when you are not directly affected. I mean just look at the common phrase that people don't want politics in their games. Which is of course a dog whistle, since they will have very much white capitalism and European feudalism their games; and if someone says they want to play a monk then they might got told that those do not fit into their game world (even though they are one of the earliest addition to D&D through Arneson in Blackmoor). So again, I would say that there plenty of people who are very much guided by xenophobia which makes the OSR experience for non-white, non-cis, non-male players often less enjoyable even without any encounter of outright extremists.
When people say they don't want politics in their games, in practice it means, please don't talk about real-world politics in games. You can use allegories, but don't beat people over the head with "the message" it's why Christian movies are so darn terrible because they preach at you. You would be surprised at how much politics are in the game if you slap a coat of fiction over the issue. SLA Industries, Cyberpunk, DarkSun, everything White Wolf ever made. All of those games were very political. ALL VERY left-leaning. But by slapping that coat of fantasy on it, it makes it palatable. As Mary Poppins said, a spoonful of Sugar makes the medicine go down. For, as a left-leaning person, I groan every time a writer has to break the flow and say "OH, Fascism is bad," "Orange Man, bad" and "Let's punch Nazis in the face because they are on Fox News". I hated the combat wheelchair, but I have played a character who could not walk, so I used my starting gold, and hired a Half Ogre merc Fighter to strap my ass to his back, and played my legless wizard as Master Blaster. He'd wade in swinging his sword, and id be blasting away with magic, or slinging darts, eventually, my guy could afford a wheelchair he had one, but come an adventuring time, he called his trusty bodyguard, and the Panzer Mage once again took off once again. In all honesty, it's not just politics that don't get discussed in games, it's real religion and football (all forms of football) as well.
@@screenmonkey White Wolf left leaning? Thy had far too much right wing talking points in their games, even outright racist ones in the Demon one, and their depiction of Roma or other minorities had been really bad. And that got not much better with Onyx Path either. Cyberpunk is not as bad, but it feels not really left leaning either. On SLA I would agree however, that is rather left, but I guess that might only be the case because we in Europe are in general more to the left, and that even the American Democratic party would be in Europe a conservative one. I mean even the CDU (the German conservative Christian party that had chancellor Merkel was more left than your Democrats) Anyway, to say you don't want politics but then still accepting the status quo is a political stance in itself. Thus I have to call BS on the claim that people do it just because they don't want to be preached to. Sure, nobody likes that, but you could also simply allow the combat wheelchair and then just as much do not talk about politics. No, the moment one starts to deny things, they are the ones who make this a political thing, not the player who asked for it.
@@Drudenfusz It's very simple. Live and let live. People saying they don't want politics in their games, are people who have to constantly deal with being criticized for just existing. Who try to get away from all that stuff by playing games, only to find that the game is doing it as well. And if you cannot understand that then maybe you should check your privilege.
@@Dharengo I don't get it. How is having politics in the game criticism for existence? It is usually the other way around, people who do not want politics in the games are the same people that discriminate against others and do exactly not want them to exist in their games. Also, for a live and let live approach you come strangely arrogant across, telling me, a queer woman of mixed ethnic background to check my privilege.
I am neither right-wing, nor an extremist. I grew up playing Moldvay BX (1981) and AD&D from 1981-1988, and then sort of moved on. But I like fantasy literature so much that I started watching people play 4e on RUclips around 2010, and painting figures for fun. Then I decided to try actually playing 5e in 2015, and stuck with it for about 2 years until I finally realized that it was not creating the same feeling of wonder, awe, and fear that playing those old games made me feel. I did not like having a bazillion class/race choices to the point where it is very difficult for DMs to manage, and the setting is completely non-themed. I did not like the the videogame-like, pre-fab, story arc railroads of the 5e products, or the lack of DM tools published in the absolute worst DMG ever...versus the open work sandbox with rumors that the players decide to pursue or not...I do not like the lack of processes (aka mechanics) for hex crawl, dungeon crawl, and town in favor of more rules and die rolls, or that like 5e rules encourage players to min/max, rules lawyer, power game, and go murder hobo...versus actually smart play by the players who rely upon their own wits and ingenuity to solve problems. In short, 5e is good for people who want to dominate the world they live in so they can feel like their characters are somehow special, but the OSR is more about providing agency to both DMs and players to create a world, explore it, and create a story TOGETHER (not travel along the story arc generated by WoTC's feeble authors). I enjoy that type of game more so than the rules crunchy WoTC games (3e-5e). I also did not like the emphasis on the tired and overdone Forgotten Realms setting, when I wanted to play a game that would allow me to have a character and setting like in the kinds of fantasy novels I read and love...And I am all about diversity and equality. (If you are really for equality, you would not support Hasbro/WoTC's attempt at capitalist domination, so stop buying their shit! These people that support the large-scale capitalism are too right wing for me!!!)...PS, 100% correct about 4Chan, which is a site popular with the right-wingers. How dumb can someone be?
Saying the osr is "filled" with extremists is like saying dnd 5e is filled with sexually frustrated weebos. I'm sure they are in there but saying "filled" implies that it's a vast majority. The fact that anyone would even have that question to me signifies an unhealthy obsession and fear of differing opinions. I gravitate towards the osr simply because my group and I grew tired of spending 45 minutes in a battle. Constantly looking up rules , always having to explain to new players where to find things on their sheet what dice to roll etc. I like less bloat.
I tend to consider people who identify themselves as a member of ANY political party as being a bit "extreme," but that certainly won't stop me playing games with them.
@@thepardoner2059 I feel like when people ask the question, they're thinking of the outstandingly offensive stuff like NuTSRs Star Frontiers or Varg Vikkernes's MYFAROG; the former being intensely racist, and Varg being am actual neo nazi and convicted murderer.
Very well thought out and expressed Jeff! I do happen to fall a fair distance right of you, but I am not extreme by either your definition or my own. There is room for everyone (except assholes from either extreme) in the OSR.....and frankly even the assholes are welcome to game within their own collectives.
That's what I thought when some blokes were going on about policing and gatekeeping. Unless you have managed to piss off very large amounts of people it's hard to toss people out of a hobby where all you need is a book and five mates. At a con I might meet three dozen chumps in one day, when would I have time to question and background check them.
I've only been into the OSR for a short while, but I've found it one of the most welcoming communities.
From what I've experienced, the game and rules come first, everything else is secondary.
It's very refreshing.
I've been playing ADnD,BECMI ,Mork Borg and DCC for a couple of years now.
And if any of them aren't friendly to ya, just let me know and I'll knock their blocks off! ;-)
You bring up an excellent point. I've found far more positive and constructive feedback from the OSR community... especially the Basic Fantasy gang. Great gamers.
@@KabukiKid I apperciate it :D
@@carrotsongRPG I'm currently running a short campaign with young cousins of mine in Basic Fantasy, and they love it. Some of the help, and ideas I got from the community was priceless.
I have such a kick from Mork Börg. Bought the book last year, and it's been one of the best investments I've ever made 😁
The OSR is a very welcoming community, it's fantastic.
Give it a couple years and it will be filled with actual crazy people who demand you remove interracial couples. Like what happened to normal D&D. Don't welcome freaks, racists, and communists into your communities. Ez
One thing you didn't mention, Jeff, is that a lot of OSR games are better for hex crawls and dungeon crawls, than a lot of the newer rules sets. You touched on time management, and a lot of that is about resources. If you're in a dungeon for days you need to know how long your torches are going to last and how long your food and water are going to last. That's a big part of OSR in most forms.
I think it shows better in hex movement where you need to plan out an expedition that must endure weeks of travel and exploration and you won't be able to easily nip back into town. You need to budget payment for any goons you hire. When they explore a shallow dungeon with one or two floors they can usually head back to base camp and their supply dump. When you spend days in the dungeon it matters more.
An effect in Esoteric Enterprises, with it's modern day setting, is modern battery flashlights. A cheap flashlight I can pick up the store can light up an entire room for half a day easily and replacement batteries fit in my pocket.
I am not a fan of easily available permanent magic like Perpetual Light. A magical light that last a whole day is worth a level 2 spell slot, but not a spell where a bloke can sit around and churn out permanent lights.
Some newer games have started to rediscover how fun it is to walk around a regional map and see what happens. Mutant Year Zero has squarecrawling by default, you need to get out into the zone on expeditions to haul stuff back for the village. Resources unavailable in the village can be found out there. You build up the village or donate stuff to it to make it stronger.
RPGs initially spun off from wargames, and I've heard that wargame players in the '70s tended to skew conservative. That makes sense, since many of the players were apparently veterans and others who saw wargames as a way to celebrate military history. However, a conservative in the '70s wasn't necessarily like a conservative today.
In terms of the makeup of the OSR, I think Jeff's got it right. If you live in a bubble of super progressive discourse, you might be shocked at the number of conservatives you find in the OSR, but the extremists are mostly on social media. There are a couple of prominent right-wing OSR designers who make a lot of noise in places like Twitter and RUclips and make people think the entire OSR is like that, but that impression is misleading.
The impression isn't misleading, the impression is dishonest.
The OSR is full of right wing extremists in the same way that there was an insurrection on January 6, that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a haven for Neo-Nazis, that Florida not wanting 5 year olds told there was no such thing as boys and girls was "don't say gay", etc.
We live in a left wing society where anyone who isn't a secular progressive is considered far right. The easiest way to demonstrate that is to point out how according to mainstream media and public discourse the ONLY right that exists at all is far right. "Far Right" just means you aren't a progressive Democrat nowadays. Anybody who is a member of the Republican party is automatically assumed to be a racist homophobe.
The only sense in which the OSR is far right is that OSR character sheets don't have a space for personal pronouns. The people labelling the OSR far right are the same people who think Thirsty Sword Lesbians is cutting edge roleplaying and who discuss whether orcs are supposed to be black people ironically unaware how they are the racist ones for even bringing up the question since the notion never even occurs to anyone else.
I haven't understood why that divide happened. The older christian conservatives I know are getting shoved away by new, hip wannabe conservatives.
@@kevinrsmith2947 Gygax and co had a divide with older wargamers who thought fanciful adventures with trolls and elfs lacked what they liked in good old military simulationism.
@@kevinrsmith2947 A lot of wargamed I personally like are built on war as extension of politics. The direct armed conflict is secondary to or in support of the political resolution. In "All Brushes Burning" you play Finnish parliament sessions as the country escalates and polarizes.
This was an excellent description of the OSR mindset. I know, I've DM'd for over 45 years.
Jeff, I am one of those right of center people that you referenced. I am going to bookmark this video and show it to anyone who is interested in learning about the OSR, but has the same questions that you brought up in the video. Thank you. You have also earned a sub from this old grognard.
Hey Krafty Matt, am I blocked on here and no one can see my messages?
@@DM_Bluddworth Nope. I can see your message, brother.
@@DM_Bluddworth seen here. 😊
Our fear over here wasn't too many people but too few. A bunch of us feared that we'd go the way of Märklin train hobbyists and become a gathering of aging collectors. People who were growing older with more economic muscle in the hobby but without enough growth. So my big concern is always "How can I get teenagers interested in this old thing?" And that is a lot harder to do if I settle down into a little private group with just my same-age mates. They're going to have jobs in other towns, kids etc.
I use three categories for describing what the OSR means:
Old School Revival = Playing the older editions of ANY TTRPG (this means not just D&D older editions).
Old School Renaissance = Newer game built off of an older game’s system. This is the most common OSR example.
Old School Roleplaying (Rules) = Playing in the style of old school gaming. Ie. Hex / Dungeon Crawls; resource management; lower survivability at low level; more DM / GM focus - rulings over rules.
I agree with you 99% on these points.
Thank you, As someone who plays Traveller I was feeling kind of left out from this
I second this.
@@baileywatts1304 Traveller and Tunnels & Trolls and a few others sort of developed in parallell.
GDW always feels like they had their own little hard sci fi corner. While Tunnels & Trolls and Metamorphosis Alpha were a bit more adjescent.
"If you're going to swim in the toilet, you're going to bump up against shit." My favorite line that I've ever heard you utter, Jeff.
Another fine video.
I'm more worried when 4chan starts to expand outwards and doesn't stay contained in their own little appendix of the internet.
@@SusCalvin The 4chan I know of hates everyone, left or right is meaningless to them collectively.
Given the shit on /D/ you'd think they'd love the left, on /tg/ you'd think center right, but on /Pol/ you can't tell what the heck is going on.
I love that the FIRST thing you mentioned is the difference between the modern approach of players using "skills" versus old school way of players using their own wits and thinking to solve problems. This has had a huge effect on "the game" and player expectations. The way I solved this (for my preferred way of running the game) is to remind players that when I ask "what do you do?" they don't need to mention or choose a skill -- that's my call as DM and I'll let them know if I want them to roll a skill check. Instead, I ask them to "tell me the story" or "describe" what/how they're doing as if it were a movie or tv show. If they need to roll a check I'll tell them. This has helped me keep the style of game I like to run, while still allowing players to use (and design their characters for) the ruleset.
Nice video. It's interesting when I see current games like Shadowdark that seem to be trying to make a bridge between old and new school play.
I noticed that Mutant Year Zero had rediscovered hexcrawling. Old Mutant was inspired by Gamma World and featured a lot of wilderness expeditions but without the OSR hexcrawling. In MY0 you "squarecrawl" out from your safe village, find threats and encounters and resources which you bring back to the village. The village is your semi-safe zone among 300 others but also falling apart. They aspired to a loop where resources from outside build up the village as well as your PCs power.
One of the greatest differences is that New School sees an idealized form of themselves in their characters while Old School players see their character as a playing piece or an imaginary friend.
Another big difference is that in New School, there's a segment of players that wants to explore how all the different parts of character creation come together to form powerful, or unexpected combinations of feats and abilities. They want a dip here or there into a class to get an ability to form a combination with an ability from another class. That wasn't ever a part of Old School gaming. If you were going to dual class a character you were dual classed from day one to the last day of the character's career. Character creation didn't become part of the game itself until 3.0.
Crafting really wasn't a part of Old School gaming. That has come into a game from video entertainment.
A couple of OSR games not mentioned are Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, even Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1E. These games are well supported with adventures and suppliments.
Yeah, it's like Marvel movies versus gritty existentialist 70's films. Where the characters are basically anti-heroes and are probably doomed from the jump.
New school RPGs can have terribly weak characters. Fiasco is a story-focused RPG where spectacular failiure is the goal of the game and making your hapless PCs stumble forward in a farce is expected.
WFRP is pretty new school. You play adventures with an act structure, a plot and such. You are wandering bums, but not to the point where you go where you please. I can play a WFRP adventure and recognize it as a narrated plot thread. A lot of the older adventures have surprisingly little combat, you can spend a lot of time chatting people up and investigating fools. Combat still happens, but even a small fight with two fools with daggers or a bloke in ambush with a crossbow is nasty.
There is no mechanic for building things in most OSR games but approaching a dungeon as an engineering problem can be fun. Then you get some use of those 10 labourers you brought as they build you a temporary bridge or dig down to the second level or clear a tunnel. It's not a video game crafting system, but you see a problem that requires a tool. One of our proudest moments was the invention of a ten foot pole with attachable ends. Ten foot rake, transform into ten foot hook!
For people looking to learn more about the OSR, I strongly recommend the "Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" By Matt Finch
There's also "Original Edition Campaign" by Erik Johansson. Or even the very recent "Blue Flame, Tiny Stars" by Stephen Wendell As a way to give the uninitiated a frisson of those heady old school days.
Great job, Jeff! You really hit so many highlights in an accessible, approachable way. Modern and OSR both have lots of great points. And lots of folks mix & match.
(Also best summary of 4chan, LOL)
The 4chan swimming in the toilet comparison is so on point
Vampire the Masquerade is one of the first new school games I can recall. Vampire was a lot better at how power cliques and relations inside a city works. Instead of a few simple factions like "The gate wardens" or "The court" or "The thief guild" you got a mess of relations between individuals and little cliques who had stagnated and stewed over centuries. Understanding who could do what to whom was as important as getting vampire powers.
I probably wouldn't loan the superhero system itself, but a relationship chart of a city has been helpful this far. If the PCs want to beat up some fools I can see who comes to their surprise aid or who gives them unexpected advice. Everything is more intimate at a city scale where everyone is less than an hour's cab ride from eachother.
That "swim in the toilet" line is brilliant.
There really aren't many ways "I went to 4Chan and..." can end. And I'm not sure any of them are good.
There are left and right wing extremists in every hobby, game, interest group, etc. But in many places, the fear of these people are strawmen being used to attack the hobby, game, or interest group as a whole with a wide brush.
I will say one thing though, I've played in games with people who could be considered to be 'far-left' before, and it's never been a problem. Like, a communist is not going to disrupt your enjoyment of the game, whatever your views are on their ideology. On the other hand, if you've got someone who isn't willing to play with racial or sexual minorities for example, that's not something that can be ignored. All that being said, I don't think the OSR has many of either type in the community.
@@spacemanproletariat4279 Funny you say that, given the many examples one can find of far-left whackos being extremely exclusionary in who they game with.
Have you ever noticed, too, that people crying for moral outrage against a given group are almost always ignoring the same outrage in their own group... and are often the same people perpetuating those same sins within it?
That can be true but you’re just sweeping an issue under the rug with statements like this. OSRs are a lovely community in general and a fun time with friends but you can’t really ignore the presence of extreme right wing people who infest it because they think modern TTRPG communities have gone “too far” with being nice to women and minorities.
@@jaksida300 True, but here in my city, quite a liberal one, I run into the opposite problem. I went to OSR to run away from those types who mainly play 5e. It might be the same with some others
I think this is only the second video of yours I've seen pop into my feed (the first was "do I still feel welcome in the hobby"), but I've subscribed based on how well you addressed this. I hadn't even heard of OSR until this video but the headline including "is it filled with right wing extremists" caught me. I'm a nearly 45 yo, who's also very liberal. Thank you for clearing this up for everyone. I did want to point out though that, based on your idea that the OSR is more of a philosophy than mechanics, I'd argue that any system could be run as such. I run a 5e game. I don't allow my players to look at their character sheets to decide what they need to roll against, I have them tell me their ideas of what their character intends to do and then ask for the check I decide they need to roll. My games are gritty and lethal. I have some players that invest in deep back stories and some (like myself when I play) who don't and the character takes life as they play. But I've found the players that create deep back stories take great delight in that creation process and often have a backlog of wonderful characters they've already created and never had the chance to play. So, my $0.02 on this is much more along the lines of... It's a philosophy and mindset in the storytelling and playstyle than a system or systems.
PS Yes, 5e content can be found in PDF format... If you know where to look.
To close though. Great presentation, I love how it feels like we're having a conversation rather than so many content creators out there trying too hard to be entertaining. It's one of the reasons I love watching Colville's videos.
Best wishes, I'm going to go dive into some of your other videos now
Actually its full of gamers we don't actually give a damn about the left or right as long as you keep that woke nonsense OUT of the game!
Define “woke”.
I didn't leave modern D&D it left me and went down a road I refuse to follow...my group is having fun with the essentials rules.
Hey, thanks for the video. I recently got into the OSR to help me with my own TTRPG game system and started to get a bit... worried after scanning through the internet. This puts a lot of things in perspective. I'm soneone who can seperate the art from the artist in MOST cases. Sometimes though... lol
I've picked up Five Torches Deep and love how compact it is. Under 50 pages. Shadowdark is interesting and the starter kit is free. The Kickstarter for Shadowdark has surpassed $800,000. Both of these games are D20 based, so there's some 5E in it but it is more deadly and fun.
Shadowdark's quickstart by itself may be the best beer-and-pretzel dungeon crawl game I've ever read.
More trolls in the OSR community than 5E community is just statistically IMPOSSIBLE 😆
Around here we aren't two separate communities. There's too few of us to have separate communities. I don't think of myself as part of the separate Delta Green community. You can test out Apocalypse World, Tales From the Loop and OSE.
One of my mates plays a 5e campaign as well as our OSR street campaign. I'm not going to toss them out.
@@SusCalvin Nah, PBTA are narrative games. They break the fourth wall as you don't play a character diegetically. You have tools to alter the outcome and the setting like a Deus Ex Machina. Storygames are their own category. They're not RPG.
A community can only be specific game related. I'm part of the DCC community, but that's it. There is no RPG broad community and no Tabletop Game community, no more than Entertainment community. That's nonsense.
@@theeyewizard8288 I mean we are not separate camps. The bloke I play Dolmenwood with still plays PbtA stuff in another group. And another has some long term Numenera thing etc. Its a niche hobby in a small region.
Original AW can be nice. It is hard and direct. You are not mucking around with abstract fate points. I am not sold on the relation meter. Things are a lot more defined by the improvisation of the DM.
The question is incomplete. The second part of the question is: What is 5th edition, and is it full of Left Wing extremists? The answer to both questions is of course. No. But some on the left who either play or go on forums about fifth edition and call themselves RPG Community, (even if they don't play), accuse those who play OSR for being hard right extremists because they either:
Go to church.
Are married,
Are heterosexual,
Believe in biology as a science,
Would like some limited checks and balances on the boarder of their country to govern immigration.
Do not want forced diversity.for example the UK is 12.5% non-white, (ukgov), yet ask for 24% representation for black people, who are about 3.5% of the population.
Express demographics. Such as there were and are lots of white people in Northern Europe.
The above things to some on the left are characteristics of fascism. Which of course they are not. Yet thinking that tells you about those on the left, and are expressions of their political ideology.
Great video. I agree that the OSR is an approach, not the rules. And yeah, DCC is at the top of my list for that feel.
I absolutely love DCC
You recommended Castles and Crusades as one of your OSR titles without anything "Weird." A note to viewers is that the Humble Bundle is currently offering all of the C&C ebooks for like 25 dollars. They've ran a few RPG ebook sales since the OGL debacle, notably a pathfinder one that sold over 100,000 copies.
The Humble Bundle actually offers 37 PDFs for a donation of $18.00 or more. I shared the news piece on tonight's live show. :) ~ Jeff
When asked to play in my games I tell them up front my games are not sexualized or politicized games. That weeds out a lot of the fringe crazies on either side.
The rational approach
The closest thing I've had to a sexualized game was the sex moves in Apocalypse World. If two characters are sleeping together, it triggers a relation effect. You don't play out exactly what they do. But we have flirted, married and such in OSR games. Drunk dungeoneering bums serenading people from under a window and such.
A fun detail: Over here, we didn't have the satanic panic in the same way. They were a lot more spooked by violent culture. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the like. The censors would be a lot tougher on a movie scene where a child was threatened with a knife than sexual content. The free churches who did pick up the satanic threat were considered as kooks and that aspect never rolled off.
This is the best discussion of both topics I’ve yet seen since entering the hobby and getting into OSR games.
Such a good a leveled breakdown. Class act. 👍🏻😊
Thank you kindly!
You're a right wing extremist if you hold SOME mildly conservative views, according to Twitter. People just don't know what certain words mean anymore and it's becoming a real problem...
Great video! You earned yourself a sub!
You're also a right wing extremist if you don't hold EVERY EXTREME VIEW POSSIBLE from the left. Look at J.K. Rowling, she's a liberal on every issue but ONE and they're trying like hell to destroy her.
twitter is not real life fren
I think they run into some weirdo who think jokes about teenage suicide is cool, edgy wannabe conservatism. And if that weirdo stands unopposed, they get to define what new wannabe conservatism is.
@@AverageTESEnjoyer5783 I think the big upcoming conflict is who gets to define themselves as real conservatives. It is a lot harder to deal with your own radical fringe.
I started playing in 1980, and I never left. So I tried some modern D&D but the game was way too mechanical and I did not like it. OSR is normal to me.
Wow. That was some of the most unbiased political commentary I've heard in a long time.
I started playing RPGs in the early 80s. So I'm in that demographic. I recently accidentally stumbled down the osr rabbit hole a few weeks ago while looking for some information .
There is a presence of older hostile gamers who do openly wear "conservativism" as a badge.
What I found was that it's largely a group of older people who are afraid of change.
They like osr because it's what played 30+ years ago. They don't like the direction rpg companies are taking things with "inclusiveness". Many are very openly hostile to ideas like pronoun use, gender and sexuality identity. They are genuinely bothered and threatened by it. Some are very open about their religious and political views and bleed that into their channels. These views are very direct and openly hostile to things like I mentioned above.
Things like gender identity scares them and they don't want it out in the open. They largely see it as forced on them. They don't like diversity, they see that as forced as well. As a group they see these things as an oppressive force taking away their freedom. I'm not exactly sure how respecting and acknowledging others takes away anything... But that's how they spin it.
So imho, I saw a lot of amateur extreme political pundits who mask it with veneer of osr and blame the wider community for corruption of the hobby. They want to go back to the good days when gender and race topics were kept in the closet.
Now, that's not all by far, but it's a sizable community.
Great video my man. I am a left leaning old dude as well. I want to start an OSR game but not have it be just a raisin fest. Videos like this help.
OSR is fantastic, gorgeous and refreshing. It bring me new passion for role-playing and fantasy. And if right-wing "extremists" love it, is because they are "right", so they are fantastic as well.
I like your kind of liberal. Thanks for a great perspective. Hopefully people play the OSR or whatever flavor of RPG they enjoy for fun and fellowship, not political or social dogma.
honestly? this whole red vs blue debate... it's just a dog and pony show to distract people from discussing the issues. Left right? that's not how the Book defines good and evil.
@@marhawkman303 Are you really using this as a platform to preach Christianity? I really hope that's not what's happening cause that would be disgusting.
@@Flammiedrum Paranoid much? the mere mention of the Book during a discussion about morality and you cower like a vampire?
I was simply mentioning that the left/right political strife.... is abhorrent to scripture.
When you look at them from the perspective of the Word... they're differently wrong, and neither is worth supporting.
But the key thing here is that, letting the political pundits con you into playing their red vs blue game means you lost already. It doesn't matter if red wins or blue wins, WE LOSE! THAT is what I was talking about.
@@Flammiedrum They’re just using the Bible as a point of reference. No need to be a sperg about it.
One thing to keep in mind is that many people don't really become more conservative as they age; they just stay where they were when they were young. What used to be liberal 30 years ago is social norm nowadays. So many older folks "seem" conservative, but in reality at some point they just stop accepting further change (even if that change is "for the better").
As to the rules and mechanics themselves... I dunno. I myself am hardly a yung'un - I started with the basic D&D black box and definitely have some nostalgia goggles for the "Rules Cyclopedia" era of Basic D&D - that one book led to so much fun and adventure - but I also really like a lot of things from more modern approaches. I played a lot of AD&D 2E and then 3E and returned recently for some 5E. I in fact think there is very little mechanically in the newer rules that keep them from being played like the older ones - it's mostly a matter of player expectations.
For my part, I like aspects of both. A lot of what newer editions have added is stuff we wanted or were house-ruling back then. And I hated that XP was tied to treasure. Made no sense then, makes no sense now. I do like a nice crunchy dungeon crawl on occasion though. I dunno. I like the nostalgia. I miss the Cyclopedia days and was tickled pink that they cleaned up a super nice PDF of it. But I like wargames and journaling games and everything in between.
I always found it funny as a European how Americans are so focused on so called "Right wing extremists" in the hobby while gleefully ignoring all the "Left wing extremists" who are much more prevalent and a lot more aggressive, personally I try to avoid both like the plague and haven't found neither of them in the OSR, hope it continues this way.
I’ve had the same experience. The uber liberals seem to be overly prevalent in the hobby and I have yet to encounter a toxic conservative.
You can never go far enough to the left. Every six months or so they have to leapfrog one of their compatriots by implying their takes are too retrograde.
@@TravisWilliams_ It's not even the politics (I frankly have no idea about the differences between dem and rep aside from them hating each other) but the highly aggressive and bullying prone attitude of these assholes.
That hasn't been my experience.
In general, Europe is more left-leaning than the US. Take, for example, the fact that the US never had a really influential Communist movement (closest we came was in the 1930s) and that it's only recently become somewhat acceptable to call yourself a "democratic socialist" here.
Now, the TTRPG hobby skews somewhat more educated than the population as a whole, so there are more liberal RPG players. Also, like the small number of right-wingers in the OSR, a small number of left-wingers have used social media to make their numbers look bigger.
Excellent breakdown of OSR and the attraction it has for many of us.
Great video! As a lifelong gamer, I've learned it's best to ignore the opinions of people who don't play at my game table. As a working professional in the industry, I make games for others. But I also get the privilege to make games for me and my friends. I've learned to look past the politics. What matters the most is how the dice fall and the stories we tell together.
Thanks for sharing Daniel! Drop me a line if you'd like to get word out about your latest edition of Zweihander and other the RPGs you've recently launched. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang Thanks again, Jeff! We will have our books in print towards December. You are on my list! Cheers~
I dunno man, I'm seeing TONS AND TONS of a DIY, almost punk-rock aesthetic and attitude in the OSR. Lots of creativity, people making their own highly personalized games and settings in pretty much zine form (pdf or printed) and sharing them for free or cheap. Its refreshing and exciting. I haven't sensed too much of a right wing vibe in it, and even if it were there, the OSR is all about playing YOUR game YOUR way anyway. Noone can stop you from doing that. The OSR is a beautful thing right now. WOTC probably haaaatttttes it for obvious reasons. It's letting the cat out of the bag, which is that AHEM Dee Un Dee is an extremely highly customizable game and you don't have to pay WOTC continuously every few years for the rest of your life to play it.
Actually, OSR isn't even a blot on WotC's radar and the company (and Hasbro) couldn't care less about it outside of anyone who stays outside the SRD or - now - Creative Commons as far as copyright.
@@Thegaminggang Interesting. Yeah I was just going on gut feeling, I had no industry evidence that WOTC hates the OSR. Thanks for the insight, I guess it's easy to forget how massively mainstream D&D is compared to let's say, Shadowdark or similar.
I agree with your explanation! I've always looked at the OSR as just a different style of play than the current iterations of D&D. For years, many have been trying to mod the playstyle into new editions. It's spawned other rulesets that have great ideas and approaches and even revitalized older editions of D&D. Personally, I like to homebrew just about everything to fit the group I'm playing with. So I like very open rulesets. I really disdain the hate marketing that has flooded the hobby. D&D has always had mismatched players that bond over adventures and often became friends... even if we didn't agree about sports or politics. Our differences are the spice of life.
I think the philosophy is more important than the mechanical differences between the osr and new school. OSR gaming is a little more folksy and working class, and newer games are more about being a super hero living out a power fantasy, and clearly that second school of thought is still, by far, the dominant one. As a DM though? I get nothing out of the modern game because even at first level the characters are essentially protaganists in a videogame.
@@phaedruslive Old-school wasn't universally averse to high-powered characters. Every single official method of creating a character for AD&D 1e was high-powered, with 4d6 drop the lowest being one of the weaker ones.
@@kevinrsmith2947 I believe Method 0 was still 3d6 down the line.
I would have to find my copy of the 1e DMG, but I'm pretty sure people only used 3d6 because the DMG was the last book out and they kept doing character creation like OD&D. Gygax explicitly said in the DMG that characters should have two 15s to be viable, and that's not likely with 3d6.
@@kevinrsmith2947 Method I in the DMG is 4d6, arrange. The narrative around '3d6 down the line' should have never truly applied to 1e/2e. For something like b/x, it makes sense as the modifiers aren't as high. People, over time, have tended to conflate the systems.
People are constantly talking about Right wing this and right wing that .
Is it right leaning ? its terrible ! .
Im just a normal person wanting to play games and everyone in the local 5e communities are dropping prounouns left right and center , we have safety words and they got used 3 times a game because they didnt like the sword slicing someone ..... ( Time out for 3 minutes ensued whilst the other people coddled them like a 3 year old )
Also i was called " Racist " for having a character that wouldnt deal with halflings ( Due to his backstory ).
If you ask me the language and freedom of expression being targeted there is more dangerous an ideology then anything ive seen in OSR /OSE community .
We just turn up and play a game and all mutually have fun without policing language , WHAT A CONCEPT !
Seriously? I look at the avatar you're using and your argument goes up in smoke.
@@Thegaminggang I googled to find out what you're talking about , and your talking point is a small percentage of people using an emote that is used all over twitch and gaming alike for right wing whistles ? . This is bottom of the barrel , whats next ? me using the OK hand gesture in my PADI diving certification a right wing gesture too ? . It really is mentally ill thinking
Go troll elsewhere.
@gonnahavetotakeyolyf You're statement is spot on and factually true. Your avatar has nothing to do with your statement. There's a big majority of players that are tired of the pronoun police,and the whiny, easily offended 'adult children'. The great thing is, they can be asked to leave your table for for being a disruption to the other players.
Bang on 100%
Contrary to popular belief, lefties tend to be far less welcoming to those who disagree, so the OSR tends to be more welcoming than the DnD community. OSR is a big tent, unlike DnD which excludes those who arent on board with prog politics
OSR Renaissance: Rebirth of something new. Taking something old and making it newer.
Newer packaging, minor tweaks.
A new game with old features simplified, perhaps adding a few tweaks that either make it read better and tweaks in formatting, mechanics.
But 80% of the core mechanics is still present.
OSRIC. For Gold and Glory. Basic Fantasy (revival and Renaissance). Lamentation of the Flame Princess. Lion and Dragon.
"if you're going to swim in the toilet, you're going to bump up against shit" aaaaand subscribed!!! 😂
Stellar video, gonna refer anyone to this video. Terrific inventory of the real differentiation.
This is a great video, well thought out and expressed. I will just say that I finally quit MeWe because some of the RPG accounts I was following were griping about the new D&D movie being a "misandrist girl-boss flick." It was the final straw; one too many reminders of who I was rubbing virtual elbows with :)
Willing to give it a chance, but the director and writers put their feet in their mouths by saying that’s exactly what their intent was with this movie. So your former game buds arent wrong with that assumption.
@@cocoablack73 Nah, they are wrong, as the interview was dumb and badly worded but was tongue in cheek and (stupidly) meant to get attention. Also anyone who uses “misandry” in a serious way is 100% avoidable in my experience.
I haven't used MeWe in a few years. It seemed like it was just becoming the gathering place for extreme conservatives who ran afoul of Facebook's moderation.
@@maxpocalypse I cannot speak for the movie. People do overreact as frequently as they don't. However, to claim misandry isn't a real thing that men face on the regular is just dishonest. And in itself, a bigoted position to have.
@@Dharengo men are systemically oppressed by women?
None of this was ever an issue or even a discussion in the 'old-school' days, until recently. Everyone from all walks of life, race, gender, etc. played D&D. Some of the best selling modules were written by women, and people from minority cultures that worked for TSR. D&D has always been inclusive, from the writers, down to the players.Not sure what all the hub-bub is for.
Yup tbh I mostly blame people at the big companies who got in adn spread this trash around, now we have "safety rules" and people trying to push their own modern day stuff into fantasy setting that has nothing to do with it.
RPGs have historically been characterized by intense gatekeeping. Perhaps not to a greater extent than other nerd hobbies but you not knowing this doesn't make it less true.
It has infused into almost every aspect of life now. It probably started when someone decided the best way to win on a debate over tax rates, safety nets, minimum wage, etc was to claim the other side were "pedos who wanted to destroy the country". Now a dispute over public education dollars becomes a fight against evil for your very survival. Then all the hate and fear that comes with that.
Good video. I havent seen this channel before, but I think you have a new subscriber. I'm more of a wargamer than an RPG guy, but I like your style. Would you consider Mork Borg OSR?
Welcome aboard! As for Mork Borg being OSR? I would say no. Not because it isn't similar mechanically but because it doesn't have an OSR mindset IMO. ~ Jeff
The GM never kills players, the world does. I personally don’t like death at zero hp though, then you can never be knocked out. I think some negative or any negative value should be agreed on.
far as im concerned play what you like, encourage others to do the same, dont put anyone down for liking what they like, kinda like real life, be kind and have fun
OSR that intrigues me most is the followers, henchmen, and hirelings. The responsibility over people that are willing ti sacrice for our cause. That should sway decision on the safety of those whom are less capable, however essential to our party's success. When players have to consider the well being of others for character progression.
This is where a broader view point to a murder and loot progression system. Its tough for someone with opposing ideology to relate. I am glad that this concern is being addressed. I believe that there is more in common when ideas are exchanged. Before stances on political view points are exchanged to compare opposition.
I think it all comes down to letting us all take a breath. Treat people with respect even if at times our world views are not all the same. We can be fun gamers adults and even teens too and just role up a D&D Character or a Sword and Wizardy RPG Character or play a game of OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and many other wonderful fun OSR and non-OSR like Pathfinder 2nd Edition products. I am a Moderate Conservative in life but I play with gay left-leaning and right-lean friends the biggest arguments are over the rules sometimes (Understanding rules in books can be a challenge) and food and drink choices to spoil the GM wish to thank him for all the fun he creates and a safe fun escape from paying this months rent, phone bills and other real-world worries and then we all give high 5s and laughs and look forward to the next game. My experience with most of the OSR is that is filled with people with new and fresh ideas and creativity not old worn-out ideas. Give it a try then decide to go into it with a positive approach anyone is welcome at my OSR game.
One of the worst parts of older books is the lack of editing experience. When you read them it as like reading someone's stream of thoughts as they describe things they don't quite have the words for yet. Concepts that are pretty simple look much more daunting than they need to.
I think this reflected how AD&D 2e was written. We're tired of writing FAQs and answering stuff in Dragon, let's make a brick of a book where rules for all we can think of are in there somewhere. Someone might ask for climbing speed rules at some point.
Re what is old school: I started playing on "1e" long before it was called 1e. To me, THAT is old school
@@trioofone8911 Reading the OD&D books is hard. Not because the rules are hard, but because they are made by people who have not yet picked up editorial skills. Things are always a little more wordy and convoluted than necessary.
I really appreciate your stance in this video.
4chan. "If you're gonna swim in the toilet, you're gonna bump up against sh*t" Lol classic!
I can definitely respect the ideas behind the OSR, that style of gamedesign will 100% enhance some people's enjoyment of the hobby and there's nothing inherently political about it. Buuuut any time i interact with that side of the ttrpg community i always run into weirdos... Like when i went to a Dragonbane forum and saw entire threads bemoaning how the main character in the recent novel being a woman was Free League "falling for woke ideology" and how they're mad that being a woman doesn't give you negatives to strength. Or when i was in a discussion about homebrew material from another system being translated into another language and someone was disappointed that the conversion didn't keep the old name of the monster, which in the original language was like...real goddamn close to just being a straight up racial slur. I mean akin to calling your orcs "blackies" or something like that.
I just wish the OSR would chill out about fighting so hard to keep even the shitty aspects of the old games. There's a phrase in fashion, "Vintage style, not vintage values". You can keep all the cool, fun stuff without dragging in the political bullshit that used to be attached to it.
Nicely put!
Players thinking women should have negative modifiers to strength compared to men is based on them wanting a realistic biology of men and women in their game. Men and women are not equally built strength wise. Transgenders entering womens sports are constantly proving this. The physical standards in the military are lowered for women. I don't think it's something for people to be upset about. Certain players want more realism.
@@pewprofessional3181 Sagas of the Icelanders is a game where men and women are effectively different roles. The game system gives you different tools to function in the honour system of Iceland. Everyone can stab a fool with a sword but what is honourable or not is hard to escape.
@@pewprofessional3181 There are RPGs with extreme realims, or at least who try to. Be prepared for bleeding rates, disease chance, hit locations and shock saving throws. These games are not very fun unless you like the additional clunk.
I know this is an old video now but I really appreciate your take on the RW extremist thing. I remember the satanic panic actually and even had family members try to pray over us for playing DND at a family reunion one time, which almost funny in hindsight decades later but I digress; it troubles me when people in the TTRPG hobby act with the same motives and hate that we used to experience just for playing the damn game, but like you said it's fortunately not an especially common problem, and I'm a Wobbly who enjoys OSR style gaming a lot, I even ran 3.5/PF in as close a style to 2e as possible back in the day when 3rd or 3.5 was new, so I also agree with you that the spirit of OSR can transcend specific rules, I've played around with a system I discovered recently called fictive hack which reminds me of 2e A LOT and have been wanting to check out dungeon crawl classics since I'm still so familiar with the 3.5/d20 style of rules. Great video!
The satanic fear wasn't as big here. There was some free churches who picked up some of it, but they were way out in the margin from the lutheran state church and considered to be kooks.
Their big fear was violence. There was already censorship of violent movies, and foreign imports like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" had spooked people. Especially violence involving, directed against or near children was freaky. This game shows up where kids are not just watching violence, but interacting in violent conflicts.
They had a hard time grasping "commercialism". To them, the concept of a saturday morning tv show that was half toy ad was something highly suspect. That part didn't lead to censorship of RPGs, just treating it as low-brow culture.
17:53
Thank you! Louder for those in the back, PLEASE.
I think you handled the topic very well. I feel most of these tellings and denunciations come from folks of more "modern" systems that feel offended by people with decades of expertise because they already figured out a better way to do it but have no other argument to get rid of the past. Also there are a lot of non-gamers who have no idea what we're doing in the hobby.
To me it's a privilege to learn from those Refs and its astounding how often I go back to learn something new to me.
Also, the culture of mainstream roleplaying is so far left that you can't even counter with "Well, 5E seems like it's full of tankies" because they don't see those stances as being weird and extreme.
@@phaedruslive I mean, clearly anyone who is against running over unarmed civilians with tanks, who opposes wiping out whole populations by working them to death in gulags, or who is in favor of free speech is obviously an evil fascist. Only a right wing extremist would deny that!
The original books are written strangely, I think the most common fault in them is people with more enthusiasm than editorial experience trying to make themselves clear. It made what could have been easy concepts look more daunting than necessary. I like how early GW assumed that we could sort things out and wouldn't need an FAQ letter.
@@phaedruslive I know marxists, and the USA doesn't have anything close to a marxist party. You got a slightly more conservative-liberal free market party and a slightly more center-liberal free market party.
I'm personally interested how you would deal with something like christian democracy. If you took conservative family values and married it with a conservative welfare system. A lot of conservatives here are not Reagan/Thatcher people who love a free market above all.
Good video. And some good advice at the end there.
To me D&d was always a place that the Outcasts and Misfits were included.
People if they are lucky should play the kind of game they enjoy. If everyone is having fun you are playing the right way.
Well this isn't a video title I expected to just appear in my recommended.
I think one component of OSR that is really important to a lot of people is broader TSR era compatibility even more so than a "mindset".
That's why DCC's status as an OSR game is controversial (even if we all love that game) because the 3e chassis is very obvious.
One thing I liked in DCC was the level 0 to level 1 mechanics. Testing out the level 0 funnel approach to a starter dungeon with a crew was a special experience. They got five level 0 chumps each, a total of 25-30 people. They only commented that it wasn't hard enough when 20+ bums survived.
When it comes to what a right wing extremist is, I recently read a book called the reactionary mind by corey Robin.
From the Wikipedia summary Robin argues that rather than being about liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power.
For right wing extremists, from Edmund Burke reacting to the French revolution to now, there is this unassailable hierarchy. Not one that they want to create, but one that is inevitable, unquestionable. Kind of like monday, there's got to be a first day of the week. During Edmund Burke's time it was divine right of kings, in the early 20th century it was eugenics and phrenology. Now you hear Internet weirdos talk about wolves and greek letters. There is a natural sorting of people into this hierarchy and they believe themselves to be, at the very least, not at the bottom.
For the right, there's always a bottom. There has to be. Liberals and leftists who want equality, a flat hierarchy or a one person one vote democracy, are subverting the natural order, and to right wingers, would put them at the bottom. Because the right wingers, the hierarchy is inevitable, someone has to be at the top, and it's not who they would like.
Any kind of attempt at spreading the wealth around or sharing the same space as the people they think ought to be on the bottom is seen as an attack on them because equality means they are inherently at the bottom. Logically it should mean they are at the top too but they don't see it that way because the top is an uncontestable sovereign and that has to exist and they know they aren't them.
Anyway that's my definition. As to why you see a lot more of these people in the osr space, I would attribute it to nostalgia being a frequent rhetorical tool and propaganda for the right. Anyone in the world can be nostalgic. It is not right wing, it is merely an emotion. But they remember a world of their childhood where the world was simpler, except of course, that as children during their childhood, of course the world is simpler.
Considering how little you can veer off the leftist path and suddenly be denounced by your erstwhile "allies", I would take claims of "right-wing extremism" with a pinch of salt. A former friend denounced me and said that he felt ashamed for appearing in the credits for the same game as me (we both wrote content for a popular RPG) just because I challenged his views on politics. The playground is huge; there should be room for everybody who want to play.
What did you manage to do? Over here, the war is making everything more tense right now. Fools who joked about how Putin would save us from political correctness are trying to pretend it was just a joke, bro.
I think we must be careful to keep fascists out. I think there are certain elements in the OSR that are attractive to them. They tend to latch on to hobbies and aesthetics that are traditional. They thrive on creating myths about a sort of mystical past when everything was better before they use that as a reason to exclude marginalised groups. We don't want the OSR to become like the old nordic religions that have become so overtaken by neo nazis that people with a deep connection or interest in them shy away from being open about it to avoid being linked with them. Fascists systematically try to find hobbies and cultural niches they can use as recruitment grounds.
I'll agree if you extend this to commies as well, not a fan of either here.
@@AnonAdderlan Whataboutism isn’t helpful whenever people try to address Neo-Nazis and fascism. It doesn’t add to the conversation and only serves to add noise. How fascists infiltrate hobbies and the rhetoric they use is very different to how other unsavoury groups do.
those windmills ain't gonna tilt themselves
Some fools managed to walk around Roblox with an avatar that linked to an antisemitic tract on RUclips. So I'm not surprised they show up in other hobbies.
Thanks for talking about this. Great video!
There were completely unbalanced dnd modules, but tsr usually took time to make sure a reasonably equipped party would be ok. Whereas Tegel Manor was all over the place and it's difficult to fit it in to a long running campaign.
When we tried Tegel Manor it was incoherent but fun. We found a saphire plough under a bed. Some statue leered at us. It was hard to make any sense of the whole, but it was weirdly fun.
"Is OSR filled with right wing extremists?" Have people completely lost their minds? Seriously that's what your worried about? Everyone has their own beliefs and if you start looking at everyone through their political affiliations, and only want to play with "your side" you will become a narrow minded idiot. Judge people by their actions not your own preconceived ideas, and that goes for everyone. Somebody should have taught you that when you were a child, maybe go tell your parents they failed. That might seem kinda harsh, but that is an asinine question.
What an absolutely asinine comment from someone who obviously didn't bother to watch a single moment of this video. What a troll.
Interesting as OSR go beyond the realms of USA. I’m American living in UK playing with Australians (where I previously worked) so to have someone boil down the community to just the USA and right wing extremism is in of itself just plain wrong
I love OSR. I hate politics. I respect your observations and you make great points. But I just want to explore a dungeon, or maybe make a Beholder feel bad about itself.
If I were at a game where a player/GM made a table political, I'd pay my share for the pizza and leave.
I notice most of them argue about what OSR even is
All you need to do in order to answer this question is to filter comments by "newest". Pretty much all of them contain some form of far right narrative. I cannot say whether they do that out of hatred or ignorance, but it's pretty undeniable something is going on.
It's sad. I don't think all of those comments are made by people of the OSR community and I also believe that the OSR isn't inherently tied to right wing extremism. I just think that it's a tool that fits nicely into their ideology, as everything that's new is also "woke". Gods, I hate what this word has become. Pretty much anytime it is used, it is to distort reality.
@@Rubycule Thank you.
Really liking this channel. I love your presentation.
For me, "rulings over rules" is an often misused or misguided phrase. To me, it doesn't mean "ignore the rules and change them on the fly" it is more of a game design philosophy- keep the rules simple and light, provide a framework but you don't need a rule for everything. The GM is there to make rulings when the rules don't cover it or are ambiguous.
I also agree with "rulings over rules" when the GM doesn't know, or can't remember a rule. I play mostly 5e now, but I apply that same philosophy. I'm not going to stop play to look up a rule unless it's really, really important. As an old dude DM with a family, full time career and other obligations, I simply don't have time to immerse myself in the game the way I used to and so I don't know every rule. In fact, I actually don't mind if a player during play reminds me of a rule I forgot. In fact, most of the time I appreciate it. I don't consider that "rules lawyering".
I enjoy OSR games. Apparently I am a "right-wing extremist" too (or so I'm told), although back in the 90s I was a left leaning centrist and I haven't really changed my position on anything since then. Make of that what you will, internet.
Maybe modern gaming is full of left-wing extremists who can't tolerate anyone who thinks differently?
There is a lot I disagree with in centrism, but mostly because the libertarians took over that niche here. Anyone who takes the centrist position assumes they are the normal everyone else must gravitate around. It gets trickier when a lot of different people all claim the center.
Bit late to the party here. Still, it is shocking that politics seems to overwhelmingly involve itself into so many facets of life in the US. It is a game of make believe with a bunch of likeminded geeks, nerds and if you are lucky absolute muppets sitting about a table pontificating over esoteric rubbish that would have your average 1970's / 80's pearl clutcher calling the local priest. It is both the easiest and hardest of games to explain to others, the absolute hardest to have them understand without experience - and I have had people try to explain Australian Rules to me, and honest to god that aerial ping-pong prancing rubbish is an open book in comparison to a table top role playing game to 'outsiders'. It is the pinnacle of gaming excellence, pulling from the entirety of human evolutionary drives to tell collaborative stories. It is both weird and absolutely wonderful... but political? That bit breaks me a little.
"If you're going to swim in the toilet..." 🤣🤣🤣🤣
My gaming group is in the 30-60 year old range and we're definitely pretty left-leaning. heh I do now how people tend to turn more conservative as they age, though. Definitely hasn't affected me, though... if anything, I think I became more liberal as the years have gone on. lol I love a ton of the OSR games out there. :-) Thankfully, I have managed to avoid these right wing extremists in my travels, but I obviously believe they exist. Like you said... do go on 4chan! lol
yeah teh question is numbers.... and many of the examples I've seen are like..... so you saw one guy say that... and that's it?
@@marhawkman303 i don't think "the Book" you referred to in another comment calls for dismissing others' experiences nor misrepresenting them
@@marhawkman303 Yeah, if someone is only going by anecdotal evidence, they may want to dig a bit deeper. ;-)
@@soniaiboyako4023 What the Book tells you is to never bring an accusation without evidence. If your evidence doesn't go beyond "this is what happened to me".... having experiences isn't unique... everyone has them. Why should I treat yours any differently than someone else who gives me the same level of "evidence"?
Which is the problem with your dismissive attitude. If I'm in a position where I have to choose A or B.... pulling that "how dare you dismiss my life experiences" card is gonna make me question if you made it all up. why? because it signals that you had nothing but your "word of honor"... IE... talk. and as we all know "talk is cheap".
@@marhawkman303 absolutely no one is asking you to be the one "treating" random people's experiences any type of way though.. and you don't have any evidence yourself that their experiences are false or that they only happened once - since that seems to be your issue (something happening once means it's okay to you i guess). "talk is cheap" refers to boasting and pretentiousness, not just communicating... good grief
If I understand correctly, that would be a boardgame approach vs a role playing one.
No, it is just not so focused on character narrative.
@@sungeziefer7421 It might help with some examples of old school games that were narrative-driven.
WFRP 1e adventures are written in such a way that I can see them as narrative acts. You are wandering bums on the road but each adventure is a narrative where you need to buy into a plot. Combat is highly lethal but older adventures have surprisingly little combat. And when combat happens, it's story events like a legal duel, three blokes who will ambush a coach or a very confused demon. Even a small combat encounter has weight.
White Wolf managed to draw a lot wider crowd than grognards in dungeons. Vampire was a lot better at describing social-political relations among an urban subculture. Understanding who was feuding with who over what and how to leverage that for support when the time came to whack them was as important as growing your personal power. A WoD city is a relation web between cliques and cotteries and individuals. Instead of making a long list of shops and describing three to five rough factions.
@@SusCalvin It maybe in your specific group, but in general - no. D&D Basic (also Gamma World, Star Frontiers) were dungeoncrawls were the characters narrative did not interest anyone. Neither were the adventures. I can say, because not only I was gm'ing all the time in the 80', but also that was my major gripe with the existing RPG's at that time. Interestingly Germans biggest RPG "The Dark Eye" started becoming so popular, because they had a narrative from the start, even if there were a dungeon crawl as it first adventure. The starting adventure is so popular that it is now getting its own beer mug for its 40th anniversary. Also another German RPG Midgard (1982) had dungeoncrawls, but even they had more narrative than the major brands (it was Tolkiens Middle Earth). But still in these days characters were on the tear-off slip. (Which Goodman Games still offers as major OSR distributor). About WFRSP, I gm'ed all four editions and played them, and to be true, it was always an awful experience. I know there is large fan base, but I sold last week my latest edition and I am glad about it.
@@SusCalvin Addendum: One of my favorite Adventure trilogy "Desert of Desolation" was changing point in the RPG history because it was the first with a narrative. I think Prof. Dungeonmaster has mentioned it in a video about it Ravenloft.
You can absolutely find all the 5e PDF's online.
Illegally...
@@Thegaminggang That is an important distinction, yes
An RPG table is a great place to spend time with people who are politically different from you. I lean very right, but my table leans very left. We rarely talk about politics, but I will apply more conservative values to my in game actions, while other players apply left leaning ideas. I'm always right, so it's a great teaching tool for them. 😛
RPG gaming is gaming and people are people. Some, like me, prefer the old school simpler, grittier style of play. It has nothing to do with personal politics or cultural preferences. We all need to stop tagging people we disagree with using pejorative labels. C’mon folks we can do better, and just have fun. A little tolerance goes a long way. 👍🏼
I think the key word to describe the OSR is reactionary. It is a reactionary movement against the current state of D&D offered by Wizards of the Coast, encouraging a return to older traditions. As such, you can expect to find communities around it which are reactionary also- so, a highly skeptical conservatism, often naively so. Anyone too bothered by this state of affairs has divided off into what is called the NSR or NuSR, an explicitly left-wing faction which rejects corporate D&D but has no attachment to older games. Still- the vast majority of the OSR in any case will be that vague "normie" liberalism you would expect to find among nerds online.
Since I've never heard of the NSR or NuSR, and I read a fair amount of gaming news online, I have a feeling that wasn't too many people.
This is a good nuanced overview. Thank you.
Very welcome!
Grumpy reactionary here. Definitely on the OSR train. There’s plenty of room at most tables, and if not, there’s always the option of putting together your own group. I wanted a specific flavor, so I made fliers and put them up at the local gaming shop. The graphics were scans of swords and barbells. Conan references in the text. They looked like fliers for a basement show. It took some time, but eventually a group formed who aligned with this aesthetic and the accompanying set of interests. I chained a heavy kettlebell to the bay door of the space where we play one night. Real-world strength check to enter. Literal gatekeeping, with a sense of humor. You could just as easily make a flier with your preferred pronouns on it and filter out the folks you don’t want at your table (me). Lots of room in this hobby for everyone. Just find the right table, or put in the effort to create one. If you’re bothered by how other people play games, and act like it affects you personally… you might want to take a deep breath and recalibrate.
This is the greatest thing I've ever read. Conan, OSR, old school strength training, and metal are some of my favorite hobbies.
Well and also pistol and rifle shooting and smoking meat.
A smaller hobby around here means we can't divide ourselves into little groups as much. I have friends who try to be picky about people, and they get a lot less activities together than my friends who happily talk to any dunce who doesn't outright insult them.
If I was to start filtering people that hard, it would be down to me and a handful of chaps. And that's a little clique, not a community. And an aging clique at that.
@@SusCalvin a little clique, or an adventuring party? It doesn’t take many people to have a fun experience at the table. Everyone can choose how much to filter people out. I don’t live in a big town at all. It’s still possible to have a table of people who you actually like. Mine isn’t homogenous at all. A wide array of political leanings, religion, etc. but we share enough of our values to make the game enjoyable and drama-free.
@@PitchBlackForge I found that a pool of players is much more workable. It isn't constantly two missing players from falling apart.
'right wing extremist' to the Far Left, there is no other type of right wing
Annnnd subscribed just for the swim in the toilet saying, which I am stealing.
Historically WOTC effed over the hobby and the industry some twenty years ago re licenses and it meant a fracturing and constructive innovation, fresh restatements of older editions of 'the game' of D&D - there are bound to be opportunists/extremists to glob onto this get their own ideologies across in their products (either side of the political spectrum) - denial of this is a mistake. Having said that, I'm not enamoured of nostalgic notions of what is 'the only way to play' OSR 'properly' that is sometimes the discourse on social media/other online spaces, it often gets used as an exclusionary tactic when some groups find out about your politics. Just passing on my experience with using online VTTS like Roll20 over the years. I just want to PLAY. OSR, 5e whatever. Great stuff on the OSR as a playstyle, game design and running philosophy over mechanics though, thanks for this breakdown video.
Politics needs to stay out of gaming and everything else. I think it's going to be a factor with online gaming but local gamers political leanings should be put aside.
I’ve been role playing for 40 years and never run into a problem. My rule is don’t play with jerks and don’t talk politics during a game. Why would you? You’re playing to escape. Knowing the political persuasion of fellow players defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
I think I never stopped being old school playing any ttrpg. D&D kept reinventing itself and I pretty much stopped playing it after 3e. Even though I have 5e I seldom play it. I go with older game systems and a lot of the time I play or run games in the Palladium/Rifts megaverse because they knew how to stop the upgrades while still ahead. The rules didn't change much between 1e and 2e and they just added new campaign worlds. WotC really ended up screwing a great RPG system up.
I would say that in OSR games the things on the character sheet had been also very important, but they were not in the form of ready to use powers but in the form of tools which then required on top of having the right tools (like certain spells and equipment, or resource management in general which you mention in the video as well) the ingenuity of the players. Either way, I don't like ableism much and thus both style are abhorrent to me, but the hobby is very much shaped by that ableism that was early on introduced, that it s all about what people can do (character or players) and very little about who the person is (which was only compounded by the lethality of those early games).
I think regarding rules, that is why there is so much of an emphasis on streamlining rules these days in modern game design, so that all the rules are easy to memorise since they all follow the same design principle. And people notice that painfully if some special rules are the outliers which have to looked up when needed. I like games powered by the apocalypse in that regard, since the basic rules format is so simple that I feel like I read it once and know how it works and never have to look up anything again, because it is so streamlined. And that super streamlined approach is what I am going for in my own system design.
Extremist are indeed rare, but I would not limit the problem within the OSR just to the very extremen, but many reactionaries that might not be an issue for you, but that still could hold problematic views. As queer woman with a mixed ethnical background, I can tell you, I experience quite a lot of shit, and I am not going to 4chan. Some times you might not even notice problems when you are not directly affected. I mean just look at the common phrase that people don't want politics in their games. Which is of course a dog whistle, since they will have very much white capitalism and European feudalism their games; and if someone says they want to play a monk then they might got told that those do not fit into their game world (even though they are one of the earliest addition to D&D through Arneson in Blackmoor). So again, I would say that there plenty of people who are very much guided by xenophobia which makes the OSR experience for non-white, non-cis, non-male players often less enjoyable even without any encounter of outright extremists.
Honestly? that sort of "extremism" in gaming.... is pretty much anywhere people like that feel like being.... and definitely isn't just the OSR.
When people say they don't want politics in their games, in practice it means, please don't talk about real-world politics in games. You can use allegories, but don't beat people over the head with "the message" it's why Christian movies are so darn terrible because they preach at you. You would be surprised at how much politics are in the game if you slap a coat of fiction over the issue. SLA Industries, Cyberpunk, DarkSun, everything White Wolf ever made. All of those games were very political. ALL VERY left-leaning. But by slapping that coat of fantasy on it, it makes it palatable. As Mary Poppins said, a spoonful of Sugar makes the medicine go down. For, as a left-leaning person, I groan every time a writer has to break the flow and say "OH, Fascism is bad," "Orange Man, bad" and "Let's punch Nazis in the face because they are on Fox News". I hated the combat wheelchair, but I have played a character who could not walk, so I used my starting gold, and hired a Half Ogre merc Fighter to strap my ass to his back, and played my legless wizard as Master Blaster. He'd wade in swinging his sword, and id be blasting away with magic, or slinging darts, eventually, my guy could afford a wheelchair he had one, but come an adventuring time, he called his trusty bodyguard, and the Panzer Mage once again took off once again. In all honesty, it's not just politics that don't get discussed in games, it's real religion and football (all forms of football) as well.
@@screenmonkey White Wolf left leaning? Thy had far too much right wing talking points in their games, even outright racist ones in the Demon one, and their depiction of Roma or other minorities had been really bad. And that got not much better with Onyx Path either. Cyberpunk is not as bad, but it feels not really left leaning either. On SLA I would agree however, that is rather left, but I guess that might only be the case because we in Europe are in general more to the left, and that even the American Democratic party would be in Europe a conservative one. I mean even the CDU (the German conservative Christian party that had chancellor Merkel was more left than your Democrats)
Anyway, to say you don't want politics but then still accepting the status quo is a political stance in itself. Thus I have to call BS on the claim that people do it just because they don't want to be preached to. Sure, nobody likes that, but you could also simply allow the combat wheelchair and then just as much do not talk about politics. No, the moment one starts to deny things, they are the ones who make this a political thing, not the player who asked for it.
@@Drudenfusz It's very simple. Live and let live. People saying they don't want politics in their games, are people who have to constantly deal with being criticized for just existing. Who try to get away from all that stuff by playing games, only to find that the game is doing it as well. And if you cannot understand that then maybe you should check your privilege.
@@Dharengo I don't get it. How is having politics in the game criticism for existence? It is usually the other way around, people who do not want politics in the games are the same people that discriminate against others and do exactly not want them to exist in their games. Also, for a live and let live approach you come strangely arrogant across, telling me, a queer woman of mixed ethnic background to check my privilege.
I am neither right-wing, nor an extremist. I grew up playing Moldvay BX (1981) and AD&D from 1981-1988, and then sort of moved on. But I like fantasy literature so much that I started watching people play 4e on RUclips around 2010, and painting figures for fun. Then I decided to try actually playing 5e in 2015, and stuck with it for about 2 years until I finally realized that it was not creating the same feeling of wonder, awe, and fear that playing those old games made me feel. I did not like having a bazillion class/race choices to the point where it is very difficult for DMs to manage, and the setting is completely non-themed. I did not like the the videogame-like, pre-fab, story arc railroads of the 5e products, or the lack of DM tools published in the absolute worst DMG ever...versus the open work sandbox with rumors that the players decide to pursue or not...I do not like the lack of processes (aka mechanics) for hex crawl, dungeon crawl, and town in favor of more rules and die rolls, or that like 5e rules encourage players to min/max, rules lawyer, power game, and go murder hobo...versus actually smart play by the players who rely upon their own wits and ingenuity to solve problems. In short, 5e is good for people who want to dominate the world they live in so they can feel like their characters are somehow special, but the OSR is more about providing agency to both DMs and players to create a world, explore it, and create a story TOGETHER (not travel along the story arc generated by WoTC's feeble authors). I enjoy that type of game more so than the rules crunchy WoTC games (3e-5e). I also did not like the emphasis on the tired and overdone Forgotten Realms setting, when I wanted to play a game that would allow me to have a character and setting like in the kinds of fantasy novels I read and love...And I am all about diversity and equality. (If you are really for equality, you would not support Hasbro/WoTC's attempt at capitalist domination, so stop buying their shit! These people that support the large-scale capitalism are too right wing for me!!!)...PS, 100% correct about 4Chan, which is a site popular with the right-wingers. How dumb can someone be?
Saying the osr is "filled" with extremists is like saying dnd 5e is filled with sexually frustrated weebos. I'm sure they are in there but saying "filled" implies that it's a vast majority. The fact that anyone would even have that question to me signifies an unhealthy obsession and fear of differing opinions. I gravitate towards the osr simply because my group and I grew tired of spending 45 minutes in a battle. Constantly looking up rules , always having to explain to new players where to find things on their sheet what dice to roll etc. I like less bloat.
Brilliant coverage! Thank you for the clarity and the honesty. Great video.
😊nicely done
I tend to consider people who identify themselves as a member of ANY political party as being a bit "extreme," but that certainly won't stop me playing games with them.
@@thepardoner2059 I feel like when people ask the question, they're thinking of the outstandingly offensive stuff like NuTSRs Star Frontiers or Varg Vikkernes's MYFAROG; the former being intensely racist, and Varg being am actual neo nazi and convicted murderer.
Very well thought out and expressed Jeff!
I do happen to fall a fair distance right of you, but I am not extreme by either your definition or my own.
There is room for everyone (except assholes from either extreme) in the OSR.....and frankly even the assholes are welcome to game within their own collectives.
That's what I thought when some blokes were going on about policing and gatekeeping. Unless you have managed to piss off very large amounts of people it's hard to toss people out of a hobby where all you need is a book and five mates.
At a con I might meet three dozen chumps in one day, when would I have time to question and background check them.
Good job. I used to say Renaissance but after the WOTC OGL screw-up I'm now using Old School Revolution.