Classic Rant: Bold Steps Backwards: Announcing the PSR

As of today, I am celebrating the recent announcement by some of the guys over at Dragon-foot, the Knight-and-Knave Ale-house, and other bastions of Old-School Purity, of the birth of the new, more purist (because we all know ideological/historical purity is the key to fun, don't we?) Paleolithic School Restoration.  Also known as the PSR, where we fix what went wrong with RPGs for good this time.

One cannot disagree with the argument some of that gang of moderates who call themselves the Old School Renaissance have said, that RPGs have "taken a wrong path". But where they are deeply wrong is in their timeline. The mistake wasn't 2e (as most of the OSR-ites seem to feel), nor was it 1e (as some seem to feel).

No, we at the Paleolithic School Restoration take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, and judge that the place where it all went wrong was none other than 0e!
That's right, the original D&D booklets were an abomination that twisted the whole meaning of our great RPG hobby by altering the "fast and loose" style of play that existed before its publication.

We at the PSR want to bring Roleplaying back to what it once was: playing Chainmail and making your miniatures talk in funny voices.

THAT, and nothing else, is the pure fundamentalism of RPGs.

The PSR: because being an RPG luddite shouldn't be an unifinished task.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Castello 4k Collection Canadian + Image Latakia

(Originally posted April 1, 2010)