The worst thing about the OSR-Taliban is that they make the past so fucking tiny.
They reduce the huge variety and possibility that was happening in the Old-School period into playing ONE edition of D&D in ONE particular style (which was by far not the most popular style, I should note). And use absurd interpretations of "scripture" to justify it.
After the last couple of days' responses to my blog entries, no one has the right to question my calling them the "Taliban" again. They have exactly the same goal: to go back in time and wipe out all the wide variety and diversity and innovation and change and just say that one tiny sliver of the past is the one and only truth, and worse, pretend that's all there ever was.
But Old-school can be bleeding edge gaming, if we let it. Tons of 3rd-wave OSR games have proven that, completely contrary to the perspective of the OSR-Taliban, if we open up our minds about how you can play D&D and what you can do with it mechanically (instead of looking for some mythical purity), we have hardly just begun to explore how far you can take old-school D&D
And ironically, this latter point of view is WAY closer to how people actually thought and felt in the old-school era. To quote someone else who, unlike J. Maliszewski, was actually fucking there:
" I started playing in 1978. Every gamastermaster I knew was strictly Anti-Gygax and we ALL created our own rules systems. So it's kind of laughable to me having been there to hear people claim that there was only one version of The Beginning. "
Admiration for Gary Gygax grew over the years, organically, in part because as he got older he became less of an asshole. Slavish Adoration of Appendix N emerged almost overnight, when Internet Fraud James Maliszewski invented the idea that this appendix is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT PAGE IN THE HISTORY OF D&D by pulling it out of his own ass. Look at conversation on the internet about D&D, even old-school D&D, before that, NO ONE was talking about appendix N. It is not a long cherished legacy of our hobby, it is like a Mullah having taken some obscure line in one of the secondary sayings of the Prophet and declaring this to be the justification for his own personal jihad against any style other than the one he thinks will best suit his own gain.
In the REAL old-school era, people weren't obsessing about how to keep D&D "pure". Just the fucking opposite: they were going nuts with creativity. They were so excited about making new worlds, changing up the rules, inventing new systems, with FUCKING CHANGING STUFF.
THAT is what old-school is all about: creativity and innovation. Not 'purity' and backward-looking elitism. The OSR shouldn't be about picking apart apocryphal minutiae and trying to let the wise men amongst us decipher for all the rest of us "what gary really meant" by it so we can all go play in that same pure way. The OSR should be about taking a set of rules, a set of limits, and seeing just how much crazy stuff we can do within those limits. We shouldn't be going backward until there's no further backward to go; we should be looking at all the cutting-edge potential D&D had in that early era, and realizing that we have barely even started to push the limits of what you can do with it.
The OSR has to decide: it's either a Nostalgia Cult, or a design movement. It can't be both at the same time.
Actually, fuck that. The OSR HAS decided. The success of products like Red Tide, Arrows of Indra, Yoon Suin, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, the Islands of Purple-haunted Putrescence, and yes, Dark Albion (as well as many, many more) has made it very clear that the Nostalgia Cultists have lost. We don't need JMal or his followers pretending to have Gygax's Authority to tell us all how to play Old-School.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Neerup Egg + Image Virginia
(Originally posted June 7, 2016)
>After the last couple of days' responses to my blog entries, no one has the right to question my calling them the "Taliban" again.
ReplyDeleteWhat responses are those? I am not seeing a great number of comments. Are these responses on other blogs? If so, can you link?
This was a "classic rant". The posts it was referring to were in 2016.
DeleteHere's the ones it was referring to as far as I can see:
http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2016/06/appendix-n-is-most-useless-dmg-appendix.html
http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2016/06/and-now-i-will-proceed-to-piss-off.html
Thanks, I'll take a look.
DeleteIf that's what you are relying on, "the last couple of days' responses to my blog entries" are in 2016 and 2017. Nothing I read in the comments there suggested that there was an OSR Taliban.
DeleteSome people, myself among them, find Appendix N useful. Some people, yourself among them, do not.
I see the places where you say the first group of people are completely wrong. I do not see the places where that group of people says you're wrong.
Can you link to it for me?
If you notice the "Classic Rant" designation above, and the "originally posted" designation at the end, you'll note this blog entry IS FROM 2016. It's a repost.
DeleteSince you mentioned me, I'll take the opportunity to point out that I'm blogging again. This time on G+, https://plus.google.com/collection/U6GAVE Join me as I reminisce about the good old days. If you have books or other material from those days of yore, you can send them to me so that I might wax nostalgic about them. I won't pay or trade for them, but I always accept such things with grace and goodwill. Unless they are too beat up. Then I get angry that you're sending me your trash.
ReplyDeleteYou won't like me when I'm angry.
For the record, I'm no Mullah. I am the Pope of the OSR.
DeleteI've been enjoying the Return of the Pope on GPlus (sorry Pundit!) :P
DeleteNope! This is the OSR we're talking about. We're ALL Popes.
DeleteFunny, it seems you have me blocked there, you fucking coward.
DeleteI guess you don't want people coming to your page and commenting about the thousands of dollars you stole from a bunch of suckers you're now trying to get more money out of, huh you fucking fraud?
If that's really him, you have to give him credit for sheer gall.
DeleteIt may not be him. But that wouldn't change that the real JMal is a Con Artist who stole tens of thousands of dollars from gamers he fooled into thinking he was the "great thinker", and that now he's clearly trying to make a comeback while blocking voices that could remind his new rubes about the old rubes he scammed.
DeleteHe fooled people into believing he was a great thinker by writing about old ads he saw in Dragon? The RPG hobby must be full of dullards.
DeleteNo. He fooled people into thinking he could produce a "legendary" megadungeon. How many of his readers were not from the early days of the game, say 1974-1979, but wished that they were? These were his 'rubes'.
DeleteI had no idea he was blogging again.
I understood it was less of a con artist deal and more of a major breakdown sort of situation. I could be wrong though.
DeleteHis dad either died or got sick with no hope of recovery (I'm not sure which) so he took some time off to grieve. That would have been fine, except he didn't bother to tell his backers. After a long period of silence from Maliszewski, one of his partners finally had to explain on his behalf what was going on. People were understanding. But the silence just dragged on and on, way past what was a reasonable (generous, even) time for bereavement—especially considering that, by his own admission, he and his father were never very close. Eventually it became obvious to even the most sympathetic souls that Maliszewski had abandoned the project but kept the money. His partners finished it from the notes he gave them, but the whole thing just left a bad taste in everybody's mouth. Everybody except Maliszewski, of course, since he was $50,000 richer and didn't have to lift a finger.
DeleteWell, I WAS THERE at all of the primary milestones, from start until now, and there was never-ever ONE TRUE WAY with anything, period==not even with Gygax (though he has two faces of the same coin). This is all about expanding (open design) and not closed forms which imitators so easily gravitate towards for expediency.
ReplyDeleteDamn right. Thanks Rob!
DeleteThe funny thing is if you read Sorcerers Scroll in old Dragon Magazines it's obvious a lot of folks weren't following Sir Gary's preferred way and he was playing whack-a-mole trying to enforce some kind of comfortably.
DeleteEven Sir Gary didn't follow all of his own rules.
Hoo boy. Another "classic rant", and again against the Appendix N. Excuse me while I'm yawning myself to death. The problem with your "argument" here, Pundit, is that it's a strawman.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how narrow-mindedly you interpret Grognardia's posts. No-one was talking about Appendix N? You're joking, right? Appendix N was the lingua franca of the early scene, things everyone had read or watched, at least in part. It was the common ground.
But for civilized argument's sake: Could you point me to a blog post where James Mal says Appendix N was the single most important page in the history of D&D? And I mean historically, to understand where D&D comes from, just as James does. Because I can't find any text saying that.
I never heard anyone talk about Appendix N back in the day. It was more of a list of books folks looked over to see how many they'd read by accident (ah, he included Karl Edward Wagner, awesome!).
DeleteNah, nobody gave a squirt about Appendix N. That's just a lie.
Delete