The OSR identity crisis

I have no problem with people bringing politics into games; in fact I would argue that neither do you, either. What people usually mean when they say “keep politics out of games” is that they don’t like other people’s politics in their games. If you have monarchs, war, racism (even about made-up races) then you have politics in your game! And that’s totally fine for most people - in fact, it’s an easy story trope to hang your coat on.

Now, there is a difference between forcing a particular political philosophy into a discussion, and critiquing a trend within game design. For instance, I personally see a lot of Defaultism in the TTRPG space. A lot of people I’ve GMed for assume a certain appearance and gender, unless I explicitly describe the NPC or whatever as being non-white/male. This isn’t a big deal in my games, but as a non-White person I do notice that, and think it’d be cool if we had more settings which imply a different “default.” There are only a few people doing that sort of thing in the TTRPG scene, though some of them are doing incredible work!

I think if those conversations could happen - without the hanging spectre of being “cancelled” - we could all benefit from some interesting and unique modules and games!

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I totally agree with this. Every choice is political but some only notice it when it deviates from the status quo. I enjoy examining colonialism’s legacy in D&D or even the status of orcs and other evil races, but I just wish such conversations had less vitriol and more nuance.

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Yochaigal makes an excellent point about the default of whiteness. This has been discussed by professional scholars of race and its social construction for some decades now: whiteness has typically meant blankness, being unmarked. Characteristics considered non-white are marked and therefore must be stated in narration, but the assumption is that without a description a white person is described.

It’s complicated also by the common currency of the eurofantasy, which is older than role-playing games and is perfectly explicable by its historical origin. As society has changed, however, the fantasies have remained as generic tropes, common currency, and are hard to extricate from the eurofantasy. Awkwardly, it is also increasingly a social risk for people racialized as white to play non-whites; predatory shaming (yochaigal’s “cancelled” effect) over perceived appropriations will only cement the eurofantasy in its place and constrain fantasy of all kinds to non-variety. But that’s the world in which we live.

I am guessing that spittingimage probably didn’t mean that politics should not appear in games, but that the vitriol and aggressive name-calling between gamers bring the games themselves down. I agree. If you want to ruin your day, do a google search with the terms osr alt-right. Then read the first eight or so hits. You may just want to quit gaming. Or, better yet: vote whenever you get the chance.

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As other have stated, you cannot avoid bringing your political stance in your games (or even in this community - for example, not tolerating nazis in this space is a political stance). What you can (and should) avoid to bring is the vitriol and division which normally comes from real-world politics. You can play (or talk about games) with people you wouldn’t vote or support in their political campaign (with obvious limitations: nobody wants to play with people whose political stance is to want them dead).

This would probably warrant a topic into itself, because it’s something very interesting (I’d also like to add a correction to the term “eurofantasy”: it should be better called “anglofantasy” since people from the rest of Europe have different myths and are starting to develop their own fantasy genre, like the Italian “spaghetti fantasy” or the Polish The Witcher).

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You don’t know me well enough to assume.

i suggest you finish reading reading the post

3 posts were split to a new topic: What eurofantasy is about

To be frank, that’s such an unimaginable predicament for me, exactly because even though I “identify” as a lot of things, I never thought of them as definitive of me. When I say I’m a metalhead, I don’t mean I resemble the average metalhead in any way - except the fact that I like metal music. When I say I’m an atheist, I don’t mean I have anything in common with other atheists - except that I reject theism. In that mindset, being upset because other people sharing these characteristics act any way I don’t agree with just doesn’t make sense (except when it goes against said characteristic, of course, like an atheist becoming the pope or something).

Yes!

Well, yeah, but also consider how “fantasy gaming” when used today generally excludes sci-fi and western. I hope people are still aware of how “fantasy” encompasses those things (just like “old-school gaming” historically speaking was more diverse than the OSR today in terms of design approaches), but colloquial usage has markedly changed nonetheless.

This sort of tribalism was prevalent in the 90s and early 00s, too. It was more of a private thing, though, because while it’s trivial to say bad things about other people and their way of gaming online, normal folks don’t walk up to other people telling them the same in person.

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This is a fair point. To return to my earlier youtube example, it was when the commentator started going off into alt-right wingnut land that I turned the video off.

The original point of this thread was about an “identity crisis” in which, I gather, the OSR is being linked to that kind of thing. My point is that there’s nothing intrinsic about the “old-school” style of play that attracts those people. Rather, if anything, it’s a community issue: the people who have created a “renaissance” around old-school play are the community. The rules are just what they are.

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DanCrossNYC, I’m with you all the way. I do, however, suspect that if a movement is framed as “rejecting modern” things and “getting back to the authentic, original thing,” that is a sentiment highly appealing to conservative mindsets. I can’t prove that it’s connected with the culture of the OSR, but I think the gaming fundamentalism with which the OSR began strongly appealed to “the right” or “conservatives” who regretted change. I agree completely that the rules are just game rules, but it was how they were re-evaluated that gave them a political charge. So I think.

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This is something I had not considered before. Excellent point.

I do think demographics are important, as well. There have always been non-Whites, women, transfolk etc in the RPG scene (including old school games), but it is absolutely dominated by White, cisgendered men. In terms of player career choice, there is definitely an overepresentation of STEM fields as well. Americans and British also dominate the scene (at least in the English speaking world, obviously). So to some degree, there is a reason a particular political philosophy or two are more likely to bleed in by default.

Not that all of those dominant demos hold the same philosophy, or course! It’s more that libertarian or conservative American political viewpoints are overwhelmingly popular with a certain demographic.

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Yochaigal, thanks. My attempt to give historical context to your “defaultism” was split over into a thread about the “eurofantasy,” a term that I made up that our European friends here quite dislike. I wonder what you will think of that discussion, if you have time for it.

About the conservative appeal embedded in the OSR concept, I wrote this. I had very little contact with OSR players at the time I wrote it; it was based on my first deep looks. Generally, I still think this, though I’ve talked now to a lot of current OSR gamers who are not part of any conservative thing. They just want rules-light games. This seems to be a change from 2010, when the focus was on recovery.

About women at the beginning of role-playing games, this article is pretty much definitive, in my view.

Anyway, I don’t want to monopolize this thread. It’s just so interesting.

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Could it be perhaps that the infamous R of the OSR is for Reactionary?

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Have been into OSR since the tail end of the google+ days and I’m on twitter and stuff now and am pretty unaware of all this drama. The posts I see on there are just about peoples games, and constructive discussions etc. Maybe I’m not following enough people to see all the arguments or something?

Places like this board and small discord groups tend to be my favoirte places because of their format and their small size.

I made this poll about what is important about the OSR to different people https://strawpoll.com/s967e5e5y/r

I think my favoirte aspect of the OSR is the decentralized pluralistic nature of it.

I was thinking about what the OSR means and thought that theoretically another type of game could have had something like the OGL , and d&d might not have. In this case there would be a different space that people would be experimenting in a decentralized way - making Indie or collaborative games etc. In this case the red and orange part of the poll would not be associated with old school rules.

And in this scenario theoretically a company like goodman games might have been the only one making “new old school” products. You can imagine that in this case DCC would be like “the” old school revival system. The OSR wouldent be a movement in this case, but it would still be the green and purple part of the pie chart.

But I think its cool that they happened together like this, even though the boundaries between OSR games and non OSR indie games can be blurry sometimes

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I have no problem with people bringing politics into games; in fact I would argue that neither do you, either. What people usually mean when they say “keep politics out of games” is that they don’t like other people’s politics in their games. If you have monarchs, war, racism (even about made-up races) then you have politics in your game! And that’s totally fine for most people - in fact, it’s an easy story trope to hang your coat on.

Couldent agree more

Like for example, isent something thats even celebrated and a classic in grognard communities like star wars anti fascist and pro diversity? and hence extremely political?

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You may be mostly thinking of the OG trilogy, but even in the remix it’s the same case. Finn, in particular, is essentially the same as a Westerner who deserts the army and joins Al Qaeda. That’s a super interesting character arc! Or at least, it could/should have been, though like many other decisions they went with sub-optimal ones.

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Apologies that I will not be reading this thread in its entirety any time soon, but if there is further discussion on the topic (as the ouroboros turns) I think this post I wrote a while back may be of assistance:
What We Talk About When We Talk About The OSR

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I don’t know if it’s my browser but the link doesn’t seem to work

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Doesn’t work for me either but this is the link: https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/2019/12/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about.html

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“Cancel culture” is a sick form of puritanism and like all such things ends up consuming itself. The rest is just people I don’t know and have never heard of having opinions I don’t care about. Twitter is just one example of it. All this energy directed into negativity is pointless. Skip what you don’t like, whether it’s a person, an opinion or a rules system.

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