A Taxonomy of Old School groupings

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There was a time when Old School gamers simply referred to those gamers who played OD&D, B/X and AD&D 1e back in the day and never stopped doing it. Then Grognardia started writing blog posts about it and before long a Renaissance movement was born. The Blogsplosion was supplanted by a flurry of G+ games and discussions and before long, people started making actual game products. 

Zac became a a self-made billionaire and Matt Finch began pondering if he should simply buy Mattel in order to acquire the D&D brand or if Swords & Wizardry was now so much bigger that it wouldn't even matter.

Shit went down over the years. G+ shut down and fragmented the community. Maliszewski went AWOL for 8 years when he couldn't deliver on the Dwimmermount kickstarter. Zacgate. Stuart amended the OSR logo to say dickheads weren't allowed to use it anymore. JB switched from B/X to AD&D. Tumultuous times all-round. 

Many a blog post was dedicated to the meaning/demise/reformation of "OSR". The tent had become too big and fractured for one appellation and many felt the tent itself had been uprooted altogether.

Here we are, in the post-exciting-times era of the OSR, which seems mainly comprised of casual bloggers, youtube channels, Gavin Norman sitting on a pile of gold thanks to OSE and PrinceOfNothing battling between his desire to remain true to his transgressive your-dungeon-is-suck roots, and monetising the NoArtPunk movement to take his place as the new Fat King of the OSR.

It can be a lot to navigate. So your Uncle Anders sat down to compose a taxonomy of old school groupings that fall under the fallen tent of "OSR" as it stands in 2024. Enjoy. 

Stuart in fact released this under CC 3.0, which means no backsies.

0enards /oh-wee-nerds/ - Original Edition gamers. A bewildering mixture of creative, open-minded gamers and grumpy elitist grognards.

1eLords /wonny-lords/ - Advocates of AD&D 1e as the One True Way. They tend to be the most elitist of old schoolers, going back all the way to the 80s since they were playing "advanced".

2eSubs /Too-eeh-subs/ - Gen X submissives who have no real creed or conviction concerning gaming, but liked second edition the best and are incidentally still playing it. Will fold at the earliest sign of an argument. May not even be true old school. See also: people who play Black Box D&D.

BtB Fundies /beeteebee fundees/ - By the Book Fundamentalists. Almost always 1eLords. Do not care for comparisons to the RAWdogs of 3e+.

FAGs /you-can't-say-the-f-word-like-that/ - Fantasy Adventure Gamists. When "roleplaying" became mainstream, they invented a new term to retain their self-chosen position as nerdpunk outsiders and declared Longform Campaigns the only real way to play D&D. See also 1eLords and BtB Fundies.

Grognard /gro-nyar/ - Someone old enough to have been a wargamer before they picked up this newfangled "D&D" everyone at the local game store had been talking about.

OSErs /hosers/ - Baby-faced newbies starting on the old school path through Old School Essentials and Youtube and asking questions like "don't random encounters slow down play?". Haven't even published a heartbreaker yet and so have no street cred.

Shadowdorks - I go back and forth between being quite proud of that one and thinking it needs more workshopping. Regardless, these are the true deplorables of the OSR. Too wet behind the ears to even make the leap from 5e to OSE and so utterly devoid of aesthetic sensibility that they went and bought a game named "Shadowdark". Even amongst elfgamers there must a tipping point where bespectacled and socially awkward dweebs cry out and say "this will not stand". Kickstarter estimates nonetheless places Shadowdorks as comprising 95% of the OSR population. 

ArtPunkers /ÄarT-PoonKers/- Non-old-schoolers-in-old-school-drag hipsters who usurped and subverted the OSR into a vehicle for making dough out of their artistic impulses, according to Prince.

NuSeRs - (rhymes with 'losers') Heretics inspired by, but not actually playing, old school games looking for an appellation that will allow them to game however the fuck they want without being told "that's not old school'. Often also ArtPunkers. Usually considered part of the woke mob by the ConSR.

Lamentables - Adherents of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. May even refer to themselves as actual edgelords. Often overlaps with ArtPunkers.

MörkBurgers - Artpunk NuSeRs who believe they are still old school because of the Edge, without realising that Mörk Borg modules are all awful and follow no old school principles.

Brozers - (rhymes with 'posers') #BrOSR 1eLords who believe the One True Way is misogynistic and bigoted male-positive conservative christian Braunsteinian AD&D/Chainmail. Likely to have a victim complex because they stand for truth in the oppressive environment that is the RPG community. Possible future study topic in sub-culture anthropology. 

ConSR /con artist/ - Overtly "anti-woke" gamers who thought "Old School" was code for 'doggedly conservative'. Will unironically choose internet handles such as "Venger Satanis" and "RPGPundit". Most of their time will be spent: moaning about how woke WotC is; moaning about persecution from the woke mob; or persecuting other persecution-complex groupings, such as Brozers and Lamentables.

I am sure I missed some lexical delights that could have been added to the glossary. Thankfully, the comments are open.

Comments

  1. Anonymous28 October 2024 at 14:23

    Ah yes, Prince of Nothing... a blatant hypocrite who rallies against ArtPunk in one breath while simultaneously doing glowing Lamentations payola reviews in another. If he becomes the new Fat King of OSR, then we are all truly lost.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PrinceofNothing28 October 2024 at 17:47

      Salty and baseless commentary, a tasty morsel even from such a puny source. Lotfp != Artpunk. And there's good Artpunk too.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous30 October 2024 at 19:37

      Lamentations is to artpunk as the book of Genesis is to the Bible.

      Delete
    3. PrinceofNothing3 November 2024 at 15:07

      It is absolutely patient zero. But! Kelvin Green, Carcosa, Staffordshire, Thulian Echoes, DLD etc. etc. Some of it is, some of it is not. Its power is in the variety of its lineup.

      Delete
  2. Anders H28 October 2024 at 15:20

    An omission was pointed out to me and has been add:

    Shadowdorks - I go back and forth between being quite proud of that one and thinking it needs more workshopping. Regardless, these are the true deplorables of the OSR. Too wet behind the ears to even make the leap from 5e to OSE and so utterly devoid of aesthetic sensibility that they went and bought a game named "Shadowdark". Even amongst elfgamers there must a tipping point where bespectacled and socially awkward dweebs cry out and say "this will not stand". Kickstarter estimates nonetheless places Shadowdorks as comprising 95% of the OSR population.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous28 October 2024 at 15:38

      You seem traumatized by the existence of folk having other kinds of fun. Please point to the spot on the doll where the other gamers touched you, Anders.

      Delete
    2. Anders H28 October 2024 at 15:49

      That is a sad pre-adolescenct tale that began when the advent of Magic: The Gathering utterly demolished the AD&D campaign I was running for classmates during every recess at school.

      Delete
  3. waywardwayfarer28 October 2024 at 16:56

    There's a blog I once followed which is now apparently in the vanguard of the BrOSR. Sometimes I still look at it out of morbid curiosity, and then cringe and recoil from the overpowering stench of self-congratulatory smugness.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anders H28 October 2024 at 17:37

      The thing is, I am fascinated by their ideas of Patron and faction play, even if I question their claim to AD&D originally being Braunsteined.

      And 1e AD&D BtB seems like the kind of Sisyphean task that I want others to carry out, so they can tell me what they learned after its collapse.

      The vibe though. I just can't.

      Delete
    2. PrinceofNothing28 October 2024 at 17:57

      AD&D BTB/RAW is kind of a meme. The idea that you play a game more or less straight before you start customizing it to gain excellence is good, and there is probably some sort of group cohesion effect that gets disrupted if there is too much drift between tables. In that sense BTB exists. However: anyone who has actually played 1e can tell you there are a tonne of cryptic passages, there's a bit of interpretation, there's omissions, there's rulings, gaps etc. There's a reason all these various topics generate so much debate. The answer is often not clear cut, and it is easy to miss a rule tucked away in an unfamiliar location.

      Delete
  4. KeeperofTheWell15 November 2024 at 01:50

    Regarding the BrOSR:
    The phrase, "a broken clock is right twice a day" comes to mind.
    They have some interesting ideas scattered about, though they lack the rhetorical ability to communicate those ideas effectively, or, sometimes, at all.

    ReplyDelete

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