Blog Series "A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I"

[Admin Pete]

The blog Simulacrum: Exploring OSR Design did a about the history of the OSR that started in Feb 2021 and concluded in mid December. Here is the first post and I will be reading it with you as I just found it but have not read it. I have no doubt, but that it will be vastly superior to the "history" published by the infamous Shannon Applecline. Nevertheless, I expect to disagree with parts of it. and once I read it I will comment and I hope that you do too.

A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I

[boarspear]

I will give it a read!

[boarspear]

There are a lot of navel-gazing articles about what makes a game OSR and what the Old-School Renaissance is. Some are quite informative and succeed in boiling essential principles down into digestible morsels; many aren't worth the bytes spent to release them into the electronic wild. However, even with all the writing on what is and isn't OSR, I still notice plenty of players asking "what is OSR, anyways?"

Ultimately, for all of the writing on what the OSR is from a gameplay and theoretical perspective, there really isn't much out there that explores it in a cohesive historical fashion. Being a historian by trade, I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring, trying to arrive at the goal not by arguing in favour of a theoretical conclusion of how the game should be played, but working through what happened and why. I wasn't there at the OSR's start (I was more interested in BattleTech and Champions at the time, feeling that I had exhausted what old-school D&D could offer and not particularly interested in 3rd edition after the initial thrill had worn off), but "not having been there" is par for the course for most any historian, and with a blog mistakes are easily correctable. If you have no interest in lengthy historical analysis, skip this series of posts.

The Death of the Old School — The Adventure

Dungeons & Dragons, in its original 1970s form, was conceptually a relatively straightforward game. It featured a tight gameplay loop where characters explored dungeons and occasionally the wilderness to acquire wealth, which they then hauled back to civilization to go up in level, so that they could go and explore tougher dungeons and wilderness areas. Add roleplaying to taste; rinse and repeat.

I did not play in the early days being 2 years old when D&D was published, so I ask, is this an accurate description of how the game was played in the beginning?

[hengest]

Thanks for posting this, Admin Pete!  Have an Exalt!

This was a pleasure to read and I would recommend this to just about anyone on this board.

Being a historian by trade, I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring, trying to arrive at the goal not by arguing in favour of a theoretical conclusion of how the game should be played, but working through what happened and why.

This is something I can really appreciate.  I've encountered this in other fields -- the person who tries to turn off their own preferences to determine or describe what happened rather than what should have happened.  

With the DM's connivance and the players' wishes, PCs could be anything they wanted eventually, but the default assumption early on was that they were not heroes (at least, not automatically) but professional graverobbers, seeking to get rich or die trying.

I really do like this idea and this formulation.  In my (would-be) game and to my taste, I'd say "scavengers" rather than graverobbers, but it's good to remember this: not heroes by default.

If you scroll down in the post to "Master of the Desert Nomads," you'll find an excellent, non-polemical description the agency-reducing features of a module by David Cook.  If you want to see (some of) what happened in TSR publications, and you weren't there at the time, definitely give this section a read.

The whole thing is worth reading, top to bottom.  Looking forward to what Admin and others have to say about this...

[Admin Pete]

Jan 6, 2022 14:19:32 GMT -5 boarspear said:

The Death of the Old School — The Adventure

Dungeons & Dragons, in its original 1970s form, was conceptually a relatively straightforward game. It featured a tight gameplay loop where characters explored dungeons and occasionally the wilderness to acquire wealth, which they then hauled back to civilization to go up in level, so that they could go and explore tougher dungeons and wilderness areas. Add roleplaying to taste; rinse and repeat.

I did not play in the early days being 2 years old when D&D was published, so I ask, is this an accurate description of how the game was played in the beginning?

Reasonably accurate. It was about exploration, but I am sure that which had prominence the dungeons or wilderness varied from table to table. As PD mentions, he created and ran his first dungeon without ever having played in one first and that they primarily ran wilderness adventures. Also the above "tight gameplay loop" leaves out the adventures in civilization, whether village, town or city. It also leaves out the wide range of roleplaying you might encounter from table to table. It was nowhere as orderly or ordered as he presents IMO. IMO it was more complex and more nuanced than he implies.

[Admin Pete]

Jan 6, 2022 14:44:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

Thanks for posting this, Admin Pete!  Have an Exalt!

Thank you!

Jan 6, 2022 14:44:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

This was a pleasure to read and I would recommend this to just about anyone on this board.

Being a historian by trade, I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring, trying to arrive at the goal not by arguing in favour of a theoretical conclusion of how the game should be played, but working through what happened and why.

This is something I can really appreciate.  I've encountered this in other fields -- the person who tries to turn off their own preferences to determine or describe what happened rather than what should have happened.  

I agree with this, I can't bring myself to be that dispassionate about things.

Jan 6, 2022 14:44:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

With the DM's connivance and the players' wishes, PCs could be anything they wanted eventually, but the default assumption early on was that they were not heroes (at least, not automatically) but professional graverobbers, seeking to get rich or die trying.

I really do like this idea and this formulation.  In my (would-be) game and to my taste, I'd say "scavengers" rather than graverobbers, but it's good to remember this: not heroes by default.

This!

[Admin Pete]

In short, there wasn't much "what's my character's motivation?"

IMO there was no angst about "what's my character's motivation?" because that is a question actors who have not read the script ask the director. But D&D players are not there to act, there is no script and the Ref/DM is not a director in the sense that applies to stage or screen. We all came to the table with normal human motivations, which come to normal people as easily as breathing. I want to explore, John wants treasure, Tim wants a magic sword to help him get revenge, etc. By the same token you don't have to write a back story, it comes to you during play and it is not necessary to even tell anyone else, but it motivates you nevertheless. All part of being a living, breathing human being playing a game that is open-ended and with no straitjacket on your imagination.

[Admin Pete]

As such, early adventure modules gave you settings and situations much more than they gave you deep plots. The Lost City, Keep on the Borderlands, White Plume Mountain, Castle Amber, The Isle of Dread: it's no coincidence that these are places rather than events. With the assumption there that you didn't need to convince people who had showed up to play D&D that they should bother playing D&D, modules simply provided sites to explore. Exploration (and the gold this provided, which allowed you to level up) was its own reward.

I don't know much about adventures modules, but I do know that Keep on the Borderlands contains no trace of a scripted railroad, as PD is wont to say.

Spoiler: There is a Medusa in KotB and IIRC PD said he played in it and recruited the Medusa to help the PCs.

KotB is very open ended and therefore really easy to incorporate into any campaign. If adventure module were all like KotB, I don't think anyone would be opposing them as a valid game tool. Unfortunately the art of writing open ended modules is almost completely lost.

[hengest]

Jan 7, 2022 0:48:45 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

As such, early adventure modules gave you settings and situations much more than they gave you deep plots. The Lost City, Keep on the Borderlands, White Plume Mountain, Castle Amber, The Isle of Dread: it's no coincidence that these are places rather than events. With the assumption there that you didn't need to convince people who had showed up to play D&D that they should bother playing D&D, modules simply provided sites to explore. Exploration (and the gold this provided, which allowed you to level up) was its own reward.

I don't know much about adventures modules, but I do know that Keep on the Borderlands contains no trace of a scripted railroad, as PD is wont to say.

Spoiler: There is a Medusa in KotB and IIRC PD said he played in it and recruited the Medusa to help the PCs.

KotB is very open ended and therefore really easy to incorporate into any campaign. If adventure module were all like KotB, I don't think anyone would be opposing them as a valid game tool. Unfortunately the art of writing open ended modules is almost completely lost.

A project for this board, maybe?

[Admin Pete]

Like I said, I cannot comment much on specific modules, howsomeever,

Boxed text in many ways encapsulates the practices that would eventually kill off the old school: an item that was a logical outgrowth of existing gameplay, meant to be helpful, at its best capable of being quite useful, but in its most common manifestation detrimental to the playstyle

IMO no eventually to it, boxed text completed the killing off of old school that the first non-open ended modules and AD&D started. So IMO 1980 was mostly the end which is when the boxed text first appeared. After 1980 IMO you can no longer talk about old school D&D.

[Admin Pete]

Jan 7, 2022 0:50:44 GMT -5 hengest said:

Jan 7, 2022 0:48:45 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

I don't know much about adventures modules, but I do know that Keep on the Borderlands contains no trace of a scripted railroad, as PD is wont to say.

Spoiler: There is a Medusa in KotB and IIRC PD said he played in it and recruited the Medusa to help the PCs.

KotB is very open ended and therefore really easy to incorporate into any campaign. If adventure module were all like KotB, I don't think anyone would be opposing them as a valid game tool. Unfortunately the art of writing open ended modules is almost completely lost.

A project for this board, maybe?

I think you would be quite good at it. I am not sure many of us have a taste for writing adventures. I know for sure PD would not, he is seat of the pants all the way. But if one or several of you want to write modules, we will definitely support you in that endeavor.

[Admin Pete]

Reviewers were noting these changes, often favourably. Future TSR employee Rick Swan's review of X4 in Space Gamer #71 commented that it provided "welcome relief from the tedious dungeon exploration all too common in TSR D&D modules".[8] Similar reviewer comments in this period about "the traditional dungeon crawl" and the like indicated that the idea of just exploring a complex for the sake of exploration was becoming passé. By this point D&D was approaching ten years old, and people were looking for it to provide something different.

Even back then the old school players and Refs did not have a voice in the reviews and people with no old school credentials drove the narrative. That along with a growing horde of players who had no background in fantasy fiction, especially the old fiction entering the hobby along with the "educational" mode of not teaching kids how to think, but only how to follow and obey, came together to facilitate the dumbing down of D&D. Those younger ones of you that are here are exceptions to the rule and there will always be exceptions to the rule. The round peg in a round hole paradigm will always fail to be 100% successful, no matter how forcefully promoted. There will always be those who ask why, even if it is only inside there own heads.

[Admin Pete]

In short, the sandbox was closed. Tracy Hickman, one half of the team that produced the novel (and also Ravenloft), also wrote five modules in the series.[9] Its approach reflected his long-standing frustration with traditional D&D: around 1978 he had written a proposal for an adventure series to be entitled Nightventure, which had the following explanatory opening:


Some time ago, I found, with mounting frustration, that my so-called "epic dungeon" was rapidly turning into an "eternal dungeon"; one which even I would never discover the bottom of, let alone any player characters. My evil wizard would never be routed from the tower--not because of the treacherousness of the way--but because of its tediousness. There had to be a better way.

Well Tracy, that is on you. If you want your dungeon to not be an eternal dungeon, then just stop building it bigger. You do not have to keep creating new levels to be explored. As the DM you can set the limits as large or small as you want. It is no fault of the game that you were frustrated, it was your own lack of the ability say enough and allow things to play out. If it becomes "tedious" that is your fault and you had the power to fix it, but you chose to whine and blame the game instead of yourself where the blame belonged.

[Admin Pete]

From the footnotes

[2] I want to add an important caveat. Overall we're talking about how the initial designers of D&D intended it to be played and what the rules and modules published by them were intended to support, rather than making a universal claim as to how DMs outside the initial Lake Geneva TSR circle actually played D&D in this era. OD&D was so vague and AD&D was so baroque that both lent themselves to all sort of alternate interpretations. Additionally, D&D is attractive to creative minds, and so even with clear rules the first thing a role-playing gamer often does is tinker and modify, throwing out things that don't fit their style. As such, people immediately took the ruleset in all sorts of different directions (as published lamentations from Gygax et al. in the period demonstrate; addressing this playstyle drift was one of the design impetuses for AD&D), and you could certainly find people who rapidly abandoned the open site exploration style of play in favour of what would become later norms (i.e. heavily plotted heroic questing) even in this early period; after all, the newer wave of TSR designers and their different design style had to come from somewhere.

They came from somewhere alright, a hot place that smells of brimstone.

[Admin Pete]

Also from the footnotes

What I actually saw was much more dramatic than my hypothesis. If you’re the DM, you get two sentences. Period. Beyond that, your players are stacking dice, talking to each other, or staring off into space. Time after time, players were missing the actual data in the boxed text – basic stuff, like room dimensions, how many doors exit the room, and number of monsters."

That is because instead of the DM reading this to the players, it was the players job to ask questions to discover this stuff themselves. Reading boxed text was just stripping D&D of fun and the proof is what happens when it is read, the players minds wonder. It is passive (listening to reading) vs active (asking questions and gathering information). Active is more fun than passive!

[Admin Pete]

This is also from the footnotes

[6] I'm not arguing that the old-school method is the one true way to play D&D, though it's the one I prefer.

Which method you prefer says a lot about you, your maturity, your ability to think for yourself, how much intellectual curiosity you possess, etc., etc., etc... People don't enjoy things that they lack the mental tools to enjoy.

[Admin Pete]

From the comments

D&D supplement 2 has a module in it, Temple of the Frog, that establishes a much different play style from what most consumers did. It has background, it requires stealth over a direct approach, it presents a setting within a much larger setting. Many did not understand how to run it. Tim Kask was not up (to) explaining the level of Game Play in Arneson’s TOF and provided no editorial commentary on what Arneson was presenting. This is a huge failing on his part as editor of the supplement.

Ah yes, the infamous Mr Kask. Temple of the Frog is a master class in and of itself. Who knows what things would be like if Arneson had been treated right, and wrote modules his way for 30 years for TSR.

[Admin Pete]

I wondered that I had never seen this blog before, but it had 9 posts in 2017, then did not post again until 11 posts in 2020 and 10 in 2021. With no G+ there is no one place to see posts shared anymore.

[hengest]

The writer sure has a solid style and surefooted way of presenting information. As historical posts these posts seemed flawless to me.

[hengest]

Jan 7, 2022 1:15:24 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

In short, the sandbox was closed. Tracy Hickman, one half of the team that produced the novel (and also Ravenloft), also wrote five modules in the series.[9] Its approach reflected his long-standing frustration with traditional D&D: around 1978 he had written a proposal for an adventure series to be entitled Nightventure, which had the following explanatory opening:


Some time ago, I found, with mounting frustration, that my so-called "epic dungeon" was rapidly turning into an "eternal dungeon"; one which even I would never discover the bottom of, let alone any player characters. My evil wizard would never be routed from the tower--not because of the treacherousness of the way--but because of its tediousness. There had to be a better way.

Well Tracy, that is on you. If you want your dungeon to not be an eternal dungeon, then just stop building it bigger. You do not have to keep creating new levels to be explored. As the DM you can set the limits as large or small as you want. It is no fault of the game that you were frustrated, it was your own lack of the ability say enough and allow things to play out. If it becomes "tedious" that is your fault and you had the power to fix it, but you chose to whine and blame the game instead of yourself where the blame belonged.

Interesting you replied to this. Hickman was half of the writing team that produced the Death's Gate novels which I read under pressure from my girlfriend's sister in college. One of the central elements was a seemingly infinite dungeon-prison, the Labyrinth, from which escape was nearly impossible.

[Admin Pete]

Jan 7, 2022 6:12:25 GMT -5 hengest said:

The writer sure has a solid style and surefooted way of presenting information. As historical posts these posts seemed flawless to me.

Yeah, I do not think I am disagreeing with him, but more the people he quotes and I think sometimes he should have said more, but then I would be editorializing where he is not.

[Admin Pete]

Jan 7, 2022 8:50:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

Jan 7, 2022 1:15:24 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Well Tracy, that is on you. If you want your dungeon to not be an eternal dungeon, then just stop building it bigger. You do not have to keep creating new levels to be explored. As the DM you can set the limits as large or small as you want. It is no fault of the game that you were frustrated, it was your own lack of the ability say enough and allow things to play out. If it becomes "tedious" that is your fault and you had the power to fix it, but you chose to whine and blame the game instead of yourself where the blame belonged.

Interesting you replied to this. Hickman was half of the writing team that produced the Death's Gate novels which I read under pressure from my girlfriend's sister in college. One of the central elements was a seemingly infinite dungeon-prison, the Labyrinth, from which escape was nearly impossible.

Heh! You may have guessed that I don't think much of that writing team.

Also from things PD has said, his dungeons seem to be infinite, but not a source of frustration to him since there is no grafted on plot and they are intended to be explored from generation to generation by characters and their descendants.

[hengest]

Jan 7, 2022 14:00:04 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Jan 7, 2022 8:50:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

Interesting you replied to this. Hickman was half of the writing team that produced the Death's Gate novels which I read under pressure from my girlfriend's sister in college. One of the central elements was a seemingly infinite dungeon-prison, the Labyrinth, from which escape was nearly impossible.

Heh! You may have guessed that I don't think much of that writing team.

Also from things PD has said, his dungeons seem to be infinite, but not a source of frustration to him since there is no grafted on plot and they are intended to be explored from generation to generation by characters and their descendants.

As I remember the books, they were consistent as if they had been plotted from the start. The writing didn't collapse halfway through from success.

But regardless of quality, kind of interesting to see that Hickman was so irritated by his own megadungeon. As you say, he could have done any one or many of infinitely many things with it. It sounds as if freedom for him turned into monotony. Strange to see how fsr back it goes. Of course, people can do whatever they want. But it is a shame (as has been said many times) that catering to and encouraging this kind of helplessness became the main product to sell.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 6, 2022 11:18:18 GMT -5 boarspear said:

I will give it a read!

As will I...

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 6, 2022 14:19:32 GMT -5 boarspear said:

There are a lot of navel-gazing articles about what makes a game OSR and what the Old-School Renaissance is. Some are quite informative and succeed in boiling essential principles down into digestible morsels; many aren't worth the bytes spent to release them into the electronic wild. However, even with all the writing on what is and isn't OSR, I still notice plenty of players asking "what is OSR, anyways?"

Ultimately, for all of the writing on what the OSR is from a gameplay and theoretical perspective, there really isn't much out there that explores it in a cohesive historical fashion. Being a historian by trade, I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring, trying to arrive at the goal not by arguing in favour of a theoretical conclusion of how the game should be played, but working through what happened and why. I wasn't there at the OSR's start (I was more interested in BattleTech and Champions at the time, feeling that I had exhausted what old-school D&D could offer and not particularly interested in 3rd edition after the initial thrill had worn off), but "not having been there" is par for the course for most any historian, and with a blog mistakes are easily correctable. If you have no interest in lengthy historical analysis, skip this series of posts.

The Death of the Old School — The Adventure

Dungeons & Dragons, in its original 1970s form, was conceptually a relatively straightforward game. It featured a tight gameplay loop where characters explored dungeons and occasionally the wilderness to acquire wealth, which they then hauled back to civilization to go up in level, so that they could go and explore tougher dungeons and wilderness areas. Add roleplaying to taste; rinse and repeat.

I did not play in the early days being 2 years old when D&D was published, so I ask, is this an accurate description of how the game was played in the beginning?

I was also 2 years old.  I didn't discover D&D until 1980 so I would like to know if this is accurate as well.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 7, 2022 1:42:32 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

I wondered that I had never seen this blog before, but it had 9 posts in 2017, then did not post again until 11 posts in 2020 and 10 in 2021. With no G+ there is no one place to see posts shared anymore.

Google+ was awesome to me!  I thought it was a great tool for social media and fit my tastes perfectly.  I so wish it was still around.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 7, 2022 20:09:20 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

Jan 6, 2022 14:19:32 GMT -5 boarspear said:

I did not play in the early days being 2 years old when D&D was published, so I ask, is this an accurate description of how the game was played in the beginning?

I was also 2 years old.  I didn't discover D&D until 1980 so I would like to know if this is accurate as well.

If I would have read one more post in the thread, I would have gotten an answer - d-oh!

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

And now a little bit of commentary on the blog post...


[1] - "As such, early adventure modules gave you settings and situations much more than they gave you deep plots. The Lost City, Keep on the Borderlands, White Plume Mountain, Castle Amber, The Isle of Dread: it's no coincidence that these are places rather than events. With the assumption there that you didn't need to convince people who had showed up to play D&D that they should bother playing D&D, modules simply provided sites to explore."

[1] - Although I wasn't there at the very beginning of hobby, many of these early modules were readily available in 1980.  We certainly played many of these modules in my group and had a blast doing so. The bolded portion of the quote above really captures my feelings about the difference in presentation and play style between earlier stuff and the changers to reach the modern offerings.  I haven't bought a module since the 80s because the new stuff doesn't appeal to me because it feels too scripted for my tastes and seems to lack character.  I remember the illustration of the little hermit dude living in the tree in Keep on the Borderlands to this day.  That grabbed my attention and wanted me to discover more.  The new stuff does not.  On a side note, I may purchase the Goodman Games version of Keep on the Borderlands just to see what they have done with the old product. 

[2] - "...it's clear that rules alone do not determine what is old school..."

[2] - This quote nails it as far as I'm concerned.  There is no ONE TRUE WAY about OSR.  It's about how you play instead of what you play.  Was it Necromancer Games that had the tagline of "3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel" or something similar?  You can play just about any rpg in an old school style.  You just have to change the focus of the game and learn when to hand-wave details and go with the flow.  

This first post has definitely caught my eye and I will continue reading.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Jan 6, 2022 14:44:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

Thanks for posting this, Admin Pete !  Have an Exalt!

This was a pleasure to read and I would recommend this to just about anyone on this board.

Being a historian by trade, I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring, trying to arrive at the goal not by arguing in favour of a theoretical conclusion of how the game should be played, but working through what happened and why.

This is something I can really appreciate.  I've encountered this in other fields -- the person who tries to turn off their own preferences to determine or describe what happened rather than what should have happened.  

With the DM's connivance and the players' wishes, PCs could be anything they wanted eventually, but the default assumption early on was that they were not heroes (at least, not automatically) but professional graverobbers, seeking to get rich or die trying.

I really do like this idea and this formulation.  In my (would-be) game and to my taste, I'd say "scavengers" rather than graverobbers, but it's good to remember this: not heroes by default.

If you scroll down in the post to "Master of the Desert Nomads," you'll find an excellent, non-polemical description the agency-reducing features of a module by David Cook.  If you want to see (some of) what happened in TSR publications, and you weren't there at the time, definitely give this section a read.

The whole thing is worth reading, top to bottom.  Looking forward to what Admin and others have to say about this...

I would use neither "graverobbers" ( I cannot remember one time a grave appeared in my game) nor "scavengers", I have always fallen firmly in the adventurers camp with the potential to become heroes (or not).

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Jan 7, 2022 0:31:37 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Jan 6, 2022 14:19:32 GMT -5 boarspear said:

I did not play in the early days being 2 years old when D&D was published, so I ask, is this an accurate description of how the game was played in the beginning?

Reasonably accurate. It was about exploration, but I am sure that which had prominence the dungeons or wilderness varied from table to table. As PD mentions, he created and ran his first dungeon without ever having played in one first and that they primarily ran wilderness adventures. Also the above "tight gameplay loop" leaves out the adventures in civilization, whether village, town or city. It also leaves out the wide range of roleplaying you might encounter from table to table. It was nowhere as orderly or ordered as he presents IMO. IMO it was more complex and more nuanced than he implies.

I agree with this, I would not describe my game as having a "tight gameplay loop". My players may leave town and between wilderness and dungeon spend months away from town. Not a tight loop at all.