Old School Appeal

I know the folks in the OSR do what they do for sheer love of the game and not for money. That’s why I’m involved at any rate; the whole DIY ethic is really awesome. Having said that, does DIY mean that the OSR should eschew slick, commercial level production values? I know that I really love a lot of the aesthetic that is going on out there and I don’t mean to denigrate it, but I really want to know that if the production values are stepped up, does it detract from the overall appeal?

James Raggi in a recent post which you can read here. In the last third, he addresses the topic and challenges OSR publishers to top him. I know that James Raggi has a tendency to raise people’s hackles, but I do have to admit that I don’t see anything wrong with folks rising to his challenge. I know there are some amateur folks out there that have some awesome talents and it’d be nice to see them being put to use doing things other than aping the conventions of the past. Now, having said that, I’m not a big fan of the big spikes, guns, skulls, and chains that along with anime influenced stuff tends to populate the comics and other mass produced commercial fanboy fantasy stuff these days. I tend to prefer stuff with a bit more verisimilitude (Like the artwork in the Osprey books for instance). But you know, some slickly done dungeon tiles, nice color work, etc would be nice.

Along the same lines, Blair over at Planet Algol raises another point about adventure paths in the OSR (again, you can read it here). Some folks seem to think such a thing would be anathema to the old school gaming style. I am not so certain. I think the GDQ series of modules lays out a perfect road map. Or the Slavers series. It seems that the idea for a connected series of adventures has been around for a while, why not pick it back up?

At any rate, there is a lot of good stuff being done in the OSR. I’d also like to see what the folks in the OSR are capable of. Surprise me!

Comments

  1. Stefan PoagFebruary 7, 2011 at 8:07 AM

    I'm used to being 'odd man out' in terms of taste in RPG artwork. That said, I'm more interested in seeing some of the work that results when the gauntlet is picked up than in whether Raggi or some challenger 'wins.'
    For my own part, I am my own worst critic. I enjoy my stuff while I am working on it, but by the time I am done I usually see 100 things I wish I had done differently and my own work looks too derivative to my own eye of stuff I've seen before.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carter SolesFebruary 7, 2011 at 8:21 AM

    Some of us are taking Planet Algol's suggestion and running with it, contributing to a "Sea of O'sr" Sandbox-Style Adventure Path (if that's not an oxymoron). You can read about it here:

    http://quicklyquietlycarefully.blogspot.com/2011/02/request-for-3-hour-islets.html

    As you can see, the idea of a spiffy print version has come up already, though who knows where that will lead exactly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. XyanthonFebruary 7, 2011 at 9:22 AM

    @Stefan - I love your style and would hardly consider it derivative. I really respectf artists whose style you can peg on first sight. I aspire to that. At any rate, I think as artists, we are always our worst critic. As to Raggi and his challenge, I don't think there can be such a thing as a winner, but It would be nice to see folks trying different things. We'll see where it goes I suppose.

    @Carter - I have been following it a bit but thanks, I'll keep poking in and seeing how things are progressing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Neurodiversity and Dragons - the adventure begins!

Image
  Tl;dr: Kia ora all! I don’t often post much about my personal life, but as a parent of two neurodiverse teens, I reckoned that I’d post some of my experience in gaming here on our journey. My daughter was diagnosed with autism almost a year ago and my son is dyslexic/dysgraphia with ADHD like presentation. Both are incredibly bright and very different from each other (my son has lots of friends and is very bright and gregarious if also very lazy while my daughter is very retreating and shy but incredibly driven and motivated). They both love fantasy and fantasy literature, movies and gaming has been a way for us all to connect. Though often what works for one, doesn’t necessarily work for the other. This brings me to my point, I am working on trying to best accommodate the needs of my neurodiverse daughter and include her in an experience that she very much wants to participate in, but often feels frustrated and overwhelmed by. This is an introduction to our journey so far.   For s
Read more

More Thoughts on my Campaign System

So, I’ve been thinking of my campaign world again and my magic system a lot lately. I’ve been reading a lot of Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga and the Hobbit (what a strange dichotomy!) and they have both influencing my thoughts on magic systems. I’m becoming more and more intrigued of having only a single “class” and everything else being a trapping of that. For my campaign world, I’m steering towards an everyman approach were you purchase “disciplines” as you advance to create different character types. I’m not really interested in creating a whole new retro-clone system per se, but building on top of either the Labyrinth Lord or Swords and Wizardry White box. For what I have in mind, the S&W Whitebox might make even more sense. So I’m thinking that the normal adventuring type guy would have a base d6 hit die. You’d have some starting amount of experience to spend on disciplines to start down the road of customizing your character. So for instance, if you wanted brawny fig
Read more

I like pie!

Cyclopeatron made an interesting blog post which I tend to agree with. Most conent posts don't get responses but opinion posts do. I've noticed the trend in my own blogging as well. There is some incredibly interesting content being generated out there in OSR blog land. I think folks tend to react more to opinion pieces because no one really wants to 1) either say your stuff sucks on a blog post or 2) only say "that's cool man". I tell you what, I cherish the "that's cool man posts", it at tleast let's me know folks are paying attention. As to the your stuff sucks, well those are OK too as long as they tell me why they think my stuff sucks so I know how to try and improve it. At any rate, I like pie. It even tastes better when I had to kill an orc to get it ;).
Read more