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Sunday 22 June 2014

OSR-Fundamentalist Ironically Proves My Point

After yesterday's blog entry, a certain blogger by the name of "Venger Satanis" (who I think may be the guy I previously mentioned as one of those who not only thinks Cthulhu is real, but worthy of worship; and no, I'm not kidding here, this is his "church" website) decided to try to explain to me in gentle terms that the reason that even though James Maliszewski had referred to himself as "OSR Taliban", I am not allowed to use those words because, and keep in mind I'm quoting the idiocy here: "I liken this to certain African American individuals who call themselves or each other the N-word."

You see, OSR guys are like ganstas who can call themselves Taliban, but I can't. Wait... why can't I? Because, according to Venger, I'm not actually OSR: "you're considered an outsider, RPGPundit.  Hardly any OSR gamers consider you one of us.  That means you don't have the tribal rights to throw that phrase around without consequences."



So wait, apparently Venger is saying that its offensive that I talk about the existence of an "OSR Taliban" but at the same time he declares I'm not "Old school" enough to be in the OSR? Isn't that just proving my point?!

I mean shit, what do I need to do to be "old school enough" for OSR?
I WROTE an old-school OSR game.
I wrote an earlier old-school game too, but it was pretty well ignored by the OSR because that was at the height of clonemania and it was when the Taliban ruled that anything that wasn't just a slavish copy of specific D&D editions was unwanted.

I've posted at enormous lengths about my several old-school campaigns, including an RC D&D campaign which started at level 1 and ended 5 years later or so with the pcs at level 36; after starting on a 60-hour marathon and being run for 10 hour weekly sessions after that.  That was back when JMal hadn't yet "discovered" that he wasn't actually a White Wolf Swine at all, and had secretly been an Old-school fanatic all along now that he would get more attention doing that than he would continuing to shit all over class-based systems (like he did in his earlier writing before discovering he was an old-schooler).

I could have been writing long fatwas about interpretations of specific bits of the Gygaxian Hadith too, but you know, I was too busy ACTUALLY RUNNING OLD-SCHOOL CAMPAIGNS for the last two decades while he was wearing makeup and pretending to be a vampire.
And have continued to do so now: two of the three campaigns I run weekly are Old-school games, for both of which I've posted regular and extensive play report material, for one of which I'm now converting to a major OSR commercial product with the writer of FH&W.

So please, tell me motherfucker, what do I have to do to be "in" the OSR? Say: "There is no God but Gygax and JMal is his prophet"?  Suicide-bomb a 5e thread?

So thanks, Venger, for being extremely helpful at proving my point about how there is a group within the OSR that are exclusionary and fundamentalist when someone with my credentials can be casually dismissed as an "outsider".

I see now how it's not appropriate for me to talk about the OSR-Taliban because the guys who call themselves the Taliban declared I'm not actually OSR. Funny how that works.

RPGPundit

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11 comments:

  1. "I wrote an earlier old-school game too"

    Which game is it? Is it still available? I'd like to take a look... Arrows of Indra is also on my to-buy list :-)

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    1. The earlier game was "Forward... to Adventure!" (and I also wrote FtA!GN!, the "Forward... to Adventure! Gamemaster's Notebook!").
      Its not what I would do today but I'm still proud of it, especially the material in FtA!GN!

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    2. I forgot to say, its still available, and its published by Flying Mice games.

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  2. What's your earlier game? I know about AoI, not sure if I've heard of your other one but always looking for more OSR goodness!

    And where do I get my osr tribal cred? ;-)

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    Replies
    1. My earlier game was "Forward... to Adventure!"; it was published what seems like ages ago, by Flying Mice games. Still available I think, as well as the FtA!GN! sourcebook. I think in comparison to the stuff I'm doing now its much more amateur, but the FtA!GN! sourcebook in particular has a huge weath of stuff that could be used in any old-school game; including the "kitchen sink" table.

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  3. If anyone tried to dissuade me with that silliness I'd call them a nigger.

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  4. Well, those "OSR" guys are so full of themselves it often seems their blogs boil down to "I've been playing D&D longer than anyone else" with little to no actual contribution to gaming. As if playing D&D a long time means anything.

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  5. You were being a douche. Unlike you, I stick up for the people I associate with. I'm not going to call you "OSR d-bag" because, again, that's just painting a group with an unnecessarily large brush. To me, you're just a plain old self-important, egotistical d-bag braggart. Live with it or change your ways.

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  6. Well, apparently unlike you I hold honesty over tribalism. I'm part of the OSR, I run old-school campaigns with OSR games, I've published OSR games. I love so much of what the OSR has accomplished, but I don't believe in avoiding criticizing its faults because they're "our side" or something like that.

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  7. You've been had.. it's a wind up, he's playing your own words and hot topics right back at ya, maybe to attack you but more likely as a wind up. Think it over..

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