I am not a part of the OSR. Not just because “the OSR” doesn’t exist in any meaningful sense, but also because I was never a part of it in any meaningful sense. When people were hanging out on Dragonsfoot, I was lurking Giant In The Playground and the WoTC forums. When G+ was relevant I was on Reddit and Twitter, unable to get an invite to G+ when the hype first started and uninterested once the doors finally opened to me.
I’ve been playing D&D since the early ’90s, getting my start with AD&D 2e. In the past couple of years I’ve developed a deep fascination with the early, developmental history of this hobby and this medium. Over on my Patreon I’ve become a little bit of an archaeologist, digging through old modules and texts to find out what these games actually say and how that compares to what we say and think about them. I’m a DCC tournament champion.
These are, often, the hallmarks of an OSR grognard.
The other hallmarks - the ones known to people outside the various small circles that form “the OSR”, the ones that continue to stain the reputation of anyone working in this space despite any and all attempts to reject them - tend to the less pleasant. Reactionary conservatism. Bigotry. Transphobia, racism, homophobia, a dislike of people seen as Outsiders, a fear that people are going to “steal” the hobby. It manifest it toxicity, gatekeeping, and in some cases outright facism.
I should make it clear that I despise these people and everything they stand for. But I’m unwilling to cede the games I love to this sort of oerson. I’m a trans, disabled, socialist queer person. My very existence threatens them, and this fuels me.
But to return to the point. This site, and the After School Revival.
My interests don’t quite align with the classic, core OSR. My D&D of choice is the three brown books. My Basic of choice is Holmes, not B/X (and certainly, definitely not BECMI. Not ever). I don’t particularly care for Gary’s AD&D as a system but have a huge heap of nostalgia for the objectively more bloated 2nd Edition. My preferred retroclone is Delving Deeper, and I don’t particularly see a need for OSE. I don’t fit in.
But what I do have in common with “the OSR” is that, once squabbling about whether Rules Cyclopedia was a dark time in our history or not1 is over, I don’t particularly give a shit about system in any meaningful way. What I care about is play, preferably over the long term. Campaigns that last for years, taking a character up to higher levels, getting engaged in faction play, mapping the dungeon and making our mark in the territory and seeing where the ripples end.[^2].
And what facilitates play? What’s the second most important thing after the game itself2? Modules. My first and most pure love. Adventures, in all their forms.
I am not a part of the OSR. Some time ago I coined the phrase After School Revival to describe the small scene I find myself in. It was tongue in cheek at the time, but I’ve grown to like the term. I expounded on what that means to me here. I won’t repost the entirety of that post here, because that’s redundant, although I will add that my understanding of it has expanded to include the idea that we should be welcoming of new players, encourage them to get their feet wet, and help them get their first character swallowed by a gelatinous cube as quickly as humanly possible.
This blog will focus on two of the tenets listed at that link, namely:
I love to read modules, I love to play them, and I love to talk about them. I also think we as a scene and a hobby deserve better reviews than we currently are provided with.
This does put me in an awkward position, because I’m also someone who works in this industry and writes modules and I don’t want to be seen to be targeting or attempting to damage the careers of my peers. But I believe that critical reviews - critical here meaning “expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work of literature, music, or art” rather than “expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgements” - are vital to a healthy industry/hobby/scene, and so I’m going to put my neck on the line and start writing about these things that I love so dearly.
It’s important to do as much as I can go separate Chris The Adventure Writer from Chris The Reviewer. That’s why this blog is being hosted on blot rather than Loot The Room proper. They’re linked, of course, but I want at least some separation between my professional, commercial work and this project. Blot also doesn’t have any tracking or analytics, which is a good thing. Not knowing whether anybody is reading means I’ll never find myself pandering to an audience. Not being able to see whether specific things garner more clicks means I won’t hear the call to be overly negative, destructively scathing, in order to farm outrage traffic - a call so many reviewers succumb to. This, too, is why there won’t be any comments sections here.
Thanks for reading.
[^2:] Mandy the Mournful, my Delving Deeper cleric, has been exploring the megadungeon of Rutghast for about 18 months now and is 6th level. I’ve just started creating my own spells, mostly grabbing things from 1e that aren’t in OD&D but that I think would be nice to have. One day he will die a horrible death at the hands of one of the many gods he’s collected, and it will have all been worth it.