Thursday, August 30, 2012

OSR Apocalypse? Again? *facepalm*


Here we go again. Why do human beings insist on being obsessed with the demise of things?

I know I'm a bit behind on commenting on the latest round of "OSR is dead" doomsaying. I just shake my head at the whole nonsense. If it's not "OSR is doomed!" talk, it's "Roleplaying in general is doomed!" jibberjabber. People, let's stop worrying and start playing.

To those of you who realize that the OSR is actually CHANGING instead of simply DYING, hats off to you rational folk. Thanks for bringing an appreciation of the concept of balance to the discussion. Again, it seems some people are spending too much time on gaming theory (or in this case gaming eschatology) rather than on actually gaming.

I'm not even going to bother linking to any of the myriad of recent posts on this non-topic. Come on, folks. The movement will continue to evolve, as any human activity should. For we humans are nothing if not adaptable.

Do things ever truly die? Most often, things metamorphose into something else. That something else may be so unrecognizable to us that we think something has died...and yet it lives on in some other way. There will be those who recognize the changes and see that which has changed for what it is: a new version of the old. The OSR in 2011 was different from the OSR when it first began, and the 2012 OSR is different from what it was last year. If you no longer consider the current version of the movement to be the OSR, that's your own perception. Someone else is living in their own OSR utopia right now, guaranteed.

The OSR is just adapting and shifting. Will the forthcoming "electronic format" reissue of prior D&D rule sets by WotC cause the *gasp* death of the OSR? No. But it will cause change. And what's so bad about that?

5 comments:

  1. Oh Shit! Run!

    its something I enjoy hearing on occasion in the games I run, Jason ;)

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  2. The "OSR is Dead" movement is dead.

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  3. 'Old School?' looks at DMG, 'It was new when I bought it.'

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  4. Pfft, ADD Grognard, posted on his blog, that the OSR never existed, so your arguments are invalid.

    ADD Grognard: "First, there never WAS an OSR. A lot of people claimed it existed."

    HA!

    ERIC!

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