2019-08-08 OSR as a scene is dead
I think Melan is right: the OSR has desintegrated.
The old-school community split this year, and its surviving pieces have gone their separate ways. It is gone. There has been surprisingly little talk about it, and most still speak in terms of a general scene, but in my eyes, the divorce has clearly taken place. The fault lines had been present for a few years, and the conflicts were visible for all to see. Google+ās shuttering by its corporate overlords provided a good opportunity for things to come apart, but it has also obscured the OSRās disintegration. [ā¦] There was undoubtedly something there for a few years, and now there isnāt.
We had lots of activity in the forums (and they are still around: Dragonsfoot, OD&D Discussion, Knights & Knaves, and so on), then we had the blogs (and they are still around: Old School RPG Planet), then we had Google+, and now itās all over the place and nowhere.
Iām not active on /r/osr, nor MeWe. Is that where the various groups still interact? Lasagna Social is super small. The Old School on Mastodon is tiny.
I just noticed the following on the unofficial Reddit guide: /r/osr has 6k subscribers but /r/rpg has 680k and even something like a subreddit for a YouTube channel has more: /r/mattcolville has 41k subs.
ā#RPG
Comments
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
ā
The biggest community is on discord, several thousand people with lots of regulars. A lot of the OSR blog authors chat there, bounce ideas off each other, work on community projects, etc. Check Chris McDowallās Bastionland for an invite.
ā diregrizzlybear 2019-08-08 12:53 UTC
---
Catholocism didnāt end with the Protestant Reformation, I donāt know why the OSR would end because of the Sworddream Reformation, itāll just be smaller. Declaring the OSR dead feels like folks have lost confidence in Sworddream and want to āblow upā the OSR in frustration.
ā ruprecht 2019-08-08 13:00 UTC
---
@ruprecht, Wherever Sworddream is happening, Iām not seeing it. Do you have a link? I remember seeing the announcement and then nothing else.
I think that the word ādeadā is as appropriate as it is to use for any thing thatās out of fashion. Yes, itās still around, but itās diminished. I mean, Old School RPG Planet has plenty of blogs listed, but it no longer feels like a community. I donāt see people commenting on each otherās blogs as much ā not as much as they did in 2008-2012, and not as much as people used to comment on Google+.
@diregrizzlybear, thanks for the info. I tried Discord around 2017, I think. I was on many different servers but the chat format didnāt really work for me, even though Iām on IRC a lot. It feels like a different niche. I donāt really have the need to chat *in real time* about role-playing games.
ā Alex Schroeder 2019-08-08 14:41 UTC
---
I disagree. For me, it is and always has been about the blogs. G+, Discord, Mewe, etc etc are all basically valueless, as they donāt create the kind of permanent(ish) record the blogs.
The quality has tailed off a bit across the board, but I think thatās inevitable. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked, early giants have retired, etc. But I think thereās still value in the appellation OSR, and in the work the remnants are doing.
The OSR has always been niche, and it still is. Thatās ok. It doesnāt mean itās gone.
ā Charles 2019-08-08 14:50 UTC
---
āYes, itās still around, but itās diminished. I mean, Old School RPG Planet has plenty of blogs listed, but it no longer feels like a community. I donāt see people commenting on each otherās blogs as much ā not as much as they did in 2008-2012, and not as much as people used to comment on Google+.ā
Because it all moved to discord instead of being broken up across dozens of blogs. At this point, blogging is where people put more finished products, after it has been discussed, critiqued, brainstormed, and editted in semi-realtime. It isnāt that the community has disappeared from the OSR but that the blogs serve a different purpose.
Itās also where games are organized, whether on private discords or via hangouts or roll20.
ā diregrizzlybear 2019-08-08 15:18 UTC
---
@diregrizzlybear, I see. Thanks!
ā Alex Schroeder 2019-08-08 16:08 UTC
---
To be clear I think Sworddream was stillborn. The concept was basically OSR without yucky people and thatās not really much of an idea. I donāt know if itās a third wave of the OSR or something new altogether but the Black Hack and GLOG seem to be examples of real movements and communities in a way Sworddream never managed. Then again I donāt discord so Iām probably missing something.
ā ruprecht 2019-08-08 18:58 UTC
---
Yeah, at one point I made the effort of contacting all the GLOG blogs mentioned in that Who is the GLOGosphere post and was surprised to see how many there were ā and how disconnected they were from each other, apparently. Many hadnāt realized that they had been listed and linked until I contacted them.
ā Alex Schroeder 2019-08-08 19:10 UTC
---
After a few days on Discord again, Iām not too impressed. Itās fine as it is for the people on there. But it hasnāt been drawing me in, so I didnāt feel like I was observing a community in action. Iāll keep an eye on it, for sure, but it hasnāt wowed me.
ā Alex Schroeder 2019-08-17 16:55 UTC
---
As I was browsing the *Monsters & Manuals* best of list and happened upon Everybody Loves Our Game: On the OSR "Scene" where the term āsceneā is used like I wanted to use it:
Everybody Loves Our Game: On the OSR "Scene"
a scene is something that simply forms by accident around a set of shared interests or behaviours, and as a consequence of the interactions of human beings who have those shared interests or behaviours - nothing more or nothing less
And my impression was that the interactions are dropping off. Or that I am dropping out of it. Not for lack of shared interests but for lack of interaction.
Weāll how this Discord mania goes. For now I donāt mind using it because I get to use my IRC client and not their app. Their terms of service leave much to be desired, however.
I see that a while ago I wrote:
I just gave their terms another read through and users must submit to *arbitration* instead of a jury trial and they may not join a *class suit*. I thought these were good things to have?
I also dislike wording like the following although I was happy to see the limitation āin connection with operating and providing the Service.ā I hope they take it to mean the same thing that I take it to mean.
By uploading, distributing, transmitting or otherwise using Your Content with the Service, you grant to us a perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable, royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license to use, host, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display Your Content in connection with operating and providing the Service.
@seven alerted my to the fact that the word āperpetualā most likely violates the General Data Protection Regulation.
General Data Protection Regulation
@technomancy alerted me to the fact that using third party clients are a problem. Just look the rules of /r/discordapp:
Discussion of the following will remain against our subreddit rules:
3rd party clients3rd party āpluginsāCSS Modifications
Hah!
ā Alex Schroeder 2019-08-26 17:31 UTC
---
An interesting overview of how it rose and fell: The Many Deaths of the OSR by Lich Van Winkle.
ā Alex Schroeder 2020-08-05 05:20 UTC
---
ā Alex 2021-12-17 22:38 UTC