The Sound They Make

I frequently go back to the OSR well of wisdom that is Grognardia.  Sure, there are posts about stuff that means nothing to me and a few posts where I very much disagree with +James Maliszewski (to be expected as individuals and individualists vary), but more often than not I'm rewarded with a look back at vintage OSR.

In this blog post, I wanted to highlight a Grognardia blog post from October 30th, 2012 that I just discovered.  About halfway down, James describes an account from someone who attended Games Fair '83...

It's also reported that Gygax "horrified a few of the purists with one remark," namely that "a good referee only rolls the dice for the sound they make. He just decides what happens!" While that comment might have been surprising in 1983, it's pretty well known nowadays that Gary had a lot more of the "storytelling" style as a referee than many old schoolers would themselves countenance in their own games.

If you'll remember my fairly recent post about rule zero, Gygax's statement is about as zero-ish as it gets.  His advice does not hail from the halls of traditional play-styles nor story-gaming, in my view.  It is old school itself - that indefinable quality of roleplaying that's as primordial as it is inspirational, where the game runs on pure imagination and flows of its own accord, influenced by the player-characters and directed by the Game Master.

Dice are awesome and they have many uses - no one is disputing that.  However, it is the GM who ultimately makes the call, navigating the current, and slyly exercising his will.  As with dice rolled, players should have their input, too - just not at the expense of the singular presence in charge of the game.

While many still disagree, I believe the evidence suggests what master Game Masters have known all along - trust your instincts; don't be badgered into making an "authorized" ruling.  You are the rule of law!  To put it another way, use the force...

After all, 40 years ago today the original Star Wars debuted in theaters across the country.  Happy Birthday Episode IV: A New Hope, and many happy returns!

VS

p.s.  I ran a quick one-shot of Alpha Blue today and will try to get a play report up in a day or two.

Remembering Grognardia

I try to remember that ideas are cheap, but player interest is often priceless.  For some, it can be a hard lesson to learn, but once understood, it more than repays the time and effort spent acquiring it.

~ James Maliszewski

I was going to title this blog post, "Looking Back," but it's really going to focus on the OSR blog of OSR blogs, back when the OSR was just becoming a thing - Grognardia!

I was tuning in a little later than most of the original OSR folks - early 2013.  That's just after Grognardia "went dark."  I probably read about a dozen of +James Maliszewski's posts.  They were good, but by then James was mostly reviewing products or talking about the Gygax foundation / memorial / statue or whatever it is (was).

Grognardia was a bit intimidating and maybe it was my assumption that James and similar folks into the old school ways were "fundamentalists" when it came to D&D.  Perhaps I had heard some negative things about the Dwimmermount Kickstarter or "OSR Taliban" from +Kasimir Urbanski (RPGpundit).

I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I never went that deep into Grognardia... until recently.  Everything from his unsure trials with old school mechanics, DM style, and campaign setting (a megadungeon) to his love of "pulp fantasy" to theorizing about what made D&D so awesome back in the day.  Some of our experiences are eerily similar, others are just really interesting (like his assumptions about 4th edition D&D based on pre-release announcements).  But there's real knowledge, experience, and understanding in many of those older posts.

Here are just a few favorites of mine:  Pulp Fantasy, Gary Gygax 1979, Dice as Oracle, Rough Edges,  Old School Culture, and My Megadungeon: Dwimmermount.

Speaking of Dwimmermount, I'm very interested in buying / reading / running this campaign in the near future... when I start GMing again, of course.

Dwimmermount was James' rejection of "modern" D&D for some kind of primordial version - to see if he could implement the old ways and capture that nostalgic vibe from the 70s and early 80s.  Not merely because he wanted to re-create the past, but he was seeking a return to the much-more-satisfying roots of our beloved hobby.

I started blogging about old school gaming stuff shortly after James stopped.  Here's my first post from March 14th, 2013.  It was shortly after that that I self-published my own crash course in old school fantasy roleplaying experimentation with Liberation of the Demon Slayer.

VS