Re: worth a listen: The OSR Should Die, by Marcia B, read by Nick LS Whelan

On Mon, 5 May 2025 09:52:29 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/3/2025 12:21 PM, lkh wrote:

On "Blogs on Tape" Nick Whelan reads interesting blog posts.
 
This one, *The OSR Should Die* by Marcia B. gives a good overview of the OSR.
 
https://blogsontape.paperspencils.com/2025/04/21/episode-135-the-osr-should-die-by-marcia-b/
 

https://traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-osr-should-die.html
for those who want the text version

I don't quite get the blogs on tape thing. I find it much easier to just
click through to the original article.
>
anyway: I like Marcia, but she definitely likes to stir the pot. Not
sure if it isn't needed sometimes. She likes putting out well-argued
criticism of DnD in just such a way it's gonna cause umbrage.

Honestly, the whole article smacks of... I dunno, navel gazing. It's
not so much that its inaccurate as that it comes up with an idea and
then just goes so deeply into itself that it almost creates a
completely new reality around that idea. God knows I've fallen into
that trap myself. You just keep writing and writing and you almost
become trapped by what you've already said so have to argue some more.

I mourn the loss of good editors who'd --were this written in a
magazine or something-- take content like that and chop out three
quarters of it and tell the author to a) get to the fucking point, and
b) stop huffing their own farts.

But I can't present any counter arguments to the blog because I've
never really delved too deeply into OSR material or the so-called "OSR
movement" she supposes. I grab from all content --OSR or otherwise--
and make it work for me. (my games would probably be considered "OSR"
but I've never considered them that. We use old edition rules just
because it's what we know and don't see any real advantage to
upgrading). So I can't really say if there's any bigger mission
statement to OSR than that.