Is the OSR historical, or a new invention?

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I think early Palladium is a really good example of gonzo that takes it self seriously. Palladium Fantasy is a very gonzo game, but Kev put a lot of effort into worldbuilding.
 
I've personally never been a world builder, nor am I interested in deep diving into someone else's world building. But I'm also not totally gonzo (I WAS more so in High School and freshman year of college). What I have come to enjoy is running a game using a nice map that has enough terrain detail to feel like a decent simulation, and plenty of place names that I can hang things on. Having several iconic locations described (even to the extent of having and adventure module) is welcome. So Glorantha of the early years fits well. Blackmoor of The First Fantasy Campaign fits well (and the TSR DA modules colorized the map and even added some details). Greyhawk and Mystara didn't excite me with their "one nation equals one terrain" map style (worse for Mystara than Greyhawk, but Greyhawk still suffers some from that). Also they didn't really name lots of interesting places. Judge's Guild's Wilderlands is a very pretty map, but I've actually had a hard time running a campaign in it.

I end up being not much for urban adventures so detailed cities while I used to buy them like mad, they almost never saw play.

As to the OSR, I love the attention it has put on early games. I can collect cool stuff I can use with one of the early rule sets, and I bought into Old School Essentials as an easier to use BX. But then I've wandered away from running D&D for now.
 
I was a world builder from the get-go. Once I got to read D&D for myself, My 12 year old self grasped its potential in early 78 in two ways.

Having read the Lord of the Ring and loving the fictional history found in the Lord of the Ring appendices, I realized I could use D&D to make my own histories. Not so much in the creation part. But in the part, I could actually do something with what I wrote up. I wasn't quite like Barker, Greenwood, Crossby, etc.

Instead growing up through the 70s I gravitated to the stuff like G.I. Joe Adventures (12 inches not the weeny 6 inchers, I know heresy) then after Star Wars, the line of stuff that came out like ships and figures. I was always making up adventures and stories and by the mid 70s they have gotten quite elaborate. They were never quite in line with what was official , especially Star Wars. I often mashed up stuff together to come up with my own stuff. I wouldn't say they were good but they did give practice in world-building. The most elaborate thing I did at the time was taking index cards and making control panels and displays for my space stuff.

So D&D comes along and while I haven't done with anything with fantasy up to that point, I did love the appendices from Lord of the Rings and used that is my template to make my own maps, histories and kings lists. D&D allowed me to use that stuff in a practical sense. And so I made this in 78. Actually, this is the second drawing of the first map I drew. The first drawing I cut up in rectangles in the same proportion of letter sized paper. There were proably 24 of them. Then took some quarter inch graph paper and eyeballed the cut up section to make regional maps. It kind of bums me out that the below is the only thing left of that project.

Rob's First Campaign Map.JPG

But it doesn't stop there. See I got into hex and counter wargames when I was 11 (1976-77). And while I heard of D&D when I was 12. I didn't get to play it until late summer in 1978. So I had a lot of wargaming first before D&D became my primary gaming thing. Even then afterward the kids I ran around with continued to play wargames.

I don't know what Barker, Greenwood, and the rest thought what they would do with their worldbuilding at first. But mine was about setting up something so that the players could become commanders, rulers, mage lords, etc. But because I was young and inexperienced I had trouble generating the needed details. I understood how to PLAY the wargames, I just could never quite make one of my own that was any good or fun even in a half-ass way.

So I ditched the above, and tried Greyhawk which was great from a high level view but had nothing for wargaming details. Then I got the Wilderlands which had the local level details I needed, and since it was thin on the high level details of kingdoms and history, I could make my own and take it from there.

I ran published adventures, and made a few of my own but the point of those in my early campaigns was to get the players to the mid-levels to where they could start building up their forces and resources. And that when my campaigns started to rock. And if you are going to do that then you have to be willing to let the players trash the setting. So I became known as the referee who didn't get bent if the players killed the king. And because of my wargaming experience could make killing the king a fair and interesting challenge. Provided that I could my hand on enough local level detail.

As far as I know I was pretty unique in doing this in my hometown. The other referee I knew got twitchy if players try to wreck a major setting details. And it wasn't always the referee's fault. We were all high schoolers and some players were dicks and didn't respect their referee at all. I was lucky in that because I used a lot of wargaming stuff it didn't matter much if a player or the players turned the session into a me versus them the situation. Especially since I am usually the better wargamer for my age group. And asshole players had enough issues that they were poor tacticians to begin with.

Wrapping this up with a comment on playstyles the thing that surprised me throughout the 80s is just how different various groups were. The 80s were a time when I went from high school in a small town, to a division 2 sized university, then being on my own with my own car. Even back in high school playing with a different group was like visiting a different island where some things were familiar but a lot of things were done differently. There was not a lot of homogeneity back in the day. I never really saw much homogeneity until the rise of the Living campaigns in the late 90s and people started to flock to game stores to play.
 
I remember the lack of homogeneity in the 80s and 90s. Every DM had house rules that varied from a page or two of clarifications to full rewrites of the rules that were actually different games still being called D&D. I know that Dragons had rules clarifications and commentary but none of us bought Dragon on a regular basis so it didn't affect how we did things. We were all lower middle class without a ton of disposable income. I gave up comics when I was 12 to have money for D&D and wargames; I had a subscription to S&T for a while then they didn't seem to get my renewal (I was too out of the loop to realize that SPI had just collapsed).

In the 80s, for me, it was about adventures. We'd run mainly modules but also home made dungeons. In the 90s, I started world building with full mythologies, histories, and crap. By the 2000s, I'd have game worlds but they were much thinner with mostly local info.
 
I started playing 20 years ago, and at the time stuff in D&D struck me as someone with an interest in fantasy novels and comics as pretty weird and out there. We used a lot of the 2e settings in our campaigns, and I was introduced to the idea of the older game and the newer game and the differences between them.

So around 2010 I started looking at blogs and stuff and found all this OSR commentary. I thought it was really interesting seeing all these people looking at the origins of my hobby and the differences between how it was played back in the day, or what was implied by the older rules that had been lost in the newer rules. A lot of it clicked with me, in that I really like exploration and survival based play, and I'd often been a bit frustrated that modern D&D did away with those aspects of the game through easy access to magic rendering it moot. I was pro-4e when it came out and still think it has something to offer, but the problems with it's design made me think more about what the old design was good at (fast fights, letting you get on with more exploration and so on). There was always a segment of people who hated the new stuff in the hobby and wanted to get away from it, and I never really got along with that. I've enjoyed all the D&D I've played to one extent or another, the only RPG I've ever completely bounced off of was FATE.

So that's the OSR to me, a bunch of ideas and looking back at older ways of playing, and then trying them out. I've run games I consider OSR influenced but never used a retroclone or an older system to do it - because the way you resolve skills or attacks wasn't as important as the other stuff.

But as the OSR has continued it's become a publishing phenomenon as well, and therefore it has developed something of a brand identity. That's pretty inevitable. A lot of the weird stuff I noticed in 3e D&D was about brand identity too. Most of what 5e tries to do is leverage the brand and not offend anyone who has ever liked any part of D&D in the past - pretty successfully I'd say. To me, 5e shows a lot of influence from the OSR, perhaps not implemented particularly well but it's more backward looking than 4e for sure.

But I'm not super interested in the OSR as a publishing brand. It's fine, but when I look at some of the products I definitely get the impression that I'm being marketed to strongly and encouraged to make my "gaming identity" align with the aesthetic choices and ideals of these publishers. Not really interested in that. And tbh aesthetic choices are pretty low down my list when thinking about gaming material. If a review spends most of it's time talking about how beautiful and unique a book looks, I'm not gonna be very interested in picking it up. I read comics for cool art and stories.
 
Eternal Chump said:
But as the OSR has continued it's become a publishing phenomenon as well, and therefore it has developed something of a brand identity.
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Has it? Does the OSR have a "brand identity"? If so who is creating it?

I know I am challenging your assertion but think about it. Does the OSR have a brand identity? Or is it the case that certain publishers who have a distinctive artistic style and perhaps a distinctive way of promoting their stuff are the ones you are focusing on. Followed by linking them to the idea of the OSR?

A related side note, the vast majority of publisher who put their stuff under the OSR category on DriveThruRPG even when it explictiy uses classic edition mechanics, don't use any type of OSR branding including myself. But when it comes to blogs, podcasts, and other social media, some but not all including myself say that we do is part of the OSR. But that about the extent of it.

It been this way since the term OSR became a thing back in 08 to 09. Because then and now, it useless as a way of telling the potential buyer what this product is about. It is gonzo, it is game of thrones using OD&D stuff, it is about sandbox campaign like my stuff, is it weird horror? When you hear D&D 5e, Savage Worlds, GURPS, you think X and when you look the products for those games usually X is supported by what there.

With the OSR closest thing that comes to that is that may have something to do with classic edition mechanics. But what people do with those classic editions mechanics varies considerably.

 
Well, I think I agree with you that it's not really a brand. It's certainly not controlled by one person. I didn't have a better shorthand to get across what I meant. I guess I'm discussing my view from the bits of the discourse that I look at, where I see this kind of funky, alt artistic, psychedelic stuff being touted as OSR, and those aesthetics being put forward as a kind of OSR aesthetic. That stuff is cool, but it isn't really the point of OSR or the entirety of it.

But yeah, what I said is just based on my impression from what I see discussed on Youtube and various discussion sites. I am definitely only getting a slice of what's going on, but it seems to me that it's a successful slice in terms of publishing and hype at least. So when you say there's some publishers with a distinctive style that I'm focusing on, I think that's pretty much correct...though I'm not really focusing on them out of an interest in their stuff, it's more what gets pushed by various tastemakers and so on.

My only definition of OSR is that it's about looking at the older stuff in the hobby and being inspired by it in what you create. And so it's a pretty diverse thing. But I see stuff like Mork Borg, Maze of the Blue Medusa, Ultraviolet Grasslands, or even stuff like Dolmenwood as being somewhat similar in their aesthetics and presentation, and I see people getting quite excited about that presentation. You likely have a better perspective than me, I'm not a publisher or anything, just someone reading and watching stuff on the internet.
 
Eternal Chump said:
You likely have a better perspective than me, I'm not a publisher or anything, just someone reading and watching stuff on the internet.
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I think you make some good points with your observations both just now and in the previous post. It is a thing that what many see are the people you mention. This can be frustrating for those of us who are more low-key and trying to publish stuff. Until one realize that it is not a zero sum game. That the reality of publishing today is that we not limited by shelf space in a game store or storage in a distributor's warehouse. But it also means it requires a different approach. For me personally, I opt for slow and steady with the occasional drop of open content stuff like my Herbs and Potions or Merchant Adventures. Others like Kevin Crawford have their own spin on doing this. Some like Frog God Games and Goodman Games opt to run things more like a traditional publisher.

The folks you mentioned opted for being loud and distinct. I couldn't pull that off. I like a minimalist b/w approach for one thing. I am more suited to an approach where I win each customer one by one by making useful stuff suited in whole or in part to their needs. I can get away with this because the economy of scale on the internet is such that I can get away with a smaller number of sales (or downloads if free) to meet my goals and what I need to keep this going profit-wise.

The key I think in all this is for folks in the hobby is realize that with the OSR the reality is much vaster they than realize. And for publishers to realize that they need to keep their heads and that it not a zero-sum game and there is always somebody out there will find one's material useful and fun.
 
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robertsconley said:
Has it? Does the OSR have a "brand identity"? If so who is creating it?

I know I am challenging your assertion but think about it. Does the OSR have a brand identity? Or is it the case that certain publishers who have a distinctive artistic style and perhaps a distinctive way of promoting their stuff are the ones you are focusing on. Followed by linking them to the idea of the OSR?

A related side note, the vast majority of publisher who put their stuff under the OSR category on DriveThruRPG even when it explictiy uses classic edition mechanics, don't use any type of OSR branding including myself. But when it comes to blogs, podcasts, and other social media, some but not all including myself say that we do is part of the OSR. But that about the extent of it.

It been this way since the term OSR became a thing back in 08 to 09. Because then and now, it useless as a way of telling the potential buyer what this product is about. It is gonzo, it is game of thrones using OD&D stuff, it is about sandbox campaign like my stuff, is it weird horror? When you hear D&D 5e, Savage Worlds, GURPS, you think X and when you look the products for those games usually X is supported by what there.

With the OSR closest thing that comes to that is that may have something to do with classic edition mechanics. But what people do with those classic editions mechanics varies considerably.
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Honestly I think it's about as useful as when people say d20 based game. That often seems to be used as a shorthand for modern D&d based mechanics but with such variation it's almost useless. The thing it tends to tell a buyer is where the seller believes their product fits in the larger RPG world. D20 based (I'd assume probably unified systems where odds jump in 5% increments may or may not have strong tactical component.. OSR - probably simple less tactical may have non unified systems. D100 probably relatively unified systems with no levels.
Broad strokes
 
Bunch said:
Honestly I think it's about as useful as when people say d20 based game. That often seems to be used as a shorthand for modern D&d based mechanics but with such variation it's almost useless. The thing it tends to tell a buyer is where the seller believes their product fits in the larger RPG world. D20 based (I'd assume probably unified systems where odds jump in 5% increments may or may not have strong tactical component.. OSR - probably simple less tactical may have non unified systems. D100 probably relatively unified systems with no levels.
Broad strokes
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I've only ever use D20-based game to those based on D&D 3rd edition's engine, so they all have six standard stats, XP-based classes & levels, saving throws, and Feats. Interestingly, I don't think I've yet to encounter a game that uses the D20 as it's base resolution mechanic that isn't 3rd edition based, the closest being 2D20.
 
TristramEvans said:
I've only ever use D20-based game to those based on D&D 3rd edition's engine, so they all have six standard stats, XP-based classes & levels, saving throws, and Feats. Interestingly, I don't think I've yet to encounter a game that uses the D20 as it's base resolution mechanic that isn't 3rd edition based, the closest being 2D20.
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I think that was very very accurate and remains pretty accurate but just like OSR has expanded beyond retroclones I think D20 is growing to include just about any game where the core mechanic is d20 to hit/succeed. An example is I think the OMNI system might currently be referred to as d20 and it's not 3.x based.
 
Bunch said:
I think that was very very accurate and remains pretty accurate but just like OSR has expanded beyond retroclones I think D20 is growing to include just about any game where the core mechanic is d20 to hit/succeed. An example is I think the OMNI system might currently be referred to as d20 and it's not 3.x based.
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They really should have picked a different trademark than D20... I try and use D20 games ONLY to refer to games derived from the D&D 3.x SRDs in the vein of 3.x style games (so the OSR retro-clones that derive from the SRD are not D20 though technically they could be...).

Pre-3.x D&D, Bushido, Pendragon, Hero Wars/Hero Quest are NOT D20 games... (just to name a few games I know of that use D20 for resolution).

I would apply the same for D100, though I prefer to use BRP family for those. Warhammer Fantasy Role Play is not a D100 game...

And I guess I would expect a "2d6" game to be based on Traveller... Chainmail uses 2d6 but is not a 2d6 game...

And don't try and create a 3d6 game category (TFT and GURPS are not really the same game engine, and Hero is definitely it's own thing).
 
Remember that originally (up until the release of 4E) “d20” meant something different - it had a separate/additional license with additional restrictions (e.g. you couldn’t include full character-generation rules and had to include a blurb on the cover stating that the D&D Players Handbook was required to use it) in exchange for which you got to use the “d20” brand logo. That was how almost all third-party/OGL content was released early on. It wasn’t until after WotC pulled the rug out from under the d20 publishers with the release of 3.5 that publishers started abandoning the d20 license for the less-restrictive OGL.
 
T. Foster said:
Remember that originally (up until the release of 4E) “d20” meant something different - it had a separate/additional license with additional restrictions (e.g. you couldn’t include full character-generation rules and had to include a blurb on the cover stating that the D&D Players Handbook was required to use it) in exchange for which you got to use the “d20” brand logo. That was how almost all third-party/OGL content was released early on. It wasn’t until after WotC pulled the rug out from under the d20 publishers with the release of 3.5 that publishers started abandoning the d20 license for the less-restrictive OGL.
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Of course Arcana Unearthed was an early OGL "D20" game... Monte Cook could get away with just being OGL and not using the D20 license for some little unknown reason... :-) :-) :-). I think there were other full on OGL games in those early days but yea, it broke open later. Of course he used the D20 license on his supplements that didn't need character generation...

But I think it's fair to lump things like AU in as a D20 Game.

And OGL Game becomes too broad (again, most of the retro-clone games are OGL games).
 
ffilz said:
They really should have picked a different trademark than D20... I try and use D20 games ONLY to refer to games derived from the D&D 3.x SRDs in the vein of 3.x style games (so the OSR retro-clones that derive from the SRD are not D20 though technically they could be...).

Pre-3.x D&D, Bushido, Pendragon, Hero Wars/Hero Quest are NOT D20 games... (just to name a few games I know of that use D20 for resolution).

I would apply the same for D100, though I prefer to use BRP family for those. Warhammer Fantasy Role Play is not a D100 game...

And I guess I would expect a "2d6" game to be based on Traveller... Chainmail uses 2d6 but is not a 2d6 game...

And don't try and create a 3d6 game category (TFT and GURPS are not really the same game engine, and Hero is definitely it's own thing).
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Who expects rational labeling these days?
 
T. Foster said:
Remember that originally (up until the release of 4E) “d20” meant something different - it had a separate/additional license with additional restrictions (e.g. you couldn’t include full character-generation rules and had to include a blurb on the cover stating that the D&D Players Handbook was required to use it) in exchange for which you got to use the “d20” brand logo. That was how almost all third-party/OGL content was released early on. It wasn’t until after WotC pulled the rug out from under the d20 publishers with the release of 3.5 that publishers started abandoning the d20 license for the less-restrictive OGL.
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Wasn't it the Erotic Handbook that revealed the OGL license advantages? I seem to recall that but memory can be a tricky thing.
 
Bunch said:
Wasn't it the Erotic Handbook that revealed the OGL license advantages? I seem to recall that but memory can be a tricky thing.
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IIRC both of those (WotC tightening the terms of the d20 STL in response to that book, and undercutting all of the third-party publishers with the release of 3.5) happened right around the same time (mid-2003), so it was likely a combination of both that got more publishers looking more closely at the non-d20 OGL.
 
T. Foster said:
IIRC both of those (WotC tightening the terms of the d20 STL in response to that book, and undercutting all of the third-party publishers with the release of 3.5) happened right around the same time (mid-2003), so it was likely a combination of both that got more publishers looking more closely at the non-d20 OGL.
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It also probably didn't hurt that by then D20 was well established as D&D and OGL was just about the same from a consumers perspective. Losing D20 off your product in lieu of OGL didn't decrease sales.
 
TristramEvans said:
I've only ever use D20-based game to those based on D&D 3rd edition's engine, so they all have six standard stats, XP-based classes & levels, saving throws, and Feats. Interestingly, I don't think I've yet to encounter a game that uses the D20 as it's base resolution mechanic that isn't 3rd edition based, the closest being 2D20.
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Golden Heroes used a D20 + Attacker's Weapon Class + Defender's Defence [Armor, and it was descending] Class, vs. a TN of 21. There was an attack table, but there sure didn't need to be. It was also basically a re-tooled Gamma World 1E, so similar to D&D. No classes or levels, but a cousin for sure.
 
Paranoia has always used d20 as well.
 
Honestly, most of the OSR just blurs together for me after you get by some of the bigger sellers. I’m much more interested in games that really push the boundaries of mechanics instead of just adding a few house rules. That’s why I was a big fan of OGL games that broke down the d20 system and tinkered with it.
 
robertsconley said:
The key I think in all this is for folks in the hobby is realize that with the OSR the reality is much vaster they than realize.
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I get your frustration.

I consider myself an "old school" GM, but I am certainly not OSR. But like it or not the people who promote the gonzo type of play and the associated aesthetics seem to be more successful in their marketing, so maybe instead of fighting over the label, "old school" GMs and content producers should call themselves something else... like Retro or something.
 
TristramEvans said:
I guess that's true, though I've never once ever called it, or heard anyone call it, "a D20 game"
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Thats sort of where d20 as it has expanded in some eyes runs into the same issues as OSR. At some point saying you mostly roll a d20 is a stupid meaningless grouping. As the OSR has gone from retroclones, to retrostyle , to whatever it is now it's lake of cohesive focus means it's pretty useless as a designator.
 
I've always understood "d20" as referring to a system derived from the 3x chassis, just as "OSR" refers to systems derived from earlier editions of D&D (usually B/X). I've never heard anyone call something a "d20 game" simply because it uses a d20 for task resolution. That's so broad a definition as to be meaningless. By that definition Palladium is a d20 game too.
 
I tried to label what I’m Interested in (and contributing to) as “neoclassical” which I thought was actually pretty fitting and appropriate, but it was rejected because some guy had already used it in the name of his OGL heartbreaker system :cry:
 
One thing I think is... ahistorical about the OSR is... the stuff that TSR started denouncing in the early 80s in favor of grounded, detailed worldbuilding is the galactic dragons playstyle that was very popular back then-- else why try to denounce it?-- and it is totally valid. People dismiss it as "Monty Haul", but having a lot of powerful magic is only Monty Haul if the powerful magic allows you to roflstomp the rest of the campaign; if the rest of the world is as powerful as the PCs, the game's just as challenging and just as deadly as wrestling an elderly kobold for his last copper piece.

This playstyle... which I learned in the early 90s (and spent the rest of the 90s unlearning) is missing from the modern discourse on "old school D&D".
 
Dammit Viktor said:
One thing I think is... ahistorical about the OSR is... the stuff that TSR started denouncing in the early 80s in favor of grounded, detailed worldbuilding is the galactic dragons playstyle that was very popular back then-- else why try to denounce it?-- and it is totally valid. People dismiss it as "Monty Haul", but having a lot of powerful magic is only Monty Haul if the powerful magic allows you to roflstomp the rest of the campaign; if the rest of the world is as powerful as the PCs, the game's just as challenging and just as deadly as wrestling an elderly kobold for his last copper piece.

This playstyle... which I learned in the early 90s (and spent the rest of the 90s unlearning) is missing from the modern discourse on "old school D&D".
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I've long thought that there's a gap in the D&D like market for a game designed purely for playing high level characters.
 
TJS said:
You see this in blog posts that are about things like "How do we make sense of alignment languages?" or "what do alignments languages imply about the default D&D setting?". To my mind the answer is "you don't" and "what setting?" and I think if you're even asking the question you're probably not actually old school but OSR. (Edit: I don't mean to imply that people weren't doing this from the very beginning, but that doing this immediately begins the process of moving away from what the OSR wants to recover).
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This is like the sort of posts where people would try and infer things about Traveller's default setting from the character generation rules - and they'd invariably only look at the first three Little Black Books, so the six careers were (Space) Navy, (Space) Marines, Army, Scouts, Merchant, and Other. The result were about as sane as you'd imagine, and the whole thing was silly, but people tried.
 
TristramEvans said:
I've only ever use D20-based game to those based on D&D 3rd edition's engine, so they all have six standard stats, XP-based classes & levels, saving throws, and Feats. Interestingly, I don't think I've yet to encounter a game that uses the D20 as it's base resolution mechanic that isn't 3rd edition based, the closest being 2D20.
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Traveller: The New Era, from 1993. d20, roll low, vs attribute+skill, so more like GURPS with a d20 than anything D&D3 based.

Back in the day it was occasionally called the 'd20 system' to differentiate it from earlier versions of both Traveller and from earlier versions of the 'House Rules' (as GDW was then calling the Twilight: 2000 (2e), Dark Conspiracy, etc. system) that used a d10.
 
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Sharrow said:
Traveller: The New Era, from 1993. d20, roll low, vs attribute+skill, so more like GURPS with a d20 than anything D&D3 based.

Back in the day it was occasionally called the 'd20 system' to differentiate it from earlier versions of both Traveller and from earlier versions of the 'House Rules' (as GDW was then calling the Twilight: 2000 (2e), Dark Conspiracy, etc. system) that used a d10.
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Yeah, never played Traveller
 
arjunstc said:
I get your frustration.

I consider myself an "old school" GM, but I am certainly not OSR. But like it or not the people who promote the gonzo type of play and the associated aesthetics seem to be more successful in their marketing, so maybe instead of fighting over the label, "old school" GMs and content producers should call themselves something else... like Retro or something.
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I hear but I am not ready to surrender my usage of OSR? Why because still saying OSR and writing out OSR is still pretty fun given the alliteration with TSR. To me it still just feels more "right: than the alternates. Besides I long ago come to peace with the fact that I will have to give the full explanation of what it is I do rather than expect saying OSR will just magically cover it. Also perhaps I am used to the gonzo side of the OSR because they were there from the get-go and I had numerous positive interactions with folks whose creative interests tend to the gonzo.

Like I have been saying it is not a zero-sum game anymore there is room for everybody and will continue to be that way. So when it comes up I will be the annoying guy to point out that folks, including myself, don't know the full picture of what going on and back it up with as much examples and data as I can.
 
Dammit Viktor said:
One thing I think is... ahistorical about the OSR is... the stuff that TSR started denouncing in the early 80s in favor of grounded, detailed worldbuilding is the galactic dragons playstyle that was very popular back then-- else why try to denounce it?-- and it is totally valid. People dismiss it as "Monty Haul", but having a lot of powerful magic is only Monty Haul if the powerful magic allows you to roflstomp the rest of the campaign; if the rest of the world is as powerful as the PCs, the game's just as challenging and just as deadly as wrestling an elderly kobold for his last copper piece.

This playstyle... which I learned in the early 90s (and spent the rest of the 90s unlearning) is missing from the modern discourse on "old school D&D".
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Well it because it describes the route 3.0/3.5/4e/and to some extent 5e went. Just sub in feats, subclasses, and other character options for magic items although they are still present.

I do agree that it should be acknowledged the fact that many modern hobbyists like this shouldn't come as a surprise to old-timers. As you correctly pointed out Monty-haul was a large part of the hobby back in the day. I will argue it remained part of the hobby to some extent. Just people either kept quiet about it. Or gravitated to the first great explosion of Computer games like Doom and the first computer RPGs.
 
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