How Oldschool is Oldschool?

Years ago there where two sites that listed all the recent posts of private RPG websites. Both have disappeared a while back, as far as I know, but Alex Schroeder has now created a new one, in reaction to Google Plus closing.

As someone who never used Google Plus (because I try to limit my interactions with tech megacorps to the bare minimum of Youtube and Android), I’m actually quite happy to see that people have started posting a lot more in recent weeks.

The new aggregator is called Old School RPG Planet, and I am not in it. Yet. The description says that “The Old School RPG Planet is for Old School Renaissance (OSR) or Do It Yourself (DIY) bloggers.” I feel that I am sufficiently do it yourself to qualify and it does say “OSR or DIY”, so after some consideration I send Alex a mail to add me.

But I still hesitated because it says “Old School RPG”. Am I sufficently oldschool to qualify as oldschool? One the one hand, I recently started to appreciate D&D 5th edition and am right now working very energetically on setting up a campaign. I think, by definition, WotC games can not be oldschool games. But on the other hand, my style is all about unscripted wilderness adventures, random encounters, resource management, and interactivity, and I am hugely into both 30s and 80s Sword & Sorcery. And isn’t that what oldschool has always been really about? Before the Gygaxian orthodoxy?

2 thoughts on “How Oldschool is Oldschool?”

  1. Was there ever a time of Gygaxian orthodoxy? Maybe during the AD&D 1st ed days when Gary wrote into his books that there was exactly one way to play the game. But at the end of the OD&D booklets he had written that we should do the rest of the inventing ourselves, and that’s what I’ve started to appreciate over years. I’m no longer interested in RAW (rules as written).

    As an aside, though: there’s always https://campaignwiki.org/indie/ as an alternative. Or somebody could step up and volunteer to manage a mainstream Planet? I’d host it, for sure. I just don’t have the energy and the contacts for doing it.

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