Readings that help the mind and the soul of a RPG gamer
TAGS: #RPGTHINKTANK
In the last days I spent some time to find the right spark on what I should follow in terms of KUP campaign. I have a pretty clear idea of what I should do anyway I want to better fix the ‘how’. Well, the good piece of news is that I got a (hopefully) good idea on a highly metaphysics experience for ther VI·VIII·X KUP RPG which I am now currently developing… but I stop here for the time being! (If the idea is good, then the outcome won’t be that different!)
…but there’s another good piece of news: I found this incredibly interesting, deep and clever post: ‘The OSR should die’ by Marcia. It really revved those little wheels in my brain! I had been thinking about this great post for days, I enjoyed the extensive references which makes it a very intense exercise of understanding and also the several links to other interesting posts!
Honestly, I envy Marcia since she was able to do something I am not capable: to write with an ordered sequence and logic a lot of concepts so that the overall result has a clear ‘storyline’! And what is fantastic is that she touched so many interesting topics that I cannot even remind them all!
I am happy since this allowed me to think about the ‘reason why’ of OSR, of any RPG and, at the end, of my game! That is what I mean intellectually exciting! Well, my points about the ‘core’ of that post are two.
The first one is that I ended with my vision very close to Marcia’s conclusions and this can be summarized in two words: ‘signifier’ and ‘nostalgia’. These are the explanation for OSR and, in general, for any idea which mainly comes from the heart (and not from the brain). The answer to what is OSR is just like the answer to those who ask themselves in 2023 why there are some people still using the record player and 33 rpm records… it was called ‘high fidelity’ back in the days… why in 2023 with the current state of technology there is still someone using a technology of more than 50 years ago? The answer is both ‘signifier’ and ‘nostalgia’. In other words we are humans and, believe it or not, our souls are fed by memories. Those memories, if are good, are always searched and somehow reperformed… we believe that if we enjoyed in a certain moment an experience, we should then try to clone it another time in order to feel the same pleasure. The pleasure is actually the memory itself and not the experience but our natural instinct pushes us to try to repeat the experience. In this sense many players wanted to follow this path and ‘set the field’ as it was when they were kids and had a lot fun with D&D (or other early games!). The OGL helped them to find a legal way to define a good opportunity to offer this experience to other people, obviously changing what it was better to change and adapting the game according to their personal view. The OSR movement is this in my opinion: there is no common understanding in terms of movement, there is a common way to find to feel once again the joy they have in their memories. I do not blame this at all! As a matter of fact I wrote my game in part for this reason as well! For the sake of completeness this was not the main reason therefore I am not sure my game could be considered as an OSR! (This means that some ‘deviations’ from D&D are because of this reason, but the great part are driven by other reasons!)
This leads me to the second thought emerging from the reading of Marcia’s post: I have not yet written the reasons that led me to write a full game! I know it is stupid in this moment to write a rulebook: ‘money and success are in adventures, or better, in seeds ideally thrown in a sandbox campaign working for any setting’… this is what I have been told many times… I am aware of this and after all I am not interested and I keep on following my original idea (which is growing more than I could think actually!). I am really bad in communicate why I spend my time here and on the VI·VIII·X rules and the KUP model. I definitely need to write a ‘kind-of manifesto’: I am sure I won’t be able to write a real manifesto (that’s why it is a ‘kind-of manifesto’) but I should try to deploy what I have in my head… again, that is an extremely difficult task but I won’t otherwise be understood! I wish I could do an exercise like Marcia’s post about what is behind this game! I have started to organize all the ideas and sooner or later something will appear here on these pages! In the meanwhile, my sincere thanks to Marcia who helped me to get to this point!