ORIGIN STORY: How I Got Into The OSR

In an effort to keep to my word to make things more blog-centered, I am going try to read, link to, and respond to more blog posts.

Over at Gorgon Bones, there is an OSR origins story of sorts. And I thought it might be fun to tell my version. I don't know how long this will be but I will try to not meander too much.

I STARTED WITH 2e AD&D

Despite BX being my preferred edition of D&D, I actually got into the hobby by stumbling upon my brother's comics and 1e AD&D collection. But the frustrating thing is that I had a bunch of adventures and filled out character sheets, but no starting rules. However, I did find in the collection a copy of TMNT and Other Strangeness so that was my very first RPG. A few years later, the second edition of the game was put out and I snatched it up quickly. Fortunately, I had made a friend in middle school who played with his 2 brothers and cousin.

And so I headed off into the RPG wilds, rolling up several characters that I would never play and really only ever getting about 1 Saturday afternoon's worth of adventuring in on any adventure. Eventually, group had bought boxsets, splat books, and such-- Ravenloft and Planescape being the favorites. By 14, it had all accumulated to just too many rules for one DM (usually me). So, things wound down by about 16 with the occasional game of Battletech or 40k in there. And of course Magic the Gathering. I eventually got deep into school and dating and all my RPG stuff lay dormant but the fun never forgotten.

INTERLUDE SEPERATED BY MANY YEARS

ME: Wait you said you ran games for White Wolf? They do Vampire?
TEACHER: Yeah but before my friends and I did do a lot of Call of Cthulhu.

ME: I don't play WoW because I've already played that game... its called Dungeons & Dragons 

ME: I never understood where your Player's Handbook was because how did you learn the game?
BRO: Oh, I guess I did have the Basic Box but must have given it away. I never did understand why people moved to AD&D, Basic was enough.

YEARS LATER AT THE CROSSROADS OF 5e D&D & 6e CoC, I MET THE DEVIL

I was comming off getting big into the US boardgame revival in the mid-2000. There were three games that stuck with me (and continue to do so) all from FFG: Cosmic Encounter, Talisman, and Arkham Horror. 

Of course 5e D&D came out and hearing it was a more back-to-basics D&D and not the direction that 4e had taken, I was all back in. But as I started reading the adventures I couldn't help feel they still were the same on-rails experience a lot of 2e was. Which, in addition to the volumes of splat-book rules we piled on, really made the game a drag. So, remember how much fun Arkham Horror was I wondered if Call of Cthulhu was the same fun. And The King in Yellow was one of my favorite mythos stories-- so I started looking up "Carcosa" as a setting.

And lo-and-behold, I start reading on the internet how someone has published suppliment to D&D called Carcosa and there were calls for it to be banned or censored or burn because it was just too much.

At first I thought this was some sorta gag right? Like a book based on a book about a play that makes people go insane and see visions of a planet called Carcosa was being boycotted? Just like the fictious play. Can't be real.

With a little more digging I, like a lot of folks in the OSR scene, had my first encounter with Lamentations of the Flame Princess. But I still couldn't figure out what kind of D&D it was and no store in my area were carrying the rulebooks. Casting about more I hit upon a few notable blogs like False Machine, Monsters & Manuals, Monster Manual Sewn From Pants, Dungeon of Signs, and Zak's blog. So the first three things I got my hands on were: 

• Deep Carbon Observatory
• Yoon-Suin
• Vornheim

And after reading those books, I all of a sudden I had a version of D&D that I could keep in my head. I realized that unlike 2e, I didn't need to keep a bunch of chats and stats in my head. Instead, I could keep a few relevant numbers and relationships in my head. I had also found Matt Finch's manifesto about the old school scene. That too clicked with me.

Those three books also kinda represented a mix of what I wanted out of D&D-- a game where creativity moves to the front, instead of numbers. They also encouraged me to develope at-the-table tools and to creatue situtions, instead of trying to create a "story" the players are to follow. The tone of DCO and Vornheim appealed to my inner meloncholy while I found Yoon-Suin sorta reminded me a little bit of Planescape in that it was a D&D setting, but pretty removed from traditional D&D.

MY VERY OWN BX D&D

In the near present, I started running BX in earnest when I was asked to start a D&D campaign for some folks who worked around me.

5e of course was a natural start, but it quickly became apprent that it was just too much for complely novice players. They really didn't "get" how to play an RPG so I needed a system that was stripped down. A few sessions with the Black Hack and then I transitioned to BX. At first with a lot of LotFP as it was about the best BX out there. But, I finally looked on ebay for a copy of B/X D&D. Found a good copy of each book along with a copy of B2 Keep on the Borderlands and as a treat I had them bound together in library binding (left pic). A now very cherished relic. But so much so, I hate to use it unlike my very well worn copy of OSE.

An really from there the rest is on this blog!