#whatthehelldowedonow

[zedecksiew]

DIY D&D, October 2018

Google Plus, where I found all my best nerd-friends, is closing down. It was where I found the DIY D&D / Old School Renaissance community. This community:

Gave me my best roleplaying game experiences; Gave me the confidence to start writing RPG material; Taught me a lot about building a functional community. 

I’ve gotten paychecks from people in DIY D&D. I’ve gotten postcards. In this day of social-media instant connectivity? Postcards. In my mailbox. With actual ink, and a stamp.

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Google may be killing G+, but DIY D&D isn’t going away.

The OSR started as a network of blogs. Here’s a list. (Here it is as a thingy you can plug into your RSS reader.)

People are moving en masse to different platforms. Here’s a massive Discord server. Here’s a cool forum. Here’s a nice MeWe group.

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Zak S has a questionnaire up for DIY D&D types. I’m answering because it’ll brew a snapshot of the scene + myself, as part of the scene.

OSR Guide For The Perplexed Questionnaire 

1. One article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me:

“... after a run-in with some "filthy dwarf-types" (kobolds from the wandering monster list) Max lopped off a monster-leg and stuck it in his backpack. At the time, I thought he was just being weird. But later he very effectively distracted some white apes by throwing the grisly limb among them. The apes were much more willing to brawl among themselves over a quick snack rather than fight people bearing torches and swords. Max wasn't content to let his brief character sheet dictate what he could and couldn't do. He went out there and grabbed that dungeon by the collar and gave it a good shaking. And here's the kicker: Max is twelve years old and today was his first time playing D&D!”

All Hail Max, Jeff Rients. Pretty basic stuff, at this point. Still pretty fucking baller.

2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark:

“The thing I really really dislike about how people use terms like problematic and "interrogate"  "critical awareness" etc is they rarely (if ever) provide a framework to objectively measure harm or benefit. So if you say "classic adventures are problematic because it's kinda like a Victorian narrative about invading people and taking their stuff" that's your subjective opinion , which then , when one publishes or writes something extremely similar, you can turn around and declare you have "critical awareness"  , and therefore not problematic. Which is utterly perfect for performing wokeness for marketing purposes while never actually doing anything different, e.g Evil Hat's whole business model Compare this to saying to pointing out something which can be used to hold ones on behaviour to a standard: "There are very little women artists in rpgs", "there needs to be more takes on colonialism other than one favourable to the invader" "freelance writers don't get paid a living wage" Then , you yourself can demonstrate that you are actually committed to your wokeness by doing something you can be held accountable for. Because you actually pay people, hire people and publish people in ways that benefit the people whose struggle you are using for marketing purposes.”

Scrap Princess, from this excellent G+ thread. Saying stuff that needs to be said about woke white indie RPG creators who’ve made a career handwringing about how games might be sexist / racist / colonialist / queer-phobic / etc -- 

But who never quite get around to hiring or paying non-white people / queer people.

(PS: the OSR does. Zak’s paid me. Hydra Cooperative is publishing something I wrote.)

3. Best OSR module/supplement:

“Veins of the Earth”. That blackest brick of a book. I love it most.

4. My favorite house rule (by someone else):

I like usage die! “Torches (d6)” means you roll d6 after every turn that torch is used? 1-2, it drops a die size. 1-2 on a d4 means it’s gone. From The Black Hack, I think?

5. How I found out about the OSR:

Back-of-the-book blurbs, for real. Le Guin, who blurbed China Mieville, who blurbed Scrap & Patrick’s “Fire on the Velvet Horizon”. 

6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy:

Not really a utility, more a personal thing. The Lavender Marshes. Filling in a few of its hexes was my first taste of Gygaxian Democracy. Thank you, Ramanan S.

Otherwise, Links to Wisdom.

7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers:

It is still G+, right this very moment ... 

8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games:

Feel free to add me, at these places:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zedeck.siew Twitter: https://twitter.com/zedecksiew Discord: zedeck.siew#4237  MeWe: mewe.com/i/zedeck.siew

And these forums, I guess?

(I really want to do comments on this blog, too. But Tumblr makes it fiddly.)

9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough:

“Play your character, not the screenwriter writing your character.”

Because I hate hate HATE games trying to get into Creative Writing 101 rules-of-good-narrative nonsense.

10. My favorite non-OSR RPG:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, because I have a strange inexplicable love for Warhammer.

11. Why I like OSR stuff:

Nowhere else in roleplaying games do you get writing this fecund, this poetic, this muscular, this good. Serious: I’m in with the DIY D&D crowd because of the writing.

12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:

Khairul Hisham is a old-school Star Wars nerd who’s written about Malay-language references in Star Wars; Dirk Detweiler Leichty should get gallery shows:

13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be:

Patrick Stuart still has my heart.

14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is:

How to kill a god, and then turn it into a mine.

15. I'm currently running/playing:

Patrick’s running Yoon-Suin using Johnstone Metzger’s “The Nightmares Underneath”; Camilla Greer’s running Luka Rejec’s Ultraviolet Grasslands with The Black Hack 2E.

16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because:

Honestly I wasn’t around for this particular nerd bush-war, so I haven’t the faintest what’s ascending vs descending AC is even about???

17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice: 

Is at the top of this post. (Source)

The roundabout ingenuity required to turn the arse of a demon entity from mad alter realities into something as mundane as a cannon is totes OSR.

[janetehammer]

Ugh

I need a job, I haven't worked in a while. I'm a woman, over 40. All of this equals up to a great big (how to say this politely) fuck you from employers. I'm not sure when I became a big bag of crap. Useless and better left alone because to touch the bag would mean you wake up whatever critter is inside. Amidst all the junk and left over raviolios, is some weird breathing creature. It has white and gray hair, natural ( surely a sign of desperation) so best to kick it and leave it be. The only problem is, is needs to eat, it has medical problems, it wants to sleep...inside. No, it's not a dog, it's me. I'm getting old. Unlike my male counterparts I don't want to take skiing or skateboarding, you know dude like the old days. I want to have a home, for me and all the shit I have amassed over my lifetime.i want to travel. A lot. There are a lot of places to see and I don't need to be drunk to enjoy them now. I am a member of Generation X, one of the smallest and most fucked generation ever. We are following the baby boomers, who have wiped the planet clean of all rewards and goals, save for the millenials who will become the next boomer generation. Oh well. Let's sleep on it a bit more.