Wherein the author describes social complexity within a closed system (in this case, the OSR), the network effect, fairy tales breaking kayfabe (my words), and why the same modules get recommended again and again.
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Just read this earlier today and thought about posting here too. I really appreciate the depth of inquiry and analysis here (and in many Taskerland posts). Always gets me to question my assumptions and turn over rocks. I agree in principle that more emphasis could be put on a greater diversity of content and creators. However I think it’s a little unfair in calling out the list in question here. If I remember correctly that was specifically in response to (and I think these lists tend to be about this) a question about what are the best adventures to introduce new players (coming from 5e/OC/Trad games) to the OSR play style. So that list was created to minimize the number of new variables you are exposing the new players to. Basically OSR play principles and mostly everything else is familiar and comfortable. Also these are known quantities that have been played and confirmed over and over for a more or less verified “good experience.” I could be conflating all that a bit.
Anyway, I think if the question had been: “what are the unique and awesome OSR modules that break the mold or otherwise subvert and challenge traditional DnD assumptions?” It would create a very different list.
Maybe a list worth making?
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I didn’t see the list as a “call out” (Moreau even says " I am in no way angry or disappointed with him [the blogger]." I think the argument is that it represents another network effect in the scene. I myself am responsible for this, and as someone constantly on the look for new/original works, it makes for a real signal-to-noise situation. One nitpick is that my own Rise of the Blood Olms is not a frequently suggested work, and it does appear on that list!
But you’re right of course: the subtext is that people often ask for “introductory” adventures, and so the same list repeats again and again (for good reason). But what does it leave out?
I’m with you on making a list of “unknown” adventures.
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I’m thrown by “greed transforms you into a dragon” as an example of “lol random,” that’s straight from Sigurd, BUT i do like the call to action here
Escaping the gravity of Adventures Everyone Knows is hard! Especially when people are looking for representatives of the genre, that typically means relatively “safe” recs that don’t push expectations, just deliver on them very well. But I think we can afford for weirder or more challenging recs to go around, especially since, by nature, not everyone will be giving them. Adding more options just means adding more options.
On my own site I have a rec list of different systems, and I had to try hard to come up with a spread that really showed off the variety I wanted to, but it was very satisfying to put together
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I agree, that example doesn’t really work because it is referencing something else. I do agree that it is a thing however (I put an example in the comments on the blog).
…and now i’m thinking of a different side of the problem. How do new modules get momentum at all? Is the best infrastructure there really DTRPG and Itch’s New Releases sort?
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Yeah, I agree “call out” was inaccurate. Probably enough to say he highlighted it. Anyway I think another issue here is how much available playtime the average gamer or group has. Even for a group that meets weekly that list of 20 pretty tried and true modules represents months, maybe years, of play. If that’s were we start, and we don’t take a chance on other content, we may never be in a position to recommend something else - if we assume having played is a prerequisite for recommendation - which it doesn’t need to be. My point is game time is a pretty rare and precious commodity. I think the inclination is to maximize the chances of success/fun so taking a risk on a more obscure module is tough, and leaves us in a place to continue to only recommended the same modules because they are what we have experienced.
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It’s funny — my tastes in tabletop adventures are also very influenced by Marxism and materialism, and I also struggle to find adventures I like, although I’ve found certain ways to integrate fairy-tale B.S. into my setting and make my peace with it.
My problem with the predominant tastes and tastemakers in the OSR is the emphasis on form and function over content.
People want adventures that feel complete: they want something that checks all the boxes on Arnold K’s dungeon checklist or Mausritter’s sandbox creation checklist. They want a long list of features and things to encounter in the adventure.
What content is actually filling in those boxes is touched upon in reviews, sure, but it tends to be treated as secondary. It feels like we’re in the early stages of video game criticism where everything is treated as a product first and a work of art second.
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Interesting, as founder of a worker co-op and anarcho-socialist myself my interest in RPGs has NOTHING to do with marxism, lol. I’ve never even thought about it, and am continually surprised how often it comes up (particularly around the younger crowd).
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For me it was a reaction to the boring cosmology of official D&D.
History comes down to a struggle between the good gods who want good things, the evil gods who want evil things, and the heroes who want to stop the evil things. And don’t get me started on lawful and chaotic things…
I think most people in the OSR want something more interesting than that… the Cairns and Dolmenwoods of the world seem to have gone in the direction of “draw from real religion and folklore instead” and certainly I like that better.
But to me that official D&D narrative reeked of idealism, and my reaction was to want materialism. I wanted a fantasy world that has evolved according to a law-governed process, even if the laws of magic are included somewhere in there.
So I have a lot of notes for a setting along these lines. Something where magic and gods and fairies evolved over time instead of simply existing from the outset.
Anyway, I recognize the more interesting piece of this post for most people is probably the criticism of criticism (incidentally something Marx was familiar with!).
I don’t have the distaste for fairy tales or Mausritter-style stuff that the author does, but I do have a hankering for a more realistic style and conflict-based approach than a lot of OSR stuff seems to offer—in part because so much of it is laser-focused on a specific kind of dungeon, maybe?
Maybe the 5e space has more “serious world” modules, but there’s a reason I like Longwinter, some WFRP modules, N3, and B10 (among old TSR modules): they feel more like a real space, sometimes with real problems. Liminal Horror does that because it’s the real world. (I don’t know that it’s really less fairy-tale-esque than Dolmenwood or Black Wyrm, if not in actual fairy tale elements but in sudden breaks with reality. But it’s the real world.
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I was thinking about how I don’t want the musty medfan stuff and the OSR mostly is about it, or weird things often trying too much to be different. I like wuxia, where’s my NSR wuxia scene, right?
But I was afraid if everybody goes that route, then we explode in a myriad micriscopic niche scenes maybe?
Here’s the answer I got: I want to play wuxia, I need to form my wuxia band and start playing. Indie rock band analogy. Starting a band includes playing in the most Butler-foresaken places, in social - community centers of small towns, and whatnot. I want entertainment, I do it myself, that’s the gospel.
I just saw this blogpost after this, which is also an attempt at finding a more serious tone in OSR adventures: A Collection of Middle Earth Adjacent OSR Modules | Certain Fathoms
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I feel like I consider these both to be issues separately, but find the juxtaposition of the two to be a bit at odds
Like I think people (and largely Reddit) should be recommending a wider range of games by a more diverse set of people.
I also think that seeing a wider range of genres would also be good, and there are under explored directions to take OSR games.
However, a lot of the larger and more diverse set of writers are often drawing from folklore, or going in the direction of more animal adjacent whimsey, or going even more strongly in the direction of metaphor in games. It could be just my personal interests, but if I were to make a list of more diverse writers I think it would be even farther in the direction the author doesn’t like.
As a side note, I also think that these genres are not just random stuff happening, they have their own internal logic and are almost always on some level commentary on society more broadly
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Just throwin this out there, Our Vale of Discontent is one I love, but never really seems to get recommended.
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that line about greed turning you into a dragon being “lol random” was a great UNRELIABLE NARRATOR moment.
but it does show how a diversity of adventures is good, because we all do have very personal internal worlds of logic that are critical for playing RPGs in a way that satisfies. finding the right match is important-- probably just as, or more important, for adventures than for rulesets.
as a side note, interestingly, the same critique of using marxist materialism as a way to do history kinda translates to his RPG problem as well-- its a very limiting way of viewing the world. like, if you are so focused on running that lens thru everything you experience, then its not surprising that the same person doesn’t “get” fairy tales-- since they operate in the psychological/mythic/cultural realm, which marxist materialists downplay.
and going down this hole, i have a friend that is also very baked into that specific leftist world, and they ALSO always end up playing campaigns with lots of hirelings and spreadsheets, etc.
all this is to say, once again, that a diversity of adventures and play experiences is important…
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I agree with a lot of this article, but I find myself a bit unexplainably offended at the notion of the Brandonsford dragon being “lol random”.
It’s a metaphor. Don’t people get metaphors!
But that also leads me to think back to the idea of greater variety in modules. I, personally, really enjoy the symbolic and abstract while others don’t. I wonder if instead of asking what modules we should recommend to newcomers, the question should be what exactly that newcomer is looking for in a module.
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There are bits and pieces of this that I really like but at the end of the day, I’m not 100% clear that I understand the critique? Is it just that popular modules aren’t to the author’s taste? Is it that most popular modules are written by white men? Is that these two things make it hard for the author to find works that are more to their taste? If the problem is the former, there’s not a whole lot to do except write modules you like better. If the latter, support and promote a more diverse group of authors. I don’t think they’re so hard to find?
Edited to add: Also, people keeping pointing out that the author calls the greedy dwarf transforming into a dragon random, and it’s obviously not, but I do think this gets at a fundamental issue I’m having with their complaints. Yes, there’s no material cause for the transformation, in the sense of a scientific explanation, but the metaphor at the core of the transformation that magic literalizes is about material social relations. That drive for power and wealth leads to rapacious violence is a materialist statement about social relations. If you like stuff about complex, materially driven social relations that the author says they do, this kind of fairy story is great! They give you great tools to tell exactly the kind of socially complex story the author says they want. There are tons of modules that do this kind of stuff really well, Where the Wheat Grows Tall, Beyond the Pale, Deep Carbon Observatory, it’s all there. So I think what bugs me is the way the author connects their preference for social complexity with their interest in materialism, when what they really want is more scientific realism, rather that materialism. These are not the same things.
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its a fascinating article BECAUSE of this tension. the author identifies a real problem, but also has an internal struggle to explain the problem because of some built in assumptions. this struggle mirrors the problem itself in an interesting way.
the way I see it, when writing an adventure (especially OSR/NSR style), one of the big devices is that the author creates situations that lead to player decisions that have consequences. classic example, “which faction to support?”. like, what faction is going to help me, help my cause. but also, which faction do I feel comfortable role playing as an ally to. etc. then also, how will this faction react to my support, and how will they proceed in the future.
this all exists outside of game mechanics in most games. so its operating purely in the fictional realm. and it relies on the adventure, the GM, and the players to have some sort of shared fictional framework to work correctly. when it fails, it turns into what this author describes as LOL RANDOM. it seems random because its outside of their framework for how the fictional world works (in this case because of an interesting failure of imagination). so they feel like as a player/GM, its useless. random. an immersion breaking joke.
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and sorry to spam this thread. but i want to take on PART 2 here. which is to say, the thing the author is literally talking about: how to find OSR adventures I want to run?
here I think the answer to their specific question is we should be more aggressively APPENDIX N-ing adventures. like, sharing at a marketing level all the work that the adventure builds on; a good appendix N should have enough information in there (maybe some non-fiction/non literature/non media things in there too) for people to find a shared universe, or at least a universe that they will have fun playing in.
this fictional world that is baked into the adventure is maybe… the most important part for a lot of tables, especially as the game mechanics are minimized.
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