[old and new D&D] OSR fundamentalism (warning: not insulting)

[Ian Charvill]

Hi Ron

I read A Hard Look... when you first put it up: the period of D&D it talks about predates me -- same with Naked Went the Gamer -- so it didn't really resonate with me, but I can see where you're coming from.  The OSR stuff resonates more becaused of recently playing some Basic D&D (Mentzer + the 'banned' edition of Palace of the Silver Princess).

If there's no god, religion cannot serve a function of getting you closer to god -- or closer to what god really wants -- so the function ends up being forming a society and all of the morality and status stuff that goes along with that.  And lots of non-functional elements as well because you're pointing societal efforts at something that just isn't there.

I think that's where your analogy gets it's traction: there is no real actual "the way people really played back then" -- no primer to old school play, because there was no old school play.  So a good chunk of the functional stuff around the OSR ends up being around identity politics, and status stuff, and morality after a fashion.  Where the parallels I'm drawing break down a little is that the extent to which religion points at nothing, the OSR can point at actual functional-now play even while it thinks it's pointing at play then.

Ian

[Joshua Bearden]

I'm pretty sure I'm a Christian fundamentalist. I was brought up in the Church of Christ which as far as I can make out is most greatly concentrated in Nashville. It is hard to be sure because the Church rejects the idea of any central moderation.  It also rejects the notion of denominationalism---meaning it wont admit to being one.  I say I still am one because I haven't openly rejected my background or upbringing and no-one has excommunicated me yet.  I'd love to try and suggest this gives me some special insight into the underlying analogy; but objective awareness of being a member of a religious organizatoin is yet another thing the Church of Christ strongly discouraged. We were not taught about the origin or  history of the denomination (cause it wasn't one).  I think we are meant to believe that we are the direct continuation of the first century Christian church of Paul and the apostles.  Only later in life I got some inkling that we might have a connection to something in Scotland and in the US called "the restoration movement" which sought to re-create the "early church".*

This involved rejecting almost all of the links from within the church to secular structures, organizations, power structures, even aesthetics. Not simply a separation of church and state but almost a separation of church and culture.  One very interesting side-effect of this is illustrated by the reaction by my family and the church to my playing D&D. Almost nothing. After about a year of collecting TSR books circa 1984, my father decided to dedicate a couple of Sunday school sessions to reviewing the books content with my friend and I. Legends and Lore, pagan gods ... no problem.  Magic and demons... fine.  There was a bit of a blip at illustrations in one of the modules I had.  (My father was troubled by what he felt was exploitative and anatomically inaccurate depictions of women. We had the same talk about the Black Cat and Dagger in my comic book collection.) But other than that, complete indifference - no reflection of the D&D hysteria coming out of Baptist and Pentacostal and major evangelicals earlier.

But that detail is way off topic. With regard to the analogy, some descriptions of the OSR movement do ring true to me as comparable to the idea of re-creating the 'early church'- stripping away as much hierarchy and institutional cruft as possible to try to live out the RPG scene as it existed.  However the same analogy occurred to me earlier when reading about Eero's "primitive D&D".  Perhaps the difference is that Eero's "early church" actual predates the D&D apostles and draws on what Eero believes is the same divine source of inspiration. 

* Wikipedia indicates that the restoration movement my church came out of can also be described as 'christian primitivism'.   Here's an apropos quote:
Fundamentally, "this vision seeks to correct faults or deficiencies [in the church] by appealing to the primitive church as a normative model.

Interestingly in my experience, the 'primitive church' is not sought through historical or anthropological research but deduced soley by interpreting and re-interpreting the biblical cannon. 

[Troy_Costisick]

(1) Gygax died in March 2008, leading to a mild amount of media coverage, but enough to make everyone who remembers the 1970's and '80's era of D&D play feel nostalgic for those days.  Lots of middle aged men suddenly felt curious about something that was a huge part of their youth and had been put aside.

(2) Long-tail PDF / POD sites had made the editions of D&D from the 1970's and 1980's available again, cheaply, to people who either had never seen the stuff, or who hadn't taken a fresh look at it in 25 years. 

(3) In mid-2008 Wizards of the Coast was releasing D&D 4e.  (The introduction of 4e did far more to grow the OSR than 3e ever did.)  The roll-out here was very badly handled, infuriating many fans of the Third Edition.  A lot of OSR-types saw 4e as WOTC giving up any pretense of "legitimate" D&D.  This is all identity politics, of course, but I do think there's some objective truth to it: just compare magic items Core 4e with, say, 2e to see what I mean (or the 1e mosnter manual with the 4e version). 

James makes some important points, here.  Gygax's death was certainly a can of gasoline thrown on the embers of a nascent OSR movement.  4e was definitely the last straw as many "gorgnards" got fed up with the Video-gamey aspects of the newest edition and its abandonment of a lot of what many perceived to be D&D sensibilities.  And it's not just the OSR guys that felt that way.

But I'd contend that 3e didn't do as much to grow the OSR, at least in its official published sense.  The D20/OGL put a ton of D&D content into the public domain, and some pre-2008 OSR guys were already taking advantage of it.  For instance, OSRIC was put out there in 2006.  And the "First-Wave" OSR guys relied heavily on OGL content to create their re-creations of Local D&D from the 70's and 80's.  Without 3e (and its accompanying OGL), the early OSR publishers would not have been as bold in their publishing, IMO.  Hence, we would very likely not have the OSR movement we do today.  It'd be much more "guys on the hillsides tending their goats."

[Ron Edwards]

Troy, I don't quite understand your final paragraph. Are you drawing a distinction between D20/OGL on the one side and D&D 3.0 on the other? I tend to think of that whole flurry of publishing as one big thing.

What's weird is that the independents could have gone ahead and published their works without any OGL anyway, and since they never say "D&D" on their stuff, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. There's no copyright on isolated components of games, so if they wanted to use "levels" or the six familiar attributes or whatever, there's no violation there.

People seem never to understand that TSR could not possibly sue successfully for using the  same names and mechanics for isolated pieces of your game, as long as your game as a product cannot be mistaken for one of theirs. But some OSR-associated conversations of mine recently indicate to me that this misapprehension - and fear of legal shutdown - sits quite heavily upon the minds of that design subculture. They don't seem to know that TSR did not successfully sue the Lejendary Adventures publishers but merely frightened them.

So one of the craziest aspects of the whole D20/OGL thing is that, if you wanted to cleave so close to the original that it'd be legitimately mistakable for it, then you're doing D20, so the OGL part is almost entirely either redundant or unnecessary.

Best, Ron

[Troy_Costisick]

Troy, I don't quite understand your final paragraph. Are you drawing a distinction between D20/OGL on the one side and D&D 3.0 on the other? I tend to think of that whole flurry of publishing as one big thing.

What's weird is that the independents could have gone ahead and published their works without any OGL anyway, and since they never say "D&D" on their stuff, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. There's no copyright on isolated components of games, so if they wanted to use "levels" or the six familiar attributes or whatever, there's no violation there.

People seem never to understand that TSR could not possibly sue successfully for using the  same names and mechanics for isolated pieces of your game, as long as your game as a product cannot be mistaken for one of theirs. But some OSR-associated conversations of mine recently indicate to me that this misapprehension - and fear of legal shutdown - sits quite heavily upon the minds of that design subculture. They don't seem to know that TSR did not successfully sue the Lejendary Adventures publishers but merely frightened them.

So one of the craziest aspects of the whole D20/OGL thing is that, if you wanted to cleave so close to the original that it'd be legitimately mistakable for it, then you're doing D20, so the OGL part is almost entirely either redundant or unnecessary.

Best, Ron

You're exactly right, Ron!  They were afraid that T$R/WotC would come after them legally until the D20/OGL became a thing.  Remember when Garfield patented trading card games and WotC threatened other companies like FRP and ICE?  That stuck with a lot of people.  Even now, if you ask a WotC employee they'll tell you they own the patent on Trading Card Games.  Everything else is just a collectible card game.  Crazy, but people know about this.  And yes, D&D 3.0 and D20/OGL are different things for me.  There are games beyond tabletop RPGs that use D20 for their mechanics (video games especially) and advertise it as a D20 game.  They want nothing to do with D&D because to the mass market, D&D means a specific thing (altho, like you've been saying, it's a different thing to each local group). 

Anyway, I'm getting off track.  The First Wave OSR guys wanted to claim to be using the OGL as a basis for their game so that they have SOME tie to D&D, but not the current form!  And not 3.0 either.  I dunno, it's an appeal to authority, I guess.  They could say they've got some D&D DNA in them, but they're a retro-evolved creature that's just using that DNA to bring an extinct species back to life.  At least that's my reading of the situation.  And I do want to say, that they're games are awesome and fun.  I hope I'm not being insulting, here.

I don't know if this would fit your analogy well enough, but you could maybe consider it a splinter group like "Free Will Baptists" or something.  I think that's a fundamentalist group, right?

[Ron Edwards]

I still can't believe people fell for this. The patent that Wizards took out on Magic: the Gathering only operates for the totality of the mechanics. So you could imitate 90% of those mechanics and be immune to suit. Especially after Atlas put out On the Edge and were careful to instruct people to tilt the cards only so far, and called it "cranking," everyone was apparently convinced that Wizards had patented tapping as such and just about shit their pants with terror. I don't care how many times I explained it, back then until this very day, and still they're shitting their pants about it.

[glandis]

On topic: legally real or not (more on that in a bit), I think the existence of the OGL - and the fact no one ever got in trouble over using "character advancement" stuff that wasn't included as "Open Game Content" - FELT like a huge permission to do what you coulda-mostly-always have done anyway. A lot of "OSR" stuff I've looked at is clearly house rules that were around for decades but that were now "safe" to polish up and make public. The fears about this I think go back way before Lejendary Adventures to the RoleAids/etc. days, when for a while they COULD be "official" D&D products and then TSR decided to stop that. My recent review of old modules uncovered more than a few stickered-over covers that were once "official" or "approved" and then weren't. This may help with the back-to-the-original feel of the fundamentalism - back to before the lawyers started pulling their tricks.

Off-topic: I know people who went bankrupt fighting total-bullshit patent claims. They were in the right, but the opposition had better/more expensive/more patient lawyers. I don't know if this ever actually happened in the RPG industry, but at least in theory, it could. I hate HATE *HATE* the idea that people might get scared-off of doing perfectly moral, legal, and cool things by bully-lawyers, but financial realities sometimes trump the "facts."

[Ron Edwards]

Not too off-topic. I looked into this in some detail. I couldn't find a single case regarding RPGs in which the big-company successfully enforced any such policy in actual court. The only examples I found that were brought fully into pay-your-lawyer land were the reverse, as when a judge upheld White Wolf's claim vs. whoever produced Underworld.

I do find a lot of talk about the "big guys" have more money and meaner lawyers, but again, the only genuine impact seems to be in intimidation, not the costs proving prohibitive in actual court. If the Gygax/TSR case is any indication, then the lesson should be don't cave. The company owners were merely scared off - it never went to court.

Gordon, if you know of a case or cases in which the actual money and other legal procedures made defending the rightful claim prohibitive, let me know.

[Troy_Costisick]

Yeah, to my knowledge, no RPG mechanics have ever been patented.  The only gaming patents of this sort I'm aware of are Magic's patent and the clicky patent thing from Mage Knight/Hero Clix.

[glandis]

So, to be clear - I used to work for with patent lawyers & IP (Intellectual Property) types of many stripes, but I'm a software guy, not a legal guy. I have no special knowledge of ANY cases that are RPG-(or even gaming)specific. When I say "I know people who went bankrupt fighting total-bullshit patent claims," I'm talking about technology-stuff and engineering-stuff, not gaming-stuff.

For the discussion at hand, I think patent and trademark/copyright can be looked at as the same thing - tools for one guy to tell some other guy what they can or can't do. Legally, they're very different (or so I was always told). In general, my guess (only a guess, I'm not a lawyer, and all that) is Ron is right - anyone willing to take their chances and/or possibly fight (and pay lawyers) years in court and etc. would "win" most of the RPG stuff. And usually that wouldn't even be needed, as the "big" company in RPG terms may not actually have the money/will for super-massive lawyer-stuff either.

But - what I remember of the very early, first-gen "TSR flexes legal muscle" is hearing from very small companies that they got cease-and-desist letters, talked to a lawyer about what it'd cost to even start fighting, and just gave up. Note that "giving up" in this case just meant putting stickers on products, but ... there's a weird effect. These early companies (well, usually individuals, probably) were understandably upset and wanted everyone to know that TSR was kinda being a bully. But I wouldn't be surprised if the effect was more "TSR might come after me - shit!", than "TSR's a bully but they can't really hurt me." So by being publicly upset, they actually contributed to people being afraid to publish stuff. And - people sometimes just lose their enthusiasm when confronted by this kind of thing.

Maybe that's what TSR-lawyers were going for - psychological effects, similar to the "network externalities" stuff that Ryan Dancy talked about with the OGL (that also ticked some gamers off).

You can read one take on the history at http://www.skotos.net/articles/TTnT_/TTnT_209.phtml. I think what I'm remembering/talking about is what happened to the not-Judge's Guild folks when TSR decided they actually would give a license to Judge's Guild (and therefore others without that license were "violating the copyright" or whatever). It happened to Judge's Guild later, when TSR again changed their mind, but there were problems brewing in the market then anyway.

So in short: on the one hand, Ron's right; on the other, stepping in lawyer usually makes your shoes smell.

Also interesting - the "Why did GDW go out of business?" section at http://www.cgi101.com/~lkw/faq.html. One thing it points out is that winning/losing and money aren't the only ways that dealing with a legal hassle can hurt you.

[glandis]

Whoops, I gotta add - there IS some stuff about trademark usage that clearly could get you in trouble, but a minor amount of attention (lawyer-time or trust-yourself research) is probably enough to avoid that.

[Ron Edwards]

Yes.

So, why did I say this wasn't off-topic? Because we're talking about the relationship of the modern independent publishers who consider themselves the rightful heirs and representatives of "original" "real" D&D - regardless of its inaccuracy, it's both sincere and productive - to a perceived orthodoxy. And I mean a perceived institutional orthodoxy with (again) perceived nigh-metaphysical temporal power; I'm minded of the long-standing fear and horror felt toward the Roman Catholic Church by the American fundamentalists, not only during the period I'm using for my analogy, but all the way up until 1973.*

Such a perception needs the orthodox power to be overwhelming. Being beleaguered is part of the self-identity, part of the justification for the fervency of devotion and commitment. It is not merely expression they seek, but resistance.

I'm saying that at least some of the persistence of the "TSR is all-powerful, it will know you mutter against it no matter how small you are, and its angels will crush you where you stand" image is an active feature of the mind-set we're discussing. It's even desirable from this point of view, to the extent that it's a motivator. So when I say that TSR is no such thing and am impatiently waved away, it's not mere ignorance or subcultural branding at work, it's part of the very fires that burn brightly enough to forge these games. Lose that fear and you lose your rebel ferocity.

Best, Ron

* After which the Schaeffers were able to close that rift by ramping up the pushback against the Roe vs. Wade decision and recasting it strictly in moral-religious terms.

[glandis]

Such a perception needs the orthodox power to be overwhelming. Being beleaguered is part of the self-identity, part of the justification for the fervency of devotion and commitment. It is not merely expression they seek, but resistance.

And you know, the OGL being concurrent with Ryan Dancy talking about "network externalities" - in addition to the (possibly mixed) relief that the "TSR will get you" boogeyman was gone, they had a new, "all your gamers are belong to us" boogeyman saying that because they were the big boys, they'd make all gamers play their way. The TSR lawsuit oppressor may have faded, but we can still resist the Borg 3.0 ...

(Aside: I never understood how people possibly thought the Forge was saying "you have to play our way." I mean, I was/am not immune to the allure of being the beleaguered, but that - I really didn't see how. Maybe I'd underestimated how sensitive segments of gamer culture were just then to anything remotely-interpretable as "there's a One Way to play"?)

[Callan S.]

(Aside: I never understood how people possibly thought the Forge was saying "you have to play our way."

Because of the extra identity it lends to their way.

[Troy_Costisick]

Gordon, if you know of a case or cases in which the actual money and other legal procedures made defending the rightful claim prohibitive, let me know.

I'm not Gordon, but after having this in my brain last night, I woke up this morning and remembered something Mark Rosewater once told me about.  He's the design chief for M:TG.  When Magic: the Gathering first came out, it wasn't actually owned by Wizards of the Coast. Peter and Richard Garfield created a shell company called Garfield Games that licensed MTG to WotC.  I asked Mark why, and he said there was some sort of legal battle WotC was in over one of its RPGs back then, and if the lawsuit shuttered the company, Peter and Richard wanted Magic to be spared from the settlement.  Mark couldn't remember all the details, though.

This morning, I did some research and the truth probably will come as no surprise to anyone.  The lawsuit involved Palladium's Kevin Siembieda.  I guess WotC came out with this "multi-system" game called Primal Order that Kevin felt overstepped Palladium's copyrights.  Kevin sued and the suit was settled through arbitration.  This was back when Wizards was a very small company.  You can read about some of it here: http://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory1.phtml

I don't know if you would label that "successful" or not, Ron, but the parallels to the OSR and TSR can perhaps be seen if you squint real hard.  They didn't want to say DnD was the backbone for their game because they could get sued for copyright infringement like WotC did in its early days.  D20 made it easy to avoid legal trouble.  But then again, this was a very obscure case.  I doubt too many people are even aware of it.