Newcomers are the primary beneficiaries of organizing labels, which make sense of as yet unmapped territory1. It is possible to take a scenic route to the same semantic destination by reciting minor arcana: resource depletion, lethality, creative problem solving, exploration-focused play, location-based design, and so forth. However, doing so is a cumbersome and awkward method of evocation, perhaps occasionally justified by greater precision, but suboptimal for widespread comprehension.

I run mostly old school rules. That is, I draw from a school of thought based primarily in the original 1974 D&D and Moldvay’s 1981 Basic D&D. I participate in a renaissance. That is, the explosion of creation2 and discussion3 informed by old school gaming traditions. This continues, at a constant or accelerating rate.

So, there was and is a renaissance of tabletop roleplaying games with old school genealogy. What is in a label? Without a label to organize and bind the concepts in these traditions together, it is unlikely that playing tabletop RPGs would be on my radar at all at this point in my life. I got into gaming back in 2011 only because a coworker invited me to a fourth edition D&D game, and that led me to OSR conversations online. If all I experienced then was mainstream fourth edition D&D, I doubt I would have persisted.

Rather than helping a marginalized group or suffering individual, polarization4 weaponizes substantive political concerns to sow divisions and play status games, sometimes to bolster egos, sometimes to build name recognition in service of selling products. I am not the neighborhood watch, or, even worse, an officer of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. But my conversations, are, I think, pretty chill.

I choose to focus on similarities rather than differences. I choose to ignore the changelings, those malevolent intelligences consciously or unconsciously adapted to coopting your attention, generating social reinforcement, and harnessing your emotion. That is my perspective. I doubt it will change any time soon.

1. Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, Principia Apocrypha↩

2. An incomplete and idiosyncratic list in approximately reverse chronological order: Blasphemous Roster, Mothership, Dead Planet, Echoes From Fomalhaut #1, Echoes From Fomalhaut #2, Thousand Thousand Islands, Frostbitten and Mutilated, Through Ultan’s Door #1, B/X Essentials: Classes and Equipment, Krevborna, B/X Essentials: Cleric and Magic-User Spells, Kidnap the Archpriest, Operation Unfathomable, Gardens of Ynn, Megadungeon #3, Epochrypha, Eldritch Cock, B/X Essentials: Monsters, Faux Pas, The Dolorous Stroke, Sounds of the Mushroom Kingdom, Knave, B/X Essentials: Adventures and Treasures, Witchburner, The Stygian Library, What Ho Frog Demons, Umberwell, XQ1 The Castle that Fell from the Sky, Ultraviolet Grasslands free extended intro, Field Guide to Hot Springs Island, Dark of Hot Springs Island, Veins of the Earth, Hyqueous Vaults, Tomb of the Serpent King, Macchiato Monsters ZERO, Mageblade! Zero, Marvels & Malisons, Wolf-Packs & Winter Snow, B/X Essentials: Core Rules, Dungeon Full of Monsters, Fever Swamp, Nameless Grimoire, Megadungeon #1, Maze of the Blue Medusa, Broodmother Skyfortress, A Market in the Woods, World of the Lost, Black Hack, Misty Isles of the Eld, Perdition, Nightmares Underneath, Maze Rats, Hubris, Do Not Let Us Die In the Dark Night of This Cold Winter, Comes the Mountain, Black Sun Deathcrawl, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Yoon-Suin, Stonehell Dungeon: Into the Hearth of Hell, Into the Odd, Lusus Naturae, Castle Gargantua, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, Wizard-Spawned Insanities, Perilous Wilds, Wormskin, Troika, Dread Machine, Along the Road of Tombs, Wreck of the Anubis, Lone Colossus of the Akolouthos Sink, Cthonic Codex, Vacant Ritual Assembly, Warband, No Salvation For Witches, Red and Pleasant Land, Excellent Travelling Volume, Adventure Fantasy Game, Terrors of the Ancient World, Dungeon Dozen, An Illustrated Bestiary of Fantastic Creatures, Deep Carbon Observatory, Undercroft, Sleeping Palace of the Feathered Swine, Servants of the Cinder Queen, Barrowmaze Complete, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Goblin Punch Book of Tigers, Pergamino Barocco, Hexenbracken, Teratic Tome, Hulks & Horrors, Beyond the Wall, Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Rules & Magic, On the NPC, Better Than Any Man, Seclusium of Orphone, Evil Wizards in a Cave, Pits & Perils, Space-Age Sorcery, Corpathium, Prison of the Hated Pretender, Tempus Gelidum, Obelisk of Forgotten Memories, Red Demon, DCC RPG, Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Dungeon Module ASE2-3: Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Hamsterish Hoard of Monsters, Other Dust, Rappan Athuk, Grimmsgate, Barrowmaze, Theorems and Thaumaturgy, Tales of the Dungeonesque and Grotesque, “An Echo Resounding”, Dwarf-Land, Small But Vicious Dog, Carcosa, Vornheim, Dungeon Module ASE1: Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Demonspore, Challenge of the Frog Idol, Tome of Adventure Design, Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, Realms of Crawling Chaos, Red Tide, Shadowbrook Manor, Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Deluxe Edition, Tower of the Stargazer, Dyson’s Delve, Stars Without Number, Death Frost Doom, One Page Dungeon Codex, Cursed Chateau, Stonehell Dungeon, Eldritch Weirdness Compilation, Knockspell, Spire of Iron and Crystal, Miscellaneum of Cinder, Tomb of the Iron God, Fight On!, Random Esoteric Creature Generator, Philotomy’s Musings, OSRIC, Mines of Khunmar↩

3. OSR blog list in OPML format, Links to Wisdom wiki↩

4. OSR logo controversy↩