[BLOG] Year Eight: New Foundations

The Hall of Mirrors stretches beyond the Two Infinities...

This blog started on 5 August 2016, making this part of the year a good  time to take stock and reflect. Things have been going fairly well, although more quietly on this front than others.

The State of the Blog

There is “it’s so over”, there is “we are so back”, and there is “it is what it is”. 2024’s blogging was definitely “it is what it is”. The blogging spirit left me, and that means I wrote all of 10 posts over the year. This was a better option than forcing it: if you do something, you should try to do it well, and I felt I was running out of interesting things to say in the form of blog posts. The nuts-and-bolts talk migrated to Discord and published materials, while I felt like my reviews were getting a bit repetitive. This means some of the truly excellent stuff that came out this year ended up unreviewed. Running a review blog demands having your finger on the pulse of the scene, which I didn’t, so it wouldn’t be a fair sampling either if I picked and chose a few things I liked. Fortunately, new contestants have stepped up to run their own reviews on a consistent basis. Ben Gibson of Coldlight Press writes them regularly (including the random itch.io pick, which is always fun in the same way Russian Roulette is a great party game), and Prince and Bryce are as busy as ever.

For the record, here are the reviews I did do since last time:

• 5 with the Prestigious Monocled Bird of Excellence. This rating was not awarded this year. Wormskin, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, The Tome of Adventure Design, and Yoon-Suin are still up there. I had one candidate, but since the review was not written, the title could not be awarded. This is unfair; perhaps to be fixed at a later time. 
  
• 5 was awarded to one release, Skalbak Sneer: The Stronghold of Snow by Jason Blasso. A grim murder machine in an icy realm, where men’s hearts are warmed by the thought of the blood they have spilled, this is true excellence in the lair assault genre.
• 4 was not awarded this year.
• 3 was awarded to two releases: Shrine of the Demon Goddess by Jonathan Becker – unassuming homemade word doc, strong meat-and-potatoes AD&D; and Benighted Betrothal by Sandor Gebei, a mini-sandbox centred around a Viking marriage, with a strong social dimension and a weaker physical sandbox.
• 2 and 1 were not awarded this year. Shovelware hucksters and assorted crapmongers, this has been your year: * * THE FIERY SWORD OF VENGEANCE * * was merciful… this time.

This produces an annual average of 3.7, quite above the eight-year total of 3.1. With this sample size, the stat is not really meaningful, so it is only noted here for curiosity. However, continuing the trend from last year, it also seems that the true bilge has moved away from old-school gaming, while high-quality material has emerged more prominently. This means nature is healing: if you are looking for good stuff, you are more likely to find it, and you will find more of it. There is a good number of people, many of them new at publishing, who know what they are doing.

Recently, I have gotten back into posting play reports. More short-form and bird’s-eye than previously, I do these on Discord and collect them into blog posts. Discord has a character limit, so it helps you to focus and not overdo it (which used to be a problem, and the reason I had to abandon doing it). This seems to have started a trend on the CAG server, where posters are now posting regular dispatches from their games. This is a good development, as it provides a look into how people run their campaigns, and what their groups are up to. On the community level, it puts the spotlight on actual play, the most worthwhile, but often least visible aspect of gaming (a remarkably private activity). Maybe this brevity is really how it should be done; it recalls early examples from Diplomacy zines that are still enjoyable almost 50 years on.

Sword & Magic at MondoCon, Hungary

The State of the Fanzine & Other Projects

This year, EMDT has published 13 releases, so what was lost on the blogging side was made up elsewhere. These include three larger hardcovers, which took a few years to get into shape. First and foremost are the Sword and Magic 2^nd edition rules and the accompanying Gamemaster’s Guidelines. These books, written for the Hungarian audience, present a complete old-school game that’s not quite canonically “OSR” in its rules (it emulates, but does not reconstruct, old TSR editions), but fits well into the Classic Adventure Gaming spirit, with a strong sword & sorcery vibe. The rules will remain for the local audience (although I am aware of two partial translations into the English, one of which I own as a physical copy!), but the GM’s book shall receive a translation under the title Gamemaster’s Guidelines Beyond Fomalhaut. The shall undergo some editing so it is less rulebook and more OSRIC supplement, but most of it is a translation job – the illustrations, layout, and other bells and whistles are mostly done. This is going to be my main 2025 project.

I have also been publishing the Erillion materials in the Hungarian, which has given me the opportunity to do some polish, commission new illustrations, and add new adventures that didn’t appear in Echoes From Fomalhaut. Ultimately, these will form the basis for Erillion, Land of Adventure, an English hardcover with all the campaign materials in one place. I also had the privilege of publishing T. Foster’s excellent Melonath Falls, with a translation by Istvan Szabadi. Trent is working on an English edition of the full campaign Melonath comes from under the title The Brink of Calamity, so you should watch out for that one when it arrives.

Sword & Magic translations,
courtesy of Cameron Hawkey and Terrible Sorcery

In the English, the main release was Khosura: King of the Wastelands. It got delayed (mostly because of the need to wrap up Sword &Magic, an expected time-sink that turned into the customary even larger time-sink), but in the end, it turned out fine. I have been very happy with the illustrations and cartography; the contributors did a great job on these. Khosura is the sort of regional sandbox I have long wanted to release, with a combination of city, dungeon, and wilderness adventures. Perhaps the best balance is smaller modular adventure/setting materials and the occasional large book like Khosura (first released in bits and pieces over multiple Fight On! issues). Khosura opens the door for further Fomalhaut stuff; a revised players’ gazetteer first (the one in Fight On! is from 2008), and others later (Urmalk the Boundless in Echoes #12 was the first thing from the most recent campaign to see the light).

I also published an issue of Echoes, although it could have been two – the next one’s probably for early next year. Chomy’s No Artpunk winning Webs of Past and Present received an edition, along with Cloister of the Frog-God and Drifting Lands, a campaign gazetteer for the setting where Erillion, the Twelve Kingdoms, and Kassadia are set. This has been a fairly good year, all things considered.

"The Keep on the Borderlands for Assholes"
Rides Again

The State of the Old School: Strongholds

Old-school gaming started as a highly specific thing: a movement to rediscover old D&D versions, play styles, and design concepts. There was always slightly more to it – Gamma World and Encounter Critical were early examples of non-D&D systems that fit into this sphere – but ultimately, it was about identifying and separating a distinct form of gaming that was very different from the modern mainstream. Over time, as the concept of old-school games broadened, the “OSR” became something that could be about anything as long as it was tentatively connected to the mechanics, concepts, or overall vibe of old D&D; or not even that. The term became meaningless, and “anything goes, everyone is welcome” just led to the consequences these phrases always do: an unintelligible mess. Whatever meaning the OSR label had was lost.

Fortunately, this trend has not led to the complete dissolution of old-school gaming. On the contrary, the fascination with this particular tradition has been revived in smaller, more precisely focused communities. This involves a return to the original creative wellspring, but ironically, also the early old-school gaming of the 2000s, a “revival of a revival”. This took a few years to re-emerge in a coherent way, but these centres are now sufficiently strong and lively again to sustain activity, organise contest, and cultivate excellence in old-school gaming. There is a renewed community in place that’s smaller, but just large enough to occupy a good place on the hobbyist / small press boundary, and strongly quality-oriented. The Classic Adventure Gaming Discord in particular has become a good hub for both old hands and new people, and maintains a high signal-to-noise ratio.

This community is not wide open. It is a walled garden, or perhaps a stronghold on the borderlands, standing proud against the lowly horders of the Mörklings and other artpunk mutants. Jokes aside, while the OSR became a movement about “anything”, CAG is about “something”. It has more strongly defined preferences about doing things, and hews closer to the original games, particularly Gygaxian AD&D. That carries the spirit of exclusion, of setting boundaries, and of more strict definitions. There are gates that are being kept and watched. Some things don’t belong neatly, or at all. This is the price of emphasising the specific, but also the precondition for maintaining a distinct creative vision. This should be familiar to observers of the modern world in general: communities have to be a bit defensive and a bit active in policing their boundaries to maintain their cohesion against the great flattening and interchangeability of hyper-globalisation. This offers benefits of cultivating something not found elsewhere, something with its own flavour or intellectual distinction, and a community capable of making something high-quality. Anyone can make generic parmesan cheese or dessert wine in industrial quantities, but proper Parmigiano Reggiano or Tokaji are a cut above the rest, and they are that way because there are limitations and quality standards in place with respect to who can make it, and how. These qualities deserve protection.

A Tough Nut to Crack

Striving for excellence in the emerging CAG community has been particularly fruitful. No Artpunk has emerged as a module writing contest with a strong creative vision, a healthy competitive spirit, and a relentless dedication to quality. NAP-III, dedicated to high-level adventuring, has produced 700 pages worth of strong material in a neglected genre. This is a return to AD&D tradition, a lot of which was dedicated to levels 9 and up. It was reinvigorating to rediscover low-level “survival D&D”, but it is just as exhilarating to see powerful characters operating in a complex, highly challenging environments. The contest provided just that kind of material, in spades. While Prince of Nothing (who should be known as King of Nothing based on recent developments) will be taking a break from running the contest this year, NAP has a worthy successor in the Adventure Sites Contest (although these are short-form adventures, which do sacrifice some worthwhile complexity). Standalone adventures, drawing on CAG principles, are now starting to appear.

Other signs of revival are also afoot. In Europe, Cauldron Con is now in its second year, and set to expand in 2025 after running out of space in 2024 (available registrations were filled up in a few days, leaving only a long waiting list). Fight On! has finally returned from its long slumber, riding on a mighty purple worm while being pursued by dragon-riding adventurers. A strong issue #15 has been produced, and #16 is in the works. It is delightful to see it back, and particularly that it is not an afterthought or a nostalgia ride – it is just Fight On! as it has always been.

There are challenges left. There is the risk of dilution – expanding too quickly but losing the culture, as had happened before. However, the main one is found in the dominant communication platform. Discord is an excellent venue for real-time discussion and building a community; however, it is less accessible than forums and blogs if you are not on that particular server, or you have missed the last few weeks’ talk. This is a structural weakness that has also affected 4chan’s /osrg/ megathread, which has a good focus, but little preserved memory. You can dig up Dragonsfoot, K&KA or OD&D Discussion threads from 2005, but Discord talk from three weeks ago is just gone. This places a long-term emphasis on actual, published materials which can stand the test of time, and on codifying what is being discussed in zine articles, well-reasoned blog posts, and other kinds of effortposting.

What works for our new domain, though, is its scale: it is small enough to be personal, relatable and cohesive, but large enough to leave a footprint and provide value to the participants. Gaming is rooted in friend groups organised on the bottom-up principle and voluntary association, and this spirit of camaraderie and fruitful exchange is what makes creative communities flourish. May ours withstand the great tests, and achieve even greater glories! Here is to new horizons!

And we shall look at the OSR in the sun
from the Salisbury Plain...