The Imagined Game

I've only just realised that's a punny title. It appears I can't help myself.

I'm always trying to think of how to explain the OSR, especially to relatively inexperienced gamers, who are often the ones to rock up at my table. It's tricky for a number of reasons, not least of which are that it's largely defined in contrast to a playstyle these new players will have little or no experience with, and that the priorities of the OSR as a quote-unquote "movement" apparently keep shifting. But I think I've found a new way to describe it, the way I'm going to explain to people, from now on, why you'd play using an older ruleset, or even something completely different that's designed to evoke an older ruleset.

Do you remember hearing about ttrpgs for the first time? It's an experience I imagine you and I share, and share with a lot of people. I can't remember the actual event itself, but I definitely remember the experience - confusion and befuddlement giving way to wonder. The explanation usually goes something like this:

This is a game where you play a fantasy character living in a fantasy world, like Conan, Legolas or Ged. You go on adventures, delve into dungeons (cue explanation of dungeons for the inexperienced), and perhaps explore the perilous wilderness. You uncover treasures and magical artefacts, and increase in power and ability as you become more experienced. You can play whatever sort of character you want (within reason), and even if you can't necessarily succeed at everything you try and do, you can certainly try anything.

To the newcomer, especially one who is imaginative, young, and relatively un-jaded, this sort of description sets the mind afire with the possibilities of such a game. And it's been the way we describe ttrpgs for their whole history (with apologies to those introduced through non-fantasy angles) - the introduction to the 5e D&D Player's Handbook is still very much in this vein. Often, newer (post 2000) versions will involve a comparison to video games, noting that ttrpgs offer much more freedom than their computerised counterparts. To the newcomer, this is freedom they didn't even necessarily realise was lacking from video gaming. The possibilities seem boundless; one is instantly drawn into imagining what such a game would be like, perhaps not on the level of rules, but at the level of game feel and playstyle.

Call this the "imagined game" - the game we have in our heads when we first hear about what an rpg is.

The above describes a very personal experience, of course, but I think it's one that many (most?) gamers will share. But what comes next is, I think, the experience that binds the OSR scene together specifically. Because when we first sit down to play a modern game of (usually) D&D, it can feel very different from the imagined game.

There are lots of reasons this might be, and moreover, I think that they've changed as the dominant playstyle and rulesets have changed. I think the main reason right now is that the modern playstyle is intensely story-focused. We sell rpgs as a very freeform experience, and this gets built into the imagined game - you don't imagine yourself progressing scene-by-scene through a fantasy story of someone else's devising, you more imagine that you'll be getting into scrapes of your own accord like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or perhaps taking up causes as you personally see fit à la Conan. Or maybe you just think of zigzagging journeys across the landscape and into dungeons as in The Hobbit - I'm sure my own expectations were a hazy mix of many such examples.

I want to posit here that the desire for OSR-style play arises as the desire to correct these perceived deficiencies in the game as it is actually played - the desire, that is, to play something more closely resembling the imagined game. When our hopes and expectations for the potential of rpgs as they are described run aground on the realities of the dominant playstyle of the time, those who don't give up hope cast around for other ways of playing that might better fit those expectations. Reports of the "old school" playstyle (or memories of play, for older gamers) seem to fit the heady image in our minds better than the modern one, so we come to the OSR to pursue that game, the one in our imagination.

This version of events could potentially explain a lot. First off, it would explain the shifts that have occurred in the OSR over its history (on which see this very informative article over at Knight at the Opera). The shift away from emphasising "Rulings over Rules" (although it's never fully gone away) and towards "Balance is Unimportant" (or "Combat is War") and "No Railroading, Ever" as the core OSR credos makes sense as a shift in the deficiencies of the current version of the real game when compared to the imagined game - rules-heavy 3e contrasts with the imagined game in different ways from narrative-focused 5e.

Does this make the OSR out to be an intrinsically reactionary movement? Well, in a sense, it does. But I don't think we need to be particularly coy about that. On one level, it shouldn't surprise us that a scene that self-describes as "Old School" establishes itself against the specific aspects of the "New School" that it construes as lacking something. But there's also the main point that I'm trying to make here, that the OSR is committed to something timeless, and thus non-reactionary, that provides the core of its values - namely the imagined game. The specific credos can shift, since credos are just the points that it's important to draw people's attention to, and they can change with context. What defines the core values of the OSR is pursuit of the imagined game.

Tunnels, potentially featuring Trolls

The pursuit of the imagined game is nothing new, either. Ken StAndre, author of arguably the first non-D&D rpg, Tunnels and Trolls, describes how he was excited to play D&D upon first hearing about it soon after its release, but, after getting his hands on a friend's copy, found it incomplete, arbitrary and needlessly confusing. D&D as it was executed didn't reflect the game StAndre had in his head when he first heard about D&D, so, being imaginative, young, and relatively un-jaded, he literally went home and wrote down rules for that game, the one in his head, which became T&T. This is roughly the process, I would posit, followed by people who come to the OSR having had their first exposure to D&D during 3e or later: We find that an older style of play better reflects the semi-mythical imagined game, so we start to explore that territory as a way of pursuing that playstyle.

I would also suggest that StAndre's thought process closely mirrors that of the authors of OSR rulesets that evoke older editions of D&D without following (m)any of their specific mechanics. The big three of these, to my mind, are Knave, the Black Hack and Into the Odd. As I see it, these non-retroclones have exactly the same chief design goal as Tunnels and Trolls: Be the game that new initiates imagine when they first learn about fantasy roleplaying. And they do a fairly good job - I dare say that if you'd handed Ken StAndre a typeset copy of the Black Hack in 1974 instead of OD&D, he might not have experienced the same compulsive need to gut it in order to home in on what he construed as the fun bits (his deep-rooted suspicion of poly dice notwithstanding).

What I see in these games is a yearning for a particular experience. That yearning is largely defined against the games that fail to satisfy it. But it's not vacuous or contrarian - it stands on its own as a yearning to play in a particular way. And a lot of people feel this, even though that specific mode of play largely defies expression, except through rulesets designed to cater to it. This is why, for me, these games that throw out most of the familiar D&D trappings are as central to the OSR as the first retroclones, and the subsequent games that attempt to mirror older editions of D&D more faithfully. All of these games are attempts to realise the same vision, just in different ways, and it's that vision, that game that we all imagine, that unifies the OSR despite its diversity, and despite the changes in how we articulate its principles.