The Wonderful & Terrible Things That Effervesced in the OSR Scene, Part 1

I came into the DIY/OSR RPG scene perhaps midway through it's golden lifespan. My understanding is that 2004-2008 is sort of the seeding time and 2008-?? was the flowering and fullness of it's prurient presence*. If I dig back into my archive of files and emails and such, I can see that I was dipping my toes in the water in 2012. I didn't even know it existed prior to that time and the only reason I discovered it - to the best of my failing memory - is that I stumbled across a link or ad for DCC RPG or I happened upon the first episode of the Spellburn podcast. Either way, DCC RPG is really the catalyst that got me into this shit. I very, very quickly found my way to OSRIC, Basic Fantasy RPG, and podcasts such as Save or Die and Roll For Initiative.

Given that nearly all my postings and publishings since then have been aligned with basic D&D and it's spiritual successors, I found my niche. I have created scant few things for DCC RPG and no publications. I love the game, but have been resistant to creating for it for some reason.

I was talking to Mike Evans recently about game systems and the conversation lead me once again to a post on Daniel Sell's blog What Would Conan Do: How to be an adventurer. I am not entirely sure, but I bet I've mentioned this and linked to it more times than anything else in the movement. It was a huge influence on how I've been thinking about gaming ever since because it pinged so many of my quibbles and gripes about D&D and how to effortlessly house-rule them away.

Blog posts such as that one are the reason this creative scene has been so god damned beautiful. And of course there are more. Many, many more.

(Suddenly I have a lot of rambling things to say about this topic. I'll post more later, if for no other reason than I want/need to talk about it "out loud". Maybe I'll get to the "terrible things" as hinted at in the title of this post. Also, I'm not going to obsessively hyperlink everything in every post. I think by now everyone who might read this knows where the fuck to find DCC RPG.)

(*NOTE: I'm not suggesting that the movement is dead or anything. I am not a good judge of these things. I know I still love creating in this vein and so do a lot of other people so... not dead. But changed, altered, completely transformed in many ways that could be linked temporally to the death of G+ among other events.)