Get That Label Off Me

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson, but you knew that already.

I strongly dislike labels. And yet I recognize their incredible utility.

If I go into a video store (in the past..) and I know I want something cool and fantastic, I can go to the sci-fi and/or fantasy and/or horror sections to find it. I won't find it in the drama section. This is very useful because I'm not in the mood to watch 2 hours about a fucked up romance. I wanna see monsters and shit.

But it's also unfortunate because those labels are boxes that we put ourselves into. Without them, we might explore more territory and be more wildly creative. If I know I'm doing a sci-fi thing then I know I need to check off a few boxes. Maybe that alone is enough to stifle my creativity a little bit.

I dunno.

Here's a label I hate: Gen X.

I'm part of Gen X. But nobody called us that until at least the 90s and I honestly don't remember hearing that term until much later. Nobody talked like that back when I was young. Today... that's all the fuck you hear. It causes us to divide up into boxes based on the year we were born... which smacks of some kinda astrological bullshit if you ask me.

Social mores and pop trends change over time and we can broadly classify them into categories if we want. But there's no bright line between Gen X and Millennials and none between Millennials and whoever comes next. The overlap is staggering, huge.

Until you TELL people which category they belong in. Then suddenly some of them start modifying their behavior to fit it. Suddenly we're being sold products and ideas created by corporations, based on the definitions they've carved out for us. We're corralling ourselves into these dumb, stupid, silly boxes that are useful only for data mining, not for living fulfilled lives.

Here's a label you might know: OSR.

This one is very useful for one big, shiny, obvious reason. It's because Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark. We can't go around putting D&D on the cover of our RPG books, even though they are 100% part of that lineage. So, for better or worse, this label "OSR" has become the stand-in. And that does serve a handy purpose. But it still means we box ourselves in.

And yeah, I know, I know. OSR doesn't just mean D&D. But cool your heels... look around at all the game books with OSR labels on them and tell me how many are NOT part of the D&D lineage, in many cases being entirely compatible with that game. Just because you use OSR to just mean "like older games" doesn't mean the rest of the fuckin' world isn't using it to mean "this is off brand D&D".

Anyway... I feel this boxed in lack of air lately. It's probably why I've slowed down to a crawl with Black Pudding, which has always been an explicitly B/X D&D-based RPG zine... OSR. I'm in a creative head space right now where I don't want to make stuff for D&D. Not at this moment. I have other things I wanna do.

Speaking of... I do have the entire Heavy Helping Vol 2 completed and have had it completed for months. The only stumbling block has been some issues with getting it ready to go up on DTRPG. I'll try to focus and sort that out soon. I know I've promised it to a lot of people.