DC Comics Minis

When I was a kid we used to do the flea market and auction circuit and my stepdad would get all kinds of odd items. At some point he got a few boxes of Leaf Comicbook Candy and I captured some of them. I still have 6 of the 8 different secret origins books. I'm not a DC fan but these are super cool minis.

OSR Nostalgia & Candy Bars

R.I.P. Steve Z

This post is riffing on or continuing some thoughts I had here and here. It's a bit rambly. Skip if you like.

Way back in the ancient times of the 1990s I was deeply involved in the small press comics and zine scene. By the early 2000s the internet had came along and killed that scene almost utterly. Yes, I know people continued to publish and people continue to publish today. But the scene I knew in the 90s is long dead, killed by the internet, rising costs of mailing, and ready availability of cheap alternative publishing methods. Hell, we photocopied shit because it was cheap and we didn't have print-on-demand.

Anyhoo... this is analogous to the G+ gaming scene and the OSR. To me, anyway.

G+ was where it was at. Games, communities, conversations, news, everything. In the 2010s if you weren't on G+ you were not keeping up with the pulse of the OSR and indie games movement. It's a god damn fact. Everyone was there, even if they didn't want to be. And it was fantastic.

That time lasted about 8 years or so, then Google stuck a fork in it. Now it's dead and the OSR and indie scene splintered as a direct result. It's fucking true. Don't argue with me. Yeah, some of you might have been existing on the fringes, ignoring G+, and nothing much has changed for you. Goody gumdrops. You are very special.

So anyway, G+ died and took much of the OSR's mystique with it. Of course it wasn't just the death of

Blood in the Controversy

G+ that gutted the motherfucker. You spend enough time with a group of disparate people connected tenuously by a common interest in a hobby and you're going to develop rivalries, controversies, and enemies. Peoples' true colors come out over time and they are judged for it. Bad shit comes to light, battle lines are drawn, factions formed, actions taken, communities fractured.

It is inevitable. So I'm not really arguing that the death of G+ was what killed the mystique, it was just the final blow to an already bloodied combatant.

When I started messing around in the OSR sandbox around 2012 or so there were a few tentpole circles that I remember. Lamentations, Tenkar, DCC, Dragonsfoot, Story Games, Podcasters... I'm probably missing some. These are just the tentpoles I remember the most. There were smaller ones too, such as BFRPG's community.

Fast forward to 2020 and you still have remnants of these same groups plus new ones that have grown

This got me started, honestly.

in the interim. They are more rabid and polarized now. Some groups have drawn hard lines in the concrete and do not mix with other groups on any level. Lamentations is certainly in a hardcore stance at the moment in response to various controversies. Story Games has morphed a lot and is perhaps more diffused. I have no idea if Dragonsfoot is still breathing nor do I know if Tenkar's corner of the OSR world is still alive. DCC seems to be trucking along much the same, though I haven't heard of any big Kickstarters in a while so maybe it's losing steam? You also have some other smaller groups/circles, such as the Hydra Collective that have amassed some oeuvre since 2014 or so. You've got the Troika! community. There's a pretty robust collection of RPG circles on Twitter, though that's where you'll find the most intense battle lines. The OSR Anchor podcasting scene came on fast and hard and I think is still going. Of course there are the Outer Circles of the movement where we sometimes send the unwanted, and I generally ignore most of that shit because I've got enough on my plate, thank you very much.

A very tasty jam

It's a funny thing to realize that you feel nostalgia for a movement that was itself largely based on nostalgia. And the OSR was most definitely nostalgia-driven. At first I resisted saying that because I didn't want to say that a thing I loved was "just nostalgia". I've come to a different understanding of it now. Nostalgia is as legit and viable a reason for loving something as anything else. It's all about time and space, distance and personal connections. It's also a neutral term, isn't it? You can have nostalgia for Marathon candy bars (good) or for Confederate flags (bad). Nostalgia itself is neutral without context.

Nostalgia for D&D or Traveler or MERP is good, generally. It's fine. It's wonderful.

At this this point I have logged many more hours playing Labyrinth Lord than I ever did with all versions of D&D combined. Hell, I would say I've played more hours of DCC RPG than I ever played of D&D. For me, 2012-2018 was a golden age of gaming. So many wonderful games and books, so many good times, so many new friends.

That era is over. But as with most good things, something new emerges. We're in a new time. I'm still enjoying myself in gaming. I'm still publishing books, which is the great love affair of my life. I have positive vibes for the future, despite some of the negative energy that has pervaded the scenes in recent years.

Onward.

Bushido!

Here's a thing I picked up recently on a whim. Here's how it happened:

1. I saw a post on G+ where someone was selling Bushido RPG books.
2. I remembered owning Bushido in high school. It means something because it was the first time I got a money order and mailed off for a book. Special!
3. Noticed the books were not in original box. Nerd mind kicked in.
4. Found complete box set on eBay, sans the wacky tiny d20 that my original set came with.
5. Bought the damn box set.
6. Spent some time looking at it, flipping through the books, reading some bits I remembered from long ago. Smiled.
7. Posted about it.

The box is beat up but it's been 37 years so...

This isn't actually the printing of the box set that I owned back in the day. Mine was all black. I ordered it via a Dragon Magazine ad. I think it was $8 if I remember correctly. I was so excited when that package arrived! I do remember this stuff being in my box, but also a tiny tiny d20.

The good stuff inside!

The box may look like shit, but the books and other contents are in excellent condition. There is some wear on the books, but not much. The map and reference sheet are perfect. Almost as if they were never used... hmmm.

Thing is, I never played this game. I never even fully read the rules. I skimmed it, read bits, stole bits, and got inspired by it. I remember especially being fond of stealing the weapons table and using it for D&D. I even wrote up a budoka character class for D&D and rolled up a few PCs that I never used.

So the thing about Bushido is that I'll never ever run it in a hundred years. I'll keep this box set, mostly on the shelf, and I'll pull it out now and then to look at it. I'll maybe eventually read the whole thing. I'll steal from it and be inspired by it. But I have no illusions about running it. Not gonna happen. And since this is an FGU game I probably would not like the way it plays anyway. The presentation is crunchy and I'm not a big fan of crunch.

Of course if I found a group playing it I might join in at some point. That much is for sure.