Growing up With D&D

Thinking about my history of gaming after listening to Trying to Be Kind (Season 2, Episode 2), especially a bit Fiona put forward about learning the game in the early days of D&D. As related in another post, I started playing with friends the year it came out and we developed our own interpretations and play styles in response to the loose system presented in the three books. 

However, it wasn't too long before we began joining other games, with older players, both college students in Urbana, Illinois, and older gamers, early adopters, friends of TSR, college professors, etc. It was at once an intoxicating scene for it's interest in the games we played, and to be in that orbit was amazing! But it was also one where we were marked outsiders: young and, more critically, playing The Game in what was clearly becoming a non standard way. We were outsiders, not on the mailing list, too young to attend any but local conventions, to drive, to fully engage in the expected ways. 

So, the 'OSR', whatever it is, is, in some ways, referencing a conversation or frame we were two steps away from. We played all the games, voraciously, but rejected, in many ways, those that pushed us and our playstyles aside. We moved quickly towards punk and anarchy in an era of massive RPG growth. All those convention goers and box set purchasers of the late '70s and early '80s were symbolic of capitalism's worst excesses and seemingly a betrayal of our game's roots.

Gaming was about taking the slimmest of seeds and constructing an artifice of imagination around it. The premade adventures, the dueling iterations of advanced versus basic, and the artifice of the right way to play, well, that was as alien then as it is now.