Uncaring Cosmos

I’ve made a character sheet for Dragon Warriors. You can get a copy here (though you’ll need a Google account to access it). It’s not my finest work, but it will get the job done.

I’ve decided to use the Dragon Warriors RPG by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson as system of choice for my upcoming “British Old-School” campaign. After reading it through again, it really is about as close to B/X D&D as any British RPG published in the 1970s or ’80s ever came. Hopefully I can put together some Basic D&D / Dragon Warriors conversion notes at some point so that OSR content can be ported in relatively easily.

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For me, gaming is not necessarily a distraction from life’s “important stuff”. Jonathan Jones, the Guardian’s art critic, once wrote an infamous (and lazy) hit piece on the Discworld novels not long after Terry Pratchett’s death. To be fair to Jones, he later held it up as his “most shameful moment as a critic”. Nevertheless, he clearly draws a distinction between “entertainment” and “art”, and believes life is “too short to waste” on ordinary entertainment (particularly the “graveyard for the English language” that is the fantasy genre).

Mssr. Jones thinks we should be spending our precious time reading “art”, by which he means novels of the sort Philip Roth wrote. Michael Moorcock once said of novels of the sort Philip Roth wrote that they are “usually blokes writing about being a bloke, and quite frankly I can’t think of anything more boring… It’s the modern novel’s final fling, the ‘bloke novel’… All the various versions of the right of passage.”

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Apologies for the radio silence! I’ve been on holiday in Tokyo and have only just returned. My goodness, Japan is amaze-balls [If you ever write “amaze-balls” again, you’re fired – Ed.]. If you haven’t been, I very, very much recommend a trip.

I last visited Japan in 2005 and it feels like a lot has changed in those 14 years. Tokyo feels like a much more international city than it was when I first wandered its neon-washed streets over a decade ago.

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There’s a really wonderful discussion taking place on the RPG PUB forum about my earlier post. Lots of great input, with people sharing memories of gaming in Britain (and Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere) back in the day.

There was some gentle pushback against the term “B-OSR”. It was never really intended seriously, so I’m not overly attached to it. I chose it, with tongue in cheek, because it implies Britain is in some sense in second place (the “B-OSR” to America’s “A-OSR”) and, despite the current trend towards jingoistic boosterism, people in the UK have a long tradition of thinking their country is a bit shit. Still, if you prefer, “British old-school” works just as well (and it can be considered a vibe or aesthetic rather than a revival).

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I’ve bashed together a simple B-OSR blogroll for the Uncaring Cosmos sidebar. It’s a work in progress and not supposed to be definitive. If you can think of additions, let me know in the comments below or via my contact page.

I’ve already had a couple of comments asking how I define the British old-school. The simple answer is that I’m not really interested in a strict definition; I think the B-OSR is / should be a really loose, flexible thing. I do think the term “British old-school” or B-OSR is a useful one, because I reckon British tabletop gamers have slightly different cultural points of reference than our cousins from other countries, and I’m interested in exploring that.

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