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.”
Philip Roth was no doubt a marvellously talented author (I particularly enjoyed The Plot Against America, though I have some sympathy with the view that reading his work can be akin to having him sit on your face until you can’t breathe), but his novels are not necessarily telling me anything about the human condition. They’re often telling me about the condition of being Philip Roth. My right of passage was my own childhood, and my own childhood included British Old-School gaming (and, yes, Terry Pratchett). My own memories of 1990s Bristol, and how they feed into my gaming, tell me much more about the experience of childhood than an American novelist writing about growing up in 1940s Newark.
Not that I consider the British Old-School to be a self-obsessed exercise in nostalgia. Simon Pegg (co-creator of Spaced), got himself into a bit of bother a few years back when he suggested that “nerd culture” was infantilising us and distracting us from more serious matters:
“We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc.”
He may have a point. But, I would argue, games of the British Old-School are often obsessed with themes of inequality, corruption, and economic injustice. They are games of working class heroes, exploring fantasy societies from the lowest rungs. British Old-School games can engage players with all sorts of big topics (albeit usually in a Pratchettesque fashion), from death and religion, to disability, race, and gender. Rather than being a distraction, I think the British Old-School is a wonderful way for a group of friends to play with some of life’s important stuff.
Trevor Hirst says
Who makes a hobby of dealing with injustice? Hobbies are like golf, fishing, flower gardening, arts and crafts.
Hobbies are not meant to fix the world. They are for taking a break to enjoy life a little bit. There would be less injustice if people enjoyed life more.
Uncaring Cosmos says
@Trevor Hirst Watching films can be a hobby and there are plenty of films that deal with themes of inequality and poverty. Reading books can also be a hobby, and there’s no end to books on politics, history, philosophy, etc.
I’m not saying that British Old-School games can “fix” injustice. It’s more that themes of social status, class, inequality, poverty, etc., run throughout British Old-School gaming, and they contrast pretty strongly with some of the other old-school RPGs out there (in particular the approach taken by Gary Gygax in Dungeons & Dragons).
I’ll explain a bit more what I mean in my next post. But by “injustice” I also mean a sense of randomness and unfairness in things like character creation. You have a 99% chance of rolling “Peasant” on the social status table, and a 1% chance of rolling “Noble”. Nobles start with loads of money, and get a bonus on the roll to determine whether a PC is convicted of a crime or not, whereas peasants start with a sack of mud and get a penalty to see if they’re convicted. That stuff’s fascinating, and it’s more what I’m driving at.
Trevor Hirst says
I was mostly reacting to Simon Pegg lamenting that we are spending our time focusing on what thrilled us as children instead of tackling important issues. I don’t like the idea that for something to be judged as good, or worthwhile it must be serious about complex human issues.
The best part of playing these games as a child was the ignorance of these social issues. I don’t feel inclined to add the lousy parts about being an adult into my fantasy games. Hah that seems to be contrary to what I am hoping to get out of the few times we get together to play each month.
Great post though, I hope you don’t take this as a personal attack! Simon Pegg might want to dial it back and enjoy some simple pleasures every once in a while.
Uncaring Cosmos says
@Trevor Hirst Sorry for the slow response! I don’t take it as a personal attack, don’t worry – I’m always happy to discuss these things with anyone who will pay me any heed! :-D
Simon Pegg himself says that his comments make him seem like (and I quote) an “A-grade asshorn” (or, more properly, an “arsehorn” – he’s probably spent too much time in Hollywood). However, I do think he’s got some really interesting things to say.
I guess I would put it this way: The reason you and I could enjoy playing these games in ignorance as
a child[Children. You weren’t one child. That would be weird. – Ed.] was probably BECAUSE of the lousy parts of being an adult.We often take for granted (I know I do) the idea of “childhood”, “leisure time”, and the “extended youth” that Pegg talks about, but it’s quite a novel concept.
Before the latter half of the 19th century, there wasn’t really such thing as childhood in the way we think of it today (a time of innocence, ignorance, education, play, freedom from economic activity, etc.). And, of course, childhood came to the middle and upper classes earlier than to the working classes.
In 1870, half of all children in England had no access to any schooling at all. Compulsory primary school education was made free in 1891 (and, even then, many parents would keep working children home because they made more money that way). Compulsory secondary school education was made free in 1944. Comprehensive schools were only introduced on a widespread basis in 1965.
As a grown-up today, in 2019, having enough free time to meet up with friends and game is also a function of the lousy parts of being an adult. Things like working hours, rates of pay, cost of childcare, the balance of housework in a family, even sexy stuff like housing and transport infrastructure, etc., all have an impact on the free time we have to game.
Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t turn our brains off now and again. Escapist entertainment is, frankly, often the only way to stay sane. However, I don’t believe all “mass media” is escapist, nor that “high art” is never escapist (I’m a huge fan, in case you haven’t guessed, of mass media). I think the idea that “high art” is always superior to mass media is elitist (which is why I get so annoyed by the rampant snobbery of Jonathan Jones.
Anyway, I’m rambling again. My next post (hopefully published next week) will be looking at social class mechanics in early British RPGs (and which bits I’m going to pinch for the campaign I’m preparing). I’ll be a bit less philosophical, and a bit more focused on what will work at the table.
Then I’ll start getting into Dragon Warriors, and how I’m going to adapt it for my game. Please stick around and comment!
Trevor Hirst says
Hey! The reply notice ended up in my junk email file, hence my delayed reply. I am glad you didn’t take it as an attack! I have an art degree…. So I have heard alot of high brow opinions about art. Anyway, first day of school for my kiddies tomorrow, so we have company and what not this evening. I look forward to your next blog. (It is probably already up by now) !
Trev
OVERLORD says
Very excited to see this project! I have found other recent attempts to adapt British Old School content a bit lacking, namely Troika (Fighting Fantasy) felt rather flashy and inspiring without holding anything actually gameable, and Zweihander cluttered and overproduced for a WHFP clone.
Assuming you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to check out Small But Vicious Dog, an adaptation of WHFP to a B/X framework, as well as MÖRK BÖRG (Fighting Fantasy mechanics as a vehicle for a bunch of very inspiring (and at times cartoonish) grimdark mud, blood, & shit art/aesthetics
Uncaring Cosmos says
@OVERLORD Ta very much!
I haven’t read Troika yet, though I owned (and played) pretty much all the old Fighting Fantasy books back in the day (as well as all the Advanced Fighting Fantasy books). To be honest, FF (together with Discworld, Narnia, and The Hobbit) basically WAS the fantasy genre to me in the early 1990s.
I also haven’t read Zweihander yet. I never played WFRP (I was too young when WFRP 1e came out, somehow missed the Hogshead reprints in 1995, and was out of tabletop gaming when WFRP 2e came out) but I do own a copy of the original 1st edition (as well as the Realm of Chaos and Middenheim supplements). I did, however, play Warhammer Fantasy Battle (4th edition) and Warhammer 40k (2nd edition), as well as games like Necromunda and Gorkamorka, and I read White Dwarf when I could get hold of it (by then it was devoted to WFB and 40k) and loved the fluff of the Old World.
Which is all to say that I can’t really offer an opinion on Troika and Zweihander (I’d like to give them a read, though!). It sounds like you’re saying Troika is a little too light, and Zweihander is a little too crunchy, with neither quite occupying the sweet spot for you. As I said, I haven’t read them, but I can imagine myself coming to a similar conclusion.
Fighting Fantasy was always about the atmosphere, the illustrations, the oddball swords & sorcery world mixed with British humour and weirdness. That’s why I’m planning to use Dragon Warriors (which, again, I owned back in the day) as the system, but will probably use Titan / Allansia as the setting for my upcoming campaign.
I’ve been playing a B/X (or BECMI) variant, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, for the past couple of years, and I have read (and stolen bits from) Small But Vicious Dog. The introduction to SBVD, to me, really captures the idea of the British Old-School:
I very, very, very, very almost put down some cash for the MÖRK BÖRG kickstarter. It looks amazing. However, I’d already backed the Old-School Essentials kickstarter, so in the end my wallet won out.
OVERLORD says
@Uncaring Cosmos
I too have been running Lamentations, with some house rules pulled from Last Gasp Grimoire (check him out, he’s awesome). It is far and away the easiest system for me to emulate The Blood on Satan’s Claw + Dungeons, which is my preferred type of game. Your taste is both patrician and respectable
Shock Slogans says
@OVERLORD
I found there was something missing in both Zweihander and Troika as well.
I think the big issue I have with them is that as I grow older I have less patience for implied settings.
I don’t want to “fill in the gaps” myself. I can already make changes and add bits as I see fit. I want a decent framework to build on.
Troika’s implied setting is great. There’s a lot of interesting stuff there, but it’s not fleshed out enough for my taste. It’s a collection of potential story seeds, not an actual universe.
Zweihander has a slightly different issue, being how it’s essentially WFRP with the serial numbers filed off, but without the attention to worldbuilding found in the original. And what interests me most about the implied setting there is actually where it seems to diverge from the source material; ogre scholars, everyone hating gnomes etc.
Both books are crying out for an actual setting.
Because obviously their inspirations had just that. (Well, FF is complex when it comes to scifi. It never had anything like Titan. But while the universes of “Rings of Kether”, “Robot Commando” and “Rebel Planet” were very different, they all were about as detailed as you can get in a gamebook. I could happily run a game set in the Rebel Planet universe without much thought. The same is not true of Troika).
It also strikes me as oddly divergent from the British source material. I’m hardpressed to think of a B-OSR RPG that didn’t have a definite setting. That strikes me as more an American thing, with D&D and Tunnels and Trolls. (Trollworld was detailed later I believe). And there’s a reason my group never returned to D&D after starting a WFRP campaign.
Uncaring Cosmos says
@Shock Slogans
This is pretty much exactly my attitude. I would add that, for me, there’s definitely a “sweet spot”. I don’t want to fill in the gaps, but I also don’t want a setting to be too detailed.
The Old World from 1st edition WFRP definitely hits that sweet spot (it gives you just enough to get started, then gives you the tools to add more). Funnily enough, later editions are too detailed for me.
The Fighting Fantasy world really hits the sweet spot for me.
I don’t have time to mess around making up a world’s geography, political boundaries, history, calendars, pantheons, etc. At the same time, I don’t want too much fiddly information. Just a sketch is enough so I can fill in the details later (and, even then, only ever if it actually comes up at the table).
OVERLORD says
@Shock Slogans
There is definitely something uniquely Anglo about a detailed and fleshed out setting. The founder of British Fantasy as We Know It ™, Tolkien, sets the standard pretty clearly with Middle Earth and we see that followed through in Discworld, WFRP, etc. Compare that to something like Glen Cook’s Black Company (All implied worldbuilding, pick it up as you read) or the default assumed setting of Dungeons & Dragons (before Forgotten Realms took over you basically had “Fantasy World” to go on unless you bought splatbooks).
I find myself in my own home games falling very much on the implied side of things. The players know the name of the town, and the few plagiarized Irish gods worshiped there. They know there’s a huge (Read:height measured in kilometres) tower with a necromancer in it close enough to see from town but not close enough to be an immediate threat. That kinda does it for me. When I ran WFRP a while back I got really into the lore and tried to build up crazy political intrigue among the major factions. It’s a lot of work to put into a 3 hour game every two weeks. Ad Hoc worldbuilding has definitely become the default for me.