OSR origin story : my turn !

 So back in november, Jenx over at Gorgon Bones posted about his coming into the OSR and invited others to do the same.

Since I was planning a post in this vein at some point, why not now ?

I've succinctly described my role-playing background in my opening post, so let's build on that.

I'm a 30-year-old French man, not raised in a particularly geek household (at least not in the tabletop RPGs and video games kind), so I haven't been exposed to the now-classic D&D kind of fantasy at an early age. That's why you won't see much fondness here on this blog for actually old-school modules and rulesets — they're just not part of my fantasy / RPG upbringing. I'm no TSR grognard and it shows.

My own exposure to fantasy, science-fiction and RPG concepts was made through several ways :

- in childhood, many contacts with the traditional European, Polish and French body of fairy tales, fables and bedtime stories, along with bits from other cultures of the world, and a healthy dose of Matter of Britain (and France, and Rome, and Greek myths) by way of tales and simple cultural osmosis ;

- inventing a parallel world in our garden where my younger brother and I would weave stories blending various toys and the garden's micro-landscapes ;

- from childhood to adulthood, extensive travels and holidays in Brittany, Germany, Poland, and various French mountains and countrysides ;

- a long-time habit of playing board games, including slightly fantasy-themed ones like Labyrinth ;

- discovering Game Boy games at school, so you can thank Zelda : Link's Awakening for introducing me to the whole "you adventure with a sword in a weird fantasy setting" thing, and Pokémon Blue for familiarising me with the concepts of HP and levels (and cool monsters) ;

- reading adventure comics and novels : looking back on it, it's mostly XIXth century anticipation (Jules Verne, Herbert George Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle...) and XXth century comics of the French-Belgian world. Among those you'll find fairy tale / fantasy (the Smurfs), series blending contemporary adventures with pulp and sci-fi stuff (Tintin, Blake & Mortimer, Yoko Tsuno, Les Petits Hommes, Le Scrameustache, Bob Morane...), and other things (Gaston Lagaffe and its yé-yé / hippie protagonist in an uncaring 70's Belgium, for example) ;

- several old or not-so-old movies illustrating various fantasy domains : Jason and the Argonauts, The Neverending Story, Jumanji, Sindbad, Ghibli's Castle in the Sky, etc. I spent a non-negligible number of Saturday afternoons binging and re-binging Jumanji and Neverending Story with my brother ;

- and then, around the ages of nine to twelve, that's the explosion : Harry Potter books, borrowing the whole Lord of the Rings from a friend's mom after being gifted Fellowship of the Ring by chance, owning my own Game Boy Color with Tintin and Harry Potter games on it, scouring the library where my dad worked (and still works) for all the SFFF I could find, discovering  « chose your own adventure » books, and reading the weird sci-fi / sci-fantasy comics hidden in my dad's bookshelves (hello, Enki Bilal, hello, Mézières & Christin...). Add to this the GameCube with Zelda : The Wind Waker, a passion for hacking the stories of my video games and the mechanisms of my CYOA books, and my background was pretty much set.

So, everything was in place for me to discover and appreciate pen-and-paper RPGs. All the basic concepts were there : fantastical stories and worlds, role-playing in groups, or solo, inventing my own stuff, hacking stuff I found of interest, dice procedures to resolve play, and even levels and HP by way of video games first. (Those core D&D mechanical elements really had the time to permeate pop culture a lot already, even though it's even more ubiquitous 20-25 years later, of course.)

But I cannot seem to pinpoint the exact moment I discovered the existence of the classic format of playing RPGs. All I know is that, upon arriving in university and discovering the local gaming club, it seemed natural for me to join and play.

I actually did not play in group sessions very much at the time, and haven't much since. A railroady Talislanta one-shot at the club in 2012 and a short-lived D&D 4e campaign by a dear friend in 2013 convinced me of two things : first, railroading sucks. Second, D&D 4e was not for me and, to be honest, most complex or crunchy rules systems were not.

Retrospectively, I think that I bounced off 4e for several reasons. First is that we picked up the game to play, without knowing much about it, this specific edition, and how it was played. So I had no idea the game was supposed to have that tactical side of squares, powers and resources, synergies, etc. Second is my legendary cursed luck with dice : my cleric managed to miss hitting immobile enemies and nearly die against low-level animated wood puppets. (To be fair, the first bit is also a problem of rules adjudication.) And third, my (then undiagnosed) ADHD made it very difficult for me to grasp the different powers and elements of the character sheet, to reference and use them easily. I had a lot of trouble and it made the game difficult, for me and for my friends.

It's from then on that, still hooked on the potential of pen-and-paper RPGs, I tried to look for and devise simpler game systems. Things that carried flavor and promises of great adventures, but designed with simplicity and accessibility in mind. I'm not proud of my first tries, but that's what first tries are for. And I slowly opened up to the English-speaking RPG internet spheres, around 2013-2014.

This led me to take up the mantle of the GM and game initiator : once for a very fun one-shot Lasers & Feelings hack, once for a would-be campaign set in post-apocalyptic southern France, and once with the indie game House of Reeds that I translated and played one-on-one with my girlfriend-now-wife. I also got involved in freeform role-playing on a French language Skyrim forum. 

Since these, a few years have passed. I discovered and binge-read many OSR blogs (too many to quote here, but I'll make a list one of these days). What got me into the whole OSR thing was the joy to discover that, like me, there existed people who just wanted to play : stuff that was fast to set up, quick to resolve and adjudicate, free from the "character build" mindset that was too heavy for me, and all of it DIY-friendly. It felt like a perfect fit. 

I lurked on many forums, participated and commented on reddit (r/osr) sometimes. I wrote many drafts, many genres, many random tables, many ideas. I formed opinions on some games, some topics, and many aspects of what has come to be known as "the OSR", and also discovered the FKR movement, and its delightful radicality. I got interested in procedures, theoretical reflexions, and came back to solo role-playing, which was one of my earliest ways of playing. I tried blogging once or twice, but didn't commit. The itch stayed, though, as I regularly found myself wanting to say and develop things and share them with others.

So here we are now : I try to actually write, and actually post. I'll try to participate more in the scene, to my humble level. And, most of all, I'll try to play with what I write and discover, because this is why we're here, after all.

Am I officially an "OSR guy" ? I have no idea, since I didn't really ever played an OSR game, solo role-playing excepted. But it matters little : I know it broadly fits what I want, and I know I really appreciate what it has given to the whole hobby. 

Here's to many blogs, exciting adventures, inventive ideas and hours of play !