Thoughts on the British Old School

I first shared this post to the OSR subreddit seven years ago, long before I had a blog. It garnered some very interesting discussion in the day - I even inspired an entire blog centered around the subject that offered some great insights but sadly no longer appears to be online. It's still a topic that I'm interested by. I consider the Lunar Lands to be, spiritually, a setting in the British old-school RPG tradition, as it draws consciously or unconsciously on much of the same ground - and perhaps for that reason, I've felt more of a resonance with British fantasy of the era than with the stuff from across the pond. So I figured it would be helpful to have an archive on my blog.

Some trends in the OSR community that I cited back then aren't quite as relevant these days; the OSR hasn't trended so heavily toward weird fantasy since...what, 2019? But I still think it's helpful to outline the qualities I find a consistent, and identifiable, thread across British fantasy gaming from the 70s to the 90s, and in a place I can easily look up and link to. Besides, I think it's a subject that's still ripe for exploration.