Spengler! D&D! Psychotronic gaming!

Thanks to Stephen Smith, I came across this discussion of D&D with a dose a Spengler. Since this blog is the Internet’s foremost provider of Spengler-themed short fiction, how could I resist?

The discussion is quite long, a couple of hours, but it is interesting to hear Rick Stump talk about his 42-year-old Seward campaign and how he makes it work. Rick also talked about the shift in RPG culture that happened when modules became the dominant product, confirming my theory that this was a side effect of people who loved games trying to make a living.

Rick also said something about the now mostly defunct OSR that clicked with something I read recently. Rick said that the OSR was an attempt to recapture the magic of early D&D without direct experience of what it was like. Which is what this post on Spriggan’s Den says as well.

This isn’t a bad thing, and it happens all the time. Gregorian chant, for example, is not a living tradition that stretches back to the Middle Ages, but a nineteenth century re-creation of a tradition that was lost.

However, you will probably have an easier time of it if you do hearken back to such experience while it still exists.