Once a distinct style has been found, and the groundwork has been laid, THEN it is time to see what has been done before ye. Would knowing something of space make one more adept at running science-fictional space operatic games? Would knowing something of police work allow one to inject a game of pretend-police officers with a degree of liveliness and fealty that would otherwise go missing? Then why do ye run DnD, not understanding its inspirations also? Why do ye forsake ye Appendix N not even knowing why ye forsake it? Thou wouldst achieve excellence in module cobbling? Is it seemly to vomit color all over an electronic sheet, or to obsess over layout like a neurotic, or to inject the adventure with all the buried memories of the time Uncle Gerald wandered drunkenly into one’s bedroom? Must entire pages of text be devoted to the exact manner in which various statt blocks mischannel and contort their sexual drives? Nay. Take your idiot rules and burn them! Put your house-rules on a blog, and take solace men enjoy your game, and bother us no more. Spare me your micro-games, your rules-lites, your B/X clones. What few worthies exist: ACKS, DCC, Lotfp and some choice others, retain a spiritual connection with the old material, or are sustained by a unique creative vision, and are honed, and played over the long years. It takes immense craft and years of fine-tuning to make something, a whole game, that can stand shoulder to shoulder with its predecessors, yet novelty and fickleness make them common as lice on a mangy dog. There are too many games in the OSR, and in no other category of merchandise do you find lower yields! There is not one in twenty of the new games that is worthy of more then contemptuous scorn, a disgusted, disappointed, tired sigh. And what could be more self-evident? There are some who peddle the fraudulent and diseased notion that the OSR is about making new games, but this is obviously false. The OSR is about oldschool games and their continuation. Let us decimate the merchant caste, the twitter parasites, the bandwagoneer, the revisionist, let us savor their death throes and leave only the fittest, the chosen few, to peddle their wares in the ashes of rebirth. The griftsr, the petty merchant who grinds out his vulgar pulp to ensnare the credulous youth without ever having laid hands on dice and GMscreen, the copywriter and layout man who xerox your ancient games, let him starve. Let the spirit of competition and chastely love of the game inspire you to make work that is WORTHY. Let material be made primarily not for the tinkling of coppers, but for the sheer ebullient joy of it. Let us remember once more that the OSR is a pasttime first and foremost. Seek you to be a bearer of this sacred fire? Then heed ye well what must be done. The Sacred Fire must be rekindled once more, and the mounds of ashes must be sloughed off, lest they smother the rebirth of the Phoenix and leave us in this Dark Age. A million classes for Troika each costing 0,5 dollars, zero effort for zero value. A broken machine made in imitation of older machines that is slowly winding down. Newcomers enter and say unto themselves ‘The OSR? It was invented by and it is about making garishly colored modules and selling them on itch.io!’ There is no link with the past. Garish preening, endless effeminate slapfights, cancellations, and trash, trash that is promoted as worthwhile. They rule now, the Artpunkmen, purveyors of the DnD that is not DnD, the very greatest of these never having played a character beyond the 6th level. His kingdom grew and grew and fell, and half of his retainers were beholden to the Evil One, and left him to rot, and from his fallen kingdom started other petty kingdoms.

The Great King who took the Sacred Fire, and with it kernelled his own dream, is also but a shadow.

All that is good is made obscure, and all that is evil is dressed in robes of carmine and sable. Few of the olden guard remain, and they are shunned and villified or merely forgotten, forced to dwell in caverns and ancient tombs while mummers and thieves mumble and posture in the limelight. The titans of old, who have snatched away the embers of the Promethean flame from the hoary clutches of Hasbro and kindled it until it is become a roaring bonfire, have perished or are reduced to shadows of their former glory. The OSR is sliding into an age of darkness.

Sacred fire kickstarter