I think if you need any proof that the OSR is living is to see how much naysayers continually feel the need to tell you that it is in fact, dead. Now you might provide obvious examples to all their arguments – there are still new and changing ideas coming out of it, and there are more people playing the “style” (by which I mean old school games and games inspired by such, I am referring to a much larger player base than just people who quote the Principia Apocrypha) than ever.
One of the most important points about the OSR is that it was not a recreation of some mythologized past. When you play an OSR game, you are most likely not playing how they did in the 70s. Granted, the styles of play were so diverse that maybe you are playing something in the ballpark similar to one particular campaign back then, but most likely that’s not the case. And there was certainly not one particular style, probably from the point that Dave ran a game for Gary & co., and then Gary started running for his players.
This “OSR is dead” as a whatever scene is doing similar mythologizing – it’s pointing to a hyped subsection of one OSR scene as the scene. It’s usually saying either the scene you participated in, or the scene your friends talked about was the real OSR, and since current OSRs are different, they’re obviously artistically or stylistically or thematically or whateverically “dead.”
It’s straight-up saying “the past I remembered was the one true way, and anything that existed contemporaneously to that wasn’t really part of the OSR, and anything after it is dead/undead/unliving.”
Go grab three random adventures or games or supplements prior to 2019. Go jump on a blog, a forum, and a chat room at that period. Grab Assault on Blacktooth Ridge and The God that Crawls and tell me that those two are part of a single, centralized artistic movement. Try to tell me that the K&KA OSRIC folk were part of some central discussion with the GLOG kids.
One of the killer features of “the” OSR was that it was decentralized, so I don’t see how saying “well there are more people now so it’s even MORE decentralized” is any further indication that this concept is dead, if anything it’s proof that its growing.
I have yet to see any argument that the OSR is dead is anything more than “the past that I remembered has more positive qualities than the past I didn’t participate in, or the present that is different from what I remember or was told about.”
Both the gatekeeping and the OSR IS DEAD concepts exist only in your (and other people’s) head. How can one thing be not alive if me and you are playing and enjoying it?
Moreover, I don’t understand _why_ some people feel the urge to proclaim the OSR dead. What’s the point?
It’s patently false by the mere observation that discussion about the OSR means that the scene is alive.
It’s even more obviously false because there are plenty of people playing OSR, publishing OSR products, writing OSR-focused blogs, and engaging in the many OSR forums and online communities.
If one doesn’t like the present discussions within the scene, start a new discussion or just move on. Declaring the scene dead because one’s particular view isn’t the most popular any more seems childish to me.
By the way, “whateverically” is an excellent word.
I think there are often two reasons people often do this. The first is that there are people getting into the hobby that the author doesn’t like, so they view their inclusion as the “end” of the OSR. I don’t think the recent crop of people proclaiming this section of the hobby’s death is doing this, but you did unfortunately see it early on with the groggier types.
The second is marketing – they’re looking to distinguish themselves in the “market” by contrasting themselves to what came before. If even to not sell a product, it’s at least to control the narrative, revise history, and present oneself as a “thought-leader” or an OSRfluencer.