The Alpha and Omega of Old-School...

So when does old-school gaming begin?  And when does it end?  This might seem like a trivial (or pointless) question, but either the designation means something or it means nothing.  And a relative, subjective definition is little better than none at all.  But first, some context to get started.  I recently spoke to a younger gamer who defined "old-school" as those old World of Darkness games he played in the 90s!  Clearly, this was his introduction to the hobby, so it probably seems downright primordial to him.  But if this is how we're gonna define things, then everything is old-school, which means nothing is.

Now, I argue that old-school refers to the first ten years of the commercial hobby, and this bears some explanation.  Wesely and Arneson were doing their thing as early as 1967 (earlier, actually), but their fabulous creations weren't available beyond a relatively small group of insiders.  Think about it.  The imaginary childhood games we all made up with our siblings are no different, and no one seriously suggests they should amount to a cultural movement.  But with the release of the first D&D rulebooks in 1974, the game was (at least theoretically) available to everyone.  Now that's a movement.  That's a bona fide thing, and it rightly forms an objective starting point for the hobby.  The birth of old-school.

From here, I say the next decade.  The first decade of the hobby.  Why?  Well, because ten is a nice, rounded figure.  I mean, why else would the gods give us ten fingers?  But it's more than that.  This first decade represented a certain state of the hobby.  Sure, the games were commercially available, but they were still largely an underground phenomenon.  Gaming represented a distinct subculture largely unnoticed by the world at large.  Now this changed as the decade wore on, but it holds for most of the period.  The Satanic Panic of the 80s could only begin once parents knew the games existed, and this didn't start to happen until the B/X set (more clearly aimed at younger readers) hit Toys R' Us.

Yeah, all old-school gaming groups looked like this...

But it's more than just an underground pedigree, and like I said, the hobby became progressively more mainstream as the decade rolled on.  Being an underground thing meant less money to invest in production, which resulted in an amateur look and feel.  RPG rulebooks weren't yet the slick products they would later become.  I don't mean to sound like a snobby purist.  Games are guidelines at best, and the real action takes place in the participant's heads.  But there's something about gaming-as-cottage industry that really speaks to its origins in the basements and rec-rooms of the early 1970s...  

Amateur production creates a sort of punk ethos.  Gaming as punk with all its purity.  But getting back to marketing, the hobby's first decade ended in a very different place from where it began.  D&D started as a sort of wargame (and never mind my previous postings to the contrary on this blog).  The rules referenced armor and weapons with an emphasis on historical accuracy and a wargamer's general sensibility, and one need only read the earliest issues of The Dragon to see that wargaming still featured often enough, or that so many readers were (still) interested in military simulation.  Indeed, remnants of this would show in 1985's Unearthed Arcana, where Gygax regaled us with his love of pole arms.  I can only wonder about this particular obsession, but then, who am I to judge?

So there you have it.  1974-84.  The hobby was an amateur, underground phenomenon with production values to match that retained strong ties to its wargaming roots...

But the scene would change.  And how.  Things would become mainstream enough for parents to panic about it, and with mainstream notice came money (and with money came better production).  At the same time, the games were increasingly appealing to non-wargamers more interested in the role-playing and storytelling aspect.  You see a noticeable shift to younger readers with the He-Man art of the BECMI set.  Indeed, Elmore's artwork became ubiquitous across the entire spectrum of TSR's growing catalog.  There was a D&D cartoon (I won't alienate friends by weighing in on that), AD&D action figures, stickers, and activity books.  I can only imagine D&D toothpaste and other (mainstream) marketing fiascos, but I don't have to.  It was clear the hobby had turned a corner, though not a bad one.  You can't stay young and hungry forever.  But it was no longer old-school as we knew it.  So what do you think?  Did we get anything wrong?  Share your thoughts!  What's your timeline?

ADDENDUM: To avoid any appearance of gatekeeping, anyone who plays and enjoys old-school games is an old-school gamer in our eyes no matter their age!  Game on...