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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21398 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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OSR?

Old School Renaissance/Revival. Basically, D&D going "back to its roots" (generally 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, depending on who you ask, but sometimes Basic or even Chainmail). There are a host of Old School "retroclones" which are all variations on the old "6 stats, class/level, d20" fantasy game, but the aesthetic is generally to appeal to 70s and 80s kids disenchanted with everything post-TSR and all the newer games. Unsurprisingly, there is a large overlap between OSR fans and gamers sick of "woke D&D," though it's by no means an entirely right-wing or anti-woke movement.

Old School Renaissance/Revival (generally, clones/imitations/enhancements of the first two editions of Dungeons & Dragons)

I would actually say that the center of gravity of the OSR has shifted to 0e and Basic more than 1e or 2e for quite some time. OSRIC was the first OSR game, and it was based on 1e, but most people have moved on to other clones or NSR games these days.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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