the OSR as a subject of scholarly inquiry

The other day I was wondering how Nicholas Mizer was doing. He played the elf Celumir the Bald (I hope I'm getting that PC name right) in my first FLAILSNAILS campaign, the one set in Wessex. If I am recalling correctly, Nicholas was the one who solved the Mystery of the Blue Lobster.

Around that time he did a crowdfunding campaign to raise some funds for his PhD research on tabletop RPGs. Out of the blue last week it occurred to me that I wanted to see what had come of that.

First of all, I found his dissertation. So congrats on finishing, Dr. Mizer. Also, he has a book out now, which I am going to try to convince my school library to buy.

I also found a couple academic articles Nicholas authored and a book review that was interesting to me professionally (Turns out there's an edited volume with chapters on RPGs and education. I smell a new faculty workshop in my future.). I forwarded a co-authored piece on an economic game to my buddy who teaches behavioral economics. He was pretty stoked, as the piece had been published in an anthropology journal and he had not seen it before.

Nicholas's 2014 article "The Paladin Ethic and the Spirit of Dungeoneering", published in The Journal of Popular Culture, is a really compelling piece. The conclusion contains what I suspect is one of the first mentions of the Old School Renaissance in an academic journal. 

Now I was down the rabbit hole. I decided I needed to know if there were any more recent articles about the OSR. I found one, "Old School Renaissance as a Style of Play" by Tommi Brander of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The analysis is a little bit water-is-wet to anyone who actually plays old school style, but water-is-wet research is important. Playing isn't the same as documenting for the outside world, after all.

Anyhoo, I thought you all would be interested in who from the scene is cited in the article:

author	work
Alexander, Jason	Jaquaying the Dungeon at the Alexandrian
Baker, D. Vincent	The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions (cited as example of a failure to understand OSR as a style of play)
Blacky the Blackball	Dark Dungeons (Am I right in thinking this is a Rules Cyclopedia retroclone?)
Bowman, David	article on the entourage approach in Open Game Table anthology
Brockie, Dave and Pittman, Joe	Towers Two
Cone, Jason	Philotomy's Musings (cited multiple times)
Crawford, Kevin	Godbound
Finch, Matthew J.	Old School Primer (multiple citations)
Kemp, Arnold	Goblinpunch post on "rulings not rules" being insufficient
Lynch, Bryce	tenfootpole review of Seclusium
Maliszewski, James	2009 escapist article on the history of the OSR
Maliszewski, James	"Time in the old school campaign" from Grognardia
McDowell, Chris	Into the Odd
Melan	seminal dungeon mapping post from ENworld & dragonsfoot
Milton, Ben; Lumpkin, Steven et al.	Principia Apocrypha (cited multiple times)
Princess, Scrap and Stuart, Patrick	Fire on the Velvet Horizon
Raggi, James Edward IV	Guide to Adventure Writing in Open Game Table anthology
Raggi, James Edward IV	Lamentations referee book (the old one from the boxed set)(cited multiple times in article)'
Raggi, James Edward IV	Lamentations player's hardback
Schroder, Alex	blogpost comparing Seclusium to Moldvay dungeon stocking
Strejcek, Brendan	Necropraxis article on the R in OSR
Strejcek, Brendan	Necropraxis article on OSR Attributes
Strejcek, Brendan	Necropraxis article on his OSR survey
Strejcek, Brendan	Necropraxis article on OSR survey participation
Stukey, Randall S.	Microlite 75 (cited as a possible alternative approach to OSR play)
Tuovinen, Eero	multiple story-games.com forum threads about D&D (cited multiple times)

There are some pretty rad people on the list above. I am, of course, jealous. These are only the old schoolers mentioned in the piece. (Also appearing: Vincent Baker.) 

What is a little more alarming is the amount of GNS in the article. John H. Kim, Brian Gleichman, Ben Lehman, and especially Ron Edwards are cited in this regards. Brander uses the threefold model to analyze old school play, which is totally legit to me. What concerns me is that a non-specialist, even an academic who studies mainstream D&D for a living, could easily conclude from this article that GNS and the associated people are part of the OSR.

But to circle back the the beginning: nice work, Nicholas!