The OSR is Not One Single Group

A neutral look at the OSR's political affiliations if any.

   I will make this post as short as I can, and politically neutral. I'm just going to state facts, not personal opinions. (Unless you want to consider my conclusion from the data presented my personal opinion.)

  Let's have a look to see if the OSR has a majority political side, backed by data where gamers actually put money on what they wanted.

  First, one of the writers that some people point to when they claim the OSR is this super-Conservative group, Venger Satanis. 

  Or is it Venger Christianis?

  Anyway, moving on! This is the result of Venger's latest fundraiser (that I could find online) for his Cha'alt After Dark book:

  Now let's have a look at a definitely Progressive OSR game, Chromatic Dungeons by Rod Waibel:

    This is a screenshot from the Chromatic Dragons Kickstarter:

And the results of the fundraising campaign for that game:

  So there you have it. Between Venger Satanis-Christianis and Rob Waibel, Venger had slightly more backers while Rob had slightly more money from his backers. I consider this a tie, 1 point for each.

  This is where you could argue my personal opinion comes in, I do think a higher price value can detract a few people so it's why I separate the number of backers and the total money raised as each worth '1 point' for my judging.

Side-Note for transparency: There are bigger names in the OSR than Venger Satanis-Christianis and Rob Waibel of course. I was initially thinking of two in particular. One I would consider conservative and the other progressive. I am not using them as examples because their popularity goes beyond the scope of the OSR alone. Also, the conservative one openly tries to make his games neutral of politics -unlike Venger who writes anti-abortion adventures- and the progressive one has people who follow his work in other areas than even the TTRPG hobby. Because of that, they seemed to me ill-suited for a balanced look at the OSR by itself stripped of other outside factors. I am sure some of you can guess who I am talking about but to confirm it would send the conversation in completely off-the-rails directions I am sure.

Also of interest:

• The OSR is Being Destroyed by the Right Wing! (Video by James Desborough)
• The OSR: Shorthand and Pointless Arguments (Article by Jason Vey)