More mini-reviews! The Pirates of Drinax, A Field Guide To Hot Springs Island and Enter The Dagon

It's been a while, hasn't it?  Of course, I'm keeping busy.  I haven't had much actual gaming lately, but (correction: I wrote that part of the sentence before Gen Con, so it is no longer true) there's been plenty of writing.  And as the title of this post suggests, I keep up a steady diet of OSR reading.

Well, is definitely arguable whether or not Traveller is considered proper OSR, and some people even argue against DCC's inclusion.  Oh well!  Who fucking cares?

OSR puts some lovely ideas out there, but I get the feeling that the movement is slowly losing steam.  I see fewer new adventures and blog posts as time goes by.  If I use forums as a guide, I'd say the peak of OSR interest was probably around 2012-2013, and I got on this train a little late.  Not that I'm particularly dissuaded, but it's sort of disappointing to hear the air hissing out of the tire.

Maybe it doesn't really matter.  OSR has contributed something extremely valuable to tabletop role-playing, and even if the "true" OSR community is waning, you can see its influence ripple outwards.  The reprint of so many old titles and properties, as well as games like DCC that take a step forwards while being mindful of their roots...and the elephant in the room, 5e itself.  Anyone who bothers to look can see OSR fully embedded in D&D 5e's DNA.

OSR is all about pillaging lost treasures of the past

I got off-topic!  Let's talk about cool games!

An idea for the sandbox: no character progression

Sometimes, we are so used to traditions and convention that we forget to question them.  One that I've been re-considering lately, for the first time ever, is the idea of character progression.  I only know of one RPG where improvement of skill over time was not assumed to happen: classic Traveller. 

This was the rulebook I had back in the day

With that one exception in mind, I can't think of any tabletop RPG that doesn't have a system for character progress.  The main question that most rules answer is whether to have a class-and-level system, or track individual skill levels.  Games carefully consider what is the proper rate of character improvement.

But is this all absolutely necessary?