I think this argument is at the crux of the "trad-first" taxonomy and mind-set. "trad" can only be traditional if there wasn't anything before it. Well...clearly there WAS something before it since it's...duh...Dragonlance. So it feels VERY revisionist to me to down-play and dismiss that earlier style as "not a culture, just a mish-mash of styles". The very idea that the OSR-style is a reclamation of that "non-culture" proves this altered-history to be a lie. Just because AD&D was trying to tighten up OD&D play for consistent convention play (which it successfully did) doesn't support this "trad" pipe-dream.
I would question whether "trad" can only be "traditional" if there wasn't anything before it since I don't think that's true of anything else we would call "traditional". I think it gets the title from its hegemonic distribution and use as an autonym by its adherents. In fact, its adherents only really start calling themselves "trad" to contrast their styles with those of the Forge and eventually, the storygames movement that grows out of the Forge. Prior to that they used even more pejorative titles like "real roleplayers" etc. which I specifically refused as a label.
I also think characterising my attitude towards that proto-culture as "dismiss[al]" is inaccurate. I generally have quite a positive attitude towards the proto-cultural phase of D&D. I see it as a very diverse and productive period full of conflict and exchange, without a single powerful set of norms that could be deployed to stifle dissent. We are discouraged from delving into politics here, but suffice to say that my characterisation of trad as "hegemonic" is influenced by how people of my political tendency understand and evaluate "hegemony" (not positively).
In general tho', when characterising these cultures of play and the history of the game, I strive to distance myself from my own affective investments and treat all sides fairly.
You mentioned me codifying all of this in a blog post. I am working on one, but it's mainly to understand OC RPG / neo-trad and how that emerged from taking games written for trad audiences like D&D 3.x, and combining it with the expectations of online freeform roleplaying to produce a new culture of play, that has rapidly risen, through the influence of streaming games and online media, to become the largest of them. Trad vs. neo-trad debates are surprisingly vicious, partially because both sides use the same terms in different ways and thus seem to fall into constant misunderstanding and accusations of bad faith.
Yeah, I tend to agree with
Lich Van Winkle; the founding myth of the OSR is that is harkens back to a universal playstyle (EDIT: or universal culture) that never was. There is much useful to be gleaned from the OSR, but its foundational myths, like most foundational myths, are myths.
Yes, much like trad took one thing from Gygax and combined it with something else to create something new, I think the OSR took at least one other thing from Gygax (specifically challenge-oriented play) and combined it with something else (what exactly is another huge discussion for some other time) to create a new culture of play, and as part of the emergence of that new culture, its members engaged in a bit of myth-making around how they are the true inheritors of Gygax's legacy.
I think LVW's understanding of the details of that are weak at best, tho' I did enjoy some of his writing. I think he tends to confuse the romantic myth-making component for what is actually going on in the OSR far too often, and he frequently overlooks the more outre-works to emphasise the more conservative ones even when the avant-garde stuff is more.
For anyone interested in play style research (like actual research) in the 1974-1980 period, plenty of fanzines and other publications contain play reports and example scenarios. Some are freely available, and Alarums & Excursions pdfs are still for sale. I can help with other zines that aren’t freely available.
This is a little out of date (I will copy in my latest notes later today), but still a decent starting point for research:
drive.google.com
Any hypotheses regarding story probably ought to take T&T solos and early choose-your-own-adventure books into account.
Good work putting this together! Thanks for doing so. I tend to use the word "crystallise" rather than looking for the origin per se. I don't doubt the origins of trad are significantly earlier than 1983's publication of Ravenloft.
By "crystallise" in this context I mean that two conditions have come into effect:
1) A sufficient number of players are adherents to the norms of the culture of play that direct transmission of norms through personal connection / education is no longer necessary. A new entrant to the culture can pick up the norms through "osmosis", reading, and discussions without necessarily requiring close instruction by someone familiar with it.
2) A sufficient body of textual material exists exemplifying the norms of that culture to be available to people without personal connections to the producers, and that is clearly inspires imitations and other derivative works.
I don't claim this is a perfect definition or characterisation, it's more of a working sense of how to characterise the "floruit" of a given culture of play.