Quote from: JimLotFP;248252Actually, another good reason for OD&D... because it's the barest-bones of the D&D versions, if you're wanting to make changes to the system it's the easiest to use as a base, and you can still add whatever you might want from most of the other editions and it'll still work.

Really? I would say that Holmes or Moldvay/Cook is the baseline for bare-bonesness, especially since those version don't have the fiddly rules about choosing whether the elf is a fighter or a magic-user session. Granted, they have thieves, but dropping them requires precisely zero effort. And they're a little more nicely arranged than OD&D, which is handy for chopping-and-changing purposes.

Quote from: StormBringer;248267d two ohs before hos, muthafukka.

I had to sig that.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: Nicephorus;247924So why the renaissance for OD&D? To me, it looks like pretentious adolation of an antique brand name. Is there something I'm missing?

I think everyone will tell you this happens. I also think everyone will tell you that's not why they do it. Only some of them will be right.

It seems like we could start a "Why ____?" thread for any RPG in existence, really.

Like, do you get constant "Why" questions on a general RPG board (a board dedicated to SR doesn't count) when you say you're playing an older version of Shadowrun?

Some folks like the ruleset, they like the style of play.  Other people haven't experienced the style of game that's called "old school" and want to try for themselves.  That doesn't deserve any kind of insinuation that they're being pretentious or some form of wannabe.

Though if someone really _is_ getting into "retro gaming" in order to be seen as cool by a bunch of people on the internet, they deserve to be beaten up.

Quote from: KenHR;248424Like, do you get constant "Why" questions on a general RPG board (a board dedicated to SR doesn't count) when you say you're playing an older version of Shadowrun?

Umm.

edit: As for accusations of pretentiousness, I base them on my experiences with the people who play OD&D and its derivations, not on the simple fact of playing an earlier version of some game. I don't play SR4 or D&D 4e or ED2, and I don't think it's because I'm pretentious. But when questions come up about these games, you really do see people crawling over each other to wave their hands and say, "I'm playing a version earlier and even less polished and sensical than this other guy!"

I should've looked before posting...heh.

No one called Gabriel pretentious or a wannabe for it, however.

Well, I hit that issue in my ninja edit.

So you did.

And, you know, thinking about it...I can see where you're coming from.  Especially when you have message boards and blogs devoted to the older editions quibbling over whether minis are "old school" or debating the merits of amateurish art (I loves me the Erol Otus, but those awful Bell illos from the original edition are blech).

However...I can see where those folks are coming from, too.  A lot of "old school" proponents have been playing that way for years (I've found two groups around here who were unaware that there'd been a 3e, much less 3.5 and 4.0) and found their style of play denigrated and called immature, stupid or worse for a long time.  So I think a bit of it is that pride people who are marginalized in whatever niche or walk of life have when they find others with the same mindset.

Not that any of the above excuses the behavior on either side.

Quote from: KenHR;248445A lot of "old school" proponents have been playing that way for years (I've found two groups around here who were unaware that there'd been a 3e, much less 3.5 and 4.0) and found their style of play denigrated and called immature, stupid or worse for a long time.

That's got to be a bitch. It's like being a cop: every time anyone ever has a bad experience with a cop, they bitch about all cops, and you're dragged into it by association; worse, you hate bad cops even more than they do! So I think calls of "guilt by association" need to be very very careful.

Quote from: Engine;248449That's got to be a bitch. It's like being a cop: every time anyone ever has a bad experience with a cop, they bitch about all cops, and you're dragged into it by association; worse, you hate bad cops even more than they do! So I think calls of "guilt by association" need to be very very careful.

That's the phenomenon, yes, though I'm willing to bet it's not quite as severe as what I imagine you and Serious Paul go through with the anti-cop faction.

I do have to say I have immense respect for police, by the way.  You and Paul will always have my respect!

Quote from: KenHR;248464I do have to say I have immense respect for police, by the way.  You and Paul will always have my respect!

That's what I always tell cops...

-clash

Quote from: KenHR;248464I do have to say I have immense respect for police, by the way.  You and Paul will always have my respect!

Awesome, thanks! Except I'm not a cop. I'm kind of the opposite of a cop. But Paul deserves mad respect [and a little pity] for taking the sort of jobs - Marine, then guard at an omnimax prison - none of us want to, so that the rest of us don't have to. And for keeping people like me off the streets.

Quote from: flyingmice;248472That's what I always tell cops...

-clash

Ha!

Seriously, before I got my job here, I was seriously considering taking the state police exam and all that.  Only there was a hiring freeze, and by the time it was scheduled to be lifted, I'd have been too old.

Quote from: Engine;248476Awesome, thanks! Except I'm not a cop. I'm kind of the opposite of a cop. But Paul deserves mad respect [and a little pity] for taking the sort of jobs - Marine, then guard at an omnimax prison - none of us want to, so that the rest of us don't have to. And for keeping people like me off the streets.

Ah, damn, I thought you were both in law enforcement.

Well, 'nuff respec' to Paul.

Quote from: Calithena;248330OD&D consisted not just in rules but in a set of play-practices which could be easily duplicated if desired in AD&D 1 and 2, Moldvay, Mentzer, and Holmes. ...

3rd and 4th edition D&D have in various ways - and this is not to knock them as games - jeapordized some of those play-practices. Both rules and play-text militate against them in some ways. I know that you can play a game very similar to the older versions of D&D in 3e, especially at lower levels, and for all I know you can get at least partway there in 4e, but there's a lot that's different too.

Among other things, the return to OD&D now is the return to a neutral framework within which many of the other pre-2000 approaches to D&D can be fit, unprejudicially.

Here are three very good points about the appeal of OD&D (and old school gaming in general). On point two, it matches my experiences. Basically, what I wanted from 3e was "AD&D with better mechanics and a return to demons, devils, dungeons and half-orc assassins", and on the lower levels, 3e mostly delivered. It was later that I bumped into issues where the system revealed itself to be something different - still good, but not exactly what I had in mind. Hence, from "old school as a play style", I proceeded to "old school in system". I did not make the leap to really playing OD&D or 1e; I run something that's more d20 light meets C&C meets sword&sorcery/weird fantasy than canonical Gygaxian old school.

Jackalope's point about the "market-driven" nature of old school is at odds with what really happened. While Necromancer delivered 3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel and was arguably a seminal influence, the majority of today's old school community was created bottom-up. Dragonsfoot, for example, mostly attracted people who did not like 3rd edition for whatever reason and decided to make themselves heard. Development has been, and is more about communities than market; with OSRIC and especially the interest in OD&D, it is entirely about a community of like-minded hobbyists and little more. Small-press products selling 50 to 300 copies is not a market, although it's nice for a hobby.