theRPGSite is the only place I'm going to mention this, because of the fairly healthy blend of "new" and "old" school gamers.

This is going to be kind of a weird post - it's granting what I'm going to call a "letter of marque" on my own products.  This isn't anything I have seen done before, and it's a blend of general announcement and advertising, so if it needs to be moved, that's fine.  It might be interesting enough on its own accord to remain in the discussion section.  It's my personal answer to WotC's nonsensical approach to handling piracy.  It's inevitable that some jerk will put products up on file-sharing sites - that's just the landscape of the world.  Publishers should just deal with that, not throw silly hissy-fits.

I've got several "old school" products for Swords & Wizardry (compatible with 0e, 1e, etc) on sale at lulu.com - to my mind, they are good for idea-mining even to people who play later editions.  However, I've got no real idea HOW useful they are.  You can view a sort of preview on lulu, but it's only the first couple of pages.

Here is the letter of marque:
IF you (a) would never in a billion years buy one of these products sight unseen, (b) don't actually post them up yourself on a bit-torrent or other file-sharing site, and (c) don't make public posts about where you found your prey ...

Then feel free to download them "illegally."  In other words, feel free to find and download them on the high seas, and it's legal. Obviously, I'd prefer that you buy them, but if you never would anyway, engage in some privateering (as opposed to piracy) and see if these old school products are useful for your later edition game.  I suspect the Monster Book is the least useful of the four for later-edition gaming.

Okay, the list of products I'm talking about follows, together with blurbs from "old school" reviewers - probably only Philotomy Jurament, Tacojohn (Jon Hershberger) and Grognardia will be familiar here, but the others are reviewers, not random web posts.

The storefront is http://stores.lulu.com/mythmere
(by the way, this is also the free download site for the Swords & Wizardry rules)

The resources, and what people are saying about them:

Knockspell Magazine
"Holy-freakin'-wowser!" -Trollsmyth

"I'm not exaggerating to say that this issue reminded me of Dragon during its Golden Age height."  -Grognardia

Swords & Wizardry Monster Book: 0e Reloaded
"HOME RUN. This book is flat out the most impressive and most useful collection of monsters I've seen since the Rules Cyclopedia, and likely even trumping that." -Meepo

"5 stars out of 5 stars" -Jon Hershberger

The Spire of Iron and Crystal
"I think the best way to describe the feeling I got, adventuring in the Spire, was that it reminded me of the anxiousness and uncertainty I remember from my earliest D&D experiences, going "in search of the unknown" and not having any idea what I might find. For a jaded gamer who has played since the 70s, that's quite a thrill."  -Philotomy Jurament

"Finch pulled out all the stops in writing this one, creating both a truly memorable environment and filling it with obstacles to test even experienced players." -Grognardia

Eldritch Weirdness Compilation: Books Three to One
"Matt's imagination and ability to take a theme and run in 30 different directions with it is in full display." -Chgowiz

I've essentially been doing the exact same thing you've been doing, for years now, with regards to my Forward... to Adventure! game.

RPGPundit

I assume your strategy is to let as many players try your game and get them hooked even if they don't pay at first. How would you measure the efficiency of this policy ?

Why not post asking for a reviewer to review your products with an eye for how useful they might be for AD&D and 3e players?

Quote from: boulet;304835I assume your strategy is to let as many players try your game and get them hooked even if they don't pay at first. How would you measure the efficiency of this policy ?

Yes, but I do that already.  The game's pdf is free.  This is about letting people figure out if the old-school resources themselves are any use to them in a later-edition game. That's pretty individualized, because some people don't have a problem building out stat blocks and difficulty ratings to adapt a good basic module or concept - other people would find the material useless without stats.

That's why I haven't tried to find a later-edition reviewer, too; I think peoples' different concepts of whether early-edition material is useful to them personally would be pretty damn wide-ranging.  Not something a reviewer would likely capture, IMO.

I might read a fair amount of 3e material if it were free, but I don't pirate. This is just that concept executed in reverse.  The fantasy and creativity parts of a resource, for any game system, can be exported.  It just has a lot to do with whether - and to what degree - reading a different game's stats pisses you off.