TheRPGSite

OSR: a design philosophy of creating systems, settings and adventures that fit within the boundaries of old-school mechanics and concepts; that is, either directly utilizing features that were in existence in the period before the advent of 2nd edition AD&D; or features that, in spite of not having historically existed at that time, could have existed in that period without the addition of material or design concepts that are clearly the product of subsequent ideas or later theories.

OSR: Derivative clones of early D&D. Any other result is just some lame ass trying to hijack the name for sales.

Quote from: danbuter;791324OSR: Derivative clones of early D&D. Any other result is just some lame ass trying to hijack the name for sales.

Ditto.

OSR is old D&D and it's imitators.

I thought one designers take on it was bemusing.

"OOP Stolen Repeatedly" Due to the plethora of bootlegs out there now under the guise of OSR.

Another one was "3rd ed...Again, and again and again and again..." Due to the plethora of OSR using the 3rd ed tentpole excuse.

Which ignores the much more valid works of people producing actual original material like modules and setting books.

I dont think there will ever be a viable definition now because as usual in the gaming biz. People are using it for things that arent.

Quote from: danbuter;791324OSR: Derivative clones of early D&D. Any other result is just some lame ass trying to hijack the name for sales.

Quote from: Piestrio;791326Ditto.

OSR is old D&D and it's imitators.

Yeah.

It may not be what we want from OSR, but that is what it has turned in to.

O.S.R. - "A brief renaissance of interest in early D&D playstyles, game mechanics, and aesthetics that grew out of an already existing renaissance of older game systems being "cloned" and made available online in the late 90s and early aughts. Cloning early editions of D&D gained a measure of legitimacy following the release of the OGL with the publication of D&D "3rd edition" by WoTC, with Castles & Crusades the forerunner of the online movement originating with OSRIC. The renaissance ended shortly after people started referring to it as a renaissance, as this, like any other sort of positive declaration online, led to a morass of whinging, bitching, and pedanticism that killed any goodwill or interest from the public at large."

Definition's too wordy, tries to be too precise, and contains errors. All the OSR is is a bunch of people rebelling against modern D&D and often, by extension, other new games. What they in general reject is system-first game design.

Or, since you love to hate Ron Edwards, how about I explain it in terms that would enfuriate Ron Edwards? Ron hates D&D, Ron hates "simulationism". The OSR rejects the trend towards "gamist and narrativist priorities" in D&D and tries to restore simulationism. That's why Ronn made his recent dismissive comments about the OSR being just a marketing term. It galls him that people would want to fill blog posts with random tables of door types or monster motivations, or rant about the uselessness of game balance, or embrace "rulings, not rules" play styles.

Quote from: talysman;791342Definition's too wordy, tries to be too precise, and contains errors. All the OSR is is a bunch of people rebelling against modern D&D and often, by extension, other new games. What they in general reject is system-first game design.

Or, since you love to hate Ron Edwards, how about I explain it in terms that would enfuriate Ron Edwards? Ron hates D&D, Ron hates "simulationism". The OSR rejects the trend towards "gamist and narrativist priorities" in D&D and tries to restore simulationism. That's why Ronn made his recent dismissive comments about the OSR being just a marketing term. It galls him that people would want to fill blog posts with random tables of door types or monster motivations, or rant about the uselessness of game balance, or embrace "rulings, not rules" play styles.

Ron hates Simulationism  or Simulationism doesn't really exist? Ron should make up his mind.

Original Simulated Repeated
Old Souls Rejoicing
Oops Shoddy Remembrance
Oh Shit Raped

Material based around TSR era D&D/AD&D.

I don't see why 2e should be excluded. I don't like everything done in it, but it's largely a clean up of 1e and is probably 95% compatible. Indeed, early 2e products had a thing on the cover saying they still work with 1e.

I don't think there is anything in 2e that wasn't in 1e, except I guess how specialist mages work, casting a subset of spells rather than being a whole separate class. NWPs were in Gygax's own OA (he didn't write it, but claimed copyright ownership of it)

Quote from: JeremyR;791365Material based around TSR era D&D/AD&D.

I don't see why 2e should be excluded. I don't like everything done in it, but it's largely a clean up of 1e and is probably 95% compatible. Indeed, early 2e products had a thing on the cover saying they still work with 1e.

I don't think there is anything in 2e that wasn't in 1e, except I guess how specialist mages work, casting a subset of spells rather than being a whole separate class. NWPs were in Gygax's own OA (he didn't write it, but claimed copyright ownership of it)

In Pundit's defense, I don't think he's excluding 2e. He says an OSR game must be designed with mechanics that existed prior to 2e, or that could have existed prior to 2e. Unless there's something in 2e that's clearly not possible pre-2e, 2e must qualify.

What defines a mechanic that "couldn't exist"?

Quote from: TristramEvans;791376What defines a mechanic that "couldn't exist"?

Yeah, I find that phrasing weird, especially with the timing of 2e in 1989. There were definitely mechanics that didn't exist yet in 1989, but couldn't exist?

By 1989, Dragonlance was already well under way, and there were plenty of games that put story at the forefront. Ars Magica has a rotating GM structure and player control of plot via Whimsy Cards. Prince Valiant also had such a structure. There were also plenty of dissociated mechanics-heavy systems that parallel the complaints about D&D4 - parts of Champions were probably the most well-known of these, but there were plenty of others.

I wouldn't limit OSR to D&D only. SWN and Mutant Future seem to fit in the OSR niche. There are probably others too.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;791390I wouldn't limit OSR to D&D only. SWN and Mutant Future seem to fit in the OSR niche. There are probably others too.

This is one of the things that galls me about the OSR moniker. Classic Traveller is obviously Old School, but is not embraced by the OSR. Stars Without Number is just Classic Traveller with D&D style characters & combat, but is lauded as one of the best OSR games in existence. WTF?

Quote from: jeff37923;791391This is one of the things that galls me about the OSR moniker. Classic Traveller is obviously Old School, but is not embraced by the OSR. Stars Without Number is just Classic Traveller with D&D style characters & combat, but is lauded as one of the best OSR games in existence. WTF?

Yeah, annoys me as well. One of the reasons the OSR failed, IMO.

Quote from: jeff37923;791391This is one of the things that galls me about the OSR moniker. Classic Traveller is obviously Old School, but is not embraced by the OSR. Stars Without Number is just Classic Traveller with D&D style characters & combat, but is lauded as one of the best OSR games in existence. WTF?

Because you can't run Keep on the Borderlands with Traveller.

But aside from that, the biggest reasons people play one-book SWN instead of black-book Classic Traveller boil down to:

1) Tools for building planets and societies that give the GM obvious cues for building adventures. The tag system alone is a vast amount more support than anything CT gives to the GM. Expert Traveller GMs can conjure up wonders from a multi-digit planetary code, but the rest of us like to have things spelled out a little more clearly.

2) Faction rules to help the GM keep the sector in motion around the PCs and give them obvious organizational foes, allies, and obstacles.

3) Character progression. CT has none to speak of and zero-to-hero is the favorite playstyle of a lot of old-school players.

4) Out-of-the-box compatibility with anything else that works with B/X D&D. Yes, you can play Keep on the Borderlands with it without changing anything you can't edit on the fly. This makes it a lot easier to flesh out a sandbox since you can simply yank and reskin almost anything else that OSR types are publishing.

5) At least an order of magnitude more people know and have played D&D compared to CT. A system that uses familiar frameworks and mechanics is going to have an advantage on that ground alone.

Obviously, these reasons won't apply to a lot of people. Equally obviously, it's foolish to pretend that SWN is somehow objectively better than CT. But the simple fact is that the vast majority of stuff labeled OSR is D&D-compatible, and so stuff that is also D&D-compatible is going to find a lot more network benefit from it than CT-derived material.

Quote from: SineNomine;791407Because you can't run Keep on the Borderlands with Traveller.

But aside from that, the biggest reasons people play one-book SWN instead of black-book Classic Traveller boil down to:

1) Tools for building planets and societies that give the GM obvious cues for building adventures. The tag system alone is a vast amount more support than anything CT gives to the GM. Expert Traveller GMs can conjure up wonders from a multi-digit planetary code, but the rest of us like to have things spelled out a little more clearly.

2) Faction rules to help the GM keep the sector in motion around the PCs and give them obvious organizational foes, allies, and obstacles.

3) Character progression. CT has none to speak of and zero-to-hero is the favorite playstyle of a lot of old-school players.

4) Out-of-the-box compatibility with anything else that works with B/X D&D. Yes, you can play Keep on the Borderlands with it without changing anything you can't edit on the fly. This makes it a lot easier to flesh out a sandbox since you can simply yank and reskin almost anything else that OSR types are publishing.

5) At least an order of magnitude more people know and have played D&D compared to CT. A system that uses familiar frameworks and mechanics is going to have an advantage on that ground alone.

Obviously, these reasons won't apply to a lot of people. Equally obviously, it's foolish to pretend that SWN is somehow objectively better than CT. But the simple fact is that the vast majority of stuff labeled OSR is D&D-compatible, and so stuff that is also D&D-compatible is going to find a lot more network benefit from it than CT-derived material.

I appreciate the positive spin you placed here, but you've just confirmed that OSR has been relagated to being an overused marketting term. OSR now means that any game with the label will mean that the gameplay will have the same feeling as D&D in whatever genre the game is set.

Originally the OSR embraced ALL old style games and gaming styles, then one thing or another happened and that fell apart and the OSR died quietly and became more or less an echo chamber for a handful of people while others kept making things.

Quote from: bat;791441Originally the OSR embraced ALL old style games and gaming styles, then one thing or another happened and that fell apart and the OSR died quietly and became more or less an echo chamber for a handful of people while others kept making things.

I actually think you got it backwards.

The OSR started and was at its best when it was overwhelmingly focused on TSRD&D.

The wheels started coming off when everyone and their dog tried to re-define it to include everything.

Quote from: Piestrio;791444I actually think you got it backwards.

The OSR started and was at its best when it was overwhelmingly focused on TSRD&D.

The wheels started coming off when everyone and their dog tried to re-define it to include everything.

  How much of that was connected with a shift from " 'old school' as a good way to play" as " 'old school' as the One True Way to play"?

Quote from: jeff37923;791391This is one of the things that galls me about the OSR moniker. Classic Traveller is obviously Old School, but is not embraced by the OSR. Stars Without Number is just Classic Traveller with D&D style characters & combat, but is lauded as one of the best OSR games in existence. WTF?

You have it all wrong. You're asking "Why don't the OSR people do Traveller?"

Wrong question. The right question is: "Why don't the Traveller people do OSR?"

The OSR has a large overlap (perhaps more than would be ideal) with D&D because it was the old-school D&D people who decided to put effort, time and work into the fucking thing. We've written strict retroclones, we've written loose retroclones, we're written "inspired by" games, we've gone commercial with for-sale products and/or offered up the fruits of our labour for free out of love and enthusiasm. All in all, I imagine thousands of man-hours of work have gone into "OSR products" of various stripes.

And you know why there's no Traveller OSR? Because the Traveller fans were either too lazy or too uninterested (or have their needs perfectly met by Mongoose Traveller) to put in the same amount of work. They just sit around the CotI forums doing whatever they do over there and they're very patently NOT publishing clones, inspired-by games or RPG blogs based on Traveller. (For all I know.)

There's no elitist cabal of D&D players actively sabotaging the efforts of Traveller fans to create a Traveller OSR. It's the Traveller fans themselves who just DON'T WANT TO DO IT. Same goes for the Tunnels & Trolls fans, the Runequest fans and all the others. We are not excluding them. It's them who are not interested in joining. If they did put in the work and come up with some products, I'm sure all sane OSR people would welcome them with open arms and let them slap the badge on their game.

And there's nothing the D&D people can do about this state of affairs. I mean what do you expect us to do, create Traveller OSR products by people who don't play and are not interested in Traveller? That would just as absurd as expecting Traveller players to write D&D adventures "because want them to".

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;791447How much of that was connected with a shift from " 'old school' as a good way to play" as " 'old school' as the One True Way to play"?

I must have missed that memo.

Quote from: Premier;791448You have it all wrong. You're asking "Why don't the OSR people do Traveller?"

Actually, I wasn't asking. I was pointing out the flaw.

But that is OK, you have a good rant going.

Quote from: Premier;791448Wrong question. The right question is: "Why don't the Traveller people do OSR?"

Because they want something different than just D&D in (blank).

Quote from: Premier;791448The OSR has a large overlap (perhaps more than would be ideal) with D&D because it was the old-school D&D people who decided to put effort, time and work into the fucking thing. We've written strict retroclones, we've written loose retroclones, we're written "inspired by" games, we've gone commercial with for-sale products and/or offered up the fruits of our labour for free out of love and enthusiasm. All in all, I imagine thousands of man-hours of work have gone into "OSR products" of various stripes.

And you know why there's no Traveller OSR? Because the Traveller fans were either too lazy or too uninterested (or have their needs perfectly met by Mongoose Traveller) to put in the same amount of work. They just sit around the CotI forums doing whatever they do over there and they're very patently NOT publishing clones, inspired-by games or RPG blogs based on Traveller. (For all I know.)

Most are happy with Mongoose Traveller. It does a really good job. A very liberal Fair Use policy for Traveller has helped a lot (WotC shooting themselves in the foot over D&D helped bring about the OSR). Of course, you wouldn't know that because you seem to not be interested in any RPG that strays too far from D&D.

(And actually, you should take a look. There is a lot out there for Traveller and the cross-pollination of ideas can't hurt your game.)

Quote from: Premier;791448There's no elitist cabal of D&D players actively sabotaging the efforts of Traveller fans to create a Traveller OSR. It's the Traveller fans themselves who just DON'T WANT TO DO IT. Same goes for the Tunnels & Trolls fans, the Runequest fans and all the others. We are not excluding them. It's them who are not interested in joining. If they did put in the work and come up with some products, I'm sure all sane OSR people would welcome them with open arms and let them slap the badge on their game.

This thread would suggest that the OSR label is just for those games that have the same feel as D&D, for marketting. Not saying that sales of product are a bad thing, but it is an exclusive club of D&D only that is considered part of the OSR.

Quote from: Premier;791448And there's nothing the D&D people can do about this state of affairs. I mean what do you expect us to do, create Traveller OSR products by people who don't play and are not interested in Traveller? That would just as absurd as expecting Traveller players to write D&D adventures "because want them to".

No. I really don't think that playing Keep on the Borderlands would be as fun if you were using Traveller.

(And you should go look at DriveThru RPG under the system heading of Traveller, there is already a bunch of stuff there.)

Quote from: Premier;791448Wrong question. The right question is: "Why don't the Traveller people do OSR?"

The following are my OBSERVATIONs.

The Classic Traveller community never experienced a break in continuity. After the release of MegaTraveller they used the Traveller Mailing List, the early internet to continue to produce new material. It helped that GDW was friendly towards non-commercial efforts.

Along with the fact that Traveller was both about rules and a setting, the Third Imperium. So while classic rules were Out of Print, the Third Imperium continued to be developed. Developed in a way that was broadly compatible with the earliest material for classic Traveller.

Then Mongoose released their edition of Traveller, basically a cleaned up classic Traveller, just as the d20 tide receded. Which shifted everything into a "renewed" support mode.

Runequest in the form of Basic Roleplaying had a similar lack of continuity. It wasn't as clean as the history of Traveller but useful stuff was still being released through out the 90s and early 00s. Finally Mongoose, again, kicked the door open with their version of Runequest ulimately going with a completely open system in the form of Legends.

The Runequest IP holders being willing to license,.the OGL Legends, and the continued existance of Chaosium means that Runequest experienced an independent renaissance of its own.

Other older games like Tunnels & Trolls, The Fantasy Trip did not benefit directly from the OSR but benefited from the same forces that propelled the OSR forward. Namely the ease of communication fosted by the Internet and the expansion of computer technology to allow individuals or small groups to pursue sophisticated projects.

Quote from: Piestrio;791444I actually think you got it backwards.

The OSR started and was at its best when it was overwhelmingly focused on TSRD&D.

The wheels started coming off when everyone and their dog tried to re-define it to include everything.

Absolutely not, in the beginning many of us worked together to promote all kinds of gaming, genres and to encourage people actually playing. There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with people playing any old style game, whether it is OD&D from 74 to Barbarians of Lemuria, which is even more simplified to classic Traveller.

No, the OSR did not fall apart when people tried to re-define it, the OSR died when people tried to lead it. Leadership is nonsensical and those who would lead are setting themselves up for a bit of disappointment, however it is fun to watch them try. :)

Quote from: TristramEvans;791399One of the reasons the OSR failed, IMO.

Quote from: bat;791477...the OSR died when people tried to lead it...

WTF? The OSR 'failed'?!?  The OSR 'died'?!?

When did these things happen?  :confused:

As far as I can tell, the OSR is very much alive, and has been astonishingly successful.

Quote from: Premier;791448You have it all wrong. You're asking "Why don't the OSR people do Traveller?"

Wrong question. The right question is: "Why don't the Traveller people do OSR?"

The OSR has a large overlap (perhaps more than would be ideal) with D&D because it was the old-school D&D people who decided to put effort, time and work into the fucking thing. We've written strict retroclones, we've written loose retroclones, we're written "inspired by" games, we've gone commercial with for-sale products and/or offered up the fruits of our labour for free out of love and enthusiasm. All in all, I imagine thousands of man-hours of work have gone into "OSR products" of various stripes.

And you know why there's no Traveller OSR? Because the Traveller fans were either too lazy or too uninterested (or have their needs perfectly met by Mongoose Traveller) to put in the same amount of work. They just sit around the CotI forums doing whatever they do over there and they're very patently NOT publishing clones, inspired-by games or RPG blogs based on Traveller. (For all I know.)

There's no elitist cabal of D&D players actively sabotaging the efforts of Traveller fans to create a Traveller OSR. It's the Traveller fans themselves who just DON'T WANT TO DO IT. Same goes for the Tunnels & Trolls fans, the Runequest fans and all the others. We are not excluding them. It's them who are not interested in joining. If they did put in the work and come up with some products, I'm sure all sane OSR people would welcome them with open arms and let them slap the badge on their game.

And there's nothing the D&D people can do about this state of affairs. I mean what do you expect us to do, create Traveller OSR products by people who don't play and are not interested in Traveller? That would just as absurd as expecting Traveller players to write D&D adventures "because want them to".

I read this and really laughed. There must be a lot of third and fourth generation 'OSR' people who never knew in the beginning there were groups and we made fliers for people to distribute for their old style games (yes, T&T, yes, Traveller, yes, RuneQuest, yes The Fantasy Trip, etc), that was during the days of the OSR. These are post-post-OSR times now. The OSR was defeated fairly easily early on by those who wanted control. How do you control an organic toolbox? You don't. But then, that is why there truly is no OSR now, which maybe is as it should be: Go out there and game! Nobody cares about people's theories on is 'x' better than 'y' or is this OSR or that, just get some people together, roll some funny shaped dice, and have fun.

In the beginning I enjoyed the idea of the OSR and thought it was going places, and many great games and products were created and then the OSR fell and fell hard and it is no longer necessary as an entity or even a large group, it fulfilled its purpose long ago and that is evident in the flourishing smaller groups out there, just because the OSR is gone, that doesn't mean that people aren't still gaming the way they want and it served a purpose in its time.

Quote from: bat;791480...then the OSR fell and fell hard and it is no longer necessary as an entity or even a large group, it fulfilled its purpose long ago and that is evident in the flourishing smaller groups out there, just because the OSR is gone, that doesn't mean that people aren't still gaming the way they want and it served a purpose in its time.

:huhsign:

On my planet, the OSR is alive and thriving.

Quote from: Akrasia;791479WTF? The OSR 'failed'?!?  The OSR 'died'?!?

When did these things happen?  :confused:

As far as I can tell, the OSR is very much alive, and has been astonishingly successful.

As a movement, the OSR died years ago. I game in an old school way, running S&W fairly often from coast to coast, but I have nothing to do with the OSR and I know many other people who feel the same way, we just game. The OSR was a movement in the beginning, a group with goals of spreading information and getting people to play, now it is beyond all of that and the basic notions are gone, leaving viable ways for people to continue gaming however they want to, which is a pretty decent legacy.

Quote from: Akrasia;791481:huhsign:

On my planet, the OSR is alive and thriving.

But do you mean people playing old school D&D or people as part of a greater movement encouraging people to play and bringing in new players?

I have run S&W through the summer with new players. OSR? Not in the slightest, just having fun running a game with new people. I don't need the OSR, it took me a while to see it, and I do appreciate the games that came from it, but it is over as a movement, now just game.

Quote from: bat;791483As a movement, the OSR died years ago.

It did?  By what criterion?

The games (S&W, OSRIC, Crypts & Things, etc.) still exist, still are being published, still are being played.  Many OSR websites and blogs still exist (some have died, others have emerged, but if anything there seem to be more today than 5 years ago).  The games are run at cons, indeed, there are cons devoted to OSR and OOP games.  The games are being played by groups.

I have no idea how anyone could regard the OSR 'dead'.

Quote from: bat;791484I have run S&W through the summer with new players. OSR? Not in the slightest, just having fun running a game with new people. I don't need the OSR, it took me a while to see it, and I do appreciate the games that came from it, but it is over as a movement, now just game.

If you're playing OSR games, introducing people to OSR games, etc., then I'm afraid that you're part of the 'movement'.

I don't know what the 'movement' was/is beyond producing the games, promoting them, writing about them, and playing them.

Quote from: Akrasia;791485It did?  By what criterion?

The games (S&W, OSRIC, Crypts & Things, etc.) still exist, still are being published, still are being played.  Many OSR websites and blogs still exist (some have died, others have emerged, but if anything there seem to be more today than 5 years ago).  The games are run at cons, indeed, there are cons devoted to OSR and OOP games.  The games are being played by groups.

I have no idea how anyone could regard the OSR 'dead'.

I do not equate old school style gaming with the OSR, the two are no longer, and never were, mutually exclusive. The OSR was a brief thing, the games, as I said before, are a proud legacy of that time, but hardly because of it, people have been playing older games at conventions for ages, for example.

I was criticized by the Pundit for being "aloof" and being hypocritical about the the definition of the OSR.

I don't bother with offering a definition. Instead I talk about what I observe doing when they label themselves as part of the OSR. Perhaps I wasn't I clear about that. The reason I approach things this way is because I long been an advocate of open source and open content. I also been involved in open source projects.

The first open source project I had any success with was a simulation of the Mercury Space Capsules (http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/). Accurate enough that you can use the original flight plans and the craft and switches will do what the flight plan say they should do. It was an add-on for the Orbiter Space Simulator (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/). If anybody interested in that type of thing I provided a link.

My experience has taught me that you can only define movements around open source/open content by what they do. The OSR is about what the member want to do with Classic D&D. The OSR involves more than Classic D&D because it members are not one dimensional caricatures and have other interests.  The result is a fusion of what people are doing with the open content and their own ideas.

It like Linux, some view it about a holy crusade to liberate the masses from the clutches of the evil corporate masters like Microsoft. Other view Linuix as something useful to get something done they need.

The same with the OSR. Some, like the Pundit, view is a design philosophy and a way of the playing the game. Others only care that it gets more material for their favorite games.

The Pundit and others worry about people capturing or hijacking the OSR. But what they don't realize that because the OSR is primarily about something that is open content it not like a mass movement based solely on ideas.

From the beginning the OSR was based around open content. This ensure that there never any gatekeepers or somebody that had any type of effective type of control. That there was always the option to say "fuck you I am doing it my own way."

Indeed the community that gave birth to OSRIC was born of a group that said "Fuck you, I am doing it my own way." to Troll Lords and Castles & Crusade.

Chris Gonnerman and Daniel Proctor were both independent of any other classic D&D community when they released their respective rules. (Basic Fantasy, and Labyrinth Lord).

There was never a time when there was place like the Forge dominating the OSR. It was always a group of distinct independent communities pursuing their own agendas united only by the fact what they were doing was about classic D&D.

And because we are talking about people, not cartoon characters, they have other interests. Interests that merged and fused in with what they were doing with classic D&D. Jeff Rients promoted retro-stupid and gonzo, James Raggi had weird fantasy, I worked a lot with sandbox campaigns and hexcrawl settings. Even Pundit put his own stamp on things with Arrows of Indra being based heavily on non-european mythology.

I never heard of any plausible scenario where a person or small group could dominate the OSR in the way that Ron Edwards and his clique dominated the Forge.  Even at the height of Grognardia popularity there were plenty of people ignoring or criticizing him and being successful in the OSR.

All of this is based on what I observed. I am satisfied with the fact that I have the freedom to write what I want, when I want. I am beholden to no one person or one group to do what I want to do either in promoting, playing, or publishing. I participate in the larger OSR community because I like helping people. That by helping other I increase the pool of ideas that I can draw from for my own work and be better off for it.

Is there a downside to all this? Sure, open content movement are influenced by those who do. Those who do the work, calls the shots. Not everybody wants to publish, not everybody wants to write a blog. And people doing the work are not always right. So there is a tendency to ignore people not publishing, not blogging, etc.

There is no good way of resolving this as the freedom granted by open content license is blind. Any effort to "fix" this invariably comes back to attempts to curtail the freedom of open content and nobody involved will have anything to do with that.

All of this is based on what I observed and experienced. It not my opinion on what ought to be. It is my opinion on how things are.

My opinion on how things ought to be is for more people to publishing and promoting.  As long as it legal, have at it and do your thing. And for those want to play, enjoy the wealth of options to pick from. Also enjoy the fact that many options are in a form that makes it easy to adapt for your own use. Like Swords & Wizardry (http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/cleanwpfilecore4.rtf) and my own Blackmarsh (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/blackmarsh_srd.zip).

Quote from: Akrasia;791486If you're playing OSR games, introducing people to OSR games, etc., then I'm afraid that you're part of the 'movement'.

I don't know what the 'movement' was/is beyond producing the games, promoting them, writing about them, and playing them.

I am not part of the OSR nor have I been for years,as are many others, we eschew the moniker vehemently, actually. I am not part of the OSR because I do not believe in many of the things that it had become towards the end. Just because a person plays old school games does not mean that they want to be lumped in with others.

Well said, Estar. You hit the proverbial nail on the head there.

Quote from: bat;791483I have nothing to do with the OSR

You run old school D&D, create material for it, and share it with the world via blog.

If that's not being part of the OSR, I don't know what is.

Quote from: bat;791487I do not equate old school style gaming with the OSR, the two are no longer, and never were, mutually exclusive. The OSR was a brief thing, the games, as I said before, are a proud legacy of that time, but hardly because of it, people have been playing older games at conventions for ages, for example.

You do realize that those of us who started using the term OSR used it to refer to all the activity that was going on with the playing, promoting, and publishing for classic editions of D&D and similar games.

You played Swords & Wizadry this summer. Congratulations you are part of the OSR.

Quote from: bat;791490I am not part of the OSR nor have I been for years,as are many others, we eschew the moniker vehemently, actually. I am not part of the OSR because I do not believe in many of the things that it had become towards the end. Just because a person plays old school games does not mean that they want to be lumped in with others.

What do you understand the 'OSR' to be? :confused:

I've participated in it from the very beginning, and always have understood it to involve producing, promoting, and playing OSR games.  By that definition, you have indeed been participating in the OSR.

Quote from: The Butcher;791492You run old school D&D, create material for it, and share it with the world via blog.

If that's not being part of the OSR, I don't know what is.

Bah, there are many that would gladly point out that I am not part of the OSR because I do not conform to this or that or bow to the right people. I do my thing, if something from my blog works in a game, AWESOME, if not, sorry, I tried. I did what I did for others, not for profit, not for accolades, not for anything else than to be of help. I cannot be a part of something where a few people are dismissive, narcissistic and/or controlling of others, that is not what I signed up for originally. Either we all pitch in, try our best to get along and play fair or we don't play together. I'll live.

Quote from: bat;791484But do you mean people playing old school D&D or people as part of a greater movement encouraging people to play and bringing in new players?

I have run S&W through the summer with new players. OSR? Not in the slightest, just having fun running a game with new people. I don't need the OSR, it took me a while to see it, and I do appreciate the games that came from it, but it is over as a movement, now just game.

But playing these games, and generating material for them (whether in a professional or amateur capacity) is the movement in a nutshell.

Today people are just more aware of the games, and there are more variants out there. It's changed, definitely, but hardly dead, and I don't think if has failed (as another poster seems to think) by any sane metric.

Quote from: bat;791490I am not part of the OSR nor have I been for years,as are many others, we eschew the moniker vehemently, actually. I am not part of the OSR because I do not believe in many of the things that it had become towards the end. Just because a person plays old school games does not mean that they want to be lumped in with others.

You said something interesting that I highlighted in bold. How did the OSR become something you didn't believe in?  Who were the individual or groups involved? And what effect they had on you being able to produce, use, or talk about materials for classic D&D, old school, and similar games?

I will be straight up and say that I will be viewing any answer with extreme skepticism. Because

a) you have a blog, so you know how easy (and hard) to setup and maintain a blog.

b) You have Swords & Wizardry so you are using one of the OSR that is noted for being 100% open content with little or no restricution on how you can use it to play, publish, or promote.

c) And from looking over your blog, I notice you are aware of various OSR products and where they originated. I am assuming, I could be wrong, that you realize that where they sprung form distinct communities with their own independent agendas.


ease communication, open content, and multiple independent groups don't add up to a unified movement. A movement yes but one that only bound by their mutual interests. Anything beyond that is only the opinion of a few.

Quote from: The Butcher;791497But playing these games, and generating material for them (whether in a professional or amateur capacity) is the movement in a nutshell.

Today people are just more aware of the games, and there are more variants out there. It's changed, definitely, but hardly dead, and I don't think if has failed (as another poster seems to think) by any sane metric.

I believe that what is necessary for people to play old school games is accomplished. The roots are there for further embellishment, for branches to grow. New games, new adventures, new add-ons, yes, please! That work is done, the OSR is no longer necessary as a thing for old style playing to flourish, there is no need for a banner now.

I am not saying that the style of gaming is dead by a long shot, but the term OSR is no longer needed-come on, you have people starting up companies like Mark with his Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen module, did he need the OSR? Nope, all of the basics are already there. The toolbox was always there, and the OSR, in its time, encouraged what we have now, which is great, but I don't see it as a fluid thing as much as people see the interest is out there to share their ideas.

I don't think a precise definition of the OSR is possible.  But as a vague definition, I think that play styles and mechanics common to the 'first wave' of RPGs (roughly 1974-1984) is helpful.

The OSR generally has focused on AD&D/D&D, but I personally would not restrict it to D&D at all.  

The reason why the OSR has focused on A/D&D is twofold:

(1) A/D&D has always been the most widespread and popular RPG, and

(2) there are two huge discontinuities in the style and mechanics of official publications for A/D&D.  
(The first discontinuity is marked, roughly, by 1985 and the publication of Dragonlance; it reached its apogee with 2e.  This discontinuity has to do with the 'style' and focus of adventures and campaigns.  The second discontinuity is marked by 1999-2000 and the introduction of 3e D&D.  This discontinuity has to do with mechanics, even whilst 3e marketing trumpeted [among other things] a 'return to the dungeon' [i.e., pre-1985 adventure style].  Simply put, the OSR rejects post-1985 style, and post-1999 mechanics.)

In contrast to A/D&D, other 'old school' games -- like Call of Cthulhu and other BRP games (including RuneQuest) -- did not experience these kinds of discontinuities (thought some games, like RQ, did go through periods during which they were not being published at all).

Traveller would be another old school game.  Others have commented on it already (and I'm not familiar enough with Trav to do so).

So, in a nutshell, I would say that the OSR focuses on pre-1985 play styles (sandbox-ish campaigns, no PC 'plot protection', etc.), and pre-1999 mechanics (though some might say pre-1989 or even pre-1985 mechanics instead).

Quote from: bat;791496Bah, there are many that would gladly point out that I am not part of the OSR because I do not conform to this or that or bow to the right people. I do my thing, if something from my blog works in a game, AWESOME, if not, sorry, I tried. I did what I did for others, not for profit, not for accolades, not for anything else than to be of help. I cannot be a part of something where a few people are dismissive, narcissistic and/or controlling of others, that is not what I signed up for originally. Either we all pitch in, try our best to get along and play fair or we don't play together. I'll live.

This is similar to Pundit accusations. And I will ask you the same questions I asked him.

Who are you talking about?  And what happened specifically?

Both Akrasia and myself have stated a very liberal definition of who is part of the OSR. You play classic D&D you are part of the OSR. I have stated several times there are no gatekeepers and why.

And I am well aware there are assholes in the OSR. I have personally run into people dismissive of my own work like the Majestic Wilderlands. Personally I just ignore them as they are obviously not my customers as the phrase goes.  Well not my customers as far as my Majestic Wilderlands. Some seem happy with Points of Light and Blackmarsh.

Quote from: estar;791498You said something interesting that I highlighted in bold. How did the OSR become something you didn't believe in?  Who were the individual or groups involved? And what effect they had on you being able to produce, use, or talk about materials for classic D&D, old school, and similar games?

I will not name the name, it will only start a pointless fracas, some snide, dismissive, sanctimonious remarks will be issued towards me, and probably a glib, hipster quote as well.

Quote from: bat;791501I am not saying that the style of gaming is dead by a long shot, but the term OSR is no longer needed-come on, you have people starting up companies like Mark with his Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen module, did he need the OSR? Nope, all of the basics are already there. The toolbox was always there, and the OSR, in its time, encouraged what we have now, which is great, but I don't see it as a fluid thing as much as people see the interest is out there to share their ideas.

It will be useful as long as it remain useful as a shorthand. Right now it encompasses a lot of different things in people's mind. The most common use is a shorthand for everybody playing, promoting, or publishing classic D&D. You can see this at RPGNow (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?filters=0_0_1300_0_0).

It is also a shorthand for a design philosophy. Because it started with classic D&D it brought along with it how people played classic D&D and designed things for classic D&D. Because of none of this dependent on using the classic D&D rules it became part of the OSR and gave life to the "and similar games" portion of the OSR movement.  For example Dungeon Crawl Classics, Blood & Treasure or Castles & Crusades. None of which is based on a particular D&D classic edition but explictly supports how people commonly played classic D&D.

Classic D&D was never just a game of dungeon crawls. That may have been is most common use but it was certainly used for other types of campaigns and adventures. Because the OSR from the get go had a diverse cast and based on open content this meant things like James Raggi Lamentation of the Flame Princess and my own Majestic Wilderlands will be developed and become part of the OSR. Eventually this gets extended to other genres and spreads out into the edges merges into the larger tabletop roleplaying hobby.

For example Dunegon World, Torchbearer, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, have their take on elements that the OSR focuses on.

The OSR has grown to the point that 'what it is' depends your personal experience and who you dealt with.  However it core remains those playing, promoting, and publishing for classic D&D.

And if OSR becomes so diffuse that it become useless for marketing, or any other type of shorthand then another term will arise from the community of people playing, promoting, or publishing for classic D&D.

I personally don't consider this a likely fate of OSR for several reasons.

The term was too general, and an adjective too desirable, to be useful.

People wanted a moniker to describe a particular thing they were doing, without any judgement being passed on other gaming also happening during that general era.  But old-school is desirable adjective real estate, and immediately came the "but how can 'x' not also be called old school" or "I've been playing just as long as you, so what elitist snobbery of you to apply this label I find positive and exclude my play style".

And since those arguments have merit, the tent bloated as to be meaningless as a term of distinction, as evidenced by no three that self-identify agreeing.

I think if the label chosen was more "Champaign", and less "Sparkling Wine", it could have had more positive effects with far less squabbling.

Quote from: bat;791506I will not name the name, it will only start a pointless fracas, some snide, dismissive, sanctimonious remarks will be issued towards me, and probably a glib, hipster quote as well.

I understand, however without that then all I can say you are wrong about the OSR. What happened was you happen to encountered a slice with a bunch of assholes labeling themselves as members of the OSR.

With the good news being  they have little or no power over what projects you choose to pursue. That if you ever need help there are plenty of others, including myself, that will help you with aid or advice if you let us know.

Quote from: Akrasia;791479WTF? The OSR 'failed'?!?  The OSR 'died'?!?

When did these things happen?  :confused:

As far as I can tell, the OSR is very much alive, and has been astonishingly successful.

Many people think the same thing about The Forge.


And about Steampunk.

I'm not saying people aren't still creating and playing games that are/were/could be included in the "OSR" umbrella (of course most of us were already and never stopped), I'm saying it's no  longer a "renaissance". Its just the hardcore adherents doing what they've always done. Just like "Goth" is over, but you can still meet goths.


The Pundit is basically Disco Stu at this point.

Quote from: RPGPundit;791320OSR: a design philosophy of creating systems, settings and adventures that fit within the boundaries of old-school mechanics and concepts; that is, either directly utilizing features that were in existence in the period before the advent of 2nd edition AD&D; or features that, in spite of not having historically existed at that time, could have existed in that period without the addition of material or design concepts that are clearly the product of subsequent ideas or later theories.

People playing the "OS or Not?" game blow fuzes over stuff that was current before the 1st ed. DMG hit the shelves.

The whole Maliszewski-ish predicate is bollixed. The OSR is not "a design philosophy" in the first place, which is why attempting to define it so is a soup sandwich.

The OSR is movement among fans of TSR-era D&D - including AD&D 2nd Ed - to produce new material for it as well as derivative spinoffs.

Quote from: jhkim;791385Yeah, I find that phrasing weird, especially with the timing of 2e in 1989. There were definitely mechanics that didn't exist yet in 1989, but couldn't exist?

By 1989, Dragonlance was already well under way, and there were plenty of games that put story at the forefront. Ars Magica has a rotating GM structure and player control of plot via Whimsy Cards.

Ars Magica and Whimsy Cards were quite separate products! I encountered the cards in the context of D&D, and certainly did not receive a deck as part of my purchase of AM.

QuotePrince Valiant also had such a structure. There were also plenty of dissociated mechanics-heavy systems that parallel the complaints about D&D4 - parts of Champions were probably the most well-known of these, but there were plenty of others.

En Garde! (1975): Social status is the goal? No skirmish-level miniatures rules? New School!

Tunnels & Trolls (1975): Wizards in armor! Spell Points! Buff stat gains each level! What is this, some kind of fantasy game? New School! 5th ed. (1979): Saving Rolls start to look suspiciously like a general system, and the new rule is no xp for treasure. Newer school!

Empire of the Petal Throne (1976) and various articles on Metamorphosis Alpha and such in The Dragon: Skills, a setting and society.

Traveller (1977): Skills and at least an implied society: the now not-so-new idea that adventurers can be more than just antisocial vagrants wandering subterranean mazes.

Melee (1977): OMG,  grid-based combat! What self-respecting grognard would touch a hexgrid with a 2-3 soak?

Chivalry & Sorcery (1977): Okay, now Hanns Johst is unlocking his Browning. The 2nd (1983) edition added skills and some philosophical ramblings.

RuneQuest (1978): Geez, by now maybe we should call this stuff "old school".

Quote from: estar;791475The following are my OBSERVATIONs.

The Classic Traveller community never experienced a break in continuity. After the release of MegaTraveller they used the Traveller Mailing List, the early internet to continue to produce new material. It helped that GDW was friendly towards non-commercial efforts.

Along with the fact that Traveller was both about rules and a setting, the Third Imperium. So while classic rules were Out of Print, the Third Imperium continued to be developed. Developed in a way that was broadly compatible with the earliest material for classic Traveller.

Then Mongoose released their edition of Traveller, basically a cleaned up classic Traveller, just as the d20 tide receded. Which shifted everything into a "renewed" support mode.

Runequest in the form of Basic Roleplaying had a similar lack of continuity. It wasn't as clean as the history of Traveller but useful stuff was still being released through out the 90s and early 00s. Finally Mongoose, again, kicked the door open with their version of Runequest ulimately going with a completely open system in the form of Legends.

The Runequest IP holders being willing to license,.the OGL Legends, and the continued existance of Chaosium means that Runequest experienced an independent renaissance of its own.

Other older games like Tunnels & Trolls, The Fantasy Trip did not benefit directly from the OSR but benefited from the same forces that propelled the OSR forward. Namely the ease of communication fosted by the Internet and the expansion of computer technology to allow individuals or small groups to pursue sophisticated projects.

In short, if there is - and there might not be  - a significant division into hostle  "schools" in some other game community, they don't necessarily have anything to do with this D&D vs. that D&D. Projecting your own discontents on others is a way of confusion, not understanding.

Quote from: SineNomine;791407Because you can't run Keep on the Borderlands with Traveller.

That's absurd. Of course you can. Well, maybe not you, personally (I don't know you, maybe there's some special reason you couldn't), but I could easily as could any GM barring any aforementioned "special reasons".

Quote from: TristramEvans;791542That's absurd. Of course you can. Well, maybe not you, personally (I don't know you, maybe there's some special reason you couldn't), but I could easily as could any GM barring any aforementioned "special reasons".

The point, I think, is that Traveller is a remarkably different rules set. Mutant Future is even closer to D&D (specifically the 1981 ed.) than was its Gamma World inspiration, and I gather the same holds even more in a comparison of Stars Without Number  vs. Classic (or Mega or Marc Miller's T4 or Mongoose) Traveller.

Quote from: TristramEvans;791542That's absurd. Of course you can. Well, maybe not you, personally (I don't know you, maybe there's some special reason you couldn't), but I could easily as could any GM barring any aforementioned "special reasons".

How would you propose to do that on the fly? Keeping in mind, of course, that CT is predicated on the assumption that PCs will never substantially increase in personal prowess, while D&D assumes that any given PC may eventually become an order of magnitude more capable than they are at the start of the campaign.

Quote from: SineNomine;791546How would you propose to do that on the fly? Keeping in mind, of course, that CT is predicated on the assumption that PCs will never substantially increase in personal prowess, while D&D assumes that any given PC may eventually become an order of magnitude more capable than they are at the start of the campaign.

"Rulings not rules"

All the system does is provide a means of randomization and task resolution.

Quote from: Piestrio;791444I actually think you got it backwards.

The OSR started and was at its best when it was overwhelmingly focused on TSRD&D.

The wheels started coming off when everyone and their dog tried to re-define it to include everything.

Pretty much, although I'd like to acknowledge one of estar's posts in this thread about Traveller, BRP, and the like not really having the same needs as old-school D&D players.

The communities around other old school games are not in the position of having their game in continuous publication, but changing so much over the editions, and with active discouragement against playing in older ways. The OSR is just a rebellion against that. "Hey, old D&D is not necessarily bad!" Tunnels & Trolls, Call of Cthulhu and Runequest barely changed, Traveller seems to maintain small communities around each version without much of the "playing older Traveller is WRONG!" mindset, etc.

Quote from: Akrasia;791481:huhsign:

On my planet, the OSR is alive and thriving.

People have been saying "The OSR is dead" since it first became a thing. If not before. I guess the theory is, if you repeat something three times, it's true.

Quote from: Phillip;791531The whole Maliszewski-ish predicate is bollixed. The OSR is not "a design philosophy" in the first place, which is why attempting to define it so is a soup sandwich.

The OSR is movement among fans of TSR-era D&D - including AD&D 2nd Ed - to produce new material for it as well as derivative spinoffs.

I'd also say it's a rebellion against making D&D-ish (Class and Level Exploration Fantasy) games more gamist or narrativist. It's a rejection of system mastery. It's definitely not a design philosophy, because it's too fragmented: everyone has their own ideas about what old school D&D features were the best and which should be emphasized. We've got OSR people making games more freeform, those making clean, streamlined, simple versions of D&D, those making highly-detailed economic systems, those focusing on improve, those focusing on extensive prep... as long as they're going back to the old ways in some way, it doesn't matter what their "design philosophy" is: they are OSR.

Quote from: TristramEvans;791548"Rulings not rules"

All the system does is provide a means of randomization and task resolution.

That's all well and good, yes, but how exactly is that going to work at the table when you have the CT black book in one hand and Keep on the Borderlands in the other? What exactly is the GM supposed to do for magic-using character creation, spellcasting enemies, and the adventure's basic assumption that some humans are literally four or five times harder to kill than an average healthy person? What does the GM say when the first player says, "Okay, I want to be a magic-user with a Sleep spell."?

The system doesn't only provide randomization and task resolution, it provides systematic assumptions about how this game world works. CT assumes flat PC power curves in a world where their human and humanoid enemies are mildly-inflected versions of the same. D&D assumes drastic PC power curves in a world where the opposition ranges from kobolds to dragons. You rapidly reach a point where D&D-based resources are useful only in the sense that they give you some basic inspiration for making a completely rewritten version for CT.

Quote from: SineNomine;791561That's all well and good, yes, but how exactly is that going to work at the table when you have the CT black book in one hand and Keep on the Borderlands in the other? What exactly is the GM supposed to do for magic-using character creation, spellcasting enemies, and the adventure's basic assumption that some humans are literally four or five times harder to kill than an average healthy person? What does the GM say when the first player says, "Okay, I want to be a magic-user with a Sleep spell."?

The system doesn't only provide randomization and task resolution, it provides systematic assumptions about how this game world works. CT assumes flat PC power curves in a world where their human and humanoid enemies are mildly-inflected versions of the same. D&D assumes drastic PC power curves in a world where the opposition ranges from kobolds to dragons. You rapidly reach a point where D&D-based resources are useful only in the sense that they give you some basic inspiration for making a completely rewritten version for CT.

I'd disagree with this last part. Combat encounters while wearing street clothes and wielding a sword would be very different from combat encounters while wearing battle dress and wielding a FGMP-15. The power curve for CT is based on wealth and equipment while the power curve for D&D is based on levels.

(And as a caveat, you can actually do a Collossal Red Dragon vs an Imperial Lift Marine Squad using D&D 3E and d20 Traveller. It was a hoot.)

As I see it, the OSR currently has two main factions:
1. AD&D Revival
2. Old School Revival

The mainstay of the OSR is the AD&D Revival where you have people enjoying TSR era D&D products (either original books or retroclones) and making/reading/playing new stuff written for those games. Of course, this is the much larger faction simply because far, far more people played AD&D than any other game in the 70s and 80s.

The Old School Revival faction is about the rediscovery of non-D&D games from the 70s and 80s, and the playstyle of those games. In this community, you have the retroclones of those games, and the creation of many new games "in the flavor" of those older games.

As for this "I am more Old School than thou", fuck that shit.

If you have been playing OD&D nonstop since 1974 or just downloaded SWN or Mutant Future yesterday, I don't give a damn. All I care about is (a) are you fun to play with? or (b) are you creating cool stuff for me to play with?

Everything else is bullshit.

Quote from: TristramEvans;791542That's absurd. Of course you can. Well, maybe not you, personally (I don't know you, maybe there's some special reason you couldn't), but I could easily as could any GM barring any aforementioned "special reasons".

It takes less work to run Keep on the Borderlands with Stars without numbers than it does Traveller. That what is meant when X can't be run with Y. Of course any RPG can run any setting or adventure made for another RPG.  What differs is the amount of work you have to do to run it.

Quote from: Spinachcat;791566As I see it, the OSR currently has two main factions:
1. AD&D Revival
2. Old School Revival

The mainstay of the OSR is the AD&D Revival where you have people enjoying TSR era D&D products (either original books or retroclones) and making/reading/playing new stuff written for those games. Of course, this is the much larger faction simply because far, far more people played AD&D than any other game in the 70s and 80s.

The Old School Revival faction is about the rediscovery of non-D&D games from the 70s and 80s, and the playstyle of those games.

Here's where we fall through "not Holy, not Roman, and not an Empire" into the Mad Hatter's tea party.

"Old" stands by itself, though it's a movable feast. D&D 3e is now almost as old as OD&D was when AD&D 2nd Ed  was published.

The closest thing to a unified "school" here, though, is a D&D-specific, post-2000 phenomenon. What single "playstyle" identifies a bloc of En Garde!, Bunnies & Burrows, Chivalry & Sorcery, Man Myth & Magic, Pendragon, Ars Magica, Starships & Spacemen, FASA Star Trek, Traveller, Star Frontiers, Star Ace, The Mechanoid Invasion, The Morrow Project, Fringeworthy, Gangbusters, Call of Cthulhu, Witch Hunt, Ghostbusters, Paranoia, Marvel Super Heroes, Champions, Mekton, Toon, Teenagers from Outer Space, Morphius, and Sandman: Map of Halaal - opposing a similarly monolithic block of post-1990 product?

I don't see it.

 

QuoteIn this community, you have the retroclones of those games, and the creation of many new games "in the flavor" of those older games.

As for this "I am more Old School than thou", fuck that shit.

If you have been playing OD&D nonstop since 1974 or just downloaded SWN or Mutant Future yesterday, I don't give a damn. All I care about is (a) are you fun to play with? or (b) are you creating cool stuff for me to play with?

Everything else is bullshit.

Quote from: SineNomine;791561That's all well and good, yes, but how exactly is that going to work at the table when you have the CT black book in one hand and Keep on the Borderlands in the other? What exactly is the GM supposed to do for magic-using character creation, spellcasting enemies, and the adventure's basic assumption that some humans are literally four or five times harder to kill than an average healthy person? What does the GM say when the first player says, "Okay, I want to be a magic-user with a Sleep spell."?

The system doesn't only provide randomization and task resolution, it provides systematic assumptions about how this game world works. CT assumes flat PC power curves in a world where their human and humanoid enemies are mildly-inflected versions of the same. D&D assumes drastic PC power curves in a world where the opposition ranges from kobolds to dragons. You rapidly reach a point where D&D-based resources are useful only in the sense that they give you some basic inspiration for making a completely rewritten version for CT.

Not sure how to explain it to you, to be honest. Let's just say I ran Pendragon for years without a magic system and it worked just as fine as the game did once a magic system was introduced. I guess it all depends on how much one wants/needs the game to be defined by the system, vs how comfortable one is making judgments based on common sense and the accepted "reality" of the fantasy situation. I've never really felt that rules were 100% necessary to roleplaying, a sentiment Gygax himself shared (at least until he decided later that there was an "official" way to play). They're training wheels at best IME. I can sit down right now with a map, 2d6, and 3-4 friends and spend a month roleplaying any given situation/world a person pulls out of a hat. Even the dice arent strictly necessary.

Quote from: estar;791569It takes less work to run Keep on the Borderlands with Stars without numbers than it does Traveller. That what is meant when X can't be run with Y. Of course any RPG can run any setting or adventure made for another RPG.  What differs is the amount of work you have to do to run it.

I think the amount of work one "has to do" is bound up in their preconceptions of how muuch of the game needs to be defined by set rules.

Alive?  FOOLS!  THE OLD SCHOOL REVIAL WAS NEVER ALIVE!!!

If you didn't cut your heart out and store it in a phylacrity you can't possibly be old school.

Quote from: estar;791569It takes less work to run Keep on the Borderlands with Stars without numbers than it does Traveller. That what is meant when X can't be run with Y. Of course any RPG can run any setting or adventure made for another RPG.  What differs is the amount of work you have to do to run it.

Sort of, it takes more work to run it with Trav as DnD, then use SWN; but if you are running Trav, it isn't that much more work.


Pundit, I would go big tent and forgo the working definition.

Quote from: dragoner;791701Sort of, it takes more work to run it with Trav as DnD, then use SWN; but if you are running Trav, it isn't that much more work.

The same with me, however what true for me or you is not true for everybody. And the issue might not be ability but interest. The easier a person can use a adventure or similar setting out of the box with a given set of rules the more likely that people using those rules will use that adventure.

I been involved long enough with people not only running Classic D&D, but Hero System and especially GURPS to see how people vary in their attitude and ability to convert adventures.

Quote from: estar;791726I been involved long enough with people not only running Classic D&D, but Hero System and especially GURPS to see how people vary in their attitude and ability to convert adventures.

I have found that those systems sort of breed the various people who want to play them. Sometimes you get crossover and sometimes not. I've seen huge arguments erupt over different points of view like such as in "Across the Bright Face" if you give the rebels the briefcase, they won't shoot you. Which is a very different sort of mindset, I have a tendency to believe they would shoot you, or at least imprison you.

OSR ceased to have any practical utility as a term when it became synonymous with old-school. For the term to have any use to me, the 'R' part has to mean something.

It's possible to love old-school systems, adventures, and play modes, while having little interest in OSR systems, adventures, and forums. But the way the term has expanded means that distinction is lost.

Quote from: TristramEvans;791625Not sure how to explain it to you, to be honest. Let's just say I ran Pendragon for years without a magic system and it worked just as fine as the game did once a magic system was introduced. I guess it all depends on how much one wants/needs the game to be defined by the system, vs how comfortable one is making judgments based on common sense and the accepted "reality" of the fantasy situation. I've never really felt that rules were 100% necessary to roleplaying, a sentiment Gygax himself shared (at least until he decided later that there was an "official" way to play). They're training wheels at best IME. I can sit down right now with a map, 2d6, and 3-4 friends and spend a month roleplaying any given situation/world a person pulls out of a hat. Even the dice arent strictly necessary.

Same here. Manipulating an abstraction can be a  lot of fun, but it's a sub-game added to the essential role-playing game.

The latter we can play with the referee's algorithms remaining a black box to the players, and even amounting to "Ref applies Mk1 eyeball, assesses situation." What's most important is what we can talk about in ordinary language.

Quote from: Premier;791448You have it all wrong. You're asking "Why don't the OSR people do Traveller?"

Wrong question. The right question is: "Why don't the Traveller people do OSR?"

Plenty of reasons.

1) You can buy a CD-ROM with ALL the Classic Traveller stuff (very many books/adventures/aliens/games) in PDF for $35 from FFE. Another $35 and you get ALL the JTAS magazines. You can buy The Traveller Book on PoD. So all the OOP stuff is easily and cheaply available... The same goes to essentially every edition of Traveller, with the exception of GURPS Traveller and Hero Traveller.

2) FFE has a VERY liberal fair-use policy. You can essentially write ANYTHING you want for Classic Traveller, and openly claim compatibility with Classic Traveller, as long as it is provided for free.

3) There is an official, commercial, supported, in-print "retro-clone" for CT, AKA Mongoose Traveller.

4) Mongoose Traveller has an OGL and an SRD and even a compatibility license; all allow for commercial publication. A good number of commercial third-party products are now available for Mongoose Traveller, which are perfectly usable with CT (I wrote one - a whole setting, Outer Veil). Also a good number of Traveller fan-made settings and blogs around. In essence, you can publish ALMOST ANYTHING you want, commercially, for Mongoose Traveller and openly claim compatibility PROVIDED that you don't touch the official setting outside of Foreven. And MGT is close enough to CT so that your products will be quite compatible with it as well.

5) Many CT fans were playing their game straight for 30+ years, with no big edition break, including finding new players.

So there is little actual need for an "OSR" for Traveller.

Quote from: Phillip;791531The OSR is movement among fans of TSR-era D&D - including AD&D 2nd Ed - to produce new material for it as well as derivative spinoffs.

Unfortunately its also become a cover for bootlegging. "I have filed all the serial numbers off of MSH and am selling it totally legally under the OSR license!" Which is why OSR gets a bad rep from some game designers and some think its a haven for thieves. Hence the hostility you see now and then.

Quote from: golan2072;7920733) There is an official, commercial, supported, in-print "retro-clone" for CT, AKA Mongoose Traveller.

IIRC, Pundit's review of Mongoose said as much.

I've been watching people try to "define," this bullshit for years, and those definitions seem to get longer, more complicated, and stupid every time the subject comes up. I get it, we're nerds and geeks and have to categorize and compartmentalize every fucking thing. I just don't think it's necessary (even though I do it too).

That being said, as someone who plays and runs OSR games and didn't grow up playing the games they copy/steal from, here is my definition based on my experiences over the last few years:

OSR is a very loose network of DIY designers, publishers, and players of games based loosely around old editions of D&D.

An addendum to that would be: The OSR community often publishes material that is more creative and fun to play than that of the original games they emulate.

Quote from: Haffrung;791983OSR ceased to have any practical utility as a term when it became synonymous with old-school. For the term to have any use to me, the 'R' part has to mean something.

It's possible to love old-school systems, adventures, and play modes, while having little interest in OSR systems, adventures, and forums. But the way the term has expanded means that distinction is lost.

I wouldn't say it meaningless but it is far more diverse than it used to be. And it still works if an individual uses it describe what they are doing with classic D&D or something similar.

Yet there are still a number of people publishing, promoting and playing for classic editions of D&D. With their number growing little by little every year. So that much hasn't changed.

And as the numbers increase so do the other things that happen under the OSR banner increase.

I would define the OSR as something that was, at one time, fun. I would argue also that what exists today as compared to what existed a few years ago is a change of degree, not of kind. There were always assholes and sychophants, but as things increased in size, so too did their numbers and noise.

The lack of gatekeepers and restriction are fucking great, but these things are not a product or side effect of the OSR. They are products of the internet- and the OGL, from which all the original retroclones are derived.

Now you can explain to me in a thousand ways how the OSR survives becuase of this or that, and really, you'd be correct. None of that matters to me, however, because the thousand flowers are bloomimg in a field of shit, and as much as I might like the colors, I can't stand the stink.

Quote from: Omega;792083Unfortunately its also become a cover for bootlegging. "I have filed all the serial numbers off of MSH and am selling it totally legally under the OSR license!" Which is why OSR gets a bad rep from some game designers and some think its a haven for thieves. Hence the hostility you see now and then.

1) There is no such thing as "the OSR license".

2) There is no such thing  in the USA as copyright protection for game algorithms. Once the artistic presentation context protected by copyright or trademark  is "filed off," what remains is legal use, not "bootlegging." The only exception would be game algorithms that are patented - very rare, and certainly no part of MSH.

3) There is no such thing in the USA as protection from a frivolous lawsuit. The Open Game License basically gives a promise not to sue people using material in conformance with its terms. In the case of AD&D retro-clone OSRIC, there's also the factor that a suit would have to be brought in a British court. The protection for an MSH retro-clone is simply that WotC doesn't give enough of a shit about it to bring a frivolous suit (or probably even a legitimate one).

Quote from: Phillip;792399The protection for an MSH retro-clone is simply that WotC doesn't give enough of a shit about it to bring a frivolous suit (or probably even a legitimate one).

Considering all the old MSH books are available for free (http://www.classicmarvelforever.com), I find the creation of a clone somewhat retarded...

Quote from: Brad;792438Considering all the old MSH books are available for free (http://www.classicmarvelforever.com), I find the creation of a clone somewhat retarded...

Doing something legal when there's an illegal alternative is "retarded," eh? Maybe you should think about that a bit more carefully, because there's no natural law confining disrespect for rights to an "except for when it bothers Brad" domain.

Quote from: Phillip;792439Doing something legal when there's an illegal alternative is "retarded," eh? Maybe you should think about that a bit more carefully, because there's no natural law confining disrespect for rights to an "except for when it bothers Brad" domain.

Pretty sure Jeff Grubb approves of the site, so no idea wtf you're talking about.

Quote from: Brad;792478Pretty sure Jeff Grubb approves of the site, so no idea wtf you're talking about.

   Well, I don't know if that's relevant for legal purposes--the question is, does Marvel approve of the site? (IIRC, most licensed RPGs assign copyright to the licensor.)

   It's been around long enough and is well known enough that I expect they don't disapprove of it enough to bother with, at least--and remember, Marvel's owned by Disney, which has a reputation for being quite vigilant with its IP.

Quote from: talysman;791375In Pundit's defense, I don't think he's excluding 2e. He says an OSR game must be designed with mechanics that existed prior to 2e, or that could have existed prior to 2e. Unless there's something in 2e that's clearly not possible pre-2e, 2e must qualify.

Mechanically speaking, there's nothing in 2e that wouldn't qualify, it's true.  There are some significant stylistic details that make it a bit different from the old-school.  Both in terms of its overall attitude, its whitewashing for "moral" purposes, and in terms of things like the increasing embrace of metaplot and stuff along those lines as 2e progressed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;792494Mechanically speaking, there's nothing in 2e that wouldn't qualify, it's true.  There are some significant stylistic details that make it a bit different from the old-school.  Both in terms of its overall attitude, its whitewashing for "moral" purposes, and in terms of things like the increasing embrace of metaplot and stuff along those lines as 2e progressed.

2nd ed seems to herals the "novel era" as it were.
Some of the metaplot and more restrictive modules stems from the change in office from Gygax to Williams. Loraine had a much much more literary focus. That coloured the product one way or another.

The funny thing is that oft the metaplot in the novels is not quite the same as that in the product due to how things were done back then.

Quote from: Brad;792438Considering all the old MSH books are available for free (http://www.classicmarvelforever.com), I find the creation of a clone somewhat retarded...

Most "clones" are not exact copies would be the main reason. Another possible would be to reach out to a new audience.

In my case, Ive done Phaserip both as a tribute to a game that gave me endless hours of joy over the last 30 years and to present the rules in a way that explains them better to a new audience that no longer possesses the unspoken assumptions that one could rely on from a roleplayer in the early 80s. Altho I refer to my game as a "retrovamp" because its not a clone, but where I would have liked to have seen the game progess for a fictional 3rd edition that never happened, stripped of the Marvel IP. And I also wanted to present the system in a way that showed how versatile it was applied to other genres besides bronze age Marvel supers specifically.

I love that site by the way.

Quote from: Brad;792478Pretty sure Jeff Grubb approves of the site, so no idea wtf you're talking about.

I'm talking about the fact that Jeff Grubb's approval is irrelevant to the disposition of property that does not belong to Jeff Grubb. Marvel Comics and Wizards of the Coast (or whoever inherited TSR's share) own their respective copyrights and trademarks, which according to the website are being used without permission.

Quote from: Phillip;792567I'm talking about the fact that Jeff Grubb's approval is irrelevant to the disposition of property that does not belong to Jeff Grubb. Marvel Comics and Wizards of the Coast (or whoever inherited TSR's share) own their respective copyrights and trademarks, which according to the website are being used without permission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

Quote from: Brad;792569http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

Is that supposed to be your latest attempt at justification for calling retro-clone creators "retarded" for doing what is legal rather than flouting the law? If you would actually state your argument, perhaps we could find some coherence in it!

Quote from: Phillip;792570Is that supposed to be your latest attempt at justification for calling retro-clone creators "retarded" for doing what is legal rather than flouting the law? If you would actually state your argument, perhaps we could find some coherence in it!

(http://i61.tinypic.com/demtg1.jpg)

Brad, all I can make of your utterly obscure response - a photo of a cat??? - is that you realise you cannot defend your position.

Quote from: Phillip;792582Brad, all I can make of your utterly obscure response - a photo of a cat??? - is that you realise you cannot defend your position.

You're trying to make some moral argument about the illegality of looking at some gaming books that 1) the author of said books knows about and tacitly approves and 2) the original IP owners have either abandoned or don't care enough to act. Further, I actually own the physical copies of a lot of those books. So, yeah, IDGAF.

Quote from: TristramEvans;792513And I also wanted to present the system in a way that showed how versatile it was applied to other genres besides bronze age Marvel supers specifically.

Well that's quite a different thing than what I was talking about. The system itself is quite cool so if you're writing something that is more generic, I can see the utility behind it.

I suppose I'm just more annoyed at "OSR" games that have no discernible differences from the original AND the originals are still available. On rpg.net, for instance, there are people discussing a 4th edition D&D clone. Why? You can get a copy at any gaming store right now.

In the field of computer programs, there is a long-standing ethical controversy as to what the law ought to be. In the USA, the law has become quite Draconian, making it (I gather) a felony merely to possess a tool that can defeat "digital rights management" regardless of the legitimacy of actual use. Meanwhile, "copyleft" licenses such those from GNU have seen increasing use by people who want legally to ensure the right to copy, share and/or modify software.

It is, however, one thing to advocate for a purchaser's possession of certain rights of ownership; quite another to claim a right to piracy!

That a crime has become easy to commit makes it no less a crime. Mass murder is very easy with arsenals that go all the way to nuclear weapons, and there are technologies that can greatly assist a kidnapper, rapist, torturer, blackmailer, etc.

That I may have a lust for something does not entitle me to take it. I am not compelled to give or sell my property to you just because you want it, either. Why are these principles of justice?

A very practical reason in the case of a creator's control of creations is that, absent the incentive, many people will choose not to create, thereby impoverishing the commonwealth. As an example, consider the shortage of top-quality computer games that are free and open source, compared with top-quality tools for productive work. It's a lot harder to get together a team of people who value a video game enough to put in the work for no return but the game itself.

With Marvel Super Heroes, you can legally buy the product in the secondary market. [edit: I see you make the same remark above regarding D&D 4e.] That requires no denial of any right the publishers claimed, no denial of what is already well established.

It therefore does not offer an invitation to others to deny your rights - objection to which could then be dismissed as blatant hypocrisy!

Quote from: estar;792187I wouldn't say it meaningless but it is far more diverse than it used to be. And it still works if an individual uses it describe what they are doing with classic D&D or something similar.

But if OSR has simply come to mean 'old-school' then I don't see the point in the term. It's just a hug-box for people who enjoy a certain style of play, or a rallying banner for edition wars. And if you're part of the OSR simply because you play old-style D&D (and have always played old-style D&D), then that annoys me even more. I'll decide what 'movements' I belong to, thank you very much.

I mean, is someone who has collected and played vinyl records since the 70s part of the vinyl revival? Or just a guy who likes vinyl?

Quote from: Haffrung;792643But if OSR has simply come to mean 'old-school' then I don't see the point in the term. It's just a hug-box for people who enjoy a certain style of play, or a rallying banner for edition wars. And if you're part of the OSR simply because you play old-style D&D (and have always played old-style D&D), then that annoys me even more. I'll decide what 'movements' I belong to, thank you very much.

I mean, is someone who has collected and played vinyl records since the 70s part of the vinyl revival? Or just a guy who likes vinyl?

Nah, that"s silly. You're part of the renaissance if you're producing or consuming the stuff. If you've got no involvement, of course you're not part of it.

Being part of the phenomenon does not imply being a subscriber to a definition or ideology such as Pundit and others have bruited. They can claim members only of their factions, and only those who so declare themselves.

Quote from: Haffrung;792643I mean, is someone who has collected and played vinyl records since the 70s part of the vinyl revival? Or just a guy who likes vinyl?

Is the vinyl-fan buying products made during the revival? Then he's part of the revival as a consumer.

Is the vinyl-fan participating on forums with revivalists in a positive, inclusive manner? Then he's part of the revival as a member.

Or just listening to his old stuff and buying old stuff? Then he probably may not even know a revival is happening.

Quote from: Haffrung;792643But if OSR has simply come to mean 'old-school' then I don't see the point in the term. It's just a hug-box for people who enjoy a certain style of play, or a rallying banner for edition wars. And if you're part of the OSR simply because you play old-style D&D (and have always played old-style D&D), then that annoys me even more. I'll decide what 'movements' I belong to, thank you very much.

That the problem with terms like OSR, you don't get to decide that you are part of the OSR or not.

Because one of the its meanings, the meaning what people most often think of when they use OSR, is the group of people playing, promoting, and publishing D&D. Which include people who never stopped playing classic D&D, like yourself.

And the things that you and others that get annoyed at being labeled as OSR forget that the whole thing is suffused with the ideals behind the open gaming license. Open content usable by anybody for any purpose they see fit. From my experience in the OSR and within open source that beyond its practical side, people using open content develop an independent attitude that when push comes to shove they will say "fuck you" I will do it my own way. And because it all based open content there is no effective means of control.

This allows people to proclaim that the OSR about an old school method of design, that OSR is about blah and blah and blah. But the reality is that the OSR is exactly what the individuals involved want it to be about.

And when you look at the people labeling themselves as part of the OSR, myself among them, the large majority are doing thing revolving around a classic edition of D&D or something very similar. However because the use of the OSR has spread so far along with the number of gamers playing, publishing and publishing classic D&D, the number of people doing any one particular thing has also increased. In your case you see a lot of people proclaiming the OSR is advocating a style of play or a springboard for edition wars. But that a misconception just as much as saying the OSR is solely about classic editions of D&D. A definition of the OSR is only good if it describe what everyone using the label is doing.  A daunting task considering the kaleidoscope of individuals involved. The best I been able to do is describe what I have seen and remind folks that I know there is much I haven't seen or only heard of in passing.

You complain about the OSR this and the OSR that. But despite your complaints it managed to expand the amount of material available for use by a fan of classic D&D by at least an order of magnitude. There is also a similar increase in diversity. What the OSR is, is an example of what people do when they are free to truly use something in the manner they see fit.

Fate has a similar movement with a center resting on a different set of rules and a different style of play. Runequest also enjoys a similar renaissance.  And open content being what it is there is are overlaps as gamers who have an interest in both make their own material. For example Dungeon World.

You criticize the OSR and resent being included in it by others. But what is your real problem? Are you not able to do something in the manner you see fit? Is nobody playing, publishing, or promoting the particular style of classic D&D you like? If so what stops you from promoting, playing, or publishing what you like? Is it a resentment against labels in general?

Quote from: Brad;792592I suppose I'm just more annoyed at "OSR" games that have no discernible differences from the original AND the originals are still available. On rpg.net, for instance, there are people discussing a 4th edition D&D clone. Why? You can get a copy at any gaming store right now.

I can understand this sentiment, but in defense of the OSR (I know, weird from me, huh?), one of the good points of retroclones that are indeed clones of earlier versions of D&D is that they allow for new material to be published for these games.

Quote from: estar;792945That the problem with terms like OSR, you don't get to decide that you are part of the OSR or not.

Because one of the its meanings, the meaning what people most often think of when they use OSR, is the group of people playing, promoting, and publishing D&D. Which include people who never stopped playing classic D&D, like yourself.

So by playing and publishing a retro-clone of an old edition of D&D, I'm part of the OSR whether I want to be or not.

QuoteAnd the things that you and others that get annoyed at being labeled as OSR forget that the whole thing is suffused with the ideals behind the open gaming license. Open content usable by anybody for any purpose they see fit. From my experience in the OSR and within open source that beyond its practical side, people using open content develop an independent attitude that when push comes to shove they will say "fuck you" I will do it my own way. And because it all based open content there is no effective means of control.

This allows people to proclaim that the OSR about an old school method of design, that OSR is about blah and blah and blah. But the reality is that the OSR is exactly what the individuals involved want it to be about.

So by being part of the OSR (according to your first statement), I get to define what the OSR is.

Fine. In that case I define it as "What those other guys do, not what I do."

You can't have it both ways. You're trying to both define it as a global and fairly meaningless "everyone who plays older D&D editions" and a tighter "whatever you want it to be" at the same time.

Either it's global, in which case it isn't "exactly what the individuals involved want it to be about"; or different people use tighter and varied definitions, in which case it isn't global and people aren't simply part of it for playing older D&D editions regardless of whether they consider themselves part of it or not.

The two are mutually exclusive.

QuoteIn your case you see a lot of people proclaiming the OSR is advocating a style of play or a springboard for edition wars. But that a misconception just as much as saying the OSR is solely about classic editions of D&D.

But you just said it was up to us what it is! So it's not possible for whatever we say it is to be a "misconception".

Or is it only up to us what it is providing we agree with what you say it is?

QuoteA definition of the OSR is only good if it describe what everyone using the label is doing. A daunting task considering the kaleidoscope of individuals involved. The best I been able to do is describe what I have seen and remind folks that I know there is much I haven't seen or only heard of in passing.

Okay, so we're back to it being everything and therefore nothing again. The OSR is whatever we want it to be, providing we want it to be "everyone who plays older D&D editions, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves to be part of a movement".

QuoteYou criticize the OSR and resent being included in it by others. But what is your real problem? Are you not able to do something in the manner you see fit? Is nobody playing, publishing, or promoting the particular style of classic D&D you like? If so what stops you from promoting, playing, or publishing what you like? Is it a resentment against labels in general?

If we go past the contradiction between your "it's everyone" and "it's whatever you want" definitions, we get to the issue.

If it's "whatever you want", the majority of people (or possibly a loud minority - it doesn't really matter which when it comes to general perception) want it to be something that doesn't describe me. And want to be able to say "I'm not with them".

But you're telling me that I have to be put under the same banner as them whether I want to or not. It's not a case of resenting labels in general, but resenting being told that a specific label used by a self-identifying group that I dislike and want no part of applies to me and that therefore I am part of that group whether I want to be or not.

Quote from: Akrasia;791479WTF? The OSR 'failed'?!?  The OSR 'died'?!?

When did these things happen?  :confused:

As far as I can tell, the OSR is very much alive, and has been astonishingly successful.

I think some of these people mean to say "the OSR as I PERSONALLY wanted it to be".

Because the OSR as I want it to be, personally, is fucking ruling the gaming hobby right now.  We're the ideological push behind 5e, and 5e was a tremendous success (as compared to the failure of the forge-theory-inspired 4e).

The people who say stuff like "the OSR is dead" are one of two people:
a) people who were never in any stage of the OSR, hate the OSR, and have an active interest in wanting it to go away
or
b) people who wanted the OSR to stay small and obscure; like those idiots who love a band until it becomes commercially successful, and spend their time talking about how the band has sold out and how "I liked them before they got all mainstream".

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990If it's "whatever you want", the majority of people (or possibly a loud minority - it doesn't really matter which when it comes to general perception) want it to be something that doesn't describe me. And want to be able to say "I'm not with them".

This. Before the term 'OSR' started being bandied around, there were people who played and talked about classic D&D, and about classic play modes using other editions and games. As I've remarked before, the online forum that renewed my own enthusiasm for old-school D&D (though I never had stopped playing) was the Necromancer Games forum, which was largely system-agnostic. This was before D&D archaeology became a thing, so people talked about how they played TSR not, now how Gygax intended OD&D to be played. There was no edition-warring, Gygax was never mentioned, and everyone simply shared their enthusiasm for dungeons, NG adventures, Judges Guild, and deadly old-school play.

I personally have never had much interest in the material published under the auspices of the OSR. I don't have any ideological enthusiasm for the DIY ethos - I create a lot of my own material, but I also buy a lot of material. I certainly don't hate commercial publishers, and if I can't find something commercial that meets my needs, I'll make it up myself - no need to sort through the enormous quantities of chaff posted online looking for the occasional grain of wheat.

Also, I personally do dislike labels and camps and factions. Once people start belonging to factions, they typically shut off half their brain and criticize everything about rival camps, and give a pass to everything their camp says. I cherish my freedom to criticize anyone and everything without consideration of which groups they belong to or whose side they're on.

label =/= faction

The OSR is broadly about the renewed interest in old-school play, rules, and products. This abbreviation bears no other content.

If you do not believe in a specific deity, you are considered an atheist in terms of the belief in that deity. Even if you do not wish to be called an atheist, you still factually are one. There might be the the Secular Coalition, American Atheists, or the Atheist Alliance, but your non-participation in any of these doesn't change the fact that you still are an atheist.

I can't fault people for wanting no association with the term OSR, if there's always a guy trying to shoehorn an additional meaning into what is pretty clearly laid out in the name "OLD SCHOOL RENAISSANCE".

Quote from: estar;791488I never heard of any plausible scenario where a person or small group could dominate the OSR in the way that Ron Edwards and his clique dominated the Forge.  Even at the height of Grognardia popularity there were plenty of people ignoring or criticizing him and being successful in the OSR.

I'm willing to stipulate to "ignoring".  I'm sure some of the important people in the OSR just didn't say anything one way or the other about Maliszewski.  But "criticizing"?  I'd like to see evidence of someone who was considered to be within the OSR at the time of Maliszewski's height of influence who was actually criticizing him in any meaningful sense.  Because it seems to me that the people who were vocal about not buying his snake-oil were all, AT THAT TIME, people who had been labeled "not real Old-school".

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990So by playing and publishing a retro-clone of an old edition of D&D, I'm part of the OSR whether I want to be or not.

Yes because many people use it as a shorthand for those playing, publishing, or promoting classic editions of D&D.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990So by being part of the OSR (according to your first statement), I get to define what the OSR is.

Fine. In that case I define it as "What those other guys do, not what I do."

It is a democracy of the purest sort. You can declare that your definition above but unless people agree with it, it remains your just your definition. I labeled myself as part of the OSR because I work with classic D&D editions and I work with hexcrawl settings. I know that many other people, but not all, who also label themselves as part the OSR find my stuff useful.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990You can't have it both ways. You're trying to both define it as a global and fairly meaningless "everyone who plays older D&D editions" and a tighter "whatever you want it to be" at the same time.

I don't try to define the OSR, I will however describe it. Even the thing that I get quoted the most on.

QuoteTo me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

Is really an observation of the consquences of using open content and what people are doing with the fact that much of classic D&D being open.

And that many including yourself are missing the point of. The OSR is what it is because of open content. More than that is result of people using open content. It not an ideal or a philosophy or about anything other than what happens when people a truly free to use something they have a lot of love for.

Even the ideal of open content and open license is not a focus. It just what enables the rest to happen. Everything that is OSR is results from that some folks found that everything you need to create new material for classic D&D can be found in the d20 SRD which is under the OGL. That combined with the fact in the United States ideas and mechanics can't be copyrighted allowed clone ruleset to be created.

And because all these clone rulesets have the OGL at their heart it allowed other people to make hybrids or variants of whatever aspect of classic D&D and tabletop roleplaying they liked. Resulting in things like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Blood & Treasure, and my own Majestic Wilderlands.

Because we are talking about people and not 2D caricatures who have other interests the diversity of the OSR expands to include things like D&D in other genre like Stars without Number, things developed on the same source material as D&D like DCC RPG, or things that are no way related to D&D but because it interests a OSR gamer gets lumped in anyway like the Pacesetter games.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990Either it's global, in which case it isn't "exactly what the individuals involved want it to be about"; or different people use tighter and varied definitions, in which case it isn't global and people aren't simply part of it for playing older D&D editions regardless of whether they consider themselves part of it or not.

I think the above is not a consideration for most people who label themselves as part of the OSR.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990But you just said it was up to us what it is! So it's not possible for whatever we say it is to be a "misconception".

Okay, so we're back to it being everything and therefore nothing again. The OSR is whatever we want it to be, providing we want it to be "everyone who plays older D&D editions, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves to be part of a movement".

Again it is a consequence of not only YOU getting to define the OSR but everybody else defining OSR. Your voice is no more or no less important than anybody else. So what the OSR is the collective action of what everybody doing.

However it is grounded on a set of out of print games. Classic D&D and other older games provide an anchor or a center around which everything else revolves. Stray too far from that then chances what that person is doing will NOT be considered as part of the OSR will go up.

If for whatever reason the majority of people decide that OSR means something else entirely. The group of gamers playing, publishing, and promoting classic D&D and other old school games will remain. And they will come up with another term to describe themselves. Personally I don't consider this likely but it could happen.  

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;792990If it's "whatever you want", the majority of people (or possibly a loud minority - it doesn't really matter which when it comes to general perception) want it to be something that doesn't describe me. And want to be able to say "I'm not with them".

But you're telling me that I have to be put under the same banner as them whether I want to or not. It's not a case of resenting labels in general, but resenting being told that a specific label used by a self-identifying group that I dislike and want no part of applies to me and that therefore I am part of that group whether I want to be or not.

In my experience, the average gamer don't think in terms of whether a game follows a particular design philopshy or promotes a specific style of play. What they say, to me at least, is that they like game X, dislike Y, and don't care one way or another about Z.  These gamers use OSR as a shorthand for the people playing,promoting, and publishing for classic D&D. When they are even aware of the term.

The vendors at then conventions I attend (Origin, Con on the Cob, CosCon, etc.) that use OSR as part of their marketing also has a large array of products for classic D&D edition. Although there a heavy dose of other products like Goblinoid Games Pacesetter line, and the DCC RPG. SO it isn't just about classic D&D although that where the focus is.

Again, the OSR is built on open content. Open content classic D&D is the direct cause of the kalidoscope that is the OSR, why you have debates on what it is, what it means, why people argue so vehemently about its definition. But the truth is all of the above because the freedom that exists for anybody do what they want with the material and for that matter the term OSR.

Quote from: Haffrung;793021This. Before the term 'OSR' started being bandied around, there were people who played and talked about classic D&D, and about classic play modes using other editions and games. As I've remarked before, the online forum that renewed my own enthusiasm for old-school D&D (though I never had stopped playing) was the Necromancer Games forum, which was largely system-agnostic. This was before D&D archaeology became a thing, so people talked about how they played TSR not, now how Gygax intended OD&D to be played. There was no edition-warring, Gygax was never mentioned, and everyone simply shared their enthusiasm for dungeons, NG adventures, Judges Guild, and deadly old-school play.

The Necromancer Games forums was a great place to discuss older stuff. However other people in other places often got dumped on for liking classic D&D. Too many gamers would ridicule their interest in what they considered to be a broken obsolete game. The unfortunate thing is that some of the classic D&D fan grew overly touchy and aggressive to the point they were just as bad as those who mocked them in the first.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793029I'm willing to stipulate to "ignoring".  I'm sure some of the important people in the OSR just didn't say anything one way or the other about Maliszewski.  But "criticizing"?  I'd like to see evidence of someone who was considered to be within the OSR at the time of Maliszewski's height of influence who was actually criticizing him in any meaningful sense.  Because it seems to me that the people who were vocal about not buying his snake-oil were all, AT THAT TIME, people who had been labeled "not real Old-school".

I will have to do some more digging but this post in an example of Grognardia criticism during the height of his popularity circa 2010.

http://waxbanks.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/in-response-to-grognardia-gygax-on-dd-a-non-game.html

While digging I found this what I think illustrate the problem of getting even a small segment of the OSR working together.

http://www.rpgblog2.com/2009/01/quick-note-on-direction-of-old-school.html

My experience with this issue is why I criticize the idea that that any small group or individual can capture the OSR. I am well aware that in  history, movements of various types can be captured and turned away from its original purpose.. But the circumstances of the OSR make this highly unlikely. Namely because of Internet, open content, ease of print on demand, and the publishing history of classic D&D.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793019Because the OSR as I want it to be, personally, is fucking ruling the gaming hobby right now.  We're the ideological push behind 5e, and 5e was a tremendous success (as compared to the failure of the forge-theory-inspired 4e).

I don't about ruling the hobby, but the OSR as a whole can pat themselves on the back in showing how a "broken", "incoherent" rule system [insert sarcasm] can be used to make fun and interesting campaigns. That obsolescence and progress in tabletop RPGs is a far different beast than video/computer games.

And it great that the designers of 5e learned the right lessons from the experience of the OSR, among other things.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793029I'd like to see evidence of someone who was considered to be within the OSR at the time of Maliszewski's height of influence who was actually criticizing him in any meaningful sense.  Because it seems to me that the people who were vocal about not buying his snake-oil were all, AT THAT TIME, people who had been labeled "not real Old-school".

How about T. Foster?  (Didn't you characterize him as the Khmer Rouge of Old School, at one point?)

Quote from: T. Foster at K&KThat link [to the Dwimmermount Kickstarter] is icky. The "legendary" product we've all been breathlessly awaiting since 2009! All the excitement of a 21st century "new school" professional rpg author's thought-experiment to see if he could re-create something like how people played BITD in order to better understand the history of the hobby! A thrilling double-immersive pastiche! Something that literally everyone who has read the OD&D rules could create on their own! Everybody who contributed to that Kickstarter (over $25K raised? Really?!) deserves to be kicked in the junk :roll:

Quote from: T. Foster, againYeah, I realize I'm behind the curve on this. I honestly just hadn't been paying any attention, and until Shaman (you'll always be Shaman to me, Mr. Vulmea :P ) posted that link I hadn't seen what the actual fuss was about. I don't actually blame JM for this -- if people are willing to drop $25K+ on this he'd be a fool not to take it. My disgust is aimed squarely at the backers themselves (and, I suppose, whoever wrote that Kickstarter hype-page and is acting like Dwimmermount is some unique achievement in the history of rpgs and not the exact same thing that every single "old school DM" has stored away in their notebooks, because it was created literally by just following the advice in the OD&D rulebooks).

Quote from: T.Foster AgainSure, $10 for a pdf isn't too bad, I guess (even though with a copy of the OD&D rules, a set of dice, and some paper & pencils you could probably come up with something just as good or better on your own for free). $40 for a hardback is a little more dubious, at least to me, but I suppose for folks who normally buy hardback rpg books it's not unreasonable (though, OTOH, paying $40 up-front for a book that has yet to be written in an "industry" so chock-full of flakes and vapor-vendors is pretty much labeling yourself a sucker). What I'm really mystified by (and horrified at) is the ~200 people who've donated $50+ (including over 100 who've donated $100+). I mean, I guess I could see paying that much for something that was genuinely creatively brilliant or had legitimate historical-interest value, but something deliberately generic and vanilla and by-the-numbers; something created by a guy in order to help him "grok" the "old school" mindset (i.e. that pretty much by definition won't offer any sort of insights into that mindset, because it was a tool for discovery, not a demonstration of mastery); something that - at least until the hype-machine surrounding the publication kicked into gear with its convention, game-store, and G+ "events" - didn't even seem particularly well-received by its own players (I distinctly remember Grognardia blog-posts about how his players (of which, IIRC, there were only ever about 4 or 5) were growing bored with Dwimmermount and the "campaign" going on hiatus after about a year of weekly play)? What is so desirable about that to make anyone (much less 200 people) want to pay premium $ to support it? I don't get it at all :?

Quote from: Black VulmeaYou line 'em up while I slip into my steel-toes.

The Grognardia experience in general seems like a lot of second-hand bloviating about games never played and rules never used, '. . . but I liked the ad/read the article in Dragon!' It's like a young hipster explaining big-band music to a roomful of octagenarians who heard Tommy Dorsey perform live at Radio City.

All that stuff is from this K&K thread. (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10011)  Actually, James used to post at K&K sometimes, although at one point he mentioned (on his blog, I think) that he didn't fit in there, very well, which definitely seemed to be the case, to me.  Eventually he got insulted, removed his account, and left.  Don't remember exactly when all that was; I never paid much attention.

I think for Pundit's misconceptions, I think this thread (http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4456) offers more than just Maliszewski (who is really only referenced indirectly, since he was on this steering committee being discussed).

Authors/editors talking about their intent for the close clone products?  Check.

Lack of community crossover between blogs and forums?  Check.

Wide spectrum of ideas about whether to stick to orthodox AD&D or branch way beyond that?  Check.

Lack of any sort of viable plan to control what was to be deemed "OSR" or not?  Patently obvious.

You can even see the seeds of why some people see the "OSR" is dead, or failed, in how people expressed their goals.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793019I think some of these people mean to say "the OSR as I PERSONALLY wanted it to be".

Not really, but a little. The OSR as I'd personally want it to be is exemplified by the Oldhammer community, an Old School Renaissance in its own right. The reason I personally consider the Renaissance over is because 1) D&D has returned to its roots with 5e, so "old school" isnt old school anymore, its just...um, "school" and 2) because its no longer a revival. Its been revived.

QuoteThe people who say stuff like "the OSR is dead" are one of two people:
a) people who were never in any stage of the OSR, hate the OSR, and have an active interest in wanting it to go away
or
b) people who wanted the OSR to stay small and obscure; like those idiots who love a band until it becomes commercially successful, and spend their time talking about how the band has sold out and how "I liked them before they got all mainstream".

I don't fit either category. Sorry, Mr. Ron Edwards, your oversimplified attempt to classify gamers into neat little groups whose existence revolves around your personal views fails again...

Quote from: TristramEvans;791518Many people think the same thing about The Forge.


And about Steampunk.

I'm not saying people aren't still creating and playing games that are/were/could be included in the "OSR" umbrella (of course most of us were already and never stopped), I'm saying it's no  longer a "renaissance". Its just the hardcore adherents doing what they've always done. Just like "Goth" is over, but you can still meet goths.


The Pundit is basically Disco Stu at this point.

Ridiculous.  The most interesting things the OSR has ever produced are being produced right NOW.  The boring stuff? That was from the Clonemania era.

The older stuff? Saying that's all the OSR was is like saying the Renaissance was only about re-translating the old greek texts.  Others would argue that the Renaissance only started when those old texts inspired people to create all kinds of new ideas.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793224Ridiculous.  The most interesting things the OSR has ever produced are being produced right NOW.  The boring stuff? That was from the Clonemania era.

The older stuff? Saying that's all the OSR was is like saying the Renaissance was only about re-translating the old greek texts.  Others would argue that the Renaissance only started when those old texts inspired people to create all kinds of new ideas.

It was and has always been that way. Unlike self-professed "OSR insiders", the rest of us got over trying to nail down definitions for outsiders and spent most of our efforts collaborating on useable and new gaming material for the games we like to play a few years ago. Most of that work continues in smaller forums and groups and not on personal blogs.

As EOTB and Philo both mentioned in another thread, James Maliszewski and certain other bloggers-of-note were never very popular (and still aren't) with the creative side of the OSR precisely because all they ever brought was a whole lot of critical social commentary and 'definition', but very little in the way of anything one would actually use to play an rpg. If they did, they made a very big deal about advertising it or asking for kickstart backers to pre-pay them for their time. Those kinds of people never understand or contribute to what I would call the defining characteristic of the OSR: material freely written and distributed out of a pure love of the game.

Anyways, 'nuff said. Time to get back to work.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793224Ridiculous.  The most interesting things the OSR has ever produced are being produced right NOW.  The boring stuff? That was from the Clonemania era.

The older stuff? Saying that's all the OSR was is like saying the Renaissance was only about re-translating the old greek texts.  Others would argue that the Renaissance only started when those old texts iinspired people to create all kinds of new ideas.

None  of which has anything to do with what I said. I made no comments regarding the quality of what was or is being produced. I dont hold up any specific time period as "this was when the OSR was great". Thats awesome that you like the stuff being done now. I dont know why your holding onto the term OSR as having any special meaning beyond the description of a time of revival when old-school style games went from being "fantasy heartbreakers" to being a refreshing re-look at what made old D&D great in the face of 3rd-4th editions's general shortcomings. I cant see any reason to hold onto it as a term beyond as a marketing slogan at this point. But its not, for me, an issue that I have any emotional investment in. Anyone is free to use the term how they like and I certainly wont jump in to stop them.

Quote from: Phillip;792596It is, however, one thing to advocate for a purchaser's possession of certain rights of ownership; quite another to claim a right to piracy!

Who is advocating piracy? If someone writes a book that goes out of print and subsequently DOESN'T CARE about said book anymore, how exactly is it being "pirated"? There is a huge difference between getting a bootleg copy of Skyrim because I don't want to spend $50 on Steam and playing Wizards Crown in an Apple ][ emulator...

Quote from: Brad;793330Who is advocating piracy? If someone writes a book that goes out of print and subsequently DOESN'T CARE about said book anymore, how exactly is it being "pirated"? There is a huge difference between getting a bootleg copy of Skyrim because I don't want to spend $50 on Steam and playing Wizards Crown in an Apple ][ emulator...

On one hand no, and other the hand yes. The law gives the holder of the copyright the exclusive right to make duplicates. The holder is allowed to license out that right under the terms they see fit. In the absence of a license means a third party doesn't have the right to copy period. Regardless whether it is out of print and unsupported.

You may feel that is ethically or morally wrong but that how the law is.

However the law will consider being out of print and unsupported for damages due to copyright infringement. The courts won't allow a copyright holder to turn around and sue everybody who copied Wizard's Crown when they haven't done anything for decades. This is where the myth of "losing" copyright comes from. What people losing is the right to sue for PAST infringement due to a lack enforcement. However once notice is given then the clock resets and folks will be liable for any future infringement.

Copying Wizard Crown is piracy but the consequences are virtual nil compared to copying Skyrim.

Quote from: estar;793336snip lawyer stuff

Yes, I get all that; I understand how copyright works. I'm simply saying I see no ethical/moral problem with it, so the law can s a d. There are plenty of stupid laws, and copyright law in the US sits atop the heap.

Quote from: estar;793336On one hand no, and other the hand yes. The law gives the holder of the copyright the exclusive right to make duplicates. The holder is allowed to license out that right under the terms they see fit. In the absence of a license means a third party doesn't have the right to copy period. Regardless whether it is out of print and unsupported.

You may feel that is ethically or morally wrong but that how the law is.

However the law will consider being out of print and unsupported for damages due to copyright infringement. The courts won't allow a copyright holder to turn around and sue everybody who copied Wizard's Crown when they haven't done anything for decades. This is where the myth of "losing" copyright comes from. What people losing is the right to sue for PAST infringement due to a lack enforcement. However once notice is given then the clock resets and folks will be liable for any future infringement.

Copying Wizard Crown is piracy but the consequences are virtual nil compared to copying Skyrim.

The deal with FASERIP is, the rights were jointly held by TSR and Marvel, Inc; two companies that no longer exist. Marvel's trademarks have since passed on twice, TSR's trademark in that particular game has not. Marvel 2.0 has given approval for the game to be freeware, but did so before Disney bought them out. TSR doesnt have a say in the matter anymore. Thats the whole of it.

The real question is...who cares? The stuff's been free for well over a decade. The only basis for not downloading it is some sort of odd ethical objection that isnt based on any theory of ethics I'm familiar with. No one can be prosecuted for using the site, no one can get sued. If Disney closes the sites, then it does. Until then, its a valuable resource worth making use of.

Quote from: Brad;793338Yes, I get all that; I understand how copyright works. I'm simply saying I see no ethical/moral problem with it, so the law can s a d. There are plenty of stupid laws, and copyright law in the US sits atop the heap.

I have no problem with US Copyright Law. Only with the length of the term which is currently Life + 95 years in the US and Life+75 for much of the rest of the world. I think the older term of 27 years plus 27 years if renewed was adequate incentive to get people to share creative works.

The current term length is counterproductive in terms of the goals of the copyright clause of the US constitution as the jacks up the number of orphaned works with no legal way of preserving them.

Quote from: TristramEvans;793352The deal with FASERIP is, the rights were jointly held by TSR and Marvel, Inc; two companies that no longer exist. Marvel's trademarks have since passed on twice, TSR's trademark in that particular game has not. Marvel 2.0 has given approval for the game to be freeware, but did so before Disney bought them out. TSR doesnt have a say in the matter anymore. Thats the whole of it.

If Marvel 2.0 give explicit permission for their IP that leaves only TSR copyright or the original author's copyright depending on how the project was setup. As for Disney they could always withdraw permission but as I understand when Company A buys out Company B all of Company B's contracts and license are still valid. Of course Company A could choose to not renew contracts. The only time where that is not true is if Company A buys all of Company B's assets but not the company itself. But I believe that wasn't the case with Disney buying Marvel.

Quote from: TristramEvans;793352The real question is...who cares? The stuff's been free for well over a decade. The only basis for not downloading it is some sort of odd ethical objection that isnt based on any theory of ethics I'm familiar with. No one can be prosecuted for using the site, no one can get sued. If Disney closes the sites, then it does. Until then, its a valuable resource worth making use of.

If both parties with a copyright interest give permission then you are right. There is no moral or ethical reason NOT to download the material. There is only a problem if you go beyond the scope of the permission.

As a side note none would be a problem if copyright were truly limited in term like the old 27+27. The current lifetime + 95 is a travesty and turns copyright into a form of censorship. Which was the original reason for copyright in the first place. So the crowned heads of Europe can control printing and publication i.e. censorship.

Now author ought to profit from their works and have legal protection. So I am for a legal monopoly on the right to reproduce a work and its derivatives as long as the term of the monopoly is truly limited.

Quote from: Brad;792571(http://i61.tinypic.com/demtg1.jpg)

This cat bears a striking resemblance to one of my two cats.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;793048How about T. Foster?  (Didn't you characterize him as the Khmer Rouge of Old School, at one point?)

These are certainly examples of serious criticism of Maliszewski.  However, that thread doesn't even start until 2012, by which time the OSR had already been moving well past the Clonemania phase and Maliszewski wasn't really at his peak anymore.  Still, a better indication of criticism.

Quote from: TristramEvans;793279I dont know why your holding onto the term OSR as having any special meaning beyond the description of a time of revival when old-school style games went from being "fantasy heartbreakers" to being a refreshing re-look at what made old D&D great in the face of 3rd-4th editions's general shortcomings. I cant see any reason to hold onto it as a term beyond as a marketing slogan at this point.

Because there are people who want to define the OSR out of existence as a way to be able to relegate old-school games back to the realm of 'fantasy heartbreakers' and out of the ideological vanguard of the hobby, so they can impose their own gaming ideologies in its place.

Quote from: estar;793045I will have to do some more digging but this post in an example of Grognardia criticism during the height of his popularity circa 2010.

http://waxbanks.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/in-response-to-grognardia-gygax-on-dd-a-non-game.html

While digging I found this what I think illustrate the problem of getting even a small segment of the OSR working together.

http://www.rpgblog2.com/2009/01/quick-note-on-direction-of-old-school.html

The first of these links is by someone I haven't even heard of. What did he do?

The second doesn't even explicitly mention Grognardia or Maliszewski in the body of the post.

Not exactly resounding condemnations.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793654The first of these links is by someone I haven't even heard of. What did he do?

Kept up a blog with gaming commentary since 2003. Does he need to do more?

You asked for criticism of Grognardia circa 2008 to 2010 and I found an example.

By and large people didn't get vehement in the way you do on your blog. Said their piece and went on their way.

The comments of this post was typical of how people responded to James calling for something to be done.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/05/universal-system.html

Or this disscussion.

http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4404&p=47414&hilit=Maliszewski#p47414

The TARGA controversy, which Grognardia had little to do with, was the first one to generate truly vehement commentary. Before that nothing was worth getting worked up about because of the Open Game License and technology. People doing stuff knew that there was nothing that any individual or group could do to shut what they were doing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793654The second doesn't even explicitly mention Grognardia or Maliszewski in the body of the post.

Not exactly resounding condemnations.

You need to read the sentences afterwards. It is an example of just how hard it was to get anybody in the early OSR to cooperate in any type of concerted action. Hell it is still that hard. You paint these conspiracies by individual or small groups to act as gatekeepers. But you never say exactly how this was accomplished.

Pundit,

I think part of your attitude results from how you approach publishing. We talked briefly about this when you approached me about publishing Arrow of Indra and your interview brought it back the memory.  You rely on others for everything but the writing and playtesting.  Which is fine but that is not the typical experience of people publishing for the OSR.  

Most of what the OSR does in publishing is do it yourself with help from acquaintances and friends. LoftFP, Goodman Games, and Frog God Games are the closest thing the OSR has to traditional publishers who make a habit of publishing other authors work. Even then there is a heavy dose of collaboration, like with Matt Finch and Frog God Games.

That always been the downside of movements based on open content or open source. If you are uninterested (your case) or unable to do it yourself the movement can seems like a world of gatekeepers. The gate in this case is fact that to participate, especially in the early days, you have to be willing to do most of the work.

There is no good solution to this. Fixes will only result in the curtailing of the freedom that ignited the movement in the first place. Aside from the practical impossibility of making that happen, nobody involved, myself included, will ever agree to let the freedom of the OGL to be curtailed.

The only solution I seen work is diversity. The movement grows so large that anybody can find somebody somewhere that is willing to help. And that why you been successful in recent years with OSR projects. Because after 2010 it was far easier to find people in the OSR willing with a author that was only interested in writing and playtesting than before 2010.

Finally that diversity wasn't a result of a liberation from the clonemanics by a intrepid few. That was a consequence of the clonemanics adopting the Open Game License at the very beginning of the movement. The clonemanics dominated the early OSR because they were the first to do the work that others can take advantage of.  Once the way was pioneered then other, like myself, had a path to get our own projects. The very clonemanics you mock are the ones responsible for the diversity you see today.

Rob, I don't think Pundit is all that concerned with a quest for the truth regarding the early simulacrum period unless it's narrative-supporting.  

I mean shit, it doesn't seem very hard to find information online that shows that Matt Finch, one of the main cogs in OSRIC, put out Swords and Wizardry a short time after OSRIC - with the text completely open and explicitly designed to make it easier for people to use it as a base to create all the variant-D&D games that tickle Pundit's happy spot.  Labyrinth Lord was also pretty much completely open text/content, IIRC.

The only clone that was limited in that regard was OSRIC, designed to preserve 1E rules as faithfully as possible.  So what.  I've never heard anything to indicate that decision was driven by anything but admiration for 1E.

The early clones had no publishing companies, so there wouldn't have been anyone to turn down the opportunity to publish his efforts during that time, in order for him to arrive at the misconception you propose.

The interesting question is: why?  Why pick a fight now with people who are happily playing and supporting the original TSR games through sims?  They're not swine.  They're not SJW.  They're not talking about Pundit.  So none of the normal Pavlovian bells apply.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793652Because there are people who want to define the OSR out of existence as a way to be able to relegate old-school games back to the realm of 'fantasy heartbreakers' and out of the ideological vanguard of the hobby, so they can impose their own gaming ideologies in its place.

Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

Quote from: EOTB;793742Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

I should have known it all comes back to "The Swine" in the end. This is now making me picture "OSR brand-toothpaste"

"To get rid of that pesky pork flavour"

Quote from: EOTB;793739The interesting question is: why?  Why pick a fight now with people who are happily playing and supporting the original TSR games through sims?  

As near as I can tell somebody involved in the early days pissed off with their opinion on Forward! to Adventure. Although my google-fu comes up short when trying to find the specific incident.

In his blog grognardia doesn't take about the Pundit or Forward! to Adventure although it been noted in the comments by others.

The earliest reference to this I can find is this post by Hairfoot (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=322575&postcount=76).

By the middle of 2009 the Pundit already had a very negative opinion of the OSR as shown by this post  (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=322368&postcount=12)and this thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=15046).

Update

I found this thread  (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5934)on Knights & Knaves

Here the link to the blog post (https://web.archive.org/web/20090720075434/http://rpgpundit.xanga.com/707317875/item/?) they referenced.

Quote from: EOTB;793742Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

I also interested in the RPGPundit's opinion on how they suppose to accomplish this?

I am highly skeptical due to the number of people who want to play or buy classic D&D/Old School products versus the number of people who want to take over a movement for their own ends.

Now that the OGL let the publishing cat out of the bag for classic D&D there is no effective way of stuffing it back in as long as people want to continue to play classic D&D and other Old School games.

Especially when old school RPGs with much smaller fan bases managed to survive and remain published to the present.

I've lost track of this thread for awhile, and maybe someone has already offered this, but a working definition of the Old School Renaissance might work best if it emulates that of the actual historical Renaissance. One might thus call the OSR:

"...a rebirth of interest in the styles, concerns and conceits of earlier RPG systems (we'll call this systems that predate D&D's 3rd edition). Free from copyright restraints (thanks to the OGL), this renewal of interest was accompanied by new works patterned after those older styles, concerns, conceits, etc., to an audience already familiar with them, thus sparking a general, wider re-awakening to what seemed to have been lost or obscured.

That's a rather lengthy definition, I know. But it's an easy one to support. In a way, the wave of OSR designs we've seen the last 10 years or so mimics the wave of Renaissance art, which was itself inspired by the thought processes and knowledge of an earlier civilization.  The actual effect of the Renaissance during the actual time of the Renaissance, when it came to the rank-and-file, was marginal at best. But among those in a position to influence culture via art and music, the Greco-Roman influence was profound, and since those with power and influence drive arts and culture, that's what they did. The OSR thus differs in that respect in that avenues for self-publication, encouraged by the OGL, sprang up from many sources. You didn't need power, contacts or influence to put out a game. And since you didn't have to worry about copyright infringement, you could piggyback on an existing system that already had a waiting audience.

Quote from: estar;793771Update

I found this thread  (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5934)on Knights & Knaves

Here the link to the blog post (https://web.archive.org/web/20090720075434/http://rpgpundit.xanga.com/707317875/item/?) they referenced.

That thread on K&KA is the source of a grudge, and/or gatekeeping paranoia?

I don't see it.  All that thread shows is that while Pundit may love earlier play styles, he was not interacting with, and pretty much completely unknown to, the largest communities dedicated to discussing TSR games.  Because for most posters on K&KA not to know who someone is, that person also would have to be an unknown on Dragonsfoot and ODD74 as well.  

That invisibility might have hampered his earlier game - people won't consider purchasing what they don't know exists - but if that was a hindrance it was one brought on by Pundit exercising his freedom of association, not some external actor.

Which, given that he has his own message board, it makes some sense that he wouldn't be spending much time elsewhere.  But people have to be accountable for their own decisions about how to invest their time for marketing, and I'm guessing that Pundit was probably seeing the RPG.net and ENworld crowd as a better market (with more $) than DF, K&KA, and ODD74.  

I did a search for "Forward! to Adventure" on DF and got crickets.  Then I searched for Pundit and found a couple of relevant hits, but the only marketing was a thread by Bedrock Brendan in 2012 for AoI - with two posts by the publisher - that directed traffic over to here.

So yeah, people didn't buy it.  Surprise.

Edit - now that I've read the blog post of Pundit's referenced in the thread, the amount of irony in his rant on Mishler's reasons for whining about lack of sales for his game being due to lack of marketing, as compared to Pundit's reaction to the failure of Forward to Adventure to make inroads into the old school crowd in a period where he wooed to old school crowd very little, is vast.

Quote from: EOTB;793828That thread on K&KA is the source of a grudge, and/or gatekeeping paranoia?

I don't know but that the most relevant reference to the RPGPundit I can find on K&KA.

My opinion at worse, from Pundit's PoV it demonstrates indifference to Forward! to Adventure and people disliking his blogging style.

Quote from: EOTB;793828That invisibility might have hampered his earlier game - people won't consider purchasing what they don't know exists - but if that was a hindrance it was one brought on by Pundit exercising his freedom of association, not some external actor.

Another interesting factis that the gonzo side of the early OSR, led by Jeff Rients, was aware and talking about the Pundit. Both Jeff and Akrasia on Akratic Wizardry talked about the Pundit and Forward! to Adventure and considered it a old school game.

Couple with the fact there is zero mention of the Pundit in any of James' blog post.  I am at a loss as to the source of his conflict with what he describes as clonemanics and gatekeepers of the early OSR.

Whenever it happened it was after mid 2009 as then when the references to Pundit's animosity started appearing here.

And I found this post spelling out what system were acceptable for Fight On! a major early OSR publication.

http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/837/systems-write

And in the list is Pundit's Forward! to Adventure. My current conclusion is that the event that set him off occurred between early 2008 and mid 2009.

And looking over my posts from the time period I was just as baffled then about his hostility as I am now. I can find no reasonable reason for his attitude or that matter any reason other than some folks exhibited indifference or didn't like his blogging style. Which was not exactly new news even then.

I seem to recall somebody from KnK (maybe T. Foster, again, but I don't remember for certain) leveling criticism at Forward! To Adventure (especially the art style, but other stuff too, I think).  But I don't think that was on KnK, I think was here.  Maybe.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;793836I seem to recall somebody from KnK (maybe T. Foster, again, but I don't remember for certain) leveling criticism at Forward! To Adventure (especially the art style, but other stuff too, I think).  But I don't think that was on KnK, I think was here.  Maybe.

Wasn't me. I've never so much as seen a copy (in print or pdf) of F!tA.

I followed the link in T Foster's Tagline and found the Pundit quote from August of 2009.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318450&postcount=342

Going upthread we get to this.

And find a post where the Pundit names names.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318102&postcount=301

The culprits being folks from K&KA.

Which is interesting because when i search K&KA for Pundit or Forward to Adventure. The harshest post I found is the one I linked too previously.

And the Pundit expresses specifically the issue a few post later.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318226&postcount=310

Then slightly later I point out rather sarcastically that it makes no difference if they have that attitude.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318316&postcount=322

And returning up thread  we find this

Quote from: RPGPundit;316163Yup. I think its a fundamental flaw of the "retro" movement. Either you're playing a game so similar to its inspiration that might as well be playing the original, or you are playing a game so different that you're not playing anything like the original.

I really hope that eventually the Old School movement clues into that, and comes to get that what you need to produce are games with an Old School design-feel, but not actually an imitator of an old game; and with modern comprehension of design and presentation.

That's what I was trying to get at with FtA!. Its not a clone, its not based on any one old-school game, its very much its own thing, and it has a smooth streamlined system, but it in every respect of feel and atmosphere firmly located in the Old-school camp.

Which seems to add to the idea that the source of Pundit's beef with the early OSR is some of them, particularly K&KA ignored Forward! to Adventure.

And reading down thread from that we get this exchange between Papers and Paycheck and the Pundit which enflamed the situation.

Quote from: P&P;317223The words that started this 24-page thread.  :)

And they're so wrong.  What we needed to do was totally reject the "modern comprehension of design and presentation".  We needed to break away from this endless series of attempts to write a modern game that reaches out to the old school feel, because if we'd stuck in those old, old wheel ruts, what we'd have produced is Yet Another Completely Pointless Also-Ran RPG which a grand total of about 14 people would play for about six months before it started gathering dust.

And having rejected "the modern comprehension of design and presentation" we did exactly the right thing.  We believed that the game Gary Gygax wrote was pretty close to the perfect starting point for people's house-rules.  So we decided to write a SRD for it and bring it in line with the modern comprehension of open gaming instead.

Since then, WOTC have done us several huge favours.  4e helped.  4e outside the OGL helped a lot.  And killing off the .pdf sales of OOP stuff helped a lot.

So thank you, WOTC, for OSRIC's recent successes.  :)

followed by Pundit's response.

Quote from: RPGPundit;317763You haven't actually written anything. You stole another man's work, and tacked on some homebrew add-ons, and you're claiming that's a movement. OSRIC is perfect example of why the whole "old school" thing is shaping to be a mammoth waste of time for all concerned if the "only-clones" crowd stays in control of things.

Still can't pin exactly when anybody involved with K&KA criticized Forward! To Adventure.

Getting close to the source of the issue.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281177Ok, I'm going to come out and say it. I love old-school, and old-school gaming, but basically, I think retro-clone games suck ass. OSRIC; Labyrinth Lord, etc., they're all pointlessly stupid.

If you want something classic, why the fuck would you go with this? The originals are all still out there ( you can get the RC pdf for $5), and there's NOTHING in any of these "clones" that make them more worthwhile than the original.

If, on the other hand, you want something with "old school" sentiment, but not actually old-school rules, then again why the fuck would these be any good to you? Why not just go for a game (like, say, "Forward... to Adventure!") that manages to capture the old-school feel without having to just be a cheapass ripoff of an actual old-school game, and presents new elements and a modern rules-design sensibility without being hassled with trying to balance that with trying to look and stay close enough to "AD&D 1e with Unearth Arcana rules but without Cavaliers" or some shit like that?!

Ok, there's my ranting for the day. Discuss.

The Pundits response are calm and reasonable including this one.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281902Again, I'm not saying they're evil or damaging to the hobby, I'm just saying that I personally don't like them.t

And then oh man there was this.

Quote from: P&P;282499My game's more popular than your game.  :)

Also, neener neener neener.

Later in the thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=283136&postcount=225) FtA! marketing gets discussed.

With above posts my opinion it started with a personal conflict between Stuart Marshall, the author of OSRIC, and the RPGPundit the author of Forward to Adventure!. And is in essence comparing the length of.... err respective virtues of their RPGs.

That prior to this the RPGPundit and K&KA were indifferent to each other. Along with the fact FtA! was supported by the portion of the OSR that revolved around Jeff Rients, and the crew behind Fight On!. (Which continues to exist over on the OD&D discussion forum (http://odd74.proboards.com/).)

That when this started many of us in the OSR, (Melan, Philotomy, Rients, myself, etc) attempted to explain the state of affairs. But the Pundit got too wrapped up in his personal animosity toward specific individuals to listen. That things steadily went downhill from there.

Part of the reason that I commented heavily on his recent blog posts is that I thought we got past this with publication of Arrows of Indra. That his experience in publishing and promoting that book will be a practical demonstration of how the OSR has always operated. But it appears not.

OK, that thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14812) was pretty enlightening.

So, as near as I can tell it, the gatekeeping boils down to influence.  Pundit hammers home his idea in that thread that the play style of old games is great, but that they need to die a (revered, honored) death so that they aren't keeping people from buying shiny, new, evolved games.  People like P&P who promote continual use of the old games are inhibiting this process.  Thus, gatekeepers.  Supporting old games probably would have been more tolerable if it wouldn't have taken off quite so well.

I actually would be quite pleased to have him spouting his froth, so long as he linked the entirety of that thread to it when he did, so that people could see the entirety of what is behind it.  I think that would benefit old games very well.  Do you think he would be willing to sig the link or something?  "This (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14812) is why I believe clonemaniacs needs to be stopped - RPG Pundit".  Don't stop with half-hearted efforts - get the whole story out!

Snippets from that thread:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318470&postcount=348

Quote from: Akrasia;318470:rolleyes:  Do you even try to understand posts that point out that your understanding of the OSR is deeply mistaken?

And T. Foster is one guy.  He's not the president of the OSR.  I'm sure that he would hate my house rules for OD&D.  :p

This misunderstanding of Pundit's is not new, and frankly, after reading through all of that, it is deliberate. It is the same misunderstanding he's been nursing for years.  However, it is not a misunderstanding of his, it is (our/their) misunderstanding of him.  He understood "the OSR" as it was constituted then, and to a large extent, now, quite well.

The problem is that he doesn't put all of his view or intent in one place.  So when he uses words like "gatekeeper", that he is defining that term in a different way than everyone else would commonly associate meaning with, it is lost on the viewer who instead is defining it as Joe Q Public would normally do so.  But this leaves anyone - not willing to dig - with a misconception that is quite favorable to Pundit's interest.  Which I will quote later.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318690&postcount=413

Quote from: RPG Pundit...rather than there being anyone saying "we must take what is awesome about the past and make NEW, DIFFERENT stuff with it" (and no, clones or rip-off games or modules (emphasis supplied - ed.)for out-of-print games is not new, or different)

Ah, but see... here's where things get curious. If that's your mission statement, I NO WHERE poked any pointy stick at it. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that old games are not broken, and that the hobby would be better off if games like (emphasis supplied - ed.) Basic/Expert D&D were still the standard. In fact, I've made a career out of saying that.

It's not just the games - modules, too.  Support material can't be new or different.  The game engine must be new or different.  That is the criteria for a laudable effort from Pundit, or something that isn't to be attacked (at minimum).

Quote from: RPG PunditBecause FtA! is not a clone or even directly based a specific old game, it was "out", and is therefore bad. And FtA! is by far not the only one. You have Wayfarers, Epic, and tons of others; actual NEW games with old-school style, that none of you give a fuck about (emphasis supplied - ed.) because you're too busy making up monster lists for brown-box D&D and debating the crucial issue of whether its permissible for AC to scale up or only down, and what should be done to someone who dares to use THAC0 instead of the attack matrix table.

Yep, actual new games again.  

Of course, debating D&D is part of the fun of D&D.  It's what you do when you can't get enough people together to play D&D.  The letters section, and later forum, of Dragon was consistently one of its most popular features in the annual surveys.  But damnit - doing this keeps us from searching out new games.  It's got to go.

Quote from: JimLotFP;318701Then why do you have your panties in a wad about people actually holding up Basic/Expert D&D and saying, "Play this! It rules!"?

If it's there and it's good, why the need for NEW and DIFFERENT games entirely?

Why should I make my own distinct game or care about FTA! or Wanderer or whatever that is the "same spirit" when what I've got is well and good enough?

If I want new and different, I'll actually go to a Forge game because those are different, and not just a different way to scratch the same itch that I've already got well-scratched.

Quote from: RPGPundit;318709This is you, making my point for me.

So, fundamentally you're admitting that there's no real difference between you and T.Foster except that he's not afraid of sounding like an ass (either through courage or some kind of dysfunction), whereas you are. But fundamentally, you're in agreement with him, that the future is old men playing old games till death takes them?

RPGPundit

There you go, Jim LotFP, misunderstanding that Pundit wants the old games to live on only in spirit through new games.  

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318721&postcount=440

Quote from: RPG PunditActually, I'd never been to KKA in my life before yesterday.
My feelings and impressions about the OSR came mostly from what I'd seen from people on here, Enworld, RPG.net, and very rare forays into old-school blogs or other forums.

As for our similarity, the big difference is that here we tolerate debate and free expression. From what I've heard, over there the groupthink is strong.

And yes, I should have qualified "playable" for EC. You're right about that.

So this immutable opinion was formed not by interacting with these people.  It was formed because they were being discussed on places like ENworld, RPG.net and such.  Can't fucking have that!  I mean, here was Pundit, preaching old school play like a guy in a white shirt and tie riding a bike and handing out pamphlets down the strip in Vegas, and someone else was getting traction, but instead of buying new games to replace their forgey or 3E games, it was getting them excited about pulling out their old games, or downloading free simulacrum!  They killed Kenny!  Those bastards!

Meanwhile, completely absent his involvement in the OSR, it went in a direction he didn't approve of.  

In other news, dropped rock hit ground approximately 2.3 seconds after release.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=319478&postcount=548

Quote from: RPGPundit;319478...and for hte last fucking time THIS ARGUMENT IS ABOUT IDEOLOGY, NOT MY BOOK...

Agreed.  But it isn't about gatekeeping, either.  That's the disingenuous part of Pundit's screed.  It's about a competing ideology's existence, not any active effort against pundit by those who hold it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;319478No, it doesn't you stupid fuck.
Going to someone who's talking about difficulties in their GURPS campaign and telling them "play WUSHU instead!" is not constructive criticism, its you being enough of a cunt to merit having a fucking ice chipper shoved down your throat.
Telling baseball fans worried about the red sox "become a hockey fan instead!" is not constructive criticsm. An architect whose advice regarding a housing crisis is "build an abatoir instead" is a fucking idiot.

You, in other words, are a fucking idiot. Do you understand me now? Do you get how you are a fucking idiot?... (emphasis supplied - ed.)

RPGPundit

Irony.  He's telling baseball fans who aren't even worried about the red sox that they need to become hockey fans instead (buy new games!)  He's telling gamers that don't even feel homeless that they have a housing crisis, and he's the architect that will solve their problem.  Fucking idiot, indeed.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=320191&postcount=598

Quote from: RPGPundit;320191Then certainly those people, the ones who become a clique, must be criticized, humiliated, anything possible to avoid this marginalization.

RPGPundit

Here we get to the root of the issue.  Here Pundit nakedly lays out why he consistently mischaracterizes his targets, refuses to consider the huge volume of contradictory information, and chooses loaded and inaccurate terms like "gate keeping" and "purity tests" to describe those who have a differing point of view and goal in regards to the original games.  They are a clique he neither controls, nor views him (or his amibition) of any importance.  They have an influence he feels will marginalize the hobby because he's already concluded that new games are the only way it will live/grow.  That influence interferes with his goal of getting people to buy NEW games designed according to his preferences.  

So he will smear them constantly, attempt to influence those unfamiliar into seeing them as groups taking actions to limit choice, and, due to a negative "review", to thereafter steer clear of those that approach RPGs from a singular viewpoint.  He has to strangle this ideology to have any hope of killing off the original games (or at least convince people they still need, at minimum, to continue to buy newer games.  Maybe taking the original games out for a spin every once in a while is OK when it's sunny enough to put the top down.  They still have the right spirit, after all.)

Gate keeping indeed.  For all the breast beating he just displayed after consultant-gate about how certain tactics are vile inherently, he certainly seems willing to use those very same tools.  He's no different than those he's recently castigated, only his agenda.

That was actually a rather interesting read; well researched and all.

My question to you is this; how on Earth did you find the time and energy to research that? Have you been bookmarking Pundit's posts for years?

I can speak for why I'll play updated versions of older games:

BFRPG: Flips the AC, tons of free stuff (hell, it's ALL free).

LL: presentation much easier to follow than having to jump back and forth between B and X.

I don't have a problem with anyone who plays 1E. Don't care for the crowing that 1E is the game of all games. Also feel like that bitching about someone who's playing a simulacrum or retroclone of one's own beloved system is kinda like bitching out someone for buying generic cola instead of actual Coke.

Quote from: everloss;793917That was actually a rather interesting read; well researched and all.

My question to you is this; how on Earth did you find the time and energy to research that? Have you been bookmarking Pundit's posts for years?

I have a decent amount of Google fu combined with being a speed reader. It boils down to my ability to pick out good terms to search on combined with luck. The luck in this case was T. Foster posting and his signature with  the OSR Taliban link to Pundit's post. From that thead it took me two tries at searching and I found the Jan 2009 thread where the Pundit and Stuart Marshal insulted each other.

The big hurdle with this site is that it only returns the first 250 hits. Otherwise it would been as easy as searching all of the Pundit post for OSR and find the first time he mentioned it. Then work your way forward. Something that takes 15 minutes.

So I need some luck to narrow down the area I need to search. After which I can use Google site search with a date range filter to find relevant posts.

At work I am typically the guy assigned to use Google to find some obscure technical detail for my boss or coworkers.

For what it's worth, a couple of the ideas in FtA weren't bed. As an expat playing rpgs with non-English speakers with very limited access to physical gaming swag, I thought relying on 6-sided dice was a great idea. The Traveller-style settlement generation was neat as well. Later I wondered why Pundit never expanded on the game.

IMO, for a new system to have a chance in hell of being accepted, the publisher (or in the case of the OSR - the writer) needs to do more than just release the rules. It won't catch on if you aren't willing to back it up with some very substantial and hard work providing supplementary material. Getting bitter and holding a long-standing personal grudge won't change that. Neither will losing interest and moving onto the next big thing.

That said, the first big OSRIC supplement, Dangerous Dungeons, is nearing completion, after a couple years of grinding away, with somewhere north of half a million words. Lots and lots of never before seen material, plenty of optional house-rules type stuff, and enough tables to give a carpenter good pause. I'm pretty confident it will be popular, regardless of what particular system folks prefer or their respective opinions of the authors as individuals. No, it won't be a reinvention of the wheel (or re-definition of what the OSR is), but it will have something almost anyone can use.

Quote from: estar;793934I have a decent amount of Google fu combined with being a speed reader. It boils down to my ability to pick out good terms to search on combined with luck. The luck in this case was T. Foster posting and his signature with  the OSR Taliban link to Pundit's post. From that thead it took me two tries at searching and I found the Jan 2009 thread where the Pundit and Stuart Marshal insulted each other.

Fair enough. I wasn't intending to sound insulting, although after re-reading my post it may have come across that way.

Quote from: estar;793684Pundit,

I think part of your attitude results from how you approach publishing. We talked briefly about this when you approached me about publishing Arrow of Indra and your interview brought it back the memory.  You rely on others for everything but the writing and playtesting.  Which is fine but that is not the typical experience of people publishing for the OSR.  

Most of what the OSR does in publishing is do it yourself with help from acquaintances and friends. LoftFP, Goodman Games, and Frog God Games are the closest thing the OSR has to traditional publishers who make a habit of publishing other authors work. Even then there is a heavy dose of collaboration, like with Matt Finch and Frog God Games.

That always been the downside of movements based on open content or open source. If you are uninterested (your case) or unable to do it yourself the movement can seems like a world of gatekeepers. The gate in this case is fact that to participate, especially in the early days, you have to be willing to do most of the work.

There is no good solution to this. Fixes will only result in the curtailing of the freedom that ignited the movement in the first place. Aside from the practical impossibility of making that happen, nobody involved, myself included, will ever agree to let the freedom of the OGL to be curtailed.

The only solution I seen work is diversity. The movement grows so large that anybody can find somebody somewhere that is willing to help. And that why you been successful in recent years with OSR projects. Because after 2010 it was far easier to find people in the OSR willing with a author that was only interested in writing and playtesting than before 2010.

Finally that diversity wasn't a result of a liberation from the clonemanics by a intrepid few. That was a consequence of the clonemanics adopting the Open Game License at the very beginning of the movement. The clonemanics dominated the early OSR because they were the first to do the work that others can take advantage of.  Once the way was pioneered then other, like myself, had a path to get our own projects. The very clonemanics you mock are the ones responsible for the diversity you see today.

I think you're conflating two different things here: indie self-publishing, and ideological gatekeeping.  Self-publishing makes gatekeeping ineffectual in a larger industry sense; it doesn't matter how many people say "Bob Smith shouldn't be allowed to write RPGs" if Bob can just publish one himself. But movement-gatekeeping can still be highly effective at what amounts to a kind of identity-politics, where people will allow themselves to be convinced that Bob's game is not the "right" kind of game for the type of thing they identify with.

Quote from: EOTB;793742Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

Ron Edwards, and storygamers in general.  If they get to be the ones who define what the OSR is, they get to define it out of existence.

The problem you and others seem to have is that you don't recognize the power of semantics in the post-Foucaltian world. When all values have been lost and all truth reduced to deconstructed 'relative' states, then whoever gets to establish semantic definitions has enormous power.

Quote from: estar;793834Another interesting factis that the gonzo side of the early OSR, led by Jeff Rients, was aware and talking about the Pundit. Both Jeff and Akrasia on Akratic Wizardry talked about the Pundit and Forward! to Adventure and considered it a old school game.

Couple with the fact there is zero mention of the Pundit in any of James' blog post.  I am at a loss as to the source of his conflict with what he describes as clonemanics and gatekeepers of the early OSR.

gee, it's almost like if at that time there were two distinct groups, with the ones on the "inside" not considering the other guys to be "legit", huh?

Quote from: EOTB;793905Gate keeping indeed.  For all the breast beating he just displayed after consultant-gate about how certain tactics are vile inherently, he certainly seems willing to use those very same tools.  He's no different than those he's recently castigated, only his agenda.

You're an absurd fucking idiot for this paragraph.

Incidentally, thanks for quoting JimLotFP arguing vehemently against the creation of new OSR rulesets back then, only to have then made a career out of one of the most successful new OSR rule-sets and proven me RIGHT.

Quote from: Kellri;793970For what it's worth, a couple of the ideas in FtA weren't bed. As an expat playing rpgs with non-English speakers with very limited access to physical gaming swag, I thought relying on 6-sided dice was a great idea. The Traveller-style settlement generation was neat as well. Later I wondered why Pundit never expanded on the game.

Um, as a point of fact, FtA! was the only game I ever did a supplement for.  I generally prefer to make my games self-contained, and FtA! largely is, but I still wrote FtA!GN! (http://www.flyingmice.com/ftagn.html) (the "Forward... to Adventure! Gamemaster's Notebook!"), which is a several-hundred-pages long sourcebook with insane amounts of supplemental material for FtA! play.

If that's the case, then you either have a serious marketing problem or the book just wasn't that good. As for all that post-Foucaultian semantic definition nonsense, when it comes to gaming, it's always preferable to DO something definitive than to just SAY something over and over again on a message board hoping it will be construed as definitive. Show don't tell.

Quote from: RPGPundit;794796I think you're conflating two different things here: indie self-publishing, and ideological gatekeeping.  Self-publishing makes gatekeeping ineffectual in a larger industry sense; it doesn't matter how many people say "Bob Smith shouldn't be allowed to write RPGs" if Bob can just publish one himself. But movement-gatekeeping can still be highly effective at what amounts to a kind of identity-politics, where people will allow themselves to be convinced that Bob's game is not the "right" kind of game for the type of thing they identify with.

Intellectual Gatekeeping on works when the movement is about an idea. But the early OSR wasn't about an idea but about a concrete thing the renaissance of classic D&D and similar games. And one of the groups you had a problem with, K&KA was one of the most focused on a particular things AD&D 1st edition.

And when a movement is focused on a thing or things and those things are under open licenses there can be no gatekeeping. Because the moment the original group goes off the deep end people can say "fuck you". And since the thing we are talking about here is classic D&D and other older games, being out of print they can't be changed to suit somebody agenda. There is always a point of reference that anybody interested can look at.

This social mechanism is what lead to the retro-clones in the first place. Because Castles & Crusades was not not AD&D 1st despite it compatibility with older supplements. Because Castle & Crusades was built on the open content of the d20 SRD. K&KA and Chris Gonnerman could turn around and create their own classic D&D clones.

If any intellectual gatekeeping was done it was done by people like yourself, Troll Lords, Clark Peterson of Necromancers, and other in the larger roleplaying hobby who severely criticized the writers of OSRIC and other retro-clone for recreating old editions. Spreading the word far and wide that what they was doing was dubious, shady, and illegal. Criticism that continues today.

Far from hobbling the OSR, AD&D 1st Fanatics of K&KA liberated it by successfully making the closest possible clone that is legal. Now there was an example of where the boundary lay if you wanted to write your own set of rule. This freed guys (like myself, James Raggi, yourself, etc) from the worry that their products would fall under the baleful eye of Wizards Legal because they are designed work with older editions even tho they are not clones.

Without OSRIC people would be still afraid to do anything commerically that had to do with classic D&D. Being brainwashed into thinking that doing so would be illegal and shady when the reality is that if you strip the d20 SRD of skill, feats, etc what is left is a game very close of that of classic D&D.

And all the people who came into the OSR because of liberation of classic D&D brought their own interests in. Which happened to be an interest in old school in general. Which ignited a parallel renaissance in old school gaming.

Now I documented the source of your animosity to a personal conflict with Stuart Marshall. My opinion you both contributed to that dispute. Your blog post toda (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-id-give-crap-about-being-inclusive.html)y and general blogging style makes it understandable why you acted the way you did. As for Stuart, one reason for his sarcasm, was the relentless criticism of OSRIC as an illegal publication. He and just about everybody involved with the project at K&KA was sick of it and pissed off when they explain what they did and the limit of what they could do nobody listened. So when the two of you met in that thread the result wasn't good.

Now the deal is this. K&KA is NOT an inclusive group. They are a group focused on AD&D 1st, OD&D, and a few other older games. Want to talk about something else there, they will tell you take it somewhere else. Two version of classic D&D is what they are about and supporting OSRIC.

However they are certainly not interested in controlling or dominating a wider movement. As a community K&KA is opinionated, defensive, and sarcastic as all hell. And those members who are interested doing something in the larger OSR generally start up separate projects like Matt Finch. And they return to K&KA to talk about OSRIC, AD&D, OD&D or one of the folks there.

As for your other major point of criticism, James of Grognardia he was a blogger first and foremost. He dabbled in publishing, pursuing pre-existing project like Thousand Suns, while involved in the OSR only did or worked on, Cursed Chateau, Petty God and the infamous Dwimmermount. The last two had to be completed by others. Cursed Chateau was his only major OSR release. Being a blogger first meant his impact on were doing had severe limits.

Because whether it classic D&D or something else old school, the OSR was always about doing stuff with things not abstract ideas like the theorywank going on at the Forge. To put it another way, at the Forge they made theories and produced games based on those theories. In the OSR people produced games first and people afterward made up theories afterwards.

Quote from: RPGPundit;794798The problem you and others seem to have is that you don't recognize the power of semantics in the post-Foucaltian world. When all values have been lost and all truth reduced to deconstructed 'relative' states, then whoever gets to establish semantic definitions has enormous power.

I for one am well aware of that idea. I think the post- world that is in operation with the OLG is the world of post-OGL post-Open Content. Open content is not just a practical tool for sharing content but an expression of an ideal and way of thinking about how creative works ought to be.

Free for anybody to use as they see fit.

My opinion is that you are the guy fighting World War I with 19th century cavalry tactics.

Quote from: Kellri;794814If that's the case, then you either have a serious marketing problem or the book just wasn't that good. As for all that post-Foucaultian semantic definition nonsense, when it comes to gaming, it's always preferable to DO something definitive than to just SAY something over and over again on a message board hoping it will be construed as definitive. Show don't tell.

You're certainly new to the internet, aren't you...

Also, when are you ever going to post on your blog again? It's been like five years.

Quote from: Brad;794865Also, when are you ever going to post on your blog again? It's been like five years.

I suppose I could, but I got really tired of the whole pissant-sized 'serious business' side of the hobby and humourless cunts in general. Since I last posted on the blog, I've done quite a bit of seriously heavy freelance journalism in and around Asia of a sort that more often than not I cannot and dare not even reveal my own name. Documenting from the the front lines things like the last known use of chemical weapons in the area, interviewing ex-Khmer Rouge cannibals, observing factory riots, Burmese ethnic cleansing raids, the drug trade, the sex trade, the growth of the Russian mob into SE Asia, expats with ties to Anonymous, and that's just during my vacation time. When I get motivated to do some RPG writing, I like to do my thing and let other people whinge about the semantic implications. They might like it, they might not - I don't give a fuck, because I'm here to rock, not to roll. Nomsayin?

Quote from: Kellri;794873I suppose I could, but I got really tired of the whole pissant-sized 'serious business' side of the hobby and humourless cunts in general.

FWIW, your blog was the one I got by far the best read/use ratio out of in the last 10 years.

Quote from: Kellri;794873When I get motivated to do some RPG writing, I like to do my thing and let other people whinge about the semantic implications. They might like it, they might not - I don't give a fuck, because I'm here to rock, not to roll. Nomsayin?

Make some more CDD Netbooks using Castles and Crusades as the base. I'll even pay you to do that. I think it's funny you're still using truculent.org...heh.

Quote from: RPGPundit;794806gee, it's almost like if at that time there were two distinct groups, with the ones on the "inside" not considering the other guys to be "legit", huh?

The pre-OSR D&D community was split into several distinct groups. This is nothing new. Before the publishing side took off there was forum drama which resulted in several distinct communities. Then there was the 3rd Edition rules, 1st Edition feel crowd. Then Troll Lords got going with Castles & Crusades.

The classic D&D community was fractured before the anybody ever thought of OSRIC or publishing for classic D&D.

Quote from: estar;794927The pre-OSR D&D community was split into several distinct groups. This is nothing new. Before the publishing side took off there was forum drama which resulted in several distinct communities. Then there was the 3rd Edition rules, 1st Edition feel crowd. Then Troll Lords got going with Castles & Crusades.

The classic D&D community was fractured before the anybody ever thought of OSRIC or publishing for classic D&D.

Yes... and at the time the OSR decided none of the other communities were valid except for the Quest-for-Proto-D&D/Talmudic-Interpretation-of-Gygax-Texts/Fantasy-Fucking-Vietnam denomination of old-school nostalgia.

Quote from: RPGPundit;795257Yes... and at the time the OSR decided none of the other communities were valid except for the Quest-for-Proto-D&D/Talmudic-Interpretation-of-Gygax-Texts/Fantasy-Fucking-Vietnam denomination of old-school nostalgia.

You don't have the documentation or posts to back this up and are making up shit that never occurred in the early OSR. In short you are doing what you accused Tenkar of distorting the early history of the OSR.

You never mention the OSR or the retro-clones prior to 2009 and your commentary only turned negative after you got into a pissing match with Stuart Marshall in 2009. Which I was able to document.

You should know better.

Quote from: Brad;794920Make some more CDD Netbooks using Castles and Crusades as the base. I'll even pay you to do that. I think it's funny you're still using truculent.org...heh.

Erm...for personal and aesthetic reasons, I will never write anything for Castles & Crusades. I am nearly finished with a big OSRIC supplement tentatively entitled Dangerous Dungeons, edited by Stuart Marshall, that will update and expand all of the old CDD netbooks. We're not doing a kickstart or asking for pre-order money. Once released, there will be both a free pdf version and a for-sale hardcopy, probably through Black Blade.

As for truculent.org...that was hosting space given to me for my stuff. I've since forgotten the password and am surprised it's still online. I still get a couple emails a week asking questions about those books or requests to use one part or another for some project. The most hilarious was some guy who wanted me to send them all to him in a plain text file so he could convert them to BECMI D&D. That's one offer I didn't accept.

Quote from: estar;795276You don't have the documentation or posts to back this up and are making up shit that never occurred in the early OSR. In short you are doing what you accused Tenkar of distorting the early history of the OSR.

Yeah, that pretty much nails the Pundit's fictitious 'history' of the OSR.

Quote from: Kellri;795292I am nearly finished with a big OSRIC supplement tentatively entitled Dangerous Dungeons, edited by Stuart Marshall, that will update and expand all of the old CDD netbooks. We're not doing a kickstart or asking for pre-order money. Once released, there will be both a free pdf version and a for-sale hardcopy, probably through Black Blade.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final version of Dangerous Dungeons!

Quote from: Kellri;795292Erm...for personal and aesthetic reasons, I will never write anything for Castles & Crusades. I am nearly finished with a big OSRIC supplement tentatively entitled Dangerous Dungeons, edited by Stuart Marshall, that will update and expand all of the old CDD netbooks. We're not doing a kickstart or asking for pre-order money. Once released, there will be both a free pdf version and a for-sale hardcopy, probably through Black Blade.

Looking forward to this.

Quote from: Kellri;795292As for truculent.org...that was hosting space given to me for my stuff. I've since forgotten the password and am surprised it's still online. I still get a couple emails a week asking questions about those books or requests to use one part or another for some project. The most hilarious was some guy who wanted me to send them all to him in a plain text file so he could convert them to BECMI D&D. That's one offer I didn't accept.

There one reason I personally wouldn't mind seeing a plain text file of all the table. So that I can code them up to use with Inspiration Pad Pro. I found by a using a good set of random tables, (and yours are among the ones I considered good), making stuff like mega dungeons become far easier.

There been work done on random dungeons over the years. A completely random approach doesn't really work out for me a least. Instead I developed what I called a constrained use of randomness.

For example I know how big a level or site should be and randomly generate the map . I will then alters about 25% to make them fit with the rest of the thing I done and to account for planned features.

Then I will randomly generate all the room. I will throw out 25% of that in favor of planned features and inhabitants. Then I will go through the remainder and give each a brief write up. The write  up ties it someway back into the rest of the area or dungeon. 25% of that is total random garbage in the sense that there is no way to make the result make any type of sense for what I am trying to do. So I reroll until I am able to come up with something that works.

I repeat this for most of the levels or areas I have.

I find this allows me to create area and locales far more quicker and with better variety. I often only have a dozen or so firm ideas and the rest I have to scratch my head until I come up with something. I find explaining random results easier and often better because things will come up that I haven't thought of before.

The trouble comes is that doing this by hand is very tedious as I am often rolling up two dozen or more entries using multiple tables. I found Inspiration Pad Pro which allows me to code up random tables of nearly any level of arbitrary complexity.

The thing is that I have to retype tables from my source. It would nice that a new product with random tables as one of its central selling point would offer the tables in plain text to make coding them up with one of the automatic generators easier.

For example I took the NPC personality tables from Paizo's Gamemastery Guide and combined with the AD&D 1st DMG Guide to produce this. I use it as a source of inspiration to come up with a NPC.

For example I generated this for a town.

chandler
finesmith
finesmith
herbalist
jeweler
jeweler
leathercrafter*
legal
merchant
ostler
religious
sailor
scholar        
scholar        
tailor*
tavern          
tavern          
tavern
weaponsmith
weaver*


Then for each entry generated a personality profile like this

Finesmith

QuoteAlignment: neutral, Possessions: scant Age: youthful, General: rough, Sanity: normal General Tendencies: opinionated/contrary, Personality: Average: well-spoken, Disposition: unfeeling/insensitive, Nature: forgiving, Honesty: deceitful, Energy: normal, Morals: lustful, Intellect: anti-intellectual, Materialism: greedy, Bravery: craven, Thrift: mean, Piety: reverent, Interests: drugs Background: Killed someone in self-defense, Goal: Marry a prince/princess, Physical: Homely, Personality: Polite bus calls attention to it with elaborate bows or other gestures., Secrets: Is the bastard child of a noble, Reward: Offer the hand of a relative in marriage

From the above I wrote

QuoteFinesmith, Quality: Poor, Prices: Average
Ecgric, age 26, is the bastard brother of the Baron of Piall. His father, the current baron’s father, secured him a finesmith apprenticeship and later a franchise in Mikva. This has seriously upset Leudast. Ecgric gets along with his half-brother the Baron however the favoritism shown by his father has left him with an inflated sense of his importance. He will states his opinion whenever he can and attempts to join in on important events. Baron Argus tolerates this but will not give him any task or position where his brother is in charge.

The AD&D 1st Edition has multiple individual tables for each entries which meant it would take an excessively long time to generate the 20 or so entries I wanted for this project. But with Inspiration Pad Pro (free BTW) it took seconds to generate 20 results and print them out.

It would nice if thing could be arranged that a spread sheet or something similar of all the tables in Dangerous Dungeon would be available so people could code up files for IPP, Tablesmith or whatever.

Quote from: estar;795276You don't have the documentation or posts to back this up and are making up shit that never occurred in the early OSR. In short you are doing what you accused Tenkar of distorting the early history of the OSR.

You never mention the OSR or the retro-clones prior to 2009 and your commentary only turned negative after you got into a pissing match with Stuart Marshall in 2009. Which I was able to document.

You should know better.

At the time I had that pissing match with stuart marshall, I had no idea who he was.

So I'll be clear here: I wasn't involved with OSRIC, I wasn't in any of those traditionalist OSR forums, I didn't know who any of these guys were.  And I'm sure that for those of you who were on the inside of those groups, there were many nice things about what was happening, and it was an exciting time.

For me, on the outside, I was happily going along in my ignorance, being Old-School, running an old-school (RC D&D) campaign, writing about old-school, designing an old-school game (or what I thought was one), and not giving a fuck about OSRIC.

So my perspective is based on how my earliest encounters with people identifying themselves as "OSR" were people telling me FtA wasn't an old school game and I wasn't an old-school gamer, and that the way I was playing wasn't old-school play, because I wasn't doing it right the way people like JMal told them "everyone" was playing it back then (where he never was); even though I was "back then" and never played it that way, nor recalled it being anything like what these people (who, from my perspective, had just come out of nowhere) were claiming it had been like.
In fact, EVERYTHING about their perspective seemed terribly not-old-school to me.  Because the real old school, the one I'd lived rather than the one they were full of nostalgic fantasies about, was an old school that was full of excitement about thinking up new cool ways of doing stuff.  That's the problem with reactionary movements; they claim to represent The Way It Was In The Beginning, but their attitude is always one of rejecting anything new. When back in the actual beginning, everyone was much less interested in maintaining strict purity and way more interested in all kinds of experimenting with exciting new ideas.

So yeah, I was predisposed to dislike that Reactionary version of the OSR right from the start, and it didn't help when the first experiences I ever had with them was of people directly or indirectly telling me I was Doing It Wrong for all these years of identifying myself as an old-school gamer.

That's the truth of the matter: that's my documentation of my experience. Was there other stuff that the OSR was doing that might have been cool? Probably, sure, as long as you drank the kool-aid of their particular vision of things.  But if you didn't, you were out.   Things only started to get better when they finally ran out of old D&D editions to slavishly copy down to the last detail.