Quote from: RandallS;584361Some people wonder why I continue to work on Microlite74 games when there are so many alternatives that would work just as well for most people. The answer is simple, I keep publishing them because people want to play them -- and I enjoy working on them. [/QUOTEPretty much sums it up for me. Most of us, do the things we do because what we did was well-received or sold well. Then we follow up on that not only on direct sequels but related work.

Quote from: estar;584360Name names, don't cloud your criticisms in vague insinuations.

I'm not trying to be vague; the line about "thinking they started it" is a reference to Tavis saying that Dwimmermount was ancient because, since the OSR is a 3 year old hobby, DM existed at the dawn of that hobby.

Ergo, you don't think the hobby is 3 years old unless you have a "circle of friends" (again, quote from Tavis) that is somewhat self-absorbed into only their own blogosphere-squad or whatever you want to call it.  Moreover, if you also say that 2008/9 is when you started to game this way, and (building on the previous) you think the OSR started three years ago because Dwimmermount has existed as long as the OSR has and is legendary, and the discussion between that circle of friends is so stunted that it is not inclusive of Dragonsfoot, or the work that everybody put into OSRIC (of which I am not one - it was recently published when I found K&KA), than it follows that what that person considers the "OSR" is what they and their friends put together 3 years ago.  I.e., "they started it".  You can't include the contributions that came before and still think it's 3 years old - those positions are mutually incompatible.

So to me, connecting the dots a bit, I wonder if Tavis is of the consideration that TARGA was the start of the OSR.  But this last part is really kind of taking a shot in the dark - it just matches up quite neatly with his timeline.  

As far as game authors go, I admit to making personal exceptions for no reason other than that I like them.  I would, for instance, love to see AS&SH outsell D&D5 because Ghul was shafted so badly in the Castle Zygag deal, and I love how he put his game together.  So I'll cop to that.  But there is an undefined practical limit in how many almost-old-D&D games that the OSR can absorb and maintain any sense of identity.  At some point if it's 400 different games with 25 players each, you lack a critical mass and the common language becomes dialects only partially compatible.

Edit - I also recognize that there exists a market for all these clones.  People buy and/or download them.  I suspect that the market penetration is actually greater with the WotC edition crowd, simply because I see far more discussion about ACK or Microlite 74 on the big purple than I do on DF or other old-game sites, but I acknowledge that those $ count as well.

Quote from: estar;584367You must be from an alternate timeline with a different english dictionary. The one here says

Your criticism is ironic considering your most recent blog post is about your accomplishment in getting the presentation right on your Cavern Below map.

http://somekingskent.blogspot.com/2012/08/vectorised-pdf-of-caverns-below-abode.html

I never used the word accomplishment. There are nuances to the word of perfection and attainment but like I said if you consider getting out of bed an accomplishment then I can't argue with you. (You may want to consider using the OED rather than freedictionary.com)

My point was that your importance, as a group, and 'achievements' might be more accurately reflected through words and phrases such as  'unending struggle', 'unrewarding toil', 'drudgery', 'pointless exercise', 'wearisome endeavour', 'vacuous mimicry', 'monotonous repetition', 'suicidal compunction', 'vomitous nostalgic obsession' ... and such like ... and if you adopted my proposal naive gamers would not be fooled by fiascos like Dwimmermount and your rubbish.

Quote from: estar;584358Not to say I wasn't tempted to publish a complete ruleset. I may do so for one reason; so that when go to a convention and sell on the point, or go to a game store and sell my book I have a rulebook to sue the supplement with. To date and for the foreseeable future that hasn't been important enough reason in light of the other things I want to accomplish.

I see this line of thought all the time.  

Doesn't this only work if the FLGS thinks that the rule system is a widely played one?  

I mean, if all the OSR authors put out a rulebook, and every author went to the game store on the same day to convince the owner to stock the 25 different rule systems + supps to go along with them, is any FLGS going to say "wow, I never would have stocked these supplements, but since it's a game line I most certainly will!  Put them over there with the 15 game lines that came in last week."

I.e., doesn't this "I'll sell more supps with a rule book" depend on 1 or 2 "OSR rule systems" eating the rest, and becoming dominant?

Quote from: EOTB;584373I'm not trying to be vague; the line about "thinking they started it" is a reference to Tavis saying that Dwimmermount was ancient because, since the OSR is a 3 year old hobby, DM existed at the dawn of that hobby.

Thanks for taking the time for clarifying your answer.

And as an aside, I did some research into when the term "Old School Renaissance" in regards to the playing of older edition D&D was coined. The earliest reference I can document is found on Dragonsfoot

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11962

Interestingly the poster was anonymous. 2007 was the year where it exploded into widespread use. Expeditous Retreat Press and Dan Proctor with his OSR Lulu store front had a lot to do with popularizing the term.

Quote from: EOTB;584373So I'll cop to that.  But there is an undefined practical limit in how many almost-old-D&D games that the OSR can absorb and maintain any sense of identity.  At some point if it's 400 different games with 25 players each, you lack a critical mass and the common language becomes dialects only partially compatible.

You bring up an interesting point.  Please don't take this critically, but think about what you are saying. Why are there so many games? Because the OSR is largely founded on the freedom granted by the Open Game License. The consequence of this freedom is that there are no gatekeeper to allow somebody to use the older edition rules.

Then compounding this is the separate development of print on demand and internet communications. Now the barrier to actually selling something is extremely low, in fact no barrier at all to the determined hobbyist.

What we are seeing is a consequence of these two factors compounding the effect of the other in relation to older edition publishing and play.

Any alternative involves gatekeepers of some type. Is this what you want? Somebody else to say "No your books is redundant make it different or you can't publish it."  If you had a Ring of Three Wishes would you want that power for yourself? Or anybody else to have it for that matter?

For me, I don't want that power, nor I am willing to give that power to anybody else. My solution is to make even easier for people to write, publish, and communicate.

My faith is the belief that my fellow gamers and customers can sort it out for themselves. And I have concrete reasons for that belief if you want to talk about it further. As well as reasons why the existence of 400 rule sets is not going to be of consequence.

Quote from: estar;584378Any alternative involves gatekeepers of some type. Is this what you want? Somebody else to say "No your books is redundant make it different or you can't publish it."  If you had a Ring of Three Wishes would you want that power for yourself? Or anybody else to have it for that matter? For me, I don't want that power

I definitely want that power. it sounds awesome!!

Quote from: estar;584378nor I am willing to give that power to anybody else. My solution is to make even easier for people to write, publish, and communicate.

I am willing to fight you for that power and fight against making it easier for retards to publish crap so that we avoid even lengthier discussions about what is great in the history of published material.

==

By the way Estar in your avatar you look like a Wool-Man my sister once made for her doll-house before she lost interest in him and fed him to our dog Biffo.

Quote from: EOTB;584291As Estar said, there is not a bright red line.  The closer you get to a game where people kill fantasy monsters for treasure and power, the more I consider whether I think that this ruleset was an outgrowth of D&D rules.

Cool. Benoist goes over a lot of the ground that I would have covered, but if ACKS was a series of LL supplements... you're replacing classes, you're replacing the spell system, you're adding the talent section, replacing the rewards section, adjusting the monsters section to the few major rule changes, really adding the domain management stuff (Because there's so little in LL)... you'd be referencing the supplement contents a lot more than the core rulebook contents, and the ACKS submechanics all hang together so much that ripping them out is going to make something stop working correctly. The only things it really shares is the core rules chapter... is that enough for a new game? I'd say yes, but I can understand why you (And others) would want a bigger change in the core gameplay.

Quote from: EOTB;584373But there is an undefined practical limit in how many almost-old-D&D games that the OSR can absorb and maintain any sense of identity.  At some point if it's 400 different games with 25 players each, you lack a critical mass and the common language becomes dialects only partially compatible.

All OSR games are cross-compatible with each other to a degree hardly imaginable for most other frameworks. I can run an ACKS/OSRIC/LL/S&W/Mazes & Minotaurs/Stars Without Number Expedition to the Olympian Peaks mashup game without doing much more than flipping an AC value and expect it to work fine. Anyone with a palate sufficiently discerning to actually care about the differences between the games is someone experienced enough to convert them all on the fly during play. Those who don't care won't even notice the differences in the first place, and none of the games will break because of it.

To this extent I'd agree that yes, there's a saturation point of games that do exactly what the originals did, but we passed that point years ago. Once we had S&W/LL/OSRIC we pretty much had everything we needed for old-school D&D revival barring a good 2e clone. Every game that's come out since then that has actually made any sort of impact has been a game that promised to do something more than just recapitulate the past or dish up "better D&D". And because of the old-school framework, I can use any and all of these games in my own home campaign, gutting the dozen pages of core rules that I don't need and adopting the rest in whatever bits and pieces I like best.

I don't worry about glutting because it's a self-correcting problem. If your latest effort doesn't actually bring anything new and exciting it'll just fall away into irrelevance. If you dish up something that people actually like, they'll strip the bits they enjoy and bolt them on to their house system, so it's not as if it was wasted effort.

Quote from: estar;584378Thanks for taking the time for clarifying your answer.

And as an aside, I did some research into when the term "Old School Renaissance" in regards to the playing of older edition D&D was coined. The earliest reference I can document is found on Dragonsfoot

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11962

Interestingly the poster was anonymous. 2007 was the year where it exploded into widespread use. Expeditous Retreat Press and Dan Proctor with his OSR Lulu store front had a lot to do with popularizing the term.



You bring up an interesting point.  Please don't take this critically, but think about what you are saying. Why are there so many games? Because the OSR is largely founded on the freedom granted by the Open Game License. The consequence of this freedom is that there are no gatekeeper to allow somebody to use the older edition rules.

Then compounding this is the separate development of print on demand and internet communications. Now the barrier to actually selling something is extremely low, in fact no barrier at all to the determined hobbyist.

What we are seeing is a consequence of these two factors compounding the effect of the other in relation to older edition publishing and play.

Any alternative involves gatekeepers of some type. Is this what you want? Somebody else to say "No your books is redundant make it different or you can't publish it."  If you had a Ring of Three Wishes would you want that power for yourself? Or anybody else to have it for that matter?

For me, I don't want that power, nor I am willing to give that power to anybody else. My solution is to make even easier for people to write, publish, and communicate.

My faith is the belief that my fellow gamers and customers can sort it out for themselves. And I have concrete reasons for that belief if you want to talk about it further. As well as reasons why the existence of 400 rule sets is not going to be of consequence.

I agree, current technology and legal freedoms make the current state inevitable.  

No,  I don't want a gatekeeper for all of the reasons you describe.

Let me bring it back around a bit, because the nature of the OSR was a thread divergence that forked at around the "3 years old" post.  My criticism/cynicism - however it is viewed - might be best summed up as a question.

Given the continuance of current trend, if the OSR continues to exist as a gaming philosophy, is it conceivable that in 10 years I could have a conversation with a younger gamer in which they identify themselves as an "OSR gamer" (for lack of a better term), and yet when I ask them what they thought about the foreword to the 1E DMG they shrug and tell me "I don't know, I've heard about that book but I've never seen it"?

I know, the OSR is a nebulous, undefinable thing.  But the explosion of D&D-faced-15 degrees-to-the-left in the last half-year or so makes me wonder if for the first time, there isn't a significant portion of those who identify themselves as "OSR" for whom the actual, original games are not a necessary part of that identity.  Or at best, only a homage instead of as actual gaming tools.

And yes, I would find that sad on some level, and contrary to the excitement or purpose that caused such a name to spring up in the first place.  

But apart from that identity, or brand, or rocket decal on the spine of the book as Tavis described it, the idea of 400 games with 25 players each bothers me not a whit.  Although I even then I see it as a trade-off of a near-perfect individual table experience where everyone has their exact flavor, for the community of everyone having gone through the against the giants series.  But it's just a trade off.

And yes, I would be interested in what concrete stuff you have, either in thread or by PM.

EOTB,

I think 22 posts is about as much as we need out of you. Take a deep breath and think is there anything else you could do with your time. Thank you.

Quote from: _kent_;584376I never used the word accomplishment. There are nuances to the word of perfection and attainment but like I said if you consider getting out of bed an accomplishment then I can't argue with you. (You may want to consider using the OED rather than freedictionary.com)

You wrote about successfully completing the task of finding the right presentation for Craven Below which is still one of the accepted definition of the word and it still makes your criticism ironic.

And yes one of the uses of accomplishments is to signify skill. However you have really did have access to the OED you will which of the multiple definitions of a work is used depends on its context. Which in the case of "things I want to accomplish" clearly used it in the meaning of "tasks I want to successfully complete." However I want to improve my writing and make the best product possible, I do have desire to be an accomplished writer and game designer.

Quote from: _kent_;584376and if you adopted my proposal naive gamers would not be fooled by fiascos like Dwimmermount and your rubbish.

OK I bite, so exactly how many units have you sold?

On Lulu I sold 319 units of Majestic Wilderlands across all formats since 2009
On RPGNow I sold another 319 units of Majestic Wilderlands across all formats since 2009.
On RPGNow I have over 2519 download of the PDF version of Blackmarsh
On my website I have a further 1123 downloads of the Blackmarsh SRD
On RPGnow I sold over 96 books of Blackmarsh.

If have 24219 unique page views of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox by far my most popular post. 12 times more than my next post "A 911 call from the Attic".

Per my contract I can't divulge sales figures of my Points of Light book. I don't know how well Fortress Badabaskor or the Wilderlands boxed set did, two products I co-authored. I will say that I am responsible for being the person to come with the final format of writing the Wilderlands Boxed Set.

However according to RPGNow Points of Lights I is a Silver Pick and II is a Copper Pick. Also Fortress of Badabaskor Version 2 is a Silver Pick.

Off hand I would say I had some minor accomplishments as a game author. A

Quote from: I run with scissors;584289Well if you look at what they put on their very own webpage, the impications are such that they view themselves as an investment platform, and not a store.

I should have been more specific in my comment, sorry. It is irrelevant how they view themselves if they cannot convince the appropriate taxing authorities.

Quote from: EOTB;584206I don't know of an OSR that is all about rehashing and rereleasing the exact same anything.  Are you saying that making new spells, classes, modules, etc., for AD&D using the safe harbor of OSRIC is bad, while making new spells, classes, modules, etc., for AS&SH is great?  Or if Gamma World is cloned with Mutant Future that's to be praised, but B/X is cloned with LL, it isn't?

I may have been off about Mutant Future, I'm not 100% sure because I haven't actually read it (they never sent me a review copy!), but I was under the impression that unlike LL with B/X, mutant future was NOT an exact clone, but rather a new old-school game "in the style of" GW.

I'm more interested in new iterations of old-school play than another dungeon for levels 1-3 of AD&D. That's what I'm saying.

QuoteIf you're talking about people who want to play OSRIC rather than people who want to publish new shit using OSRIC - that makes some sense to me.  I remain somewhat perplexed by people who want to play OSRIC in lieu of AD&D.  

Well, I can kind of agree with that just on the fact that they're the same fucking game. What I'm saying is that I already have the D&D rules, I want something new with the old-school aesthetic.

QuoteI like many of the games you listed, but then again, many of them exceed the "OD&D with my house rules" threshold in my opinion.  I'm not interested in buying a 300 page book to get your 50 pages of house rules, with the other 250 pages being the game I already own, just rotated 15 degrees off center.

The thing is, I don't think any of the games I listed are quite that.  Majestic Wilderlands is only the house rules and not a complete game in itself, so we can rule that one out right off the bat.
But as for the others, look at something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess: to get the same experience as LotFP provides, you'd have to list so many "house rules" and modifications to B/X D&D that you're better off just publishing it as a full-blown new game.
My own upcoming Arrows of Indra is even more radically different as a rules-set, there's absolutely no way I could have done what I wanted with it by publishing it as a set of house rules for another game (which is the reason why I didn't end up making a deal with Tavis, who was very nice to me, but was hoping to publish Arrows as a sourcebook for ACKS; I knew that the changes I wanted were just too many, or that the compromises I'd have to make to the system I envisioned would be too many if I were to try to fit that admittedly very good rules-set).

So my point is that the OSR stuff I love is precisely that stuff that diverges sufficiently from AD&D, OD&D or B/X to feel like its a new take on Old School. That's what I think is worthwhile.

RPGPundit

Quote from: estar;584390OK I bite

Not worth it Rob. This guy's idea of a moral/intellectual high ground is to post shit like this:

Quote from: _kent_;584380By the way Estar in your avatar you look like a Wool-Man my sister once made for her doll-house before she lost interest in him and fed him to our dog Biffo.

... all the while complaining that people post rubbish on the internet. I mean come on. Let's just appreciate the irony and let him fight his windmills in his corner of the echo chamber.

Quote from: _kent_;584388EOTB,

I think 22 posts is about as much as we need out of you. Take a deep breath and think is there anything else you could do with your time. Thank you.

Actually, today's my day off and I'm waiting at the repair shop for my car.  So you're basically fucked.