Going back to the 'substance' of Gabe's post, that S&W session he ran sounded fucking horrible. Check it out:

Quote from: GabeA sort of OD&D roller-coaster with all the twists and turns of old school gaming but minus the freedom and danger.

During the game I used the television behind me to display a slideshow of old artwork from the history of D&D.

I was kicking it old school with the multimedia presentation too, just like the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, minus good drugs, good music, and hot sluts in go-go boots. But I did try to get the players into that mindset with some sweet pictures of Teri Garr.

Quote from: estar;372614Unless I missed a thread various forums devoted to Old School D&D are pretty sedate in their responses to the penny arcade article. They are either "meh? who cares." or "Way to go!".

My reaction was BOTH "meh? who cares" as they obviously don't get OD&D at all but its sounds like they had fun AND "way to go!" on the mention of/link to Swords & Wizardry. As I'm not a video or computer gamer, I don't know these folks from Adam, but I hear they are popular and free advertising for a retroclone is almost always a good thing.

Quote from: Garnfellow;372606I do not dig PA -- I don't play video games, so 95% of their humor goes right over my head. And I've set J Arcane on ignore here.

But all that said, I am astonished by the responses from so many grognards in this thread. (I was not in the least surprised to see Jamie Mal pooh-pooh this development, though.)

J Arcane is absolutely, 100% right here: Penny Arcade is fucking huge, and their interest in Swords and Wizardry -- for whatever reason -- should be seen as nothing but a complete and total CRAZY WIN for the OSR. PA probably gets more pageviews in a day than a combination of all P&P RPG forum sites in a week.

And yet, we get lots of mehs and grousing.

For all the cheap palaver about bringing "the Old Ways" to a new audience and bringing new energy to these cool games, far too many OSR people live the caricature: they would prefer to hermetically seal themselves under a big glass bell with their bong, 8-tracks, and tattered copies of the three little books.

If the OSR fails, it won't be because greedy cooperate interests swooped in and co-opted the movement with their filthy commercialization and pretty packaging. And won't be because a bunch of obnoxious young punks infected everything with their strange anime and video game references.

It will be because too many old, out-of-touch fucks couldn't stop bitching and actually make something fresh, exciting, and -- I don't know, inviting? -- for a new audience.

All of the grognard angst and kvetching is completely misplaced. We Have Met the Enemy...and They is Us

I think what you all are failing to realize is that only a few folks are "meh" about this, and at least one of us few, that being me, are so very not "OSR". I have S&W, and LL in print, and the pdfs for the others. Played LL and OSRIC each once. Otherwise, not really OSR even in games played. I like them ok, have nothing against them at all. Enjoy the "old school" feel in games well enough. Don't read OSR blogs, web sites, or whatever else. Honestly, I'd probably much more interested in PA talking about video gaming. I just don't see where this is all that big of a deal. Please point out to me where "too many old, out-of-touch fucks couldn't stop bitching and actually make something fresh, exciting, and -- I don't know, inviting? -- for a new audience". I'd like to know who these folks are who you are describing when you say "far too many OSR people live the caricature: they would prefer to hermetically seal themselves under a big glass bell with their bong, 8-tracks, and tattered copies of the three little books."

Really, I'm sorry us old fogies don't share all you young whippersnapper's enthusiasm about some internet video gamer and comic strip people mentioning S&W, but it's really not that exciting. Do ya'all honestly think it's going to make that much of a difference? Time will tell, but as i said before, I'm not holding my breath.

Quote from: DevP;372610I'm getting serious subcultural whiplash from fellow geeks that are like "What's the Penny Arcades?" Granted, I just went to PAX (with thousands of other geeks, including thousands of active TTRPG players), so I'm probably at one corner of the skew. Still: in my various circles, the PA crew are one of the more important voices in gaming (yes, far above IGN, Gamespot and all that.) YMMV.

ETA: I obviously don't care about what comics you read or don't, which blogs are popular or not, etc., nor am I requiring any of you to enjoy their rather specific humor. Just surprised at subcultural differences.

Speaking only for myself, the issue is that I don't read any but the one online comic, and I don't ever read blogs. Hell, even the gaming with porn stars blog only held my interest for about 10 minutes, and it's actually a pretty good one it seems. I don't pretend to be the norm in this regard though, it's just I can only speak for myself in regards to this stuff. I can also say I know several other folks who are not regular blog readers, even some who are avid video gamers themselves, so I know I'm not alone anyway.

Quote from: Imp;372619PA can definitely direct that kind of traffic. I mean, I wouldn't guarantee a number, but you're looking at somewhere in the same order of magnitude I think, esp. on the hits-per-day figure.

'Can', 'could', 'might'...  So?  Have they?  Has this potential flood of fans dumped all over S&W, or are we waiting for the Heisen-hits to settle on a definite state?

Quote from: beeber;372611i'm in the "this is BIG" camp on this one.  if it makes one or two folks try something other than 4e and expand their gaming horizons, the mention is a success.  i'm also surprised at the amount of "meh" responses.  had no idea so many folks in this hobby were clueless in that regard. :confused:

Do you really think it's because we're "clueless"? Do you really think this is going to be some giant coup for S&W? Maybe I am clueless cuz I'm just not believing that it's going to make much of a splash. It's mildly interesting, and certainly not a bad thing IMO, but I really don't see the big deal either.

What I find interesting as well is the way, when some of us go "huh? Why should I care", it's like we slapped people in the face and should like fall on our knees to worship Penny Arcade. Really, it's awesome to get the exposure, but then again, I'm not going to touch myself over it, especially, as previously mentioned, when I read stuff like this:

Quote from: GabeA sort of OD&D roller-coaster with all the twists and turns of old school gaming but minus the freedom and danger.

During the game I used the television behind me to display a slideshow of old artwork from the history of D&D.

I was kicking it old school with the multimedia presentation too, just like the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, minus good drugs, good music, and hot sluts in go-go boots. But I did try to get the players into that mindset with some sweet pictures of Teri Garr.

Good for him really. I'm not taking offense or anything.

Quote from: StormBringer;372613Ok, I knew my response numbers were a bit low, but I just wanted to throw some examples out there.  The point being, and you seem to agree, is that 2mil readers does not equal 2mil S&W downloads.

I don't think anyone here is being less than friendly, honestly.  Benoist, myself, several others are saying 'Good for S&W!'.  Despite claims to the contrary, no one here is saying they are assholes or baby-killers.  When the S&W guys come along to say their site was crashed with 200,000 hits, or they have a consistent uptick of 5,000 more hits a day or something, then I will be excited.

Here here SB. I'd love to be proven completely wrong about this. Still, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Quote from: Sigmund;372624Please point out to me where "too many old, out-of-touch fucks couldn't stop bitching and actually make something fresh, exciting, and -- I don't know, inviting? -- for a new audience". I'd like to know who these folks are who you are describing when you say "far too many OSR people live the caricature: they would prefer to hermetically seal themselves under a big glass bell with their bong, 8-tracks, and tattered copies of the three little books."

Some name-calling for "some people", "somewhere in the OSR". Not naming names. Note though: before it was "the OSR this", "the OSR that". Now we have "some people within the OSR". So there's some progress... I suppose. :idunno:

Quote from: Garnfellow;372615This shows how far your head is up your ass here: video games are mainstream now. They are not some niche little geek product only for the computer nerds. The jocks play video games. The prom queens play video games. The Grandmothers have wiis and play video games.

I don't play 'em, but that doesn't mean they aren't ubiquitous or enormously influential on American culture. The influence of video games is probably 2 or 3 orders of magnitude greater than pen and paper games.

Penny Arcade is not mainstream, and they aren't household names, but if they have even a fraction of an audience that is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude greater than pen and paper games, that means they are still reaching a large, and largely untapped, market for S&W.

Any person who loves pen and paper roleplaying games and is not retarded or insane should be over the fucking moon about this development. It's not like there is any imaginable downside to having a whole bunch of new people check out S&W.

Will they stay? I don't know. But given the likely reception they will receive, I'm not sure why they would.

The problem is, we've seen this more than once before. RPGing in general and D&D in particular have been mentioned in mainstream outlets before, many times. Hell, EGG himself was on The Simpsons. D&D used to have it's own cartoon. Did they have an effect? Sure. Was it some instant bonanza of exposure and interest. No, not really. Ya'all are saying this is a huge deal, but I don't buy it. I'll believe it when I see it.

Quote from: FASERIP;372622Going back to the 'substance' of Gabe's post, that S&W session he ran sounded fucking horrible. Check it out:

Completely clueless. If he really wanted the "Old School" feel, he wouldn't have had Teri Garr, he would have had the poster of Farah Fawcett... ya'all know the one I mean... ya know ya do.

Quote from: Benoist;372630Some name-calling for "some people", "somewhere in the OSR". Not naming names. Note though: before it was "the OSR this", "the OSR that". Now we have "some people within the OSR". So there's some progress... I suppose. :idunno:

Sometimes when people say things like that, it's because they are trying to be polite.

Quote from: Benoist;372630Some name-calling for "some people", "somewhere in the OSR". Not naming names. Note though: before it was "the OSR this", "the OSR that". Now we have "some people within the OSR". So there's some progress... I suppose. :idunno:

There is that... baby steps and all.

Quote from: J Arcane;372633Sometimes when people say things like that, it's because they are trying to be polite.

Yeah, well they should cut that shit out.  It might be polite on other boards but here it's just plain cowardly.

Quote from: J Arcane;372633Sometimes when people say things like that, it's because they are trying to be polite.

And sometimes, that's because their claims don't have any legs to stand on.

Besides, they're trying to be polite? Here? To whom? You think I can't take someone telling me I'm some sort of museum asshole grognard? Have you noticed how many times AM tried? Pluh-ease.