Quote from: ElBorak;1117295The only ones talking about that c*********g are you LGBTQP+ Types. And I do not want to know about your deviant sexual practices not yours or the other millennial snowflakes like you. And please all of you LGBTQP+ Types, stay away from children.

...okay, we're gonna take a timeout here, for a second.

Either you're trolling me with these responses, which would be fucking hilarious, or you have zero idea how trash talking on the internet works.

When I'm accusing you of cocksucking, it's metaphorical. I'm not claiming you are doing that literally. It's... shorthand for something like, "you're being completely uncritical of $TOPIC and are unwilling to brook any argument that goes against your position." That might not be 100% accurate, but I'm... having a hard time explaining this, I guess.

I'm not sure how you can be on the internet using forums and not be aware of this? It... you need to play some Call of Duty with voice chat, or something, man. I find it hard to believe that that terminology and usage of the phrase is new to the internet age, though.

Quote from: GameDaddyYour contributions and legacy to creating better roleplaying games here is duly noted, Thank you.

Feel free to hop into my thread where I'm attempting to write shit for 5e and say something about it, then. Don't see anybody else around here talking about trying to write crap.

You can even say it sucks ass. So long as you can tell me why, that'd be cool.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117300...okay, we're gonna take a timeout here, for a second.

Either you're trolling me with these responses, which would be fucking hilarious, or you have zero idea how trash talking on the internet works.

When I'm accusing you of cocksucking, it's metaphorical. I'm not claiming you are doing that literally. It's... shorthand for something like, "you're being completely uncritical of $TOPIC and are unwilling to brook any argument that goes against your position." That might not be 100% accurate, but I'm... having a hard time explaining this, I guess.

I'm not sure how you can be on the internet using forums and not be aware of this? It... you need to play some Call of Duty with voice chat, or something, man. I find it hard to believe that that terminology and usage of the phrase is new to the internet age, though.

I was born in 1950, I play TTRPG, never played any type of video game, have no idea or need to know how to use voice chat.  Of the forums I have been on, this is the only one that allows anything other than PG language. And no I am not acquainted with metaphorical usage of the worst of profanity. My Internet usage is apparently radically different and much more limited in scope than yours.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117300Feel free to hop into my thread where I'm attempting to write shit for 5e and say something about it, then. Don't see anybody else around here talking about trying to write crap.

You can even say it sucks ass. So long as you can tell me why, that'd be cool.

Downloading to take a look at it.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117302I was born in 1950, I play TTRPG, never played any type of video game, have no idea or need to know how to use voice chat.  Of the forums I have been on, this is the only one that allows anything other than PG language. And no I am not acquainted with metaphorical usage of the worst of profanity. My Internet usage is apparently radically different and much more limited in scope than yours.

Alright, fair enough.

So one of the issues I have with the... I'll use the term "ancestor worship," here, for getting across the whole thing the older community has towards Gygax and Arneson and co., is that it seems very reluctant to acknowledge new sources of fantasy and inspiration. I'm sure that back in the day, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan and all that jazz, all the Appendix N stuff, was probably inspiration and such for a lot of gamers in the "old days." That combined with the much slower rate of information and memetic transmissions, it's not surprising that those kinds of stories stayed relevant for quite awhile to the TTRPG industry.

But today? I haven't read any of that stuff, and I'm old enough where modern kid's slang is starting to sound foreign to me. If you're ignorant of how things like Breath of the Wild and Skyrim and Metroid are impacting how kids interact with entertainment... I mean yes these are video games, but they absolutely can have an impact on how we play and design TTRPGs, and are full of interesting mechanics. Some shit doesn't translate, obviously, but there are a lot of good ideas in there.

This is kind of one of my biggest issues with D&D, at this point. It's easy to recreate Vance's crap even in 5e, but try to do Last Airbender or even Harry Potter and you're shit outta luck. The sorts of stories that are around today are significantly different than the sorts that were around back when D&D got started, and while a lot of video games and such are influenced by old-school D&D, there's also a lot of stuff that isn't.

You want the old stuff preserved. I get that, and it absolutely should be, because - as I said upthread - maintaining an accurate historical record is important, for a lot of reasons. But there's ~50 years between here and there, man. Things have changed, and I think part of the issue is that we have a lot of folk keeping this... stranglehold on the hobby, trying to keep things "pure," when what we need is actual innovation and new ideas and shit.

I miss Gronan. He was a great poster, both here and as Old Geezer on RPG.net.

As for Rules As Written (RaW), I doubt I could even do that with OD&D, since OD&D expects the DM to improvise and create.

As for the OSR, there's lots of variation and variable focus on RaW, but mostly among the smaller publishers and OSR bloggers. Venger Satanis with his Cha'alt setting goes off the rails (in many good ways) and you can easily use OD&D (as is) or S&W:WB or a stripped down 5e to play. And its nothing like vanilla OSR play (and I like vanilla OSR too).

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117305Alright, fair enough.

So one of the issues I have with the... I'll use the term "ancestor worship," here, for getting across the whole thing the older community has towards Gygax and Arneson and co., is that it seems very reluctant to acknowledge new sources of fantasy and inspiration. I'm sure that back in the day, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan and all that jazz, all the Appendix N stuff, was probably inspiration and such for a lot of gamers in the "old days." That combined with the much slower rate of information and memetic transmissions, it's not surprising that those kinds of stories stayed relevant for quite awhile to the TTRPG industry.

You want the old stuff preserved. I get that, and it absolutely should be, because - as I said upthread - maintaining an accurate historical record is important, for a lot of reasons. But there's ~50 years between here and there, man. Things have changed, and I think part of the issue is that we have a lot of folk keeping this... stranglehold on the hobby, trying to keep things "pure," when what we need is actual innovation and new ideas and shit.

The stranglehold thing is completely untrue, especially here in these forums. I do want to keep as much of the legacy and history of original gaming intact and available to even the new gamers so they are not re-inventing the wheel.  I'm quite open to new games though, and will check out your new Steampunk setting over the holidays.

Some of the new games I'm involved running and playing but haven't spoken or posted a whole lot (here or elsewhere) about include;
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (2017) OSR D&D withe many twists...
The Rhune Campaign Setting (2016) a Fantasy setting for the Pathfinder RPG
Aces & Eights (2008) Western RPG
Mindjammer (2015) Transhuman Sci-Fi
Castles & Crusades (2016-2017) This is a legacy d20 game that keep on seeing many new releases each year.
Chaos Wars (2017-2018) This is Ral Partha's in-house fantasy minis/RPG game.
Traveller 5e (Not just your re-hashed Traveller game, plenty of interesting and new rules and ideas for that classic hard sci-fi game, available directly from Marc Miller @ Far Future Enterprises. 2019)

...and my personal favorite from last year and this one, Adventures in Middle Earth, a 5th edition D&D variant that just died as Cubicle7 surrendered their license to make games based in Middle Earth. If you don't have the books already, get them, as it is now out of print, and will be increasingly difficult to find and purchase in the future.

Oh,and if you are not too busy, and have Netflix, I'm pretty certain you would enjoy the Netflix Original first season of "The Witcher" based on the videogame of the same name. I binge watched it Friday, and half of Saturday. Completely based on a D&D game, and some great new Fantasy!

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117305Alright, fair enough.

So one of the issues I have with the... I'll use the term "ancestor worship," here, for getting across the whole thing the older community has towards Gygax and Arneson and co., is that it seems very reluctant to acknowledge new sources of fantasy and inspiration. I'm sure that back in the day, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan and all that jazz, all the Appendix N stuff, was probably inspiration and such for a lot of gamers in the "old days." That combined with the much slower rate of information and memetic transmissions, it's not surprising that those kinds of stories stayed relevant for quite awhile to the TTRPG industry.

But today? I haven't read any of that stuff, and I'm old enough where modern kid's slang is starting to sound foreign to me. If you're ignorant of how things like Breath of the Wild and Skyrim and Metroid are impacting how kids interact with entertainment... I mean yes these are video games, but they absolutely can have an impact on how we play and design TTRPGs, and are full of interesting mechanics. Some shit doesn't translate, obviously, but there are a lot of good ideas in there.

This is kind of one of my biggest issues with D&D, at this point. It's easy to recreate Vance's crap even in 5e, but try to do Last Airbender or even Harry Potter and you're shit outta luck. The sorts of stories that are around today are significantly different than the sorts that were around back when D&D got started, and while a lot of video games and such are influenced by old-school D&D, there's also a lot of stuff that isn't.

You want the old stuff preserved. I get that, and it absolutely should be, because - as I said upthread - maintaining an accurate historical record is important, for a lot of reasons. But there's ~50 years between here and there, man. Things have changed, and I think part of the issue is that we have a lot of folk keeping this... stranglehold on the hobby, trying to keep things "pure," when what we need is actual innovation and new ideas and shit.

Ah, I think we are more in agreement than not then. First it is not ancestor worship for me and not for most of the people I hang with. We do not worship Arneson or Gygax, what we are tired of though is being silenced as is happening on a lot of venues right now. A lot of places are denying access to people who don't agree to a specific main stream view. Zero disagreement is permitted and it is not just places like RPGNET, it is infecting many of the "old school" forums.

Yep, I figured you have not read "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan and all that jazz, all the Appendix N stuff", it is a shame that writing has been rather blacklisted these days, but it is still very worth reading. I don't have any knowledge of video games, but I have no problem with people using them to inspire their modern games. While at my age, I am not interested in learning something with a ton of rules from scratch, I would play in a game that was rules light enough that I did not have to learn a ton to play.

I have seen the Last Airbender and Harry Potter movies, I think that you could play those in a house-ruled OD&D. Obviously I would have to be interested enough to go read the books several times to even start. But based on the movies, I see no reason that could not be run as a  game world in OD&D if you wanted to. I get it a lot of the things people read are different. An example, I finally got around to watching the Last Jedi on Netflix, with all of the negative stuff I have heard about it I was pleasant surprised. The only thing I had to get past was Luke Skywalker running and hiding on that island waiting to die, it was so out of character for the character. But once I got past that I loved the rest of the movie. I love seeing more women in movie, the old paradigm for movies was one or two women and a dozen men. So I have always wanted more women on the screen. I loved Katherine Hepburn, nothing weak about her.

The people I hang out with are not trying to keep things pure, we are trying to keep alive the old try anything style and preserve the old stuff. Make all the new stuff you like, but come look at the old stuff now and then, you can learn things from it you can't learn anywhere else these days. And yes, a lot of us want real innovation and new ideas. A lot of people don't like Rob Kuntz, but he is reviled and hated for preaching the need for actual innovation and new ideas. The main stream on the "old school" forums can't wait for him to be gone.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117306I miss Gronan. He was a great poster, both here and as Old Geezer on RPG.net.

As for Rules As Written (RaW), I doubt I could even do that with OD&D, since OD&D expects the DM to improvise and create.

As for the OSR, there's lots of variation and variable focus on RaW, but mostly among the smaller publishers and OSR bloggers. Venger Satanis with his Cha'alt setting goes off the rails (in many good ways) and you can easily use OD&D (as is) or S&W:WB or a stripped down 5e to play. And its nothing like vanilla OSR play (and I like vanilla OSR too).

I did not know that Gronan was no longer here.

Greetings!

You know, that's not the first time I have heard about people *hating* Rob Kuntz. What is up with all the hate towards him?

Which then reminds me of some other tangents. Over the last few years, I have read a considerable trainload of hate from a lot of people towards Zeb Cook, Mentzer, Rob Kuntz, that guy who used to be the editor of Dragon Magazine way back, Tim something or other, I forgot his name. As well as hate towards Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weiss, and also Gary Gygax. Just off the top of my head. All of them are "old school" from back in the day, and created, and contributed enormously to the RPG hobby. It just seems odd that all of these founders and old school contributors have all seemed to be in the crosshairs of hate for a lot of people.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1117315Tim something or other, I forgot his name.

Tim Kask.

Finding people to hate seems to be the new hobby for a lot of people these days. SJWs find people to hate. CAH find people to hate. Lots of really insecure people spending a lot of their free time hating rather than doing anything useful with their spare time. :confused: If only they had a hobby - like, oh I don't know, running RPGs to spend their energy on....

Quote from: Bren;1117316Tim Kask.

Finding people to hate seems to be the new hobby for a lot of people these days. SJWs find people to hate. CAH find people to hate. Lots of really insecure people spending a lot of their free time hating rather than doing anything useful with their spare time. :confused: If only they had a hobby - like, oh I don't know, running RPGs to spend their energy on....

Greetings!

TIM KASK! Thank you, Bren!:D

Exactly, my friend. You've noticed this weird trend as well? It seems it has only been in recent years, too. People writing up scathing diatribes against Gygax, Tim Kask, Mentzer, Rob Kuntz, or, and I read a litany of crybabies just going ape-shit against Lewis Pulsipher over on EN World, too. It's like, damn, what is wrong with these people, you know?

Like you said, SJW's love finding people to hate. All of these old school creators and contributors have been targeted in recent years by a lot of people. All crying and screaming, digging their hate against these people.

It's like, what the fuck? How can these people's Q and A's, games, books, and articles, generate such hate?

I have never been a fan of Dragonlance, Bren. But you know what? I was at Gen Con, years ago now, where I attended a seminar thing by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss. The seminar thing was outstanding, informative, and fun! Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss in particular hung out afterwards for autographs and Q and A's, for quite some time. They were outstanding, friendly, and wonderful. I also have some experience with Gary Gygax, from the years before his passing. Not merely in public forums, such as at EN World, but he also corresponded with me through private E-mails. Gary Gygax was warm, friendly, gracious, kind, helpful, and instructive. He was wonderful. Just a few personal experiences I have had with some of the "old school" set.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117299You are wrong. I'm special because I do exist, I'm especially special here because I'm one of a decreasing number of individuals who were around at the very dawn of role-playing games and can provide accurate accounts of what happened, and how it evolved.

No, you are not. Having existed does not make you special. You may have some knowledge which others don't have, but that doesn't make you special for having observed something helpful. The more you insist you're special, the less seriously I take you. You're literally arguing you have some special snowflake entitlement to special treatment because you existed at a point in time. It's ridiculous nonsense. It's what you do with that knowledge which could make you special - not merely having it. And apparently all you've done with it is share in on untrustworthy platforms you have no control over and then whine bitch moan and complain when the content you gave to anonymous people. at THEIR expense, was not caretaken like you wanted it to be. Which makes YOU irresponsible, not them. They owed you nothing for you existing. YOU didn't pay for their platforms you just used it for free and then apparently shared this entitled attitude with them. Behave more responsibly next time. If it's worth sharing, share it somewhere you control.

QuoteYou can pretty much count on it, that I'll be calling out anyone who claims to support original D&D, and the original games that were played, but who fail to maintain those contributions made by those original gamers and game masters on their forums and game spaces. That's not whining by the way, that's a statement of fact, simply holding them accountable to their word that they want to maintain a public forum that is devoted to supporting the original games.

Pretty much nobody gives a crap that someone irresponsible and entitled like you thinks some other message board didn't behave as caretakers for your information in the manner you wanted them to, when they paid for a forum you used for free and which you had no reasonable expectation over controlling that content. That's on you, not them. You took that risk and now you're unhappy it didn't work out like you wanted it to, though they had more skin in the game than you did.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117276Yes, you are correct that right out of the gate everything was being tried, with one exception. You see right out of the gate it was all DIY and MIY, then came modules and a lot of the DIY and MIY was lost in the gaming community at large. That is in my opinion the difference between old school and new school. Old School, everything is tried. New School, let's just play this module. That is not a value judgement, just an observation.

So true. Gary and others had mentioned this to me on occasion. My view is that a basic framework is often enough for most DMs to run with. And some can do fine without even that. But the bare bones basic skeletons you got from OD&D and later BX were great for DMs who needed at least a map to work off of and a few place names. Then build off of that. And one thing at least Gary understood eventually was that players wanted to explore his world (and in a way modules were getting Gary to proxy DM for you. heh-heh.) And as usual, not everyone is good at DIY so why not tap a market when its practically begging you to?

Quote from: Franky;1117280If one is concerned about the loss of information, comments what have you, then instead of bitching about it, archive it.  Taking a screenshot of a complete web page is easier than ever, at least in Firefox, right click and 'take a screenshot'  select 'save full page'.  There is also the wayback machine, https://archive.org/web/ where you can save a web page.  Also, http://archive.li/  I'll bet there are other places to archive as well.  It is entirely possible to save multiple pages.  Hell, even right click 'save page as' works most of the time.

Ah, of course one makes backups of important files on your hard drive, at least two, one of which is not internet accessible, right?

We did, and we do. Currently, our digital archive has 36 gigabytes of artwork files, and 32 gigabytes of texts. We have five 'working copies' in-house, and three more sets located elsewhere.

Quote from: Mistwell;1117321Pretty much nobody gives a crap that someone irresponsible and entitled like you thinks some other message board didn't behave as caretakers for your information in the manner you wanted them to, when they paid for a forum you used for free and which you had no reasonable expectation over controlling that content. That's on you, not them. You took that risk and now you're unhappy it didn't work out like you wanted it to, though they had more skin in the game than you did.

Ummm. no. It is 100% on them. Why do you think I called them out here on an open forum, one where they couldn't twist the facts, one where they couldn't delete the threads? Since they have failed so completely at their stated goal, and on purpose I would add, I have since taken steps to preserve the important discussions of the early days of gaming. I moved my gaming discussions to forums like this one, where they can't control, modify, disparage, or delete. I have also the year before last, put my gaming website back up online, and am posting directly there. I need to post more often, All is not quiet there, a lot going on behind the scenes there and 2020 should see my website growing healthy. Not only that, I'm setting up a trust to ensure the history and knowledge remains intact and available, even after I'm gone.

I'm taking Murkhill out of my lineup of forums that are hating on original gaming and gamers as I have been in discussions with Forest O'Grady since last week, and he is actively taking steps looking into my claim and has offered to fix the forums there.

0D&D 74' Proboards though, and Dragonsfoot claim to be boards that support original D&D and the history, but in fact they do not. As I said earlier I'm just warning people here not to post there, so they don't make the same mistake I did and post about the history of games, only to have the posts deleted, or that they be banned for speaking the truth.

As to what I used for free, I'm going to let you in on a little secret about the Internet that you really should know. The Internet was never about business. The Internet and Forums wasn't originally about whether I could afford to pay and play or not. In it's original form, in the 1970's it was called Arpanet, and it was one of the first national computer networks. It was funded by a DoD research grant, meaning it was taxpayer funded, and it linked mainframe computers at universities, trade schools, government offices, and the military. It was specifically designed as a flexible open communications system that would be able to withstand a protracted nuclear war and direct nuclear weapons strikes. It was built just so people could talk to each other, even under the most difficult of conditions, and originally the only domains available were .org, .net, and .mil and .edu.  There was no .com  There was no commercial internet, ...at all. We just talked to each other online. Once the hardware (computer, modems, etc.) was purchased to enable communications all you needed was the knowledge of how the software works to make the network function. It was the cost of electricity to run my computer. I would know, I had a .mil email account on Arpanet, and was on USenet (the civilian portion of Arpanet) beginning in late 1982.

In 1984, when .com became available, and commercial companies for the first time were allowed to participate and the Internet was actually born, I was there, and behind the scenes we were having discussions about whether or not to allow commercial companies onto Arpanet. Some thought they would take it over, and use it solely to take advantage of people, others thought that we would enter a new information age, and companies would share their data and knowledge freely since there was virtually no expense to maintaining a presence and sharing on the Internet. In the end, we all took a private vote behind the scenes and opted to allow commercial companies a place at the table WE HAD ALREADY FUCKING BUILT AND WERE USING... in our generosity of spirit, in order to support opportunity, liberty, and justice for all.

..and now, five decades later, the commercial part of the Internet, the Internet that my snowflake special ass helped to build, is being thrown back in my face by ignorant kids like you.

If a company or an individual decides they want to build a website or forum, they do have the responsibility to do their best to ensure that forum is available for everyone to access and use. It's why we built the Internet in the first place. What you are doing here, I don't know, and if it is not to share information, and make a better world, and make better games, what are you doing?