TheRPGSite

"An analysis of three lists of creature names, one from the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail and two from The First Fantasy Campaign, provides intrinsic evidence that Chainmail includes fantasy material from Dave Arneson."

https://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/thread/3245/evidence-chainmail-incorporates-material-arneson?page=1&scrollTo=41099

Make of it what you will. I saw a version of this on some other forum I can't remember. The author's methodology and conclusion were both strongly criticized given what both Arneson, Gygax and others have allegedly said regarding the origins of the game.

Looks like open season on Gygax isn't over yet.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1116117Looks like open season on Gygax isn't over yet.

It never will be. There are people eho pathologically despise Gygax. Because someone told them to. Not from any real evidence. Just because someone said Gygax was a mean ol man. Im pretty sure TSR after they got rid of him fostered this as well.

I wish I had that much time on my hands.

In 40 more years, any evidence of Gygax having anything to do with D&D will be erased from existence and all copies updated to Arneson and Arneson's Dog.

Isn't that Llaurenella's forum, full of his socks?  It is!  Someone make a bingo card using this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies  then go ahead and read that article.  You'll get to Bingo! very quickly , I should think.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1116117"An analysis of three lists of creature names, one from the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail and two from The First Fantasy Campaign, provides intrinsic evidence that Chainmail includes fantasy material from Dave Arneson."

https://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/thread/3245/evidence-chainmail-incorporates-material-arneson?page=1&scrollTo=41099

Make of it what you will. I saw a version of this on some other forum I can't remember. The author's methodology and conclusion were both strongly criticized given what both Arneson, Gygax and others have allegedly said regarding the origins of the game.

Looks like open season on Gygax isn't over yet.

Did someone just include an "Abstract" Section for a forum post?

Quote from: Franky;1116151Isn't that Llaurenella's forum, full of his socks?  It is!  Someone make a bingo card using this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies  then go ahead and read that article.  You'll get to Bingo! very quickly , I should think.

Mr. Sock is another winner who was happy to ride Gary's jock at DF while he was alive, and didn't develop a DA obsession until after EGG was dead (and a strain of the OSR became fascinated with origin what-ifs).

Why is it so impossible for the fandom to give both men credit?

Nothing gets produced in a vacuum. I do playtesting with a couple of local boardgame companies so I've seen the process from Idea to Prototype to Playtest to Produced game and even if there only one name on the eventual box, the reality is so many people had input at every stage.

D&D was created by Gary and Dave (or Dave and Gary).

They flogged this dead horse back in 2017 over on the 0D&D proboards, and firmly established that Chainmail was already published prior to Dave starting up his Blackmoor Fantasy Campaign. Chainmail was a wargame with some fantasy included. It broke down in play at Dave Arneson's gaming table so he tweaked it into what became D&D.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116173It broke down in play at Dave Arneson's gaming table so he tweaked it into what became D&D.

That is not accurate Dave Arneson tweaked it until he developed his own rules. And it wasn't just chain mail at the beginning. From all accounts Dave was an excellent seat of the pants referee. His notebook however was more of a memonic aid than a rule book.

In contrast D&D start as a short manuscript typed up by Gygax after he experienced a session in the Blackmoor dungeon, talking with Dave and getting a few of this notes. Then he ran the Greyhawk campaign developing the rules further along with consulting with Dave.

The final version we see in the 3 LBB resulted from this.

Now while Gygax is the father of D&D, he couldn't have written it without Dave's help and advice. Because Dave was the first to figure out how to run a tabletop roleplaying campaign. The first to put everything together and to make it work. It didn't happen all at once with the Blackmoor campaign. At first it was a sophiscated ongoing Braustein where everyone played an indvidual character focus on the war between the baddies (PCs) and the good guys (also PCs). But because Dave was willing to say yes if it made sense the focus shifted to the antics of the player character rather than the war. This was cemented by the popularity of the Blackmoor dungeon.

However to this day we don't have the rules from any point during this process, just antecdotes and snippets. But nonetheless Dave helped Gary to become a tabletop roleplaying referee thus earning co author status on D&D even tho Gygax wrote all of it.

Thus Dave is the father of tabletop roleplaying and Gary is the father of D&D and there is no path to our hobby today that doesn't run through the two.

Quote from: EOTB;1116166Mr. Sock is another winner who was happy to ride Gary's jock at DF while he was alive, and didn't develop a DA obsession until after EGG was dead (and a strain of the OSR became fascinated with origin what-ifs).

The same within many different groups:

Someone tries to make themselves socially relevant by attaching themselves to a relevant persons "celebrity".

Insinuating themselves into their circle, and when that attachment eventually goes away; by tearing them down, ankle bite by ankle bite.

Quote from: Jaeger;1116239The same within many different groups:

Someone tries to make themselves socially relevant by attaching themselves to a relevant persons "celebrity".

Insinuating themselves into their circle, and when that attachment eventually goes away; by tearing them down, ankle bite by ankle bite.

There were other problems besides that. I stopped posting over at Murkhill, because the mods over (including perilous dreamer) there either deleted, or managed to lose a number of threads and discussions related to old school gaming, original D&D, Blackmoor, and the Wilderlands that had content contributed by original old school authors, as well as gamers (...including myself) and fans. One of my Pet Peeves is censorship by omission where inconvenient conversations are arbitrarily deleted by mods with no good cause and without remorse. You don't like what you hear even though it is the truth, too bad. Not my problem, and you better not censor me for telling the truth, or speaking my mind because I live in a free country.

Interestingly enough my account was banned from the 0D&D Proboards in October of 2018, another old school D&D board because Rafael (one of the Mods over there) over there wasn't happy that I refused to close my Murkhill account, just because they have a hard-on for killing their internet friend the  "Sockpuppet" and anyone associated with him, regardless of the actual status of the relationship (of which they are completely ignorant, by the way). He actually PM'ed me directly and told me to stop associating with Perilous Dreamer, and threatened to delete my account, and I just told him politely to fuck off, and get off my lawn.

You know, I petitioned Finarvn "Marv" to have my 0D&D proboards account reinstated a few weeks later and he said he would, but I checked it a couple weeks ago, and my account over there is banned. They don't want to talk about old school games, and original D&D and Traveller, and they don't want me to talk about old school games, fuck'em. They want to delete messages and threads because it doesn't fit there narrative of what "original D&D" should be, fuck' em. I was around when original D&D was the only thing being played, and know what really happened, who was responsible for what, and why. Their slithering narrative, deliberate and careful omissions in order to reinvent what original roleplaying and D&D was, is duly noted here, ...a place where the truth still matters.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116241... I was around when original D&D was the only thing being played, and know what really happened, who was responsible for what, and why. Their slithering narrative, deliberate and careful omissions in order to reinvent what original roleplaying and D&D was, is duly noted here, ...a place where the truth still matters.

Ahh, the old "memory hole" trick...

Some people will go to great lengths to keep their delusion-bubble from being popped.

Quote from: Franky;1116151Isn't that Llaurenella's forum, full of his socks?  It is!  Someone make a bingo card using this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies  then go ahead and read that article.  You'll get to Bingo! very quickly , I should think.

But I thought Llaurenella was dead of cancer... twice. :rolleyes:

Anyway, move on, pops. D&D was written by Aretha Washington, a brave womyn of lesbian colour, whose original game, Unicorns & Feelings was appropriated by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson to deny her royalties, and turn her game into a heteromasculinist exercise in gendered political violence. You will be able to read all about it in detail in next week's Kotaku exposé.

Whoever this nut is that thinks Dave Arneson wrote most of Chainmail, he knows how to draw a really awesome Venn Diagram. I also like the part where he goes on and on about 'Trees.'

You gotta get that part to understand the rest of it.

Quote from: Omega;1116121It never will be. There are people eho pathologically despise Gygax. Because someone told them to. Not from any real evidence. Just because someone said Gygax was a mean ol man. Im pretty sure TSR after they got rid of him fostered this as well.

Indeed. While we're definitely living in a golden age of resentment towards anyone whose accomplished anything in their lives, Gygax hate goes back a long way. In the 90s when I first started dipping my toes into online rpg forums (this was pre-TBP), I was surprised to find that there was a whole little sub-community of people who seemed to think that GG had killed their dog or something.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1116285Indeed. While we're definitely living in a golden age of resentment towards anyone whose accomplished anything in their lives, Gygax hate goes back a long way. In the 90s when I first started dipping my toes into online rpg forums (this was pre-TBP), I was surprised to find that there was a whole little sub-community of people who seemed to think that GG had killed their dog or something.

   I was there, and if memory serves, a lot of that came from resentment of some of his more intemperate Dragon articles and the fact that neither the hobby nor the Internet will ever let go of a grudge.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1116289I was there, and if memory serves, a lot of that came from resentment of some of his more intemperate Dragon articles and the fact that neither the hobby nor the Internet will ever let go of a grudge.

Yea, Garry wrote some nasty letters. He ripped the APAs (Amateur Press Association fanzines) a new one. For this reason, I'm not fond of Garry. But that is NOT a reason for me to dismiss his contributions to the hobby. Anyone trying to write Garry out of the history of RPGs is way off base. Rob is right, the hobby wouldn't be what it is today without BOTH Arneson AND Gygax (now we can argue that someone else would have eventually come along, and that is probably true, but NEVER a reason to dismiss anyone's contribution, that could be said of ANY accomplishment ANYONE ever achieves).

I always thought of 'Gamer Gary' and 'TSR Gary'.  The latter was a raging asshole, and the former was a decent fellow with whom it would be a lot of fun to play games of any sort.  Read through his AMAs on other forums and you'll see Gamer Gary.

Quote from: Franky;1116300I always thought of 'Gamer Gary' and 'TSR Gary'.  The latter was a raging asshole, and the former was a decent fellow with whom it would be a lot of fun to play games of any sort.  Read through his AMAs on other forums and you'll see Gamer Gary.

It is hard to fit someones whole life story into one alignment box.

There'll be some painting supposedly by Michelangelo, and someone uses an x-ray to figure out it was actually one of his students, now it's gone from $100 million valuation to $100,000. If you can't tell the difference without an x-ray then really there is no difference. Believing that inanimate objects are possessed of a spirit or essence is animism, thus the value of the thing to us depends on things which we cannot see with the naked eye.

Likewise, the value to some people of D&D lies not in the game itself, but its spiritual essence, its authour. This animistic thinking puzzles me. For a non-animist, the value of something lies in its beauty and utility, not in its authourship.

I always find it interesting how strong animism is in modern supposedly secular Western secular society.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116241There were other problems besides that. I stopped posting over at Murkhill, because the mods over (including perilous dreamer) there either deleted, or managed to lose a number of threads and discussions related to old school gaming, original D&D, Blackmoor, and the Wilderlands that had content contributed by original old school authors, as well as gamers (...including myself) and fans. One of my Pet Peeves is censorship by omission where inconvenient conversations are arbitrarily deleted by mods with no good cause and without remorse. You don't like what you hear even though it is the truth, too bad. Not my problem, and you better not censor me for telling the truth, or speaking my mind because I live in a free country.

Interestingly enough my account was banned from the 0D&D Proboards in October of 2018, another old school D&D board because Rafael (one of the Mods over there) over there wasn't happy that I refused to close my Murkhill account, just because they have a hard-on for killing their internet friend the  "Sockpuppet" and anyone associated with him, regardless of the actual status of the relationship (of which they are completely ignorant, by the way). He actually PM'ed me directly and told me to stop associating with Perilous Dreamer, and threatened to delete my account, and I just told him politely to fuck off, and get off my lawn.

You know, I petitioned Finarvn "Marv" to have my 0D&D proboards account reinstated a few weeks later and he said he would, but I checked it a couple weeks ago, and my account over there is banned. They don't want to talk about old school games, and original D&D and Traveller, and they don't want me to talk about old school games, fuck'em. They want to delete messages and threads because it doesn't fit there narrative of what "original D&D" should be, fuck' em. I was around when original D&D was the only thing being played, and know what really happened, who was responsible for what, and why. Their slithering narrative, deliberate and careful omissions in order to reinvent what original roleplaying and D&D was, is duly noted here, ...a place where the truth still matters.

I sent you and The Pundit a PM months ago when you posted this claim of censorship explaining that no posts were deleted or lost. After theperilousdreamer stepped down from being owner of the forum, the new management team gave the forum a face lift and renamed the different categories of the forum (see here http://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com). When we did that we consolidated some areas and created some new ones, threads were moved around in a way that made sense to us. I did not post in the thread the first time I saw you made this false claim, I sent a private pm to you the The Pundit. The only reason I am posting this info in a thread is because even now that you know nothing was censored or deleted, you insist on promulgating that untrue info. Nothing you posted at The Ruins has been censored, deleted or removed, nothing! As far as blaming theperilousdreamer for your imagined censorship, you should direct that towards the management team as theperilousdreamer has not had anything other than regular member access for about 18 months at this point.

The rest of it we don't really care about one way or the other. I will confirm that the mod you mentioned at ODD74 does fully run the show over there and did in fact ban every common member between the two forums. I suspect that most of our "new" members are just old members ducking a banning at ODD74 by using a new name with us.:) At the time dozens of our members were banned at ODD74. We temp banned Finarvn for about a month until we found out that he was not behind any of what was going on, but just another victim and we unbanned him about 16+ months ago. At this point only three people form ODD74 remain banned at The Ruins. The ring leader and two henchman. One of those henchman was a Global Mod at The Ruins under the guise of friendship and used his access to record the email address, date of birth and IP of every members. Oh and that Global Mod that did this, had two accounts at The Ruins when we got to checking. Yeah, the Zealot's henchman had a sockpuppet of his own.

To the charge that has been made that The Ruins was created behind Finaryn's back, here is the advice that Finaryn gave theperilousdreamer a few days after the building of The Ruins started.

QuoteJan 16, 2015 at 17:01 Admin said:
Hey, David --

I like the concept and I like your organization. A couple of thoughts:

(1) In general, more discussion of OD&D is better, so I like to see lots of places like yours pop up.

(2) As you noted, however, moving some traffic there will probably dilute conversation here.

(3) You may find that your board may fail, simply because it seems like one needs a "critical mass" of posters in order to maintain interest. (I have found this out with my Amber Diceless board, where I built it and no one came.) I'm not sure how to attract enough posters, but if you don't get them it'll be a quiet place.

(4) There are other places which also discuss OD&D and don't get much traffic, either. Dragonsfoot has an OD&D section, there's a site called Platemail (I may have the name wrong?), Rafe's Blackmoor page has some OD&D space, Knights & Knaves has an OD&D area, and so on. None get many posts.

In spite of my doom-and-gloom sounding comments, I think that it's a good idea and I wish you luck with your endeavor! It looks cool and I can't wait to read some posts! :D

- Marv

Sorry Pundit, but we are not the censors we are being accused of and I could not let that pass a second time.

Now back on topic. I find it amusing that people seem to think that The Ruins is anti-Gygax, we are not. It is a common delusion that wanting Arneson to get the credit he deserves is somehow anti-Gygax. I am in agreement with Mr Conley about the common importance of both. I do not understand how you can look at Mr. Wittig's detailed post and come up with anti-Gygax. The point he is making, at least the way I read it, is that there was cross pollination going back and forth from multiple sources from multiple directions. That strikes me as quite believable. Whether his specific premise is as strong as he believes, I don't know. But it does give us something to think about.

Quote from: ElBorak;1116405After theperilousdreamer stepped down from being owner of the forum, the new management team gave the forum a face lift and renamed the different categories of the forum... When we did that we consolidated some areas and created some new ones, threads were moved around in a way that made sense to us. I did not post in the thread the first time I saw you made this false claim, I sent a private pm to you the The Pundit.

Sorry Pundit, but we are not the censors we are being accused of and I could not let that pass a second time.

You do censor what you don't like, and you tell lies here right now. That's pretty ballsy, so I'm calling you out. You won't get away with this here because you can't erase this forum or move things around (same difference, when it comes down to it)  so they can no longer be easily found, ...as you can over on your own forums.

A couple things happened with this that I can specifically recall where you are at best, evading the truth concerning this. Some areas were deleted entirely and perhaps their threads were moved around into other categories, where they can possibly still be found, however these threads were originally layered in a specific chronological order, and for a very good reason. We wanted the discussions to be presented to the general public so that they would understand. With the loss of chronological order comes a a great loss in meaning and understanding as everything that was originally posted is now out of context. I'm speaking specifically about two threads/categories here the thread about Judges Guild and the Wilderlands, and Bob Bledsaw, and other threads where Rob Kuntz had been posting about original D&D. You know your little "re-arranging and housecleaning stunt" pissed off Rob so bad, he stopped posting over on your website as well. Everyone here can go over and see that for themselves, you'll see he had been posting quite a bit and then abruptly stopped in April of 2018. I myself continued posting sporadically until late 2018, but was put off at first in the late summer by the threats and allegations that were coming from that douche Rafael, over on the 0D&D proboards, and later totally quit when I could no longer find my own contributions there. No point in me posting if it won't even be seen, eh?

For the record Rafael specifically refused to share data that I requested about specific IP addresses and accounts, so I could not actually confirm for myself that you all were sock-puppeting over there, but your own actions spoke for themselves and lent him an undeserved credibility.  I ended up quitting posting on Murkhill, because I could no longer find threads that I had participated in, even using the onsite search tools, and I checked last week, many of the threads from the Wilderlands discussions are still missing or cannot be easily found (Same difference...). Rob quit posting because his threads that had a prominent place were arbitrarily moved and threads that favored the mods over there and perilous dreamer were moved into locations that were easy to find, relatively speaking compared to Robs threads. The implication with this is that Robs contribution about original D&D shouldn't be considered as meaningful as, well, ...you know, yourself, perilous dreamer and his sock puppet army, even though he was one of the original authors of D&D.

Even though I have an account on Murkhill, I don't even want to post over there anymore. Pretty much the same as Dragonsfoot, where they took all of the threads from the original D&D authors and dumped them into one little subforum on their website, reducing the contributions of the Original D&D authors there to a footnote, even though they made the website what it is today, Shame on them. Shame on you for trying to do exactly the same thing with Murkhill. I at least understand why they are doing what they are doing over there, They got their little Kingsmen's Knickers in a twist, because they want to control all the discussions and IP for "old school" roleplaying and original tabletop RPGs but they (and you as well) will fffaaaaaaaaaiiilllll!

While I'm on the subject, after the fall of G+, a bunch of us gamers migrated over to MeWe, and began posting in gaming threads over there. Not content with fucking up their own website and driving everyone off who was interested in posting about old school games, the Murkhill gang and their alleged sockpuppet army (...If there ever was one, I"d still like to see some logs with some specific usernames of supposed sock puppets attached to some specific IPs so I could independently confirm the 0D&D Proboard allegations), started a bunch of old school social network circles there, and are attempting to channel and dominate the ongoing conversations, Fortunately MeWe has a really outstanding private channel system, so it is pretty easy to evade their attempts to steer the RPG gaming conversations.

Censorship: to examine and expurgate. To assess, estimate, and judge. (From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Your job over at Murkhill as mods is not to Judge what I, or anyone else contributes. You are supposed to be the guardians of our written truths, of our opinions about RPGs, and games, and you should care about the exact nature of what we wished to convey, if we are there sharing. Anything else, is, ...well, censorship with another agenda.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116426You do censor what you don't like, and you tell lies here right now. That's pretty ballsy, so I'm calling you out. You won't get away with this here because you can't erase this forum or move things around (same difference, when it comes down to it)  so they can no longer be easily found, ...as you can over on your own forums.

A couple things happened with this that I can specifically recall where you are at best, evading the truth concerning this. Some areas were deleted entirely and perhaps their threads were moved around into other categories, where they can possibly still be found, however these threads were originally layered in a specific chronological order, and for a very good reason. We wanted the discussions to be presented to the general public so that they would understand. With the loss of chronological order comes a a great loss in meaning and understanding as everything that was originally posted is now out of context. I'm speaking specifically about two threads/categories here the thread about Judges Guild and the Wilderlands, and Bob Bledsaw, and other threads where Rob Kuntz had been posting about original D&D. You know your little "re-arranging and housecleaning stunt" pissed off Rob so bad, he stopped posting over on your website as well. Everyone here can go over and see that for themselves, you'll see he had been posting quite a bit and then abruptly stopped in April of 2018. I myself continued posting sporadically until late 2018, but was put off at first in the late summer by the threats and allegations that were coming from that douche Rafael, over on the 0D&D proboards, and later totally quit when I could no longer find my own contributions there. No point in me posting if it won't even be seen, eh?

For the record Rafael specifically refused to share data that I requested about specific IP addresses and accounts, so I could not actually confirm for myself that you all were sock-puppeting over there, but your own actions spoke for themselves and lent him an undeserved credibility.  I ended up quitting posting on Murkhill, because I could no longer find threads that I had participated in, even using the onsite search tools, and I checked last week, many of the threads from the Wilderlands discussions are still missing or cannot be easily found (Same difference...). Rob quit posting because his threads that had a prominent place were arbitrarily moved and threads that favored the mods over there and perilous dreamer were moved into locations that were easy to find, relatively speaking compared to Robs threads. The implication with this is that Robs contribution about original D&D shouldn't be considered as meaningful as, well, ...you know, yourself, perilous dreamer and his sock puppet army, even though he was one of the original authors of D&D.

Even though I have an account on Murkhill, I don't even want to post over there anymore. Pretty much the same as Dragonsfoot, where they took all of the threads from the original D&D authors and dumped them into one little subforum on their website, reducing the contributions of the Original D&D authors there to a footnote, even though they made the website what it is today, Shame on them. Shame on you for trying to do exactly the same thing with Murkhill. I at least understand why they are doing what they are doing over there, They got their little Kingsmen's Knickers in a twist, because they want to control all the discussions and IP for "old school" roleplaying and original tabletop RPGs but they (and you as well) will fffaaaaaaaaaiiilllll!

While I'm on the subject, after the fall of G+, a bunch of us gamers migrated over to MeWe, and began posting in gaming threads over there. Not content with fucking up their own website and driving everyone off who was interested in posting about old school games, the Murkhill gang and their alleged sockpuppet army (...If there ever was one, I"d still like to see some logs with some specific usernames of supposed sock puppets attached to some specific IPs so I could independently confirm the 0D&D Proboard allegations), started a bunch of old school social network circles there, and are attempting to channel and dominate the ongoing conversations, Fortunately MeWe has a really outstanding private channel system, so it is pretty easy to evade their attempts to steer the RPG gaming conversations.

Censorship: to examine and expurgate. To assess, estimate, and judge. (From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Your job over at Murkhill as mods is not to Judge what I, or anyone else contributes. You are supposed to be the guardians of our written truths, of our opinions about RPGs, and games, and you should care about the exact nature of what we wished to convey, if we are there sharing. Anything else, is, ...well, censorship with another agenda.

I will be brief since this is the Pundit's forum and will not then continue further unless he approves.

Again your claim of censorship is false. Anyone that has doubts can read the forum for themselves. We censor only bad languages and sex to keep the forum family friendly. As for Rob Kuntz he left in April 2018 and our  

Quote"re-arranging and housecleaning stunt"

took place in the latter half of June and July 2018. As for Rob's threads, we handled them in strict accordance with Rob's instructions. As to whether or not Rob was pissed at us, I do not know that to be true. I do know that he and the dreamer interact on other platforms in a friendly manner and I am told they exchange emails from time to time. I also know that the dreamer promotes Robs work. A few other people, gronan being one, deleted their own accounts on the way out as they left on their own. Other's have left on their own and deleted their own posts on the way out the door. IIRC 16 people deleted their own accounts and another 60 stopped posting at all, including most of our top posters at the time. Of the original 13 members that helped build the forum in the few weeks before it went live only one remains.

As for MeWe we have four small groups (and no I do not count the Tunnels & Trolls group as being one of those) and we are drop in the bucket over there, albeit a bigger drop than we were on G+. But you are sounding like the Zealot you call the douche when you say we are trying to dominate. We might represent as much as 2% of the old school community at MeWe, but if you call that trying to dominate, then we have wildly different definitions of the word dominate.

If someone thinks we are censoring this fellow come and look. Oh, we did move his subforum into the area of all the dormant subforums see http://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/board/47/campaign-listed-murkhill-archives. It was moved because it had not been touched in many months. gamedaddy/dragondaddy makes it active again, it will be moved back to the main page, but inactive it stays were it is at.

So with my apologies to the Pundit I will end this here.

Gamers can be such dorks, honestly.

Greetings!

Geesus. All the drama over posts or threads being deleted and moved at some other allegedly small website, with few members. If some mods somewhere, somehow, for whatever reason don't like you, too fucking bad. They can fuck themselves, and you move somewhere else.

I don't understand why all of this backroom whispering conspiracies, who emailed who, and who said what, who is really an ally or someone else is a shit-disturbing snake, whaa, whaa, whaa.

Why is all that remotely important?

I think some people have way too much invested in online fucking drama.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Game Daddy and El Borak, you guys aren't helping anything, most especially the memory of Gary and Dave. That exchange was bugnuts. Bannings! Memory Holes! Sockpuppets! Ruins of Murkhill and OD&D Proboards sounds like a mental institution, not a gamer gathering.  

The fandom of OD&D is such a tiny community and yet ALL we ever hear from the various "groups" is A-grade nutburger bullshit. Instead of great game discussion, we get whackass venn diagrams and "how many owlbears can dance on the head of a pin" arguments about what REALLY might have happened the week of March 9, 1972.

OD&D is a wonderful game, and thanks to Swords & Wizardry: White Box, its now remarkably accessible to everyone. But none of this ugly internecine wanking helps promote actual play.

Quote from: estar;1116175Thus Dave is the father of tabletop roleplaying and Gary is the father of D&D and there is no path to our hobby today that doesn't run through the two.

That's an EXCELLENT way to explain the situation. Kudos!

Quote from: Melan;1116269Anyway, move on, pops. D&D was written by Aretha Washington, a brave womyn of lesbian colour, whose original game, Unicorns & Feelings was appropriated by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson to deny her royalties, and turn her game into a heteromasculinist exercise in gendered political violence. You will be able to read all about it in detail in next week's Kotaku exposé.

Too painfully funny!

Henceforth, OD&D shall be known as a "heteromasculinist exercise in gendered political violence"!!!!

Quote from: SHARK;1116444I don't understand why all of this backroom whispering conspiracies, who emailed who, and who said what, who is really an ally or someone else is a shit-disturbing snake, whaa, whaa, whaa.

Why is all that remotely important?

I think some people have way too much invested in online fucking drama.

Exactly. I don't understand it either. I certainly don't understand why I should be banned from the 0D&D74 boards, just because I refused to discontinue posting over on Murkhill, and I also don't understand why my posts over on Murkhill should be deleted or moved into places where they can no longer even be found. This is important because if it is happening to me, its happening to other old school gamers as well, and what they are contributing to our discussions in making the games (and the environment for games) better is being deliberately omitted. How can gaming become better if the people that do support that have their voices either silenced, or muted? I simply spoke out here, because the narratives and the discussions around old school gaming are being carefully crafted, and I don't know why. It is affecting me directly. I spoke out here because unlike the other forums,  it is very unlikely my posts will be either deleted, or moved.

From 2006-2010 or so, I actually migrated over to the forums or boards that actively supported old school gaming, another words bulletin boards and forums that supported players that wanted to play original dungeons and dragons, 1st edition or 2nd edition or (now) 3rd or 4th edition. I did this because my posts about gaming on the modern high volume gaming boards like Enworld, and WOTC, and rpg.net were being deleted, and I was also being directly harassed by both contributors and mods because a select group over there decided that the games I wanted to play, were literally not the games they wanted me to play. They wanted me to play the 3.5 edition of D&D, and later D&D 4.0, and I was quite happy posting about 3rd edition D&D, and Original D&D. So I obliged them, and quietly moved over to forums or boards that supported old school gaming.

Now though, that is changing. They don't have the support on their boards, so they have been quietly opening accounts here and other old school boards and trying once again to drive the narrative concerning what games should be played, and what actually happened or occurred in the past. I'm content to let the message boards reveal the history of the past, so long as what is posted remains in place, so that the full context of the discussions remains and is not lost on the arbitrary whims of some message board mod.

I'll give you a very specific example about this, the very title of this thread "Intrinsic Evidence that Chainmail's Fantasy Supplement Contains Material Material from Dave."  You know, I actually spoke to Dave Arneson deliberately about exactly what he did contribute in making Dungeons and Dragons, ....for many, many hours, ...at his request, by the way, not mine. He never mentioned anything about Chainmail at all other than his Blackmoor group tried the rules and found them entirely unsatisfactory because they were too close to wargames, and literally weren't balanced well enough to depict the kind of fantasy games that he and his players wanted to be playing, so he did what came naturally. He tweaked the rules to suit his group, and continued doing so, until his game was much better, and provided a much more vivid and memorable experience than guys just playing Chainmail, would experience.

With Chainmail, you were either a foot soldier, a hero (worth approximately four foot soldiers), or a superhero, a very difficult to kill leader worth approximately eight foot soldiers in battle. ...and that was it. It was April of 1971, literally a month after Chainmail was first published, and in Dave's group one of his players had a hero, who was hit just once by a Troll, and died instantly. The Player called foul, and argued that given his experience in battle, his character should not have been so easy to slay. So Dave tweaked the already existing Chainmail rules.

He added levels, and hit points. The more a player played, the more experience his character had, the more hit points his character had, the more difficult his character would be to kill, and that made the characters actually heroic or superheros. Their is actually no limit to player character progression in Original Dungeons and Dragons, very unlike Chainmail. With the old Chainmail, players would do a point buy and select a fixed number of heroes to include to lead their fantasy armies in battles. With Dungeons and Dragons players would create their hero, tweaking different aspects to suit their style of leadership, and then their hero would join in battles (amongst other things, D&D took the sole focus away from fighting and battling and added an almost limitless number of additional options for the players to choose instead.) and progress, if the hero survived and leveled, it would be even more difficult to kill, and not only that, the hero could return to fight another battle. The hero wasn't some nameless mook, but a character with a background and a history, based his his/her earlier conduct in battles, and with other challenges.

Chainmail might actually contain a monster or two that Dave suggested to Gary to add, but neither of them thought enough about it ensure including Dave an author credit for Chainmail, and Dave never cared about that, or he would have mentioned it to me, when we were talking about what his contributions were to creating original D&D.

As far as I'm concerned the original statement that defines this thread is pure speculation and fantasy, and the problem with that, is Dave is no longer around to provide his insight, as well as clarify.

I think some people have way too much invested in attempting to redefine what actually occurred in the past. Gary was actually an excellent game designer, and there does seem to be a group that is constantly seeking to minimize his contributions to gaming, and I am uncomfortable with that as well.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116447Game Daddy and El Borak, you guys aren't helping anything, most especially the memory of Gary and Dave. That exchange was bugnuts. Bannings! Memory Holes! Sockpuppets! Ruins of Murkhill and OD&D Proboards sounds like a mental institution, not a gamer gathering.!

That. Exactly. Is why I don't post over there anymore, and wouldn't post over on the ProBoards even if they reactivated my account there. I'm actually not concerned about what is happening over on them other boards anyway. Many in their original membership, which supported old school games and gamers, no longer choose to be with them, just like me. I'm simply leaving a record here, as to why.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116456With Chainmail, you were either a foot soldier, a hero (worth approximately four foot soldiers), or a superhero, a very difficult to kill leader worth approximately eight foot soldiers in battle. ...and that was it. It was April of 1971, literally a month after Chainmail was first published, and in Dave's group one of his players had a hero, who was hit just once by a Troll, and died instantly. The Player called foul, and argued that given his experience in battle, his character should not have been so easy to slay. So Dave tweaked the already existing Chainmail rules.

Good on that Player, keeping powergaming characters alive since April 1971.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116426You do censor what you don't like, and you tell lies here right now. That's pretty ballsy, so I'm calling you out. You won't get away with this here because you can't erase this forum or move things around (same difference, when it comes down to it)  so they can no longer be easily found, ...as you can over on your own forums.

A couple things happened with this that I can specifically recall where you are at best, evading the truth concerning this. Some areas were deleted entirely and perhaps their threads were moved around into other categories, where they can possibly still be found, however these threads were originally layered in a specific chronological order, and for a very good reason. We wanted the discussions to be presented to the general public so that they would understand. With the loss of chronological order comes a a great loss in meaning and understanding as everything that was originally posted is now out of context. I'm speaking specifically about two threads/categories here the thread about Judges Guild and the Wilderlands, and Bob Bledsaw, and other threads where Rob Kuntz had been posting about original D&D. You know your little "re-arranging and housecleaning stunt" pissed off Rob so bad, he stopped posting over on your website as well. Everyone here can go over and see that for themselves, you'll see he had been posting quite a bit and then abruptly stopped in April of 2018. I myself continued posting sporadically until late 2018, but was put off at first in the late summer by the threats and allegations that were coming from that douche Rafael, over on the 0D&D proboards, and later totally quit when I could no longer find my own contributions there. No point in me posting if it won't even be seen, eh?

For the record Rafael specifically refused to share data that I requested about specific IP addresses and accounts, so I could not actually confirm for myself that you all were sock-puppeting over there, but your own actions spoke for themselves and lent him an undeserved credibility.  I ended up quitting posting on Murkhill, because I could no longer find threads that I had participated in, even using the onsite search tools, and I checked last week, many of the threads from the Wilderlands discussions are still missing or cannot be easily found (Same difference...). Rob quit posting because his threads that had a prominent place were arbitrarily moved and threads that favored the mods over there and perilous dreamer were moved into locations that were easy to find, relatively speaking compared to Robs threads. The implication with this is that Robs contribution about original D&D shouldn't be considered as meaningful as, well, ...you know, yourself, perilous dreamer and his sock puppet army, even though he was one of the original authors of D&D.

Even though I have an account on Murkhill, I don't even want to post over there anymore. Pretty much the same as Dragonsfoot, where they took all of the threads from the original D&D authors and dumped them into one little subforum on their website, reducing the contributions of the Original D&D authors there to a footnote, even though they made the website what it is today, Shame on them. Shame on you for trying to do exactly the same thing with Murkhill. I at least understand why they are doing what they are doing over there, They got their little Kingsmen's Knickers in a twist, because they want to control all the discussions and IP for "old school" roleplaying and original tabletop RPGs but they (and you as well) will fffaaaaaaaaaiiilllll!

While I'm on the subject, after the fall of G+, a bunch of us gamers migrated over to MeWe, and began posting in gaming threads over there. Not content with fucking up their own website and driving everyone off who was interested in posting about old school games, the Murkhill gang and their alleged sockpuppet army (...If there ever was one, I"d still like to see some logs with some specific usernames of supposed sock puppets attached to some specific IPs so I could independently confirm the 0D&D Proboard allegations), started a bunch of old school social network circles there, and are attempting to channel and dominate the ongoing conversations, Fortunately MeWe has a really outstanding private channel system, so it is pretty easy to evade their attempts to steer the RPG gaming conversations.

Censorship: to examine and expurgate. To assess, estimate, and judge. (From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Your job over at Murkhill as mods is not to Judge what I, or anyone else contributes. You are supposed to be the guardians of our written truths, of our opinions about RPGs, and games, and you should care about the exact nature of what we wished to convey, if we are there sharing. Anything else, is, ...well, censorship with another agenda.

You are a fucking loon. Walk away from the computer.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116465You are a fucking loon. Walk away from the computer.

Hmmm. look what my comments brought our of the woodworks. Exactly one of the douchebags I have been speaking of. You should take your own advice, because no one here here will to be told what they can, and can't post, regarding games.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116467Hmmm. look what my comments brought our of the woodworks. Exactly one of the douchebags I have been speaking of. You should take your own advice, because no one here here will to be told what they can, and can't post, regarding games.

What the hell are you talking about? Are you referring to "that other thread" which you endlessly refuse to respond to me in, in which I also personally and directly defended your ability to post (despite it being unsubstantiated garbage statements of "fact")? Otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe spend some of that pent up energy knitting, or screaming into a mirror.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116468Otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe spend some of that pent up energy knitting, or screaming into a mirror.

Evidence that you haven't even been reading this thread. Why are you even commenting?

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116471Evidence that you haven't even been reading this thread. Why are you even commenting?

I've read the thread. If you are butthurt (which you are, clearly) that a public fucking forum got shuffled around and/or had shit deleted, then boo-hoo. Contrary to belief, nothing on the internet is forever. Back it up locally, write a fucking diary, do whatever. You are assigning responsibility to people who have literally none towards you. Stop crying, stop listing definitions of words under some pretense it will alter the reality of the situation, stop twisting words to suit your narrative, stop being a fucking baby. No crimes have been committed against you. Grow up. You clearly care about the hobby a lot and that's great, but some things just HAPPEN. You are not the hobby. The hobby is owned by a fuck ton of people who will do with it what they like. Much like real life, where kids who have inherited their grand dad's photos will chuck or sell them at the earliest opportunity. All of history is a patchwork, not all of it will be remembered or kept sacred. If something is truly important to you, then YOU keep it safe.

Also noted that you did not refute the other portion of my post. Apology accepted.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116472If something is truly important to you, then YOU keep it safe.

Sure, Dickhead. I also posted publicly here so that other people would know not to waste their time posting on those websites, and forums that are just going to trash their contributions. When I refer to controlling the narrative, that is exactly what you are attempting to do here now, by discouraging me about posting about my actual experiences, ...so fuck right off.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116473Sure, Dickhead. I also posted publicly here so that other people would know not to waste their time posting on those websites, and forums that are just going to trash their contributions. When I refer to controlling the narrative, that is exactly what you are attempting to do here now, by discouraging me about posting about my actual experiences, ...so fuck right off.

Post whatever you like? I'm literally just another poster, so I'm not sure what you're insinuating here. As I mentioned previously I have directly defended your ability to speak freely, which I think should count. I don't doubt being a douchebag or "Dickhead" but I don't consider myself an enemy of yours, even if I do still think you're a fucking loon and possibly a moron. I'm not sure how anything I've said qualifies as "controlling the narrative" and it seems to me you're doing more shadow boxing, but do what makes you happy I guess. If you're referring to my initial comment, it was meant more in jest with regards to your laser-focused and expansive ranting (translation "walk away from the computer because you're clearly way too personally invested in this and it hurts to read and you're stretching the limits of sensibility and credibility particularly versus the sensible and factual commentary of someone who runs the site, you sound fucking crazy and you're literally listing definitions of words and reinterpreting statements to suit your previous argument, not to mention speaking about 'jobs' you are assigning to people who have no such duty towards what you are speaking of").

I'm not even refuting anything you're posting (at least in this thread) as I have no personal relation to what you or Elborak are talking about and I have no frame of reference. But you really should take a breather.

EDIT: Also, "trashing" contributions appears to be a contentious point, looking at both yours and Elborak's posts. I'm not sure you're really warning anyone as it appears you're just being argumentative, but if that's what you think you're doing OK.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116475I'm not even refuting anything you're posting (at least in this thread) as I have no personal relation to what you or Elborak are talking about and I have no frame of reference. ... But you really should take a breather.

...you first. Because of the outright lies you tell. ^^^^^

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116475You are a fucking loon. Walk away from the computer.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116476...you first.

:p Okay. I am supposed to make cookies for wife's church meet anyhow, I'm procrastinating.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116476...you first. Because of the outright lies you tell. ^^^^^ earlier...

In what way am I telling lies? Did you even read what I posted? Or what you posted? Do you just enjoy arguing? :confused:

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116478In what way am I telling lies? Did you even read what I posted? Or what you posted? Do you just enjoy arguing? :confused:

Q.E.D.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116479Q.E.D.

... so you can't actually reply to what I have asked or stated, as usual. Alright. Gonna go make cookies, at ease GameDaddy.:)

Quote from: SHARK;1116444Greetings!

Geesus. All the drama over posts or threads being deleted and moved at some other allegedly small website, with few members. If some mods somewhere, somehow, for whatever reason don't like you, too fucking bad. They can fuck themselves, and you move somewhere else.

I don't understand why all of this backroom whispering conspiracies. / Why is all that remotely important?

1: This one is easy. Loss of records of conversations that possibly can never be had again if any of the members have quit or passed away. Personal irk example was IMDb removing the forums. On the Silent Running forum we had some amazing insights from one of the amputees who played the robots. And comments from people in the industry in other forums there as well. Gone now. This is at least offset by the erasure of the rampant trolling over there too. So a few babies got tossed out with the bathwater.

2: This one not so easy to explain. But again, unfortunately, also from personal experience I've spent 25 years combating a particular sociopath in one of the art circles who absolutely despises a certain theme and started infiltrating, subverting, and ruining or destroying every group he can find. Chats, forums, art sites, interest groups. Think of it as akin to how some of the worst of the Storygamers, Forgeites, Pundits Swine, GNS, etc factions have driven wedges between groups or tried to co-opt or erase certain styles of play they disapprove of. And his right hand man happens to be an RPG publisher.

As for this argument of GD vs EB. Considering how loony GameDaddy's acted recently. All bets are off if he is right or wrong. But odds are this is another one of his manias in action. Sorry GD but you did it to yourself. I can totally understand being upset over important insights being lost, or at least buried somewhere obscure. But the lesson I learned the hard way is to save this stuff ASAP as the internet is utterly ephemeral. Yahoo Groups taught me this a decade + ago with their rampant covert deletions and now this new mass removal of files, images, possibly alot more.

Never assume anything on the net will be there forever. It may not even be there tomorrow. Hell, I had Yahoo Delete a group even as I was typing a post warning members that Yahoo could delete a group even as I was typing this warning. Irony is cruel sometimes.

Back on what passes for a topic. It is hilarious that even now we have people crusading for Dave long after it was shown and detailed exactly what he did and did not contribute. Parts by his own admission. But the crusaders refuse to believe Dave himself. GREEDY Gary MUST be VANQUISHED!

Quote from: Omega;1116493Never assume anything on the net will be there forever. It may not even be there tomorrow. Hell, I had Yahoo Delete a group even as I was typing a post warning members that Yahoo could delete a group even as I was typing this warning. Irony is cruel sometimes.

Exactly. Such is the nature of the internet.

Quote from: Omega;1116493As for this argument of GD vs EB. Considering how loony GameDaddy's acted recently. All bets are off if he is right or wrong. But odds are this is another one of his manias in action. Sorry GD but you did it to yourself. I can totally understand being upset over important insights being lost, or at least buried somewhere obscure. But the lesson I learned the hard way is to save this stuff ASAP as the internet is utterly ephemeral. Yahoo Groups taught me this a decade + ago with their rampant covert deletions and now this new mass removal of files, images, possibly alot more.

Never assume anything on the net will be there forever. It may not even be there tomorrow. Hell, I had Yahoo Delete a group even as I was typing a post warning members that Yahoo could delete a group even as I was typing this warning. Irony is cruel sometimes.

Actually, I do now. Since all this occurred last year, I pretty much have been archiving some of the old important discussions about the early days of gaming. I also tend to keep copies of anything that I specifically contribute to other Forums, Websites and Bulletin Boards as well.

Concerning Yahoo, they nuked just about all of the Groups over there over the last couple of months. I'm in the process of gathering all of the original posts I made there on the original Gamma World Group, including my files and resources that were contributed, and I'll shortly be re-posting those as well as files from other Yahoogroups I participated in over on my gaming website (as in over the holidays, this winter). Same deal for my gaming convention reports from the last thirty years. I'm also looking into setting up a perpetual trust so that my gaming website will be able to continue indefinitely, even after I'm permanently out of the picture. I'm probably among the youngest of the original grognards that were there in the very beginning, right when D&D was published. I'm actually no longer counting on being around for very much longer as I have already outlived one Grandfather, and all of my male relatives on the German side of my family.

It just really pisses me off that there are gamers who are deliberately tearing up the Internet, especially the RPG gaming part, when there is no need, or even a good reason to do so. As I see it, other gamers that want to contribute to the history of gaming should know where they can post, where there is even a chance thier posts will remain, for new generations of gamers in the future to see.

Back in the eighties when we were first building the Internet, we wanted it to be ubiqitous, and contain all of the resources and facts and discussions so that future generations could bask in our wisdom and avoid the mistakes that we made. The world wide web was officially switched on in 1993 with the introduction of the Mosiac web browser, but since September 11th, 2001 many of our businesses, as well as our government, as well as every other government in the world has been tearing that vision apart, carving up the net, blocking it, censoring, deleting, and removing facts, discussions, and resources. On fucking purpose!

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116505Actually, I do now. Since all this occurred last year, I pretty much have been archiving some of the old important discussions about the early days of gaming. I also tend to keep copies of anything that I specifically contribute to other Forums, Websites and Bulletin Boards as well.

It just really pisses me off that there are gamers who are deliberately tearing up the Internet, especially the RPG gaming part, when there is no need, or even a good reason to do so. As I see it, other gamers that want to contribute to the history of gaming should know where they can post, where there is even a chance thier posts will remain, for new generations of gamers in the future to see.

Back in the eighties when we were first building the Internet, we wanted it to be ubiqitous, and contain all of the resources and facts and discussions so that future generations could bask in our wisdom and avoid the mistakes that we made. The world wide web was officially switched on in 1993 with the introduction of the Mosiac web browser, but since September 11th, 2001 many of our businesses, as well as our government, as well as every other government in the world has been tearing that vision apart, carving up the net, blocking it, censoring, deleting, and removing facts, discussions, and resources. On fucking purpose!

Not just gaming. There have been some savage artist wars on and off the net and wars waged by fans of a particular theme, genre, etc. And part of this is information warring. Infiltration and co-opting another group. What you see with storygamers trying to co-opt RPGs and re-write history is just one example.

As for the EB site. Assuming what is said is true. And a quick glance shows it seems to be. Then perhaps you should go back and re-assess what happened? It looks more like a bit of ill thought reorganization than something malicious. I think if malice had been the intent then they could have just deleted things instead of moving them. The format is similar to what a few other fora have in place. Others have that weird "threads after X number just vanish" setup like RPGnet for example. About 20+ years ago a MU** I play on changed the system of building BB-Boards such that messages delete after a few weeks. Making anything posted very transient.

So go back and re-think what happened. If you still think it deliberate sabotage then move on from there.

Quote from: Omega;1116493Back on what passes for a topic. It is hilarious that even now we have people crusading for Dave long after it was shown and detailed exactly what he did and did not contribute. Parts by his own admission. But the crusaders refuse to believe Dave himself. GREEDY Gary MUST be VANQUISHED!

But they're both dead anyway. So it doesn't matter unless you're an animist, as I mentioned earlier. But I thought most people were supposed to be atheist or Christian or Jewish or something, and the closest any of them come to animism is Catholic and Orthodox relics, but that's been played down a lot in recent generations.

Arguing whether some book has X's spiritual essence or Y's is rather odd. What next, someone digs up the guys' remains and use their mummified hands to bless their dice to roll well?

The guys are dead. It could all have been secretly written by Hugh Hefner or Tolstoy and it wouldn't make a bit of difference at the game table. It doesn't matter any more.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116505It just really pisses me off that there are gamers who are deliberately tearing up the Internet, especially the RPG gaming part, when there is no need, or even a good reason to do so. As I see it, other gamers that want to contribute to the history of gaming should know where they can post, where there is even a chance thier posts will remain, for new generations of gamers in the future to see.

Back in the eighties when we were first building the Internet, we wanted it to be ubiqitous, and contain all of the resources and facts and discussions so that future generations could bask in our wisdom and avoid the mistakes that we made. The world wide web was officially switched on in 1993 with the introduction of the Mosiac web browser, but since September 11th, 2001 many of our businesses, as well as our government, as well as every other government in the world has been tearing that vision apart, carving up the net, blocking it, censoring, deleting, and removing facts, discussions, and resources. On fucking purpose!

I just emailed you all of your posts in five pdf files. All of them are currently on the forum and easily found.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116505I'm probably among the youngest of the original grognards that were there in the very beginning, right when D&D was published.

GD, your energy is misplaced. Your knowledge and thoughts on history and development of the RPG hobby belong in a book. Instead of wasting time battling with online strangers, write your book and get it on Amazon for the world to buy.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1116511What next, someone digs up the guys' remains and use their mummified hands to bless their dice to roll well?

Several years ago, I had two players who claimed they did a pilgrimage to Gary Gygax's grave and rubbed their D20s on his grave.

Which had been foretold in Knights of the Dinner Table, so it was life imitating art. Best part is neither of the players knew about the KoDT storyline with those players rubbing their dice on the dead game designer's corpse during his wake.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1116511The guys are dead. It could all have been secretly written by Hugh Hefner or Tolstoy and it wouldn't make a bit of difference at the game table. It doesn't matter any more.

Is this what they call a "stinging truth"?

Quote from: ElBorak;1116515I just emailed you all of your posts in five pdf files. All of them are currently on the forum and easily found.

Way to deliberately censor and curate history dude. What did you do with my keys?! Tell me!

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116553Is this what they call a "stinging truth"?

Way to deliberately censor and curate history dude. What did you do with my keys?! Tell me!

Ass, of course there are conversations from those forums missing that he failed to send me, probably because he doesn't have them. Since you have to be an ass about it, Just to remind everyone, you are a lair and seem to be here as part of the group that just won't stop trying to tear down people who are just here to play D&D and role-playing games. Fuck you, and that is the stinging truth. get the fuck off my lawn, and don't come back. But you know, ...you just won't.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116561Ass, of course there are conversations from those forums missing that he failed to send me, probably because he doesn't have them. Since you have to be an ass about it, Just to remind everyone, you are a lair and seem to be here as part of the group that just won't stop trying to tear down people who are just here to play D&D and role-playing games. Fuck you, and that is the stinging truth. get the fuck off my lawn, and don't come back. But you know, ...you just won't.

In what way am I here to tear down people playing RPGs? What is your problem with me? How about respond to him instead of me if you have an issue with what he's provided you? What's with the animosity? And how am I a liar?

Many of us own lawns, you know. :)

EDIT: OK to be fair I don't own a lawn, but I'm working on it...:o

There ought to be a gif that shows making jiffy popcorn over a dumpster fire.

Quote from: Mistwell;1116574There ought to be a gif that shows making jiffy popcorn over a dumpster fire.

...Here let me fix this for you.  I doubt you'll find it as good as good conversations about games though.

Quote from: estar;1116175That is not accurate Dave Arneson tweaked it until he developed his own rules. And it wasn't just chain mail at the beginning. From all accounts Dave was an excellent seat of the pants referee. His notebook however was more of a memonic aid than a rule book.

In contrast D&D start as a short manuscript typed up by Gygax after he experienced a session in the Blackmoor dungeon, talking with Dave and getting a few of this notes. Then he ran the Greyhawk campaign developing the rules further along with consulting with Dave.

The final version we see in the 3 LBB resulted from this.

Now while Gygax is the father of D&D, he couldn't have written it without Dave's help and advice. Because Dave was the first to figure out how to run a tabletop roleplaying campaign. The first to put everything together and to make it work. It didn't happen all at once with the Blackmoor campaign. At first it was a sophiscated ongoing Braustein where everyone played an indvidual character focus on the war between the baddies (PCs) and the good guys (also PCs). But because Dave was willing to say yes if it made sense the focus shifted to the antics of the player character rather than the war. This was cemented by the popularity of the Blackmoor dungeon.

However to this day we don't have the rules from any point during this process, just antecdotes and snippets. But nonetheless Dave helped Gary to become a tabletop roleplaying referee thus earning co author status on D&D even tho Gygax wrote all of it.

Thus Dave is the father of tabletop roleplaying and Gary is the father of D&D and there is no path to our hobby today that doesn't run through the two.

After reading a great deal about the origin of the game, that seems to be all we can say. From what I understand, Dave produced no rules that could be sold but had all of the concepts of an RPG going at his table and Gary made something out of it that others could use.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1116591After reading a great deal about the origin of the game, that seems to be all we can say. From what I understand, Dave produced no rules that could be sold but had all of the concepts of an RPG going at his table and Gary made something out of it that others could use.

This. It's what I saw and heard about at the time, and fits everything I've seen and read since. Unless, of course, you want to buy into the myth that Prof. Barker actually invented RPGs, and Dave and Gary stole the idea from him to produce D&D before Dave had actually met Phil. This is, of course, absolute proof that Dave and Gary were actually time travelers.

It simply astounds me that the context of those times, where we all spoke pretty much the same language as we'd seen the same movies and read the same books, has been lost or is being ignored. Occam's Razor is dead, I gather.

To each their own, I think, and I'll scuttle back under my rock. Ta! :)

Game Daddy, you're often a nutburger on these forums, but when you're not freaking the fuck out, you DO have interesting and worthwhile insights into the early days of the hobby, its development and what's been gained and lost over the decades. THIS is what you need to save and preserve as your RPG legacy.

Again, I urge you to be proactive with your treasured knowledge.

BTW, if you're a Metamorphosis Alpha fan, please start a thread discussing MA vs. Gamma World and your thoughts on the original game and the various later developments. Feel free to cut & paste stuff you've posted elsewhere.

FYI, Troll Lords has a Warden Kickstarter happening now. Apparently, Ward mapped out the whole shebang.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116561Just to remind everyone, you are a lair

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116563And how am I a liar?

You're not a liar. You're a lair.

We're gonna send elves and gnomes through your back door and they're gonna escape with treasure!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1116595To each their own, I think, and I'll scuttle back under my rock. Ta! :)

Are you writing your book under that rock? If not, get thee to a word processor!

Like Game Daddy, you're another not-spring-chicken who has unique life experiences regarding our hobby that are very interesting to read and illuminating to learn about.

Amazon has made self-publishing very easy.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116597You're not a liar. You're a lair.

We're gonna send elves and gnomes through your back door and they're gonna escape with treasure!

Oh shit, I was always terrible at Dungeon Keeper. STAY AWAY! :eek:

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1116595This. It's what I saw and heard about at the time, and fits everything I've seen and read since. Unless, of course, you want to buy into the myth that Prof. Barker actually invented RPGs, and Dave and Gary stole the idea from him to produce D&D before Dave had actually met Phil. This is, of course, absolute proof that Dave and Gary were actually time travelers.

It simply astounds me that the context of those times, where we all spoke pretty much the same language as we'd seen the same movies and read the same books, has been lost or is being ignored. Occam's Razor is dead, I gather.

Oh Hai! Thanks for popping in! Got a couple things for you real quick!

First, there is a copy of the Tekumel Boxed set up for auction on ebay right now for just under $290 which puts puts it at about the average price of a White D&D Bookset, even though it is much more rare;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Empire-of-the-Petal-Throne-Box-Set-Tekumel-M-A-R-Barker-Huge-MegaExtras/352559708928

Second I apologize for the kerfluffle over here, there seem to be some folks hell-bent on redefining some of the things that actually happened back in the day, and as I've noted earlier up-thread I have not been pleased that many of the folks responsible for keeping an accurate accounting of the history discussions and accounts have been remiss in their duties to maintain an accurate record of the ongoing discussions. Many here say I should not have any expectations at all that forum and bulletin board mods remain impartial, and try to maintain an accurate records about gamers and what they like to talk about, and I'm almost inclined to agree with them.

After all, ...on one hand, I have folks like Antiquitation! here basically just telling me to just shut up, and leave. On the other hand I'm over on Facebook chatting with Shohreh Aghdashloo about the 5th Season of The Expanse.  You know she invited me to Indianapolis ComicCon next summer? Seems The Expanse crew is going host some breakout panels and workshops on their award winning Sci-Fi show, that was, based on an RPG. I'm mightily tempted to ring up Marc Miller and invite him to join me in San Diego, as I think it would be just lovely to introduce the two of them.... "Shohreh, I have this guy I want you to meet, I love that you are in this award winning sci-fi show that was based on an RPG, ...this here is Marc, he wrote the first hard Sci-Fi RPG, You don't suppose we could all just get a photo together, eh?" I hope they are having a dinner party too, I would reeeaaally like to wrangle an invitation to that.

It's either that, or dealing with these mmm... rather dense folks here. Still though, someone will stop by these forums one day because they want to know if Dave wrote Chainmail as Gary was obviously just like this hanger-on. So I still need to post here to clarify about misconceptions like that is being introduced by the same folks on them boards that have not even been keeping accurate records of what my discussions and contributions consist of.

Anyways, good having you stop by, ...am looking forward to seeing some good Tekumel action at GaryCon in March! Ta!

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116603Oh Hai! Thanks for popping in! Got a couple things for you real quick!

First, there is a copy of the Tekumel Boxed set up for auction on ebay right now for just under $290 which puts puts it at about the average price of a White D&D Bookset, even though it is much more rare;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Empire-of-the-Petal-Throne-Box-Set-Tekumel-M-A-R-Barker-Huge-MegaExtras/352559708928

Second I apologize for the kerfluffle over here, there seem to be some folks hell-bent on redefining some of the things that actually happened back in the day, and as I've noted earlier up-thread I have not been pleased that many of the folks responsible for keeping an accurate accounting of the history discussions and accounts have been remiss in their duties to maintain an accurate record of the ongoing discussions. Many here say I should not have any expectations at all that forum and bulletin board mods remain impartial, and try to maintain an accurate records about gamers and what they like to talk about, and I'm almost inclined to agree with them.

After all, ...on one hand, I have folks like Antiquitation! here basically just telling me to just shut up, and leave. On the other hand I'm over on Facebook chatting with Shohreh Aghdashloo about the 5th Season of The Expanse.  You know she invited me to Indianapolis ComicCon next summer? Seems The Expanse crew is going host some breakout panels and workshops on their award winning Sci-Fi show, that was, based on an RPG. I'm mightily tempted to ring up Marc Miller and invite him to join me in San Diego, as I think it would be just lovely to introduce the two of them.... "Shohreh, I have this guy I want you to meet, I love that you are in this award winning sci-fi show that was based on an RPG, ...this here is Marc, he wrote the first hard Sci-Fi RPG, You don't suppose we could all just get a photo together, eh?" I hope they are having a dinner party too, I would reeeaaally like to wrangle an invitation to that.

It's either that, or dealing with these mmm... rather dense folks here. Still though, someone will stop by these forums one day because they want to know if Dave wrote Chainmail as Gary was obviously just like this hanger-on. So I still need to post here to clarify about misconceptions like that is being introduced by the same folks on them boards that have not even been keeping accurate records of what my discussions and contributions consist of.

Anyways, good having you stop by, ...am looking forward to seeing some good Tekumel action at GaryCon in March! Ta!

... :p

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116575...Here let me fix this for you.  I doubt you'll find it as good as good conversations about games though.

You're part of that dumpster fire. I like you GameDaddy but you seriously crapped on this thread. You think you're talking about games? No, bullshit. You have not been talking about games. You'e been talking about personal beefs with other posters and boards for hours and hours. You have not said a word about games or gaming in quite a while. All you're doing is airing dirty laundry.

Hence, the need for popcorn, watching you and some other schmucks whine bitch moan and complain to and at and about each other.

You want to talk games? Cool, I am all ears. But this cross-board drama you're engaging in isn't that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116597Game Daddy, you're often a nutburger on these forums, but when you're not freaking the fuck out, you DO have interesting and worthwhile insights into the early days of the hobby, its development and what's been gained and lost over the decades. THIS is what you need to save and preserve as your RPG legacy.

Again, I urge you to be proactive with your treasured knowledge.

BTW, if you're a Metamorphosis Alpha fan, please start a thread discussing MA vs. Gamma World and your thoughts on the original game and the various later developments. Feel free to cut & paste stuff you've posted elsewhere.

FYI, Troll Lords has a Warden Kickstarter happening now. Apparently, Ward mapped out the whole shebang.

Mmm. Thanks for that eccentric compliment, ...I think.

I mainly played and ran Gamma World, however also had a copy of the 1st edition Metamorphosis Alpha by 1980 or so, and used that to support my Gamma World games. My real start with Metamorphosis Alpha didn't begin until I finally met Jim Ward for the first time back in 2002 when he was working for Fast Forward Entertainment. He had re-released a 25th anniversary edition of Metamorphosis Alpha, as Metamorphosis Alpha Universe, and I picked up a copy at Origins because my ex-wife had auctioned my first edition copy before my divorce, sometime in 1984. After that, I was on the mailing list and was notified when the 4th edition of Metamorphosis Alpha was published by MudPuppy games in 2006, and of course, picked up a copy of that as well.

Now Jim always had all of the deck plans for the Starship Warden, and in fact provided an outline of every deck, so the game ref could create adventures on the fly. There was also this great map of an alien asteroid that is like 50 miles in diameter, and one hundred miles high, that is under powered flight, that deliberately collides with the Starship Warden.

One of the interesting things about MA 4th edition is that it also included new rules for designing your own starships including Alpha Class Colony Ships identical to the Starship Warden. In 2006 I designed and wrote up an adventure about the Alpha Class Colony Ship the Mao Tze Tung which had been launched by the Pan-Asian Collective and sent to colonize Delta Trianguli which is a solar system just over 35 light years from Earth and features a G0V type sun. after Jim found out I was working on this, he asked me to send him a copy for editorial approval, prior to me releasing this, and I of course, obliged him.  I did my ship including a full set of deckplans, and the storyline was different from the original adventures onboard the Starship Warden as featured in the original Metamorphosis Alpha.

This adventure debuted at Origins 2007 on July 5th in support of the 4th edition Mudpuppy Games release party there that year for Metamorphosis Alpha. I have included the cover sheet, as well as the players' handout for your reference today.
Metamorphosis Alpha RPG "New Hope" Adventure - 2007 (https://imgur.com/a/Qd09HlV)

An interesting story about this adventure, in 2008 my personal computer at home was hacked, either by the Chinese, or by the NSA (They were both conducting hacking ops based out of the Shanghai province of China in the summer of 2008, and I did manage to backtrack the origin of the attack on my system to that location, before the trail went cold based on my website logs, as the attack had actually originated as a strike going through a website I owned that was being hosted on GoDaddy at the time. When they hacked my PC, they completely wiped my hard drive when they finished so I couldn't conduct a post-forensic examination to determine the software they actually used, or the actual origin location of the attack. All my gaming files were suddenly gone including my original files for this Metamorphosis Alpha adventure. I did have five hard copies of the adventure still, because I had made copies to give away as prizes, to the players who participated in playing at Origins, and had a few leftovers from my small print run.

Jim Ward has a copy, I have a copy, I auctioned a copy off in 2018 at Garycon which went for several hundred dollars, the proceeds of which were donated to Jim Ward's medical fund that year, I have one copy for his son, who requested it last year at GaryCon, but I didn't get the chance to meet him last year at GaryCon to give it to him, and the last copy is sitting on my desk right now. I'm scanning the cover and the player introduction for you guys. If they run out of stretch goal awards, I 'll offer this up as an additional reward for the Starship Warden Kickstarter.

I'll also post in a new thread a bit later on as you requested, about my earlier gaming history with Metamorphosis Alpha, and Gamma World.

Quote from: Mistwell;1116611You're part of that dumpster fire. I like you GameDaddy but you seriously crapped on this thread. You think you're talking about games? No, bullshit. You have not been talking about games. You'e been talking about personal beefs with other posters and boards for hours and hours. You have not said a word about games or gaming in quite a while. All you're doing is airing dirty laundry.

Hence, the need for popcorn, watching you and some other schmucks whine bitch moan and complain to and at and about each other.

You want to talk games? Cool, I am all ears. But this cross-board drama you're engaging in isn't that.

That's good. It is laundry that needs to be aired out and dried. Also It's not cross-board drama you idiot, it is simply the other board mods who claim to support old school gamers failing to support old school games, They are failing to support the people that posted real gaming articles, notes and commentary on their forums, just because they happen to disagree with, they are practicing incompetence, or they have an agenda to suppress other gamers. It's not just me by the way, I just happen to be the one of the few willing to speak out about it. There would be no need for any drama at all IF THOSE MODS ACTUALLY DID THEIR JOB AND LEFT REAL ORIGINAL GAMING ARTICLES AND COMMENTARY POSTED ON THEIR BULLETIN BOARDS AND FORUMS INTACT AND UNMOLESTED!

I posted here,  mainly as an advisory for other gamers that may consider contributing on those fora. It's not my idea to keep the dumpster fire going by the way, it's yours, with your retarded insistence on continuing to post about the matter, while I have today made two separate posts about gaming here on the RPGSite in this thread on one hand, while with the other, I'm beating you trolls with a flaming torch metaphorically speaking, until well, eventually ...you die, or otherwise quit posting non-gaming commentary.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116617and the last copy is sitting on my desk right now. I'm scanning the cover and the player introduction for you guys. If they run out of stretch goal awards, I 'll offer this up as an additional reward for the Starship Warden Kickstarter.

I imagine modern scanning software would be able to extract a word processor file from the pages. It sounds like an interesting project. I like the concept of the players having 17 days to save this massive ship from collapsing into a sun. It's both a seemingly long time and a very finite time, making it a good mini-campaign. I've run several short campaigns with timed arcs and its fun watching the players panic when they approach the last few days.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116617I'll also post in a new thread a bit later on as you requested, about my earlier gaming history with Metamorphosis Alpha, and Gamma World.

Excellent!

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116618There would be no need for any drama at all IF THOSE MODS ACTUALLY DID THEIR JOB AND LEFT REAL ORIGINAL GAMING ARTICLES AND COMMENTARY POSTED ON THEIR BULLETIN BOARDS AND FORUMS INTACT AND UNMOLESTED!

Is that even realistic? Especially over many years? And in an era where forums are fading as many migrate to social media sites instead? Also, mods are volunteers which means their commitment to archiving is going to be very variable.

I barely trust Google docs to keep my files intact.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116598Are you writing your book under that rock? If not, get thee to a word processor!

Like Game Daddy, you're another not-spring-chicken who has unique life experiences regarding our hobby that are very interesting to read and illuminating to learn about.

Amazon has made self-publishing very easy.

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I'm back to writing and to painting, with some of the best games I've ever done in the offing. Looking at having the book done by the end of 2020, when it'll be a free-to-download PDF since all I'm interested in is telling people about our adventures with Phil. All of the old artists in the Original Thursday Night Group are allowing me to use their artwork, so you'll be able to see what we did back in the day in the context that it was created in.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116603Oh Hai! Thanks for popping in! Got a couple things for you real quick!

First, there is a copy of the Tekumel Boxed set up for auction on ebay right now for just under $290 which puts puts it at about the average price of a White D&D Bookset, even though it is much more rare;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Empire-of-the-Petal-Throne-Box-Set-Tekumel-M-A-R-Barker-Huge-MegaExtras/352559708928

(snipped)

Anyways, good having you stop by, ...am looking forward to seeing some good Tekumel action at GaryCon in March! Ta!

Thanks for the notice; I have copies of all three  of the TSR editions, as well as the Gamescience, Tekumel Games, and Tita's editions. I will let the people who have asked me for boxed sets know, though, as they are always looking.

I'm staying out of this one; I only posted because of the overly complicated premise of the original document. It simply wasn't that complicated, back in the day; we were mostly a bunch of friends siting around laughing our fool heads off.

I think you'll be well-catered for at Gary Con. Both Bill Hoyt and Victor Raymond will be running RPGs there. I will not be at the convention, as the Tekumel Foundation raised such a stink with Luke about my going a few years back that it's simply not worth the hassle to either he or I for me to go down there.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1116631Looking at having the book done by the end of 2020, when it'll be a free-to-download PDF since all I'm interested in is telling people about our adventures with Phil.

Excellent news!

Take a look at how the Basic Fantasy RPG being sold on Amazon. You can easily sell on Amazon via POD and set the price at their cost so people could get a dead tree of your work for the price of a fancy coffee. Also, with low cost POD, you can also sign copies and give them as convention goodies or charity events.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116633Excellent news!

Take a look at how the Basic Fantasy RPG being sold on Amazon. You can easily sell on Amazon via POD and set the price at their cost so people could get a dead tree of your work for the price of a fancy coffee. Also, with low cost POD, you can also sign copies and give them as convention goodies or charity events.

Seconded -- I would love to see this book printed (and others like it!).

From the customer side, I've also been really happy getting stuff from Lulu. I don't know how they compare from the author side.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116553Way to deliberately censor and curate history dude. What did you do with my keys?! Tell me!

:cool:

You would find the keys here. Go to https://www.proboards.com/login and login to your proboards account and go to the Dashboard, it will list all of the proboards forums that you belong to. Then go to account settings where you will find
Export Member Data      Export the PMs and Posts of a linked Forum Account.     Export
Export Global Data        Export your Global Account data.                                  Export

This lets you export all of your own data yourself.

The most amusing thing is that I am being accused of censorship by someone who hasn't posted anything over at The Ruins that I disagree with. Odd that someone thinks people who agree with his historical posting would censor it. At any rate I sent him a complete copy of all of his posts and he can easily check that by logging as noted above and doing his own export. Odd also that someone would pick a fight with people who enjoyed and liked his posts, created a sub-forum for his personal use and were willing to provide him any assistance he needed. I guess it just shows that there is no pleasing some people.

I also find it amusing that people want to act like Gary designed everything in a vacuum. As an example he openly and self-admittedly stole the thief class without giving credit. Yep, he did a lot of original work of which we are the beneficiaries. I do find the Church of Saint Gary to get a little tiresome at times. Did Arneson create the game engine that D&D and other RPGs are built on? Yes! Did Gary take Dave's game engine and on that frame work construct D&D and replace many of Dave's mechanics with his own. Yes! Am I grateful that OD&D if not filled with d100 rolls, I sure am.

"Ma'am, this is a chick-fil-a."

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116553Is this what they call a "stinging truth"?

Way to deliberately censor and curate history dude. What did you do with my keys?! Tell me!

1: Only until they decide on the NEW TRUTH!

2: Your keys are behind the couch with your left sock playing FATAL. :eek:

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1116595This. It's what I saw and heard about at the time, and fits everything I've seen and read since. Unless, of course, you want to buy into the myth that Prof. Barker actually invented RPGs, and Dave and Gary stole the idea from him to produce D&D before Dave had actually met Phil. This is, of course, absolute proof that Dave and Gary were actually time travelers.

This will be the NEW TRUTH!!!

Actually I've seen on one or two fora someone try to claim that Barker actually was the originator.

As I noted in an older thread. I think that everyone was converging on this from some central seed concept. At the same time there was this new movement in education to use "simulations" in the classroom. I was part of one wayyyyyy back. And have looked at some academic papers on it that go back to the 60s but did not gain traction till later.

So we have alot of people getting this idea all at once, possibly academia getting it first and it percolating out from there. Or just everyone converging from different angles.

Quote from: Omega;11167081: Only until they decide on the NEW TRUTH!

2: Your keys are behind the couch with your left sock playing FATAL. :eek:

1. So long as we're making stuff up, I have it on good authority that Gygax was a wizard while Arneson was a wild magic sorcerer. D&D wasn't actually created by either of them, it was just a monstrosity that leaked through from another reality when they fucked up their Everlasting Beer Cornucopia ritual. :cool:

2. Well, that certainly explains all these oddly-shaped protein stains! :eek:

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116710D&D wasn't actually created by either of them, it was just a monstrosity that leaked through from another reality

Most convincing argument on this subject to date.

Quote from: Brendan;1116712Most convincing argument on this subject to date.

Buahaha! The power of the narrative is mine now, all mine! :D Now I get why this gives the danger hairs such a kick...

One of the things that I find amazing is the reaction of people, especially younger people, to the original D&D players and the very early groups. Earlier in this thread I stated my objections to the actions and conduct of the moderators and admins of other old school D&D forums and message boards including Murkill, the 0D&D 74' Proboards, and Dragonsfoot. To be sure, these administrators and mods may have been around since the early days of gaming just like many of us early RPG players, but now, in time, they are actively and arbitrarily deleted the content and memories of the people who have participated with them for many years. Such conduct is a great loss to our hobby, both in the lore of the early days, and in maintaining accurate records of what actually happened.

My newest case in point, a thread started over on the 0D&D Proboards just two days ago. Probably around January 6th, or maybe sometime sooner, they are going to delete or remove public access to Mike Mornard's subforum over there. They say he wants to close his account and delete all of his posts, mostly over a disagreement with uh, another member of the board. I'll quote Rafael here...

"We assume that he was displeased with having recently received a temp-ban for an "ad hominem"-attack against another fellow user, an offense that, by itself, usually wouldn't have been worth more than a light tap on the nose. However, in our internal, ongoing conversation with Gronan, it marked the last in a long series of incidents where we had had to admonish him because of his continued - and increasing - hostile, condescending and even outright hysteric behavior towards other members of this community."

You can read this thread for yourself over here;
http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/13846/subforum-closing-save-content

It is time to set the record straight on this. Us folks from the original days of RPG gaming are not inherently hostile, we are not condescending. If I truly were condescending, I wouldn't even bother posting about this on this forum, however I believe there are older gamers, as well as younger gamers who really do want to know more about what gaming was actually like in the early days of D&D, and so will continue to post here so long as the admins and mods welcome our contributions. We are certainly not hysteric in either our behavior, ...or our conduct. ...In fact, quite the contrary, the vast majority of us are good-hearted, and kind, and really just want everyone to enjoy the games that we play, and run. It has been that way since the first days of D&D.

We respond appropriately, ...and with the correct attitude I would add, ...towards people that for no good reason, are hostile, or otherwise disrespectful to us. Most of us original D&D players and Game Masters reside in the United States, where despite the efforts of our corrupt and rotting media, the average American still supports Liberty and Justice, ...for all. For everyone. We work hard to ensure all people are welcome to play our games, and we do our best, to run our games, as neutral arbiters, making the best possible call on unclear rules with an eye towards ensuring a just and fair result for all of the players at our table. We haven't stopped doing that since the first days of RPG gaming. There are times we may make an incorrect, bad, or unbalanced ruling, If you can show us clearly why such a ruling is unfair, It is virtually a certainty that we will proceed in the future by modifying our judgement to accommodate your request, or even reversing our rulings at the gaming table if it is warranted. Same deal with a discussion forum. We actually do want everyone to enjoy playing our games.

What is actually happening though, on the other message forums and boards, is that the original gamers and game masters are in fact being censored, and the admins and mods on the other boards are working to minimize the influence and reach of the original players and gamemasters, just because they don't like what they are hearing. I take issue with that. At least Finarvyn has posted there in the most recent thread objecting to that, so kudos to him for properly supporting old school gaming. Their history of censorship over on the 0D&D 74' ProBoards continues though, and they maintain entire sections of their boards privately, so that any visitors can't even see whether they are properly maintaining the history the history of RPGs, and they are concealing evidence of their actual conduct on the forums. I take issue with all of that, and call them out here to be accountable. If they truly respected the original gamers, gamemasters, and their contributions to role-playing, they would not only restore the concealed content so that everyone could share and comment, but would endeavor to preserve that content so that future generations could also see, share, and comment. That is democracy. That is freedom. and that is Justice for all. Also it is very good for gamers to know the complete history of gaming, not just what a few gatekeepers decide what is important.

Once again, the role of admins and moderators on original RPG message boards should be to prevent crime and fraud, to maintain a neutral stance as an information provider, and to ensure that everyone has the freedom to speak about the games they want, in the manner that they want, without any unwarranted interference. Let the readers and participants decide for themselves what the truth is, anything else is just politics, or providing an inaccurate history of gaming and gamers with a skewed perspective offering a false narrative in place of the entire and true real one.

Just in case they try to conceal their latest good behavior, misbehavior, and misdeeds over on the ProBoards, I have thoughtfully screen-shotted proof of my allegations, which I will provide here as evidence for our dear readers to decide, and will also maintain in a private archive, that I will make available to anyone upon request.

In the next year, I'll be increasing my postings on my own gaming website as well, and hereby offer an open invitation to original gamers and gamemasters to contribute articles, and narratives, about the early history of RPG's and D&D, and will work towards accurately maintaining that history over on my website.

Original Post on the 0D&D Proboard's outlining their incorrect logic and reasoning supporting their "excommunication and censure" of Michael Mornard, one of the original D&D Players in Gary Gygax's D&D campaign.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4047[/ATTACH]

Finarvyn's correct, and just, objection to this decision.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4048[/ATTACH]

Anonymous attempt to access some of the early history of D&D that is maintained over on the 0D&D 74' Proboards. Blocked due to censorship. i.e. "only the clean and properly annointed followers of the 0D&D 74' Proboard are allowed to see the 'true' (...and altered) history of OD&D".
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4049[/ATTACH]

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116603It's either that, or dealing with these mmm... rather dense folks here.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117236It is time to set the record straight on this. Us folks from the original days of RPG gaming are not inherently hostile, we are not condescending.

Uh huh.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117236One of the things that I find amazing is the reaction of people, especially younger people, to the original D&D players and the very early groups. Earlier in this thread I stated my objections to the actions and conduct of the moderators and admins of other old school D&D forums and message boards including Murkill, the 0D&D 74' Proboards, and Dragonsfoot. To be sure, these administrators and mods may have been around since the early days of gaming just like many of us early RPG players, but now, in time, they are actively and arbitrarily deleted the content and memories of the people who have participated with them for many years. Such conduct is a great loss to our hobby, both in the lore of the early days, and in maintaining accurate records of what actually happened.

It's bad enough that you have to lie about The Ruins of Murkhill with your unfounded censorship claims, but you add insult to injury by grouping us with Dragonsfoot and ODD74 who block us because we defend the early RPG players and defend original school gaming. Michael Mornard got his panties in a bunch and rage quit for unknown reasons, but we have not deleted any of his stuff.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117236My newest case in point, a thread started over on the 0D&D Proboards just two days ago. Probably around January 6th, or maybe sometime sooner, they are going to delete or remove public access to Mike Mornard's subforum over there. They say he wants to close his account and delete all of his posts, mostly over a disagreement with uh, another member of the board. I'll quote Rafael here...

"We assume that he was displeased with having recently received a temp-ban for an "ad hominem"-attack against another fellow user, an offense that, by itself, usually wouldn't have been worth more than a light tap on the nose. However, in our internal, ongoing conversation with Gronan, it marked the last in a long series of incidents where we had had to admonish him because of his continued - and increasing - hostile, condescending and even outright hysteric behavior towards other members of this community."

We (speaking as the Admin) at The Ruins think deleting Michael sub-forum is asinine, but the same ass posting that proposal is the same ass that deleted a whole subforum at ODD74 called "Ye Olde" and several hundred posts by The Perilous Dreamer. Yep, we have many  reasons to detest censorship. For about two years TPD's signature at ODD74 had the links altered from .com to .cm so they would not work, until they finally deleted the signature altogether. There are many things like this that people come and tell us about.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117236What is actually happening though, on the other message forums and boards, is that the original gamers and game masters are in fact being censored, and the admins and mods on the other boards are working to minimize the influence and reach of the original players and gamemasters, just because they don't like what they are hearing.

Except none of that is happening at The Ruins. We are ostracized by the Dragonsfoots and the ODD74s because we are working to maximize the influence and reach of original players and referees and they definitely don't like it when they hear us do that. Those sites are all about taking playstyles that came along at the end of the 70s and early 80s and pretending that those are the way things were in the 1970-1975 era.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117236In the next year, I'll be increasing my postings on my own gaming website as well, and hereby offer an open invitation to original gamers and gamemasters to contribute articles, and narratives, about the early history of RPG's and D&D, and will work towards accurately maintaining that history over on my website.

We (speaking as the Admin) at The Ruins, hope that you follow through on this, because we (again speaking as the Admin) look forward to reading everything posted.

QuoteFinarvyn's correct, and just, objection to this decision.

Yep, Finarvyn is just as much a victim in all of this as the rest of us. His good name has been dragged through the mud by the actions of the paranoid Dummkopf he is saddled with.

Oh and the whole thing about a huge portion of their forum not being available to read unless you are a member and having privacy invading requirements for joining (send us proof of you IRL identity) is for the sole purpose of keeping TPD from being able to read any of it. The whole hidden information thing was imported from The Comeback Inn where a huge portion of their site is hidden from non-member and unapproved members. Yep, the paranoid Dummkopf requires members to request permission to be approved to read huge portions of The Comeback Inn. Also people can't just join ODD74 to read stuff either. A few years back ODD74 deleted over 1200 accounts IIRC that had 0-10 posts.  In a thread titled "Why join but not post" Finarvyn grumps about people who don't post, http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/2420/why-join-post back in 2009. At that time he figured if you don't post why join, just lurk as a non-member. So a few years later he escalated to just deleting a ton of accounts, again instigated and encouraged by the paranoid Dummkopf. Of course now you can't just lurk and read, you have to be a member to read what they now call premium content.

Oh and one other thing. One of the guys who helped build The Ruins and was a global mod there, he left and became a mod at ODD74. You know why he left, he left because he thought Michael Mornard and Rob Kuntz were too rude and he wanted them slapped down and put in their place and told to play nice and TPD would not do that. When I became the Admin and took over the Admin account, I gained access to all the PMs that TPD had to deal with. Let me give you one example, TPD received dozens of pms complaining about Michael Mornard, TPD spent pages and pages of typing explaining to people that they should ignore a lot of what Micheal says that "hurts their feelings" because Michael, like TPD, is in considerable pain and discomfort everyday of his life and that accounts for a lot of his grumpiness and knowing that you should be able to just ignore the snark. I am not nearly as long suffering as TPD.

*We (speaking as the Admin) means speaking for the whole 5 member mod team. That applies to every "we" I have used above.

Im starting to wonder if those other boards, Dragonsfoot and ODD74, have been, or are in the process of, being infiltrated by that storygamer/Forge/GNS/Swine cult that has been trying to edit the history of RPGs to suit their warped agenda. The hydra has many heads indeed.

As for Mike getting a ban for repeated infractions. How is that in any way surprising? He DOES come across as condescending and hostile at times. Sometimes deservedly so. But he also has a very bad tendency to push his version of "one true way"ism which is demonstrably off kilter - and he knows it! He knows it because he has bitched incessantly about the very fact that right out the gate people started playing D&D in every imaginable way once it hit the shelves! In this case apparently magnified by him posting over on a fora that is getting gradually hostile to the idea of their fantasy bubble of how D&D was being broke.

BGG would have banned him in record time.

Quote from: Omega;1117254Im starting to wonder if those other boards, Dragonsfoot and ODD74, have been, or are in the process of, being infiltrated by that storygamer/Forge/GNS/Swine cult that has been trying to edit the history of RPGs to suit their warped agenda. The hydra has many heads indeed.

Um, no.  

I'm surprised you don't recognize the royal we being used in this very thread.  Unless you think its normal that some boards have a limitless stream of water-carrying posters willing to write walls of text to plead the case of their founders.

As for the People Who Played With Gary and Dave - some of them expect some sort of apostolic succession.  And for the very narrow purpose of "what was playing with those guys like/history you saw", that's probably appropriate.  But not so much for "my opinion on any gaming subject in general should be received with reverence regardless of delivery".  Tens or hundreds of thousands of gamers now have the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice creating and running games.  The handful of years headstart these guys received is no longer a gulf that makes their observations about gaming "in general" more useful than anyone else's.  Some really have a hard time with people treating them like anyone else who's insulting.

Quote from: Omega;1117254I'm starting to wonder if those other boards, Dragonsfoot and ODD74, have been, or are in the process of, being infiltrated by that storygamer/Forge/GNS/Swine/SJW cult that has been trying to edit the history of RPGs to suit their warped agenda. The hydra has many heads indeed..

I fixed it for you and the answer is yes.

Quote from: Omega;1117254As for Mike getting a ban for repeated infractions. How is that in any way surprising? He DOES come across as condescending and hostile at times. Sometimes deservedly so. But he also has a very bad tendency to push his version of "one true way"ism which is demonstrably off kilter - and he knows it! He knows it because he has bitched incessantly about the very fact that right out the gate people started playing D&D in every imaginable way once it hit the shelves! In this case apparently magnified by him posting over on a fora that is getting gradually hostile to the idea of their fantasy bubble of how D&D was being broke.

Two things, one, Mike is in constant pain, many of us are of the opinion that he would be less difficult if that were not the case and two, Arnesonian School Gaming was its own style, Arneson did not believe that D&D could be broke and he (and initially Gygax) were thrilled that D&D was played every imaginable way once it hit the shelves, that was what was supposed to happen and that is what Mike (and some others) forgets. But that does not change the fact that some of us want to talk about Arnesonian School Gaming and not the 1000 other ways to play D&D. Some of us are using Arnesonian School Gaming now to replace old school gaming since that term is so diluted it has lost all useful meaning. I was introduced to the change a few hours ago, but it makes imminent sense to me. The discussion of Arnesonian School Gaming is not welcome at Dragonsfoot or ODD74.

Quote from: EOTB;1117263As for the People Who Played With Gary and Dave - some of them expect some sort of apostolic succession.  And for the very narrow purpose of "what was playing with those guys like/history you saw", that's probably appropriate.  But not so much for "my opinion on any gaming subject in general should be received with reverence regardless of delivery".  Tens or hundreds of thousands of gamers now have the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice creating and running games.  The handful of years headstart these guys received is no longer a gulf that makes their observations about gaming "in general" more useful than anyone else's.  Some really have a hard time with people treating them like anyone else who's insulting.

Strip out the module users and you are left with the tens or hundreds (not thousands) of gamers who have the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice creating (unique home brew game worlds) and running games in those worlds. So yes, those like Jim Ward, Rob Kuntz, Jeff Berry, Michael Mornard and others who played with Gary, Dave, Wesely and Barker do deserve special treatment and consideration where others do not. There is a big gulf between those from the early days and those from after AD&D came on the scene. Between those two groups are the small group of those who picked D&D up in those early years and learned it on their own without any connection to Gary or Dave or their circles. They do not deserve special treatment, but neither do they deserve hostility from the later group.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117264I fixed it for you and the answer is yes.

and that is what Mike (and some others) forgets. But that does not change the fact that some of us want to talk about Arnesonian School Gaming and not the 1000 other ways to play D&D. Some of us are using Arnesonian School Gaming now to replace old school gaming since that term is so diluted it has lost all useful meaning. I was introduced to the change a few hours ago, but it makes imminent sense to me. The discussion of Arnesonian School Gaming is not welcome at Dragonsfoot or ODD74.

1: There is that. But wasnt sure if the SJW crowd were actually digging into OD&D or just focused on AD&D and their fake list of Gary's "sins".

2: "old school" is a term I despise along with "murderhobo" as examples of the derogatory labels storygamers and their ilk love to apply to anything they dissapprove of. It never had any meaning to begin with as there never was a "new school" as everything was being tried right out the gate.

I think more apt is to want to talk about the playstyles that developed from the early groups. The differences in DMing styles between Arneson, Gygax, etc. Mike himself has noted on multiple occasions how even Gary and Dave alone had differing styles. The players too. All accounts show that they were often approaching things in different ways even then.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117251It's bad enough that you have to lie about The Ruins of Murkhill with your unfounded censorship claims, but you add insult to injury by grouping us with Dragonsfoot and ODD74 who block us because we defend the early RPG players and defend original school gaming. Michael Mornard got his panties in a bunch and rage quit for unknown reasons, but we have not deleted any of his stuff.

Ehh? My claim to censorship from Murkhill is valid, You claimed not to delete the posts but rather "moved" them instead. If they are moved to a place that may be logically consistent for you all, however is a place that is not easily located on the subforums, how is that, in any way, ...not censoring original posts? I still believe there are missing posts as well that were once on Murkhill forums from both Rob Kuntz's forum, as well as the Wilderlands forums there, because I remember posting more, and this includes discussions that both me and Rob participated in, and in the wilderlands discussions. He noticed this as well with his posts.  I believe that is one of the reasons he stopped posting there, because he rightfully felt there were mods there that were modifying the placement of forums, and moving posts, in a quite unethical manner. Also some of the posts that are gone, ...may have been from before you were a mod there, so you wouldn't have seen the originals.  

What I do know for sure is that I was permabanned from the 0D&D 74' Proboards, and my posts were moved and/or deleted over on Murkhill. Tell me how I should feel when all of this happens on forums that are supposed to specifically support original Dungeons and Dragons and claims to maintain the original history of RPG's? If those were your posts, you'd be a bit miffed, perhaps even hostile as well, ehh?

As to Michael Mornard, everyone claims he is hostile or condescending, yet my personal experience in this regards differs remarkably from what is claimed online, My experience differs in my online correspondence with him, here, over on the 0D&D boards, over on Dragonsfoot, over on Murkhill, in private emails, and directly when I meet him during gaming at GaryCon every year. I find he has character, his posts are colorful, and may from time-to-time contain unorthodox language, however have never felt that he was deliberately trying to damage, distort, or conceal the knowledge and early lore of Dungeons and Dragons and roleplaying in general. Can you explain why our views diverge so much regarding this, because I can't? I can only go by what I know from talking in person with him, and in corresponding with him.

As to the original D&D playstyle as it evolved from 1970-1975, before the 0D&D rules were published, each group had its' own playstyle that evolved directly as a result of genesis within the groups where they made their own decisions within the group how to best intrepret and play the game. Even after the publication of the little brown books (...and the whitebooks, which we first saw in 1977 by the way. My first D&D boxed set was 3rd printing of the little brown books, which I traded for a 4th edition whitebookset, a copy of the JG Ready Ref Sheets, a Bluebox Holmes D&D basic set, and a handful of polyhedral dice, even back in 1977 the first edition of D&D was considered a collectors item. The very first D&D games I played were exclusively using wooden 3d6 that were included in the lbb), even after the publication of D&D and the lbb, different playstyles evolved based on rules that were adopted by local gaming clubs. I have the Caltech Warlock rules, as well as first edition copies of the Princeton University D&D Club rules. I wanted to get a copy of the Notre Dame D&D rules (and yes they had a D&D Variant too!), but found that the Alumni who had played original D&D were no longer sponsoring the RPG club up there. That I learned when I traveled up to Notre Dame  in 2011 to run original D&D games for the University RPG Club there. PM me if you want a link to where you might be able to find a copy of Warlock, The Caltech D&D rules, or the Princeton D&D Club original D&D rules.

Our Colorado Group evolved our own play style from 1977 to 1979, and pretty much adopted rules from both the White 74' Bookset as well as Judges Guild to run D&D games in our homes and at Ghengis Con and Tacticon in the winter. We had a few home rules, but never published our own D&D houserules.

To say there was One True Way(tm) of playing D&D, even in 1974, would be a fallacy, considering all the evidence that is easily available, that contradicts that statement. For any message board or forum to claim otherwise, even privately, is a false narrative, and a false history, of how Dungeons and Dragons specifically, and Roleplaying Games in general, evolved.

Also, in terms of schools of D&D, My original GM taught me to play using the Arnesonian School as that is being referred in this discussion, and it remains my favorite style of play, both as a player and a GM.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117270So yes, those like Jim Ward, Rob Kuntz, Jeff Berry, Michael Mornard and others who played with Gary, Dave, Wesely and Barker do deserve special treatment and consideration where others do not.

:rolleyes:

Could we knock it off with the fellation?

From an academic and historical standpoint, I'm sure that what these people wrote, did, and thought, is interesting. Some of it may even be informative. We should try to preserve that information, because history is important.

But they don't get "special treatment." They're not saints. They were just the first neckbeards playing elf-games in their basements.

Quote from: Omega;11172721: There is that. But wasnt sure if the SJW crowd were actually digging into OD&D or just focused on AD&D and their fake list of Gary's "sins".

2: "old school" is a term I despise along with "murderhobo" as examples of the derogatory labels storygamers and their ilk love to apply to anything they dissapprove of. It never has any meaning to gebin with as there never was a "new school" as everything was being tried right out the gate.

I think more apt is to want to talk about the playstyles that developed from the early groups. The differences in DMing styles between Arneson, Gygax, etc. Mike himself has noted on multiple occasions how even Gary and Dave alone had differing styles. The players too. All accounts show that they were often approaching things in different ways even then.

The SJWs are mainly focused on AD&D and their fake list of Gary's "sins". Their involvement in OD&D is more tangential and focused on who is allowed to be part of the in crowd and who are the unwashed.

The fiction out there right now (popular and mainstream) is that both pre- and early D&D were all about the "murderhobo" style and they preach that as THE ONE TRUE WAY. Where the truth is that the "murderhobo" style is very popular with teenage boys and immature adults, that is not a criticism just the facts. Some people enjoy that style of gaming and nothing wrong with that.

Gary himself noted that he and Dave did things completely differently and that is why he enjoyed playing in Dave's game.

Yes, 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.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117275:rolleyes:

Could we knock it off with the fellation?

From an academic and historical standpoint, I'm sure that what these people wrote, did, and thought, is interesting. Some of it may even be informative. We should try to preserve that information, because history is important.

But they don't get "special treatment." They're not saints. They were just the first neckbeards playing elf-games in their basements.

You may be gay, but I am not, so that is not what I am doing, I was stating the facts. And neckbeards is an insult that the ignorant use to devalue anything we older folks say.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117276The fiction out there right now (popular and mainstream) is that both pre- and early D&D were all about the "murderhobo" style and they preach that as THE ONE TRUE WAY. Where the truth is that the "murderhobo" style is very popular with teenage boys and immature adults, that is not a criticism just the facts. Some people enjoy that style of gaming and nothing wrong with that.

We completely agree that this is total fiction. In fact, what is referred to as the "Murderhobo" style was not our 0D&D play style even right from the from time I started playing and running D&D back in 1977. That didn't evolve until much later, at its' earliest, I saw elements of this play style at our gaming table back in 1980, and it came right along with with AD&D and the pre-published TSR D&D modules.

Our style of playing D&D rewarded experience points for making creative and unorthodox solutions to solve problems, awarded XP for finding and disarming traps (Both physical and political), awarded xp for participation, as in getting xp for starting and finishing an entire play session, and even xp awards for original thinking, problem solving, and even witty or original roleplaying.

The Murderhobo style was established by GMs that didn't want to spend time creating their fantasy environment, and went instead to straight competitive play, competing directly for prizes and treasures. Because they had not invested personal time and energy into creating their own fantasy game worlds, they were not particularly attached to those gaming worlds, and would let the players run free, because they had no checks and balances that would motivate players to choose a virtuous path. Interestingly enough, nature itself provides such checks and balances for any evolving species in real life.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117277You may be gay, but I am not, so that is not what I am doing, I was stating the facts.

Really. It's a "fact" that old fucks should get special treatment, because they happened to be first.

Okay boomer.

QuoteAnd neckbeards is an insult that the ignorant use to devalue anything we older folks say.

I like how you apparently didn't read what I said about what said neckbeards did, and just jumped right on that.

I'm sorry your feelings get hurt over being called names. Wait, I mean the other one: I mean I don't give two fucks. If you're so thin-skinned that that bothers you, you're not worth talking to anyway.

If 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?

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117279Really. It's a "fact" that old fucks should get special treatment, because they happened to be first.

Okay boomer.

I'll tell you why old fucks should get the special treatment, since you really want to know... (...not, it seems you're just here to insult old folk, instead of really talk about games)...

We were there. We saw how the games were played. We observed how they were supposed to be played, we ran and played the games, we modified the rules to make the game even better, and we did so well at all of that, that it evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry, an industry that supports the livelihood of tens of thousands of people now, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million, perhaps more than several million, and this industry also contributes to the happiness and well-being of many millions of people. You're welcome.

Perhaps you can contribute to that legacy, or create your own better legacy (I'd really like to see that!), instead of just running around here and shitting all over other people.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274Ehh? My claim to censorship from Murkhill is valid, You claimed not to delete the posts but rather "moved" them instead. If they are moved to a place that may be logically consistent for you all, however is a place that is not easily located on the subforums, how is that, in any way, ...not censoring original posts? I still believe there are missing posts as well that were once on Murkhill forums from both Rob Kuntz's forum, as well as the Wilderlands forums there, because I remember posting more, and this includes discussions that both me and Rob participated in, and in the wilderlands discussions. He noticed this as well with his posts.  I believe that is one of the reasons he stopped posting there, because he rightfully felt there were mods there that were modifying the placement of forums, and moving posts, in a quite unethical manner. Also some of the posts that are gone, ...may have been from before you were a mod there, so you wouldn't have seen the originals.

Nothing by Rob was deleted, nothing by you was deleted. I went looking in regard to the Wilderlands discussions. There were some Wilderlands discussions that were started in Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands area(NOT THE MAIN WILDERLANDS AREA), that is where they were started, so I moved them recently to the Wilderlands area where they belonged but never were before. Yes the forums did get some rearrangement and most people can now find things easier. As for your forum being moved to a sub-forum area it was moved because you abandoned it for a long period. You start posting and it goes back to the main page. Or if it gets expanded to something of size, like Rob Kuntz's forum, then it stays on the front page forever. Nothing has been deleted from Rob Kuntz's forum, absolutely nothing. That was a condition that TPD made before he stepped down. If you are having trouble finding things I am sorry about that. But I sent you a copy of every post you have made at The Ruins. Please look at it and if you tell me which ones you think should be someplace else I will look at that with you. Rob Kuntz's forum was completely locked down at his request. So nothing gets moved in or out of there.

Now along the way a very small number of threads where temporarily hidden when they became very disruptive. Those disruptive people stay at ODD74 and no longer come around. As for those threads I moved them back to their original locations once the furor died down. Sometimes thread have to be locked. I try to go back and unlock them after a time. I do not like hidden or locked threads. Now some threads are locked in the Announcements area (now called the Town Crier) but those are management not discussion threads.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274What I do know for sure is that I was permabanned from the 0D&D 74' Proboards, and my posts were moved and/or deleted over on Murkhill. Tell me how I should feel when all of this happens on forums that are supposed to specifically support original Dungeons and Dragons and claims to maintain the original history of RPG's? If those were your posts, you'd be a bit miffed, perhaps even hostile as well, ehh?

All of us who were perma-banned who were high posters like TPD or like Mormanyoyoman or minimal posters like me who had their accounts deleted during the 1200+ account purge feel your pain.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274As to Michael Mornard, everyone claims he is hostile or condescending, yet my personal experience in this regards differs remarkably from what is claimed online, My experience differs in my online correspondence with him, here, over on the 0D&D boards, over on Dragonsfoot, over on Murkhill, in private emails, and directly when I meet him during gaming at GaryCon every year. I find he has character, his posts are colorful, and may from time-to-time contain unorthodox language, however have never felt that he was deliberately trying to damage, distort, or conceal the knowledge and early lore of Dungeons and Dragons and roleplaying in general. Can you explain why our views diverge so much regarding this, because I can't? I can only go by what I know from talking in person with him, and in corresponding with him.

You and I do not disagree about Michael Mornard. He is indeed very nice in private conversations and has much to add if people are open to it.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274As to the original D&D playstyle as it evolved from 1970-1975, before the 0D&D rules were published, each group had its' own playstyle that evolved directly as a result of genesis within the groups where they made their own decisions within the group how to best intrepret and play the game. Even after the publication of the little brown books (...and the whitebooks, which we first saw in 1977 by the way. My first D&D boxed set was 3rd printing of the little brown books, which I traded for a 4th edition whitebookset, a copy of the JG Ready Ref Sheets, a Bluebox Holmes D&D basic set, and a handful of polyhedral dice, even back in 1977 the first edition of D&D was considered a collectors item. The very first D&D games I played were exclusively using wooden 3d6 that were included in the lbb), even after the publication of D&D and the lbb, different playstyles evolved based on rules that were adopted by local gaming clubs. I have the Caltech Warlock rules, as well as first edition copies of the Princeton University D&D Club rules. I wanted to get a copy of the Notre Dame D&D rules (and yes they had a D&D Variant too!), but found that the Alumni who had played original D&D were no longer sponsoring the RPG club up there. That I learned when I traveled up to Notre Dame  in 2011 to run original D&D games for the University RPG Club there. PM me if you want a link to where you might be able to find a copy of Warlock, The Caltech D&D rules, or the Princeton D&D Club original D&D rules.

I have the original Warlock rules AFAIK, but I would love to have the all of the above, so will send you that PM.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274Our Colorado Group evolved our own play style from 1977 to 1979, and pretty much adopted rules from both the White 74' Bookset as well as Judges Guild to run D&D games in our homes and at Ghengis Con and Tacticon in the winter. We had a few home rules, but never published our own D&D houserules.

Yep, as did many of us, I think many of us wished we had published them now and have kept records of our games.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274To say there was One True Way(tm) of playing D&D, even in 1974, would be a fallacy, considering all the evidence that is easily available, that contradicts that statement. For any message board or forum to claim otherwise, even privately, is a false narrative, and a false history, of how Dungeons and Dragons specifically, and Roleplaying Games in general, evolved.

Very true.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117274Also, in terms of schools of D&D, My original GM taught me to play using the Arnesonian School as that is being referred in this discussion, and it remains my favorite style of play, both as a player and a GM.

Again quite true. TPD teaches that (using the new term Arnesonian School) is that that method of playing is implicit in the rules and can be learned from the 3 LBBs without outside help if you have a background in older fantasy literature and the pulps as well as at least tangential wargaming such as Risk, Battleship and other non-sand table wargames, although if you played sand table wargames that gives you a leg up.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117278We completely agree that this is total fiction. In fact, what is referred to as the "Murderhobo" style was not our 0D&D play style even right from the from time I started playing and running D&D back in 1977. That didn't evolve until much later, at its' earliest, I saw elements of this play style at our gaming table back in 1980, and it came right along with with AD&D and the pre-published TSR D&D modules.

Our style of playing D&D rewarded experience points for making creative and unorthodox solutions to solve problems, awarded XP for finding and disarming traps (Both physical and political), awarded xp for participation, as in getting xp for starting and finishing an entire play session, and even xp awards for original thinking, problem solving, and even witty or original roleplaying.

The Murderhobo style was established by GMs that didn't want to spend time creating their fantasy environment, and went instead to straight competitive play, competing directly for prizes and treasures. Because they had not invested personal time and energy into creating their own fantasy game worlds, they were not particularly attached to those gaming worlds, and would let the players run free, because they had no checks and balances that would motivate players to choose a virtuous path. Interestingly enough, nature itself provides such checks and balances for any evolving species in real life.

Absolutely on all points.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117279Really. It's a "fact" that old fucks should get special treatment, because they happened to be first.

Okay boomer.

I like how you apparently didn't read what I said about what said neckbeards did, and just jumped right on that.

I'm sorry your feelings get hurt over being called names. Wait, I mean the other one: I mean I don't give two fucks. If you're so thin-skinned that that bothers you, you're not worth talking to anyway.

You didn't hurt my feelings you just lost all credibility. And the "OK boomer" that just convinced me that you know nothing of value. That is OK, in about 40 years you will understand how little you know right now.

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?

Opera, lets you SAVE AS PDF directly. And you can use Primo pdf to stitch them into a single file with all the pages in order.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117281I'll tell you why old fucks should get the special treatment, since you really want to know... (...not, it seems you're just here to insult old folk, instead of really talk about games)...

:rolleyes:

I just get tired of the amount of cocksucking that goes on when talking about the greybeards. If you'd, y'know, actually read my first post here in this thread, you'd have noted that I did indeed say that what the older crowd has done is important and should be preserved. But there's a difference between "their knowledge, stories, and experiments should be preserved and annotated correctly, without being fucked with by SJW jackasses," and "worship the ground St. Gary and St. Arneson walked on," and some of you people seem to lean way more to the latter.

Instead I got a bunch of pixelbitching over the word "neckbeard," because you can't be arsed to read and we live in an age where everybody throws a shit fit the moment anybody says anything vaguely negative in their general direction.

So guess what, grandpa: you're just like the "special little snowflakes" you like to bitch about. Old fucks are as dumb as young fucks, nothing new under the sun.

Quote from: ElBorakYou didn't hurt my feelings you just lost all credibility. And the "OK boomer" that just convinced me that you know nothing of value. That is OK, in about 40 years you will understand how little you know right now.

Yep, I know nothing of value because I'm shit-talking you for being an old fuck who can't get over that I called old people "neckbeards."

Fucking hell. Be careful handling paper, old man, I think you'd bleed out if it looked at you funny, your skin is so thin.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117281I'll tell you why old fucks should get the special treatment, since you really want to know... (...not, it seems you're just here to insult old folk, instead of really talk about games)...

We were there.

Hey snowflake. You're not specially for having existed.

If you have information you think is important for others to see and you want them to see it, post it yourself in a location you control. Don't whine like a little bitch that someone else isn't caretaking content you posted to their board, at their expense, the way you want them to. You sound like an entitled millennial whiner.

Quote from: Omega;1117254Im starting to wonder if those other boards, Dragonsfoot and ODD74, have been, or are in the process of, being infiltrated by that storygamer/Forge/GNS/Swine cult that has been trying to edit the history of RPGs to suit their warped agenda. The hydra has many heads indeed.

As for Mike getting a ban for repeated infractions. How is that in any way surprising? He DOES come across as condescending and hostile at times. Sometimes deservedly so. But he also has a very bad tendency to push his version of "one true way"ism which is demonstrably off kilter - and he knows it! He knows it because he has bitched incessantly about the very fact that right out the gate people started playing D&D in every imaginable way once it hit the shelves! In this case apparently magnified by him posting over on a fora that is getting gradually hostile to the idea of their fantasy bubble of how D&D was being broke.

BGG would have banned him in record time.

As to people playing D&D "every imaginable way," I can attest to that. Only one DM I knew in the New Haven area (out of seven) ran Rules as Written and all of the campaigns that I experienced, including the one using RaW, were really good to great. But we all called our games D&D because it was the root of the hobby. From what I've seen, the OSR releases are closer to RaW than what  most of us did. I don't remember that changing when modules started appearing but very few of us used modules. I ran "Keep on the Borderland" but that's about it.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117291:rolleyes:

I just get tired of the amount of cocksucking that goes on when talking

The 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.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1117291:rolleyes: So guess what, grandpa: you're just like the "special little snowflakes" you like to bitch about. Old fucks are as dumb as young fucks, nothing new under the sun.

Your contributions and legacy to creating better roleplaying games here is duly noted, Thank you.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1117294As to people playing D&D "every imaginable way," I can attest to that. Only one DM I knew in the New Haven area (out of seven) ran Rules as Written and all of the campaigns that I experienced, including the one using RaW, were really good to great. But we all called our games D&D because it was the root of the hobby. From what I've seen, the OSR releases are closer to RaW than what  most of us did. I don't remember that changing when modules started appearing but very few of us used modules. I ran "Keep on the Borderland" but that's about it.

Yep, that is my experience. Many of the OSR releases are closer to RaW than what  most of us did and that had a purpose in the beginning, but I think it would have wider appeal now if the OSR releases were more variable like bitd.

Quote from: Mistwell;1117292Hey snowflake. You're not specially for having existed.

If you have information you think is important for others to see and you want them to see it, post it yourself in a location you control. Don't whine like a little bitch that someone else isn't caretaking content you posted to their board, at their expense, the way you want them to. You sound like an entitled millennial whiner.

You 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.

You 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.

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 (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41545-D-amp-D-5e-Homebrew-SteamWorks-A-Guide-to-Technological-Power) 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 (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41545-D-amp-D-5e-Homebrew-SteamWorks-A-Guide-to-Technological-Power) 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?

That you had discussions with "Forest O'Grady" who also just so happens to hive mind the dislike of "other people" who've been banned from DF and ODD74, and have within a few days been convinced that your original assertion was wrong but these other forums (who have no love of the Irish) require their own broadcast warnings, is precious.  We are such ignorant kids, what would we do without your guidance?  

And not only were you a guardian of D&D, but the internet too?  I hope we fund a Mount Rushmore-sized monument to all boomers everywhere, as clearly they handed everyone a golden age that gen-xers must have f'd up somehow.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117334Ummm. no. It is 100% on them. Why do you think I called them out here on an open forum

Because you're an entitled snowflake who said he thinks of himself as special for merely having existed. That's why you called them out.

Quote, 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.

All of which you should have done in the first place rather than putting it on someone else's property which you had no control over. Which is why it's not on them (they owe you nothing) but on you for having put it there in the first place.

Quoteso 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.

Oh good. You admit you made a mistake. Progress!

QuoteAs 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?

Hey jackass, in terms of computers and the history of the Internet I am as old as you and I am betting more experiencde than you. My first was a mainframe prior to personal computers, which I learned to program on punchcards. I then had the Heathkit first home computer, which my family and I built (no monitor, no keyboard, just lights and switches and a printer eventually). Then we had Commodores and TRS 80s and such. Then I used BBSes, and helped build one of the largest. Then I was using the edu system with things like PINE to access email, and FINGER to find people. Eventually I went on to work for an ISP, one of the earliest ones, which became one of the major ones.

The boards you went to do not date back to arpanet. They are all modern boards which their administrators PAY FOR AND OWN. They're not your property, they are their property. They owe you nothing at all. There is no contractual relationship you have between yourself and them concerning things you post there for free which they pay for when they pay for the connectivity and space and OS and message board software and all the other things they're paying for to run it. They do not in fact have a " responsibility to do their best to ensure that forum is available for everyone to access and use. " Where does your entitled butt come up with this supposed responsibility? What is the source of that responsibility? THEY OWE YOU NOTHING. You did not "build the internet". In fact by putting up a message board, THEY have built it more than you! You're again making the "I existed and I am older therefore I am entitled and special" argument.

I do share information and make the world better for gaming...I just don't complain about it if I do it on someone elses message board and they decide to take it down. Because I am not entitled to their services for merely existing.

I guess I am finally starting to genuinely understand the phrase "OK Boomer".

Quote from: Mistwell;1117346The boards you went to do not date back to arpanet. They are all modern boards which their administrators PAY FOR AND OWN. They're not your property, they are their property....

...rest of this bullshit totally snipped i.e. vasectomy of the bile and hate...

I guess I am finally starting to genuinely understand the phrase "OK Boomer".

As usual, you are wrong. Proboards from their home page - Simple, fast, easy to use, and fun.
ProBoards is the largest host of free forums on the Internet. We provide the best forums and customer service to help your online community thrive.


and from the 0D&D Proboards
Just a few random thoughts.
"Play well with others. Even if you don't agree with someone, try to be nice or get thrown out.
Try to stay on topic. If you have a thread "hijack" maybe start a new thread.
Try to stick with the subject material. The goal here is to discuss OD&D. If you have some "well, AD&D does it this way..." statements, that's okay. Just try not to go too far afield. There is a "General" section for topics that don't seem to fit anywhere else."
and...

"To answer your second question, this board has mainly been brought to life in order to discuss D&D as it was before AD&D (and thus before the Rules Cyclopedia you mentioned). The reason is, that there are several boards out there discussing "classic D&D", but there was no board especially dealing with the Original D&D only. As Finarvyn stated in his initial post, it is not prohibited to talk about other versions of the game as well, but merely as in comparing rather than in subject of a topic on its own. "

and this all happened a year before I was banned on the 0D&D 74' Proboards. I had no idea until just now, honestly...


Aug 6, 2017 at 10:25am oakesspalding likes this
Quote
Post by irishwarrior on Aug 6, 2017 at 10:25am
talysman Avatar
Aug 5, 2017 at 1:17pm talysman said:
I'm a little disappointed that the forum software resets deleted user's post counts to zero. I feel that none of the users who deleted their accounts were around very long
Not around very long? I can't see the post count either but the earliest post I could find by samsonandsolomon was
samsonandsolomon
Deleted Member

It's gonna' be an Old School Christmas. . .
Dec 23, 2007 at 9:44pm

Post by samsonandsolomon on Dec 23, 2007 at 9:44pm
We hate spam, internet or in the can, both are vile! Ugh! Yuk!

We have the suspicion that we are getting something D&D related for Christmas. Less than 48 hours and we'll find out. :) :)

So that poster was around at least 9 years plus and I read his deletion post and it was clear that he quit because the global mod told him that he would have think and believe a certain way to be a member here. But apparently none of you find that Orwellian situation offensive.

As for thebloodynine I can't see his post count either but his earliest post I could find was
thebloodynine
Deleted Member

Introductions
Dec 17, 2010 at 3:38pm

Post by thebloodynine on Dec 17, 2010 at 3:38pm
Hi all, this a great site! Tons and tons of old school goodness. I will be busy reading for months. Old time, old school player and referee. Haven't played in years, but miss it all the time. This seems to be the largest OD&D forum on the internet. Thanks greatly to the admin!

This poster was around for over six years and having read his deletion post, I see that he quit because the global mod made it clear that some posters would get special treatment and could not be questioned. But apparently none of you find that Orwellian approach offensive.

Maybe the admin should make a list of the things members have to believe on the social and political spectrum to be allowed to be a participating member here. Then we can each decide if we want to bow our knee at those altars or not. I have a low post count too and I mainly lurk too, just like these recently departed members. I have been around for 10 years and this is my 9th post. I understand since I lurk my view won't mean anything, but it should raise questions when someone, the global mod, offends long term quiet members that had never before made any trouble feel offended and unwelcome to the point that they delete their accounts.

So I ask, what are our shibboleths that distinguish the required beliefs of the "in-group" and allow exclusion of the beliefs of the "out-group?" I saw the term hate speech tossed around, but I did not see any hate speech. I also saw the terms "-isms and -phobias" used to slander and libel a members personal moral belief system and that this belief "test" would be used to ban people. I think that is very troubling and I do not understand why it is being applauded.
oakesspalding
Level 7 Enchanter
****

oakesspalding Avatar

Posts: 576

   
Aug 6, 2017 at 11:07am  
Quote
Post Options
Post by oakesspalding on Aug 6, 2017 at 11:07am
With a few potential caveats - among them that there may have been certain things going on behind the scenes that I don't know about - I agree pretty much with the above. I can only go by what I see, and to me it appears that the poster in question was treated unjustly. While what he said may have been offensive to some, he was goaded into saying it by a moderator, Rafael, who has recently done more to fan the flames of discord and push his own agenda than to promote peace or calm. I refer readers in particular to the first Appendix N thread where Rafael burst in and starting insulting another member for no particular reason I could see.

As some of you also may have seen, Rafael also added a snarky Game of Thrones "farewell" video to the explanation messages of the deleted posters before deleting them completely. This is less the proper behavior of a moderator than of someone who needs a moderator.


So really? I'm on a message board for something in the neighborhood of fifteen years, and someone just comes along and arbitrarily decides I don't deserve to be on the forum anymore. Maybe we should apply these rules to you here, just to see how well you would like that?

So their boards are free, and they are not even keeping to their own code, playing nice and all. I call foul and won't be silent just to please you. Everyone needs to know how they operate. Everyone.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117354As usual, you are wrong. Proboards from their home page - Simple, fast, easy to use, and fun.
ProBoards is the largest host of free forums on the Internet. We provide the best forums and customer service to help your online community thrive.

That shows I am right. You are old enough to understand when something is free, it obligates them for nothing. They don't actually owe you that customer service - you paid nothing for it. You have no contractual relationship with them. It's FREE. How can you not grok that concept at your age that if something is free it can be cut off at any time for any reason...because it was free?

QuoteSo really? I'm on a message board for something in the neighborhood of fifteen years, and someone just comes along and arbitrarily decides I don't deserve to be on the forum anymore.

Yes. Exactly.  This is again you stating you think you are entitled to something because you existed for a long time. You didn't earn anything for existing for those 15 years on their board. You gained no rights or privileges because you posted there a long time. You are in their house, with their rules, which they can change at any time for any reason or no reason at all. They owe you nothing, just as you owe them nothing. It's a free service!

QuoteMaybe we should apply these rules to you here, just to see how well you would like that?

Oh have no doubt I fully understand you not liking it. And of course Pundit is free to kick me off here at any time for any reason or no reason at all. Pundit pays for this message board! He has alllllll the rights concerning how it is used and who it is used by.

If you were just complaining that you think it's unfair that would be one thing. But instead you're arguing you are entitled to something for having been posting there for a long time. Like they owe you something. That goes beyond just grousing about moderators.

QuoteSo their boards are free, and they are not even keeping to their own code, playing nice and all. I call foul and won't be silent just to please you. Everyone needs to know how they operate. Everyone.

Sure you can whine bitch moan and complain about the unfairness of it all, all you want. Nobody is telling you to be silent - I am just disagreeing with a meaningful portion of your complaint (I am free to do that too, right?) Just stop pretending they owe you something or you were entitled to something. They don't owe you and you are not entitled to it. Buyer beware - or in this case free user beware.

Quote from: Mistwell;1117356I am just disagreeing with a meaningful portion of your complaint (I am free to do that too, right?) Just stop pretending they owe you something or you were entitled to something. They don't owe you and you are not entitled to it. Buyer beware - or in this case free user beware.

Well, here we are actually a community, and our commitment to Freedom for all entitles you to post and continuously disagree with me. That is a real community. 0D&D Proboards however is not, although they claim to be. There should be a law against false advertising, but there isn't, and they may censor me all they like over there and ban me, and you may continue to attempt to censor me all you like over here, good luck with that.

Quote from: EOTB;1117344And not only were you a guardian of D&D, but the internet too?

As I've in NorCal and SoCal, I've met many older programmers from the early days of the net and Game Daddy's discussion is nearly word for word what I've heard many times over the years from retired engineers and developers. They were a idealistic bunch, not surprising since many came from academia or were California techno-hippies. Their shock and dismay over what the internet has become is understandable when you hear the sincerity in which they speak about their original creation.

I'm sympathetic to their dismay, but like for all of us, another reading of Shelley's Ozymandius is in order.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117358Well, here we are actually a community, and our commitment to Freedom for all entitles you to post and continuously disagree with me. That is a real community. 0D&D Proboards however is not, although they claim to be. There should be a law against false advertising, but there isn't, and they may censor me all they like over there and ban me, and you may continue to attempt to censor me all you like over here, good luck with that.

You think my dissenting with your opinion is an attempt to censor you?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117371As I've in NorCal and SoCal, I've met many older programmers from the early days of the net and Game Daddy's discussion is nearly word for word what I've heard many times over the years from retired engineers and developers. They were a idealistic bunch, not surprising since many came from academia or were California techno-hippies. Their shock and dismay over what the internet has become is understandable when you hear the sincerity in which they speak about their original creation.

Hmmm? Now we are just one Arcology among almost a countless number in a sea of the sprawl. There was a moment though, when we had a clear vision of what everything tech should be.

So it turns out I'm extra special for having started playing D&D in 1977? :cool:

So I'll share some wisdom with you, made indisputable because I played OD&D back when: People who announce they or their games are Arnesonian or Gygaxian are pretentious jackasses. Claiming there are no flaws in the original rules is dishonest propaganda. Acting0 superior because you were there 40+ years ago is only deserving of mockery.

Regarding that last point, mocking me for this post will only prove my superiority. :D

Quote from: rawma;1117375So it turns out I'm extra special for having started playing D&D in 1977? :cool:

So I'll share some wisdom with you, made indisputable because I played OD&D back when: People who announce they or their games are Arnesonian or Gygaxian are pretentious jackasses. Claiming there are no flaws in the original rules is dishonest propaganda. Acting0 superior because you were there 40+ years ago is only deserving of mockery.

Regarding that last point, mocking me for this post will only prove my superiority. :D

Yep, you are extra special because you have been around awhile. Your opinion about what constititutes a jackass is your opinion though, and not established fact, because nothing is indisputable, and this is precisely what makes this message forum better than say the 0D&D 74 Proboards because you have the right here to dispute whatever anyone claims, where you don't have that right on the other message forums. Who here has claimed there are no flaws in the original rules? Only you are are here to discuss superiority, ...you know some of us are here to actually discuss games, right?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117371As I've in NorCal and SoCal, I've met many older programmers from the early days of the net and Game Daddy's discussion is nearly word for word what I've heard many times over the years from retired engineers and developers. They were a idealistic bunch, not surprising since many came from academia or were California techno-hippies. Their shock and dismay over what the internet has become is understandable when you hear the sincerity in which they speak about their original creation.

I'm sympathetic to their dismay, but like for all of us, another reading of Shelley's Ozymandius is in order.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Greetings!

Very nice, my friend!

My mind boggles at reading through the melodramatic screeching and pretentious farting in this thread though.:D

Makes me want to light up my pipe and pour some fresh coffee.:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117377...you know some of us are here to actually discuss games, right?

Not you, as far as anyone could tell from this thread.

Quote from: rawma;1117375People who announce they or their games are Arnesonian or Gygaxian are pretentious jackasses.

I mostly agree with you, but based on many forum threads, its clear Dave and Gary had significantly different DMing styles which isn't surprising. However, what exactly exists as concrete "ways to GM" as Gary or as Dave seems to be lacking based on what I've seen. Perhaps others can point to old archives which do discuss their individual styles and how to emulate them. I know people often point to Gary's writings in the DMG and Dragon as evidence of his DM style, but what game designers write for publication and what they actually do in actual play at an actual table with actual players are often quite different in my experience.

I was fortunate to play with Dave Arneson once at a charity event at a convention, but that was decades after OD&D was created so I can't say the Dave DM experience I had was how Dave ran his tables in the Disco Era. However, I can confirm he certainly had a unique DMing style that I found surprising, refreshing and inspiring.

Quote from: SHARK;1117378Makes me want to light up my pipe and pour some fresh coffee.:D

The crack pipe has been lit too many times in this thread already!

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117382... its clear Dave and Gary had significantly different DMing styles which isn't surprising. However, what exactly exists as concrete "ways to GM" as Gary or as Dave seems to be lacking based on what I've seen. Perhaps others can point to old archives which do discuss their individual styles and how to emulate them. I know people often point to Gary's writings in the DMG and Dragon as evidence of his DM style, but what game designers write for publication and what they actually do in actual play at an actual table with actual players are often quite different in my experience.

I was fortunate to play with Dave Arneson once at a charity event at a convention, but that was decades after OD&D was created so I can't say the Dave DM experience I had was how Dave ran his tables in the Disco Era. However, I can confirm he certainly had a unique DMing style that I found surprising, refreshing and inspiring.

I would be really interested to read a discussion/comparison of the two styles. Unfortunately when I go searching I only seem to find discussion of who invented what and the falling out.

Seconding Spinachcat -- if anyone "can point to old archives which do discuss their individual styles", that'd be really cool.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1117383I would be really interested to read a discussion/comparison of the two styles. Unfortunately when I go searching I only seem to find discussion of who invented what and the falling out.

Seconding Spinachcat -- if anyone "can point to old archives which do discuss their individual styles", that'd be really cool.

Fine. I have already had discussions with folks on other boards as well as on G+ about this, much of which has been lost. Over the holidays, I'll try to find my original notes as well as my unplanned interview with Dave Arneson in 2004. I'll start today though with my notes in discussion with DH Boggs as well as over on Murkhill, and here in other threads where we were discussing Chainmail and D&D. This part of this discussion starts with Dave Arneson, because RPGs started with him, however over the holidays I'll take a look at Gary's playstyle, both when he first worked out the iteration of the rules he liked best with 1eAD&D and later in his life, when he went back, and began again to re-use that earlier freestyle more closely matched 0D&D rather than the more formal and structured AD&D. Totally appropriate for this thread, I would add...

Hrmm? There are some key references regarding HP and AC that have been overlooked in the First Fantasy Campaign, namely in the Introduction, and I'll quote this here and now because it seems that this entire article is going into a place with Dave Armeson's game design that is completely unfamiliar to me, and I spent a considerable amount of time talking directly with him about this, in 2004. I think you guys are overthinking this, and since we can't ask him right now, we need to take a close look at what he wrote in his introduction for his Blackmoor game, in the First Fantasy Campaign in 1977.

Okay so, from the Introduction in FFC on Page 2,

"So it was with the dungeon of BLACKMOOR. It began with only the basic monsters in CHAINMAIL and was only some six levels deep. Six levels was chosen because it allowed random placement with six sided dice (no funny dice back then)(sic.). So even in the Dungeon it became quickly apparent that there was a need for a greater variety of monsters, more definition even within the type of monsters, and certainly a deeper dungeon."

This tells me that Dave started with the Chainmail rules, which used a 2d6 versus a target number to hit when using the man-to-man combat rules, and a hit beating the target number in Chainmail results in a Kill, except with heroes, superheroes, and some fantasy monsters, who would receive a saving throw by rolling 2d6. If the attacker matched the target number then the defender was forced to withdraw by 3 inches.

I just want to note here, that when Dave is referring to placement, he isn't talking about player characters, rather, ...what level of the Dungeon the various monsters will be placed into, when generating random dungeons.

Chainmail also featured mass combat rules, and every creature was treated as either light foot, armored foot, heavy foot, or whatever. Some of the enchanted creatures had some special kinds of attacks which were individually described. Basically a player would roll a d6 for each miniature that made up the unit, and a 6 would hit and produce a kill. There were some variations, for example medium horsemen could roll 2 dice per mini, with a 4,5, or 6 producing a casualty. Heroes rolled four dice, and superheroes rolled eight dice, with 6's producing casualties. Units which took excessive casualties (more than 25%) would have to make a morale check. Heroes and superheroes that were hit, could make a 2d6 saving throw to avoid being killed.

Dave and his group, didn't like the Chainmail system very much, because the mortality rate for the leaders (i.e. the player characters) was too high. The Players didn't like getting killed, by just one hit from the monsters. It's especially bad, whena like a single Orc scored a hit on a Hero or Superhero, and the Hero or SH failed the saving throw, and would die in the Dungeon, so just as he described, Dave adapted his naval rules from his ironclad games, but it wasn't a straight transfer as you all are trying to recreate here in this article. The Introduction for FFC clearly described how Dave adapted the Naval rules for his BLACKMOOR game, to quote;

"So there were now different types of Dragons by size (With each HD the Dragon had, the player could now roll a dice for the Dragon to Hit, with a 6 producing a casualty in the mass combat system, and there was also 2d6 monster attack table for man-to-man melee in Chainmail  when a player faced off with a monster in a one-on-one duel.) and other new creatures like Gargoyles, from standard mythology. AC was determined by the description of the creature creature (Hide, scales, etc.) and how impervious it was in the accounts given in mythology about it."


Here it very clear, that each creature got it's specific armor class based on it's skin type, as well as additional information, Hide was equivalent to armor, Scales to Chainmail, and Dragonscales to Platemail, and so on… with variations. So the GM was now keeping a monster table describing variable monster stats, Orcs had One HD, or one attack per mini, Kobolds ½ HD, or it was that two Kobolds miniatures were needed in any attack, to get that hit. Uruk-hai Orcs, 2 HD, So they would get two d6 rolls on the Chainmail table. In Man-to-man melee, they got two attacks, and so forth. The FFC Introduction at this point goes on to describe how the monsters were assigned Hit Dice.

"HD was determined pretty much on the size of the creatures physically and, again some regard for its mythical properties. For regular animals that were simply made larger, like BEETLES, a standard textbook provided interesting facts about the critters and all were given HD proportional to their size , relative to other Beetles, for instance. Insects were all given about the same AC with additions, again, for unique properties."

A paragraph later Dave goes on to talk about combat;

"Combat was quite simple at first and then got progressively more complicated with the addition of hit location, etc.. As the players first rolled for characteristics , the number of hits a body could take ran from 0-100. As the player progressed he did not receive additional hit points, but rather he became harder to hit. All normal attacks were carried out in the usual fashion but the player received a "Saving Throw" against any hit he received. Thus although he might be hit several times during a melee round, in actuality he might not take any damage at all."

Okay, so what I'm gleaning from this is that now is that Dave is using HP for characters, just like with his Naval Wargames, and he rolls a d100 to determine the hit points that a specific character starts with during Character Generation. This is a fixed number that never goes up or down. Note that Dave has just started using levels, for the player characters in Blackmoor. Dave is also now using Polyhedral dice, (which he discovered and purchased in the late 1960's, not D6's exclusively for his Blackmoor game at this point). At this point I believe that each successful hit delivers 1d6 points of damage, and that hit damage is applied against characters as well as the Monster HP, which were determined by the HD, which the GM (Dave) decided and recorded prior to, or sometimes even during the game, especially when he thought up new monsters on the fly, he wanted to throw into his dungeons. Note that with this system, some monsters instantly become much more difficult to kill as well (Like Dragons, Large Dinosaurs, and Giants, for example). Let's continue though with the FFC Introduction though, to provide additional enlightenment as to how the original Blackmoor game was being played…

"Only Fighters gained advantages in these melee saving throws. Clerics and Magic-users progressed in their own areas, which might, or might not modify their saving throws. And so it went, Hit location, so that even the mighty Smaug could fall to a single arrow in the right place (very unlikely), Height Differentiation so that the little guys could run around more, and the big ones could kill more etc. Still these were guidelines, hit location was generally used only for the bigger critters, and only on a man-to-man level were all the options thrown in. This allowed play to progress quickly even if the poor monsters suffered more from it."

Dave's words here. The only thing I want to note right now, is from earlier where Dave said "As Players progressed he did not receive more HP, but instead became harder to hit." So too with the armor class, Leather armor added two, to the number required to hit using Dave's system, and chainmail added four, with Platemail adding six, and a medium shield adding one to the required number to hit. This was elegant, fast, and just in line with the kind of speedy play Dave wanted. He wanted one to-hit roll instead of a dice pool with counting, for determining hits to speed up man-to-man combat rounds. Because the players wanted more chances to be heroes, they were insta-killed much less often than with using Chainmail, with the Introduction of "levels" and "Hp". All of this originated in Dave's Blackmoor game and was adopted later in Lake Geneva. This also ties in with something Dave told me during my informal interview in 2004. He said that every time armor took a hit, he would reduce it's effectiveness by one, unless the players spent money to fix the damaged armor, or repaired it themselves after the battle. A set of leather armor hit twice in a fight for example, would no longer provide any bonuses for the player wearing it. He said he preferred playing this way because it was simple, elegant, and once he knew the basic to-hit roll required, the armor, and the magic to-hit modifier of the magic weapon, he could do all the math quickly in his head to determine what the player needed to roll to hit his foe, whether it be a monster, or another player wearing armor, or even magic armor.

Also from my informal interview with him, He didn't like the whiff factor in the Chainmail rules where almost 2/3rds of the time most of the attacks had no chance of doing any damage at all. He lobbied to speed up combat by having the polyhedral dice included in the game, and switched to using a d20 instead of d6's for combat to-hit rolls out in Minnesota, dropping the 2d6 saving throws that were being made, in favor of modifying the man-to-man combat tables with experience points and levels making it easier for Fighters to hit, for example, ...and more difficult for Magic-users to hit.  Blackmoor streamlined Chainmail by making just one dice roll to determine whether the player was hit, and made his saving throw, which replaced making two rolls, using separate calculations. I'll finish with the FFC Introduction, and have a couple of closing comments for you today;

"By the end of the Fourth Year (1974) of continuous play BLACKMOOR covered hundreds of square miles, had a dozen castles, and three separate referees as my own involvement decreased due to other commitments. But by then  it was more than able to run itself as a fantasy campaign and kept more than a hundred people and a dozen referees as busy then as they are today. Whether there there will ever be a co-ordination of all the area dungeons in the future as they were way back in "The Good Old Days" is unlikely, but there are 20-30 people meeting every 4th Saturday to do BLACKMOOR and other Fantasy related areas, so who can tell… After all, the keynote is that 'anything is possible' just that some things are more likely than others."

Dave Arneson
~1977

When the Dungeons & Dragons White Bookset was originally published in 1974 one was supposed to already own Chainmail, because the rules clearly stated that you were to use Chainmail first to run combat. If you didn't own a copy of Chainmail, then you could play Dungeons and Dragons using the alternative combat rules which were included in Book 1, Men & Magic. These alternative combat rules didn't come from Gary's game in Lake Geneva, they were the rules we just described that were designed by Dave Arneson for his Blackmoor game which were adapted from his Naval Wargame rules using a variation of the Man-to-man combat tables from Chainmail, and including a d20 with a single roll to determine hits and make the saving throw instead of using 2d6 and making a separate to-hit roll and a saving throw. D&D also used levels and HP, instead of the insta-kill rules of Chainmail which was a wargame. D&D was a roleplaying game with much drama because a player was unlikely to get killed receiving a single blow from a monster, instead he had a pool of HP, and could play conservative and withdraw from combat to spare his/her life and return another day, or risk everything, and take a fight right to a nail-biting conclusion.

At this point, After Dave heads up to Lake Geneva in 1972 to run a game for Gary, Rob, Terry, and Ernie, then Gary adopts these rules and Gary and Rob and the Lake Geneva gaming group begins working diligently to produce a coherent set of new rules based on eighteen pages of notes that Dave provided them. It was shortly expanded by early 1973 into a fifty page rules set. This is all clearly outlined in Rob Kuntz's book "Dave Arneson's True Genius". I'll add here that the first couple boxed sets of the original D&D little brown books that I bought in 1977 included three wooden d6's instead of a d20 to be used to play the game with. It was extremely fortunate that my first GM informed me that I needed plastic Polyhedral dice, and I was in luck and managed to trade back my first edition third printing brown boxed set for a set of Polyhedral dice, a Holmes Bluebook boxed set, and a copy of the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets from the mile high comics book store I bought it from, becuase the store owner wanted a "Collectors Item". Even back in the day, a brownbox D&D set was worth much more than its' listed sales price, and I didn't care because I just wanted to play the game. A couple months as soon as I could afford to, I picked up a Whitebox D&D set, that was in May of 1977, becuase I had made the money to buy that mowing lawns.

First published in 2016 on my gaming website, this article was from notes I had made from the 2004 Origins Gaming Convention, where I first met Dave Arneson. Rawma, you're a gaming God from the early days too, surely you have something besides snark to contribute here, and yes, ...I'm viciously mocking you. Hey, isn't that a spell in the newest version of D&D?  Everyone, let's see if Rawma can make his saving throw!

Blackmoor Week 2016
Dungeons & Dragons: Meeting Dave Arneson

Actually, I had no plans at all to interview Dave Arneson. Meeting him was not on my schedule at all for Origins 2004. Had no clue he was even attending. I had my own schedule, and had setup to run GURPS, Fudge, D20, and a OD&D gaming round through that weekend.

As it turns out Origins 2004 was one of the largest gatherings of original game designers in the history of gaming because it was the 30th Anniversary Celebration of Origins.* It was a small show compared to game shows these days. Only 13,980 people had showed up to attend. This particular year the following gaming superstars all attended though, and most received awards. Dave Arneson, of course, was there whom I ended up meeting and then having an extended conversation with.

The grognards were there in force that year, many of the original wargaming publishers including Charles S. Roberts (founder of Avalon Hill), John Hill (Avalon Hill), James Dunnigan (founder of SPI), Frank Chadwick (GDW), Redmond Simonsen (SPI), Rick Loomis (Flying Buffalo), Greg Costyikan (SPI), Richard Berg (SPI, GMT, West End Games), Peter Panzeri, and of course RPG people were there including Peter Adkison (WOTC), Robin Laws, Jonathon Tweet,* Pretty sure Monte was at Origins that year as well as Nicole Lindroos and Chris Pramas, Tom Meier (Ral Partha), Mike Stackpole, Mike Mearls, Larry Elmore, Frank Mentzer, Ken Hite, Ryan Dancey, Don Perrin, Sean Patrick Fannon, Jeff Grubb, James Wyatt, Keith Baker, Erik Mona, Jason Buhlman, Jolly Blackburn, David Kenzer, Margaret Weis, and Lou Zochhi ...just to name a few.

That weekend I spent so much time just meeting wargaming and rpg luminaries at this show, I barely had time to shop and run my games. I always schedule my games at conventions so that I have at least the bulk of one day of free time to go through the dealer hall and shop to check out new games, and I so stopped by the Goodman Games booth just after lunch on a Friday afternoon, and was greeted with a sign announcing that the creator of D&D would be stopping by later to sign autographs and that he would be running an open table OD&D game in the evening after the dealer hall closed.

I was extremely delighted to finally have the chance to meet Gary Gygax, however that was not to be on this fateful day in 2004. I wouldn't actually meet Gary until Origins 2006. That is another story too.

Dave Arneson, on the other hand, the other D&D creator, had been out of the public eye for quite some time. Sure, his name was on my White bookset, listed as a co-author of D&D... But I hadn't personally met him previously. He had left TSR in 1976, just months before I started playing Dungeons and Dragons. He would end up suing TSR and obtaining a settlement, the details of which, were sealed during the proceedings. As it turned out the settlement agreement ensured his name would appear prominently on the credits for D&D, and that he would receive royalties for sales of OD&D, and this was the basis for TSR moving forward in 1978 with the publication of AD&D (Which of course, generated yet another lawsuit naming TSR as a defendant from Dave because with the release of AD&D TSR was sneakily trying to wiggle out of paying Dave royalties for OD&D) this was finally also settled in in 1983 or 1984 with the sealed settlement (which turned out to really just be a gag order for Dave).

A year after that, in 1985, Gary Gygax, ...was, in an interesting twist of Irony, abruptly thrown out of TSR as well, in a backstabbing coup engineered by the movie people who had always secretly hated Gygax & Arneson for creating this whole new genre of entertainment that had removed board games and movies from the center of the entertainment universe. For Gary Gygax, what you give, ...you get, and this phrase of karma, turned out to be a prophetic in regards to what he had done to Dave.

In the early 2000's, Dave and Gary were at least on a talking basis again, and I was at Origins running games and having fun. So, when Joseph Goodman wheeled Dave Arneson into the dealer hall (Dave was in a wheel chair, as he was still recovering from a stroke he had in 2002) to the Goodman games booth for the autograph session, I was strangely, ...one of only two or three people in that first Friday autograph session, ...and I opened by holding my hand out and saying "Hi Gary, how are you doing?"

Dave slowly turned red, and he roared at me "I'M NOT GARY GYGAX! I'M DAVE ARNESON!"

...and my jaw dropped. And I looked at Joe Goodman, and Joe gave me a very, very, dirty look. It was my turn to turn red, and as I did, stunned, and not quite knowing what to say ...I just wandered off into the dealer hall.

This was a very embarrassing moment for me. I had not seen a picture of either Gary or Dave in quite some time, so had no idea what either really looked like, and further had absolutely no clue that Dave was even still into gaming, or that he was going to be at the show. It was one of those surprises engineered by Joe to gather support for Dave launching the d20 version of Blackmoor with Dustin Clingman under the OGL. The sign at the Goodman games booth did not advertise that it was going to be Dave at the autograph session, merely that the founder of D&D was going to be signing autographs. Who had been in the public eye for the previous 20 years? ...Gary, and the fighting at TSR. So that was naturally who I thought of. My bad.

Really, this big mistake in identification was not my fault, it was a result of poor advertising, and Dave being on the outside of D&D for so long. Still though, I had completely ruined my chance to meet one of the two creators of D&D.

Mulling it over though, I thought I should at least apologize, so went quickly back to the booth, and under a death glare from Joseph Goodman told Dave that I was very sorry, ...that I didn't know he would be there. I also took the time to thank him for creating and publishing D&D and told him that I had enjoyed a tremendously good time playing the game in my youth, during my life, and that I would always be playing D&D. Then I quietly went back to shopping in the Dealer Hall.

About an hour and a half later my day finally turned around, I was on my way out of the dealer hall, it was late in the afternoon, and I was slowly looking over some minis and merchandise at a table at one of the booths, and I heard a voice behind me saying "...Excuse me".

It was Dave, he was walking around. He said "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

I said "No, I'm sure you have every right to, I'm sure some the folks at TSR have given you a very hard time over the years, and you probably thought I was one of them, here to rain on your parade. ...I'm not one of them though." and then I explained in detail why I had not known it was him, including about the advertising, and that I hadn't seen a pictures of him in more than two decades, and that I didn't even know he was even still in gaming, and I apologized again. This time he thoughtfully nodded in acknowledgement, and then he said "Come over here and pull up a chair, I need to sit back down in my wheelchair, I tire easily these days."

So we walked back over to his booth (he was the only one there beside a single Goodman sales person) and he asked about my games, so I told him what I was running for the show.

"Altanis Dawn a OD&D adventure set in the Judges Guild Wilderlands, Gurps: Alpha Centauri, Fudge: Eden's Gate, D20 Wilderlands: The Crystal Blades, another Judges Guild Adventure, and d20 Twin Crowns: Treasure Ship"

We talked about Bob Bledsaw for a bit. I explained that I liked Judges Guild quite a bit, and why

Dave: "You are running an original edition Dungeons & Dragons game?"

Me:
"Yes, I run original D&D events at every convention I attend. For many years starting in 1980 TSR and the RPGA had banned original Dungeons and Dragons games and would only register AD&D games for events. This is only the second year I am allowed to officially run games using the original white bookset, the rules I have stubbornly been loyal to, and insisted on running games for, even though it had been suppressed for two decades, because that was the best version of D&D ever made."

...and just like that, the man who had been very angry with me for not properly identifying him, and for failing to recognize his genius, was for a short time at least, very happy to hear that I had not caved in to peer pressure and had continued to run Original Dungeons and Dragons games using the very books that he had specifically help to create and design, instead of using another set of books, the AD&D 1st edition books. Books that had been created by Gary and TSR that had been specifically designed and then rushed into production to deliberately lock him out of the very game he had helped to design. I had been using his rules, not the newer rules to run games for the better part of two decades in the face of tremendous open opposition.

So we were instantly allies and friends as it turned out, because I had recognized and acknowledged his genius in the truest sense ...very indirectly, and had displayed my true loyalty, by running his game, The Original D&D. This was even after it was officially banned at gaming shows and conventions, and right up until WOTC changed the RPGA policy and would once again allow all versions of D&D to be played again. This officially happened in 2008 when I was actually invited by WOTC to run OD&D games in the Sagamore Ballroom at GenCon.

I told him about how often I ran OD&D games at home, or for friends, and how they enjoyed learning how to play D&D using the white bookset rules, and this set off an extended conversation and Dave talked about the early days when they played in his Blackmoor campaign setting.

I told him about how I bought the bluebook and used that and the ready ref sheets sheets to play until I could save up enough money to buy the White Book Set. Dave talked about why and when he decided to start using percentile dice in addition to d20s, and how they, ...they being him and Gary at TSR had contracted to buy the original poor quality polyhedral dice that had shipped with the Holmes Basic set. We talked about Lou Zocchi, and how he had changed public perception of RPGs and Dungeons and Dragons by created high quality impact dice, and how TSR chose those dice and the percentile dice eventually that would be both included, and also recommended for the White Bookset.

Holmes blue book always only received the poor quality polyheydrals, sometimes not even that. Once I bought a Basic D&D set with a counter sheet of numbered chits that could be picked out of a bag or bowl to generate a random number. There were no dice included.

He told me stories about how he would get together at the early GenCon convention with the TSR crew and how he would run games for them, and how they would run games in turn for him, and how they were delighted to find out about new variants and trade different ideas to try out. I learned that they also exchanged correspondence and newsletter subscriptions in order to learn what other gamers were doing, and that they would add new variants to the rules, and to their games poaching, experimenting, ...improving as they went.

We talked about the very structured rules for 3e and d20, and how the game was never originally designed to be so rigid and unforgiving, but also we talked about how good it was that Ryan Dancey and Peter Adkison had saved D&D, and had breathed new life into tabletop RPGs, and how the future was looking promising again for RPGs, and he spoke for a time about the new d20 release of Blackmoor.

I asked him what he had been doing lately, and he told me about how he had moved to Florida from the West Coast/Midwest (Because, good weather!) and that he had joined this new privately owned charter startup college in Florida called Full Sail University, about how you could get a degree in game design from them, and how he was going to be teaching video game design there, and I asked him about regular game design, and he said he would be teaching classes for that as well, at his FSU, just not so often, because the video game design courses were very, very, popular, and also very, very, profitable for his new school. The tabletop gaming stuff? not nearly so popular.

I asked him about his Minnesota gaming group and he told me they still gamed now and then, whenever he was back visiting there.

...and he looked up and excused himself, as he had to grab dinner before the evening open OD&D round, and I looked up, and suddenly and hour and a half had passed by in the flash of an instant, and it was indeed dinner time being almost 5 PM. I thanked him again for being a part of the creation of D&D and wished him well.

With a sad smile he wheeled off, ...not sad because he had rediscovered an old RPG gaming friend, but sad because he was going back into the battle, that one where he had originally won every court case he had been in, but where a sealed agreement with the real snakes at TSR had ensured he could (and would) easily be overlooked in the new era of AD&D 1e and 2e gaming. That was not my fault.

What comes around goes around though. For his help in pushing Dave Arneson out, and just about a year to the day after the final settlement with Dave was reached in court, the Blume brothers at TSR backstabbed Gary Gygax in the finest traditions of Blackmoor, and themselves cashing out, gave help to a minor stockholder named Lorraine Williams, but that is someone else's story.

Now though, almost twenty years later on the fine summer day in 2004, almost twenty years to the exact day, Dave Arneson wheeled back into the battle with his friend Dustin, and the help of Joe Goodman, he was determined to be recognized for what he had done as part of a team with two creative leads, and that was to turn a simple tabletop wargame into a much more popular adventure game, and in that process create a whole new genre of games that spawned a completely new multi-billion Dollar industry, a genre that completely and forever changed the face of both the video game industry, and the movie industry.

Not bad for a guy pushing some tin soldiers around and tossing a few dice for fun.

Later on that evening, before I had to run my OD&D event, I sat in for almost an hour Just watching Dave as he Gm'ed an open table of about twenty players (By now, word had gotten around that Dave Arneson was running his original Blackmoor game at Origins, ...just using the newfangled d20 rules), and of course Dave already knew those rules, because he had written them himself, ...almost forty years previously, everything but the d20 part, and of course, Dave being Dave, he had returned to Gming that day with a flourish, and he had quite a few new surprises for the players that day. Muhahahaha....

Only three players showed up at my OD&D Origins game in 2004. It would still take another three years before my original Dungeons and Dragons gaming table would be overfull at game conventions. It would be four more years before I was welcomed to run my OD&D game with the other AD&D games at the Sagamore ballroom, and it was also four years before the OSR broke away from 3e. It was also four more years after this day before a whole new generation of gamers would really become curious about what it was really like to play the original D&D game. Since 2008 though, OD&D and a huge huge range of variants have become popular again. Thanks once again for coming back to help out for this Dave! Amazingly, ...just like the Comeback Inn, go figure!

Thanks Dustin! And thanks Joe Goodman, I'm not happy you were mad at me that day in 2004, but I am very happy to share that fight with you by showing the younger gamers what awesome fun we could have using a set of very dated rules. I'm glad you published your DCC rules, and introduced a great number of new gamers to Tabletop Fantasy Adventures. A few of those gamers have undoubtedly sat down at my gaming table, and none of them would have even known about this without you!

Roll for Initiative! Your turn again!

Well, that content was more than worthwhile. I was intrigued by the notion that characters got harder to hit instead of increasing HP, because that is how I ran OD&D from the first session that I ran it and that is how it works in some other games, including mine. I heard, years later, that Dave Arneson ran it that way but it's nice to see it confirmed.

Not only did I game with Dave, I worked for him at AGI when he published First Fantasy Campaign.

Dave's combat system had three major differences from the OD&D alternate combat system ( which Gary never used).EDIT:  I MISWROTE.  Gary never ever used CHAINMAIL for Greyhawk, even on Day One.  Rob Kuntz can verify this.

1)  Lower hit point totals
2)  Critical hits
3)  Dave used the Tony Bath syztem where you roll to hit and the defender gets a saving throw based on armor, rather than the Don Featherstone system where armor is factored into the to-hit roll.

And all I have to say about both Ruins of Murkhill and ODD74 is to point out that those of us who were there at the beginning have all left both forums.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117392Not only did I game with Dave, I worked for him at AGI when he published First Fantasy Campaign.

Dave's combat system had three major differences from the OD&D alternate combat system ( which Gary never used).

1)  Lower hit point totals
2)  Critical hits
3)  Dave used the Tony Bath syztem where you roll to hit and the defender gets a saving throw based on armor, rather than the Don Featherstone system where armor is factored into the to-hit roll.

And all I have to say about both Ruins of Murkhill and ODD74 is to point out that those of us who were there at the beginning have all left both forums.

Greetings!

Good to see you posting, Gronan of Simmerya! You should post here more often!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Wait...I started playing D&D in 1978. And I too have met Dave at Gencon and hung out with him for a bit (my wife was also a special guest that GenCon and I sat with her which put me between her and Dave, so we chatted). Does that make ME special now too?

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1117383I would be really interested to read a discussion/comparison of the two styles. Unfortunately when I go searching I only seem to find discussion of who invented what and the falling out.

Seconding Spinachcat -- if anyone "can point to old archives which do discuss their individual styles", that'd be really cool.

May I suggest the links in my signature, and ask questions? :)

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117389Blackmoor Week 2016
Dungeons & Dragons: Meeting Dave Arneson

*stuff*

Quite a tale. Thanks for sharing, GameDaddy.

Quote from: rawma;1117375So it turns out I'm extra special for having started playing D&D in 1977? :cool:

So I'll share some wisdom with you, made indisputable because I played OD&D back when: People who announce they or their games are Arnesonian or Gygaxian are pretentious jackasses. Claiming there are no flaws in the original rules is dishonest propaganda. Acting0 superior because you were there 40+ years ago is only deserving of mockery.

Regarding that last point, mocking me for this post will only prove my superiority. :D

I won't mock you - I'll tell my players that they are now playing the new "Pretentious Jackass" game. I'll have my business cards retitled too, because I want to make you happy.

You'll probably puke when you read this, but the original rules were full of flaws because at that time, nobody knew how to write a set of RPG rules. Forty years on, we now have some data to work with. Dave, Gary, and Phil did what they could with what they knew at the time.

Sadly, I have been unable to adapt to the new realities of gaming, and still play the way I did at CSA meetings etc. back in my youth. Does this make me special? I don't think so; I think it makes me a sad old man, lost in his past glories and unable to move past being an elderly white male gatekeeper of the hobby. I keep reminding my players of this, but they still keep showing up and I still have a waiting list to get into my games.

(I'm finding this thread the funniest thing on the Internet in a long time, actually. :) )

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117392And all I have to say about both Ruins of Murkhill and ODD74 is to point out that those of us who were there at the beginning have all left both forums.

But that is THE HOBBY!!! Rafael says so!!! I have no idea what I'm going to do, now that I have left THE HOBBY; anyone want 6,000 little lead people?

I just got tired. And they don't even argue about Christine Sprankle's bottom, either, like they do here. Nothing but Serious Gaming at theRPGsite!

(Which, of course takes me out of the running... :) )

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1117400(I'm finding this thread the funniest thing on the Internet in a long time, actually. :) )

Then my work here is done, no matter how small my contribution. :D

(But since I'm so special, I'll explain the context of my Arnesonian vs Gygaxian comment - some of the people I played with in the late 1970s were unhappy with AD&D and declared their OD&D an "Arnesonian campaign" without, as far as I can tell, any real basis for knowing how Arneson and Gygax actually differed, except that Gygax wrote AD&D. Amusingly, at least to me, they much preferred the Greyhawk supplement to the Blackmoor supplement. So, I'm willing to carve out an exception for the old-timers who actually played OD&D with both, if they care to express a preference. I can't recall any ever doing so, at least not to a religious edition war level.)

There is that sense that the Gygax & Arneson factions are engaging in a form of edition wars.  Tribal silliness.  

Examples of how Arneson DM'ed, before the release of D&D would be interesting to read.  There are a few people still alive who remember, IIRC.  Has Rob Kuntz written much about it?  He has been delving into Arnesonia of late.

Quote from: rawma;1117403Then my work here is done, no matter how small my contribution. :D

(But since I'm so special, I'll explain the context of my Arnesonian vs Gygaxian comment - some of the people I played with in the late 1970s were unhappy with AD&D and declared their OD&D an "Arnesonian campaign" without, as far as I can tell, any real basis for knowing how Arneson and Gygax actually differed, except that Gygax wrote AD&D. Amusingly, at least to me, they much preferred the Greyhawk supplement to the Blackmoor supplement. So, I'm willing to carve out an exception for the old-timers who actually played OD&D with both, if they care to express a preference. I can't recall any ever doing so, at least not to a religious edition war level.)

And a great contribution it is, too, putting everything in perspective. :)

This is, I had thought, a bunch of friends sitting around a table laughing their fool heads off - and on occasion, pushing lead around fake trees. How wrong I was!!!

(And you're right on, with your contextual comment. AD&D isn't even 'Gygaxian', it was all about getting product into B. Dalton Bookstores, who told the lads at TSR that trade-paperback-sized boxes didn't fit on their shelves and would TSR kindly redo the game into 8 1/2" x 11" hardbacks in order to fit B. Dalton's marketing plan. Both of them, and Prof. Barker for that matter, had very different play styles from each other and from their own published games. I don't think Dave ever really played AIF, for example, and I know that Phil departed from the straight and narrow every Thursday night from 1976 to 1988. It is what it was, and being a lazy old fart whose stuck in his ways, I still play that way and spent the money that new rules sets cost on thing like miniatures, a new roof for the house, miniatures, a new washer and dryer, and miniatures.)

(So, from where I'm sitting, I think you have it nailed. I've met a whole lot of people like the ones you describe, who have no idea how those guys played, but are more then happy to tell me How It Was Done Back In Ye Olden Dayes!!!)

:)

So how did the Blumes enter into this? When? I know that one of the brothers was into gaming, and the other was apparently the source of alot of the troubles Gary had. But no info on how much either played, it at all, before or after publication?

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.;)

Quote from: SHARK;1117378Makes me want to light up my pipe and pour some fresh coffee.:D

Despite being a terrible chain smoker of cigarettes for over a decade, I never really did quite nail down smoking pipe tobacco proper; both that and cigars tend to make me sick after a few minutes, though obviously they tasted much more interesting. Weak constitution, I suppose! But you've inspired me to pick something up for the holiday breather. Coffee's already on... Cheers!:D

Quote from: Antiquation!;1117416Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.;)



Despite being a terrible chain smoker of cigarettes for over a decade, I never really did quite nail down smoking pipe tobacco proper; both that and cigars tend to make me sick after a few minutes, though obviously they tasted much more interesting. Weak constitution, I suppose! But you've inspired me to pick something up for the holiday breather. Coffee's already on... Cheers!:D

Greetings!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

*Laughs* Yes, it's good to see you my friend! Pipe tobacco is awesome. So are good cigars. Coffee, of course, is an essential! With our cold winter weather we have, coffee is so much appreciated, you know? Forget tea, forget soda--I need some good coffee!:D

French Roast Coffee is awesome. I typically drink Gevalia. Very good stuff.:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1117398May I suggest the links in my signature, and ask questions? :)

Thank you! I hadn't run across your online writing before -- I'm pleased to make your (virtual) acquaintance!

I've been browsing through and I have a few initial questions if you don't mind:

Quote from: chirine ba kalEarly last year, an experienced D&D 5e gamer told me I should get out of the campaign that I'd been playing for a while, as I was "holding the party back because I didn't have system mastery on the 5e rules". So, since I agreed with him, I handed my player-character sheets back to the very patient GM, and left the campaign.

This anecdote shocked me. Even the most mechanically-inclined games I've ever been in were willing to approximate and fudge mechanics for well-intentioned play. Would you be willing to share (if you know) what "system mastery" mechanics this GM viewed as so important? I'm interested from a psychographic data point perspective -- I can't picture what's so critical.

Quote from: chirine ba kalWhat rules do I need to know?

Whatever set of rules - any rules - that you are comfortable with. One player is already working on a 5e PC; it's my problem to crunch the numbers, not yours.

This was another stand-out quote for me! And very thought provoking. Do you routinely support multiple rules systems for different characters in the same game? How far apart can the mechanical spread be in your experience before it gets unwieldy?

Quote from: chirine ba kalI mentioned that I've never really 'played D&D'; I've played "something called Blackmoor with Dave, something called Greyhawk with Gary, and something called Tekumel with Phil"(Note One). Back then - and this was a few years ago, remember, and back then none of these three world settings had built up the mass of materials that they have today. There was, forty years ago, a relative dearth of published information on these worlds, let alone the plethora of sets of rules that we now enjoy in our hobby.

One had to 'explore'. Get up, walk around, ask questions, have adventures. It was taken as a given that we'd all read a lot of the same books and seen the same movies; see also Gary's 'Appendix N'. We all knew what we were supposed to be about, and so we sharpened our swords and our wits and got on with our adventures. "Doing it by the book" was impossible; the book - and the game rules - hadn't been written yet. The GMs of the day came up with adventures and worlds that they were set in, and we played our Faferds, Grey Mousers, Conans, and Belits in these new worlds with all the gusto and swashbuckling vigor that we could.

This stood out to me, too. So you discovered the "rules" such as they were experientially through play? The DM guided you through something roughly equivalent to reading the rulebook description of mechanics?

How was mechanical consistency handled in this style? I imagine there was a flexible-cooperative bent to it from shared cultural background, but my outsider's guess is there would need to be some rules consistency (within some tolerance) for the game to be coherent?

Thank you very much for anything you have time to answer! Interesting stuff!

Quote from: chirine ba kal[/quoteEarly last year, an experienced D&D 5e gamer told me I should get out of the campaign that I'd been playing for a while, as I was "holding the party back because I didn't have system mastery on the 5e rules".

That person is not worthy of the name "Dungeon Master." If I knew where he was, I would confiscate his Viking Hat. Worthless scum.

From insubordinate polyhedral;1117423:

Thank you! I hadn't run across your online writing before -- I'm pleased to make your (virtual) acquaintance!

You're welcome. There's also something like 900 pages from the three 'Questioning chirine ba kal' threads on this forum, but as they wander all over the place it's a long slog to get through them; I created the .proboards forum to make it easier to find things, as well as not clog up Pundit's forum - there were, I gather, server issues starting to become apparent.

I've been browsing through and I have a few initial questions if you don't mind:

Sure. I'll answer them over here as they relate to modern gaming; my blog and forum tend to wallow in nostalgia. :)

This anecdote shocked me. Even the most mechanically-inclined games I've ever been in were willing to approximate and fudge mechanics for well-intentioned play. Would you be willing to share (if you know) what "system mastery" mechanics this GM viewed as so important? I'm interested from a psychographic data point perspective -- I can't picture what's so critical.

This twit's problem is that he's a so-called 'expert player', and a self-described big wheel in local gaming; like The Quartering is for 'MtG', he's a know-it-all about 5e. His issue was that unlike himself, I had not memorized all of the 5e books in all their (to me) mind-numbing detail and mechanics. He's a rules lawyer, pure and simple. I've been dealing with players like that for over forty years, and I don't need to now. The poor GM, who's both a good GM and a good friend, was quite shocked, and the other players were pretty unamused as they all knew that I'd never played D&D before. One of them asked the twit in a very quiet voice if he knew who he'd just kicked out of the game, and that's when the poop hit the fan.

This was another stand-out quote for me! And very thought provoking. Do you routinely support multiple rules systems for different characters in the same game? How far apart can the mechanical spread be in your experience before it gets unwieldy?

Yes. I have no problem with multiple sets of rules, as I think in probability curves; I read through the set of rules that the player likes, get a grip on the curves, and off we go. In my current Tekumel group, I am running EPT, S&G, T:OEPT, Bethorm, and D&D 5e in parallel with each other. I'll be running Tractics and 5e in my upcoming 'Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery' game, which is as about as far apart in mechanics as you can get; I don't seem to have an issue with it, and I'm not sure why. I suspect it's because I think in 'simulationist' terms, in the probability curves that I work with.

This stood out to me, too. So you discovered the "rules" such as they were experientially through play? The DM guided you through something roughly equivalent to reading the rulebook description of mechanics?

Yep. "Dave, what do I need to roll?" "Roll and I'll tell you what happens."
Nope. We just played our characters, and learned by doing.

How was mechanical consistency handled in this style? I imagine there was a flexible-cooperative bent to it from shared cultural background, but my outsider's guess is there would need to be some rules consistency (within some tolerance) for the game to be coherent?

Dave, Gary, and Phil all knew how their worlds worked, and because they were intellectually honest they were mechanically consistent. There was none of this malarky about "the rules are there to protect the players from the GM"; The GM was a facilitator and moderator; the worlds were out to kill us, so they usually just had to fill us in. They were honest referees. no 'fudging', just smarter then we were. Most of the time.

Bob Meyer still runs Blackmoor this way, as my players found out this past May at The Annual Blackmoor Reunion Game where they played two boatloads of Skadaharians.

Thank you very much for anything you have time to answer! Interesting stuff!

Again, you're welcome.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1117430Early last year, an experienced D&D 5e gamer told me I should get out of the campaign that I'd been playing for a while, as I was "holding the party back because I didn't have system mastery on the 5e rules".

That person is not worthy of the name "Dungeon Master." If I knew where he was, I would confiscate his Viking Hat. Worthless scum.[/QUOTE]

And he wasn't even the GM; he was some git who wandered into the game from the local AL play scene to pick some quick XP to advance his League standings. He'd been a twit throughout the game session, and this was simply the last straw for me personally.I'm told that he was the same with people in the AL, and at the FLGS open nights, and was eventually told that he was simply not welcome as he was literally driving new people away from the store by his arrogance and attitude.

He's one of the reasons why I shy away from doing public games at conventions and at the FLGS; you, as GM, have to take whatever walks up to the table no matter how much of a jerk that they might turn out to be. I've been doing this for over forty years at conventions and stores, and it's gotten to be that I don't think it's worth the time and energy to be 'open game' and 'on-grid' any more. If - the gods forfend! - I ever do a convention again, it's be off grid in my own suite with only people that I think will work well in my games. I've done that as an experiment, and it's worked wonderfully well.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117392Dave's combat system had three major differences from the OD&D alternate combat system...

1)  Lower hit point totals
2)  Critical hits
3)  Dave used the Tony Bath syztem where you roll to hit and the defender gets a saving throw based on armor, rather than the Don Featherstone system where armor is factored into the to-hit roll.

Welcome back Gronan!!!

Please give us more details about all three of the above.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117392Not only did I game with Dave, I worked for him at AGI when he published First Fantasy Campaign.

Dave's combat system had three major differences from the OD&D alternate combat system ( which Gary never used).EDIT:  I MISWROTE.  Gary never ever used CHAINMAIL for Greyhawk, even on Day One.  Rob Kuntz can verify this.

1)  Lower hit point totals
2)  Critical hits
3)  Dave used the Tony Bath system where you roll to hit and the defender gets a saving throw based on armor, rather than the Don Featherstone system where armor is factored into the to-hit roll.

Hi Gronan!

Hope everyone had a good holiday here! I have been checking in, however only now have time to actually write. Over Christmas I worked on painting minis, I"m trying to get my backlog of unpainted minis down to say, ...a few hundred or so.

Thanks for joining us here again! Of course I have some new questions now as well. The 0D&D had a hp total that for all practical purposes capped out at about the 12th to 15th level, after which characters generally recieved only 1 Hp per level gained, and the characters had to earn ridiculous amounts of experience points @ 250k plus, per level, just to level up just to earn that extra single hp. I never did expect that Dave used a straight d100 roll to determine character hp, even though that was mentioned in his notes in the First Fantasy Campaign. I never saw that, or heard about that in discussions anywhere else, ever. Was he actually using the tables that we used for 0D&D in the little brown books where the character would roll a number of d6s for hit points with some additional pips depending on level?

We also used Critical Hits from day one out in Colorado as a house rule. A natural twenty would always do double whatever we rolled for total damage,and magic weapon pluses counted for determining critical hits as well if the roll was twenty or over, ...CRIT! How did Dave run critical hits?

So, with the Tony Bath wargaming rules, if a character/leader was hit, the player rolled a d6 as a saving throw, if he/she were wearing light armor a 6 negated the damage, with Heavy Armor, a 5 or 6 negated the damage, and if a character was carrying a shield the player added one to the die roll. Is this the way Dave ran it?

Finally a couple questions about Gary and his D&D game.  So did he use the OD&D alternate combat system after all?... that's what I thought that he used... and if not, what did he use?

With the addition of Greyhawk, damage by specific weapon type was added, as well as variable monster damage, as well as variable armor resistance versus weapons. Did he ever use any of those in his campaigns? When I watched him run Castle Gygax he had the 1eAD&D books with him, and used that instead of the Castles & Crusades. From what I understand of his original Dungeons and Dragons games, he preferred just running with the 3lbb, and some house rules.

A couple of additional comments on our early Colorado group D&D campaigns. Critical hits were revamped after we got our hands on the Warlock! rules, and of course, Arduin, bloody Arduin, and we of course added fumbles as well. Adding in some graphic lethality was great fun! When I ran (and even now) D&D games, I always included rules for morale for both NPCs and Monsters, as only the most fanatical of troops would fight to the death, like the followers of an Evil High Priest for example, otherwise NPCs and monsters in my games erred on the side of self-preservation, and would flee if their lives were in jeopardy or they were low on hit points. If they fled, it counted as a win for the players, in terms of gaining experience points.

Finally one often overlooked venue of commentary from Gary for early D&D games was Alarums and Excursions published by Lee Gold. I would specifically point readers here to Gary's Letter published in Issue #2 from July of 1975 and from Issue #15 published in October of 1976. I'll leave a couple of  quotes from him here, today...

Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in D&D. If the time ever comes when all aspects of fantasy are covered and the vast majority of its players agree on how the game should be played, D&D will have become staid and boring indeed. Sorry, but I don't believe that there is anything desirable in having various campaigns playing similarly to one another.

...Frankly, the reason I enjoy playing in Dave Arneson's campaign is that I do not know his treatments of monsters and suchlike, so I must keep thinking and reasoning in order to "survive".

...and later in the issue two article...

I desire variance in interpretation and, as long as I am editor of the TSR line and its magazine, I will do my utmost to see that there is as little trend towards standardization as possible. Each campaign should be a "variant", and there is no "official interpretation" from me or anyone else. If a game of "Dungeons and Beavers" suits a group, all I say is more power to them, for every fine referee runs his own variant of D&D anyway.

So, early on, there was no one true way to play original D&D, there was the way each group worked out to play, and that depended entirely on the GM, and the players.

Quote from: Omega;1117412So how did the Blumes enter into this? When? I know that one of the brothers was into gaming, and the other was apparently the source of alot of the troubles Gary had. But no info on how much either played, it at all, before or after publication?

This is also a Rob Kuntz question. I just got his Redbook about Don Kaye right before the holidays, and will post a brief review here in the next couple of days.

Quote from: Mistwell;1117396Wait...I started playing D&D in 1978. And I too have met Dave at Gencon and hung out with him for a bit (my wife was also a special guest that GenCon and I sat with her which put me between her and Dave, so we chatted). Does that make ME special now too?

Yes, indeed! ...also a pain in the ass as well, ...but a special one, special as we all are that share this interest. You should have led with what you and her and Dave chatted about, ...that would have been much more interesting than just picking fights with ancient GM's, but hey, it's like Dragonslaying right? Find an old GM in a cave somewhere, and you find ways to make it miserable?

Quote from: SHARK;1117315Greetings!
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?

It is hard to hold a reasonable discussion with him especially if your opinion differs. He is versed in various academic fields, like systems theory. He often presents his opinions as facts as well as uses an extensive amount of academic jargon. Which just adds to the difficulty of participating in any discussion with him.

Quote from: estar;1117450It is hard to hold a reasonable discussion with him especially if your opinion differs. He is versed in various academic fields, like systems theory. He often presents his opinions as facts as well as uses an extensive amount of academic jargon. Which just adds to the difficulty of participating in any discussion with him.

Greetings!

Hey Estar my friend! I hope the holidays are going well for you!

That's an interesting commentary by you, Estar. I can see how Rob Kuntz's attitudes would make a discussion difficult. *laughs* That's unfortunate.:D Ah well, you know? I always appreciate your insights, Estar.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: estar;1117450It is hard to hold a reasonable discussion with him especially if your opinion differs. He is versed in various academic fields, like systems theory. He often presents his opinions as facts as well as uses an extensive amount of academic jargon. Which just adds to the difficulty of participating in any discussion with him.

Isnt he also a little mercurial in his friendships? I recall Gary mentioning someone offering support for one of his projects and then pulling out. Thought it was Kuntz but can not find my notes.

Quote from: Omega;1117477Isnt he also a little mercurial in his friendships? I recall Gary mentioning someone offering support for one of his projects and then pulling out. Thought it was Kuntz but can not find my notes.

My only direct experience with Rob Kuntz was participating in discussions he was involved in on various forums. Along with reading some of his books like The True Genius of Dave Arneson.

Quote from: Omega;1117477I recall Gary mentioning someone offering support for one of his projects and then pulling out. Thought it was Kuntz but can not find my notes.

You may be thinking of Rob's participation in the Castle Zagyg project (via Troll Lord Games). Early on, Rob and Gary intended to work on this together, drawing on both of their Castle Greyhawk material. (Some Greyhawk levels were Rob's -- for a complete presentation of the old Castle Greyhawk material, you'd need both the Gary-authored/owned material and the Rob-authored/owned material.) Before earnest work on the actual Castle Zagyg dungeons really began, Gary worked up the (new) Yggsburgh mini-setting. Rob worked up the (new) "Dark Chateau" adventure site. And Gary was organizing a team of contributors working on detailed modules for Yggsburgh city. I was sorta involved in the CZ project in that Rob asked me if I wanted to work on developing the dungeon areas beneath Dark Chateau (the "Watery Caverns"). I agreed and had started initial work on that.

However, Gary and Rob had a falling out over how the work on the Castle Zagyg dungeons/material would proceed (and possibly additional factors that I can't speak to). Rob wanted to basically release the actual Greyhawk material, including scans of the original maps and such, perhaps with notes/annotations and some additional development. Gary wanted to essentially re-do the dungeons in a new form with more detail and new presentation (a great deal more work, but by this point there was a team of people involved in the CZ project). I should note that I wasn't involved in that, and my comments on it are drawn from some discussions with Rob, as well as what Rob and Gary did release, later. In any case, their disagreements ultimately led to Rob and Gary parting ways on the project. (That also ended my involvement, since the Watery Caverns thing was part of the overall Castle Zagyg project, and I decided not to continue with it outside of the CZ umbrella.)

Rob released some of his own Greyhawk levels or rooms under his Pied Piper Publishing mark. From those, especially Bottle City, you can get some idea of what Rob seemed to have in mind. Original maps and notes scanned, a transcription of the notes, some annotations and commentary, et cetera. Personally, I would've liked that approach to all of the old Castle Greyhawk material, but it wasn't to be. Having seen some of the Greyhawk material, I speculate that Gary believed it was too minimal for publication as-is. Much of what I saw was very brief in its key/writeup: basically brief notes like what you might expect from an experienced DM that prepped a huge, ongoing dungeon for his personal campaign. Not at all what you might expect from a "ready to publish" dungeon.

The Castle Zagyg project continued after Rob left the project, with the main development being spearheaded by Jeff Talanian. Troll Lord Games eventually released the "upper works", which, as far as I can tell, was mostly new material. The aftermath of Gary's death killed the project entirely, with Trigee ending the relationship with Troll Lord Games. So we never got to see much drawn from the actual original Greyhawk dungeons.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117436Welcome back Gronan!!!

Please give us more details about all three of the above.

If you are interested, I now hang out at RPGPub.

I no longer post at theRPGSite because I'm sick and tired of "SJWS and/or StoryGamers are ruining the hobby" screeds.  Over at RPGPub we actually talk about fun.

Just like I have disassociated myself from Star Wars fandom because Star Wars fandom is now all about how much they hate Star Wars.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117545If you are interested, I now hang out at RPGPub.

I no longer post at theRPGSite because I'm sick and tired of "SJWS and/or StoryGamers are ruining the hobby" screeds.  Over at RPGPub we actually talk about fun.

Just like I have disassociated myself from Star Wars fandom because Star Wars fandom is now all about how much they hate Star Wars.

Take the blinders off sunny boy.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117545If you are interested, I now hang out at RPGPub.

I'll send over some denture-safe cookies and orthopedic pillows to the RPGsafespace.

But since you've jumped into this thread in the depths of Mos Eisley (and you're always welcome here), tell us more about the Dave vs. Gary GM methods.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117545I no longer post at theRPGSite

Apparently you do. :D

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117553I'll send over some denture-safe cookies and orthopedic pillows to the RPGsafespace.

That is beautiful. I wondered what the RPGPub was all about. I like my fun well seasoned with hot spices.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1117448but hey, it's like Dragonslaying right? Find an old GM in a cave somewhere, and you find ways to make it miserable?

This seems to have become a time honored tradition over the last 20 years or so and then ramped up on over drive the last 10 years or so.

Quote from: estar;1117450It is hard to hold a reasonable discussion with him especially if your opinion differs. He is versed in various academic fields, like systems theory. He often presents his opinions as facts as well as uses an extensive amount of academic jargon. Which just adds to the difficulty of participating in any discussion with him.

It really depends on what you are discussing and whether or not you are spouting nonsense. Often what some call opinions are facts, they just have a problem with the person presenting the facts. You yourself have been on the receiving end of people discounting your facts as opinions, you are just more laid back than Rob is when you encounter it.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1117517However, Gary and Rob had a falling out over how the work on the Castle Zagyg dungeons/material would proceed (and possibly additional factors that I can't speak to). Rob wanted to basically release the actual Greyhawk material, including scans of the original maps and such, perhaps with notes/annotations and some additional development. .

Just one of many times that Gary should have listened to Rob. The notes/annotations and some additional development would have fleshed it out plenty and it would have gotten published. This is just another example of what we all lost with the untimely passing of Don Kaye, the only person in Gary's life that he would really listen to. If Don Kaye had lived to a ripe old age, a lot of things would have been published IMO.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1117434He's one of the reasons why I shy away from doing public games at conventions and at the FLGS; you, as GM, have to take whatever walks up to the table no matter how much of a jerk that they might turn out to be.

You do? I must have been doing it wrong... Remember that ad? It's the fish John West rejects that makes it the best! Some players are the fish John West rejects. And me, too.

Who is John West and why is he rejecting fish?

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

He was talking about aircraft design, but the same goes for rpg design, and game groups. Sometimes you can take someone out of the group and it actually improves things. Addition by subtraction.

[video=youtube;gfw0pb7vTKU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfw0pb7vTKU[/youtube]

[video=youtube;AZ_RoeZxhrU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_RoeZxhrU[/youtube]

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1117672You do? I must have been doing it wrong...

At a public convention, you won't know who is a jerk and who isn't as you've never seen them before. And often the players have paid to play, so you don't get to just stop them playing unless you have a very good reason ("they are a jerk" is often not good enough).

Quote from: spon;1117682At a public convention, you won't know who is a jerk and who isn't as you've never seen them before. And often the players have paid to play, so you don't get to just stop them playing unless you have a very good reason ("they are a jerk" is often not good enough).

As a GM at conventions, I don't bother to preregister any of my games anymore, although I do send out a private email in advance of the show I'm attending with contact information to my gamer mailing list so people who have played before know where and when I'm running a game. First I don't want players that show up to my games to have to pay. They already paid with the admission to the show, and they pay to attend with travel, hotel, and other expenses, it's just insult to injury to tack on a fee for my game, because I'm there for fun, not for profit.

When I did register games I had a high incidence of douchebags showing up at the table to ruin the fun for the other players. That doesn't happen anymore. Finally with pre-scheduled games, I have had to cancel them before due to unexpected circumstances, or circumstances beyond my control. That doesn't happen anymore either, so no players are disappointed, because there is no game announcement email or text, unless the game is actually afoot.

Quote from: spon;1117682At a public convention, you won't know who is a jerk and who isn't as you've never seen them before. And often the players have paid to play, so you don't get to just stop them playing unless you have a very good reason ("they are a jerk" is often not good enough).

Well just because one paid to get in does not excuse them from being a jerk and or a douchebag. If they are disruptive and ruining the game for everyone else they get asked to stop. Failure to do so and they get booted from the table. That is non-negotiable and not up for debate. They may have paid to get in I'm an not and neither is anyone else at the table getting paid to put up with their bad behavior.

Quote from: sureshot;1117686Well just because one paid to get in does not excuse them from being a jerk and or a douchebag. If they are disruptive and ruining the game for everyone else they get asked to stop. Failure to do so and they get booted from the table. That is non-negotiable and not up for debate. They may have paid to get in I'm an not and neither is anyone else at the table getting paid to put up with their bad behavior.

Perfect response! I've run a lot of games at game stores and at conventions, and I've had almost no issues with disruptive players. [At bigger events, since I'm busy running a game, I also expect the organizers of the event/space to deal with things like booting players when I point out issues (as I dealt with that kind of issues back when I helped run conventions); booting them from one table may just send the problem to another table, and booting them from the con or store should be done from a broader viewpoint.] Conversely, I have had some of the most interesting sessions because of players I initially thought could be a problem but weren't; over-curating your table may make it bland.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1117672You do? I must have been doing it wrong... Remember that ad? It's the fish John West rejects that makes it the best! Some players are the fish John West rejects. And me, too.

You're not doing it wrong at all. I'm coming at it from the industry side, where the publisher I'm working for is having me run games as marketing, the convention / event organizer that I working for is having me do the event as marketing, or the FLGS that I'm working for is having me do the event as marketing. The terms of employment require that I keep the paying customers happy.

Back on topic, such as it is.

This over the holidays a player brought to my attention.

The Stranger Things box set has this line in the credits.

QuoteBased on the original Dungeons & Dragons game created by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, with Brian Blume, Rob Kuntz, James Ward, and Don Kaye.

The only place I came across in a quick glance through various editions was Blume being credited as a co-designer for OD&D in Eldritch Wizardry? Kuntz and Ward are credited for Gods & Demigods.

Gygax has said that the monk was based off a Blume concept, possibly even rough draft (can't remember offhand).  Blume was big into the kung-fu shows of the mid-70s and thus the class reflects those shows.

Quote from: EOTB;1117718Gygax has said that the monk was based off a Blume concept, possibly even rough draft (can't remember offhand).  Blume was big into the kung-fu shows of the mid-70s and thus the class reflects those shows.

If we're crediting people for writing the stuff a class is based on, what about the Aero Hobbies guys out of Santa Monica, CA (Gary Switzer) who submitted the Thief class to Gygax?

I'm sure if they'd owned 1/3 of TSR at one time they'd have been recognized.  It's not purely meritorious.

But if D&D "recognized" everyone who contributed ideas, even written ones that ended up largely used, then people would be complaining about the wasted page count.  Submitting ideas to someone else to be popularized is to likely lose credit for the idea.  Just the way the world works in most instances.  Something that idea-contributors hate, but the fact remains.

You'd basically need likely only 2 lines to include the people who came up with various classes that are still in the game.  Gray Switzer for the Thief, Joe Fischer for the Ranger, Peter Aronson for the schools of magic having its own class (the Illusionist), Doug Schwegman for the Bard.

And then George taking and Tim Mesford for the Anti-Paladin, which sort of resurfaced in 3e as the Blackguard (and in Pathfinder)

And then, and then, and then.

And then people who contribute stuff other than classes will say "why not recognize my contribution too?"

They're recognizing past owners who contributed.  Look, it's just the way the world works.   Even if you get your name in, it's essentially meaningless.  Note that this was in response to someone saying "why is this person even listed?".  Nobody reads the fine print.  99.999999% of people are going to assume that whoever's name is printed biggest on the front "contributed" 100% of the ideas in it, and that presumed credit for an idea to the wrong person, even where the right person is listed in tiny print, is likely going to be even more psychically painful to someone who cares about accreditation than not being credited on the work at all.  

No one cares who contributed an idea.   I say this as someone who has contributed, and am content with simply seeing it included.

Quote from: EOTB;1117739And then, and then, and then.

And then people who contribute stuff other than classes will say "why not recognize my contribution too?"

They're recognizing past owners who contributed.  Look, it's just the way the world works.   Even if you get your name in, it's essentially meaningless.  Note that this was in response to someone saying "why is this person even listed?".  Nobody reads the fine print.  99.999999% of people are going to assume that whoever's name is printed biggest on the front "contributed" 100% of the ideas in it, and that presumed credit for an idea to the wrong person, even where the right person is listed in tiny print, is likely going to be even more psychically painful to someone who cares about accreditation than not being credited on the work at all.  

No one cares who contributed an idea.   I say this as someone who has contributed, and am content with simply seeing it included.

Greetings!

All very true, EOTB. Good stuff. I'm also reminded of a related tangent, that merely coming up with say, "Idea X" does not mean that such an idea is well-written, well-detailed, and appropriately prepared for commercial use and presentation.

I have for example numerous wonderful ideas jotted down in my own game campaign. Taking such an idea and writing it up for a commercial presentation, however, is an entirely different matter.:D I've reminded some of my friends when having discussions, there's many reasons why not everyone is an "author". Some of them blithely believe that "Well, I have good ideas in my campaign! I should get a book published!":D Ahh, well.

There is also some absurdity to crediting everyone that has somehow contributed an "idea." How about the salient contributors that added something "else" to make the original idea work? You can go on and on with this, you know?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I think the new D&D credits (the ones after "with") come from the fact that those were the authors of the supplements that came after the main set, and all of that was put into the core of the rules thereafter.   For instance, Blume was included since he was a co-author of Eldritch Wizardry.  

However, you are seeing more credit being given for minor contributions nowadays.  Publishers have been better at crediting the original writers for any monster contribution.  Heck, Gary himself started crediting spells and monsters to their creators in Lejendary Adventures.  

And it's not just games--if you look at the credits to a Marvel Movie, they are now sure to credit (with special thanks), all the writers who wrote stories or developed characters that were touched upon in the story or plot.  

There might be a legal reason for this--and it doesn't make them co-contributors or allow them to claim ownership, copyright or royalties, etc.  But I think the trend is now to attribute as accurately as possible these types of things.

Quote from: JRT;1117744However, you are seeing more credit being given for minor contributions nowadays.

Compare the 1-2' credits as the opening of movies fifty years ago vs the 8-12' of credits after a movie today.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1117745Compare the 1-2' credits as the opening of movies fifty years ago vs the 8-12' of credits after a movie today.

Well, presumably it' s better if more people have worked on it, ...yeah?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1117745Compare the 1-2' credits as the opening of movies fifty years ago vs the 8-12' of credits after a movie today.

Actually the credits for movies have been fairly broad even not long after the start. But very YMMV as some were very spartan and others were not. I think they got a shorter during wartime with rationing and supply limits. But even so alot of old movies put at least a little effort into crediting people. By the 60s and 70s the credits were getting longer and started getting moved more often to the end of the movie as things like the gaffer, boom operator and best boy and even catering got credited.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1117545If you are interested, I now hang out at RPGPub.

I no longer post at theRPGSite because I'm sick and tired of "SJWS and/or StoryGamers are ruining the hobby" screeds.  Over at RPGPub we actually talk about fun.

Just like I have disassociated myself from Star Wars fandom because Star Wars fandom is now all about how much they hate Star Wars.

I wondered about your absence. I'll have to check out RPGPub.

Quote from: Omega;1117762Actually the credits for movies have been fairly broad even not long after the start. But very YMMV as some were very spartan and others were not. I think they got a shorter during wartime with rationing and supply limits. But even so alot of old movies put at least a little effort into crediting people. By the 60s and 70s the credits were getting longer and started getting moved more often to the end of the movie as things like the gaffer, boom operator and best boy and even catering got credited.

Once Upon a Time, movie credits did not ever list the accountants, caterers, drivers, gofers, etc. That time is long gone.

Quote from: Omega;1117762Actually the credits for movies have been fairly broad even not long after the start. But very YMMV as some were very spartan and others were not. I think they got a shorter during wartime with rationing and supply limits. But even so alot of old movies put at least a little effort into crediting people. By the 60s and 70s the credits were getting longer and started getting moved more often to the end of the movie as things like the gaffer, boom operator and best boy and even catering got credited.

Star Wars apparently started the trend of credits at the end; Lucas was fined for omitting the director's name in the opening credits and simply paid the fine.

Certainly there are a lot more credits than there used to be; but I think that is partly a lot more people involved (the number of names under the many special effects companies is staggering). In the very early days even the main actors were not credited.

Eventually the entire movie will be credits, with the actual content interspersed or credits within the scenes like product placement.

Quote from: rawma;1117700I've run a lot of games at game stores and at conventions, and I've had almost no issues with disruptive players.

100% agree! I've run games at conventions for almost four decades and I've had only a handful of asshats show up to the table. The majority gamers at cons just want to have fun.

And the more specific and clear you make your game pitch for the convention site & booklet, the better table you will usually get because people self-select themselves in or out. AKA, if you are running a game about courtly intrigue with heavy roleplay and little or no combat, say that up front so you get people who want that experience and not people who really prefer to play something else. Bait and switch is crap for everyone.

As far back as the 1914s actors were being credited, least the main ones. But some I've seen from the 20s did not. I think that in some cases the credits were actually on stage cards or pamphlets handed out. Hence why they werent on screen. And the musician wasnt credited because well. Hes that guy sitting over there at the piano in the theater providing the music. :cool:

As for games. Really depends on the company. One will credit everyone and their cousin twice removed. And another you have to pry the info of who designed it from their cold dead hands.

Quote from: Omega;1117813As far back as the 1914s actors were being credited, least the main ones. But some I've seen from the 20s did not. I think that in some cases the credits were actually on stage cards or pamphlets handed out. Hence why they werent on screen. And the musician wasnt credited because well. Hes that guy sitting over there at the piano in the theater providing the music. :cool:

I'm going by Wikipedia, which can be risky (lots of citation needed, but a reference to Mary Pickford being known only as the "Biograph girl" from her biography) but this looks reasonable. Clearly the early days are before 1914, anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billing_(performing_arts)#History

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1117745Compare the 1-2' credits as the opening of movies fifty years ago vs the 8-12' of credits after a movie today.

Which is why Apocalypse Now will always be one of my favorite films: no credits at all!