Quote from: Brad;843390It's AN interpretation of AD&D, not AD&D. I suppose that's the biggest fundamental difference I see. I vastly prefer AD&D 1st edition simply because there are so many contradictory and ambiguous rules, you're forced into making it up yourself. Initiative and combat being the primary examples.

I have no beef with OSRIC, but it's pretty flavorless and flat compared to the originals.

It was never intended to be used as a replacement game, and the writing is geared toward clarity for publishing instead of using a more entertaining voice.  

All of OSRIC's original purposes, as I see them (as a non-contributor to that effort), remain.  

1) WOTC still hasn't offered a way to explicitly publish for 1E with the safe harbor that the OGL offered; OSRIC offers a legal protection the WOTC PDFs don't.

2) Since it is available for free, it ensures that the 1E rules are available forever.  The original books aren't hard to find, but not everyone enjoys dealing with eBay or the secondary market for whatever reasons.  While the AD&D reprint PDF is now available, older scans of the original books were also previously available and then withdrawn for several years.  If WOTC withdraws it again, people will still be able to print their own books using the OSRIC PDF, buy the Black Blade offset print, or use Lulu.

3) AD&D left many parts of the game largely unexplained and unexplored beyond cursory mentions.  While WOTC might be willing to reprint what was previously written, they aren't expanding on it.  

Many OSR products have rewritten the base game from a particular take, but there haven't been many "second-stage" products (for lack of a better term) that go beyond slightly altering the basic mechanics to best showcase a flavor preference of the author.  We need more original content and less revised content.  When OSRIC first came out, my thought as a gamer was "great, now that an open platform is written and given away, everyone can use it as a jumping point to explore what was never written".  Instead, the same content was repeatedly flayed and "reskinned".  

Unlike creators of many OSR products, those involved with OSRIC encourage people to primarily use the original game, using the clone either as a secondary resource or not at all.  I personally never saw it as competition for AD&D (still use my original books at the table), and I suspect it was never intended as such.  I purchased my Black Blade print primarily for the artwork (I mean, geez - $26 for a top quality 400 page hardback?  Some people want $25 for a couple dozen pages of module), and as an easy reference in case I wanted to publish my own work someday.  

P&P and the other OSRIC contributors are are still encouraging the community to support the original game with new products.  Some people have used the safe harbor of OSRIC; others have instead relied upon standard copyright and trademark compatibility laws.

Don't look at me. I liked the AD&D books' writing in the first place, and I barely understood the need for OSRIC before the reprints came along.

OSRIC isn't better than the game Gary Gygax wrote, and personally I think the game's best read in Gary's original prose.  I made no effort to imitate that, although some of my collaborators are better writers than I am so there are some places where OSRIC has a neat turn of phrase.  Nevertheless, OSRIC was always first and foremost an optional tool for third party publishers, and its main purpose is to give them a place to huddle.

Secondly, it's a source of good-value table copies of the rules so you don't have to risk exposing your precious 1e hardbacks to the puddles of beer and fingers stained with salty snacks that are such a characteristic feature of the 1e gaming table.

I have no evidence for this, but in my opinion OSRIC and its subsequent imitators are the reason why WOTC re-released the earlier editions in pdf and print.  Part of the ongoing purpose of OSRIC is to keep WOTC honest.

I never expected OSRIC to get a loyal following in its own right.  For reasons I don't fully understand, it does have such a following, and I'm obviously happy to continue to support those people, as well as OSRIC's publishers.

But I want to repeat this point so the same message begins and ends this post:-  the 1e system is best read in Gary Gygax's original prose.

Quote from: P&P;844055I have no evidence for this, but in my opinion OSRIC and its subsequent imitators are the reason why WOTC re-released the earlier editions in pdf and print.  Part of the ongoing purpose of OSRIC is to keep WOTC honest.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is only true inasmuch as WoTC saw that the OSR as a whole was doing really well, and wanted to both cash in and build up good-will with the OSR crowd on the eve of the 5e launch. It definitely wasn't like "omigod OSRIC" or something like that, or some kind of attempt to defeat or subvert the OSR as such.  It was a recognition that the OSR is cool and is popular enough for WoTC to test the waters on releasing older products.

Quote from: RPGPundit;844449It was a recognition that the OSR is cool and is popular enough for WoTC to test the waters on releasing older products.

But on the whole the waters apparently were too shallow for WotC as they didn't continue to release HC reprint collections of the classic modules. I was so waiting for those...

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;844452But on the whole the waters apparently were too shallow for WotC as they didn't continue to release HC reprint collections of the classic modules. I was so waiting for those...

Well consider (and, remember, I'm a big AD&D fan), that the AD&D reprints (the Players Handbook, etc.) were "limited edition", and it took three years for them to sell out.  Now, I have no figures in front of me, so I don't know what a limited print run entails, but it may well be that this wasn't the big splash I and others thought it would be.  The cry of "There's gold in them thar hills!" may have been tempered down to "There's a little tiny bit of gold in them thar hills, but only a little." after the release of the 3 core books.  Now, the OD&D set (comparatively) flew off the shelves (but it was limited to 5000 copies).  But you can still find the AD&D books at various online vendors, as well as Unearthed Arcana, and the two module compilations (Dungeon of Doom, Against the Slave Lords).

That the reprints are now available as .PDF files tells me that they only just sold out of warehouse stock, or they gave up and released the .PDFs; the word was they weren't going to release .PDF versions until the physical copies all sold out.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;844590That the reprints are now available as .PDF files tells me that they only just sold out of warehouse stock, or they gave up and released the .PDFs; the word was they weren't going to release .PDF versions until the physical copies all sold out.

Okay, so assume you're right (you probably are) and they just now released the PDFs because the special edition hardcovers sold out. Three years? For as much clamoring and bellyaching that goes on, you'd think every grognard would have bought two or three sets, selling out a hell of a lot faster than that. Why do you think the sales were so lackluster (again, non-rhetorical)?

I only got one set of all the reprints, and was going to get multiples, but after seeing the less-than-acceptable art scanning, I was sort of peeved.

Quote from: Brad;844675Okay, so assume you're right (you probably are) and they just now released the PDFs because the special edition hardcovers sold out. Three years? For as much clamoring and bellyaching that goes on, you'd think every grognard would have bought two or three sets, selling out a hell of a lot faster than that. Why do you think the sales were so lackluster (again, non-rhetorical)?

A few reasons, and all of this is pure speculation...

Firstly, 4e players got fired.  You can say what you want, it happens with every edition but 4e players got fired hard.  Wizards seemingly did a 180' and took a knee and asked Basic, 1e, 2e and to a lesser degree (way lesser degree 3e (not 3.5!)) players for forgiveness.  While you'd think that was a net positive for the reprint sales, that's half their potential customer base.  Also, the people who loved and embraced 4e, I found, also hated 1e.  They weren't going to buy it under either case.

Next, I think there was a lot of hurt feelings from the creation of 4e and Essentials in the first place.  There were plenty of people who took the tack of "Well, you lost me as a customer forever, Wizards."  It didn't matter what they did; they could have resurrected Gary and it still wouldn't have appeased those folks.

Third, and I heard this directly from people both online and away, was "Well I already have them why would I buy them again?  If I want more copies, I can buy 'unadulterated' copies from Amazon resellers, go to my local used bookstore, buy copies on ebay, whatever, I don't have to pay $25 for a Players Handbook."

Next, I wonder if it wasn't simple aesthetics: there were a few people I encountered who would have purchased them if they'd had the original covers.

Initial price point didn't help, either.  Although most e-stores (and indeed some brick and mortar shops) had deep discounts (I saw up to 33% locally) that's still pretty steep for a thirty year old rulebook that someone might already have.

So, ultimately, that's what I think was up.  Just my opinion.

I don't know how other reprints did, but I have it on good information that the AD&D 1e corebook reprints sold very well.

OD&D sold completely out; that thing got scarce, immediately.  I mean even pre-sales sold out.

the AD&D books are still available if you look around a bit.  Unearthed Arcana is still pretty commonly available.  The A hardback and S hardback seem to still be pretty well available.  

None of this is to belie the notion that they sold well; indeed, what's in the inventory pipeline may well be all that's left (that is, Wizards has sold out, it's the wholesalers who're the ones with any stock left trickling down).  That may be the metric by which WotC has decided what "sold out" means (or sold very well), in this context.

Quote from: Brad;843327Yep. UA next, I suppose.

And no UA yet...which makes me wonder about the sales thing.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;845111OD&D sold completely out; that thing got scarce, immediately.  I mean even pre-sales sold out.

the AD&D books are still available if you look around a bit.  Unearthed Arcana is still pretty commonly available.  The A hardback and S hardback seem to still be pretty well available.  

None of this is to belie the notion that they sold well; indeed, what's in the inventory pipeline may well be all that's left (that is, Wizards has sold out, it's the wholesalers who're the ones with any stock left trickling down).  That may be the metric by which WotC has decided what "sold out" means (or sold very well), in this context.

That's what publishers usually mean, yes. "I saw it misplaced in the corner of a rarely-visited gaming store" doesn't mean it's not sold out.

Quote from: RPGPundit;845432That's what publishers usually mean, yes. "I saw it misplaced in the corner of a rarely-visited gaming store" doesn't mean it's not sold out.

And that's fine, indeed, that's great.  I'd really like to see a nice hardback version of, for example, the entire G/D/Q series with the original (pastel version) art and maybe the selling out will justify it.  I mean, that's doubtful: the G series was one of the first AD&D module series up on dndclassics.  Who knows, though.  Hope springs eternal!