Quote from: Benoist;441219Maybe modules are part of the picture. Many modules are published with direct compatibility references to OSRIC and LL. How about S&W? Are there many modules for it? There are a bunch from Mythmere Games, Frog God Games and the Tsar series... there's Knockspell, too... what else?

For Swords & Wizardry, as far I can think of from the top of my head
Modules in Knockspell:
-Emerald Isles I and II
-City of Vultures
-Tower of Mouths
-Operation: Unfathomable
-The Crossroads

Free Standing Modules
-Spire of Iron and Crystal
-Tomb of the Iron God
-Ice Tower of the Salka
-Splinters of Faith 1 (It started with a chicken)
-Splinters of Faith 2 (can't remember title)
-Splinters of Faith 3 (can't remember title)
-Splinters of Faith 4 (can't remember title)
-Ursined, Sealed and Delivered
-Fane of the Fallen
-Vile Worm of the Eldritch Oak

Magazines:
-J. Slater's Land of NOD magazine
-Fanzine dedicated to S&W WhiteBox is coming out in April as the new form of ODDities magazine.
-Knockspell Magazine (not dedicated to S&W but has lots of S&W and uses S&W stats)

Swords & Wizardry is also getting some additional traction from being published by Necromancer Games (S&W Tome of Horrors expected in Summer) and by Bill Webb's new Frog God Games (which has got a planned release of at least one Swords & Wizardry Module per month).

Modules to be Released within a month or two
-Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti
-Splinters of Faith 5
-Saga of the Northlands 1 (Vengeance of the Longserpent)
-Hex Crawl Classics
-New Swords & Wizardry module line from Bill Barsh of Pacesetter Games
-The Hollow Mountain

Variant-version game supplements:
-Ruins & Ronin
-Hideouts & Hoodlums

Other Materials
-S&W Monster Book (published)
-S&W Tome of Horrors (Necromancer Games planned for Summer)
-City Encounters (temporarily off the table while being revised for Frog God Games)
-The Swords & Wizardry Companion (3rd party supplement)
-Eldritch Weirdness Books 3-1

Plus, there are a few blogs, although the largest of these is theRavyn's Beyond the Black Gate.

Quote from: The_Shadow;441306I think David J is just someone who was probably weaned on games other than DnD and to whom its conventions aren't the natural boundaries of the FRP genre. Having started with T&T and MERP I'm in the same boat. DnD in any incarnation has always seemed rather weird, arbitrary and frustrating, much as I've tried to like it...

Actually I started with my cousins in 79.  They gave me their Holmes Basic Set and I took it home with me.  Tried to play it, got everything wrong at first, went on to play with friends who got everything wrong and a DM* who killed me off twice a session while my other friends got handed levels like candy.   Believe me, he may have had the books but what he ran was nothing like D&D.  Pure narrative fiat without ANY actual reading of the rules.  His idea of a brilliant adventure was being stuck on a waterslide with a crossbow and shooting at monsters along the side for a whole session.  I kid you not.  And yes, I branched out, I got Tunnels and Trolls and then Villains and Vigillantes, Runequest, The Traveller Book, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay, and James Bond 007.

And I have played every edition and version of D&D for at least one session.  To be fair I only played 4e for one session with the second worst DM I've ever seen.  I still think 4e is a better design than 3e but still hampered by D&D's legacy issues.  Certainly not as good as T&T 5 or RQ2 were THIRTY YEARS AGO.  The other versions of D&D including 3.0 and 3.5 have seen at least half a dozen sessions.

But really, if I hadn't gotten into playing Warhammer a decade ago, and played many miniature wargames since, I don't think I'd even think D&D had a decent game at its core.  I'd just hate it outright.

Quote from: danbuter;441165You aren't kidding about too many OSR games. More people should just publish supplements instead of entire new games. But I've been saying this for a year now, and have been completely ignored. Most OSR publishers are more interested in the sales of core rulebooks instead of supporting the hobby overall.

And some of the people producing old school and retroclone games aren't really interested in sales as the games are free. Microlite74 Version 2.0 has had over 7000 free downloads in the 18 months or so it has been out -- and this is without any presence on DriveThru/RPGNow.  Microlite74 is a very minor player in the retroclone "market" but I know of a good number of M74-based campaigns actually being played, so it's a success from my POV.

I don't do modules for it because I can't write a decent module. I run sandbox and my attempts to write standard adventure modules over the years have all been failures -- probably because I don't run games in a module manner. But it doesn't really matter. A module for ANY old school game -- TSR original or retroclone -- can be used with M74 with little conversion beyond changing the ACs to ascending. I don't see the need to produce special "Made for use with Microlite74" modules.

You may be seeing some Microlite75-based campaign settings, however. Two publishers have mentioned that they may use customized version of M75 as a rules appendix for their settings as this would allow them to sell the settings as complete games. I'm all for it. That's why my M20-based sets of game rules are all open game content.

Quote from: RandallS;441346You may be seeing some Microlite75-based campaign settings, however.

Very cool. Any sneak peeks?

Microlite is good stuff.

Hi all,

>Modules to be Released within a month or two
>-Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti
>Variant-version game supplements:
>-Hideouts & Hoodlums [snipped]

Wow, two mentions in one thread!  

If I may jump in and take this thread back to its original subject, I'm curious -- and suspect -- about the legality of games incorporating Chainmail elements.  The Brown Book in particular, from a quick skim, looked like it contained a lot of material almost verbatim from Chainmail.  How is that protected by Open License...?

~Scott "-enkainen" Casper

Quote from: Benoist;441133Stuff like the use of the d66 (I associate the d66 and d666 with In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, not OD&D). The vocabularity and general tone of the game that just don't make me think of OD&D. That kind of thing. I'm already served by the likes of S&W, Spellcraft & Swordplay and those kinds of games in the clone department, anyway. There's a game for everyone.

D66 = Old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, not those sub-par and undersold games you're talking about.

I don't know one person who picked up either of those.  Or even looked at them.

Quote from: Mythmere;441217This might be the crux of the whole thing. OSRIC, LL, and Swords & Wizardry are cited as the "big three" in almost any discussion of retro-clones. I often think that it's purely due to the fact that they are the earliest three, but you've made a really good point -- they are also the three games with tons of supplemental material from the original publishers and/or third-party publishers.

It might, following your observation, be the fact that OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry, and LL have reached a certain critical mass of support products.

The retro-clones have largely followed the course of open source operating systems specifically Linux distributions. Many of the most popular distributions are that way because of they were among the first AND developed a community around them to support them.

But as Ubuntu Linux showed it is possible to come in later in the game if you have a leader with a vision and willing to do the work to build a community. So the big "three" may be a big "four", or a big "five". Also there are formerly popular distributions that fell off the radar because their leadership faltered and the community dissipated.  However because it all based on open source other people took what unique about that distribution and carried it on to one of the other big ones or forged ahead with their own.

What it means for the OSR that the Classic D&D family will continue to be supported although the constellation of companies and authors will change.

Quote from: RandallS;441346I don't do modules for it because I can't write a decent module. I run sandbox and my attempts to write standard adventure modules over the years have all been failures -- probably because I don't run games in a module manner. But it doesn't really matter. A module for ANY old school game -- TSR original or retroclone -- can be used with M74 with little conversion beyond changing the ACs to ascending. I don't see the need to produce special "Made for use with Microlite74" modules.

I am working on that issue. I don't believe the tournament style "dungeon" i.e. a map with keyed locations written up is the only way of presenting useful adventuring material for a referee to use. That it is possible to write and sell a "sandbox" adventure that resolves around a specific situation without a predetermined course of events or an end.

Quote from: Blackhand;443775D66 = Old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, not those sub-par and undersold games you're talking about.

Sub-par?

(1) You're probably thinking of the American In Nomine instead of the game I am talking about, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, i.e. the original French game, which is a French Classic and a brilliant role playing game. It also uses the d666 and d66 exclusively with its mechanics. As for you associating it with Warhammer FRP... good for you, I guess?  

(2) Calling games like Swords & Wizardry and Spellcraft & Swordplay "sub-par" just tells me you have completely different tastes than I, which is fine, but also assume that your tastes are inherently superior to mine, which just prompts me to tell you to go play some 40K and get lost. You don't like those games. OK. Cool story, bro.

Quote from: Blackhand;443775I don't know one person who picked up either of those. Or even looked at them.

And? Why should I care? I haven't seen a single guy play Warhammer FRP in twenty years. Should you care? *shrug*

I knew WFRP used D66 a lot. I've never heard of this French RPG you're talking about. Probably the same for a lot of other people here.

That's totally cool with me. But jumping from one thing to the other and calling the games I'm talking about sub-par and all? Whatever! I was talking about me, myself, and I concur! I associate the d66/d666 with INS/MV. Period. The end. Others might associate it with something else. We have different game experiences and associations. OMG! A shocker, I know!

With the non-stop influx of retro-clones, I'm considering making a Forge-style story game called "Old School [Tent] Revival" where players take on the role of an evangelical game designer who tries to amass followers to the yet another retroclone he created.

It will have rules on holding a 4e burning bonfire, talking smack on the Internet, game store to game store evangelizing, and (most importantly) giving a good old-fashioned tent preaching (with the phrase "I feel the Gary Ghost power!" being a common component) where you get bonus dice for speaking in [alignment] tongues.

I can't decide if it should be more competitive (each PC has their own retro-clone to push) or cooperative (they are all soldiers in the "Army of Gary" against the demons of 4e).  

The first expansion pack talks about how to make the game more deep by introducing the optional setting of the time of the Great Schism, when Ryan Dancey nails copies of his D&D 3e rule update ideas to the Temple of Gary, causing acts of heresy and sedition to emerge.

heh...today I started retro-cloning GURPS first edition.  

I know it's a really bad idea, but I loved first edition and feel things went badly off the rails around the time of GURPS Space first edition and have never really recovered.

Quote from: jgants;443802(with the phrase "I feel the Gary Ghost power!" being a common component)

I like a number of the retroclones, but that line is fucking awesome.

People are still edition warring on the Legends & Lore thread, heh?