Quote from: bat on October 11, 2020, 05:49:17 PM
  Dungeons & Dragons, from the viewpoint of TARGA, the organization that kicked off the OSR

From what I recall it was more "The world (of OSR) is Chaos! TARGA shall bring it Order!"

I don't recall it ever being particularly popular, never mind central to the OSR. And it certainly didn't initiate the OSR. If anything it seemed, from the outside, to be more about putting a leash on it. Maybe that latter is a mistaken view. But if it was popular or central to the OSR I think I'd have seen some sign of that on the forums & blogs.

I am not going to argue anyone's viewpoints. I was a member of the conference calls initiated by Victor Raymond and designed the fliers. I do know that ALL older games were supported and nobody was the leader. It was always DIY. I left TARGA when Zak appeared and just help out a few publishers here and there.

Quote from: Mercurius on October 11, 2020, 05:33:49 PMOn a side note, I made the comment on ENW that I found Critical Role irritating and got quite a back-lash.

That's because there are a substantial number of posters at ENWorld who are more about D&D "lifestyle" than actually playing D&D.  So much so that they view any attempt to discuss actual play, as opposed to watching actors fake-play on YouTube, as gatekeeping or some such.  Critical Role allows them to participate in the cool, trendy part of the hobby without having to do any of the yucky stuff, like hanging out with nerds or learning rules or being told that their precious binary otherkin trans-drow just got eaten by an otyugh, because it doesn't care how special the character is supposed to be.  So, yeah, the smooth-brains at ENWorld love them some CR...

Quote from: bat on October 11, 2020, 05:49:17 PM
  Dungeons & Dragons, from the viewpoint of TARGA, the organization that kicked off the OSR,  was just one facet of old style gaming. The idea back then was to get people playing older style games instead of just talking about them. Is Talislanta in? You bet! And Star Frontiers, Gamma World and games like Wizards' World. D&D was never meant to be the only focus. How do I know? I was a member of TARGA and participated on the conference calls, created the YahooGroup, and made blank fliers for people to download,  fill out and post to announce their games. Your list is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The list is comprised of retro-clones, not all old style games - that would be endless. There is no retro-clone of older editions of Talislanta.

Quote from: S'mon on October 11, 2020, 09:38:22 PM

Quote from: Mercurius on October 11, 2020, 05:33:49 PM
By the way, what is a "Critter?" A young 'un?

A fan of Critical Role. Don't have to be young - of the two we were discussing, one is in his twenties and the other in her late thirties AFAIK. But Critical Role shapes their view of what D&D is and should be.

We think it's not even Matt Mercer's GMing, more the actor-players and how they see their role in the game, the group, the game world and the 'story'.

Ah, I see...don't know how I missed the obvious connection.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on October 11, 2020, 09:56:00 PM

Quote from: Mercurius on October 11, 2020, 05:33:49 PMOn a side note, I made the comment on ENW that I found Critical Role irritating and got quite a back-lash.

That's because there are a substantial number of posters at ENWorld who are more about D&D "lifestyle" than actually playing D&D.  So much so that they view any attempt to discuss actual play, as opposed to watching actors fake-play on YouTube, as gatekeeping or some such.  Critical Role allows them to participate in the cool, trendy part of the hobby without having to do any of the yucky stuff, like hanging out with nerds or learning rules or being told that their precious binary otherkin trans-drow just got eaten by an otyugh, because it doesn't care how special the character is supposed to be.  So, yeah, the smooth-brains at ENWorld love them some CR...

To be fair to ENW, most of the regulars are 40+ years old, and thus lifelong gamers. They illustrate how many older and long-time players happily embrace WotC and CR, and whatever the current fad is around D&D and how it should be played. To each their own, I guess. Where I take issue is a virulent form of groupthink that is hostile towards any nuance or divergence from the One Right Way to Think. Whether it is finding CR not to one's taste or not being deeply offended by Oriental Adventures, it amounts to a kind of slavish adherence to a rather narrow ideological framework. But I'm probably preaching to the choir, here.

Quote from: S'mon on October 11, 2020, 09:42:23 PM
From what I recall it was more "The world (of OSR) is Chaos! TARGA shall bring it Order!"

I don't recall it ever being particularly popular, never mind central to the OSR. And it certainly didn't initiate the OSR. If anything it seemed, from the outside, to be more about putting a leash on it. Maybe that latter is a mistaken view. But if it was popular or central to the OSR I think I'd have seen some sign of that on the forums & blogs.

TARGA was founded as an organized marketing effort to promote the classic editions. To promote the classes edition and the work of the participating author via talking about through blogs, running games at conventions, etc.

It fell apart because some authors released products that other authors didn't want to be associated with. Namely Mckinney's Carcosa. But there was friction developing prior to that over minor differences of opinions over doing x versus y. In the end it wasn't needed because individual authors using the Internet proved to be more than sufficient.

Quote from: estar on October 12, 2020, 08:12:32 AM

Quote from: S'mon on October 11, 2020, 09:42:23 PM
From what I recall it was more "The world (of OSR) is Chaos! TARGA shall bring it Order!"

I don't recall it ever being particularly popular, never mind central to the OSR. And it certainly didn't initiate the OSR. If anything it seemed, from the outside, to be more about putting a leash on it. Maybe that latter is a mistaken view. But if it was popular or central to the OSR I think I'd have seen some sign of that on the forums & blogs.

TARGA was founded as an organized marketing effort to promote the classic editions. To promote the classes edition and the work of the participating author via talking about through blogs, running games at conventions, etc.

It fell apart because some authors released products that other authors didn't want to be associated with. Namely Mckinney's Carcosa. But there was friction developing prior to that over minor differences of opinions over doing x versus y. In the end it wasn't needed because individual authors using the Internet proved to be more than sufficient.

Thanks Rob.

Quote from: Premier on October 09, 2020, 05:17:58 PMThe OSR came into existence as a direct pushback against that hostility and the lack of availability of old-editions materials.

As someone who spend about as much time on ENWorld as Dragonsfoot back in the early 2000s, I can say that this statement isn't an accurate reflection of reality. Third Edition players on ENWorld were incredibly open to discussion about old school play. How else can you explain the huge success of Necromancer Games? The formation of the old school mindset occurred on ENWorld and the Necromancer forums years before the OSR came about.

Now, compare this with Dragonsfoot where you weren't even allowed to discuss 3e, even as it related to older versions.

The reason that I say that the OSR isn't helping is that people would still be playing old school D&D whether the OSR existed or not. And if you removed the tribalism of OSR vs "new school" players, you'd have seen even more cross pollination between the two groups. Just like you see with all other older games like Traveller, Runequest, CoC, Champions, etc. Traveller, for instance, has gone through far more radical changes than D&D ever did.

Somebody came along and said "Hey, OSR!" and suddenly there was an umbrella term for publishing old school D&D stuff. That's it.

I think Rob would agree, that there were already several machinations afoot beforehand, namely Necromancer Games, C&C, Hackmaster, etc. The Retroclones just popped the cherry.
Why use page-long fat statblocks, if we can use those that these modules were written for?

I actively post on Enworld and the moderation is pretty light handed. Posters have to be stepping over a pretty clear line before any red text shows up and there almost always are warnings, not banning. In terms of this thread, the site is pretty friendly to the OSR.

CR fans are quite loud, but that is everywhere. The mods step in when site rules are violated. They don't step in if someone disagrees with a poster that does not like CR.  CR fans yell at each other more than anyone else.

I am not sure what other site posting policies have to do with the topic of this thread. If I went purely on posts on Enworld, I would say it has a small but loyal following there. Sort of like it in the market. A few stars and winners for Kickstarters and lots of small ones. Some product in the market, but the niche is much smaller than 5e which is sold at Walmart now.

I am not sure why it became about ENW's posting policies - that is not what I was referring to when I mentioned ENW. I was merely talking about the "Critters" and their defense of CR, not moderation.

If anything I'm pointing at the unfortunate tribalization within the D&D community, whether OSR folks or Critters. Maybe I'm looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, but the D&D community wasn't always so tribalized. We used to be united by our shared love of rolling dice, not arguments over who is playing real D&D or not. So I suppose you could accuse me of being an instant of my own complaint by complaining about Critters.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 12, 2020, 09:57:50 AM

Quote from: Premier on October 09, 2020, 05:17:58 PMThe OSR came into existence as a direct pushback against that hostility and the lack of availability of old-editions materials.

As someone who spend about as much time on ENWorld as Dragonsfoot back in the early 2000s, I can say that this statement isn't an accurate reflection of reality.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 12, 2020, 09:57:50 AM
The reason that I say that the OSR isn't helping is that people would still be playing old school D&D whether the OSR existed or not.

Yes but without the ability to publish or share material freely it puts a hard limits on what happens.

The reason why the release of OSRIC and Basic Fantasy marks the beginning of the OSR is because they illustrated a path for publishing and sharing free of many of the IP constrains that existed. Path easily used by anybody else willing to put the time and effort in.

The OSR certainly did not invent the idea of a fan made supplement/adventure. But by showing how such works can be commercialized, more people were now willing to put more time and more money into making material with better production quality. Even if it was just to share as opposed to sell.

Commercialization is not magical pixie dust sprinkled on to make everything better. Commercialization also mean that in-between projects were enabled. Instead everything having to be "wink-wink-dodge" semi-legal fanwork, now people can settle in at whatever level of investment they want to do. Knowing that their work isn't going to disappear with a cease and desist from Wizards.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 12, 2020, 09:57:50 AM
You'd have seen even more cross pollination between the two groups. Just like you see with all other older games like Traveller, Runequest, CoC, Champions, etc. Traveller, for instance, has gone through far more radical changes than D&D ever did.

What would have happened is all those systems would be stuck in the same "wink-wink I hope a C&D doesn't arrive" limbo. Hobbyist would have still done what they always done, most gravitating to a version of D&D and with the rest shaking out in order of their popularity they had back in the day. Provided that the parent IP holder is not a dick about fan made publication.

The OSR by its example showed how older RPGs can be revived provided certain preconditions are met. The most important one being the availability of open content.

Legends/Runequest/D100
This is an example of a community that did not evolve like the OSR despite the availability of open content. The main reason because D100 RPGs have dominant IP holder still actively publishing material, Chaosium. But wait it doesn't just have one active publisher, it has a second one as well, Design Mechanism which publishes Mythras.  Both have recently published works that were well-received by D100 hobbyist.

There are hobbyists in the D100 community taking advantage of the open content like Openquest and Newt Newport. However with Chaosium actively discouraging the use of the Legends open content every chance they get, and Design Mechanism relatively open to contributions outside of the company. There not a lot of D100 hobbyist willing to go the extra mile to publish material.

Cepheus/Mongoose Traveller/Traveller
Traveller had two waves of open content, Traveller D20, and Mongoose Traveller 1e. Neither version formed a complete RPG like the D20 SRD or the Legends SRD for D100. In addition a significant portion of Traveller hobbyists were fans of the Third Imperium setting and viewed the system as a way of running campaigns in that setting. Finally Marc Miller, the IP holder, encouraged with limits fan made projects for various editions of Traveller.

The advent of Mongoose Traveller 1e saw for the first time a growing interest in Traveller as a system. Now only Mongoose marketed MgT1e this way, they encouraged other authors to put out Traveller compatible settings as well. As of a few years ago, there were a half-dozen small publishers regularly putting out material to support original settings.

During the change to Mongoose Traveller 2e, the 3PP license was bungled by Mongoose imperiling the IP of the publishers that grown under MgT1e. For the first time in Traveller's history the conditions were there for a open alternative. Jason Kemp stepped up to the plate and used content from the MgT1e SRD, the Traveller20 SRD, D20 Modern, etc to make Cepheus. All the third party publishers that used the MgT1e SRD swtiched over and started publishing using Cepheus. In the years sense the community sharing and publishing for Cepheus has been growing at a rapid clip.

Quote from: Mercurius on October 12, 2020, 12:32:04 PM
If anything I'm pointing at the unfortunate tribalization within the D&D community, whether OSR folks or Critters. Maybe I'm looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, but the D&D community wasn't always so tribalized. We used to be united by our shared love of rolling dice, not arguments over who is playing real D&D or not. So I suppose you could accuse me of being an instant of my own complaint by complaining about Critters.

Tribalism existed in RPGs very early.  I can't number how many times I was told the style I prefer to play was some combination of "not REAL roleplaying"; "that's ROLL-playing"; or "dungeons are primitive, simplistic, and unrealistic.  RPGs have moved beyond that"

Geeks are the most tribal creatures on earth to viewpoints not socially dominant within their sub-culture.  Every fandom is like this.  But hoo-boy, when out-of-favor views gain some traction and decline to make a hybrid tent for them, that is not-ok

Quote from: EOTB on October 13, 2020, 03:22:54 AM

Quote from: Mercurius on October 12, 2020, 12:32:04 PM
If anything I'm pointing at the unfortunate tribalization within the D&D community, whether OSR folks or Critters. Maybe I'm looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, but the D&D community wasn't always so tribalized. We used to be united by our shared love of rolling dice, not arguments over who is playing real D&D or not. So I suppose you could accuse me of being an instant of my own complaint by complaining about Critters.

Tribalism existed in RPGs very early.  I can't number how many times I was told the style I prefer to play was some combination of "not REAL roleplaying"; "that's ROLL-playing"; or "dungeons are primitive, simplistic, and unrealistic.  RPGs have moved beyond that"

Geeks are the most tribal creatures on earth to viewpoints not socially dominant within their sub-culture.  Every fandom is like this.  But hoo-boy, when out-of-favor views gain some traction and decline to make a hybrid tent for them, that is not-ok

Yeah, I can hear that, although it has been exacerbated of late, perhaps as a proxy battle in the "culture wars."