Quote from: XantherI'll end my apologetics for the CotI board.

But those of us who still frequent CotI thank you for the effort, citizen.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI seem to have noticed that in recent months boards like Dragonsfoot (D&D), Citizens of the Imperium (Traveller) and a number of smaller ones have been approaching near-undead status. People are still posting contributions, but they're getting sparse, short, repetitive, and hyper-specialized.

At some point shortly after 2000, grognardism was blooming, but it seems to be losing its oomph.

Yes, no?

No, I don't agree at all. There were no significant old school communities around 2000-2002; Dragonsfoot was a small, insular community where you could engage in edition wars or quibble over the minutiae of old stuff, like "what is your favourite TSR module, Thread #270". Necromancer Games was taking advantage of the early d20 upswing, but that's an extreme case; right place at the right time. Old school was, for all intents and purposes, reflecting on an older era.

In comparison, discussion in the last three years or so has been very productive, identifying and dissecting many of the desirable qualities people associate with old school, and more or less destroying the myth of "nostalgia" and "rose coloured glasses". It is no longer possible to casually dismiss prior editions and associated products as unfun without this view being challenged. The discussions have produced a lot of fun campaigns: on DF and other sites where old school people can be found, I am seeing a lot of reports on this, and it is more and more "look at the thing I just made" instead of "we replayed G1-3 over the weekend for the fourth time, and boy, it was a lot of fun".

There is, of course, a cycle to online discussions which sometimes results in more creative energy, and sometimes less. DF is somewhat less interesting than it was in mid 2006 when some classic threads were in full swing; K&K Alehouse is indeed moribund (demonstrating the finiteness of by-the-bookism), and perhaps most unfortunately of them all, OSRIC seems to have failed, not due to legal issues but lack of interest. I propose that the hobby side is faring rather well, and people are putting a lot of the talk into practice. (Personally, precisely one year ago, I was thinking of hanging up the dice bag - but that was personal matters.)

I am curious, where did you see "booming grognardism" "shortly after" 2000?

(No idea how this all applies to Traveller, I am not active in that community.)

Quote from: James J SkachOr, in a strange twist, they are off playing now that they have just enough to keep networked.

I envy...

Yeah. Contradicting Pierce, I propose that online community-building has been successful in dispelling a lot of the insularity plaguing old school gaming groups, and allowed them to recruit, reorganise or form anew. C&C or any of the successful other old school projects could never have happened without a critical mass of like-minded people. Of course, I don't believe the resulting community is particularly large by mainstream D&D standards, just that it is large enough to maintain itself.

Quote from: Melan...and perhaps most unfortunately of them all, OSRIC seems to have failed, not due to legal issues but lack of interest.

This is interesting to me as I just used the pdf again the other evening (to compare the BAB to the To Hit tables).  So I'm curious as to why you believe this to be true, what gives you the sense, etc.

And to be clear, I'm not disputing, I'm not plugged in so I was curious...

I think a lot of the activity on old-school D&D boards a few years ago was older gamers coming online at the same time, often because they rediscovered the game with 3E and found it wanting in some ways. But the activity on the DF and Necromancer Games boards has certainly tailed off dramatically in the last year or two. Maybe there's a finite amount of discussion most people can get out of reminiscing about OOP games, or talking about your favourite adventures back in the day.

And I have my doubts that old-school gamers are playing more. Look at the threads on the NG about adventures like Caverns of Thracia and the Lost City of Barakus. Tumbleweeds blow by. Even new old-school adventures like Goodman Games' DCCs generate very little discussion. For all their emphasis in stripped-down utility, I wonder how many of those modules are ever played.

Say what you will about modern adventure design, with the adventure paths and the Red Hand of Doom, the folks at WotC and Paizo have done an outstanding job of presenting shared experiences that generate a tremendous amount of buzz and fan-submitted material. Look at the vast amount of material about the Shackled City adventure path people have contributed to the Paizo site.

The 3.x community isn't only much larger than the old-school community, but it's far more cohesive. There seems to be a compulsion among old-schoolers to break away into ever-smaller and specific niches. So you have a board (Dragonsfoot) where you can talk about older editions but not old-school play using new editions, and even that board is broken into sub-niches like Classic D&D and 1E AD&D; and you've got a couple boards (Necro, Goodman) where you can talk about old-school play using the new-edition material published by one company; and another (Troll Lords) where you talk only about a revamped older edition; and another where you can only talk about by-the-book OD&D (Knights & Knaves Alehouse). You have OSRIC, and BFRPG, and Labyrinth Lord, and on and on.

Eventually you have a dozen tiny communities that have all become too specific and small to regenerate themselves. One wonders how much longer publishers like Necro, Goodman, and Troll Lords can survive on the micro-markets they rely on.  The old-school D&D community may be too fragmented and moribund to survive the relentess attrition of time.

I agree with Melan.  There has been no 'collapse' of old school gaming communities.

While dragonsfoot might temporarily be in a lull (although I haven't noticed it myself, but then I've been pretty busy with other things in recent months), there have been many good conversations there in recent years, and the site hardly looks like it's about to collapse.  New reviews continue to be posted, etc.  It certainly seems to have far more posters than this place.

Quote from: Haffrung...[Various strange claims] ... The old-school D&D community may be too fragmented and moribund to survive the relentess attrition of time.

:confused:
Um, what?  

Castles & Crusades (and thus TLG) is in fact doing very well.  It's one of the best selling 'third party' RPGs around.  So the 'old school' market for that game, at least, does not seem to be 'moribund'.

I'm not sure what happened with OSRIC and similar efforts like LL.  I haven't been following the OSRIC 'movement' closely, so I wasn't even aware that it 'failed'.  I'd be curious if anyone has more information on that.

Quote from: HaffrungSay what you will about modern adventure design, with the adventure paths and the Red Hand of Doom, the folks at WotC and Paizo have done an outstanding job of presenting shared experiences that generate a tremendous amount of buzz and fan-submitted material. Look at the vast amount of material about the Shackled City adventure path people have contributed to the Paizo site.

Well, well. I´m pretty positive that the APs are definitely collected and cherished and more often than played, especially compared to, say the G Series.
Our group finished two APs and is falfway through the third. This is seldom in this universe. There´s not many people who pulled that off.
And even the number of people who actually finished one of the APs is small.

Melan, I take you to say that DF was good fun circa 2003 through 2006, and I totally agree with that. But for a long while now it's been an utter bore.

To return to my actual point, which is not to slag off old-school boards: The crossover between old-sch and new-sch was temporary and perhaps in retrospect superficial, for which the most resounding proof is the lack of NEW GAMES that have emerged from those quarters. C&C is not a new game.

The RPG bandwagon has moved along. It made a loop through old-schoolville, only to head off to Encount4rdor.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI seem to have noticed that in recent months boards like Dragonsfoot (D&D), Citizens of the Imperium (Traveller) and a number of smaller ones have been approaching near-undead status. People are still posting contributions, but they're getting sparse, short, repetitive, and hyper-specialized.

At some point shortly after 2000, grognardism was blooming, but it seems to be losing its oomph.

Yes, no?

Just wait it out a few months until the 3.5'ers become old school grognards.  Then the boards will be jumping again.  



Pete

Quote from: SettembriniThe RPG bandwagon has moved along. It made a loop through old-schoolville, only to head off to Encount4rdor.

Quite so.

Question is: When to get off, and where. Surely not in 3.xville (Pop. 1000).

Emancipation is the key.
Creative control via homebrew and vanity-published House Systems the six copies of which you printed circle around the table you are the GM of.

Go to theRPGSite and talk about it an abstract way. Snipe at current gamers, bitch about Lulu.


I myself will invest efforts into the German Traveller relaunch, so I might keep my finger on the local pulse for a while.

The final place to be will be Normal, Illinois at the GDW-do-kan ("Way of the Workshop: The good stuff in 90ies gaming") for me. It´s just a day trip to the Star Wars Theme park in Greater West End from there.

Quote from: SettembriniI myself will invest efforts into the German Traveller relaunch,

For real??? As in, actual books getting translated & published???

T5??

I fear it´ll be the Mongoose version.

http://13mann.de/?cat=5

Oh, those guys. Funny they should still have $$$ left after the Rolemaster relaunch. Maybe it's some kind of tax write-off scheme.