Everything's moved in, everything's been unpacked. Command Center Eta is fully operational.
My mood is more evened out.
And I said something that bothered me. In this post a few days ago, I said this:
That was a bit... harsh. But I'm more and more of the opinion that the simulacra are not such a good thing. Not in the way they are developing, anyway. Especially when the original rules, of all editions, are so easy to get, legally or otherwise. Especially when the simulacra are increasingly a presentation of extrapolated, rather than legally restated, material. Especially when massive amounts of effort are being expended just to provide the equivalent of things that have been available for 25 - 35 years.
And when the simulacra is released? Accolades. Not undeserved, looking at the amount of effort and the quality that is the results of that effort. But it seems so... pointless. "Yay, you've legally restated the First Edition Rules! Hooray! Look at that layout!"
I just imagine the effort that had gone into OSRIC 2 instead going towards producing original material. What awesomeness would have resulted?
The rules are already there. Gamers already know about them. They're accessible as it is. Those things aren't the reasons why there aren't larger hordes playing older Dungeons and Dragons.
What this movement needs is a string of releases that highlight why these older versions are worth playing, feature the differences that make the old editions distinct, and do them in a way that entices gamers not already playing to give it a try.
The simulacra producers obviously want to reach new blood. It's the only reason for all that effort. I just fear that the effort is wasted in redundancy. The crew that produced these games have much knowledge and a lot to say about their games.
That is what I want to see, read, and hear. And that's also what I think will grow this movement.
That the effort doesn't seem to be going in that direction... well... that frustration is what led to the quote noted above.
My mood is more evened out.
And I said something that bothered me. In this post a few days ago, I said this:
"And I'll say it right now, Labyrinth Lord leads the charge in rules restatements... in presentation, making an effort in getting to market, catering to a variety of approaches (see the Original supplement), and making this whole "Old School Renaissance" seem like a future viable commercial niche that welcomes a new generation of players instead of looking like a closed circle of old fuckers jerking each other off."
That was a bit... harsh. But I'm more and more of the opinion that the simulacra are not such a good thing. Not in the way they are developing, anyway. Especially when the original rules, of all editions, are so easy to get, legally or otherwise. Especially when the simulacra are increasingly a presentation of extrapolated, rather than legally restated, material. Especially when massive amounts of effort are being expended just to provide the equivalent of things that have been available for 25 - 35 years.
And when the simulacra is released? Accolades. Not undeserved, looking at the amount of effort and the quality that is the results of that effort. But it seems so... pointless. "Yay, you've legally restated the First Edition Rules! Hooray! Look at that layout!"
I just imagine the effort that had gone into OSRIC 2 instead going towards producing original material. What awesomeness would have resulted?
The rules are already there. Gamers already know about them. They're accessible as it is. Those things aren't the reasons why there aren't larger hordes playing older Dungeons and Dragons.
What this movement needs is a string of releases that highlight why these older versions are worth playing, feature the differences that make the old editions distinct, and do them in a way that entices gamers not already playing to give it a try.
The simulacra producers obviously want to reach new blood. It's the only reason for all that effort. I just fear that the effort is wasted in redundancy. The crew that produced these games have much knowledge and a lot to say about their games.
That is what I want to see, read, and hear. And that's also what I think will grow this movement.
That the effort doesn't seem to be going in that direction... well... that frustration is what led to the quote noted above.
Kenzer last summer released a book (not using any game licenses, IIRC) that boldly states on its cover "for use with Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons".
ReplyDeleteThat, IMO, took some air out of the balloons of the simulacra.
I have nothing against the simulacra, but neither do they really excite me. I think we have plenty of simulacra now, so...
I hope that phase of the Old School Renaissance is COMPLETED. I don't care to see any more A/D&D clones. I'd like to instead see kick-ass NEW stuff for old-school A/D&D.
I think, again, that there is also the issue of brand recognition. If you go into a game store, you will invariably see a Castles & Crusades section, even now in the post D20 climate. You will not see an OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, or Simulacrum section, though. In part this is because few such products are in regular distribution, but even those that are, such as Expeditious Retreat's Advanced Adventures are simply lumped in with their regular D20 products.
ReplyDeleteBrand recognition and shelf space are part and parcel of the move to make OSRIC Expanded, and now the core book is out of the way, I expect to see the people who worked on it producing OSRIC adventures and supplements, some of which may even see print.
It is necessary to be distanced from the D&D brand, but close to the old game. The only way to effectively do that in the marketplace is to recreate the game and rebrand it.
Congratulations on finishing your move!
>>It is necessary to be distanced from the D&D brand, but close to the old game. The only way to effectively do that in the marketplace is to recreate the game and rebrand it.
ReplyDeleteI understand this (and it's one reason why I put Labyrinth Lord ahead of the others... they're getting into distribution a bit).
However, in commercial terms, there are now competing but roughly compatible brands all representing different facets of the original, differently-named brand.
That can't be easily penetrable by someone not in here on the ground level, and I don't think it will be any good to the "movement" as a whole if one of these becomes a dominant brand, you know? Success means drawing attention from the reason we're all here...
To me the big thing about the retro-clones that makes me happy is that I now have the rules in legal electronic form.
ReplyDeleteThat makes it easier for them to be reformatted in ways that are easier to use at the table. As much as I love B/X, never being sure whether to look up a monster or spell in the B or X book was a practical problem for me at the table.
Secondly, it makes mashups and house rules easier. I can not only create a unholy spawn of oD&D (S&W) and BRP (GORE), I can fairly easily assemble it into a whole. S&W is particularly hopeful for actually making a group’s particular flavor of oD&D more practical at the table.
I don't think it's realistic to tell new gamers to go buy a stained, yellowed copy of Moldvay B/X on eBay for some variable amount of money, or even print out an unclear and skewed PDF. People who are drawn to gaming see the slick production values in other games and gravitate that way over something that looks like kids' cast-offs or photocopies.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a copy of Holmes Basic floating around that is basically a version that somebody took the original book, OCRed it, cut and pasted the graphics into and reformatted it similarly to the original. It had a few typos here and there, but all in all it was a decent version that looks quite playable. Additionally, I've seen something similar with "the grey book," which is somebody's compilation and rearrangement of OD&D for their group that has gotten out on the 'net.
While many people in the movement are wholeheartedly against such things, I am surprised we haven't seen this on a much larger scale with the old boxed sets and 1e hardbacks, basically recreating the old books more or less exactly for easy printing and searching. However, given the whole climate, it's still so much easier to just tell someone to go to the bookstore and pick up a copy of something.
(Anonymous because I don't want to be seen as advocating piracy, even though I really don't have any problems with it on the OOP stuff.)
>>I don't think it's realistic to tell new gamers to go buy a stained, yellowed copy of Moldvay B/X on eBay for some variable amount of money, or even print out an unclear and skewed PDF.
ReplyDeleteYeah, those pdfs of the old stuff they have for sale are PATHETIC.
>>While many people in the movement are wholeheartedly against such things, I am surprised we haven't seen this on a much larger scale with the old boxed sets and 1e hardbacks, basically recreating the old books more or less exactly for easy printing and searching.
My current project is doing this for my next campaign. I'm converting OD&D, Chainmail, Holmes, and B/X so I can print them out in my A5 notebooks.
You'll notice in past posts that I have a custom-made BFRPG that I've been using for my group. I did the same to Spellcraft & Swordplay, and that manual reformatting is how I was able to send Mr. Vey a bunch of errata. You tend to notice things when reformatting line by line, and my trip through all the old D&D versions are most educational.
But I won't even look at a game these days until I can get it printed out in A5/digest size. Full-sized books are unwieldly and pdfs are a literal pain to read on a screen.
>>(Anonymous because I don't want to be seen as advocating piracy, even though I really don't have any problems with it on the OOP stuff.)
WotC/Hasbro obviously have the legal right to the stuff, but I believe they have no moral right to it. Piracy of material so far removed from the original creators is a completely different animal than pirating current material, obviously, so what I'm about to say doesn't apply to OSRIC for-sale material, C&C stuff, any 4e stuff, Goodman Games stuff, or whatever...
Paypal $10 to Gygax Games and to Zeitgeist Games (Arneson is involved and not just licensing his name, right?) and consider yourself morally justified to download as much vintage D&D material as far as I'm concerned.
Your mileage may vary concerning how far my concern goes. ;)
Here's my take on the whole retro-clone movement.
ReplyDelete* The rules themselves are "timeless". There is no expiration date on gaming mechanics. Some of them might be more "old school" or "new wave" than others, but math is math, probabilities are probabilities, resolution mechanics are resolution mechanics. Just because a game is 20-30 years old doesn't mean it's not playable.
* The presentation and attitude of the games is what pisses me off, and what drives away, I think, a lot of potential new blood. The old timers do these retro-clones, and then fill them with the same kind of retro-70's art as the old games had, with the same sort of "look and feel", praise them to the skies for how "cool" the faux-Otus covers are and how much of a "sweet old school vibe" they have, and then wonder why people aren't snapping them up.
* Likewise, too many of these products (I'm looking at OSRIC and S&W specifically here) carry with them this pall of "Yeah, THIS is how gaming SHOULD BE - suck it Hasbro!". I showed a friend of mine S&W the other day - a guy who's been gaming for over 25 years and has a full collection of "old school" games. He said, "Looks interesting, if I want to play a game that's 50% rules, 50% ranting about how much modern RPGs suck the souls out of the people who play them. No thanks."
* These days, anyone who wants to buy a new game, is going online and doing some research about it before buying. Anyone who goes online to check out OSRIC or S&W or many other retro-products, is just going to find a bunch of cranky middle-aged guys whining about how the new Star Trek is crap, modern TV is crap, modern video games and tabletop games are crap, and in general sounding like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes complaining about how it's so disappointing that young men these days don't wear ties and hats anymore. What hip young person is going to want to buy a RPG from a bunch of guys who habitually take a crap on the entertainment venues enjoyed by the younger generation?
However, in commercial terms, there are now competing but roughly compatible brands all representing different facets of the original, differently-named brand.
ReplyDeleteThat can't be easily penetrable by someone not in here on the ground level, and I don't think it will be any good to the "movement" as a whole if one of these becomes a dominant brand, you know? Success means drawing attention from the reason we're all here...
I am not sure there is much actual commercial competition yet. I think what Matt Finch has done with S&W has the potential to serve as an umbrella brand, and that's how I perceive most of these games [i.e. S&W:OSRIC, S&W:LL, S&W:BF, etcetera].
As far as recognition on the ground goes, I would say that OSRIC and LL have most of it, you can pretty much guarentee someone will say something like "OSRIC, isn't that first edition or something?". I wish that an Advanced Labyrinth Lord imprint of OSRIC was viable, but the fear is that it will create the same confusion that BECMI and AD&D had (which is rather the point, I think).
Maybe an Advanced Swords & Wizardry imprint of OSRIC could do the job, but then we possibly have further dilution of the brand. As Robert says, one of the things that is great about all of this is the diversity, but it all falls back to needing an Umbrella brand to describe it all. I am still in favour of Swords & Sorcery myself, but there are other possibilities.
Another issue is distribution channel. You'll NEVER see any NEW original Dungeons and Dragons books on the shelves of any brick and mortar stores. Nor will you see them in Amazon or Barnes and Nobles websites.
ReplyDeleteYou can go and find Labyrinth Lord at Amazon though. ;-)
>>What hip young person is going to want to buy a RPG from a bunch of guys who habitually take a crap on the entertainment venues enjoyed by the younger generation?
ReplyDeleteThe idea of "hip" and "wanting to buy a RPG" together in the same sentence is a bit funny. :)
And as the introductions to both versions of the Creature Generator show, I'm hardly innocent of getting up in people's faces about old vs new. :P
Seriously though, we're championing games and a style of gaming that was out of style 20 years ago. It's a bunch of hobbyists (in a hobby all about creating your own realities) with no money fighting against the trends of decades and the marketing power of professional publishers of various sizes. How are we supposed to get noticed if we're not willing to stand firm and be willing to attack? Especially when we are the way we are because we really don't care, at all, what's "current" to begin with?
As soon as we start catering to the mainstream gamer's aesthetic sense, as soon as we care about what's trendy in both gaming and the world, we've lost everything we're trying to accomplish in the first place.
The problem of getting young people to try old stuff is not a problem of marketing, it's a greater cultural issue (a cultural disease, more accurately). It's a war we're fighting, albeit it on a rather obscure front. But it's worth fighting.
I have nothing against the simulacra, but neither do they really excite me. I think we have plenty of simulacra now, so...
ReplyDeleteI hope that phase of the Old School Renaissance is COMPLETED. I don't care to see any more A/D&D clones. I'd like to instead see kick-ass NEW stuff for old-school A/D&D.
I agree. Once I have print edition of S&W: White Box and OSRIC 2.0 there's really no need to do any more of these games. Sure, I'd like to see a new version of say, Lords of Creation, in print. But let's not kid ourselves here about how many people want or would use retro-clones of second or third tier games. If we've got some sort of righteous D&D in print we've got a solid foundation to build on.
Jim,
ReplyDeletePlease tell me more about this 'war.' If you don't want to cater to the aesthetic sense of the mainstream, then why do you consider it important that you be 'noticed?' So the mainstream will cater to your aesthetics? Surely that will lead to a dilution of whatever the old-school renaissance is all about? Exchanges like that work both ways, you know.
Please also explain what it is that the OSR is trying to accomplish in the first place - I would have thought that making playing older games an option for more people (blah blah easy to get: come down here and say that. Yeah, I didn't think so) was enough, but I assume I'm off the mark. Is it a particularly sinister plan? Will I still be allowed to play WFRP 2e when it comes to fruition? I hope so!
I agree with others that the main thing is that the simulacra phase is merely an opening phase of the Old School Renaissance. Once the main rules are re-released (and thus it is possible to buy a new print copy of these rules) I think that all the effort should be devoted to cranking out new and imaginative material. Carcosa is obviously a fine example of the sort of thing that should start coming out. FO! magazine is another.
ReplyDeleteBut you don't put on your shoes first, and then your socks. It's important to do things in the right order. So I'm very happy about LL, S&W and OSRIC. I think this party's just getting started.
>>If you don't want to cater to the aesthetic sense of the mainstream, then why do you consider it important that you be 'noticed?'
ReplyDeleteBecause I remember what it was like to say, "I want to play D&D!" and it was understood what that meant, even with the grand variety of styles being played in the early 80s. These days, "I want to play D&D!" has, as a default, something much, much different.
So there's that... making sure the D&D I know (and the traditional D&D methods I've come to know in the past few years thanks to a few industrious folks) can be recognized as equal to whatever "improvements" people have made to it, and can be considered equal at the table of any RPG discussion.
>>Please also explain what it is that the OSR is trying to accomplish in the first place
The OSR is not a movement that does anything. It's not a cause of people doing something, it's the effect of what's being done.
>>I would have thought that making playing older games an option for more people (blah blah easy to get: come down here and say that. Yeah, I didn't think so) was enough, but I assume I'm off the mark.
Playing the older games are an option for anyone right now. It's the matter of making it understood that these aren't relics or best-left-forgotten mistakes of the past, or the sort of dull one-dimensional experience that it's often assumed to be (and often played as).
>>Is it a particularly sinister plan?
mwahahahahahah. Not as far as you know.
>>Will I still be allowed to play WFRP 2e when it comes to fruition? I hope so!
I see we're going to have to take steps with this one.
Because I remember what it was like to say, "I want to play D&D!" and it was understood what that meant, even with the grand variety of styles being played in the early 80s. These days, "I want to play D&D!" has, as a default, something much, much different.
ReplyDeleteWell... so? Things change. If I, as a computer game nerd, said 'I want to play a first person shooter' I'd get people (morons) telling me to play Crysis or Halo or something equally stupid. That doesn't mean I can't play Doom instead, or that Doom is in any way a 'lesser' option. Some people may whinge about the graphics etc. but that in no way impacts on my enjoyment of the game.
(Before you claim my analogy is shitty, Doom has many similarities with D&D - age, it created a new genre - well, so to speak - that grew far beyond the original game's boundaries, including 'heartbreakers', relatively simple modability, simulacra - or rather, ports - which range from the faithful to the 'modernised.' Oh, and thickos who miss the point completely enjoy bashing it for very spurious reasons).
Anyway, sorry, I got a bit carried away there. I'm a big fan of Doom, if you couldn't tell.
Um... anyway, I must admit you've confused me a little with your reply. Are you going for mainstream acceptance or not? You say that you want people to consider OD&D and its most immediate successors as viable options at the gaming table - or at least that's how I'm reading your reply - which would surely mean greater market exposure, but also, "[mainstream] success means drawing attention from the reason we're all here..."
How far do you want to go with that, too? I don't think that the older games are really as put upon as I'm inferring from your statements. Look at what's come out recently - FGU stuff rereleased with some new material, all the simulacra (of course), new Dragon Warriors, Mongoose Traveller (and Runequest and Paranoia). Oh and what about that weird 'first edition feel' thing that got bandied about for a while there?
I got a bit ranting some months ago when I saw the proposal to strip away all that made Empire of the Petal Throne interesting in the first place in order to produce ... yet another clone of D&D.
ReplyDeleteThis just takes to an extreme the endless imitation that bored me years ago: Dwarves & Elves & Whatever stabbing or shooting or brooding with some "innovative" number-crunching or pretentious bullshit jargon.
I dig D&D a lot, but ... It's been done! I've already got it, in triplicate! What's potentially interesting is what people do WITH it.
Game designers who actually DESIGN GAMES are pretty cool, too. Paul Elliot's Zenobia is its own thing, its very differences from D&D giving it an "old school" vibe in my book. The guys at GDW didn't set out to do "D&D in space" with Traveller. For all its similarities in presentation, Carcosa is another example of something that's more than just a regurgitation of decades-old comfort food.
It's a bit odd when the "Rebel Alliance Against Hasbro's Evil Empire" looks as if it's led by the sort of TSR fanboys who wouldn't give any other brand a try back in the day and bought every crappy product because it was Official Issue. Yeah, that's harsh and not really an accurate picture -- just an analogy of certain "new" attitudes to old familiar ones.
At some point, the energy must go into actual creativity -- or people are RIGHT to pass up your knockoff of someone else's work for something that has real heart. That might even be a campaign actually being played (!!) with materials created more recently than the disco era.
>>Well... so? Things change.
ReplyDeleteNo they don't. At least not what we're talking about here. People's perceptions of things change.
And I think Ultima V is the most perfect computer game ever made and it pisses me off that games go in the direction of fancier graphics and stuff instead of making an Ultima V-like game FRICKIN HUGE, like it taking a day real-time to walk across a continent... if you don't meet any monsters. ;)
Lately the only computer games I've been playing are Wizard's Crown, Bard's Tale, and Civ 4 (at least Civ 4 has actual gameplay improvements in addition to the SCREWED UP "improved" GRAPHICS).
>>Are you going for mainstream acceptance or not?
Personally, I'd rather tear the "mainstream" down and eliminate the concept.
>>greater market exposure, but also, "[mainstream] success means drawing attention from the reason we're all here..."
The reason we're all here: Playing RPGS and the hobby surrounding that playing. Business and money concerns always, always, fucks up creative endeavors.
Mainstream success means business and money.
It's a tricky balancing act. We should be more... but too much and I'll probably want to start playing The Fantasy Trip instead.
>>Oh and what about that weird 'first edition feel' thing that got bandied about for a while there?
Pure bollocks and at best the signs of cowardice (why not just produce a first edition thing, especially after others started doing so?), at worse just this side of a marketing fraud.
>>It's a bit odd when the "Rebel Alliance Against Hasbro's Evil Empire" looks as if it's led by the sort of TSR fanboys who wouldn't give any other brand a try back in the day and bought every crappy product because it was Official Issue.
Who else has the desire to be looking that closely at their gaming materials?
Casual players may fill a seat at the gaming table as well as anyone, but they won't drive anything worthwhile.
>>That might even be a campaign actually being played (!!) with materials created more recently than the disco era.
Nothing released after the Carter administration really improves RPGs (or at least D&D) that weren't already there by that time. There are good products of course (Mentzer's Basic and Companion sets come immediately to mind, with their How To Play and Dominion sections respectively), but anything anyone would ever need was already released by 1980.
The things we should be getting are idea springboards and play tools (for example, I just put the Monster and Treasure Assortments in my Referee Binder... it's a wonderful tool) and what we need NONE of are the "here's a prepackaged thing for you do play on Friday."
The equation of "casual" with "not fanatically devoted to a corporate line" doesn't cut it. Those of us who (perhaps out of sheer cash-short necessity) designed our own campaigns sure as hell looked closely at our gaming materials!
ReplyDeleteActually being played is the key element. Whether the rules text is the original little brown books, Clone #23, The Latest Big Thing or a binder of hand-written pages ... it's not the noun but the verb of PLAY that makes a game attractive.
Returning to the example of Carcosa, there's an artifact of actual play -- a look at what develops in that process. There are familiar elements, but the combinations have a fresh and personal touch.
The prepackaged module seems to be what the retro-clone concept was really meant to facilitate, and I reckon we could use SOME. We can ALSO use more great tools such as your Creature Generator, for all that new-school gamers may just not "get" why it's so awesome. That "we" is obviously broader than a particular "I."
I hope quotation marks around "a game" clarify that bit.
ReplyDeleteArneson, Gygax and Barker were not looking back into some Old School Museum when they did their things. I personally find that spirit of creativity more worthy of preservation than any game-textual canon of mathematical algorithms.
Ultima V?! Ultima V?! I much prefer IV. Therefore, your mother.
ReplyDeleteActually, Savage Empire was the best of all things branded Ultima, but we won't get into that (as much as I'd love to get into a keyboard war with all comers about best computer games ever).
Also, I don't think 'mainstream' means what you think in means in this context. It's like Darkthrone vs. Britney Spears; Fenris works in a pharmacy during the day for his bread and butter, but nonetheless he's definitely mainstream in the context of black metal. Of course, folks with their collars popped and hair carefully gelled have not heard of him, and would not care for him.
Almost the same deal with RPGs - subculture etc. So I'll say again: are you going for mainstream (in the context of the PnP RPG subculture) acceptance?
If not, then why are you concerned by the opinions of other gamers ("It's the matter of making it understood that these aren't relics or best-left-forgotten mistakes of the past, or the sort of dull one-dimensional experience that it's often assumed to be (and often played as)")?
You bring up some interesting points. I do agree that now that we have all these retro clones on the market, now we just need some one needs to do something really special them. When C&C launched, at least they could hang their hat on CZ (clearly they can not at this point). That was something to take note of. At this point, none of the retro clones have anything close to that.
ReplyDeletePS...Ultima V totally rocked! That game was special.
For what it's worth, my days of writing rules restatements are (probably) over. As others have mentioned, the point (at least for me) is to get the rules out there in a form that can be digested by a new audience or by an audience that might return to this style of game. Reaching people off the internet is crucial IMHO. Labyrinth Lord is now in hobby stores. I see posts about people seeing them in various stores across the US, and I know of at least on game store in Germany that stocks it. I also have a tentative goal to get Mutant Future into distro before the end of 2009.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, my "real life" schedule will prevent me from cranking out too much over the next year, but I do have two projects in mind at the moment, more later time permits (I'm looking at you, Advanced Edition Characters!). One project is a MF adventure I've had cooking in the back of my mind for a while, and another is an unannounced campaign source book that is cross compatible with LL, OSRIC, and S&W. I'm probably about half way done with writing that and hope to have it ready for playtest by February.
Mutant Future rocks on its own eight legs!!!
ReplyDeleteThere's no C&C section in my town's FLGS, because there's no demand for it. LL? Probably not happening either, if left to the proprietor's guesses.
He's already paid for a ton of 3E / d20 crap that has just gathered dust -- now not merely for months but in some cases for years.
That does not pay the rent.
The emphasis is on lines whose players not only buy the latest product but also rent table space to host games, down marked up munchies, and fork out for miniatures and paints and so on.
As far as brick-and-mortar shops go, the Statue of Liberty says, "Send me your Napoleonic Grognards ... if they Show Me the Money!"
It was the word of mouth and yea even the pirated rulebooks that made a retail splash of the original D&D set.
>>The equation of "casual" with "not fanatically devoted to a corporate line" doesn't cut it. Those of us who (perhaps out of sheer cash-short necessity) designed our own campaigns sure as hell looked closely at our gaming materials!
ReplyDeleteAh, bad wording on my part if I said or implied that. I would think casual players really don't give a crap... the system doesn't matter so much, just (maybe) the genre of the game does.
Anyone fanatic about a certain company's products certainly isn't a casual fan, anyone making their own campaign materials certainly isn't...
>>The prepackaged module seems to be what the retro-clone concept was really meant to facilitate, and I reckon we could use SOME.
I would like modules that A- aren't just a drop-in for a night or two's adventuring, *and* B- don't make too many presuppositions or impositions on an individual campaign world. It's a tough balancing act.
>>We can ALSO use more great tools such as your Creature Generator, for all that new-school gamers may just not "get" why it's so awesome.
I'm glad the intended audience finds it useful. "New twists that don't change how the game plays" is important to me. I don't want to change the game, I just want to keep it fresh and exciting. I get the feeling many people think "fresh and exciting" requires dismantling what came before.
>>I personally find that spirit of creativity more worthy of preservation than any game-textual canon of mathematical algorithms.
I tend to believe that "system matters"... not all Forge ideas are silly. ;) The rules do encourage certain styles of play, and changing the rules changes the game experience... creativity is completely irrelevant to me if it creates something that diverges from what I want out of my game.
>>So I'll say again: are you going for mainstream (in the context of the PnP RPG subculture) acceptance?
In that context, yes. Gamer acceptance, not "man on the street" awareness. I don't like the division of gamers as it stands. "I'm an indie gamer," "I like trad games," blah blah blah. (says the guy who already said that nothing critical has been released after the Carter administration)
>>The emphasis is on lines whose players not only buy the latest product but also rent table space to host games, down marked up munchies, and fork out for miniatures and paints and so on.
ReplyDeletePeople who do any of that are insane. :D
>>It was the word of mouth and yea even the pirated rulebooks that made a retail splash of the original D&D set.
We need someone to take one for the team and go on some sort of demented criminal spree and claim that it was done specifically under the influence of old D&D, and not that new stuff that isn't dangerous to the youth at all. ;)
I don't expect old-school games any time soon to get out of the ghetto in which the New School is stuck.
ReplyDeleteBack in the Golden Age, I bought my AD&D PHB (in between stationery and crystal) at a tony housewares emporium, and the Giants modules at Sears.
The EGBERT EFFECT?
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