Is This How D&D Is Supposed to Be Played? - One Year Later

This post was one of my first "famous" (as in, linked and talked about elsewhere) blog posts, done just four days after starting the blog. It got nominated and accepted for the Open Game Table anthology before I even knew that the project existed, so somebody thought it was more than fodder for that day's boredom-breaking flame wars. Hell, it ended up being discussed on Paizo's message board last week!

It's been a long year of odd living situations and personal weirdness, not to mention a lot of reading, discussing, and arguing about role-playing matters. I'm going to go through and quote bits from the original article and give my thoughts on them... ONE YEAR LATER!

One of the positive effects of Gary's passing was that many were inspired to play old versions of D&D as a tribute and memorial to him. I think that opened a few eyes to how good the old games actually are.

Recently there's been a bit of a tendency for people to claim that 4e is the major cause and booster for the Old School Renaissance. Well, they claim that dissatisfaction with it has driven people to the old games. While some of that is obviously going on (although I suspect any backsliders who were expecting to enjoy 4e are more likely to stick with 3.x or move to Pathfinder than come our way), I think Gygax's death is a more important catalyst. Boards like Dragonsfoot and Knights'n'Knaves have been around forever, and all the major simulacra were around or announced long before Gygax died or 4e was even announced, but it was Gygax's death that pushed the blogging into high gear (... inspired Grognardia anyway, which seems to be both a direct inspiration for others to start their own blogs, as well as being the best place to find them), resulting in a greater visibility for the whole thing. I don't think it's wrong to say that the established old-school boards aren't the best environments for newcomers to jump in and splash around, nor the most constructive place to present ponderings of a more philosophical or experimental nature.

I really wish that these modules had been designed and released with less consideration as to how nice they'd be for a session or three's adventuring, and more consideration for what they displayed concerning the game as a whole.

Modules are a tricky beast. They have to be self-contained, but at the same time the good ones have to communicate the "campaign" factor. I've been trying to reconcile the two with my own projects as they come closer to release. I see that others (although this is not an absolute) still release adventures in the "self-contained good for one-shotting" mindset, which is not productive in the long run.

Ryan Dancey's "20 minutes of fun packed into four hours"

I still don't know which 20 minutes were supposed to be the fun. Looking at how 3.x is set up, I have my suspicions, and that stuff has never been the fun for me, and I tend to design adventures to turn that sort of fun on its head. But we'll have more reminiscing about fun in a couple weeks, won't we?

Matthew Finch's The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom

I was rather unkind to this module, and I should address that. In the past year, I've run this module for my group, so my opinions on it are far more credible than they were last year. Finch is a master of presenting weird situations and ideas that really get players involved and interested. There are plenty of individual bits of Pod-Caverns that had them quite invested in the situation (and one of the characters, months of real time later, still has to speak in rhymes). Many of Finch's Eldritch Weirdness spells prove his talent at coming up with odd yet eminently gamable ideas, and his City Encounters has much the same flavor.

But the Pod-Caverns as a whole just didn't come together for me. It seemed like a lot of the weird stuff was in there just to be weird, and all these great individual details didn't make sense as part of the same environment. Not to mention that the Shroom didn't seem to have a tight grip on his own home caves so believing he was a threat to outside communities (as briefly offered in the module's intro) didn't seem right... so in my game, I made the Pod-Caverns the connecting point between a cavern where a brownie was trying to protect his fox-coup from the giant chicken in the mushroom forest, and a rip-off of SSOC's Valley of Howling Shadows (talk about a diverse selection off odd...), with no pod-men territorial encroachment.

And I still think that dwarf gag is frickin dumb!

That said, I am very interested in The Spire of Iron and Crystal, since the bit of buzz about it I've heard makes it sound like it's full of the odd stuff that Finch does well, and just might all be housed in an environment to make it all ring true as a package. Now to find it in a way that doesn't involve Lulu or an upcharge. :P

(not that fully-described locations are anything to sneeze at - it's the only reason why I haven't released module after module yet... but I can make up something marked "Location 10. Kitchen" just fine in play with no written text, I just have trouble sitting down and writing a publishable and complete description for such a room... shit... I wonder if I should just release modules without all that description? 38746238742638742 releases in the next month, here I come!)

I still believe that a published adventure should flesh out its location descriptions (and relationship between various entities therein), popularity of the one-page dungeon notwithstanding.

B1 In Search of the Unknown

You know... I would run this today, and it was a location in my Olden Domain game... at least until someone figured out my thinly-veiled rumors about it and informed me they know the module.

B4 The Lost City

I've seen it since then, and it really does look like a lot of work to make it live up to its potential. Just as-is, it is far too simplistic and small to really evoke the atmosphere it could. Again, I feel providing all that detail is the entire utility of a module... else why not put that effort into my own creation?

Hmm. There was a lot less commentary on that old post than I'd have thought. Perhaps I was more clear-headed writing that post than certain others. I'll just reproduce the final bits from one year ago, because I still believe they are very true today:

To focus on reproducing the worst and most cliche elements of traditional gaming is not a celebration of days gone by, but a bastardization of it, and it plays right into the hands of what the detractors ignorantly claim the game is all about.

With the attention that traditional gaming has gotten from the passing of the progenitors, and the division caused by the new edition of what claims to be D&D these days, there is a chance here for a renaissance of commercially feasible and creatively vibrant products. If we don't take advantage of that, then all we have is nostalgia and if all we're doing is reminiscing about a "better time" then the only place we'll go is away.

Green Devil Face #3 Deadline

There are already several great submissions in for GDF #3, plus a logo-in-progress, but it seems that with no deadline people just think, "Oh I'll get around to my submission... whenever!"

So June 30 11:59pm Helsinki time (aka EET - Eastern European Time) is the deadline.

In addition to your traps, tricks, and other mindbending situations, trap-related (or devil facey) artwork would be cool to receive.

Green Devil Face has no system it's officially attached to, but if you read this blog you should figure out which games your submission should work with. :)

Contributions are unpaid, but all contributors retain the rights to their work, give me the rights to publish their work only in Green Devil Face, and will receive a printed copy of the issue in which their work appears.

Last Night's Online Game

I had three players for last night's online Labyrinth Lord game.

The problems:

I was nervous. One of my players was having only his second RPG experience ever (after a disastrous first attempt), and the other two players just know me from my blog. I kind of felt like my entire reputation as a blogger and writer was at stake... if I gave bad game, surely the one guy would swear off gaming forever and the others would spread the word around that I'm just all talk... yikes! The pressure!

This wasn't a campaign sandbox kind of thing where players were making a decision of where to go. We were playing a specific adventure, and I could have started things differently. I could have laid out the intro, given rumors, let everyone buy additional equipment based off of that, and then started the game at the first point of decision-making (Zeke's!). But doing that doesn't feel right, so they went through the motions of dithering around town, "deciding" to go up the mountain, and going through the beginning of the trip. Different circumstances demand different approaches. I don't mind presenting a situation that causes the players to delay while they discuss what to do, but in this case I caused the game to start slower than it needed to. And considering the front end of the adventure proper is just "creepy atmospheric locations to explore," it's not like things go into high gear, so the unnecessary lag at the beginning was made worse.

It is very odd to be talking to people I can't see. I've done it plenty in other contexts (I did telephone surveys and customer service for too many years), but this was awkward. Tied in to the above point, it's really hard to tell, without seeing people, if they are thinking and planning and concerned about the situation, or just bored out of their minds. I wasn't running what I think is considered a typical fantasy adventure (no combat in the four hours we played) so trying to gauge where their heads were at was important.

A lot of my refereeing tricks didn't work with this method. When I run games, I am usually standing up, and when describing locations I use gestures and body language to communicate sizes, distances, spatial relationships of objects, not to mention facial expressions and mannerisms of NPCs. I was still doing all that even though nobody could see me. The players didn't see me limp around like Zeke or do my Popeye impression scrunching half my face, nor did they see me spread my arms wide when describing the gigantic book they found at one point. Adjusting my style to the medium used is something I need to do if this kind of gaming is to become a habit for me.

I was also not letting completely loose verbally as it was a 2am-6am game and Maria was sleeping in the next room (or trying to... see below) and I was trying to be half-considerate. I suppose this is partially a good thing because when they got to the screaming faces, it would have really been obnoxious for me to just howl uncontrollably into people's ears (assuming they had headphones on).

Poor Maria. Not only does she put up with the apartment full of maniacs every Sunday, she bakes for us (one of the players last night asked, "Where are our scones?"), and just suffers not having her apartment to herself in general. Last night, she got home at 10pm from a full day's work... and at 2am had me in the next room blabbing on and on for hours. I set this up quick because I'm in such a hurry to get Death Frost Doom out the door, but perhaps that was a bit presumptuous. No reason to be in such a hurry. Future online gaming efforts shall only be done when Maria is at work. Luckily her shifts change often so the next overnight shift is never far away.

The good stuff:

Lots of valuable notes were taken. Playtesting is vital when planning to release something, even for background and "fluff" elements. What makes sense when writing often comes out a bit odd when real people are experiencing that situation. Death Frost Doom is intended to be a cohesive adventure location, not merely a resource for disparate ideas. It has to all make sense together, and all of the above-ground locations were newly written and had not been used in actual play before last night. I know in the rush to have something out I feel the temptation to cheat and skimp on such things under the rationalization that, "Well, all the real fighty encounter type things have already been seen in play!" I'm glad I showed a bit of patience, and dare I say professionalism, in doing this right and playing everything before releasing it because even though all of the big things seem to be fine, many small details will change due to actual play.

The technology worked very well. The Skype conference was free and I was able to hear everyone very clearly. It probably helped that it was the first time in five years that I'd gamed with people without accents (or as the Europeans would say, people with American accents). Skype gave us no problems other than a few seconds of distorted noise, and one guy got dropped once, and that was fixed in a minute or so. The Dragonsfoot chat room worked quite well, even though the die roller takes a few tries to get used to (especially since this wasn't a particularly heavy die-rolling session so nobody really got into the groove of using it). The Scriblink whiteboard worked well enough (even though my scribblings looked like they were done by a five year old) since I'd alerted everyone that this wasn't a mapping-intensive adventure where clues and deductions were to be had through exact and correct mapping. It was cool that anyone could draw on the same surface so people could ask about positioning when they were in oddly-shaped rooms or rooms with lots of different stuff in them.

I had feared that having four disembodied voices together might cause confusion, but it was no problem at all. Everyone seemed to recognize when it was me talking, and a few set conventions such as declaring actions in third person ("Zoltar will open the door..." instead of "I open the door...") made it easy to determine who was speaking.

Most importantly, despite my performance anxiety, it seems that everyone enjoyed themselves and experienced the adventure in the spirit it was written. The players were a bit cautious (... well how would you act if gaming with the Green Devil Face guy?), but I liked that because it showed at least a basic caring and respect for the in-game narrative. We didn't finish the adventure, but the guys all seemed eager to continue at a future time so that's probably the best indicator that it didn't all royally suck. :)

Conclusions:

This is a viable method for gaming, but there might be only so far down this road I'm willing to go. I wouldn't want to play a game entirely in a chat room (nevermind play-by-post), because speaking is much quicker than typing, and if you robbed me of my vocal inflections (and NPC voice acting!) I might be completely lost running a game! I don't know whether I'd want to set up webcams either, because I'm not sure how that would affect the smooth voice broadcasting, and as was pointed out, I would then have to wear pants (how did he know?). It's easy enough to not pick my nose or scratch my balls in front of actual people, but I fear I'd absentmindedly display all sorts of unpleasant behavior if there's a webcam there.

Poor Maria. From the day I met her I thought she was way out of my league (and I'm amazed I got a second date after spending our first date discussing the Carcosa controversy with her) and I just continue to foist an escalating amount of strangeness onto her. This morning after I woke up she was telling me that during the bits she was able to sleep (oops), she was dreaming about the game I was running. She says in her dream she came out and watched me running the game. In the dream version, we all did have webcams so she could see the players. She said they looked bizarre. Not just a little, but a lot. Inhuman, "alien," with claws instead of hands and things of that nature. "I didn't remember Matt looking that strange in the other pictures you've shown me," was a bit of in-dream dialogue.

Alrighty then.

Next online game is 7pm Eastern time Thursday, June 4. I still want to limit it to six players, and of course the people that played last night get automatic spots if they so choose. We will continue where we left off (after the death of half the party from a yellow mold trap in the dungeon, they retreated to town so it's a natural pickup point for new people) and it should be a quick trip back to the dungeon.

Insect Shrine Art Preview

Tuesday night, Maria and I had Laura Jalo and her boyfriend Oskar over for dinner. Laura delivered the completed artwork hardcopies for Death Frost Doom, No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides (there are still a piece or two to go on this one), and Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill. She was also paid in full for the former two projects (at a shameful rate, honestly she should be paid as much for one picture as I paid for all of them... but that's one of the reasons for inviting them over for a big dinner), but it was the first time I got to see the actual pieces of art rather than a digital camera photo.

Laura completed her first piece for me last June, completed the last Insect Shrine piece for me April 14th, and has been doing ongoing work since then for the other projects. Her development in the past year has been tremendous, and I will be extremely proud to present the art in the finished projects.

But this also puts a lot of pressure on me. I'm not financing large print runs using traditional offset printing, I'm running a tiny publishing effort out of my living room. It will be too easy to screw up her artwork and have it end up blurry or otherwise flawed in the final output. Even having other people handling the printing doesn't mean it will come out so well, as first-print buyers of the Creature Generator can attest after comparing the cover image in the pdf and what appears on the physical booklet. And I'm not exactly "Mr. Graphic Design" as the judges of the One Page Dungeon contest should be aware of about now.

But I will do my best, both in the writing and in the presentation of the projects. It is my hope that when Insect Shrine is actually released (July... but we know how good my predictions are in these matters...) the embarrassment and ill-will concerning the delays will be forgiven (but not forgotten - smack me down if I ever utter the word "pre-order" again without an already completed-and-in-hand product).

But in the meantime, I present a thumbnail preview of the Insect Shrine artwork.

Online Game: Tonight! Details!

For now, let's assume this is a one-shot, and see how it goes from there. Here's how we'll do this.

Gametime: 7pm Thursday Eastern time, that's 2am Friday Helsinki time.

What you need: Skype and a microphone. Skype is a free download and using it is free. My Skype name is JimLotFP. Add me as a contact on there before gametime, and fifteen minutes before game time I will start the conference call in Skype.

Because we need a die roller, I'm going to open a private Dragonsfoot chat room. Once we're hooked up on Skype, I'll let you know the room name and password. Not sure if you need to be a Dragonsfoot member to use the chat rooms, so take care of that before gametime. :D

Tricky part is a mapping surface. I think we'll attempt to use Scriblink this time. Not fancy, but how perfect does cartography need to be?

To repeat:

We'll use Labyrinth Lord for the rules. People who "sign up" need to have 3 playable characters ready when we start (roll 3d6 down the line, discard characters who have a total negative bonus, make one switch of scores... characters will start at 2nd level, so take maximum hit points for first level and roll for the second level points... take the maximum starting money then roll starting money and that's your beginning total).

Six players maximum. "Book" with me by email (lotfp@lotfp.com) and be there by gametime, else it's first come first served. And let's see if this seat-of-the-pants futuristic gaming works. :P

Meet the Three Brides

... or at least catch a glimpse of them.


This is just a rough draft of the cover I threw together after receiving the artwork yesterday (more on that tomorrow). Scans need to be cleaned up and color levels evened out, the formatting will be a bit different (I can't imagine the LotFP logo remaining that large, for starters), the text at the bottom will change... but... this is the general idea of what the cover will look like. A little splash of color certainly livens things up, doesn't it?

(and really... nobody caught the reference in Monday's Moo-Cows of Pembrooktonshire?)

Lulu: Absolute and Complete Dogshit

A few years back, I wrote an issue of my music zine that was composed of just one long essay, with none of the usual interviews and reviews. Although ranty (surprise surprise!) I think it was one of the better things I'd ever written, and it got me in contact with quite a few people and in general it was an awesome time.

I set myself up with Lulu because I wanted a hardcover copy of it (the actual issue was printed through the Small Publisher's Co-Op, which would have been an enormous resource for us if it didn't close down in 2006). I left it up for public sale because, well, why not? But between it being available from my site for free (read it here, and while you're at it read this and this which were not written by me but were directly influenced by my writing) and the regular print issue being available for $20 cheaper... my hardcover sold exactly zero copies.

Today I get notified by Lulu that a book I have available (as if I have more than one) through their service is now available on Amazon! oh gee. They didn't ask, and they jacked the fucking price up by $8... 30%.

... and apparently this is happening across-the-board with books available on Lulu.

Now people are publicizing that their stuff is available on Amazon like it's a good thing. One example: Basic Fantasy's storefront on Lulu says DON'T BUY THIS BOOK, making it so very clear that it's available for free download. The books on Amazon aren't presented that way, and while someone might look at the publisher and type that link in, basically Amazon and Lulu are hoping nobody notices and that some sucker will pay about $3 more than they otherwise would have (although it must be noted that Gonnerman is happy to be listed on Amazon). Yes, costs are increased when going through a distributor but it should be the publisher, not their fucking go-between storefront provider that has been given no rights to the content, to decide whether to put something into greater distribution, how much should be charged, and what the product details will look like. Some of these things don't even list who the actual publisher is, or give page counts, etc. It's disgraceful.

Yes, Lulu gives an opt-out, in fine print at the end of their notice, but I would think that people who have no rights to the work they are making business deals with could ask before they raise prices and present people's material in new (and rather large) sales channels any damn way they wish.

And lots of publishers in our scene make their books available for free, or at-cost. That "at-cost" amount now has even more people making money off their work (and profit-seeking publishers do not see any increase in their share of the sale at the increased price either) and the existence of free downloads is nowhere to be found, for any of them. In at least one major case (Labyrinth Lord), the Lulu-on-Amazon deal is now in side-by-side with a version being legitimately sold (as in, intentionally in distribution) through Amazon. That'll impress someone looking for the book on the trusted giant of the bookselling industry, I imagine.

I'm pissed just for what they did to me and my book that nobody bought and nobody was going to buy. I can't imagine how I'd be feeling if I was one of these guys administering something that mattered through Lulu.

I just canceled my Lulu account altogether. Fuckers can eat my shit and I hope they choke on the peanuts.

About Branding and Printing - Notes About Three Publishers

(rampant speculation ahoy!)

I received GS1 Sanctum of the Stone Giant Lord and F1 The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies in the mail today. I haven't had a chance to read through them thoroughly, and this should in no way be considered a review of their contents or game worthiness. Rather, I am going to speak to their branding and how they are printed.

Sanctum of the Stone Giant Lord by RC Pinnell (aka Thorkhammer in various places) is not done using the OGL and brands itself as "Advanced Fantasy Adventure." It's obviously intended to be a continuation of the G1-2-3 series, and was previously labeled G4 instead of GS1 (back when it was an ad-hoc off-the-home-printer offering rather than a Lulu pay project). The stats inside are pure AD&D 1e, down to spell lists, magic items, etc. No euphemisms here.

One thing I will say is that having it available on Lulu is probably a great detriment to the product. It is only 12 pages, plus cover, and the cover isn't even in color. The dungeon map is on the back cover (Lulu doesn't print on the inside of the cover), which I think would negatively impact its actual-play usability (I know I stand up a lot when running games and pick up my adventure notes when I do...). Yes, the back cover is the classic blue shaded dungeon map, but surely it would make zero difference if the thing was not in color.

For this he's charging $7.05 (plus shipping which usually isn't too kind on Lulu). It's not a ripoff or anything since product details are plainly given and so any buyer makes an informed decision before laying out his money, but I will guess that he could have printed this product locally and made it available for that same $7.05 including (domestic) postage, and still be making the same money per copy as he is now. All it would take is a small upfront investment to print out a number of these (not a huge investment for a product of this size and he's active enough in the community that I'd bet a toe that he would have recouped his investment almost instantaneously upon release) in advance, if not completely sold out of his print run - note how the 20 bundles of this and The Fane sold out in just a few hours.

(And since writing this - I had the foresight to do some fact checking before posting what I'd written this morning - I have discovered that the copies offered as part of the package deal were not produced by Lulu. I was wondering how they could offer both at that insane price considering Lulu's base price... and the answer... they didn't, even though it looks like they used the same formatting that Lulu requires. Now the product is still up on Lulu so this isn't - yet? - the new way the Sanctum is being produced, but it gives hope that more people are at least investigating whether other venues than Lulu will work for them.)

Guy Fullerton's The Fane of the Poisoned Prophecy is an interesting case. It also does not use the OGL, but it does claim compatibility by name with "1st Edition AD&D" (and "1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons"). Within, he uses lots of spells by name, and uses monsters certainly unique to AD&D 1e with full statblocks in encounters. This even has a TSR-like cover design. Pregenerated characters are fully detailed within as well. It's a fairly high-profile release for our scene, being available at a number of online vendors and Guy is making an effort to get in-store distribution.

The printing is totally pro, with a color cover, (black and white) maps on the inside covers, and artwork liberally scattered throughout. It retails for $11.99, so Guy should making enough to pay his artists, make it worth the while of his distributors to carry the product, and presumably keep a few pennies for himself at that price.

Then we have the case of Brave Halfling Publishing. They've recently decided that they'd print their new products themselves instead of going through Lulu and have an ambitious release schedule planned. One of their future projects is a Holmes clone. They announced a "Name That Game" contest all over the relevant portions of the net, featuring this Kevin Mayle piece as the announced cover. Look familiar?

And here is where I believe our actions are not under the radar, that Certain People are aware of us (even beyond facts like several blogs of common interest are linked off of Mike Mearls' blog): In a short period of time (I can't remember whether it was within "a few hours" or "a few days") all of the publicity for the Holmes game had the artwork (and the Holmes name, replaced with "a 1977 basic rpg") scrubbed off of it. I don't know, but have the impression, that it was because BHP was notified that such close cover art, and I guess the name, crossed the line. The announcements are still up, the game is still planned, but that artwork seems to no longer be associated with the project.

The Sanctum's "module code" used to be G4, but is now GS1 (see here, where the author states "Simply put, the G4, which I presume you purchased, was replaced (for legal reasons) by the GS1.").

So assuming are we being watched (or perhaps it's better to say, "Certain trademark holders are indeed aware of our activities"), if these changes imply that certain details about certain projects did indeed cross a line, does that mean that other things that have been released and publicized and talked about in the exact same places and by much the same manner are indeed deemed OK and have not crossed a line?

I realize none of this has been legally tested and we're all operating under goodwill here. To make my position clear: I do not want to challenge Wizards' ownership of any trademarked or copywritten items with my releases and don't suggest anyone else do that either, but at the same time I would want us all to go as far as possible to plainly and without euphemism communicate what it is that we are doing without challenging them. As these releases show, the OGL is a tool but is obviously not the only tool to accomplish this, and if that's established then "What is the best way?" becomes a fair question. Realizing, of course, that most on this side of the question are not going to be able to afford a lawyer, and even if one was consulted, the "safe" answers could possibly be very different from the "legally accurate" answers anyway.

Argh.

The reason I talk about all of this is not only do I have a personal interest in printing and branding methods, but a lot of us are putting stuff up for sale in various places and by various means. I don't think there should be a "backroom" where publishers have their own secret club or worse yet each publisher hoarding their knowledge. And we shouldn't all be fumbling around in the dark, either. We should talk about these things out in the open, all benefiting from each others' experiences and methods. If we're doing something wrong, let's talk about it instead of trying to bury it. If we run into a hurdle, we should be open about it so the next guy doesn't stumble over the same darn thing. If somebody is doing something right, let them share and let the competition for the "Old School Dollar" be based on effort and content, not hidden procedures and secret formulas for success. We're rebuilding and supporting and celebrating our favorite game(s), and we have the opportunity to do it right this time.

Meet Cows #125, 163 and 265, Grazers and Milk-Givers and Good Livestock of Pembrooktonshire

The farms and pastures around Pembrooktonshire are peaceful, rolling, and beautiful. The livestock is healthy, the land is fertile. The usual drudgery and uncertainly that farmers elsewhere face is instead rewarding and profitable here.

Long ago, longer than any of the current citizens can remember, Pembrooktonshire welcomed visitors, had their own men worthy of note, and on occasion had problems common to outlying communities: monsters. All of these qualities are now distant memories, but there are reminders to be found if one knows where to look for them.

Some time back there was an infestation of doppelgangers in the area. Four of them set themselves up in Pembrooktonshire. Their activities were stealthy enough to be undetected by the powers that be, but in their own subtle way, they caused much mayhem, not to mention the number of villagers they murdered, ate, and replaced. They were eventually defeated by a traveling group of powerful adventurers, but instead of killing them, the adventuring wizard decided to have some fun. He polymorphed the four into cows and made sure they did not remember their lives previous to grazing and saying, “mooooo!” Collecting their treasure, the adventurers went on their merry way, never again returning to Pembrooktonshire. The cows became known as good quality stock, giving plenty of milk and somehow never growing old, so they have been sold and thieved and traded by the townsfolk over the years.

Today, cows 125, 163, and 265 are coincidentally part of the same herd again. The three still graze and give milk, but if the magic that keeps them bound to these forms is ever dispelled…

Learn more about Pembrooktonshire in the adventure module No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides, coming soon from LotFP.

What Is Old School?

It's that time of year again...

Grognardia starts the latest round off with More Than A Feeling, which argued that the term "Old School" has actual meaning in it, and that it is more than just some abstract, subjective phrase.

The biggest response going the other way (barring trolls in Grognardia's comments) seems to be here, where it's argued that the term is so subjective that there isn't any real concrete meaning to the phrase at all.

Last July, I had two entries on this blog: What is "Old School? Who cares?, and "Old School" vs. New School" - Final Word.

I don't know that my thoughts are still identical to those expressed in those two entries, but I do have a bit more to say on the matter after the debate of the past couple days.

I Hate Fun came about because the word "fun" is so subjective that using it would effectively be a conversation stopper. For it to be useful in any conversation, the term fun itself would have to be defined by the person using it, and that never happens. It's always "I do that because it's fun." or "I don't like that because it's not fun!" "I only play games I think are fun." It kills conversation dead, and since message boards are (presumably) about conversation (in reality they seem to be about drawing lines in the sand and yelling "You crossed my line! You're an asshole!" and "Cross this line, motherfucker, I dare you!" with variable amounts of courtesy), fun is a toxic term. Thus, I Hate Fun was not literally saying "I hate fun," but hating the use of the word fun while at the same time defining what is fun for me and how that differed from what many other people seemed to consider fun.

The term "old school" is something like "fun." I think it could have a definition, and it should have. Grognardia didn't go so far as to define it, just saying that such a definition should be able to exist. But is the baggage that comes with using it worth it? I think so. There is a difference in style and tone between older games and newer designs. There should be a term that can sum up such things, a term with meaning, right? I understand the procession of games and the thinking that informed their creation isn't an either/or condition, but come on... there is a difference between mainstream then, and mainstream now (I have to say mainstream because these things have to be about the general atmosphere, not including every single exception and outlier) in terms of game design and game play.

If the viewpoint taken by the Wondrous Imaginings blog is correct, then the term Old School needs to be taken out back and shot, then cremated. Purely subjective terms are toxic to discussion and understanding, and anyone using them as an argument, rather than a punctuation to an argument, needs to be ignored lest they poison discussion going on around them.

Yet that's not the point. The fact that people could use a term incorrectly and often would does not suddenly make a term subjective. It just means a lot of people are using it wrong.I don't believe "Old School" is a purely subjective term, but I do believe it is a terrible term to use. I know I've been swept along and use the term "Old School Renaissance," but whatever term I'd use ("Classic" or "Traditional") will have the same problem of definition, even if I'd find it more pleasing and representational.But the argument of, "You're not using the right word," is hardly a conversation anyone enjoys. But what else to do about it?"The assholes can't admit they're understanding a concept completely wrong... best to just surrender it." As if!

Argue argue argue.

I still think the "good" versus "crappy" dichotomy would work better than the "old school" versus "new school." "B/X is a good game! 3e is crappy!" probably communicates a lot more about what the speaker is saying than "B/X is old school and 3e is new school!"

I guess it just depends on how long we want to argue about terminology instead of using the terms to actually make an argument.