Quote from: Psikerlord;923950I am currently writing this kind of "sandbox setting" book for Low Fantasy Gaming. Hoping to release it end of this year, but it's a bit difficult to gauge time frames.

Playtest it multiple times. Note the results, that will define what you need to write about.

Quote from: Teodrik;923931The OSR haev seen its fair share of lovecraftian stuff, gonzo/weird, horror/gore, pulpy, pure retro etc. Something I really hope to see one day would be something that draws heavily from Birthright, Pendragon, Tolkien (but not necessarily LotR), Lord Dunsany and a bit of Martins GoT.

Again, this sounds like that "Dragonlance done right" suggestion from the first post. The idea sounds intriguing, but the well established challenges and pitfalls are daunting.

If one wanted to tap into the OSR spirit of such a project I suppose one possible first step would be trying to figure out the exact point in TSR history where the old location-based adventure designs gave way to the railroad-heavy Dragonlance era and see if there are any clues as to why it turned ugly and if anything could be salvaged. I would guess the original Ravenloft module marks the turning point.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;923958Again, this sounds like that "Dragonlance done right" suggestion from the first post. The idea sounds intriguing, but the well established challenges and pitfalls are daunting.

If one wanted to tap into the OSR spirit of such a project I suppose one possible first step would be trying to figure out the exact point in TSR history where the old location-based adventure designs gave way to the railroad-heavy Dragonlance era and see if there are any clues as to why it turned ugly and if anything could be salvaged. I would guess the original Ravenloft module marks the turning point.

There never a turning point outside of a few exceptions like Keep on the Borderlands most of the modules were polished tournament dungeons. The difference is that after Ravenloft the scope changed to be more expansive and focused a lot more on the roleplaying rather than puzzle solving.

My own wish is for the term OSR to divorce itself from being an advertising gimmick term that means only D&D in _____.

There were a lot more Old School games out there that people had fun with besides D&D.

Quote from: jeff37923;923963My own wish is for the term OSR to divorce itself from being an advertising gimmick term that means only D&D in _____.

There were a lot more Old School games out there that people had fun with besides D&D.

Probably the main reason for the OSR is that D&D became a completely different game over time. Fans needed to break out on there own to continue playing the same game. Other major games of the 70s don't have an need for a movement.

By the time the OSR was really rolling, BRP/RQ and Traveller were both available in editions that were both reasonably compatible with earlier materials and also OGL. BRP has sprouted plenty of variants like Mythras, OpenQuest, and Renaissance, with more variants in the works. Chaosium just reprinted RQ2 for people that want to stick with the old classics. There is an abundance of choice and support.

The Traveller groups I follow on G+ are active with plenty of good material. Seems like a healthy scene on the whole with regular fan made materials and third party supplements.

These games don't have the violent divide between Old School and New School players that occurred in D&D.

I guess it would be interesting for more examination of games that have largely been left behind, but that was never what the OSR was. At core, it was people who played pre-3E D&D and wanted to keep playing it.

If I were going to try and resurrect interest in an early non-D&D game, I would want to stay away from the OSR label. It is so strongly associated with D&D by now that it would give a false impression of what you were trying to interest them in.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;923958Again, this sounds like that "Dragonlance done right" suggestion from the first post. The idea sounds intriguing, but the well established challenges and pitfalls are daunting.

If one wanted to tap into the OSR spirit of such a project I suppose one possible first step would be trying to figure out the exact point in TSR history where the old location-based adventure designs gave way to the railroad-heavy Dragonlance era and see if there are any clues as to why it turned ugly and if anything could be salvaged. I would guess the original Ravenloft module marks the turning point.

It's worth remembering that most early D&D location-based adventures are their own limitation. This week, you are going to explore this dungeon. If you don't go in the dungeon that your DM just bought, there is no adventure. It's not like we had unfettered freedom before story-based modules came along.

D&D is actually a tricky game to build a wide open hexcrawl for. It has an enormous spread in character ability from high to low, and the monsters have a similar spread. It's one reason D&D tied monsters to specific levels in a dungeon. The deeper you got, the bigger the risks. You avoided going lower until you were ready. Hexcrawls are more chaotic and players can easily stumble into a TPK or a series of fights that are too easy and too light on treasure.

I'm not saying D&D can't do hexcrawls, just that they are a challenge. They can be a little easier to pull off in games where characters have less of a steep power curve.

I think this is part of the reason why D&D modules tended towards a single location targeted at a small range of character levels. Adventure paths are just another way of making sure that characters only encounter monsters that are well-matched towards them. Personally, I am on the side that find adventure paths boring as whole. When I GM, I don't want to know everything that will happen. I want to see where the players take the story. In an adventure path, I know all the major plot beats from the start.

Quote from: estar;923952Playtest it multiple times. Note the results, that will define what you need to write about.

Thanks Estar, I shall - just a heads up, your last 2 links in your sig are giving 404 errors (?)

Quote from: RunningLaser;923877You should check out the Fabled Lands gamebooks if you haven't already.  They are supposed to be open ended.

Quote from: Omega;923879Gamebooks are alive and kicking. Last year there was even one up on KS illustrated by the original Fighting Fantasy artist. Theres also a yh-groups mailing list dedicated to gamebooks.

Fabled Lands was allready mentioned and another is DestinyQuest.

Quote from: Baulderstone;923894There are also plenty of gamebooks available on tablets, with Inkle's new version of the Sorcery games from Inkle being the most notable. Many of them are just the same as a book, while the Inkle ones keep the basic ideas of a gamebook and expand the idea in ways that a book couldn't handle.

Cool, I'll have to check those out.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;923958If one wanted to tap into the OSR spirit of such a project I suppose one possible first step would be trying to figure out the exact point in TSR history where the old location-based adventure designs gave way to the railroad-heavy Dragonlance era and see if there are any clues as to why it turned ugly and if anything could be salvaged. I would guess the original Ravenloft module marks the turning point.

Ravenloft was an awesome module though and still exploration based. The idea was pretty sound too: a living villain who has his own goals and does things (sometimes reacting to choices the players make). I don't know exactly when things changed but going by my memory of things, I think if you look at the Ravenloft line you can sort of see where that idea goes south though (not as sure about the other settings like Dragonlance). You still had a lot of solid adventures early on. They were not pure hex crawls, there was more focus on stuff like role-play and interesting developments, but you still had a kind of sandbox aspect to them. Feast of Goblyns explicitly tried to ape the living adventure concept (and I think for the period it came in, it did a good job). There were other good adventures like Castles Forlorn that came out as well around that time. At a certain point though, story started to really become king (I think as Vampire gained traction TSR felt a lot of pressure to make stuff feel more highbrow). So you started seeing things in the line here and there that were much more railroady, and in one egregious case I remember, they had an NPC that flat out couldn't die for story reasons (not he was magically invincible and couldn't die, but the text straight up said don't let the PCs kill this character). The module The Created had this for instance (and it was built around a very specific concept and flow of events). It was a shame too because there was still some cool stuff in the module itself. So if you look at Feast of Goblyns, there is a whole thing in there where they lay out the most likely course of events, but they pretty explicitly state, this is just the most likely way things happen and the PCs could go in any number of directions. It is also much more based around exploration with a region map, two city maps, and a bunch of manors and dungeons. At some point though you started seeing things like having scenes or acts instead of chapter titles. But it wasn't like everything just changed suddenly in 86, 90 or even 92. There was still kind of a mix in the modules and setting material.

Ravenloft also strongly eschewed the Dungeon early on (but it backtracked on this later). Not that dungeons didn't exist there. Ruins and crypts had a place. However the dungeon was pretty quickly supplanted with monster hunts and investigations (if you read the Van Richten books, that is pretty much what those were all about and they were kind of at the heart of the line). Those were quite workable as concepts and they didn't demand that you do an adventure path or follow storyline if you didn't want to. Every so often I go back to Ravenloft and I've found that drawing more not the Van Richten line, ignoring the silliness that comes up in stuff like Created, is a pretty easy way to avoid some of the problems in late 80s, 90s TSR material. And you can still mine the line for good things. Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn are still quite useable (though you might want to snipe an element here or there).

Estar's Scourge of the Demon Wolf adventure is a pretty good example of this kind of blend of monster hunt and investigation in my opinion.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;923853Is it Dragonlance Done Right?

Working on it...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;923853A more approachable domain management elder game?

An Echo Resounding doesn't do it for you?

Quote from: estar;923859this map I made for one of my campaigns.

Please, please publish this. Never enough hexcrawls!

Quote from: Daztur;923893Woud love to see a more focused hexcrawl book with a full page for each hex and then some general information about the setting and more pages about a few interesting locations such as dungeons. Sort of something in the middle between a hexcrawl ad a focused module.

Yes!

Quote from: Teodrik;923931The OSR haev seen its fair share of lovecraftian stuff, gonzo/weird, horror/gore, pulpy, pure retro etc. Something I really hope to see one day would be something that draws heavily from Birthright, Pendragon, Tolkien (but not necessarily LotR), Lord Dunsany and a bit of Martins GoT.

Another great thought. Beyond The Wall is a step in the right direction.

Here's another one: converting new school game premises to an OSR framework. Case in point: Godbound. Seriously considering an OSR-powered Rifts remake using S&W and Kevin Crawford's opus (SWN, Other Dust and Godbound).

Quote from: Psikerlord;923987Thanks Estar, I shall - just a heads up, your last 2 links in your sig are giving 404 errors (?)

Thanks it should be fixed now. Looks like Goodman Games reorganized their website.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;924032living adventure concept

Aight. I think this is a great take on Dragonlance Done Right. Ravenloft is a neat adventure because it sets up a lot of interesting encounters without expecting any canned resolutions. Whereas the Dragonlance modules pretty much do. (Go here, get the disks, fight the dragon, pregen characters are the expected party)

Quote from: The Butcher;924034An Echo Resounding doesn't do it for you?

I actually don't have it.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;923958Again, this sounds like that "Dragonlance done right" suggestion from the first post. The idea sounds intriguing, but the well established challenges and pitfalls are daunting.

If one wanted to tap into the OSR spirit of such a project I suppose one possible first step would be trying to figure out the exact point in TSR history where the old location-based adventure designs gave way to the railroad-heavy Dragonlance era and see if there are any clues as to why it turned ugly and if anything could be salvaged. I would guess the original Ravenloft module marks the turning point.

Was was actually more thinking about an open sandbox hexcral(or point-crawl) setting with the elements I mentioned. Not an adventure path DL style.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;924038I actually don't have it.

It sounds a lot like what you're looking for. DTRPG link.