I guess my puzzlement is when Gary called OD&D a mess.  I never subscribed to Dragon magazine, so if he did it there I missed it, and his yodeling about "AD&D is a totally separate game" we just ignored.

Now OD&D could use reorganization, I grant you.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863596I guess my puzzlement is when Gary called OD&D a mess.  I never subscribed to Dragon magazine, so if he did it there I missed it, and his yodeling about "AD&D is a totally separate game" we just ignored.

Might have just been marketing.  TSR wanted people to buy AD&D, not to stick with OD&D (and, at least as often, their homebrews).

The "Appendix P" rules in Dark Albion are 7 pages long. Of course, they aren't a full set of RPG mechanics. But the big things to add would be equipment lists, spell descriptions, and monsters.  Those are the things that tend to add a lot of bulk to rules.

Quote from: RPGPundit;864131The "Appendix P" rules in Dark Albion are 7 pages long. Of course, they aren't a full set of RPG mechanics. But the big things to add would be equipment lists, spell descriptions, and monsters.  Those are the things that tend to add a lot of bulk to rules.

Given how easily one can 'copy/paste' items, spells and monsters among editions of D&D, there really isn't any reason for a newly published OSR rules set to have more than a couple dozen pages. Even that could include a lot - social interaction, mass combat, etc.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863480"Gary's got this cool new game called Greyhawk, you're a bunch of guys exploring an old abandoned wizard's castle full of monsters and treasure and stuff."

I didn't see the rules until 18 months later.  

Now, granted, we were told it was "medieval" and Gary and Jeff Perren had written CHAINMAIL and we all played that.

Many of my players don't know the rules and I'm totally fine with that. I give them situations, they react, we move on from there. One thing I love the most about OD&D is that it tends to foil those rules lawyers. (We never had rules lawyers until AD&D came out, and then many game sessions got derailed because someone remembered seeing a rule somewhere...)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863481OD&D ... 3 half size booklets, Vol 1 32 pp, Vol 2 40 pp, Vol 3 36 pp.  

108 half size pages... 59 full size pages.

Hell, I can use the extra five pages to explain all the assumptions Gary made.

Exactly a point I make to many folks on message boards. They don't realize just how short and compact OD&D really is, and even some of that stuff could be considered "fluff" if you don't play campaign rules with baronies, don't have naval or aerial combat, or some of the other things in the booklets. (For example, an experienced player really doesn't need the sample exchange between the Referee and the Caller, doesn't need the sample dungeon, and so on. Good for the novice, but not a long-term rules necessity.)

Quote from: finarvyn;864245One thing I love the most about OD&D is that it tends to foil those rules lawyers. (We never had rules lawyers until AD&D came out, and then many game sessions got derailed because someone remembered seeing a rule somewhere...)

Oh we argued about rules. It's not like all the rules were models of clarity or free from alternate interpretations. So discussing and sometimes arguing about interpretations was part and parcel of figuring out what the authors intended the rule to mean or say and to figuring out if we liked the way the rule worked once we did figure out authorial intent.

And we did the same thing playing board games. The difference was that board games didn't have a referee (DM), so the only way to resolve a disagreement between players was to refer back to the rules, argue for the most reasonable interpretation, and move on from there. Most board games had more clearly written rules. They also had much more limited scope. The two things are not unrelated.

In OD&D, since there was a DM, the DM could always say "Well it works this way in my world." But if your way was too unreasonable and you said that a lot, you would probably find yourself without any players as they would move to a world whose DM wasn't so unreasonable and unwilling to discuss and justify his interpretation.

QuoteThey don't realize just how short and compact OD&D really is, and even some of that stuff could be considered "fluff" if you don't play campaign rules with baronies, don't have naval or aerial combat, or some of the other things in the booklets.

You also didn't need all the monsters and descriptions. Some monsters were suitable only for a dungeon or only for a wilderness or only for Barsoom. And in the dungeon you didn't really need to create all the levels at once. So you might be able to ignore half the monster descriptions to start DMing.

In (A)D&D I use the spell, treasure and monster lists just as examples.  Take those out and the page count goes down a lot.  A page for developing each of these consistently is all I really use. Characters research their own spells, and I develop treasure and monsters specific to the campaign.

Quote from: finarvyn;864245Many of my players don't know the rules and I'm totally fine with that. I give them situations, they react, we move on from there. One thing I love the most about OD&D is that it tends to foil those rules lawyers. (We never had rules lawyers until AD&D came out, and then many game sessions got derailed because someone remembered seeing a rule somewhere...)

OD&D fends off the rules lawyers?  Bwahh?  Possibly in your gaming circle, but in my observation, the vaguer the rules, the more eager the rules lawyers are to have at it.  :duh:

I don't recall the page counts on the genre-specific booklets in Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder boxed set (Future*World, Magic World and Superworld), and I don't have the original Basic Role Playing booklet either.

However, I think that was a very nice product. A polishing up of something like that was what I thought the "Basic" in the name implied when I learned of the project that turned out to be the "Big Gold Book" (which seems more like the later super-expanded Superworld product).

Quote from: Ravenswing;864312OD&D fends off the rules lawyers?  Bwahh?  Possibly in your gaming circle, but in my observation, the vaguer the rules, the more eager the rules lawyers are to have at it.  :duh:

That's because they are allowed (indeed encouraged) to think the rules are their province in the first place. It's like dudes going to a video arcade and expecting to get a listing of the source code before grabbing the joystick. That attitude is the new normal, but it would have been just freakishly odd in the circles in which I started playing. The GM will tell you if you've got a dice toss to make, but otherwise you just play by answering the question, "What will you do now?"

Quote from: Ravenswing;864312OD&D fends off the rules lawyers?  Bwahh?  Possibly in your gaming circle, but in my observation, the vaguer the rules, the more eager the rules lawyers are to have at it.  :duh:

There's a difference between 'vague rules' and 'rules lite'. Stuff like Swords & Wizardry isn't 'vague'... it just leaves a lot of judgements up to the GM... rather than trying to codify everything to the nth degree.
In my experience the more picayune rules a system has, the more it encourages the OCD guys to count beans and fret over partial beans.

Quote from: Phillip;864415I don't recall the page counts on the genre-specific booklets in Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder boxed set (Future*World, Magic World and Superworld), and I don't have the original Basic Role Playing booklet either.

Worlds of Wonder is three 18 page booklets (each covering a different genre/setting) and the BRP booklet that is 16 pages. So 34 pages of reading to run, say, Magic World.
The Superworld box is 3 booklets of about 30 pages each. A gamemaster's book, a Player's book and a book of superpowers.

QuoteHowever, I think that was a very nice product. A polishing up of something like that was what I thought the "Basic" in the name implied when I learned of the project that turned out to be the "Big Gold Book" (which seems more like the later super-expanded Superworld product).

The BGB is big because it's got all the options to run those settings and more... there's a lot of 'stuff' in it but the core rules are still pretty short and sweet.

Quote from: Phillip;864415However, I think that was a very nice product. A polishing up of something like that was what I thought the "Basic" in the name implied when I learned of the project that turned out to be the "Big Gold Book" (which seems more like the later super-expanded Superworld product).

  By all reports, that is what the next version of Basic Roleplaying will be--a 32-page core bundled with settings that include specialized rules. The BGB is going out of print, although it really is primarily a massive 'build your own BRP' toolkit, rather than a rulebook.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;864423By all reports, that is what the next version of Basic Roleplaying will be--a 32-page core bundled with settings that include specialized rules.

Doesn't sound much different than the free BRP Quickstart that was already available... had rules and a few starter adventures in different genres.
There's also the free RQ Essentials book.

QuoteThe BGB is going out of print, although it really is primarily a massive 'build your own BRP' toolkit, rather than a rulebook.

As is just about any corebook that attempts to cover more than one genre/setting.
The RQ6 rulebook doesn't address anything but historical and fantasy games... but it's still longer than the BGB.

Rules lawyers, like other flavors of asshole, don't need anything more than an audience to ply their wares.

Quote from: Spinachcat;864475Rules lawyers, like other flavors of asshole, don't need anything more than an audience to ply their wares.

If there aren't any rules to argue with... if they're just bitching about the GM's decision... then I think that resolves into just plain 'asshole'.