Quote from: Brad;792571

This cat bears a striking resemblance to one of my two cats.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;793048How about T. Foster?  (Didn't you characterize him as the Khmer Rouge of Old School, at one point?)

These are certainly examples of serious criticism of Maliszewski.  However, that thread doesn't even start until 2012, by which time the OSR had already been moving well past the Clonemania phase and Maliszewski wasn't really at his peak anymore.  Still, a better indication of criticism.

Quote from: TristramEvans;793279I dont know why your holding onto the term OSR as having any special meaning beyond the description of a time of revival when old-school style games went from being "fantasy heartbreakers" to being a refreshing re-look at what made old D&D great in the face of 3rd-4th editions's general shortcomings. I cant see any reason to hold onto it as a term beyond as a marketing slogan at this point.

Because there are people who want to define the OSR out of existence as a way to be able to relegate old-school games back to the realm of 'fantasy heartbreakers' and out of the ideological vanguard of the hobby, so they can impose their own gaming ideologies in its place.

Quote from: estar;793045I will have to do some more digging but this post in an example of Grognardia criticism during the height of his popularity circa 2010.

http://waxbanks.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/in-response-to-grognardia-gygax-on-dd-a-non-game.html

While digging I found this what I think illustrate the problem of getting even a small segment of the OSR working together.

http://www.rpgblog2.com/2009/01/quick-note-on-direction-of-old-school.html

The first of these links is by someone I haven't even heard of. What did he do?

The second doesn't even explicitly mention Grognardia or Maliszewski in the body of the post.

Not exactly resounding condemnations.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793654The first of these links is by someone I haven't even heard of. What did he do?

Kept up a blog with gaming commentary since 2003. Does he need to do more?

You asked for criticism of Grognardia circa 2008 to 2010 and I found an example.

By and large people didn't get vehement in the way you do on your blog. Said their piece and went on their way.

The comments of this post was typical of how people responded to James calling for something to be done.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/05/universal-system.html

Or this disscussion.

http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4404&p=47414&hilit=Maliszewski#p47414

The TARGA controversy, which Grognardia had little to do with, was the first one to generate truly vehement commentary. Before that nothing was worth getting worked up about because of the Open Game License and technology. People doing stuff knew that there was nothing that any individual or group could do to shut what they were doing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793654The second doesn't even explicitly mention Grognardia or Maliszewski in the body of the post.

Not exactly resounding condemnations.

You need to read the sentences afterwards. It is an example of just how hard it was to get anybody in the early OSR to cooperate in any type of concerted action. Hell it is still that hard. You paint these conspiracies by individual or small groups to act as gatekeepers. But you never say exactly how this was accomplished.

Pundit,

I think part of your attitude results from how you approach publishing. We talked briefly about this when you approached me about publishing Arrow of Indra and your interview brought it back the memory.  You rely on others for everything but the writing and playtesting.  Which is fine but that is not the typical experience of people publishing for the OSR.  

Most of what the OSR does in publishing is do it yourself with help from acquaintances and friends. LoftFP, Goodman Games, and Frog God Games are the closest thing the OSR has to traditional publishers who make a habit of publishing other authors work. Even then there is a heavy dose of collaboration, like with Matt Finch and Frog God Games.

That always been the downside of movements based on open content or open source. If you are uninterested (your case) or unable to do it yourself the movement can seems like a world of gatekeepers. The gate in this case is fact that to participate, especially in the early days, you have to be willing to do most of the work.

There is no good solution to this. Fixes will only result in the curtailing of the freedom that ignited the movement in the first place. Aside from the practical impossibility of making that happen, nobody involved, myself included, will ever agree to let the freedom of the OGL to be curtailed.

The only solution I seen work is diversity. The movement grows so large that anybody can find somebody somewhere that is willing to help. And that why you been successful in recent years with OSR projects. Because after 2010 it was far easier to find people in the OSR willing with a author that was only interested in writing and playtesting than before 2010.

Finally that diversity wasn't a result of a liberation from the clonemanics by a intrepid few. That was a consequence of the clonemanics adopting the Open Game License at the very beginning of the movement. The clonemanics dominated the early OSR because they were the first to do the work that others can take advantage of.  Once the way was pioneered then other, like myself, had a path to get our own projects. The very clonemanics you mock are the ones responsible for the diversity you see today.

Rob, I don't think Pundit is all that concerned with a quest for the truth regarding the early simulacrum period unless it's narrative-supporting.  

I mean shit, it doesn't seem very hard to find information online that shows that Matt Finch, one of the main cogs in OSRIC, put out Swords and Wizardry a short time after OSRIC - with the text completely open and explicitly designed to make it easier for people to use it as a base to create all the variant-D&D games that tickle Pundit's happy spot.  Labyrinth Lord was also pretty much completely open text/content, IIRC.

The only clone that was limited in that regard was OSRIC, designed to preserve 1E rules as faithfully as possible.  So what.  I've never heard anything to indicate that decision was driven by anything but admiration for 1E.

The early clones had no publishing companies, so there wouldn't have been anyone to turn down the opportunity to publish his efforts during that time, in order for him to arrive at the misconception you propose.

The interesting question is: why?  Why pick a fight now with people who are happily playing and supporting the original TSR games through sims?  They're not swine.  They're not SJW.  They're not talking about Pundit.  So none of the normal Pavlovian bells apply.

Quote from: RPGPundit;793652Because there are people who want to define the OSR out of existence as a way to be able to relegate old-school games back to the realm of 'fantasy heartbreakers' and out of the ideological vanguard of the hobby, so they can impose their own gaming ideologies in its place.

Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

Quote from: EOTB;793742Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

I should have known it all comes back to "The Swine" in the end. This is now making me picture "OSR brand-toothpaste"

"To get rid of that pesky pork flavour"

Quote from: EOTB;793739The interesting question is: why?  Why pick a fight now with people who are happily playing and supporting the original TSR games through sims?  

As near as I can tell somebody involved in the early days pissed off with their opinion on Forward! to Adventure. Although my google-fu comes up short when trying to find the specific incident.

In his blog grognardia doesn't take about the Pundit or Forward! to Adventure although it been noted in the comments by others.

The earliest reference to this I can find is this post by Hairfoot.

By the middle of 2009 the Pundit already had a very negative opinion of the OSR as shown by this post and this thread.

Update

I found this thread on Knights & Knaves

Here the link to the blog post they referenced.

Quote from: EOTB;793742Who.  Who are these people who give two fucks about the existence of games they don't play, that also have a power beyond that of the freedom of speech to bitch online.  

So many faceless boogeymen.  I suppose it is almost Halloween.

I also interested in the RPGPundit's opinion on how they suppose to accomplish this?

I am highly skeptical due to the number of people who want to play or buy classic D&D/Old School products versus the number of people who want to take over a movement for their own ends.

Now that the OGL let the publishing cat out of the bag for classic D&D there is no effective way of stuffing it back in as long as people want to continue to play classic D&D and other Old School games.

Especially when old school RPGs with much smaller fan bases managed to survive and remain published to the present.

I've lost track of this thread for awhile, and maybe someone has already offered this, but a working definition of the Old School Renaissance might work best if it emulates that of the actual historical Renaissance. One might thus call the OSR:

"...a rebirth of interest in the styles, concerns and conceits of earlier RPG systems (we'll call this systems that predate D&D's 3rd edition). Free from copyright restraints (thanks to the OGL), this renewal of interest was accompanied by new works patterned after those older styles, concerns, conceits, etc., to an audience already familiar with them, thus sparking a general, wider re-awakening to what seemed to have been lost or obscured.

That's a rather lengthy definition, I know. But it's an easy one to support. In a way, the wave of OSR designs we've seen the last 10 years or so mimics the wave of Renaissance art, which was itself inspired by the thought processes and knowledge of an earlier civilization.  The actual effect of the Renaissance during the actual time of the Renaissance, when it came to the rank-and-file, was marginal at best. But among those in a position to influence culture via art and music, the Greco-Roman influence was profound, and since those with power and influence drive arts and culture, that's what they did. The OSR thus differs in that respect in that avenues for self-publication, encouraged by the OGL, sprang up from many sources. You didn't need power, contacts or influence to put out a game. And since you didn't have to worry about copyright infringement, you could piggyback on an existing system that already had a waiting audience.

Quote from: estar;793771Update

I found this thread on Knights & Knaves

Here the link to the blog post they referenced.

That thread on K&KA is the source of a grudge, and/or gatekeeping paranoia?

I don't see it.  All that thread shows is that while Pundit may love earlier play styles, he was not interacting with, and pretty much completely unknown to, the largest communities dedicated to discussing TSR games.  Because for most posters on K&KA not to know who someone is, that person also would have to be an unknown on Dragonsfoot and ODD74 as well.  

That invisibility might have hampered his earlier game - people won't consider purchasing what they don't know exists - but if that was a hindrance it was one brought on by Pundit exercising his freedom of association, not some external actor.

Which, given that he has his own message board, it makes some sense that he wouldn't be spending much time elsewhere.  But people have to be accountable for their own decisions about how to invest their time for marketing, and I'm guessing that Pundit was probably seeing the RPG.net and ENworld crowd as a better market (with more $) than DF, K&KA, and ODD74.  

I did a search for "Forward! to Adventure" on DF and got crickets.  Then I searched for Pundit and found a couple of relevant hits, but the only marketing was a thread by Bedrock Brendan in 2012 for AoI - with two posts by the publisher - that directed traffic over to here.

So yeah, people didn't buy it.  Surprise.

Edit - now that I've read the blog post of Pundit's referenced in the thread, the amount of irony in his rant on Mishler's reasons for whining about lack of sales for his game being due to lack of marketing, as compared to Pundit's reaction to the failure of Forward to Adventure to make inroads into the old school crowd in a period where he wooed to old school crowd very little, is vast.

Quote from: EOTB;793828That thread on K&KA is the source of a grudge, and/or gatekeeping paranoia?

I don't know but that the most relevant reference to the RPGPundit I can find on K&KA.

My opinion at worse, from Pundit's PoV it demonstrates indifference to Forward! to Adventure and people disliking his blogging style.

Quote from: EOTB;793828That invisibility might have hampered his earlier game - people won't consider purchasing what they don't know exists - but if that was a hindrance it was one brought on by Pundit exercising his freedom of association, not some external actor.

Another interesting factis that the gonzo side of the early OSR, led by Jeff Rients, was aware and talking about the Pundit. Both Jeff and Akrasia on Akratic Wizardry talked about the Pundit and Forward! to Adventure and considered it a old school game.

Couple with the fact there is zero mention of the Pundit in any of James' blog post.  I am at a loss as to the source of his conflict with what he describes as clonemanics and gatekeepers of the early OSR.

Whenever it happened it was after mid 2009 as then when the references to Pundit's animosity started appearing here.

And I found this post spelling out what system were acceptable for Fight On! a major early OSR publication.

http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/837/systems-write

And in the list is Pundit's Forward! to Adventure. My current conclusion is that the event that set him off occurred between early 2008 and mid 2009.

And looking over my posts from the time period I was just as baffled then about his hostility as I am now. I can find no reasonable reason for his attitude or that matter any reason other than some folks exhibited indifference or didn't like his blogging style. Which was not exactly new news even then.

I seem to recall somebody from KnK (maybe T. Foster, again, but I don't remember for certain) leveling criticism at Forward! To Adventure (especially the art style, but other stuff too, I think).  But I don't think that was on KnK, I think was here.  Maybe.