Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;793836I 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.

Wasn't me. I've never so much as seen a copy (in print or pdf) of F!tA.

I followed the link in T Foster's Tagline and found the Pundit quote from August of 2009.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318450&postcount=342

Going upthread we get to this.

And find a post where the Pundit names names.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318102&postcount=301

The culprits being folks from K&KA.

Which is interesting because when i search K&KA for Pundit or Forward to Adventure. The harshest post I found is the one I linked too previously.

And the Pundit expresses specifically the issue a few post later.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318226&postcount=310

Then slightly later I point out rather sarcastically that it makes no difference if they have that attitude.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318316&postcount=322

And returning up thread  we find this

Quote from: RPGPundit;316163Yup. I think its a fundamental flaw of the "retro" movement. Either you're playing a game so similar to its inspiration that might as well be playing the original, or you are playing a game so different that you're not playing anything like the original.

I really hope that eventually the Old School movement clues into that, and comes to get that what you need to produce are games with an Old School design-feel, but not actually an imitator of an old game; and with modern comprehension of design and presentation.

That's what I was trying to get at with FtA!. Its not a clone, its not based on any one old-school game, its very much its own thing, and it has a smooth streamlined system, but it in every respect of feel and atmosphere firmly located in the Old-school camp.

Which seems to add to the idea that the source of Pundit's beef with the early OSR is some of them, particularly K&KA ignored Forward! to Adventure.

And reading down thread from that we get this exchange between Papers and Paycheck and the Pundit which enflamed the situation.

Quote from: P&P;317223The words that started this 24-page thread.  

And they're so wrong.  What we needed to do was totally reject the "modern comprehension of design and presentation".  We needed to break away from this endless series of attempts to write a modern game that reaches out to the old school feel, because if we'd stuck in those old, old wheel ruts, what we'd have produced is Yet Another Completely Pointless Also-Ran RPG which a grand total of about 14 people would play for about six months before it started gathering dust.

And having rejected "the modern comprehension of design and presentation" we did exactly the right thing.  We believed that the game Gary Gygax wrote was pretty close to the perfect starting point for people's house-rules.  So we decided to write a SRD for it and bring it in line with the modern comprehension of open gaming instead.

Since then, WOTC have done us several huge favours.  4e helped.  4e outside the OGL helped a lot.  And killing off the .pdf sales of OOP stuff helped a lot.

So thank you, WOTC, for OSRIC's recent successes.  

followed by Pundit's response.

Quote from: RPGPundit;317763You haven't actually written anything. You stole another man's work, and tacked on some homebrew add-ons, and you're claiming that's a movement. OSRIC is perfect example of why the whole "old school" thing is shaping to be a mammoth waste of time for all concerned if the "only-clones" crowd stays in control of things.

Still can't pin exactly when anybody involved with K&KA criticized Forward! To Adventure.

Getting close to the source of the issue.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281177Ok, I'm going to come out and say it. I love old-school, and old-school gaming, but basically, I think retro-clone games suck ass. OSRIC; Labyrinth Lord, etc., they're all pointlessly stupid.

If you want something classic, why the fuck would you go with this? The originals are all still out there ( you can get the RC pdf for $5), and there's NOTHING in any of these "clones" that make them more worthwhile than the original.

If, on the other hand, you want something with "old school" sentiment, but not actually old-school rules, then again why the fuck would these be any good to you? Why not just go for a game (like, say, "Forward... to Adventure!") that manages to capture the old-school feel without having to just be a cheapass ripoff of an actual old-school game, and presents new elements and a modern rules-design sensibility without being hassled with trying to balance that with trying to look and stay close enough to "AD&D 1e with Unearth Arcana rules but without Cavaliers" or some shit like that?!

Ok, there's my ranting for the day. Discuss.

The Pundits response are calm and reasonable including this one.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281902Again, I'm not saying they're evil or damaging to the hobby, I'm just saying that I personally don't like them.t

And then oh man there was this.

Quote from: P&P;282499My game's more popular than your game.  

Also, neener neener neener.

Later in the thread FtA! marketing gets discussed.

With above posts my opinion it started with a personal conflict between Stuart Marshall, the author of OSRIC, and the RPGPundit the author of Forward to Adventure!. And is in essence comparing the length of.... err respective virtues of their RPGs.

That prior to this the RPGPundit and K&KA were indifferent to each other. Along with the fact FtA! was supported by the portion of the OSR that revolved around Jeff Rients, and the crew behind Fight On!. (Which continues to exist over on the OD&D discussion forum.)

That when this started many of us in the OSR, (Melan, Philotomy, Rients, myself, etc) attempted to explain the state of affairs. But the Pundit got too wrapped up in his personal animosity toward specific individuals to listen. That things steadily went downhill from there.

Part of the reason that I commented heavily on his recent blog posts is that I thought we got past this with publication of Arrows of Indra. That his experience in publishing and promoting that book will be a practical demonstration of how the OSR has always operated. But it appears not.

OK, that thread was pretty enlightening.

So, as near as I can tell it, the gatekeeping boils down to influence.  Pundit hammers home his idea in that thread that the play style of old games is great, but that they need to die a (revered, honored) death so that they aren't keeping people from buying shiny, new, evolved games.  People like P&P who promote continual use of the old games are inhibiting this process.  Thus, gatekeepers.  Supporting old games probably would have been more tolerable if it wouldn't have taken off quite so well.

I actually would be quite pleased to have him spouting his froth, so long as he linked the entirety of that thread to it when he did, so that people could see the entirety of what is behind it.  I think that would benefit old games very well.  Do you think he would be willing to sig the link or something?  "This is why I believe clonemaniacs needs to be stopped - RPG Pundit".  Don't stop with half-hearted efforts - get the whole story out!

Snippets from that thread:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318470&postcount=348

Quote from: Akrasia;318470:rolleyes:  Do you even try to understand posts that point out that your understanding of the OSR is deeply mistaken?

And T. Foster is one guy.  He's not the president of the OSR.  I'm sure that he would hate my house rules for OD&D.  

This misunderstanding of Pundit's is not new, and frankly, after reading through all of that, it is deliberate. It is the same misunderstanding he's been nursing for years.  However, it is not a misunderstanding of his, it is (our/their) misunderstanding of him.  He understood "the OSR" as it was constituted then, and to a large extent, now, quite well.

The problem is that he doesn't put all of his view or intent in one place.  So when he uses words like "gatekeeper", that he is defining that term in a different way than everyone else would commonly associate meaning with, it is lost on the viewer who instead is defining it as Joe Q Public would normally do so.  But this leaves anyone - not willing to dig - with a misconception that is quite favorable to Pundit's interest.  Which I will quote later.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318690&postcount=413

Quote from: RPG Pundit...rather than there being anyone saying "we must take what is awesome about the past and make NEW, DIFFERENT stuff with it" (and no, clones or rip-off games or modules (emphasis supplied - ed.)for out-of-print games is not new, or different)

Ah, but see... here's where things get curious. If that's your mission statement, I NO WHERE poked any pointy stick at it. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that old games are not broken, and that the hobby would be better off if games like (emphasis supplied - ed.) Basic/Expert D&D were still the standard. In fact, I've made a career out of saying that.

It's not just the games - modules, too.  Support material can't be new or different.  The game engine must be new or different.  That is the criteria for a laudable effort from Pundit, or something that isn't to be attacked (at minimum).

Quote from: RPG PunditBecause FtA! is not a clone or even directly based a specific old game, it was "out", and is therefore bad. And FtA! is by far not the only one. You have Wayfarers, Epic, and tons of others; actual NEW games with old-school style, that none of you give a fuck about (emphasis supplied - ed.) because you're too busy making up monster lists for brown-box D&D and debating the crucial issue of whether its permissible for AC to scale up or only down, and what should be done to someone who dares to use THAC0 instead of the attack matrix table.

Yep, actual new games again.  

Of course, debating D&D is part of the fun of D&D.  It's what you do when you can't get enough people together to play D&D.  The letters section, and later forum, of Dragon was consistently one of its most popular features in the annual surveys.  But damnit - doing this keeps us from searching out new games.  It's got to go.

Quote from: JimLotFP;318701Then why do you have your panties in a wad about people actually holding up Basic/Expert D&D and saying, "Play this! It rules!"?

If it's there and it's good, why the need for NEW and DIFFERENT games entirely?

Why should I make my own distinct game or care about FTA! or Wanderer or whatever that is the "same spirit" when what I've got is well and good enough?

If I want new and different, I'll actually go to a Forge game because those are different, and not just a different way to scratch the same itch that I've already got well-scratched.

Quote from: RPGPundit;318709This is you, making my point for me.

So, fundamentally you're admitting that there's no real difference between you and T.Foster except that he's not afraid of sounding like an ass (either through courage or some kind of dysfunction), whereas you are. But fundamentally, you're in agreement with him, that the future is old men playing old games till death takes them?

RPGPundit

There you go, Jim LotFP, misunderstanding that Pundit wants the old games to live on only in spirit through new games.  

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=318721&postcount=440

Quote from: RPG PunditActually, I'd never been to KKA in my life before yesterday.
My feelings and impressions about the OSR came mostly from what I'd seen from people on here, Enworld, RPG.net, and very rare forays into old-school blogs or other forums.

As for our similarity, the big difference is that here we tolerate debate and free expression. From what I've heard, over there the groupthink is strong.

And yes, I should have qualified "playable" for EC. You're right about that.

So this immutable opinion was formed not by interacting with these people.  It was formed because they were being discussed on places like ENworld, RPG.net and such.  Can't fucking have that!  I mean, here was Pundit, preaching old school play like a guy in a white shirt and tie riding a bike and handing out pamphlets down the strip in Vegas, and someone else was getting traction, but instead of buying new games to replace their forgey or 3E games, it was getting them excited about pulling out their old games, or downloading free simulacrum!  They killed Kenny!  Those bastards!

Meanwhile, completely absent his involvement in the OSR, it went in a direction he didn't approve of.  

In other news, dropped rock hit ground approximately 2.3 seconds after release.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=319478&postcount=548

Quote from: RPGPundit;319478...and for hte last fucking time THIS ARGUMENT IS ABOUT IDEOLOGY, NOT MY BOOK...

Agreed.  But it isn't about gatekeeping, either.  That's the disingenuous part of Pundit's screed.  It's about a competing ideology's existence, not any active effort against pundit by those who hold it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;319478No, it doesn't you stupid fuck.
Going to someone who's talking about difficulties in their GURPS campaign and telling them "play WUSHU instead!" is not constructive criticism, its you being enough of a cunt to merit having a fucking ice chipper shoved down your throat.
Telling baseball fans worried about the red sox "become a hockey fan instead!" is not constructive criticsm. An architect whose advice regarding a housing crisis is "build an abatoir instead" is a fucking idiot.

You, in other words, are a fucking idiot. Do you understand me now? Do you get how you are a fucking idiot?... (emphasis supplied - ed.)

RPGPundit

Irony.  He's telling baseball fans who aren't even worried about the red sox that they need to become hockey fans instead (buy new games!)  He's telling gamers that don't even feel homeless that they have a housing crisis, and he's the architect that will solve their problem.  Fucking idiot, indeed.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=320191&postcount=598

Quote from: RPGPundit;320191Then certainly those people, the ones who become a clique, must be criticized, humiliated, anything possible to avoid this marginalization.

RPGPundit

Here we get to the root of the issue.  Here Pundit nakedly lays out why he consistently mischaracterizes his targets, refuses to consider the huge volume of contradictory information, and chooses loaded and inaccurate terms like "gate keeping" and "purity tests" to describe those who have a differing point of view and goal in regards to the original games.  They are a clique he neither controls, nor views him (or his amibition) of any importance.  They have an influence he feels will marginalize the hobby because he's already concluded that new games are the only way it will live/grow.  That influence interferes with his goal of getting people to buy NEW games designed according to his preferences.  

So he will smear them constantly, attempt to influence those unfamiliar into seeing them as groups taking actions to limit choice, and, due to a negative "review", to thereafter steer clear of those that approach RPGs from a singular viewpoint.  He has to strangle this ideology to have any hope of killing off the original games (or at least convince people they still need, at minimum, to continue to buy newer games.  Maybe taking the original games out for a spin every once in a while is OK when it's sunny enough to put the top down.  They still have the right spirit, after all.)

Gate keeping indeed.  For all the breast beating he just displayed after consultant-gate about how certain tactics are vile inherently, he certainly seems willing to use those very same tools.  He's no different than those he's recently castigated, only his agenda.

That was actually a rather interesting read; well researched and all.

My question to you is this; how on Earth did you find the time and energy to research that? Have you been bookmarking Pundit's posts for years?

I can speak for why I'll play updated versions of older games:

BFRPG: Flips the AC, tons of free stuff (hell, it's ALL free).

LL: presentation much easier to follow than having to jump back and forth between B and X.

I don't have a problem with anyone who plays 1E. Don't care for the crowing that 1E is the game of all games. Also feel like that bitching about someone who's playing a simulacrum or retroclone of one's own beloved system is kinda like bitching out someone for buying generic cola instead of actual Coke.

Quote from: everloss;793917That was actually a rather interesting read; well researched and all.

My question to you is this; how on Earth did you find the time and energy to research that? Have you been bookmarking Pundit's posts for years?

I have a decent amount of Google fu combined with being a speed reader. It boils down to my ability to pick out good terms to search on combined with luck. The luck in this case was T. Foster posting and his signature with  the OSR Taliban link to Pundit's post. From that thead it took me two tries at searching and I found the Jan 2009 thread where the Pundit and Stuart Marshal insulted each other.

The big hurdle with this site is that it only returns the first 250 hits. Otherwise it would been as easy as searching all of the Pundit post for OSR and find the first time he mentioned it. Then work your way forward. Something that takes 15 minutes.

So I need some luck to narrow down the area I need to search. After which I can use Google site search with a date range filter to find relevant posts.

At work I am typically the guy assigned to use Google to find some obscure technical detail for my boss or coworkers.

For what it's worth, a couple of the ideas in FtA weren't bed. As an expat playing rpgs with non-English speakers with very limited access to physical gaming swag, I thought relying on 6-sided dice was a great idea. The Traveller-style settlement generation was neat as well. Later I wondered why Pundit never expanded on the game.

IMO, for a new system to have a chance in hell of being accepted, the publisher (or in the case of the OSR - the writer) needs to do more than just release the rules. It won't catch on if you aren't willing to back it up with some very substantial and hard work providing supplementary material. Getting bitter and holding a long-standing personal grudge won't change that. Neither will losing interest and moving onto the next big thing.

That said, the first big OSRIC supplement, Dangerous Dungeons, is nearing completion, after a couple years of grinding away, with somewhere north of half a million words. Lots and lots of never before seen material, plenty of optional house-rules type stuff, and enough tables to give a carpenter good pause. I'm pretty confident it will be popular, regardless of what particular system folks prefer or their respective opinions of the authors as individuals. No, it won't be a reinvention of the wheel (or re-definition of what the OSR is), but it will have something almost anyone can use.

Quote from: estar;793934I have a decent amount of Google fu combined with being a speed reader. It boils down to my ability to pick out good terms to search on combined with luck. The luck in this case was T. Foster posting and his signature with  the OSR Taliban link to Pundit's post. From that thead it took me two tries at searching and I found the Jan 2009 thread where the Pundit and Stuart Marshal insulted each other.

Fair enough. I wasn't intending to sound insulting, although after re-reading my post it may have come across that way.

Quote from: estar;793684Pundit,

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.

I think you're conflating two different things here: indie self-publishing, and ideological gatekeeping.  Self-publishing makes gatekeeping ineffectual in a larger industry sense; it doesn't matter how many people say "Bob Smith shouldn't be allowed to write RPGs" if Bob can just publish one himself. But movement-gatekeeping can still be highly effective at what amounts to a kind of identity-politics, where people will allow themselves to be convinced that Bob's game is not the "right" kind of game for the type of thing they identify with.

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.

Ron Edwards, and storygamers in general.  If they get to be the ones who define what the OSR is, they get to define it out of existence.

The problem you and others seem to have is that you don't recognize the power of semantics in the post-Foucaltian world. When all values have been lost and all truth reduced to deconstructed 'relative' states, then whoever gets to establish semantic definitions has enormous power.

Quote from: estar;793834Another 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.

gee, it's almost like if at that time there were two distinct groups, with the ones on the "inside" not considering the other guys to be "legit", huh?

Quote from: EOTB;793905Gate keeping indeed.  For all the breast beating he just displayed after consultant-gate about how certain tactics are vile inherently, he certainly seems willing to use those very same tools.  He's no different than those he's recently castigated, only his agenda.

You're an absurd fucking idiot for this paragraph.

Incidentally, thanks for quoting JimLotFP arguing vehemently against the creation of new OSR rulesets back then, only to have then made a career out of one of the most successful new OSR rule-sets and proven me RIGHT.

Quote from: Kellri;793970For what it's worth, a couple of the ideas in FtA weren't bed. As an expat playing rpgs with non-English speakers with very limited access to physical gaming swag, I thought relying on 6-sided dice was a great idea. The Traveller-style settlement generation was neat as well. Later I wondered why Pundit never expanded on the game.

Um, as a point of fact, FtA! was the only game I ever did a supplement for.  I generally prefer to make my games self-contained, and FtA! largely is, but I still wrote FtA!GN! (the "Forward... to Adventure! Gamemaster's Notebook!"), which is a several-hundred-pages long sourcebook with insane amounts of supplemental material for FtA! play.