Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 10, 2023, 02:39:07 PM
Yeah, but this is a strange one. FMC shows a real love for the source material, there are little details only the nerdiest of OSR geeks really get (Balor being crossed out, the choices of what to edit out and what to include), but at the same time a real hatred for the source material and those who made it, and especially for those who still play it.

  Given the way many such feel about Lovecraft--and about Tolkien if they've ever gone beyond the books (or movies) to learn about the man himself--this isn't too much of a surprise.

  Even I'm guilty of it--I've loved Star Wars (pre-Disney) and Star Trek (20th century) despite Lucas and Roddenberry being largely misguided in their ideas.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 10, 2023, 03:01:13 PM

  Even I'm guilty of it--I've loved Star Wars (pre-Disney) and Star Trek (20th century) despite Lucas and Roddenberry being largely misguided in their ideas.

That is an interesting point. I hadn't thought about how much I like Star Trek (TOS and TNG) and despise the philosophy of those who made it. At the time I didn't realise how much of it was space communism though, my eyes weren't as opened back in the 80's/90's.

Just another mentally ill person (leftist).  They are a dime a gross.

Apart from all the general eye rolling I'd like to point out something a bit spooky in our hobby. I don't think anybody is really that shocked to see this anymore. I think this hobby has been ESPECIALLY susceptible to this mind virus. I noticed it turning toxic in TTRPG forums before I saw it taking over anything else. Sure, parts of it had always been there, but some of my hobbies (e.g. pinball) have been more immune than others, and sadly RPGs is the worst case.

Quote from: Trond on October 10, 2023, 04:40:16 PM
Apart from all the general eye rolling I'd like to point out something a bit spooky in our hobby. I don't think anybody is really that shocked to see this anymore. I think this hobby has been ESPECIALLY susceptible to this mind virus. I noticed it turning toxic in TTRPG forums before I saw it taking over anything else. Sure, parts of it had always been there, but some of my hobbies (e.g. pinball) have been more immune than others, and sadly RPGs is the worst case.

  I suspect it has a lot to do with two things:

  1. Strong overlap with sci-fi fandom, which has been poisonous from ancient days. I recommend J.D. Cowan's The Last Fanatics, despite the Jeffro Johnson foreword.

  2. The Satanic Panic drove a wedge between the hobby and the Church, which weakened the former's defenses against the rise of a heretical religion.

Quote from: Scooter on October 10, 2023, 03:49:24 PM
Just another mentally ill person (leftist).  They are a dime a gross.

Yes, but few of them write a retro-clone that captures something about the original dnd so well.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 10, 2023, 04:48:46 PM

Quote from: Trond on October 10, 2023, 04:40:16 PM
Apart from all the general eye rolling I'd like to point out something a bit spooky in our hobby. I don't think anybody is really that shocked to see this anymore. I think this hobby has been ESPECIALLY susceptible to this mind virus. I noticed it turning toxic in TTRPG forums before I saw it taking over anything else. Sure, parts of it had always been there, but some of my hobbies (e.g. pinball) have been more immune than others, and sadly RPGs is the worst case.

  I suspect it has a lot to do with two things:

  1. Strong overlap with sci-fi fandom, which has been poisonous from ancient days. I recommend J.D. Cowan's The Last Fanatics, despite the Jeffro Johnson foreword.

  2. The Satanic Panic drove a wedge between the hobby and the Church, which weakened the former's defenses against the rise of a heretical religion.

Nah. The "satanic panic" wasn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. I lived through it. It was a fart in a whirlwind. Plenty of Christians played (and still play) D&D. At most it was free publicity for TSR.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 10, 2023, 05:05:08 PM
Nah. The "satanic panic" wasn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. I lived through it. It was a fart in a whirlwind. Plenty of Christians played (and still play) D&D. At most it was free publicity for TSR.

   You may very well be right. I think my perspective is skewed by being too online, and getting online in late 1994/early 1995, when dialogue on rec.games.frp.misc was dominated by one poster who argued that Christians could not be gamers and had to apostasize because of "Church persecution of gamers." Between that and the later rise of Hard Progressivism in places like TBP and ENWorld, I may overestimate the level of Christophobia in the hobby. Although I don't think the acquisition of D&D by self-consciously progressive and bohemian WotC helped matters ...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 10, 2023, 04:48:46 PM

Quote from: Trond on October 10, 2023, 04:40:16 PM
Apart from all the general eye rolling I'd like to point out something a bit spooky in our hobby. I don't think anybody is really that shocked to see this anymore. I think this hobby has been ESPECIALLY susceptible to this mind virus. I noticed it turning toxic in TTRPG forums before I saw it taking over anything else. Sure, parts of it had always been there, but some of my hobbies (e.g. pinball) have been more immune than others, and sadly RPGs is the worst case.

  I suspect it has a lot to do with two things:

  1. Strong overlap with sci-fi fandom, which has been poisonous from ancient days. I recommend J.D. Cowan's The Last Fanatics, despite the Jeffro Johnson foreword.

  2. The Satanic Panic drove a wedge between the hobby and the Church, which weakened the former's defenses against the rise of a heretical religion.

My impression of the problems with sci-fi was that it was one of the few genres of literature that was still dominated by men, hence it was easily branded as "toxic". Did it go deeper than that?

Quote from: Trond on October 10, 2023, 05:26:45 PM
My impression of the problems with sci-fi was that it was one of the few genres of literature that was still dominated by men, hence it was easily branded as "toxic". Did it go deeper than that?

  There's been a strain in sci-fi from the 30s onward, coming to dominate in the post-War period, that wanted it to be Serious Fiction About Important Issues--usually with a decided leftward tilt on those issues.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 10, 2023, 06:11:22 AM
FMC is a well done minimalist retro-clone of the original 1974 DnD. It is succinct and cleanly laid out. The art feels exactly like Greg Bell's but just a little bit better. The way it handles race + class is kind of clever as it doesn't clearly separate them like AD&D does, yet it doesn't smush them together the way Basic does. It puts the races on their own page explaining their roles. So you kind of get the best of both.

Spell descriptions are brief, almost curt, with dashes of wry humor. For example:

QuoteDetect Magic Turns ?, Range ?
Detects any enchantment laid on a person, place or thing. It has limited range and
duration, but I won't tell you either of those things.

Funny because the original doesn't tell you the duration or range either. Haha, get it?

Even the name "Fantastic Medieval Campaigns" is a clever way to steal from the subtitle of the original. I wish I'd thought of that.

The monster descriptions are nice and brief, the Appendices are particularly well done. Including one of the best summaries of Chainmail mass combat I've seen. And it adds something more OSR products should: excellent Glossary and Index in the back.

So when you get to the end of it you think this is a pretty good, if derivative. retro-clone. Then the author sticks her middle finger right in your face. The last 2 pages are a manifesto where she goes off at how fascist, racist, misogynistic OD&D and its original creators are. She drops a big stinking turd right in the middle of the OSR fandom, knowing exactly what she is doing. Being an attention seeking whore.

Here is her rant:


Digital copies of FMC are free here. https://traversefantasy.itch.io/fmc

Greetings!

Sounds like a decent game, Thor's Nads.

Too bad it is produced by a moron Leftist whore that needs to bathe in NAPALM.

Her fucking book can go into the fires with her and all of them. These people are like diseased, cancerous rats. I am so sick of seeing them and hearing them. Maybe the general population will wake the fuck up, and really start to reject this scum. People like her corrupt, ruin, and destroy everything they become involved with.

The actual mechanical or stylistic merits of the book are entirely washed away with her Marxist/Feminist propaganda lecture at the end. That lecture is the main point. The book is a vehicle, for people to read and she is hoping, obviously--to be deeply influenced by her concluding lecture. More gullible people will eagerly believe her whole framing laid out in her lecture there, sadly.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 10, 2023, 06:23:03 AM
Now, I shouldn't be giving her what she wants: attention. My motivation is two-fold. One, it really is a well done retro-clone. I'm impressed. But second, and more importantly, this is a shot across the bow. They are coming after the OSR with both barrels and they want us dead, dead, dead. They want to destroy the OSR the way Anita Sarkesian tried to destroy video gaming, the way Heather Antos and her coterie of villains destroyed comics, the way feminazis have destroyed Star Wars and are destroying Marvel. These people march into institutions and seek to ruin them. They are communists, behave like communists, and use communist tactics. They've taken Hollywood long ago, taken Higher Education so they can train little marxists to take Public Education, they've long taken journalism in this country. They are taking the military, and every other thing they can get their grubbies on.

They couldn't do it with class warfare like they've done in every other hellhole they've conquered, but it didn't work in America. So they found another route: Identity Politics. And it has worked well for them. The Left, even those few who did love America, don't even know they are becoming - have become marxist communists. We see their rainbow flag planted in every territory they have conquered.

No shit. You guys are like pets bringing dead animals home as if to impress the owner. The game is trash. The author is trash.

Leave. Trash. Outside.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 10, 2023, 05:05:08 PM
Nah. The "satanic panic" wasn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. I lived through it. It was a fart in a whirlwind. Plenty of Christians played (and still play) D&D. At most it was free publicity for TSR.

Our D&D club met and played in a church basement. 
I think the satanic panic was localized.

Quote from: Theory of Games on October 10, 2023, 07:07:12 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 10, 2023, 06:23:03 AM
Now, I shouldn't be giving her what she wants: attention. My motivation is two-fold. One, it really is a well done retro-clone. I'm impressed. But second, and more importantly, this is a shot across the bow. They are coming after the OSR with both barrels and they want us dead, dead, dead. They want to destroy the OSR the way Anita Sarkesian tried to destroy video gaming, the way Heather Antos and her coterie of villains destroyed comics, the way feminazis have destroyed Star Wars and are destroying Marvel. These people march into institutions and seek to ruin them. They are communists, behave like communists, and use communist tactics. They've taken Hollywood long ago, taken Higher Education so they can train little marxists to take Public Education, they've long taken journalism in this country. They are taking the military, and every other thing they can get their grubbies on.

They couldn't do it with class warfare like they've done in every other hellhole they've conquered, but it didn't work in America. So they found another route: Identity Politics. And it has worked well for them. The Left, even those few who did love America, don't even know they are becoming - have become marxist communists. We see their rainbow flag planted in every territory they have conquered.

No shit. You guys are like pets bringing dead animals home as if to impress the owner. The game is trash. The author is trash.

Leave. Trash. Outside.

Let me rephrase your statement: Keep. Trash. Outside.

My point was to gatekeep these people out of our business. I may have been too subtle with the subtext.