Quote from: Justin Alexander;583898Oh no! The lying troll Tu Quoque is wandering the wilds of RPGSite! Whatever shall we do?

Let's take a moment to review your pertinent posts:





Do you have any explanation yet for your belief that August 20th happens before August 10th, you lying sack of shit?

So you fulfilled all promises to, your backers them?

I'm done with you. Deflect. Profane.

The fact that while typing I got a date wrong, you know have a typo. Should be obvious to anyone. So a typo, which I did not correct makes me a piece of shit? Totally invalidated my argument? Ok then.

How does it feel to be a scam artist? I mean you use some shady crowd funding site to fund your fantasy heart breaker cut and paste 3e clone. Still a year later no one has the product they gave you money for. Why? Artists flake out, or something. Your rehashing of 3e stalls ecause of two pieces of art? A decent person would refund te money, or just release the product without the art.

Ok. My typo bad.

Your scam good?

You are no better then Jim .

IRWS

The use of 'legendary' does make Tavis complicit in fooling so many backers, assuming Tavis is responsible for the air-horn hyperbole on the kickstarter page which reads to those in the know like a clowning personal ad:- Hunk with legendary musculature seeks suckers to do his bidding.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;583877When I think "legendary dungeon" I think:

• EGG's Castle Greyhawk Dungeons
• Arneson's Blackmoor Dungeons
• RJK's El Raja Key
  
• M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel Underworld

Okay. I need to sit down.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;583877When I think "legendary dungeon" I think:

• EGG's Castle Greyhawk Dungeons
• Arneson's Blackmoor Dungeons
• RJK's El Raja Key
• M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel Underworld

That is, huge, sprawling megadungeons that have existed since the dawn of the hobby, hosted many players, and are storied, but remain mostly unpublished and sparsely documented.

These are the holy grails, to be sure. Modern exemplars are less significant, but they're also more accessible. One of the things I hoped to get out of volunteering for the Gygax Memorial Fund was some insight into what it would take to get the original Castle Greyhawk levels published. I don't see any likely scenario in which that'd happen, but I do think that it'd be not-impossible to see some of the Blackmoor dungeon material from the "Bluemoor" notebook released either as a commercial product or an archive. Among my personal goals with Dwimmermount was to get some experience with the work that'd go into such a project, the possible market for it, and the different ways it could be presented. I believe Allan Grohe is doing all that can be done to pursue an archival release for El Raja Key, and the Tékumel Foundation makes the Jakallan Underworld probably the best bet out of any of the ones on this list to see the light of day.

Quote from: EOTB;583885the difference between the pre-2008 OSR and the later, mostly separate blogosphere OSR and, why many in the latter see themselves as its center of gravity.  Their focus, and their world, are those who know less about the old ways then the bloggers and who like the bounded, one-way, bite-sized nuggets of basic concept exploration the bloggers provide.  Readers provide an audience (and probably a market) as opposed to the fraternity many message boards feel like; instead other "famous" bloggers provide that fraternal function.  It also explains why you rarely see them on any of the long-established message boards in a non-commercial capacity just shooting the shit.

As a post-2008 guy, I see Finarvyn's OD&D message board as central both as a venue for fraternity and an organizing point for projects like Fight On!

Quote from: Melan;583920If we take neo-old school dungeons (that is, not Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Jakkalá or El Raja Key), where does this put Rappan Athuk (2001), which goes back to Bill Webb's 1970s Wilderlands campaign, and has had rather significant exposure since its publication?

Necromancer/Frog God certainly deserve big blasts on my airhorn. The Black Monastery is also a notable example of bringing old material into print, although I haven't read it. I'd also cite Eric Mona and the Paizo crew as among the ogres whose shoulders the OSR is standing on; I don't doubt that the backstage story of publishing Maure Castle would take many beers to tell.

Quote from: samovar;583874Ouch. The "discovering" part is great. I bought the PHB 30 years ago and don't need it "explained" to me, thanks.

Then you are good to go.

On more serious note most of the "explaining" is oriented to OD&D. While  that by the book AD&D combat is pretty impenetrable (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FE&fileid=263&watchfile=0), OD&D is even tougher. The OD&D referee has to decide which of the various interpretations he going to use for his campaign as there is no one way to run OD&D by the book.

Quote from: estar;583970Then you are good to go.

Thanks, Rob. And to think when Castles & Crusades came out my crowd blew it off as a parody and not the shape of things to come.

Quote from: Tavis;583850When I was a player in the Dwimmermount PbP game at the OD&D boards in '09 it already seemed like a legendary thing to me, and when I described the dungeon as long-awaited I was speaking for myself. That seems to have been true for hundreds of other backers, although motivations for pledging to the KS evidently vary.

I was a player in that game as well. (http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=jamesm) and what struck me was how much backstory history seemed to be infused in the place. It felt old in-game, old on multiple levels. That the primary reason I backed the Kickstarter so I can read the rest of it for enjoyment, use, and inspiration.

If James successfully gets this into the final product I think Dwimmermount will be well worth the wait.

It doesn't bother me that the rest wasn't formally written because from reading James Blog and having played it obvious me that he has it down in his head. That from his actual play reports much of that was exposed to his players. So I am personally confident he was what he needs to detail the lower levels effectively.

I do think the original deadlines were overly optimistic. I know from writing the Majestic Wilderlands supplement that it take fair amount of time to get what in your head into a form usable and understandable.  That it is better to set a pessimistic  deadline from onset than a optimistic deadline.

Quote from: samovar;583973Thanks, Rob. And to think when Castles & Crusades came out my crowd blew it off as a parody and not the shape of things to come.

I guess I will need some context about your gaming background to understand where you are coming from.

My general answer to statement like yours is that everything in the OSR is a consequence of the d20 SRD released under the Open Game License. Note I am NOT saying every OSR product is under the Open Game License.

Why the OGL is important is that the barrier of entry to producing rulesets and product for older edition D&D is non-existent. This means that the OSR is defined by those who do the work. That the only solution to "fixing" it, other than not buy or read anything, it for you to do your own product to show the rest of us how we are doing it wrong.

Quote from: Tavis;583850It'd make sense if baseball was only three years old, right? On the OSR timeline Dwimmermount is ancient, and less of it had been revealed than other early talked-about dungeons like Under Xylarthen's Tower or Mines of Khunmar.

The hype on the Kickstarter page is largely mine; folks at K&K Alehouse correctly perceived that this would be very uncharacteristic for a Canadian, or even someone who's lived over there. By American standards I thought I was being relatively subdued, and it may or may not be sufficient justification that it's all stuff I believe.

Reading Grognardia was one of my main delivery routes for the old-school Kool-Aid (and I think the only one I didn't discover from hanging out at theRPGSite at the time I was a 4E playtester and this was the only place people were saying the things I knew to be true; if memory serves I got introduced to Jeff Rients' blog and Philotomy's musings by their posts here). When I was a player in the Dwimmermount PbP game at the OD&D boards in '09 it already seemed like a legendary thing to me, and when I described the dungeon as long-awaited I was speaking for myself. That seems to have been true for hundreds of other backers, although motivations for pledging to the KS evidently vary.

OK That actually makes some amount of sense to me. I was one of the people on this K&K thread you are talking about who was criticizing the approach to the marketing of Dwimmermount.

I think others have shown why this was a mistake: because it tried to elevate something like Dwimmermount, which might have merit in and of itself, to "legendary" status in the way Greyhawk, Blackmoor et al are legendary for those who like old school games but aren't checking out the OSR blogs and aren't part of that "scene", so to speak.

So if this made sense to you when you wrote that from your perspective (and I acknowledge that, I can understand where you're coming from on this), I think this was a mistake from the perspective of people who don't drink the OSR blog kool aid as you called it, and I also believe it had a part in setting expectations as to the returns of the product on the parts of the backers, not all of whom I'd wager are religiously following the OSR blogs, and set the stage for the outrage later on.

Thank you for joining the conversation in any case. It is enlightening.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;583877

• EGG's Castle Greyhawk Dungeons
• Arneson's Blackmoor Dungeons
• RJK's El Raja Key
• M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel Underworld

The question I have is what do the original notes for all these look like? Just how developed are they?

Based on the few snippets and photos and the First Fantasy Campaign for Blackmoor , I would have to say not very, aside from a few specific areas Bottle City, the Living Room, Isle of the Ape, etc.

Quote from: estar;583975I do think the original deadlines were overly optimistic. I know from writing the Majestic Wilderlands supplement that it take fair amount of time to get what in your head into a form usable and understandable.  That it is better to set a pessimistic  deadline from onset than a optimistic deadline.

This is so true. Expectations are a fickle and fragile thing. It is much better to promise less and deliver more than the opposite. Treat publication dates like engineer Scotty treats repair estimates.


Scotty: "Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want."
Geordi: "Yeah, well, I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."
Scotty: "How long will it really take?"
Geordi: "An hour."

Scotty: "You didn't tell him now long it would really take, did you?"
Geordi: "Of course I did."
Scotty: "Laddie, you got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!"

Quote from: estar;583978Why the OGL is important is that the barrier of entry to producing rulesets and product for older edition D&D is non-existent.

I think a key word is missing here: "commercial" or "for-profit" rulesets and product.

Gamers have been "producing" rulesets and product for ages without a hitch. You know this better than most people. Your Wilderlands campaign was non-commercial for years, back when you had one of the few sites to even use the word "Ghinor."

Heck, even old Dragonsfoot was hosting rulesets and product (I love this turn of phrase) for older edition D&D over a decade ago. Nobody had any ambitions to cash a check and no OGL was required.

I'm not against working game designers, by the way. I just continue to fail to see the point of the clones.

Quote from: estar;583978This means that the OSR is defined by those who do the work. That the only solution to "fixing" it, other than not buy or read anything, it for you to do your own product to show the rest of us how we are doing it wrong.

Hit a nerve? Who said anything about fixing anything I'm apparently not part of and have no desire to be?

Quote from: estar;583984The question I have is what do the original notes for all these look like? Just how developed are they?

That consideration comes after the age and play of the dungeon itself. If you call your dungeon "The Legendary XXX" in an 100% serious, no sarcasm ad, this implies that the dungeon has seen some extensive play over decades and/or has been talked about for years and years to the point its reputation is ubiquitous in the hobby. To take another example brought up earlier, Rappan Athuk can make a claim to the former, since it's Bill Webb's dungeon from the 70s and has seen a lot of play, plus now, it can make a claim at the latter too, since it's seen 2 different incarnations (soon three) that were received by all accounts to great acclaim by the hobby.

Now Tavis framed this by talking about the "OSR hobby" and talked about the appropriation of the "legendary" thing in relation to the time the "OSR hobby" has been in existence, which does make some sense, but to some old school gamers it's just going to sound wrong because they're not in those circles or don't identify with the existence of an "OSR hobby" dissociated from the TSR and wider RPG hobby at all. I don't think this should come as a suprise, do you?

PS: I'm putting "OSR hobby" between quotation marks because it's something of a fascinating notion to me that I don't really agree with, or can't relate to, this notion that there is a hobby that is apart from the wider RPG hobby that's the "OSR hobby". That honestly smacks of groupthink to me and I wonder if the way Dwimmermount unfolded can be traced back to the flaws inherent to the OSR blogosphere in terms of confirmation bias (deleting comments, buddies commenting on each other's posts all the time, etc).

Quote from: samovar;583987I think a key word is missing here: "commercial" or "for-profit" rulesets and product.

Gamers have been "producing" rulesets and product for ages without a hitch. You know this better than most people. Your Wilderlands campaign was non-commercial for years, back when you had one of the few sites to even use the word "Ghinor."

Heck, even old Dragonsfoot was hosting rulesets and product (I love this turn of phrase) for older edition D&D over a decade ago. Nobody had any ambitions to cash a check and no OGL was required.

I'm not against working game designers, by the way. I just continue to fail to see the point of the clones.

You may be misinformed about the clones. The original purpose of the clones was to provide an in-print ruleset to support the production of supplemental material for classic edition gaming.

The clones that mimic TSR editions most directly; OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry whitebox, and Labyrinth Lord have always been and are still absolutely free in electronic format. Only if you want a print copy in your hands do you have to pay a dime for these.

What this does is support original supplement material such as adventure modules, to be created and sold to both players of the clone systems AND to players of the original rulesets they were based on.

Really the whole idea behind OSRIC was to be able to commercially produce brand new AD&D modules.

I for one am very happy that material 100% compatible for various old TSR games is available in the market again.

A bit later came the not-exactly clones of old school systems that were created as a for-profit enterprise (for the rules themselves) .

Quote from: Exploderwizard;583991You may be misinformed about the clones. The original purpose of the clones was to provide an in-print ruleset to support the production of supplemental material for classic edition gaming.

I thought that was what I was talking about, but in any event it's a tangent. If there's a thing called an "OSR hobby," I guess it's very different from playing "old school" D&D. That's okay. They evidently have their own pantheon of legendary classics. I wasn't even a fan of Rappan Athuk so am not the target audience here anyway.