Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1076353I gave my definition earlier. Grognards are anti-change, anti growth. They want everything about the game they fixate on to remain absolutely unchanging.

Their love of the game doen't really exist. Because they want to utterly stifle it.

Just curious, do you mean the same 'grognards' who love Stars Without Number, Yoon-Suin, Lion & Dragon, Operation White Box, etc etc?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1076827Just curious, do you mean the same 'grognards' who love Stars Without Number, Yoon-Suin, Lion & Dragon, Operation White Box, etc etc?

I don't regard those as grognards. I'm a fan of the OSR myself. I have no issue with OSR fans,.

Quote from: Shasarak;1076732Could Conan die to 100 serfs with sticks?  He is a literary character so "Could" covers a lot of ground.  If you look at the Hyborian world it looks pretty deadly for everyone else that is not Conan.

The important point is that Conan acts as if he can die to 100 spearmen, so a game emulating the fiction needs the same result, and the most immersive approach is that PC-Conan - a PC as powerful as Conan - can in fact die to 100 spearmen if he fails to act the way Conan acts - not using tactics, not using defensive location, not running away, et al.

Conan cannot die to 100 serfs with sticks if his death would not be dramatically satisfying at that instant in the story. He doesn't die a meaningless death midway in the story. Which then brings us to my favorite topic in game design - risk management in RPGs: what do you put at stake (no pun intended) in a mid-scenario encounter of Conan versus 100 serfs with sticks? My answer is: if he can't die, then you

• need to put something else at risk - which is not quite as negative as death but still important enough for the players to care about,
• need to tie the outcome to the performance of Conan: how long did he take to defeat them? Or: how many times would he have been killed without luck? Or: can he last 10 rounds?
  

By following that logic, you arrive at challenge-driven scenario design, an approach that is more conscious about tailoring the risks and what is at stake for the PCs and the players.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1076831Conan cannot die to 100 serfs with sticks if his death would not be dramatically satisfying at that instant in the story.

Fortunately though, D&D is not for "Making Story".

If Dungeon of the Mad Mage had been independently published by someone who went by the username of "Emirikol the Dude" on OSR forums, it would be praised to the high heavens in those quarters. The fact most OSR fans who love dungeons haven't even looked at it shows how  narrow-minded and tribal the grognard mindset can be.

Quote from: Haffrung;1076844If Dungeon of the Mad Mage had been independently published by someone who went by the username of "Emirikol the Dude" on OSR forums, it would be praised to the high heavens in those quarters. The fact most OSR fans who love dungeons haven't even looked at it shows how  narrow-minded and tribal the grognard mindset can be.

Don't be an ass. Hobbyists gravitate more to material that is relevant to what they us. You don't see fans of Pathfinder, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Dungeon World, The Fantasy Trip all singing the praises of Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

Of course they will sing the praise of somebody who released something like the Mad Mage for the system they use and ignore the versions that written for other systems. Why would you expect anything different?

Quote from: Haffrung;1076844If Dungeon of the Mad Mage had been independently published by someone who went by the username of "Emirikol the Dude" on OSR forums, it would be praised to the high heavens in those quarters. The fact most OSR fans who love dungeons haven't even looked at it shows how  narrow-minded and tribal the grognard mindset can be.

What's this in response to?

Personally I haven't looked at it because I'm just coming off a couple years of Stonehell Dungeon & wanting to do something non-megadungeony right now, hence getting big into Primeval Thule. I think there is a bit of over saturation in the OSR megadungeon market; if I was going to run another one I'd probably take Dwimmermount off the shelf. I am running a 4-weekly Princes of the Apocalypse game, but planning to put more emphasis on the social & wilderness elements, and the side dungeons, rather than clear out the whole elemental temple.

Quote from: estar;1076847Don't be an ass. Hobbyists gravitate more to material that is relevant to what they us. You don't see fans of Pathfinder, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Dungeon World, The Fantasy Trip all singing the praises of Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

Of course they will sing the praise of somebody who released something like the Mad Mage for the system they use and ignore the versions that written for other systems. Why would you expect anything different?

It's dead easy to convert between 5E and D&D-derived OSR games - just as it's easy to convert between different OSR games (which people do all the time). Or do you really think everyone who has read, reviewed, or played Stonehell Dungeon is in an active game of Labyrinth Lord? Heck the DotMM doesn't even include monster stats - the rooms will just say 6 bugbears or a gibbering mouther.

It's disingenuous to pretend an abiding hatred of Official Dungeons and Dragons isn't a common element of online grognardism. On some OSR forums, it's almost a ban-able offence to even mention WotC except to excoriate them.

Quote from: Haffrung;1077059It's disingenuous to pretend an abiding hatred of Official Dungeons and Dragons isn't a common element of online grognardism. On some OSR forums, it's almost a ban-able offence to even mention WotC except to excoriate them.

True but this has certainly eased up a lot on Dragonsfoot since 5e came out. The mods and most of the posters have no issue with 5e. There is a significant minority of haters but plenty of grognards have gone straight from 1e to 5e. I know a guy whose group wrapped up a 37 year 0e-1e campaign to switch to 5e.

I expect K&KA is more hardcore, but it's a 1e-specific forum. Generic OSR forums tend to be mostly fine with 5e.

Quote from: S'mon;1077061True but this has certainly eased up a lot on Dragonsfoot since 5e came out. The mods and most of the posters have no issue with 5e. There is a significant minority of haters but plenty of grognards have gone straight from 1e to 5e. I know a guy whose group wrapped up a 37 year 0e-1e campaign to switch to 5e.

I expect K&KA is more hardcore, but it's a 1e-specific forum. Generic OSR forums tend to be mostly fine with 5e.

There are more than a few K&KA members that say 5E is their 2nd favorite version.  Just like several members of K&KA were instrumental in getting the "Classic" D&D forum set up on DF, because they love B/X or BECMI D&D.

The idea that the only reason K&KA would exclude a game from discussion is because they hate it, makes no sense.  We limit it, because every other "AD&D" website or facebook group in the world is evidence that unless you absolutely exclude later editions, people will ignore what the discussion topic actually is so that they can post whatever their personal experience happens to be.  (Note: this para not intended to be interpreted as a summary of S'mon's post/opinion)

Quote from: EOTB;1077071The idea that the only reason K&KA would exclude a game from discussion is because they hate it, makes no sense.  We limit it, because every other "AD&D" website or facebook group in the world is evidence that unless you absolutely exclude later editions, people will ignore what the discussion topic actually is so that they can post whatever their personal experience happens to be.  (Note: this para not intended to be interpreted as a summary of S'mon's post/opinion)

No problem - sure, I wasn't criticising K&KA for being 1e-specific. Whereas because 5e D&D has a lot of OSR DNA, and Dragonsfoot is an OSR/continuity-OS site, 5e has a rather ambiguous place there. I run my 5e online games on DF text chat with the full support of the mods, but even I get taken aback by ENW-style requests on 5e min-max char-opping. Different people have different comfort thresholds.

Quote from: S'mon;1077096Whereas because 5e D&D has a lot of OSR DNA

You're welcome.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1076376The OGL was a disaster because it didn't have an end date, causing WotC to lose control of its own IP.

The D20 license, on the other hand, was a far smarter tool because it didn't allow for the creation of a competing company, but achieve the goal of outsourcing splats/adventures to 3PP (like DM's Guild does now).

Seriously WTF. How did WotC's lawyers not see that the OGL would lead to direct competitors eating their lunch?

WOTC has notoriously bad marketing and their ability to screw up a good idea was why Hasbro put them on a very tight leash as 4e turned into a total disaster. This has been a problem for WOTC for a long time. They'd rather throw unsold product into a landfill or incinerator than sell it. This is how SFR was created. They rescued Dragon Dice from being dumped in a landfill and are still selling and even making the dice nearly 20 years later. This is the WOTC that set a sales deadline for Netrunner, then overproduced it, then when it sold far better than expected they declared it a failure because there was still product left, and chucked it into an incinerator.

I suspect that part of the problem with the OGL was that it worked too well. And that they underestimated the boom in indie publishers. But more importantly. They never foresaw that this would come back to bite them when they abandoned 3e to try and cut this off. A problem magnified by... marketing... who went out of their way with 4e to insult players of prior editions.

Think of it akin to the Whole Marvel vs Image thing that happened back in the 90s. Marvel treated their artists and writers poorly and despite there being a long history of this happening to publishers, they did not foresee Image being formed and competing as it did. Or Marvel's current SJW takeover that may well have killed the company. Readers are looking elsewhere. and DC is about to feel that as well as they progressively screw up with reboot number god knows what.

Don't treat your workers like dirt. Don't treat your customers like dirt. Don't treat your potential customers like dirt.

Back to Story and RPG and all that jazz as it relates to this.

Part of the reason there is ire directed at Storygamers is that factions within have in the past been a fairly nasty lot. Ron and some of the worst of the Forge for a time. This is not how you attract people. Don't treat your potential customers like dirt.

Quote from: Haffrung;1076385Novels that are regarded as trash even by the low standards of genre fiction. I don't read garbage Dragonlance novels. So why would I strive to make by RPG campaigns play out like a vague, malformed, simulacrum of them?

In this you are wrong on so many many points.

1: Few regard these novels as bad. In fact they sell fairly damn well and a few have hit best seller marks. Think Dragonlance or one of the Drizzt books?

2: If you have not read the original DL books then you have no place to call them garbage. They were actually pretty well written. The originals and the Time of the Twins set. After that its a YMMV thing.  The Alias trilogy was pretty good too. As was the Justicar series. Still haven't read the original Icewind Dale nooks so cant say how good or bad they are.

3: On the last point you are more or less correct. Playing in the Dragonlance setting is very different from trying to re-enact the novels. Which the modules as far as I know did not really try to do. And the RPG definitly did not try to do. And I believe for most any endeavor to convert a book to a RPG, the idea is to play in the setting.