Quote from: estar;955496This is not accurate. It more accurate to say that many of those who prompt, published, or play a classic edition of D&D focuses on OD&D. But AD&D has it adherents as well. If I had to guess which classic edition is the most popular I would peg Moldavy/Cook B/X as the one with the most variants, clones, and near clones. B/X D&D seems to be the sweet spot for many who label themselves as part of the OSR.
 

Bolded part is where we are in total agreement. Now I know of course that many people love AD&D1e, me inlcuded. But the impetus at least for Calithena, and the opening of the OSRIC/Hackmaster/C&C-Old Boys-"front" was the rediscovery of OD&D by the younger generations. Also the reason for avoiding DF at some point and opening up the odd74-boards.

It provided a clean slate, if only in the Bloggerverse, were everybody who had not followed DF or KnK etc. the last years could hang his hat.
A fresh start, a fresh look at D&D. And as you say, B/X is the baseline were everybody can meet. Because B/X-fandom had an unbroken line with people who never stopped playing, the BECMI people just being cousins and the 1e and even most 2e people had started with Moldvay or Mentzer.

Good pointer to the opening of the OSR storefront. I cannot fully recall the first "commercial" DIY success that led to so many jumping on the bandwagon. Was it Fight On! with its sales numbers or LotfP who showed some bucks could be earned? I am fully aware that Goodman Games and Necromancer made already nice sales with their offerings years before that. But there was a certain point at which the DIY model of the Forge was appropriated by some OSR folks, when would you say was that and who was the first breakout hit?
Now I know Goodman and Necromancer are also Mom & Pop enterprises, but the one-guy-in-a-basement publishers, that's what I am talking about.

QuoteYou might even say an "edit" rather than a re-write. Much of the text is taken verbatim from the original D&D books, and Holmes even said "I went through the original three rule books and the first two supplements, Blackmoor and Greyhawk, of which Greyhawk is the greatest help. Trying to use the original words of the two game creators as much as possible, I edited a slim (48 page) handbook for beginners in role playing, published by TSR in 1977 as Dungeons and Dragons and usually marketed as 'the basic set.'” Holmes is firmly in the original D&D family.

I am not entirely convinced. Holmes is already following the Gygaxian road towards AD&D. As is the Greyhawk supplement.

It might be splitting hairs, but the whole compatibility-angle of campaigns among each other, and many Gary-isms from Greyhawk, they seem to be all there. Ultimately Holmes is of course OD&D, I am just stressing the point that EGG had a vision for D&D that was different from many others wo read the 74 edition. And Holmes is a step towards that vision of compatible campaigns.

Does that make sense to you what I want to convey here?

Quote from: estar;955499It took the addition of the Greyhawk supplement turn OD&D into the form that most people recognized as classic D&D. Of all the classic editions Moldavy/Cook B/X D&D is the most straightforward presentation it only major quirk is race as class. B/X D&D is basically a cleaned up and re-edited version of OD&D + Supplements.

I think OD&D + Supplements is more like AD&D than like B/X. But I suppose it's subjective.

QuoteAside from race as class vs. pick class and then race, choice, most retro-clones then to use the B/X ur D&D as a starting point.

I'm not really tuned into the OSR and the varieties of clones, these days. I just remember a *lot* of buzz around OD&D, back in the earlier period (a memory which could also be colored by my involvement). It's quite possible that B/X became the favored basis for clones; you're probably better informed than I am on that.

QuoteMatt Finch took OD&D and the supplement condensed and re-edited them into a compact one book set of rules. Because it was also 100% open content as well, many used that as a template for their own take on classic D&D.

Yeah, I was directly (although minimally) involved in that. We're both in Houston, and at the time Matt and I were part of the same gaming group, trading off as referee for our respective OD&D games. He encouraged me to develop my house rules into a S&W variant (this was before S&W was out), and asked me about developing White Box, but I'm too lazy (although I did offer feedback on the White Box manuscript as it was being developed). When it comes down to it, I'm more into playing than publishing.

Quote from: Settembrini;955504I am not entirely convinced. Holmes is already following the Gygaxian road towards AD&D. As is the Greyhawk supplement.

It might be splitting hairs, but the whole compatibility-angle of campaigns among each other, and many Gary-isms from Greyhawk, they seem to be all there. Ultimately Holmes is of course OD&D, I am just stressing the point that EGG had a vision for D&D that was different from many others wo read the 74 edition. And Holmes is a step towards that vision of compatible campaigns.

Does that make sense to you what I want to convey here?

Sure, I think we're in agreement. All I'm saying the is that Holmes rules, themselves, are definitely OD&D. But there is certainly a "Gygaxian D&D" tone and movement towards AD&D.

FWIW, I used to draw a more decisive line between OD&D and AD&D, but I've come to see that line as increasingly blurred and artificial. It's there, but it's kinda fuzzy (especially if considering OD&D + Supplements, rather than just the OD&D LBBs).

Well, some people (in the OSR) have seen that line as hard one, and once they decided it was a hard line, they made it one.
And you sir, provided some of the fundamentalist essays, I'd say;-)

Thief class being stupid and d6 omnibus weapon damage are two of the elements some people made hard stances on.

Quote from: Settembrini;955502Bolded part is where we are in total agreement. Now I know of course that many people love AD&D1e, me inlcuded. But the impetus at least for Calithena, and the opening of the OSRIC/Hackmaster/C&C-Old Boys-"front" was the rediscovery of OD&D by the younger generations. Also the reason for avoiding DF at some point and opening up the odd74-boards.

Out all of the classic D&D editions OD&D was the one had the biggest hurdle to overcome. The bloggers and forum poster were of a big help with a growing number of actual play account demonstrating various technique to use the original rules. While a classic OD&D, Gygax wrote it for the existing community of wargame in mind. So if you don't know or share that community assumption it can be a head scratchier especially compared to later RPG.

If anything one of the most valuable things that the OSR has done is bring all that to light to allow people to learn and develop their own take.

Quote from: Settembrini;955502A fresh start, a fresh look at D&D. And as you say, B/X is the baseline were everybody can meet. Because B/X-fandom had an unbroken line with people who never stopped playing, the BECMI people just being cousins and the 1e and even most 2e people had started with Moldvay or Mentzer.

While that is important what key to the OSR being what it is is the open game license, digital publishing, and print on demand. All three combine to allow folks down to the one man outfit, like me, to realize their project and more importantly get it to a wider audience in a form (books, etc) that is the same as the industry side of RPGs.

All the quirks, ifs, and buts of the OSR explained by the ease of publishing and use of open content mixed in with the temperments of the individuals involved.

For example with D&D 5e, Mike Mearls and the rest of the then Wizard team had to think carefully about how they are going to present the project, compromise on certain aspects to satisfy various interests within Wizards and Hasbro. While the financials of Wizards allows products to spread far and wide with a high production value, ultimately they are a result of a team vision rather than a individual author's vision.

With the OSR, open content and ease of publishing meant that the author's vision of classic D&D could be presented unvarnished. Some bad, most meh, and some very very good. The problem of the OSR has been "how do I get my stuff out there." Which is why OSRIC, Basic Fantasy and other early retro-clones, adventures, supplements, and blogs are so important. Each release served as a how-to template for the next guy to realize his idea. At some point a critical mass was reached and the information became readily available. My guess it around the time the OSR Storefront appeared on Lulu. Note I am NOT saying the OSR Storefront was THE critical lynchpin. It was important but the blogs and forums were important as well.

I wrote about this on my blog including this piot.
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-short-history-of-old-school.html

And thanks to guys like Guy Fullerton and stuff like the Internet archives we don' t have guess with memories. We look this stuff and see what was released and when.

Hoard and Hordes

Quote from: Settembrini;955502Good pointer to the opening of the OSR storefront. I cannot fully recall the first "commercial" DIY success that led to so many jumping on the bandwagon. Was it Fight On! with its sales numbers or LotfP who showed some bucks could be earned?

It was numerous people blogging and posting that provided the tipping. Raggi is important as being on one of the first to make it his actual job instead of something that grew over time. Fight On! was important for providing a community center to a large section of the OSR.

Quote from: Settembrini;955502I am fully aware that Goodman Games and Necromancer made already nice sales with their offerings years before that. But there was a certain point at which the DIY model of the Forge was appropriated by some OSR folks, when would you say was that and who was the first breakout hit? Now I know Goodman and Necromancer are also Mom & Pop enterprises, but the one-guy-in-a-basement publishers, that's what I am talking about.

Matt Finch and Swords & Wizardry and Dan Proctor and Labyrinth Lord. Of the two Dan Proctor is the first to leverage his success into a actual publishing company. Matt Finch was and still more of an author while Dan is more business oriented.

OSRIC was always a community effort. But Jon Hershberger and Black Blades with the Knights and Knaves crew to get OSRIC in print. Also Jon is a stand up guy who has helped me and other OSR author with getting their books to the conventions.

After Matt and Dan, the pattern has been a bunch of decent releases, with one or two standouts every year resulting in major sales for those authors and a corresponding audience. For example Raggi, ZakS, Kevin Crawford, Dyson and his maps, etc, etc.

Again Ease of Publishing, a love of Classic D&D, and Open Content are what make the OSR the OSR.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;955510FWIW, I used to draw a more decisive line between OD&D and AD&D, but I've come to see that line as increasingly blurred and artificial. It's there, but it's kinda fuzzy (especially if considering OD&D + Supplements, rather than just the OD&D LBBs).

For my part over the recent years I am come to realize the benefits of evolution through actual play versus design by fiat. After reading Playing at the World, Hawk and Moor, the number anecdotes by the people involved, this is the realization I come too. What work best for RPGs are those mechanics that been shown to be useful in multiple sessions over multiple campaigns. Which is why I find myself enjoying OD&D more than AD&D. Of course there are some element of OD&D are clunky and poorly tested and there are some part of AD&D that were a result of actual play and continue to well time and time again. So it isn't totally a black and white line.

Another example that I am working on a update of the Majestic Wilderlands to reflect what I did since 2009. One thing I found that the Matt Finich's treasure tables in Swords & Wizardry are way too stingy for how I run my campaigns. The OD&D table likewise have issues that don't reflect how I like to give out treasure. Something I tested by coding both up in Inspiration Pad Pro and generating thousands of results.

So I created my own take and developing it through successive version by using Inspiration Pad Pro until I got results that reflected what I would have done from scratch. I will incorporate that into the new book but I will also explain the process so people can do it for themselves.

Quote from: Settembrini;955512Well, some people (in the OSR) have seen that line as hard one, and once they decided it was a hard line, they made it one.
And you sir, provided some of the fundamentalist essays, I'd say;-)

I've always presented stuff I wrote as my opinion, or stuff I think is cool/interesting/different/whatever. I'm not fundamentalist about it, though. It's a game. Can't speak for anyone who took anything I wrote as dogma.

QuoteThief class being stupid and d6 omnibus weapon damage are two of the elements some people made hard stances on.

I'm still not a big fan of the Thief as a class (although I did write up an alternative "white box style" Thief, at one point), but I'm not so much against it that I would never allow the class. There aren't any Thief classed PCs in my original D&D game, but there are in my AD&D game. (And there are "thief-like" PCs in my original D&D game -- it's just not their character class.)

And I still like using d6 as the basic die for hit dice and weapons in my original D&D game. But again, I don't think it's *that* critical (and don't use it in my AD&D game, obviously). It's just a preference. I like the symmetry of it, and the way it makes power levels easy to reason about.

Basically, I use my original D&D game to "do my own thing" with the game, while trying to keep it feeling like D&D. My AD&D game is a more traditional thing. But there's a lot of AD&D in my OD&D, and a lot of OD&D in my AD&D -- not so much in the precise rules, but in the rulings and the way I approach running the game.  It's probably more true for AD&D: you could say my experience with OD&D informs the way I run AD&D, even if the rules are a bit different. Hard to explain.

Quote from: Settembrini;952168Before that, proper OD&D was basically only cared for by collectors (at the Acaeum, frex).

Well, and those of us puttering around in obscurity playing the game the way we'd always played.  But I'm not any part of any old school 'Renaissance,' I'm just doing what I've always done, playing a silly-ass game.

Quote from: estar;955524Which is why I find myself enjoying OD&D more than AD&D.

I find it very difficult to list one as a clear favorite. I guess if I were forced to only ever run one of them, I'd pick OD&D. My OD&D game tends to spur my creativity and enthusiasm more, and I suppose it's more personal. But I love AD&D, too: to me (probably because of when/how I started playing), it's the de facto standard for "this is D&D." I want both experiences: my own D&D game with my own tweaks and preferences and quirks, and also the classic feel of running a party through the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief or crawling through the underdark to the Vault of the Drow with the 1e rules.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955571Well, and those of us puttering around in obscurity playing the game the way we'd always played.

Yes indeed, I did say exactly that upthread, but I would fathom there weren't too many people like you around. At least not visible on the net. What did A&E people play and talk about in the early noughts?

I think only nowadays can people fully realize the gift it is that the Mornards and Kasks and Gygaxes and so forth are/were long enough around to share their experiences. Looking forward to your book!

Talking about books: is the EGG biography any good? Anybody any opinions on that?

Quote from: estar;955522OSRIC was always a community effort. But Jon Hershberger and Black Blades with the Knights and Knaves crew to get OSRIC in print.

OSRIC was first available in PDF and on Lulu/POD. The Black Blade printings came a bit later, but they are things of beauty (far better than the Lulu POD versions, IMO). The Black Blade OSRIC book is kind of like a Rules Cyclopedia for 1e (but with better rules and presentation than the RC -- again, IMO). And it's inexpensive. One of the best deals in the "OSR," I think. Monsters of Myth is another often overlooked gem.

Quote from: Settembrini;955574Yes indeed, I did say exactly that upthread, but I would fathom there weren't too many people like you around. At least not visible on the net. What did A&E people play and talk about in the early noughts?

I think only nowadays can people fully realize the gift it is that the Mornards and Kasks and Gygaxes and so forth are/were long enough around to share their experiences. Looking forward to your book!

Talking about books: is the EGG biography any good? Anybody any opinions on that?

Kingdom of Imagination was pretty good but had one serious flaw.  In his later years (and both Derek White and I, among others, have direct experience of this) Gary's faith became very important to him again.  Whitwer's book has Gygax leaving his religion in a divorce-and-cocaine-fueled rampage and never talks about his refocusing on it in his later years.  Which may not matter to most people, but it is definitely part of his life.


And no, there weren't many of us, hence my deliberate use of the word "obscurity."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955579Kingdom of Imagination was pretty good but had one serious flaw.  In his later years (and both Derek White and I, among others, have direct experience of this) Gary's faith became very important to him again.  Whitwer's book has Gygax leaving his religion in a divorce-and-cocaine-fueled rampage and never talks about his refocusing on it in his later years.  Which may not matter to most people, but it is definitely part of his life.


And no, there weren't many of us, hence my deliberate use of the word "obscurity."

Agreed. When I read the thing, I seriously thought I'd wasted my money. Scandal sells, my General.

Quote from: estar;955524What work best for RPGs are those mechanics that been shown to be useful in multiple sessions over multiple campaigns. Which is why I find myself enjoying OD&D more than AD&D. Of course there are some element of OD&D are clunky and poorly tested and there are some part of AD&D that were a result of actual play and continue to well time and time again. So it isn't totally a black and white line.

It's not only not a totally black and white line, it seems you've gotten it mostly backwards. The rules in the OD&D boxed set (Jan 1974) are generally very close to those in the so-called Dalluhn Manuscript (c. 1973), which appears to be based on the playtest manuscript Gary Gygax prepared either quickly after starting (or even, depending on the account you read, possibly before starting) the Greyhawk Castle campaign in late 1972. So while some elements (those inherited from Arneson - whatever they might be) may have had a couple years of playtesting behind them, most of it was freshly made up by Gary. It was all experimental and was in constant flux - there are major changes from the Dalluhn Manuscript to the published boxed set, and then a further set of equally major changes in Supplement I was released in 1975. The foundation of the game absolutely was not solid in this era - it was in very rapid and strong flux as various concepts were tested out in play and then dropped or modified, and new elements were added. The D&D set as published was just a snapshot of how the rules stood as of one particular moment (just as the Dalluhn Manuscript had been of a few months prior, and Supplement I was of a few months later).

Add in that people all over the country/world were able to read the same text in the OD&D rules and come to widely different interpretations of what it actually meant, and that there were so many holes in the published rules (some intentional, others presumably not) that every referee had to become, effectively, a co-author of the game. In retrospect, thanks to later editions and the work of folks like Judges Guild, it's possible to understand how the rules were supposed to work and what the intent of the game was, but the volume of letters and calls TSR got questioning the rules, and the number of APAzine articles written about them, show that at the time the situation was very different. Different people reading the same D&D rules could come away with interpretations as different as Tunnels & Trolls on the one hand and RuneQuest on the other.

By contrast, AD&D is the fruit of ~5 years of extremely heavy playtesting, both in-house and in what was, effectively, a worldwide "open beta" with the OD&D set. It takes those elements of OD&D that worked best (based on play and customer feedback), combines and clarifies them, modifies and rebalances those elements that proved not to work (or not to work as well as they should), and expands upon them with new material built upon that solid foundation. OD&D is a rough-draft towards a possible game - AD&D is that game, mature and complete. Sure there are some new rules in AD&D that were probably added late in the process and received little playtesting and kind of suck, like the unarmed combat system in the DMG or the revised psionics system, but it's utterly incorrect to act like OD&D was somehow better in that regard - it didn't have an unarmed combat system at all (which is why one had to be newly created for AD&D) and its psionics system was even worse (which is why it had to be revised for AD&D).

I totally get that there are reasons why people might prefer OD&D to AD&D - they like a simpler, less crunchy, system, or they like being the de facto co-author and want to be able to modify and expand the scope of and personalize the game in a way that AD&D - as a more mature and complete system - isn't as amenable to. And of course some people who'd been playing the game for 3 or 4 years and had developed all of their own house-rules and interpretations to fill in the gaps of OD&D didn't like the way AD&D filled in those same gaps and decided their version was better. All of those are totally reasonable and legitimate reasons for choosing to play OD&D over AD&D. But to claim that OD&D's rules are the solid result of extensive, rigorous playtesting and AD&D's are something that was hastily thrown together and untested is not only not true, it's pretty much the opposite of the truth.