Quote from: estar;789027I can see this of being of interest. Possibly make the story of James Mal all the more interesting.  But whatever is uncovered it would be a side show to conduct he displayed with Dwimmermount. In my mind that what did him in.

Well yes, certainly. But it speaks as to:
a) just how sincere his status as a "real" Old-school gamer was, much less the guy who wanted to be King of Old School and get to tell other people how they weren't real old-schoolers because they weren't sufficiantly "gygaxian".
b) the legitimacy of an asshole who WASN'T THERE getting to be the one to tell people who WERE there how it was like, much less whether the way they're doing it is really the way they did it back then.
and
c) just how wise it was to make him the hero of the OSR. (or, for that matter, to trust him with tens of thousands of dollars of old-schoolers own money for a product that turned out not to actually exist and that he had no intention of completing)

That's the huge irony: I was actually an Old-School Gamer. I was playing 1e and B/X when those were the current editions in print. But the OSR-clonemaniacs have the gall to say I'm not a Real Old-schooler or that the style I write about is not how people really did it back then, while licking the balls of a guy who up to 2007 had never given any sign of anything but contempt for Old-school.

i think that james had his road to damascus event just after gygax died. and that is really ok. we all waxed nostalgic after that and it was powerful catalyst for people to start exploring legacy d&d and clones.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;789115This post is a great insight into the diseased mind of RPGPundit: "Some guy changed his mind to agree with me, he must be a piece of shit. In fact, he's probably part of an international cabal that's trying to destroy roleplaying!"

For those actually interested in tracking Maliszewski's rediscovery of old school gaming, what you want to check out is the Schizonomicron, his pre-Grognardia LJ. (I found it by literally reading the very first blog post on Grognardia, which tells you to go check out his old blog if you want to see how he got to this point).

It's pretty straight-forward: He was developing Thousand Suns and frequently revisited his love for Traveller while doing so. For example, here's a post from February 2007. Around this same time period he starts looking at modern games and expressing his dissatisfaction with the way that they "transitioned [from] being rules that allowed you to tell your own stories in an imaginary world ... to being rules that allowed you to tell other people's stories (with a reference to Dragonlance as the dawn of the "new paradigm").

The lens of Traveller is also where he first starts analyzing what went "wrong" with the industry.

It also appears that his research for Thousand Suns was taking him back to the science fiction he read as a kid.

This appears to be a key post: "It's like someone's engaged in a psy-op to make me think that, you know, the grognards and canonistas aren't really that bad, after all -- at least they actually read and understood Traveller and can talk about why it's fun without having to resort to pseudo-academic buzzowords and coffee house banter." This Traveller-specific bit of "get the fuck off my lawn" comes after a series of such posts over the previous couple of months (including attacks at kid's not understanding the pop music of his youth). Shortly thereafter, he tells D&D 4th edition to get the fuck off his lawn (albeit it with a more compromising tone).

(Oddly we then get a literal Maliszewski vs. the neighborhood boys post.)

By December 2007, he's apparently reading his 1E manuals shortly after he was going to clean the old books out of his basement. A fortnight later the basic Grognardian philosophy of "back to the source" has taken literal form.

From that point forward, the Schizonomicon rapidly metamorphoses into a proto-Grognardia. In March 2008, Grognardia is formed.

So he very literally had an apparent conversion process that he mapped out on the internet, and that anyone who read Grognardia should be familiar with.

That's what I don't get, I hardly read grognardia (it was insufferable and the guy was obviously trying to create some kind of OSR-Swinedom to match his White-wolf days from the very start), but even I know that the guy readily admitted his 'narrative' about being a convert, and having gone from mocking old-school to being its Chosen Champion. That was part of the whole deal, of how he sold himself to the grognard crowd: "I used to persecute you but then I SAW THE LIGHT and now I am not only one of you but the most obviously qualified person to judge how old school really was and who is or is not old-school now!!"

So why are the people who know this trying to now deny it or claim like I'm making outrageous assertions?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;789116That is a completely inaccurate description of what happened: Maliszewski turned virtually all of the funds over to Autarch.

WHAT?  That's not what I heard. Like, ever.

Quote from: CRKrueger;789123After reading Alexander's links Pundit, you're screwed on this one.  Even if you did find a mountain of evidence to show that JMal was once a card-carrying member of the Swine, his Old School Epiphany seems real and is historically supported over time.

Could he have slowly and carefully constructed this new Pro-Old School identity merely to boost sales of Thousand Suns and institute himself as the main historian for an D&D Revival?  I suppose, yeah, he could have, but that theoretical mastermind would have been capable of delivering on Dwimmermount.

More than likely, like a whole lot of people, the internet culture arising from 3e and the advent of MMOs left him looking at this new gaming paradigm and wondering what the hell happened, and going back to find out.

The material from his pre-grognardia blog does make it seem pretty clear that he believed himself to be having a sincere conversion, yes.

But that still leaves two very significant points:

1) Why are people who CLEARLY KNOW about this conversion trying to pretend he wasn't Saul of Tarsus before the conversion?

and

2) It still makes him just about the worst shittiest choice for Pope of the OSR. Like most converts, he was a fanatic, and thought that now he was obviously the one who best understood the mind of god (or for god, read "old school"), much moreso than those who had actually walked and talked with jesus (or for jesus, read "people who had actually been old-school gamers since the actual pre-2e period").
Because he was a half-way decent writer with some skills, and because of his enthusiasm, and his willingness to tell the extreme wing of the OSR-grognards exactly what they already wanted to hear (this cannot be emphasized enough), they put him up as their Prophet. And that was a really stupid thing to do.

Quote from: RPGPundit;7891491) Why are people who CLEARLY KNOW about this conversion trying to pretend he wasn't Saul of Tarsus before the conversion?

No idea on that one, he definitely was late to the table.  I don't know how far he walked on the dark side though, only that he saw the light.

Quote from: RPGPundit;7891492) It still makes him just about the worst shittiest choice for Pope of the OSR. Like most converts, he was a fanatic, and thought that now he was obviously the one who best understood the mind of god (or for god, read "old school"), much moreso than those who had actually walked and talked with jesus (or for jesus, read "people who had actually been old-school gamers since the actual pre-2e period"). Because he was a half-way decent writer with some skills, and because of his enthusiasm, and his willingness to tell the extreme wing of the OSR-grognards exactly what they already wanted to hear (this cannot be emphasized enough), they put him up as their Prophet. And that was a really stupid thing to do.

There's a lot about the OSR that was stupid, and the fanboi celebrity of JMal was one of the stupidest, although the non-Clonemania part of the OSR is by far the more successful these days (which was inevitable, because you can only really RetroClone once, NeoClones, however are all over the place and god bless 'em.)  If you're keeping score, the OSR is holding it's own as a design philosophy or at least as a demographic to pay lip service to.

Go make an Arrows of Indra Megadungeon.

Quote from: CRKrueger;789155Go make an Arrows of Indra Megadungeon.

Yeah seriously. Bonus points if it is compatible enough to be used with other OSR games.

Quote from: CRKrueger;789155Go make an Arrows of Indra Megadungeon.

I did one better. In the section in AoI on the Patala Underworld, I provided you with all the mechanics, and building-system, and (later) things like monsters, treasure, etc., for you to MAKE YOUR OWN AoI megadungeon.

Quote from: Spinachcat;789080So Grogtard changed his mind? Big whoopee do.

One-wayism of any flavor is lame.

Agreed.When a fanatic Big Ender becomes a fanatic Little Ender, that means everything to other partizan hard-liners. To the rest of us, it's more significant that the mind is still the narrow one of an intolerant ideologue.

Quote from: RPGPundit;789143Well yes, certainly. But it speaks as to:
a) just how sincere his status as a "real" Old-school gamer was, much less the guy who wanted to be King of Old School and get to tell other people how they weren't real old-schoolers because they weren't sufficiantly "gygaxian".

I found the links to his older blog interesting but overall the issue is not that relevant to me. I am pointing this out so you know where I am coming from.

What I will say that even if all that you say is true it has little relevance to the development of OSR.

I have seen hobbyist organizations founded, grow, and flamed out spectacularly because they were reliant on a few individuals at their core. Without those individual working together the whole thing fell apart.

I seen hobbyist organization found, grow, and continued to grow or maintain a stable members despite important members flaming out spectacularly.

The difference in my experience is in the nature of what they were trying to do. Hobbyists that do things that require coordination of multiple people, like holding an event, are prone to collapsing utterly if the core leadership flames out. Or in what you are debating, prone to capture by an other set of individual and redirected from its original purpose.

The OSR is was never that type of group. Because of internet, open game license, and technology, it was and continues a kalidoscope of individuals and communties coming together and then breaking apart for a variety of projects.

Nobody I know saw a decrease in sales or viewers when James Mal flamed out spectacularly. The same when the ChicagoWiz hanged his hat, or Jeff Rients had to focus on Grad School, etc, etc.

To but it blunt is not one example of any hugely popular OSR individual have any measurable impact after they stopped participating in the OSR. The only way the OSR can go under if general interest in classic D&D ceases. Even then it has to be a pretty drastic reduction in interest before the influx of newcomers gets low enough to actually halt things.  

Reduce the flow of discussion and new material, yeah that very possible. But the low barrier of entry and the OGL means that classic D&D is around for the duration.

Quote from: RPGPundit;789143b) the legitimacy of an asshole who WASN'T THERE getting to be the one to tell people who WERE there how it was like, much less whether the way they're doing it is really the way they did it back then.

Everybody has their opinion. Even you have a very strong opinion  that old school ought to be about aesthetics and not focus so much on concrete rules. I have a strong opinion that the core of the OSR is a bunch of independents all doing their own things with the classic D&D mechanics.

Doesn't mean people have to agree with me, you, or James Mal.

Quote from: RPGPundit;789143c) just how wise it was to make him the hero of the OSR. (or, for that matter, to trust him with tens of thousands of dollars of old-schoolers own money for a product that turned out not to actually exist and that he had no intention of completing)

Because until then he seemed like any other OSR publisher. From my viewpoint I got paid promptly for the maps I did on the Old Chateau module he did. I was flabbergasted that he flamed out the way he did. I figure the worse case would be like Brave Halfling and Delving Deeper. But with his connections i figure he would have the help needed to overcome that or any other issue.

But disappearing down a rabbit hole in Canada for several months and shutting down his blog was well... well the guy burned his bridges thoroughly on that one. He did not exhibit rational behavior so there was no predicting it.  Luckily he didn't spend all of the money and remitted a substantial portion of the kickstarter funds to Autarch. I don't have the link but Tavis posted the terms publically.

I am only mention this not to make James Mal seems like a better guy. Only that the situation wasn't the worst possibility that could have occurred.

Quote from: RPGPundit;789143That's the huge irony: I was actually an Old-School Gamer. I was playing 1e and B/X when those were the current editions in print. But the OSR-clonemaniacs have the gall to say I'm not a Real Old-schooler or that the style I write about is not how people really did it back then, while licking the balls of a guy who up to 2007 had never given any sign of anything but contempt for Old-school.

So what. We all to endure our taunts by one clique or another. You think Majestic Wilderlands beloved across of all the OSR?  I gotten shit about that. Gotten shit about my blog. The difference is that I don't bitch about it. Because it had no practical effect on me. There is absolutely nothing they can do that can stop any project that I am working on or want to work on.

What I focus on is growing my audience. Making things that I know somebody finds useful. Along with helping others make useful and interesting things for the OSR. Like you.

That why I called out you out on your post. Erik is doing a lot a useful things for the OSR. You were way off base accusing him of historical revisionism.  For all his popularity Erik Tenkar does not have the kind of power you attribute to him. Nor did James Mal "the Pope of the OSR".

If anything a closer analogy to James Mal role would be the " autocephalous Patriarch of Grognardia" than the "Pope of the OSR." Pope implies some type of authority he did not have.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;789115It's pretty straight-forward: He was developing Thousand Suns and frequently revisited his love for Traveller while doing so. For example, here's a post from February 2007. Around this same time period he starts looking at modern games and expressing his dissatisfaction with the way that they "transitioned [from] being rules that allowed you to tell your own stories in an imaginary world ... to being rules that allowed you to tell other people's stories (with a reference to Dragonlance as the dawn of the "new paradigm").

The lens of Traveller is also where he first starts analyzing what went "wrong" with the industry.

It also appears that his research for Thousand Suns was taking him back to the science fiction he read as a kid.

This appears to be a key post: "It's like someone's engaged in a psy-op to make me think that, you know, the grognards and canonistas aren't really that bad, after all -- at least they actually read and understood Traveller and can talk about why it's fun without having to resort to pseudo-academic buzzowords and coffee house banter." This Traveller-specific bit of "get the fuck off my lawn" comes after a series of such posts over the previous couple of months (including attacks at kid's not understanding the pop music of his youth). Shortly thereafter, he tells D&D 4th edition to get the fuck off his lawn (albeit it with a more compromising tone).

I remember Thousand Suns, and was on the Traveller/Citizens of the Imperium forums when he was there developing it. I bought both editions of it as I am a sci-fi guy, though I lost track of him after that.

Thousand Suns is pretty good but it seems like J.M. himself is kinda all over the map.

Well whatever else you can say about Pundy it's immensely admirable that when he's being a dumbass people feel free to call him on it without even the slightest hint of fear of being banned. I don't think I've ever seen that except in unmoderated spam pits.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;789022I got into D&D in 1981 or '82 at age eleven. I became obsessed with it and it became a major part of my life throughout adolescence and young adulthood.

Shortly after college in the 90's I kinda went through a "Snob" phase of wanting "More" out of gaming (Hip, trendy, KEWL relevance that would get me respected as an artist or laid or something) and turned my back on D&D, which at the time seemed played out and about as cool and with-it as the Andy Griffith Show. I had nothing to do with D&D for a little less than a decade. It probably didn't help that none of the gamers around here wanted anything to do with it either. If I had suggested playing old-school D&D to them in 1996 I would have been laughed out of the room (Although their Earthdawn games were really no different... or for that matter their Vampire games, which as far as I could tell were about as gothic and psychological as Michael Bay movies, with vampires slugging it out on motorcycles with katanas and HK-MP3s. )

I got back in to D&D via third edition, which reminded me of just what I found so magical back in '81: Killing owlbears, looting old moathouses, half-orc assassins and temples of Tiamat and otyughs and githyanki ... but I soon decided the system was waaaaaaay too complex and number-crunchy (The "Paperwork" of designing characters and encounters was a crushing drag). So I got back down my old Moldvay Basic set and never looked back.  

I imagine that my experience of falling away and then coming back was not that uncommon among old-schoolers (Maybe it was even the norm, I have no idea). I don't think weird pissing contests about who is or is not a "Pure" OSR member are constructive.

It mirrors my experience to a degree.

I was heavily into D&D at first, though we always had time to try other games as well (Top Secret, Star Frontiers, and TMNT were all favorites in the early years; with Earthdawn, CoC, and Rifts later on).

Then there was a period in college where I really, really got into the WW stuff for about a year. It seemed so cool and hip at the time. But it got old real fast and I didn't like the people who liked those games very much.

After that I played some Earthdawn and AD&D, but it was sparse and eventually I just quit gaming all together by my Senior year in college.

Years later, I got with a gaming group that played D&D 3e. Like you, I liked the experience at first but then the sheer volume of rules seemed to weigh things down quickly (and this was just as a player).

I successfully killed that campaign off and got the group to try Rifts, which went great. We then played a rather short and dull AD&D 2e game that someone else ran before I hijacked the group again to play a 4e campaign (which was fun for a while, but it really was the difference between a good 80's action movie and something like the "Expendables" movies). Once that was over, I got the group to play a Basic D&D game, which is my personal favorite edition.

Since leaving that group, my new group has done a Gangbusters/CoC crossover game (which worked very well) and a Mongoose Traveller game (which did not). And now I'm back looking at doing AD&D 2e again (though we have tried 5e, it wouldn't be my preferred edition).

Quote from: RPGPundit;789148WHAT?  That's not what I heard. Like, ever.

Well, it's right there on the kickstarter, in update #48:

QuoteI'm very happy to announce that this afternoon, James Maliszewski transferred to Autarch the Kickstarter funds necessary for us to complete the Dwimmermount project and pay the artists who haven't been compensated for their work.

Edit: Now, that doesn't mean that Autarch hasn't lost some money finishing the kickstarter, but this would hardly be the first kickstarter where the funds weren't enough to cover the expenses.  But the person making the update seems to think they've gotten a good chunk of the Kickstarter funds.

Quote from: RPGPundit;789149Like most converts, he was a fanatic, and thought that now he was obviously the one who best understood the mind of god (or for god, read "old school"), much moreso than those who had actually walked and talked with jesus (or for jesus, read "people who had actually been old-school gamers since the actual pre-2e period").

This is what pissed me off. Grognardia marked the shift of OSR from people talking on places like Dragonsfoot about how they played TSR D&D, to pious doctrine about how people should have played D&D. And a bunch of grognards ate it up because they had become fanatical edition-warriors against WotC D&D players, and wanted a strict shared orthodoxy that the troops could rally under.

I started with Holmes Basic in 1979 and I sure as fuck didn't need some pompous blogger to tell me how real old-school D&D was supposed to work. Especially some fucker who never actually played that way.