So I was recently notified by Necromancer Games (affiliated with Frog God) that they're running a new Kickstarter for conversions of the Zach Glazar adventure/setting "Whisper & Venom."  What surprised me was that the conversions are for 5e and Old School Essentials.  I knew that Matt Finch had broken from Frog God and decided to take Swords & Wizardry with him despite a fairly successful Swords & Wizardry KS last year that produced a digest sized boxed set along the lines of those produced by Necrotic Gnome for OSE (and inspired by the LBB of course).  Not sure what prompted Finch to leave but the decision by Necromancer/Frog God to start producing material for OSE seems to be an indication that OSE is fully established as the "Top Dog" in the OSR these days.  They've even indicated they're emulating OSE's module layout with the bullets points (which I don't care for myself), though the verdict is still out on digest-sizing.

As for OSE, Gavin Norman has done a great job of marketing it.  He's essentially been recycling the same material in different packages for three years now yet each KS has surpassed the previous one.  The most recent one surpassed $770K and all it does is re-package old material.  Amazing what presentation, layout and buzz can do for you.  Even my pretty mediocre FLGS carries OSE products.  I like it well enough, but that's because of my love of B/X D&D and now that I have my Rules Tomes I see no need to keep buying the same material.  But OSE has seemingly driven Labyrinth Lord, which used to be the game that seemed to get the most third party material, into the ground.  I suspect S&W will retain its smaller niche market as should games like Hyperborea, which just released a third edition.  But they just don't seem to have the mass appeal of OSE.

So what do you think?  Is OSE the new champ?  What OSR game has a reasonable chance of dethroning it?

I just bought the hardcover Advanced Player's, and Referee's Tomes, and I love them.  I am currently in the midst of convincing my 5e-playing group to switch over to OSE.

Quote from: Persimmon on July 19, 2022, 10:50:09 PM
But OSE has seemingly driven Labyrinth Lord, which used to be the game that seemed to get the most third party material, into the ground.  I suspect S&W will retain its smaller niche market as should games like Hyperborea, which just released a third edition.  But they just don't seem to have the mass appeal of OSE.

So what do you think?  Is OSE the new champ?  What OSR game has a reasonable chance of dethroning it?

I'd wager it's because OSE seems to be the first big retro clone that's stayed 100% true to the rules of BX. All of the others that I can think of, good as some of them are, are usually 95-99% TSR rules, with that final 1-5% being the author's tweaks/home-rules/etc.

Which, on the one hand is cool because it's getting new people into BX (whether they realize it or not) and it's causing some great new adventures/content which is 100% mechanically compatible with BX appear on the market. On the other hand, it's kinda lame, because all these new folks are learning BX without the aid of the original text to put it all into proper context.

As for dethroning, who could say? I think at this point though, it's poised to stay relevant for some time, unless of course the woke mobs find some reason to direct their ire at Gavin. Since it's faithful to the source, the only way a game could naturally dethrone it is to figure out a way to organize/package even better than OSE did. But, with as good as OSE is packaged, I can't imagine that happening.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on July 19, 2022, 11:22:07 PM
I just bought the hardcover Advanced Player's, and Referee's Tomes, and I love them.  I am currently in the midst of convincing my 5e-playing group to switch over to OSE.

We finished a 2 year OSE campaign earlier this year and have been doing other games since.  Currently running Necropolis for Swords & Wizardry but it looks like we'll be switching back to OSE Advanced once that campaign ends.  My players just love the streamlined flexibility.  We have a few house rules and have ported a few things over from DCC and it runs great.  We briefly tried playing DCC straight, but after having played OSE the group found DCC too clunky at the table so we just pulled parts we liked to bolt onto OSE.  I think that flexibility has always been a hallmark of B/X.

I saw that Goblinoid Games is shutting down all social media presence, but continuing to sell products online for now, with more info to follow.

Not sure if Labyrinth Lord is getting squeezed out by OSE, if the author/owner wants to take a break for personal reasons, or if he's just getting off social media to avoid SJWs.

Quote from: Hackmaster on July 20, 2022, 11:42:25 AM
I saw that Goblinoid Games is shutting down all social media presence, but continuing to sell products online for now, with more info to follow.

Not sure if Labyrinth Lord is getting squeezed out by OSE, if the author/owner wants to take a break for personal reasons, or if he's just getting off social media to avoid SJWs.

He said in his FB post he'll have more information in the coming weeks. I'm wondering if he's not selling his games to another publisher.

My vote would be Basic Fantasy by Chris Gonnerman. 

Quote from: Persimmon on July 19, 2022, 10:50:09 PM
SWhat surprised me was that the conversions are for 5e and Old School Essentials.  I knew that Matt Finch had broken from Frog God and decided to take Swords & Wizardry with him despite a fairly successful Swords & Wizardry KS last year that produced a digest sized boxed set along the lines of those produced by Necrotic Gnome for OSE (and inspired by the LBB of course).

Why did Matt Finch leave? He's been a stalwart of FGG since the very early days.

Quote from: Hackmaster on July 20, 2022, 11:42:25 AM
I saw that Goblinoid Games is shutting down all social media presence, but continuing to sell products online for now, with more info to follow.

Not sure if Labyrinth Lord is getting squeezed out by OSE, if the author/owner wants to take a break for personal reasons, or if he's just getting off social media to avoid SJWs.

I don't know either.  I've heard indirectly that others have pushed for an update/revision of LL or even offered to buy the IP without success.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 20, 2022, 01:35:17 PM
My vote would be Basic Fantasy by Chris Gonnerman.

Personally I find that the dullest of all the retroclones, though at least it's priced right. 

But it has no presence in this discussion.  Is anyone making content for it beyond the creators and random fans?  Does it have any presence in game stores?  Is it really notable for anything beyond being cheap and simple?  Not that I know of.  Not hating here, just relating facts.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on July 20, 2022, 02:20:01 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on July 19, 2022, 10:50:09 PM
SWhat surprised me was that the conversions are for 5e and Old School Essentials.  I knew that Matt Finch had broken from Frog God and decided to take Swords & Wizardry with him despite a fairly successful Swords & Wizardry KS last year that produced a digest sized boxed set along the lines of those produced by Necrotic Gnome for OSE (and inspired by the LBB of course).

Why did Matt Finch leave? He's been a stalwart of FGG since the very early days.

Not sure.  Sometime late last year he announced he was reviving Mythmere and taking S&W with him.  I have no idea if Matt or Bill Webb (or both) initiated the break-up.  But I do think it's telling that Frog God pivoted to making OSE products so quickly.  We've seen lots of companies let their own products atrophy while tapping into the 5e market (looking at you Troll Lord), but it's interesting to see how OSE has come to sort of dominate the OSR scene to the point of their layout being emulated even by independent authors producing compatible content.

Their layout is highly usable in both print and digital formats. It's easy to read and find stuff at a glance at the table. If it pushes other people to make more readable and table-friendly content, I'm all for it. Plus it's refreshing compared to the overwritten organizational mess of say, WotC or Paizo products.

Matt Finch is supposedly working on yet another new edition of Swords & Wizardry with a new errata. If his recent Tome of Adventure Design edition is any indicator, it should have a cleaner layout also.

Isn't OSE just a clone? What does it have to offer at this point, after the other dozen clones?

I'm pretty sure it's not the "champ" of anything. Each of the clones was the big thing until the next clone came out. They're all the same rules so the appeal is entirely in things like the art. OSE is no more creative than Mork Borg, in fact it's less so, and Mork Borg is garbage (I mean, OSE's rules are better, but that's because THEY'RE JUST A CLONE OF THE B/X RULES).

In six months, someone else will take the exact same rules, add a different style of layout and art, and hype the living fuck out of it, and everyone will forget OSE.

Quote from: RPGPundit on July 20, 2022, 05:38:53 PM
Isn't OSE just a clone? What does it have to offer at this point, after the other dozen clones?

I'm pretty sure it's not the "champ" of anything. Each of the clones was the big thing until the next clone came out. They're all the same rules so the appeal is entirely in things like the art. OSE is no more creative than Mork Borg, in fact it's less so, and Mork Borg is garbage (I mean, OSE's rules are better, but that's because THEY'RE JUST A CLONE OF THE B/X RULES).

In six months, someone else will take the exact same rules, add a different style of layout and art, and hype the living fuck out of it, and everyone will forget OSE.

Actually, no, at least not in the Advanced version.  That is quite different from any other the other such games because it takes AD&D content and B/Xifies it.  This includes streamlining the various AD&D classes and creating a bunch of new race classes like gnomes, drow, half-elves, svirfneblin, half-orcs and others.  Or you can split race & class as in AD&D. Likewise, there are quite a few optional rules, like weapon specialization in a streamlined form, in there.  They do the same with AD&D monsters, though certain ones (dinosaurs, devils & demons) will supposedly come out later in thematic volumes.  And Gavin's doing a version of Gamma World as well, in addition to putting out a bunch of things for his own Dolmenwood setting.

This is quite a bit different from Labyrinth Lord's approach of just bolting AD&D stuff on, nor is it completely mimicking some other edition of D&D.  Sure OSE basic does that but even there its distinctive style has helped it stand out.

So, in short, I think there's enough there to suggest this isn't a flash in the pan that will be quickly eclipsed & forgotten.  It seems like each KS has roughly doubled the previous one and with more third parties jumping on the train, it just seems to be gathering more momentum.

Quote from: RPGPundit on July 20, 2022, 05:38:53 PM
Isn't OSE just a clone? What does it have to offer at this point, after the other dozen clones?

OSE is organized better, and some rules are explained better.  That's really the main selling point.  Oh, and OSE adds the option to use ascending AC rather than descending AC.

There are two versions of OSE though:

OSE Classic, which is a 99.5% faithful clone of D&D B/X
OSE Advanced, which takes the D&D B/X rules and adds classes, races, monsters, and magic items from AD&D, but re-formatted to fit the D&D B/X engine

D&D B/X is my favorite RPG.  Its what I'm playing right now.  But at the table, I use the OSE Classic book when I need to look something up, because its easier to use.  Not that the original B/X rules were difficult to use.  But the OSE layout is just nicer, so it brings value to my games.