A lot of things said here are true.

Maybe retroclones and their supplement products will indeed never be commercially viable.  They are however legal and free to developers and players.  I don't see what's "sucky" about offering that sort of utility, even if it is only existing fans that will bother to take advantage of it.

I must reiterate that to say a game like LL is different (or even distiguishable) from D&D in ANY sense is a terrible misconception.  It is a relative, they are one in the same.  Players of Basic D&D will use LL.  The same goes for other simulacrum products.  If you happen to run LL, you ARE running Basic D&D.  The distinction here is arbitrary, and made by people who cannot separate name from product.  If you're not blowing your nose on a Kleenex, but your target is still made of soft paper... it's still a tissue.  The only way to get a experience different enough to be worth distinguishing is to use a handkerchief or your finger... a different RPG altogether, if you will.

Personally, I never buy supplements for anything.  I don't read free ones, either.  That, and I don't like ebay.  So, there you have it. LL was what I wanted, and though perhaps not its intended function, it has one nonetheless.

Quote from: Haffrung;281773The 'renaissance' in old-school gaming is about internet forum exchanges and house-ruled PDFs, rather than a growing market or community of active players.

I disagree.  A week hardly goes by without me finding a new blogger or forum poster who has a campaign up and running, mostly Swords & Wizardry lately. but also some retro-games.

I suppose the closest you can get to re-playing that magic feeling is to re-run those classic adventures either with a new crowd, or with a bunch of players who are so long in the tooth they have forgotten the original.
 
Ive played and run the same CoC adventure several times over.

Quote from: jrients;281796I disagree.  A week hardly goes by without me finding a new blogger or forum poster who has a campaign up and running, mostly Swords & Wizardry lately. but also some retro-games.

I have to agree with Jeff on this.  Lately I'm finding much more useful, interesting and inspiring content on blogs than I am on forums (although there's some gems on the forums, the signal to noise is usually not as good).

My decision to run my next game as a homebrew world / dungeon rather than use a published module was largely influenced from reading blogs like Jeff's, Grognardia, etc.

The fact that indicating compatibility with something is a GREY area. There have been court cases supporting doing this, and other against it. This has a chilling effect in that who want to get dragged into court.

In contrast by saying that your are compatible with Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, etc is a lot easier because they have all licenses that allow this.

This is of vital importance if you doing anything COMMERCIALLY. It is not sufficient just to have the original available in PDF if you want to succeed commercially.

This has been the primary motivation behind the retro-clones. Not the only one but the most important.

For D&D most of the major variants are now covered. That is 1974 OD&D, B/E/C/M/I D&D, and AD&D 1st. 2nd Edition is the only remaining older version not having a retro-clone.

Because they are now covered we will be seeing a shift to new product that expand the old school product line as opposed to recreating older material. Some will be a new games like Mutant Future, some will be house rules + campaign source material like Carcosa, and of course adventures.

The trick is whether any of us will produce something truly novel. If that happens then Old school market could expand into the size of second tier for RPGs. I know myself and other authors are working at various ideas.

Finally I found selling product commercially is a great motivator to "Get things done". Even if it is for a pittance. The fact you have actual customer who paid real money makes you take your efforts more seriously.

Mind you there is nothing wrong with making things for the love of it. But the Wild North (done for free) sat around for FIVE years before being completed. In contrast Points of Light took five months from proposal to final turn in.

Having the retro clones out there provides the motivation that the reprint PDFs doesn't give. So I am really glad and appreciate that the authors put in the work to get them written and laid out.

Quote from: Haffrung;281773At best every new ruleset just cuts the same pie into smaller pieces.

I don't think this is as much of a problem as it may appear. Most versions of TSR D&D -- through the core books of 2E -- (and their retroclones) are close enough that adventures for any one can be played in any of the others with the GM converting stuff on the fly where conversion is needed. Most people playing those games now have no more trouble doing this than GMs did back in the days of the originals.  There is less real gameplay difference between OD&D plus Greyhawk and AD&D 2e than there is between 2e and 3e or between 3e and 4e.

Most of us may have a favorite edition, but will play in any well-run game of any of the various older editions. The divisions between the games apparently  appear bigger to those who don't play one or more of them than they do to those of us who do play them.

Quote from: Haffrung;281773Agreed. Retro-clones generate buzz and a sense of community. However, I'm skeptical of claims that they have grown the pie of old-school players (and by players I mean people actively running tabletop games), instead of simply giving the old-school players who hang out on web forums more stuff to read and discuss. The 'renaissance' in old-school gaming is about internet forum exchanges and house-ruled PDFs, rather than a growing market or community of active players. At best every new ruleset just cuts the same pie into smaller pieces.

I think there is some indication that it has increased the number of people running the games at least in the sense that many forum nostalgists are now actually putting up and running games, often it seems at local shops. Each of those is basically 4 or 5 new people *playing* old school games, even if it's either 0 or 1 new people *running* them. Maybe we'll see some of those guys turning into old-school style GMs. I don't think it is, or ever is likely to be like a fever burning across the nation. The majority of people I game with aren't very warm to the idea of revisiting the 80s(heaven forbid the 70's) rules wise, either. But a couple hundred people out there playing a pre-1990 roleplaying game for the first time is a nice thing to think about. I don't have statistics here, nor, I take it, do you, but I do think the clones have gotten *some* people off their asses.

Quote from: RandallS;281822I don't think this is as much of a problem as it may appear. Most versions of TSR D&D -- through the core books of 2E -- (and their retroclones) are close enough that adventures for any one can be played in any of the others with the GM converting stuff on the fly where conversion is needed. Most people playing those games now have no more trouble doing this than GMs did back in the days of the originals.  There is less real gameplay difference between OD&D plus Greyhawk and AD&D 2e than there is between 2e and 3e or between 3e and 4e.

Most of us may have a favorite edition, but will play in any well-run game of any of the various older editions. The divisions between the games apparently  appear bigger to those who don't play one or more of them than they do to those of us who do play them.

To paraphrase Jacobim Mugatu, "AD&D, OD&D, Labyrinth Lord – they're all the same game! Doesn't anybody else see that? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!"

These products are basically all mutually compatible. The pie might be getting sliced in terms of brand loyalty to a particular clone, but I think that's a matter that impacts play in the wild very little.

To compare it with the post d20 OGL world, you could say that, say, the split between Pathfinder and 3.5 SRD compatibility might be hurting some companies. But in the retroclone world, there isn't anyone's large, multiple staffers, family-feeding business on the line here, let alone millions of dollars.

I think the player who says "You're going to be running a session of D&D using Swords and Wizardry Whitebox? Screw you, douchebag, I'm a LABYRINTH LORD MAN." is a fictional construct.

Quote from: Cole;281847I think the player who says "You're going to be running a session of D&D using Swords and Wizardry Whitebox? Screw you, douchebag, I'm a LABYRINTH LORD MAN." is a fictional construct.

Yup.

I pitched my game as "Old School D&D Night".  As I get ready for the game I'm using mostly B/X... but also stuff from all the other Classic editions when it makes sense and/or looks like fun.

Quote from: Haffrung;281773... However, I'm skeptical of claims that they have grown the pie of old-school players (and by players I mean people actively running tabletop games), instead of simply giving the old-school players who hang out on web forums more stuff to read and discuss. The 'renaissance' in old-school gaming is about internet forum exchanges and house-ruled PDFs, rather than a growing market or community of active players...

Be 'skeptical' all you want.  My experience has been that giving people a link to a free set of rules has been very effective in getting new people to try that game, and ultimately becoming regular players.

QuoteAt best every new ruleset just cuts the same pie into smaller pieces.

:confused: How so?  The pre-3e versions of D&D, including the retro-clones, are all pretty much cross-compatible.  Most people playing these games are aware of this obvious fact.

EDIT: It seems I'm merely restating things already stated by Jeff Rients, Cole, and others ...

Quote from: RPGPundit;281671...
Except that's my argument for why we DON'T need "Castles & Crusades", "Labyrinth Lord" or any of those other retro-clones, the originals still exist and don't need updating.
...

"Castles & Crusades" is NOT a retro-clone.  It is a new game that takes elements from B/X D&D, 1e AD&D, and 3e D&D.  (For some people this is a good thing, for others a bad thing.)

As for LL, it's free to download.  The B/X D&D rules on which it is based are not free, or even available in PDF (you can't get the Moldvay/Cook D&D rules via PDF).  Since these books are softcover, it's hard to find them in decent condition after 28+ years.

And I would disagree with you about 0e D&D.  It's great, but really in need of better organization and clearer presentation (not to mention the problem of having material spread across different supplements).  That's why I dig Swords & Wizardry.  It cleans up and re-presents the 0e rules in a cheap and attractive package.

Finally, OSRIC was conceived originally as a vehicle for publishing for-profit 1e AD&D products, not as a complete 'retro-clone' its own right.  It's done pretty well in that regard -- I really like Monsters of Myth, among other things.  I personally would rather play with the original 1e AD&D books, but I like OSRIC as a reference (especially for things that are not clear in the original AD&D books, e.g. rules concerning surprise).

Quote from: Akrasia;281864:confused: How so?  The pre-3e versions of D&D, including the retro-clones, are all pretty much cross-compatible.  Most people playing these games are aware of this obvious fact.

This is very true.  I'd say most people willing to play old-school editions of D&D are willing to play most of them.  Though the rules are slightly different they all create nearly an identical gaming experience.  I may run Basic D&D, but that doesn't mean I haven't or won't participate in a game of OD&D, AD&D, LL, OSRIC, C&C, etc... I just have preferences.  I also happen to like 1st edition BESM for a rules-light system, I like BT fiction even though I've never played, WFRP and WAB interest me, etc.  Are there really people out there who refuse to play anything but their chosen system?  I suppose you could get away with it if your particular brand was stupidly popular, but still?

Makes me wonder how some people got into the hobby in the first place.

Quote from: Akrasia;281866The B/X D&D rules on which it is based are not free, or even available in PDF (you can't get the Moldvay/Cook D&D rules via PDF).  Since these books are softcover, it's hard to find them in decent condition after 28+ years.

I've got multiple copies of the B/X D&D rules and have had no trouble in either finding them on ebay, at my local used book store, or in FLGS. It is the stuff that is only available online that I end up having people not have seen.

Now with that said, I also agree that retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord have a place in gaming because they allow people to create and market adventures for a system compatible to those old rules that probably introduced them to gaming in the first place.

So to answer the OP. Yes, Old School does indeed Rock. But Retro-clones allow the Old School to remain fresh and an option to today's gamers. So when you have an Old School player using a Retro-clone to game with, you have the gaming equivalent of Johnny Cash doing the cover of Nine Inch Nails

"Hurt"

And that's a Good Thing.

Okay, here's my thought:

If a person writes a clone, and has fun...then another person reads the clone, and has fun...then he or she runs that clone and has fun...

...

...please point out the problem.

Quote from: jeff37923;281884I've got multiple copies of the B/X D&D rules and have had no trouble in either finding them on ebay...

I have multiple copies as well (including my original sets), though my experiences with ebay have not been entirely positive (often these books are in less than 'mint' condition, despite sellers' claims to the contrary, or smell like someone's damp basement).

At least with a retro-clone I know that I can get a fresh, new, clean copy from my printer or Lulu.