Quote from: estar;281399I can't give exact numbers but that is the ballpark for Points of Light as well.

I'm surprised it hasn't sold more. It's a fantastic product. What are Goodman's average sales. I would have guessed in the low to mid 4 figures for most of the DCC's for example.m Am I way off base?

Quote from: Cole;281363Pundit : How do you feel about where, say "Castles and Crusades" falls? I don't happen to own the book (it's not free!) but the presentation in Castle Zagyg definitely seems to speak to more of a personality disorder than a clone proper. It seems to push to and away from AD&D at erratic speeds from page to page.

Yes, well C&C is a tough call because its actually the grandaddy of the movement at this point.  It was hyped as a "remaking" of 1e, but it turned out to be more like a remaking of 3e along some old-school lines. Its very odd.

QuoteI can't speak for FtA!, largely since it's not free either. It seems to be a close relative of Tunnels and Trolls, maybe about C&C or Basic Fantasy close. How far off's that assessment?

There are three primary RPG inspirations for FtA!:
1. Old editions of D&D (RC, 1e and OD&D).
2. Nethack (the computer game)
3. Tunnels & Trolls was mostly an inspiration for the combat system.

But it doesn't end up "cloning" any of those games; in the sense of detail-emulation its closest, I guess, to Nethack.  In terms of things like the magic system, its completely novel and not like any of the magic systems detailed above.

Things like the class system and magic items and such are very similar to both D&D and Nethack, and its kind of hard to say where one inspiration ends and the other begins on those notes, since Nethack was basically a computer-version of a D&D dungeon crawl.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RandallS;281398Have a link? I love reading rants.

http://hofrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/that-i-can-take-bottle-or-can-leave-it.html

Did I mention it's in German? :emot_haw:

Quote from: Cole;281400I'm surprised [Points of Light] hasn't sold more. It's a fantastic product.

Yeah, what he said.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281401Yes, well C&C is a tough call because its actually the grandaddy of the movement at this point.  It was hyped as a "remaking" of 1e, but it turned out to be more like a remaking of 3e along some old-school lines. Its very odd.

FWIW, I believe that dissatisfaction with how C&C turned out is one of the things that prompted the creation of OSRIC.  I was still playing 3e at the time, so I wasn't involved, but I'm pretty sure that was one of the factors.

Quote from: Cole;281400I'm surprised it hasn't sold more. It's a fantastic product. What are Goodman's average sales. I would have guessed in the low to mid 4 figures for most of the DCC's for example.m Am I way off base?

One quarter's results three more to go. Mind you that was a short quarter too just half of August and September.

In addition I know it has not been in the majority of game stores based on the ones I have personally sampling of four major market. It may well turn out to have long legs where orders are low but constant.

The answer of course is to wait until we have more data.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;281407Yeah, what he said.

I appreciate the endorsements by you and Cole. There will be a 2nd Points of Light. In addition I am working on other products as well. Some I plan to propose to Goodman and other companies. Others I plan to release under my own name.

Quote from: Akrasia;281389This is one of the things that I really love about the Old School Renaissance.  The contributors to Fight On! have ideas that seem more interesting and original than what is coming out of WotC these days (IMO).  The hobbyist can be true to his vision and preferences, a luxury typically not available to a designer for WotC (or any other game company).

Really. I would argue that is not the case with small press but I am biased.

Quote from: HinterWelt;281413Really. I would argue that is not the case with small press but I am biased.

Fair enough.

Quote from: Pierce Inverarity;281402Did I mention it's in German? :emot_haw:

It looks I'll be putting my high school German to work later today.

Quote from: vomitbrown;281261But, I was wondering how the Old School games handle adventuring in non-dungeon environments.

With this.

Quote from: The Shaman;281465With this.

Heh.  Maybe with the map, anyway.  Hex-crawling the wilderness is a time-honored old school D&D pastime.

I think we're forgetting the major force, here, which should be the default assumption for anyone's motive.  I can't speak for anyone else, but my role in OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry wasn't scamming, wasn't commercial gain, and wasn't to free thousands from the shackles of new-school gaming.  They were written because I'm a complete spaz.  I like writing stuff, I can't really help writing stuff, and I write for what I play.  The general motive for most one-man publishing of RPG material is ... compulsive geekiness.

If anyone cares to attribute sinister motives and deep plotting to my role in OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry, well, "sinister" is way more of a chick-magnet than "obsessively geeky."  So I'm totally cool with that.

(But I actually wrote all that stuff because I couldn't stop myself...)

Quote from: Mythmere;281480I think we're forgetting the major force, here, which should be the default assumption for anyone's motive.  I can't speak for anyone else, but my role in OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry wasn't scamming, wasn't commercial gain, and wasn't to free thousands from the shackles of new-school gaming.  They were written because I'm a complete spaz.  I like writing stuff, I can't really help writing stuff, and I write for what I play.  The general motive for most one-man publishing of RPG material is ... compulsive geekiness.

I think you have also nailed the motives of the guys working at Wizards and so on down the food chain.

Quote from: Mythmere;281480If anyone cares to attribute sinister motives and deep plotting to my role in OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry, well, "sinister" is way more of a chick-magnet than "obsessively geeky."  So I'm totally cool with that.

(But I actually wrote all that stuff because I couldn't stop myself...)

Incidentally, if there's such a thing as quantum leap in "D&D Emulation," it's Whitebox. What a nice playable package.

Quote from: Cole;281490Incidentally, if there's such a thing as quantum leap in "D&D Emulation," it's Whitebox. What a nice playable package.

Thanks!  For WhiteBox, much more than half of the credit goes to my co-author Finarvyn (who's the admin for the OD&D74 message board).  I never played only with the LBBs - I'm a Holmes/Greyhawk/1eMM baby, which was the mishmash going on in '78 when I started playing.  For playing, the Whitebox-only style isn't my bag, and I handed it off to Marv when it started to become clear that I was compulsively trying to "fix" what I was writing, and just couldn't do the project right without help from a more grognardly authority.  He took it and ran with it, and we decided that since the S&W Core Rules were focused on high compatibility that the S&W WhiteBox should instead be focused on reproducing the quirky, wonky nature of 0e in its full glory, just with better organization of the rules.  I think he succeeded quite brilliantly in that goal.  It's perhaps not as good a resource for 3d-party publishers, but it's a phenomenal intro to playing the game and how open-ended rules actually work (better than my Core Rules in that regard, I think).

Clones are free, or you buy a nice print off Lulu.  Can't do that with OD&D or B/X.