Quote from: Warthur;632522Apparently in Raggi's world you're in "assholio" territory if you ask him questions he doesn't like.

 "What exactly am I bringing to the table here which merits making this product a full-blown game rather than a collection of house rules?"

I ask that question all the time (I think I did so here re ACKS once).  But it really doesn't matter, because I don't spend much money on the hobby, I don't enjoy comparing rulesets, and I don't collect things just for the fun of collecting them.

I've no idea what percentage of the 'OSR' market is like me; possibly not very many.

All comes down to whatever the market will bear.

Quote from: EOTB;632591I buy a lot of mods and supps, but I've bought my last ruleset.  Then again, I didn't play 1E uninterrupted for 25 years because I was looking for a replacement, or felt it was in need of fixing in some way, either.

I'm not slamming you for writing your own game.  My point is that silent majority of the old school players are not the people either writing, or buying, (or endlessly gabbing about) recently-published rulesets.  Instead, it's the people actually playing TSR-editions of (A)D&D.  That's the "big" market - those who like the game so much they've been playing it uninterrupted for 30 years.  

But sure; free country and all that.  The other option is to chase the market of people who've bought 6 rulesets in the past year and can't seem to develop a campaign in any of them that lasts over 8 weeks.  There's nothing wrong with that creatively - I'm just confused why there are so many people who seem to think that's actually the smart business decision (if any part of old-school RPG publishing could be called "a smart business decision", granted).

Whereas I would question the wisdom of marketing to people who apparently haven't bought a new game in 25 years.

Quote from: J Arcane;632596Whereas I would question the wisdom of marketing to people who apparently haven't bought a new game in 25 years.

If you want to get them to play something else, certainly, it's futility.  If you want to give them something designed to be used in their game?  I know lots of people who have bookshelves full of material they didn't homebrew themselves.

Quote from: P&P;632578I doubt it; everyone seems to want to write a ruleset.  Or more accurately, to be a person who has written an acclaimed ruleset.

I write rules because I can write far better rules than adventures/setting. What I work from looks more like those pictures of Gary's notebook pages of dungeon levels. With work, I could make them complete enough to look like early Judges Guild adventures -- provided I don't get bored one-quarter of the way through and quit. There's no way I could write the type of detailed description and plots adventure modules most people seem to want -- I've never ran dungeons like that, so anything I tried to write in that vain would probably be truly awful.

Quote from: J Arcane;632596Whereas I would question the wisdom of marketing to people who apparently haven't bought a new game in 25 years.

It is also very hard to sell a game to people who are satisfied with what they are playing. Personally, I would rather pick up a game that's further from the system I am actually running (and invested in) than something that was only a variant. This is why Stars Without Number, Spears of the Dawn, Arrows of Indra and - probably - Hulks and Horrors appeal to me.

In the D&D area, I would rather pick up rules modules than full rulesets - I'm sure ACKS is interesting, but it would be even more interesting to me if it was a 16-24 page supplement and not a $40+shipping hardcover I could use to bludgeon people to death. I already have a lot of games that let me accomplish that.

Quote from: Melan;632693It is also very hard to sell a game to people who are satisfied with what they are playing. Personally, I would rather pick up a game that's further from the system I am actually running (and invested in) than something that was only a variant. This is why Stars Without Number, Spears of the Dawn, Arrows of Indra and - probably - Hulks and Horrors appeal to me.

In the D&D area, I would rather pick up rules modules than full rulesets - I'm sure ACKS is interesting, but it would be even more interesting to me if it was a 16-24 page supplement and not a $40+shipping hardcover I could use to bludgeon people to death. I already have a lot of games that let me accomplish that.

I definitely see what you're saying there, I'm certainly far more interested in projects like H&H than I am in another fantasy game.

I just always have a hard time grasping the claimed interest or value in premade modules and adventures.  I mean, how many times can you really run Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?  And if you've been playing for 25 years anyway, do you really need someone else to come up with ideas for you?  What could I, or any other author, possibly put out that's going to suit your groups' taste better than you can come up with yourself?

I mean, nothing I could come up with would be anything better than what I run at my table, and I'm not arrogant enough to think that's anything special.  that's why I cut Ark Station Gargleflax from the H&H release. I just didn't see the point in it. It'd be nice to have an introductory adventure in there for new players, but I'm not especially deluded in thinking said new players are ever going to come across my game anyway.

I might be going assholio here, but personally I see a difference between those who charge money and those who don't.

I've paid a couple of bucks for a "new old school" module now and then, but I've also downloaded a lot of free stuff that's been just as good, and in some cases better.

I mean, if the author is just looking for some beer money in exchange for some impressive work he did while immersed in his hobby, that's cool. But I find something distasteful about these questionable kickstarters, people asking for thousands of dollars for some house rules they added to a game they didn't invent, or for what amounts to little more than Some Guy's Dungeon.

It's just an idea, but maybe that's why people seemed burned out on the retroclones. They see it as yet another thing to buy that doesn't necessarily offer that much.

Quote from: ningauble;632716I might be going assholio here, but personally I see a difference between those who charge money and those who don't.

I've paid a couple of bucks for a "new old school" module now and then, but I've also downloaded a lot of free stuff that's been just as good, and in some cases better.

I mean, if the author is just looking for some beer money in exchange for some impressive work he did while immersed in his hobby, that's cool. But I find something distasteful about these questionable kickstarters, people asking for thousands of dollars for some house rules they added to a game they didn't invent, or for what amounts to little more than Some Guy's Dungeon.

It's just an idea, but maybe that's why people seemed burned out on the retroclones. They see it as yet another thing to buy that doesn't necessarily offer that much.

Two different questions (both valid) there.

People getting "burned out"? Bound to happen with any trend. The interest in retroclones amounts to a big surge of publicity that's made a large number of people take notice--this will inevitably die back and leave the small core of consumers who will buy lots of variants of the same system.

As for whether one should spend a lot of money, or raise a lot of money, on that sort of product--people will spend stupid amounts of money on anything.

There is the perpetual question on whether the presence of free stuff in the market lowers the value of paid-for stuff, but that's slightly different.

I guess you analyse what you're getting for your money. I only own LotFP, no interest in other clones. What I got was a shot of nostalgia for BECMI with a tighter system, in a new package with different art and the edgy weird Lovecraftian theme that sets a different tone.

Quote from: J Arcane;632580That wasn't what I meant.

What I meant to ask was: do people really buy all that many modules?  Because it seems like an awful lot are out there already.

Do people need all that many rules sets? I'd be shocked if a typical RPG group played more than two different game systems in a calendar year.

Quote from: J Arcane;632697I just always have a hard time grasping the claimed interest or value in premade modules and adventures.  I mean, how many times can you really run Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?  

You don't need to run it more than once for it to be a worthwhile purchase. $25 for four 4-hour game sessions of fun? For me, that's good value. I haven't found one I like myself, but for people who like Paizo's style, an adventure path is incredible value at $120 for a year to year-and-half of adventure that will take PCs from 1st to 14th level.

Quote from: J Arcane;632697And if you've been playing for 25 years anyway, do you really need someone else to come up with ideas for you?  What could I, or any other author, possibly put out that's going to suit your groups' taste better than you can come up with yourself?

I can and do write my own stuff. However, at this stage in my life time is in shorter supply than money. In my experience, it takes two to three hours of prep time for each hour of play time to run with all homemade material. So even a  monthly game is tough to keep pace with.

Now, I'm pretty fussy and particular about adventures and setting content - I dislike 95 per cent that I come across. However, the fraction of stuff I do like is very useful, either to cannibalize for locales, encounters, and NPCs, or as inspiration for my own stuff. And the well-written ones can be fun to read.

What I don't have is the time to sift through hundreds of forum posts and reviews from cronies to find which self-published OSR material is worth my while. I'll take my chance with the commercial stuff. I'm also superficial enough to care about stuff like production values and artwork.

And the idea of your own ideas being better than someone else's, surely that applies just as well to rules systems and setting material. Why does a gamer with 25 years experience need someone else's rules set? The answer is time and convenience. Same as adventures.

Quote from: Haffrung;632774Do people need all that many rules sets? I'd be shocked if a typical RPG group played more than two different game systems in a calendar year.

I have been, and currently have way too many game groups I play with.

But I can say, in my experience, only one group out of ten plays more than 1 or 2 game systems a year.

That one group goes into crisis mode when selecting a system; all the other groups seem to not have that issue.

My customers buy more core rule sets than modules. I have modules two on the market right now- Hard Light for SWN and Grandfather's Rain for Other Dust, though it too will work fine with SWN. The latter is a free download, and yet I've still sold 2 copies of Other Dust for every 3 downloads of the free module. For Hard Light, the difference is even more dramatic- I've sold at least twice as many copies of the for-pay version of SWN as I have Hard Light. I'm putting out a module for Spears of the Dawn within the next month, and honestly, I'm not expecting more than half the sales I'm making on the core game because that's how the numbers have shaped up in the earlier cases.

Core rules provide the possibility of an entirely new set of options, a new setting, a new pile of mental grist to grind for the buyer. Modules don't offer that kind of hope. If you are not in the market for new grist, but are instead just buying prep time, then modules don't suffer by comparison. But if you're not in the market for new grist then the odds are that you're buying less stuff than the guy who is.

All it takes is a phenomenal breakthrough RPG like LOTFP to reinvigorate the hobby.

So, I say emphatically YES - we need a hundred other OSR products, whether they be free, D&D-inspired, pay-to-play or otherwise.

Quote from: J Arcane;632697I just always have a hard time grasping the claimed interest or value in premade modules and adventures.  I mean, how many times can you really run Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?  And if you've been playing for 25 years anyway, do you really need someone else to come up with ideas for you?  What could I, or any other author, possibly put out that's going to suit your groups' taste better than you can come up with yourself?

I read modules precisely because I've been DMing for decades. (Though I've used them since I started.) I'm an imaginative person, but I know that I can't imagine everything. For an example. Dungeon Crawl Classics was a breath of fresh air for my brain. It took someone else, whose mindset was off in a direction that I hadn't travelled, to broaden my horizons.

A good module will give me an interesting gimmick, like the tarot cards in the original Ravenloft module, or some great traps or tricks I can pilfer. Or maybe I'll run the thing whole, as I've done with a few DCC modules.

My players know what to expect from me. They know my tastes and how I think when putting together a scenario. Modules knock me off my expected path and take me places I may not have thought on my own.

With me its a combination of laziness and unwillingness to devote that much time or effort to a dumb elfgame. Coming up with good adventures - coming up with fresh and interesting challenges that are neither too easy nor too difficult, drawing maps, writing flavorful descriptive text, etc. - is both difficult and time-consuming. I'd much rather someone else did all of that for me so all I had to do was read what they'd written, perhaps put a bit of individual spin on it, and present it to a tableful of players while we share salty snacks and sugary drinks and make dick-jokes.

The problem is that the overwhelming majority of published adventures aren't any damn good - they're either bland and generic, or poorly designed and written, or are so idiosyncratic to the creator's own game-world and vision that I can't easily integrate them into my preferred flavor of D&D. I desperately wish there were more published modules I liked as much as The Abduction of Good King Despot and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and Ghost Tower of Inverness and Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia and Necropolis and Temple of Elemental Evil, because given the choice I'd MUCH rather just sit down and run one of those than have to create something like them myself.