Quote from: misterguignol;802325This is the level of similarity they're discussing over at YDIS; would you say it's accurate? If not, what have they got the wrong end of the stick on?

I think they've ordered some things funny and simplified a few concepts to probably make their specific lists seem more similar than they are, but let's ignore that for a moment: given that I've readily admitted that Tekumel was a source of inspiration for writing AoI, and pointed out that both AoI and Tekumel were influenced by the same source of mythology (Indian), I'm not sure what kind of big shocking revelation they're claiming to be making here.

What exactly is their argument here?  "An OSR game is using mechanical concepts from old-school RPGs! GASP!!" (cue dowager fainting)?

Next they'll be pointing out the incredible and outrage-inspiring similarities between the spell system in Labyrinth Lord and B/X D&D!

Unless they're claiming that I did a literal cut-and-paste job from an old rulebook (and for the record I didn't), I'm not quite sure what (other than their invented atmosphere of controversy) they're trying to bank on as a tactic here.  Shit, mechanically, 80% of AoI is much closer to D&D, and some of it adapts ideas (that became house rules of mine) from LotFP; is that going to be their next big Stop-The-Presses revelation?

Let's face who these people are here: they're a gang of fuckheads who despise the OSR (and judging from grog.txt, dislike most of the roleplaying scene in general) and resent the influence I've had on RPGs.  That's the root of all this, not some kind of quest for truth.  

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;802262Oh, and besides me and Barker, you know who else ripped off ancient Indian myth?

ALL OF EUROPEAN CULTURE.

And as a byproduct for that, most of European religion, fantasy, and legends can be said to be 'indian legends with the serial numbers filed off'.  

Sorry but last time I checked historians seemed to agree that Europe and India had common cultural, religious and linguistic roots in the so-called Pre-Indoeuropeans living somewhere in the steppes south of Russia...
So it is not a case of Europe copying India, but of shared ancestral religious symbols and figures.

Quote from: artikid;802361Sorry but last time I checked historians seemed to agree that Europe and India had common cultural, religious and linguistic roots in the so-called Pre-Indoeuropeans living somewhere in the steppes south of Russia...
So it is not a case of Europe copying India, but of shared ancestral religious symbols and figures.

Yes, technically right. But you get my drift.

Quote from: RPGPundit;802332Barker was a professor of linguistics, if I'm not remembering wrong, with a specialty in Urdu.  Tekumel is not, like AoI, a direct "D&D in Epic India" setting, and it has a mix of influences from different Indian periods, some gonzo sci-fi, and a little bit of pre-Columbian Meso-America in there too. . . . just a week or two ago we had a poster here [the inestimable Chirine ka Bal], who . . . certainly didn't seem to feel like I'd "ripped off" Tekumel.

Thanks. Interesting stuff and I think it gets us away from false parallelism or the sense that the two settings are in any kind of competition with each other.

From the very beginning, Barker considered the setting a melange drawn from many sources: "This world, its peoples, its beasts, its mythos, its social systems, and its 'sense of wonder' have been with me since I was about ten years old, developed and worked and reworked as I completed my degrees in Anthropology and Linguistics, travelled to India, Pakistan, the Middle and Far East, and read endless tales of science fiction and fantasy."

Going back to those sources is a chore for the archaeologists, but it's clear that Tekumel was never purely an "India game" to begin with.

Not sure why my core question was not addressed so I guess I'll have to fall back on my own resources here.

Quote from: econobus;802312I thought EPT proper was a free adaptation of D&D. Was I misinformed?

Memory can be a scary thing. Looks like I was remembering the working manuscript Barker would show his players. By the time EPT gets into print, he characterizes the project as "a description of a new fantasy world, together with rules for conducting adventures therein. Although the mechanics of these rules are inspired by [sic] the popular 'Dungeons and Dragons,' the inhabitants of Tekumel. . . are purely my own inventions."

Either way, it looks to me like EPT *is* mechanically "based on D&D as such" and similarities are not simply a bizarre coincidence. The real innovation is the exotic setting. But this seems to have become a sideshow so we can address it later.

Quote from: RPGPundit;802333I think they've ordered some things funny and simplified a few concepts to probably make their specific lists seem more similar than they are, but let's ignore that for a moment

Wait, what? Let's not ignore that, because that actually seems to be the important question being asked.

QuoteUnless they're claiming that I did a literal cut-and-paste job from an old rulebook (and for the record I didn't)

I think it's more accurate that the claim is that you did a cut-and-paste job and then a find-and-replace job to make the EPT stuff have a veneer of Indian-ness and presenting it as "originality."

Think of it from the point of view of a potential customer: the question they're asking themselves, if the percentages of similar content are true, is "Is it worth my time and money to buy this, or would it be better to hack old rules into my own Indian game on my own?"

Frankly, all this other garbage about "my enemies, they are legion, and they seek to discredit my prominence in the field of elfgames!" sounds like Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain smoke and mirrors. You make yourself look silly and guilty for going that route instead of addressing how similar or dissimilar your game is from what has come before.

Quote from: misterguignol;802395Frankly, all this other garbage about "my enemies, they are legion, and they seek to discredit my prominence in the field of elfgames!" sounds like Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain smoke and mirrors. You make yourself look silly and guilty [...]

You're new here, aren't you?

"The RPGPundit" is a fake persona, an Internet clown designed to generate clickbait traffic for He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named's own projects and this site.  It's a one man OSR Buzzfeed.

Quote from: daniel_ream;802430You're new here, aren't you?

"The RPGPundit" is a fake persona, an Internet clown designed to generate clickbait traffic for He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named's own projects and this site.  It's a one man OSR Buzzfeed.

Sadly, no, it's just that I'm an optimist and I keep hoping for better.

Quote from: misterguignol;802485Sadly, no, it's just that I'm an optimist and I keep hoping for better.

You're a troll from SA and YDIS, who pretended not to be until he got caught, drumming up meaningless claims to try to stop people who don't game the way you like.

The mechanical part of this was asked and answered.  The fact that you're a commenter on YDIS and not the neutral party you pretended to be has been revealed.  So really all that's left is you assholes trying to instigate a witch-hunt over an OSR game having mechanics from an old-school game; which of course serves your greater purpose: to claim that the entire OSR is bad. Because if my having been inspired by Barker's spell system makes the entirety of AoI "not worth it" (never mind how ridiculous that claim is given the years of research that went into that game) then certainly that means that LotFP having a magic system inspired by Gygax's means the same thing and "people would be better off just hacking old rules to make their own game".  What you're trying to do is to set up an argument for why the OSR isn't great, but it ignores the amount of work it takes to create these sort of games.  I know that we're not using Connect-Four to do Narrative Scene Resolution in our game about overstressed insurance company auditors, and yet people seem to like and appreciate our games more than your indie bullshit. That's because we don't reinvent the wheel but we DO put a lot of work into innovative ways to present that wheel.

It pisses you off that games (and game designers) that are so "unoriginal" because they don't use a bunch of Indie game design Theories end up being so well loved.  How sad.

Quote from: RPGPundit;802519You're a troll from SA and YDIS, who pretended not to be until he got caught, drumming up meaningless claims to try to stop people who don't game the way you like.

I've literally never been a poster on Something Awful. Do you have me confused with someone else maybe?

I also don't understand the "to try to stop people who don't game the way you like" bit. What way do you think I like to game? What are you basing this on?

QuoteIt pisses you off that games (and game designers) that are so "unoriginal" because they don't use a bunch of Indie game design Theories end up being so well loved.  How sad.

Man, what?

I...don't play indie games. I know next to nothing about Indie game design theory.

I don't even like Fate; currently into D&D and Beyond the Wall.

Are you sure you got the right dude, or are you just, like, inventing the opponent you wish I was?

Do you "not even like FATE" and have you "never even been on SA" in the same way you were a  "totally neutral" person in this issue with no involvement at all?

Or like you clearly have no involvement with YDIS you totally failed to mention?
Or like you clearly had no pre-existing issues against me? Are you being "neutral and objective" the way the piece of shit who wrote that hatchet-job review was being "neutral and objective"?

Quote from: RPGPundit;802539Do you "not even like FATE" and have you "never even been on SA" in the same way you were a  "totally neutral" person in this issue with no involvement at all?

Yes.

QuoteOr like you clearly have no involvement with YDIS you totally failed to mention?

Shit, man, do I have to list every site I post on to make sure I'm in the clear? Would you like to know what magazines I've got subscriptions to as well?

QuoteOr like you clearly had no pre-existing issues against me? Are you being "neutral and objective" the way the piece of shit who wrote that hatchet-job review was being "neutral and objective"?

Pre-existing issues with you? Dude, I've totally done you a solid before. Remember that time you asked if someone could take your Dark Albion posts and turn them into a workable pdf for you? I did that for you. You thanked me for it. I didn't have to do it, but I thought, "Hey, why not, I'll help the guy out." That doesn't sound like someone with an axe to grind against you.

Quote from: misterguignol;802544Pre-existing issues with you? Dude, I've totally done you a solid before. Remember that time you asked if someone could take your Dark Albion posts and turn them into a workable pdf for you? I did that for you. You thanked me for it. I didn't have to do it, but I thought, "Hey, why not, I'll help the guy out." That doesn't sound like someone with an axe to grind against you.

I look forward to you claiming that DOM stole your layout structure when the Dark Albion book comes out.

Clearly somewhere between then and now, an axe in need of grinding has been found.  Otherwise, why pull this shit? Why put your stake with a gang of hypocritical sophomoric assholes (sexist, racist, and homophobic assholes at that, cynically using 'social justice' when it suits them), who have nothing but contempt for the OSR, in what is so obviously a personally-biased attack on me. Why do them the "solid" of lying about your association/neutrality, in order to give them a semi-sockpuppet illusion of their bullshit being supported by an unpartisan and respectable member of the site?

In other words, what the fuck did I ever do to you?

I think YDIS used to be funny, kind of like Donjion, only Donjion had a broader list of targets, cleverer satire, and less stalking, bile, hatred and feces.

YDIS now is too obvious and tired in its obsessive hatred, kind of pathetic really.

Still, I think you're way off base with Guignol there, Pundit, and going a bit off the deep end in general in response.  You got baited successfully.

The review used your name, that's a banning offense itself.

Stalking?  Christ, the person made two posts, Marleycat stalks Geezer worse then that, and half a dozen posters stalk you worse then that.

Doxxing? Are you talking about SA, 4chan, YDIS or what, because I don't see any doxxing in the review.

The guy came over here, took a dump on your floor, waved the red flag and you charged, fair enough, but ease down a tad, hell, even the reviewer said your Underworld section was badass.

I've got neither beef with nor big interest in AoI, but branding MisterG a troll and a swine is simply silly. Even if he posts at sites like YDIS (heck, in many circles, posting here at the rpgsite would get you marked as disruptive)

Have you checked his blog? It's fucking brilliant. There no theory or BS, it's just packed with ready-to-use imaginative and cool stuff. Look at some of his Solomon Kane posts - and then ask him to do chapter in Dark Albion. Please.

/Fanboy off

Quote from: CRKrueger;802553The review used your name, that's a banning offense itself.

Stalking?  Christ, the person made two posts, Marleycat stalks Geezer worse then that, and half a dozen posters stalk you worse then that.

Doxxing? Are you talking about SA, 4chan, YDIS or what, because I don't see any doxxing in the review.

Using my real name was the doxxing.  Revealing personal information a person has made clear they don't want used, that's doxxing.

As for stalking, given that YDIS has apparently been on a bit of a crusade against me, and have set up an account here only to engage in an attack, I'd say that's stalking.

In any case, this should not be discussed in this thread, but rather on the review thread; were you meaning to post it there?

Since this thread and the review thread have become entirely convoluted, and since its very clear that any posting going on here from this point on is going to involve either YDIS-guys attacking me or other people talking about the YDIS-attack on me, I'm going to consider this thread derailed and close it.  Further discussion can of course happen elsewhere, with discussion on the review belonging on the thread from the review, and discussion about AoI in general can happen on a new thread in this subforum (note: any thread opened explicitly for the purposes of stalking me or disrupting this site (including threads that are just proxy-attacks for YDIS) rather than for actual discussion of AoI, will not be tolerated).