True, it seems a bit convoluted and unwieldy in its attempt to bridge PbtA and D&D.

Quote from: estar;963881It is a distinction without meaning given how the OSR operates. A commentator can pick any arbitrary segment of the OSR with a with more than a handful of publishers behind it and say it is a wave. The only accurate statement is that the OSR is increasing in diversity which includes various types of hybrids RPGs and supplements.

Here are the 30 newest self-labeled OSR releases on RPGNow. You would have to monitor this for a month or so to get a sense of what people are actually making.

1. The Dungeon of Trials
2. What Has it Got in its Pocketses, Eh?
3. The Nephilim
4. Dungeon of the Selenian Conclave
5. Book of Fantasy Races (Labyrinth Lord)
6. Purple Mountain: Temple of the Locust Lord (DCC)
7. Mageblade! Zero
8. Marvels & Malisons
9. Hit Points, Ammo Or Whatever Tracker
10. Light City #1 - The Brawler
11. Generic Monster Wheelies For Labyrinth Lord
12. Monster Wheelies For Labyrinth Lord Volume 2
13. Monster Wheelies For Labyrinth Lord
14. Castle of the Mad Archmage (OSR) Digital Bundle [BUNDLE]
15. Wheelies For Advanced Labyrinth Lord Players
16. Wheelies For Labyrinth Lord Players
17. Sanctum Secorum - Episode #24 Companion
18. Castles & Crusades Codex Classicum
19. Perfectorium Of The Golden Tentacle: An OSR Adventure
20. L'Arsenale della Principessa Guerriera
21. S2 Delver's Delights
22. Monkey Business (Digital Edition)
23.The Lost Lands: Bard's Gate - The Riot Act (SW)
24. The Lost Lands: Bard's Gate Players' Guide
25.The Lost Lands: Bard's Gate Swords and Wizardry Edition
26. BF2 Crypt of Bones (CnC)
27. BF2 Crypt of Bones (DCC)
28.Dwarves of Copper Gulch a Swords and Wizardry Compatible Adventure
29. Swords & Wizardry Compatibility Logo
30. Dungeon Crawl Classics #93: Moon-Slaves of the Cannibal Kingdom

Understand, I am in your camp and think that Arrows of Indra and Dark Albion like my own a Majestic Wilderlands a strong way to go for an OSR publisher. I am under no delusion that what I do is part of any type of larger wave other than the one where people take advantage of digital technology and open content to publish content that works with or similairly to out of print RPGs.

First, most of those products will only sell a few copies, and will not likely be representative of any greater trend.  Second, some of them are clearly series of long-running stuff.  All three waves of the OSR will still produce things, there's still people out there creating what are essentially Clone Games just very slightly different from other long-running Clone games.

The wave designation does not indicate that everything that came before is just 'over' or something. It does suggest that there's new layers of development in the OSR.  If I'd done Arrows of Indra in 2009, people would have claimed it was "not OSR".  Today, it's not even close to the limits of what is defined as "within the OSR".

Quote from: estar;963958First off the lists I created it used by clicking on the categories on the upper left. The official D&D tag can't be used by anybody other than Wizards. Search terms are more inaccurate compared to the tags on the OBS

Note that Wizards just used the "OSR tag".  They've made a huge sale of TSR/Mystara products under the header "OSR Extravaganza".  That's pretty obvious evidence of our influence. Of course, me being hired for 5e instead of certain other people was evidence enough.

QuoteSo tell me what more likely the "thing" regarding the OSR a third wave of rules tied tightly to the setting? Or the use of open content to realize a multitude of diverse products?

Those are not mutually exclusive things.  They can both be "things".

People don't talk about "module PTSR332 Lair of the Tomb of Imitation Horrors", even if in fact it might make significant sales on RPGnow.  They talk about Dark Albion, Yoon Suin, Narcosa, Maze of the Blue Medusa, Stars Without Number, etc etc.  So you have to consider what's in the intellectual vanguard of the movement as well; what people are excited about.  Because over time that defines in which directions the movement goes.

Quote from: RPGPundit;964436Note that Wizards just used the "OSR tag".  They've made a huge sale of TSR/Mystara products under the header "OSR Extravaganza".  That's pretty obvious evidence of our influence. Of course, me being hired for 5e instead of certain other people was evidence enough.

I am talking about the technical feature of OBS website where a publish can tag their product as belonging to specific categories setup by OBS. Wizards is particpating in the OSR sale so yes in a colloquial sense they have tagged themselves as part of the OSR. But their products are not tagged using the OBS feature, rather they use the Official D&D tag that OBS provides.

I pointed this out so people can see for themselves the relative number of products in each category and that the OSR tag doesn't not include Official release and vice versa. As a further note, OBS cracked down on publishers trying to check every category two years and cleaned it up considerably.

Quote from: RPGPundit;964436Those are not mutually exclusive things.  They can both be "things".

Sure that possible, but I disagree with you that is the case and about their significance. The use of open content and digital technology is pervasive and dominates every segment of the OSR including your own works. Products that adapt classic edition mechanics to specific setting like Arrows, Spears at Dawn, Majestic Wilderlands, and Dark Albion is a just a sliver.

Quote from: RPGPundit;964436People don't talk about "module PTSR332 Lair of the Tomb of Imitation Horrors", even if in fact it might make significant sales on RPGnow.  They talk about Dark Albion, Yoon Suin, Narcosa, Maze of the Blue Medusa, Stars Without Number, etc etc.  So you have to consider what's in the intellectual vanguard of the movement as well; what people are excited about.  Because over time that defines in which directions the movement goes.

I agree it has an impact but it pales with the creative freedom that accompanies open content and the low barriers to distribute and profit off one's creative works. How much do you follow what going on with the world of the DCC RPG and Gonzo fantasy. Or what happening with the weird horror side of things as exemplified by James Raggi. Or what been going on with various Zines, Pateron, and so forth and so on.

And to complicate the picture, you are right in a sense about the "intellectual vanguard" having importance because a segment of the OSR has had an obvious impact on the leading RPG in the industry and hobby, D&D 5e. However is the reverse true, did D&D 5e incorporating OSR ideas have an appreciable impact on OSR. I argue no. It had an impact on specific author like myself who borrowed things like advantage/disadvantage. But overall what still drive the OSR is freedom granted by open content and the low barriers to distribution.

Open content in general it not just about the nuts and bolts of sharing works but also about an ideal that our cultural heritage is something that should be freely shared. So again I disagree as to the significance of any individual author or group of author within the OSR as Third Wave, New Wave or whatever wave.

There's an intellectual vanguard in roleplaying games? :rolleyes:

Quote from: estar;964475I agree it has an impact but it pales with the creative freedom that accompanies open content and the low barriers to distribute and profit off one's creative works. How much do you follow what going on with the world of the DCC RPG and Gonzo fantasy. Or what happening with the weird horror side of things as exemplified by James Raggi. Or what been going on with various Zines, Pateron, and so forth and so on.

DCC and most of the Gonzo Fantasy are 3rd Wave OSR.  They are making rules intended to fit a specific genre and in many cases a specific setting.

Raggi's stuff was originally definitely 2nd wave (being created as a set of rules meant to be a kind of edgier weirder-fantasy D&D), but as time went on he became more and more obsessed with making his game fit a 17th-century Earth mold, essentially adapting to become 3rd wave. It's maybe one of the best examples of how important the 3rd-wave concept is.


RPGPundit

@Pundit
I don't want to be a dick about this, but is it happenstance that this whole wave idea neatly fits your own output of D&D-derived game products? Except for the first wave of course, whose arbiters you have mixed feelings for, because they didn't consider you "pure" enough.

Quote from: RPGPundit;964822DCC and most of the Gonzo Fantasy are 3rd Wave OSR.  They are making rules intended to fit a specific genre and in many cases a specific setting.

Raggi's stuff was originally definitely 2nd wave (being created as a set of rules meant to be a kind of edgier weirder-fantasy D&D), but as time went on he became more and more obsessed with making his game fit a 17th-century Earth mold, essentially adapting to become 3rd wave. It's maybe one of the best examples of how important the 3rd-wave concept is.


RPGPundit

The new releases on RPGNow doesn't support your thesis. Rather they show that a scattershot potpourri is being released. I guess driven by the interest of their respective authors.

Looking at the new releases
An Adventure
A OSR RPG using 2d6 as the primary dice mechanc
A zine for White Star a science fiction version of OD&D.
A set of paper miniatures with White Star in mine
A Dice rolling utility in PDF form
An Adventure
A set of random tables
A monster product
An Adventure
A books of character races
An Adventure
A OSR RPG with a d20 roll under mechanic
A new magic system variant
Superhero roleplaying for S&W Light
A monster creation aid for Labyrinth Lord
A monster creation aid for Labyrinth Lord
A monster creation aid for Labyrinth Lord
An adventure
Player options aid for Labyrinth Lord
Player options aid for Labyrinth Lord
A zine supporting a old school podcast
A supplement for C&C adapting classical mythology and historical info
An adventure
An adventure in Spanish?
An adventure collection
An adventure
An Adventure

By using the toolbar on the left you can break down the 1400+ releases on RPGNow into separate categories and see what is what.

For example this for core books.

Overall looking this over I see little difference between what was being released in 2010 except everything has more in it. For example Stars without Numbers was released in 2010 and now seven years later there many more science fiction adaptations of classic D&D. Mutant Future was released in 2008.

By all means celebrate but the fact is that the OSR as whole been diversifying since the beginning. There only been one wave and that the one been driven by the use of open content to present one's vision. ANYONE who has the interest and drive to create and distribute their work.

Well, if the following model is correct:

First people made content of Type A
Later they made content of Type B
Even Later they made content of Type C

Then once people started making Type C, that doesn't mean people can't or won't make Type A or Type B content.  "Wave" is just a Type, not a defined era or exclusive window.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965343Well, if the following model is correct:

First people made content of Type A
Later they made content of Type B
Even Later they made content of Type C

Then once people started making Type C, that doesn't mean people can't or won't make Type A or Type B content.  "Wave" is just a Type, not a defined era or exclusive window.

Sure, however my experience is that A was made then within a very short amount of time over three dozen people were producing a wide variety of material including myself doing what Pundit called Wave 3. There were already people making classic D&D material on a small scale or doing the "wink wink nudge nudge" deal. But once fans became aware of what happened with OSRIC and Basic Fantasy, a enough of them switched over to using open content to jump start the OSR so that by 2009 it was getting hard to track everything that was being done with classic D&D.

There was never a time when the retro-clones were the only game in town or the main focus. Right from get go there was criticism of their originality and these critics turning around using open content to produce supplemental product and adventures. (but never a retro-clone oh no).

By the time Stuart Marshall set off the Pundit with his crack about Forward the Adventure!, the OSR was well beyond any type of discernible wave than the the fact it was diversifying fast due to the use of open content.

Well, Pundit what do you consider the first Wave 3 OSR product and Estar, do you have examples of that type of product that occurred earlier?

Among the OSRIC crowd on K&K there seems to be some goofy resentent of 'millenials' and their supposed snowflakery that has led them to embrace heretics like Zak and Patrick Stuart who are supposedly 'not-Gygaxian.'

Putting aside the criticism of DCO for being amateurish (suspectly so, perhaps even punkish in intent!) it seems to me that Zak, Kowloski and in particular Stuart are trying to recapture the strangeness D&D had early on, particularly in Gygax's modules like Shrine of Kuo-Toa, Vault of the Drow, Land Beyond the Magic Mirror and Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. And Gygax's particular talent for creating unique and odd magical items is a clear inspiration as well.

One can criticize them for how succesful they are but to criticize because they are trying to do something different, are making people excited about D&D and the OSR and attracting a smidgen of outside attention seems self-defeating.

Even more bizarre is the claim that it is all built around personality-worship. This from people who attack others for not being sufficently 'Gygaxian'!!

Quote from: CRKrueger;965343QUOTE=CRKrueger;965350]Well, Pundit what do you consider the first Wave 3 OSR product and Estar, do you have examples of that type of product that occurred earlier?

If the third wave is "Innovation of Setting.  Games where the interesting part was less about what rules were being changed as how the D&D-type rules were being applied to fit radically different settings" then I propose that the third wave began with The Empire of the Petal Throne in 1975.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965350Well, Pundit what do you consider the first Wave 3 OSR product and Estar, do you have examples of that type of product that occurred earlier?

Here are some of what I remember
Carcosa 2008
Mutant Future 2008
Ruins & Ronin 2009
Age of Conan 2009
Majestic Wilderlands 2009
Warriors of Mars 2010
Stars without Number 2011

There is RPGNow sorted by release date and Hoard and Hordes that can be used as references.

The thing to remember is that people focused on adventures more than anything else.

Quote from: Voros;965393Among the OSRIC crowd on K&K there seems to be some goofy resentent of 'millenials' and their supposed snowflakery that has led them to embrace heretics like Zak and Patrick Stuart who are supposedly 'not-Gygaxian.'

Putting aside the criticism of DCO for being amateurish (suspectly so, perhaps even punkish in intent!) it seems to me that Zak, Kowloski and in particular Stuart are trying to recapture the strangeness D&D had early on, particularly in Gygax's modules like Shrine of Kuo-Toa, Vault of the Drow, Land Beyond the Magic Mirror and Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. And Gygax's particular talent for creating unique and odd magical items is a clear inspiration as well.

One can criticize them for how succesful they are but to criticize because they are trying to do something different, are making people excited about D&D and the OSR and attracting a smidgen of outside attention seems self-defeating.

Even more bizarre is the claim that it is all built around personality-worship. This from people who attack others for not being sufficently 'Gygaxian'!!

No one ever accused K&KA of ecumenism.

I don't expect what I'm about to say to change your mind (and I am not a representative of K&KA, only a member), but I would settle for being disliked for accurate reasons.

K&KA does not worship Gygax's personality in any way.  Most of what Gygax wrote (or had ghostwritten), for example, in partnership with the Troll Lords is considered simply bad.  It was not well-reviewed by the membership.  Gygax is also generally considered to be extremely poor at perhaps the most important function of an executive - building a team compatible with your vision.  He hired people based on whether or not he liked them - he apparently couldn't conceive, as an example, that hiring a bunch of people who admitted what they really wanted was to become successful fantasy novelists would result in a bunch of modules that looked like bad fantasy novels.  Nepotism isn't a major sin if you've got the money, but it didn't help the company in any meaningful way.  

Personality worship would be ZOMG YOU MUST BUY GYGAX'S WORLD BUILDER LINE IT IS AMAZING AND CHANGED MY GAME FOR HTE BETTER!!!!k

There are quite a few members with personal connections to Gygax, either through meeting or corresponding with him, but starry-eyed is not applicable.  As far as personality conflicts with some people, sure.  But the RPG community is rife with personality conflicts so at worst I suppose one could say that K&KA is no better or different in that regard.  If that is the stone to be thrown, let them without sin do the casting.

It would be accurate to say that K&KA discards most of what dedicated RPG consumers find interesting about RPGs.  This is where "Gygaxian" comes into play, because it is used in the sense of extolling the implicit setting and encouraged play style in the 1E core books - even more than the rules themselves.  The rules are neutral, as evidenced by mid- to late-1E products that (apart from the rules used to express them) resulted in play very different from that discussed in those books.  It would also be accurate to say that K&KA largely believes that the "Gygaxian" version of the game probably received very little official support compared against all the other styles of play D&D has encouraged through support products.  I think a case can be made that this is directly a result of Gygax's poor sense of who to hire as designers supporting the rule set he put out.  We basically went straight from the books being published, to tourney modules (including some excellent classics, granted), and then to the frustrated novelist line of game supplements.  But not much stuff that made the implicit setting easier to run.  The Greyhawk campaign set, probably, but even higher level modules were similar in structure to lower-level modules.  

So certainly, just in the dismissal of other sorts of play as something worth time and effort, it's understandable that K&KA would be disliked for this view by those feeling dismissed.  But that's still different than what you express.

No one at K&KA wants "orcs in a hole".  Bringing back the strange, as you put it, gathers no disdain there.  A big part of the difference is - I suspect - simply lies in different goals.  I think a lot of K&KA members would like to get AD&D products out to support people already running AD&D and looking for support products, or, to encourage people who aren't actively playing AD&D (and weren't dedicated hobbyist RPGers per se) to pick it back up again.   But the players of other later published games I don't think (my opinion only) were ever targeted to entice back.  We're interested in what a game can do, or adding new rules to a game, than endlessly re-addressing rules that otherwise work for variety.  That is more of a desire for RPG hobbyists who enjoy crunch for crunch's sake.  62 types of darkness probably is interesting to an RPG hobbyist in ways that would be unwelcome for a guy who wants to buy something applying the rules already in the books he pulled out of his attic; and while conversion of minor details is no big issue for a hobbyist RPGer, the attic-guy isn't necessarily interested in any extra overhead for their re-entry adventure.  

Convincing people who either entered into D&D through later editions to try a more original general approach to RPGs, or left TSR editions for later editions to return, is, on reflection, a worthwhile approach for some people - but I think all concerned would agree it isn't particularly preservationist of the original games themselves except as honored ancestors directly connected in varying degrees.  For some that is not really of great consequence so long as a certain spirit of play is honored in some way in the new offerings, but for others that isn't going to hit the sweet spot.  Rather than griping over a label's boundaries, I say let's just recognize each other as near-but-different and move forward doing the exact thing we wish to do without putting claims in on each other's POV.  

Because one fair critique that could be offered of K&KA is that it hasn't produced what it desires in large quantities, which I think is changing soon and I'm excited about that.  Certainly there's been a lot of drama kicked up over the last few months - I've been a part of that as well, admittedly.  But in the end I think it's good.  There's no need to squabble.  But neither should there be some insistence that our aims are the same, and that what others produce does in fact meet the goals of a group like K&KA.  Why fight over whether or not a banner means this or that, or insist that if K&KA doesn't see itself particularly aligned with the OSR, it is, in fact, aligned whether we desire it or not?  Or that if some traditional D&D players say "hey, product X diverges to the point we no longer find it as useful as we expected for TSR D&D" that they are horrible grogs because they notice that?  WTF is that?  We are preservationists, others prefer to draw inspiration for something sort of different in some way.  Great.  I don't think we're really competing for the same eyeballs since many preservationists don't concern themselves the part of the RPG scene which plays lots of different RPGs, so who cares?  The bizarre insistence that I was in the OSR whether I liked it or not was the straw that broke this camel's back, personally.  Don't lump me in with something that is not doing what I am trying to do, or tell me there's no difference between us.  Allow preservationists to differentiate themselves in a way which makes clear that their output is purposefully designed to not materially vary from what TSR D&D already covered, but instead is creative within that framework or extends it.