I'm not certain that download numbers would provide an accurate measure of impact.  I have more than a few RPG files that I have downloaded and never read, much less played. I also have a non-zero number of print RPG products that fall in that category.

So there were sales, and downloads that had no impact on my gaming. I would be shocked if I were the only one who has done this.

Quote from: DavetheLost;966898I'm not certain that download numbers would provide an accurate measure of impact.  I have more than a few RPG files that I have downloaded and never read, much less played. I also have a non-zero number of print RPG products that fall in that category.

So there were sales, and downloads that had no impact on my gaming. I would be shocked if I were the only one who has done this.

Sure, but it not nothing either. There is a point where you have to say through all the smoke there a fire somewhere. For example My How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox blog post has 90,000 pages view, combined with the reddit posts, forums posts, and comments i get through email occasionally I know people are using it.

My Blackmarsh has over 7,000 downloads and there is not a day goes by on a OBS storefront where a least one person doesn't download it. I am sure many of them are just like you said, look at it once and that it. From from talking to other OSR author with free products, those numbers are not typical. Again the occasional comments and emails I get leads me to think people are using it.

So if Jason said "yeah there is only a couple hundred of downloads" since 2010 that indicative of it didn't get very far. But if he said 10,000 download well that something different. Not earth shattering but not nothing either.

Also keep in my point in my debate with the Pundit is that from the get go there were no wave, no discernible pattern other than leveraging digital content and open content to play, promote, and publisher for classic editions. That a lot of other things got roped in because they interested an author who had a lot of view or sales within the OSR.

That while it picked up steam with the release of OSRIC and Basic Fantasy, there were people producing a variety of classic edition material mostly as fan material. With OSRIC and Basic Fantasy there was aha moment and it started shifting to commercial releases on Lulu and RPGnow/DriveThruRPG. The fan material got better as people started to do more knowing what was covered by the use of open content and what wasn't.

I brought Jason Vey as somebody who was trying to do something different than yet another medieval fantasy clone of D&D (although he wrote one of those as well). He not one of the most popular authors, just a guy who did solid work good enough to get him up to the silver sales level on the OBS store front. Which by the way is the same level most of Pundit's works are at.

If you notice i keep relying with specific, Pundit shoots down without offering counter examples of his own. When I bring stuff like Hoards and Hordes where a guy when it out of his way to document the various releases with links. It ignored in favor of the idea it was all about the retro-clone when Fullerton's spreadsheet clearly show even when you limited it to what he call Gygaxian D&D the number of rulesets are dwarfed by the all the other projects people released. There are 1,500 items in that list most with links to their original sites.

So I am not buying what Pundit is selling when he claims there were waves or there is a OSR taliban that controlled what was published in the mid 2000s. Especially for the later when it documented that his vitriol didn't occur until after Stuart Marshall insulted Pundit's work with Forward to Adventure!

I am probably going a bit overboard. I am passionate about open content and the use of digital technology to enable anybody who is interested to get their work out there. While I have my interests, if somebody wants tip to write an adventure that uses AD&D 'as is' I am willing to give some tips. The same if somebody wants to mash up OD&D, Cthulu, with massive Rolemaster crit tables.

I do agree with you that it is the combination of legally open source material and digital publishing are what has made the OSR possible.

I know the arguments that game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, only specific written expressions, but few if any small time RPG writers have the resources or desire to be the test case in court... The OGL and Creative Commons, etc, make it very easy to know what you are allowed to use as a basis for your own work, and it is easier to do that than creating ex nihil.

Once the d20 SRD was released under the OGL the genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

Quote from: estar;966440Nice story except other than Stuart Marshall levying a personal insult at your work,

Quote from: estar;966914Especially for the later when it documented that his vitriol didn't occur until after Stuart Marshall insulted Pundit's work with Forward to Adventure!

Where did that happen?
Apparently my Google-fu is weak...

Quote from: Voros;965904The dirty secret of the OSR is that 'mantra' is borrowed from 'storygames' in concept if not exact wording. In fact that are several modern ideas of gaming promoted throughout the OSR and in Finch's Primer.

Ok, I'll bite.

What storygame is built around the concept of 'rulings not rules'?

Most storygames try to have explicit (even if light) rules that ought to be followed, and claim that following those rules will produce a specific, ideal 'story' as a result.
A GM doing a ruling is antithetical to this. (Provided the game even has a GM...)

Oft-cited criticism (especially on this site) against storygames is that the GM is stripped of authority, including his capability to make a ruling.

Actually that 'storygames' are crafted to create railroady stories is a misnomer. At least if one defines Apocaplypse World, Monsterhearts, Spirit of 77' and all its offspring/hacks as 'storygames.' The entire system is based on very loose rules that are only to be used when needed to resolve something in the game but never bog down the game itself. This idea is so omnipresent in 'Indy' games, Vince Baker didn't invent it but he has done a lot to promote it.

The GM doesn't craft a 'story' with a beginning, middle, end they present the players with a situation and PCs make decisions that drive the game forward and may or may not create what we consider a story. The idea is 'you're this character, in this setting, here's a conflict, what do you do?' and go from there. Nothing more radical than what you see in an improv D&D session, in fact the entire playstyle was probably inspired from those kind of sessions.

A lot of criticism of storygames are against phantom strawmen instead of any actual system of rules. Actually read Baker's ideas in AW and you'll see the common criticisms have nothing to do with what he actually says. A GM in a PbtA game has lots of 'authority' in some ways greater than in D&D, they're just supposed to share it with the players by letting them make decisons, which is pretty much what happens in many idealized sandboxy D&D games. The difference most often is that D&D is location based whereas PbtA games are situation based. And that's not even true in games like DW or Freebooters of the Frontier.

Quote from: Voros;967501Actually that 'storygames' are crafted to create railroady stories is a misnomer. At least if one defines Apocaplypse World, Monsterhearts, Spirit of 77' and all its offspring/hacks as 'storygames.' The entire system is based on very loose rules that are only to be used when needed to resolve something in the game but never bog down the game itself. This idea is so omnipresent in 'Indy' games, Vince Baker didn't invent it but he has done a lot to promote it.

The GM doesn't craft a 'story' with a beginning, middle, end they present the players with a situation and PCs make decisions that drive the game forward and may or may not create what we consider a story. The idea is 'you're this character, in this setting, here's a conflict, what do you do?' and go from there. Nothing more radical than what you see in an improv D&D session, in fact the entire playstyle was probably inspired from those kind of sessions.

A lot of criticism of storygames are against phantom strawmen instead of any actual system of rules. Actually read Baker's ideas in AW and you'll see the common criticisms have nothing to do with what he actually says. A GM in a PbtA game has lots of 'authority' in some ways greater than in D&D, they're just supposed to share it with the players by letting them make decisions, which is pretty much what happens in many idealized sandboxy D&D games. The difference most often is that D&D is location based whereas PbtA games are situation based. And that's not even true in games like DW or Freebooters of the Frontier.

The Storygame/Role Playing game divide (or perceived divide) still puzzles me. It seems to clump allot of dissimilar games together, particular on the "story game" side. Much of the negative opinion seems directed at games like Fiasco, Slasher Flick and others that are more collective story creation driven as opposed to the Apoc  and Cortex games which aside from some different focus and way of handling things are pretty much like more 'traditional' games.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;967497Where did that happen?
Apparently my Google-fu is weak...

Neener, neener.

There are actually a bunch of threads where Pundejo rails against the OSR and gets shit for it because everyone knew it was just him lashing out that FtA! was filed under 'games no one cares about.'

Quote from: Black Vulmea;967556Neener, neener.

There are actually a bunch of threads where Pundejo rails against the OSR and gets shit for it because everyone knew it was just him lashing out that FtA! was filed under 'games no one cares about.'

Thank Black Vulmea. And it when downhill from there.  Pundit being offended and argumentative is reasonable. Ranting about the OSR Taliban for eight years is and making up a inaccurate story about how the OSR was back in the beginning is not.

Crom's hairy nutsack, if I'd never played Original D&D all the OSR threads in this dump would chase me away from it, just from the sheer shitstorm every one turns into.

Elf games is SEERIOUS BIDNEZZ!!!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;967570Crom's hairy nutsack, if I'd never played Original D&D all the OSR threads in this dump would chase me away from it, just from the sheer shitstorm every one turns into.

Elf games is SEERIOUS BIDNEZZ!!!

Yep. Welcome to gaming here on the Internet in the 21st century. Where's my flying car?

You dern kids, get off my lawn!

Quote from: Nexus;967547The Storygame/Role Playing game divide (or perceived divide) still puzzles me. It seems to clump allot of dissimilar games together, particular on the "story game" side. Much of the negative opinion seems directed at games like Fiasco, Slasher Flick and others that are more collective story creation driven as opposed to the Apoc  and Cortex games which aside from some different focus and way of handling things are pretty much like more 'traditional' games.

Yeah I just read that Clinton Nixon may have coined the term but a lot of dis-similar games are definitely dumped under the title. Fiasco and Meg Baker's 1001 Nights probably come close to what people mean when they say 'storygames' but neither of those, particularly 1001 Nights, fit any meaningful defintion of 'railroad.' Unless that Fiasco must end in disaster is considered a railroad which I don't think it is anymore tham CoC's design driving your PCs to death and madness is a railroad.

Quote from: Voros;967613Yeah I just read that Cynthia Nixon may have coined the term but a lot of dis-similar games are definitely dumped under the title. Fiasco and Meg Baker's 1001 Nights probably come close to what people mean when they say 'storygames' but neither of those, particularly 1001 Nights, fit any meaningful defintion of 'railroad.' Unless that Fiasco must end in disaster is considered a railroad which I don't think it is anymore tham CoC's design driving your PCs to death and madness is a railroad.

Yeah, that's the funniest thing about people's view of "storygames".  If you have a type of game where the players go OOC to gain more control over the narrative of their characters than strictly from an IC perspective, that by definition, makes a railroad GM and playstyle absolutely anathema to them.

Quote from: Voros;967613Yeah I just read that Cynthia Nixon may have coined the term but a lot of dis-similar games are definitely dumped under the title. Fiasco and Meg Baker's 1001 Nights probably come close to what people mean when they say 'storygames' but neither of those, particularly 1001 Nights, fit any meaningful defintion of 'railroad.' Unless that Fiasco must end in disaster is considered a railroad which I don't think it is anymore tham CoC's design driving your PCs to death and madness is a railroad.

Thing is, some people do. The definition of "railroad" has suffered as much drift as any other where some call any game that isn't 100% free wheeling sandbox free of any premise including genre a "railroad" at the extreme end while some define railroad as a strictly in play situation where the players choices are either or don't actually matter. Some don't think of it a pejorative And I'm sure many others. It can make discussions about this subject difficult particularly with how passionate some of are about the subject.