Quote from: Dumarest;967759Cynthia Nixon?!

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Haha I meant Clinton Nixon.

Quote from: kosmos1214;967867And are take away is supposed to be what exactly? other then there's A bunch of people in that thread that don't really post here any more I assume cuz they lack the guts to put up with pun pun.

That in this regard Pundit doesn't know what he is talking about.  There are other far more plausible reasons for the craziness that is the OSR and where it going i.e. open content and low barrier enabled by digital technology.

Quote from: CRKrueger;967851We've got a thread going on that right now. So far we have personal beefs combined with random people no one can name or point to leading to a idiotically overblown stereotype that doesn't actually exist outside of Jmal.

I think most of us have been avoiding names to prevent too much internet drama but since you insist: T. Foster, the dude who stepped out of a time machine to proclaim B/X a 'watered down version for kids' lol, Oakes Spaulding, AxeMental, Landifarne, Francisca, T. Foster, DungeonDelver, Gene Weigel who pretended to know everything ever about the beginnings of the game and TSR cause he hung out with Gygax POST-TSR until he was exposed for the compulsive bullshitter he was by an actual TSR employee.

Quote from: CRKrueger;967858Supposedly, there's this group of people out there who "worship" Appendix N like it's their Holy Text, or subject it to "Talmudic" study, like they are you or Gronan, who actually have spent years studying real Holy Texts as an academic and spiritual endeavor.  The idea is idiotic and ludicrous on its face.

Except we have a far-right blogger who has treated Appendix N to exactly that kind of rambling 'talmudic' reading and just published it as a book: Jeffro Johnson.

Quote from: Voros;967895I think most of us have been avoiding names to prevent too much internet drama but since you insist: T. Foster, the dude who stepped out of a time machine to proclaim B/X a 'watered down version for kids' lol, Oakes Spaulding, AxeMental, Landifarne, Francisca, T. Foster, DungeonDelver, Gene Weigel who pretended to know everything ever about the beginnings of the game and TSR cause he hung out with Gygax POST-TSR until he was exposed for the compulsive bullshitter he was by an actual TSR employee.

Tying this back to what Pundit is contending. What impact they had on the growth and content of the OSR i.e people, playing, publishing, and promoting classic edition of D&D?

Well exactly, I've said their impact is probably minimal. Although Landifarne 'questioning the integrity' of reviewers like Bryan Lynch and Gus L. arguably could have an impact as all libel can. Weigel oddly is still treated like an authority by some on DF.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;965923As far as Gygaxian naturalism is concerned, I may be mistaken but it appears to be more concerned with letting play produce results organically rather than nudging things in the direction of a particular narrative. D&D never has had a sensible ecology. With monsters based on plastic toys roaming around at random, a "normal" ecology isn't even a consideration.

AIR Gygaxian Naturalism was about running with the implications of monster descriptions in the Monster Manual. Eg that orcs have families and societies, they aren't House on the Borderland unknowable pig-man horrors. That lamiae and harpies and sphinxes and manticores and medusae and countless other critters are biological entities that feed, reproduce etc, rather than physically incorporated spirits/petty gods/one-off monsters as you would tend to see in mythology. That the world runs along naturalistic principles, not mythic principles (unlike eg Runequest/Glorantha). Ironically it's the exact opposite of the 'Dungeon as Mythic Underworld' backstrapolation (an idea imposed by later writers using the non-expressed implications of the Dungeon/Underworld rules in OD&D).

I think JMal put much more thought into it than Gygax ever did. In my case his Talmudic studies were useful though, they helped me identify what I always thought was wrong with all those "Ecology of the Manticore/Gelatinous Cube/etc" Silver Age articles in Dragon Magazine and reject 'Naturalism' wherever I felt it didn't fit with what I wanted. Likewise the opposite Mythic Underworld idea can be used or rejected. In both cases I find having the concepts clarified does help my GMing, though.

Edit: Just reread JMal's Gygaxian Naturalism linked post at http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html , seems to fit my recollection.

Quote from: Voros;967896Except we have a far-right blogger who has treated Appendix N to exactly that kind of rambling 'talmudic' reading and just published it as a book: Jeffro Johnson.

Is he really 'far-right' BTW, or just a right-libertarian Castalia House type? As far as I can see there is a lot of clear blue water between Varg Vikernes and what I see on http://www.castaliahouse.com/ (I see he's the top post on their blog today) - Are you just using 'far right' to mean these anti-SJW types, which would seem to pretty much cover RPGPundit too? Or is he a National Socialist racial purity type?

Quote from: Voros;967896Except we have a far-right blogger who has treated Appendix N to exactly that kind of rambling 'talmudic' reading and just published it as a book: Jeffro Johnson.

I had never heard of Jeffro before and was thinking about picking up that Appendix N book just due to the subject matter, but man... he runs in some pretty creepazoid circles.

Thanks for warning me.

Quote from: CRKrueger;967851We've got a thread going on that right now. So far we have personal beefs combined with random people no one can name or point to leading to a idiotically overblown stereotype that doesn't actually exist outside of Jmal.

It's like a mean girls convention where mean girls complain about other mean girls.

Quote from: Voros;967885Haha I meant Clinton Nixon.

Darn.

Quote from: S'mon;967915AIR Gygaxian Naturalism was about running with the implications of monster descriptions in the Monster Manual. Eg that orcs have families and societies, they aren't House on the Borderland unknowable pig-man horrors. That lamiae and harpies and sphinxes and manticores and medusae and countless other critters are biological entities that feed, reproduce etc, rather than physically incorporated spirits/petty gods/one-off monsters as you would tend to see in mythology. That the world runs along naturalistic principles, not mythic principles (unlike eg Runequest/Glorantha). Ironically it's the exact opposite of the 'Dungeon as Mythic Underworld' backstrapolation (an idea imposed by later writers using the non-expressed implications of the Dungeon/Underworld rules in OD&D).

I think JMal put much more thought into it than Gygax ever did. In my case his Talmudic studies were useful though, they helped me identify what I always thought was wrong with all those "Ecology of the Manticore/Gelatinous Cube/etc" Silver Age articles in Dragon Magazine and reject 'Naturalism' wherever I felt it didn't fit with what I wanted. Likewise the opposite Mythic Underworld idea can be used or rejected. In both cases I find having the concepts clarified does help my GMing, though.

Edit: Just reread JMal's Gygaxian Naturalism linked post at http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html , seems to fit my recollection.

Based on what I've read so far, it seems to me that a more accurate term than Gygaxian Naturalism would be Gygaxian Makeshitupasyougoism.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;967959Based on what I've read so far, it seems to me that a more accurate term than Gygaxian Naturalism would be Gygaxian Makeshitupasyougoism.

That's certainly closer to what Gygax was doing, and the style he advocated for (more or less). JMal 'Gygaxian Naturalism' is a result of Talmudic (well, really more Catholic Scholastic) study of the 1e Monster Manual as if it were a serious treatise.

Quote from: S'mon;967962That's certainly closer to what Gygax was doing, and the style he advocated for (more or less). JMal 'Gygaxian Naturalism' is a result of Talmudic (well, really more Catholic Scholastic) study of the 1e Monster Manual as if it were a serious treatise.

Spot on, and I would extend this observation as an accurate description of the root of all brouhahas sprouting up on forums (and otherwise) everywhere, concerning our silly elf games.

Quote from: Dumarest;967850Something just as real as the Illuminati.

Your Internets, sir.