Quote from: Armchair Gamer;968048Personally, I think if you want to get the equivalent to Scholasticism in an RPG, you go to the HERO System...

Is that fancy talk for falling asleep at your desk?

Quote from: Baulderstone;968047I think Estar's point was that rather than trying to bend your game to do what Gary wanted to do with it, you should bend rules to do what you want out of a game. It's hard to get freshness is you are trying to rebuild Castle Greyhawk in exacting detail, but you can get a fresh result if you just work with whatever literary and cinematic obsessions you have bubbling in your head at the moment.

That may have been what he meant but it's not what he wrote.

Quote from: Baulderstone;968043The article in question lists four goals on the new edition, and simpler language was just the third one. Simpler language doesn't automatically suggest a dumbed-down game. The other goals were to create a more organized book for people new to gaming as well as to take into account years of playtesting and answering questions. The other goal was to provide a set that would smoothly lead into the expert rules.

Simpler language in a rule books seems an admirable goal to me and not a sign of dumbing something down.

Simplifying the game to be more appealing and comprehensible to younger audiences wasn't the only goal of the revision (I never claimed otherwise), but it was absolutely a goal. So me referring to B/X D&D as "the watered-down version for kids" (and note also that I said "watered-down," which isn't the same thing as "dumbed-down") doesn't tell the whole story, but the part of the story it does tell is unquestionably true.

Also, why should anybody care what I - somebody you don't know, and will almost certainly never meet - think of the version of D&D you choose to play? What possible harm does it do you that I don't really like your favorite version? This quote has turned up several times in the past couple months as "proof" that I'm some kind of spite-filled monster out to ruin everybody else's fun and the literal poster-child of everything wrong with 1E AD&D fans, which is just utterly bizarre to me. Yeah, I like my preferred version better than your preferred version. So fucking what?

Quote from: T. Foster;968057I like my preferred version better than your preferred version. So fucking what?

Everybody has to like exactly what I like. If they don't, then I have to start calling them names and distorting their statements to mean what I want them to mean. That's the first two rules of debating RPGs online.

Quote from: Baulderstone;968047I think Estar's point was that rather than trying to bend your game to do what Gary wanted to do with it, you should bend rules to do what you want out of a game. It's hard to get freshness is you are trying to rebuild Castle Greyhawk in exacting detail, but you can get a fresh result if you just work with whatever literary and cinematic obsessions you have bubbling in your head at the moment.

The problem is that runs counter to what a lot of the OSR books I've picked up claim.  They seem to believe you can some how catch the lightning in the bottle.  But as was stated, the game has evolved, we know more, too much, to make it happen like was.

Quote from: T. Foster;968057Yeah, I like my preferred version better than your preferred version. So fucking what?

Then you couldn't have threads or even games like these.  And where's the fun in that?  I think that's the point?  I don't get it.  It's all D&D in the end, right?  And I'll repeat myself:  This is what everyone forgets about this OSR, it's just D&D.  Have fun your way, that's what's most important.

Quote from: T. Foster;968057Simplifying the game to be more appealing and comprehensible to younger audiences wasn't the only goal of the revision (I never claimed otherwise), but it was absolutely a goal. So me referring to B/X D&D as "the watered-down version for kids" (and note also that I said "watered-down," which isn't the same thing as "dumbed-down") doesn't tell the whole story, but the part of the story it does tell is unquestionably true.

Also, why should anybody care what I - somebody you don't know, and will almost certainly never meet - think of the version of D&D you choose to play? What possible harm does it do you that I don't really like your favorite version? This quote has turned up several times in the past couple months as "proof" that I'm some kind of spite-filled monster out to ruin everybody else's fun and the literal poster-child of everything wrong with 1E AD&D fans, which is just utterly bizarre to me. Yeah, I like my preferred version better than your preferred version. So fucking what?

You are welcome not to like B/X. I thought we were just having a conversation about games in a game forum. You said you thing. I said mine. I'm not in the least bit mad at you.

I can understand you being pissed off if this quote is following you around the Internet, but it wasn't my intention to pile on. I'm not really an AD&D hater either. I like using B/X just because it is simple base that I can use with various house rules and things taken from AD&D.

Quote from: Baulderstone;968070You are welcome not to like B/X. I thought we were just having a conversation about games in a game forum. You said you thing. I said mine. I'm not in the least bit mad at you.

I can understand you being pissed off if this quote is following you around the Internet, but it wasn't my intention to pile on. I'm not really an AD&D hater either. I like using B/X just because it is simple base that I can use with various house rules and things taken from AD&D.

OK, we're cool then. And yeah, it's very weird and annoying to me that something I wrote literally as a parenthetical aside in a post about something else has now been brought up several times in several different places, always by people I've had no prior interaction with, as proof that I'm the embodiment of the "OSR Taliban" or - as somebody on another site wrote - that I'm "consumed with hate," "sad and pathetic," "one of the worst," "ignorant and hate filled," "the self-proclaimed expert and gatekeeper of what old school is," etc.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;968048Hmm...got any good examples? I don't know much about Gygaxian Naturalism, but I do know Scholasticism. The OSR is actually like the Renaissance or the Reformation in its emphasis on 'back to the sources'.

   Personally, I think if you want to get the equivalent to Scholasticism in an RPG, you go to the HERO System, but I may be biased.

Sorry, I was just poking at old JMal because (a) AFAIK he's a pretty devout Catholic (b) Talmudic to me implies more disputatious rather than JMal's "Pope of the OSR" pronouncements ex cathedra and (c) I think Scholasticism was quite influential in the Renaissance though that is heresy for Protestants such as myself.

Quote from: S'mon;968077Sorry, I was just poking at old JMal because (a) AFAIK he's a pretty devout Catholic

  True.

Quote(b) Talmudic to me implies more disputatious rather than JMal's "Pope of the OSR" pronouncements ex cathedra

   Pronouncements of dogma may be more Catholic, but Scholasticism is very disputatious.

Quoteand (c) I think Scholasticism was quite influential in the Renaissance though that is heresy for Protestants such as myself.

  It depends on how you define 'Renaissance' and 'Scholasticism', but generally, Renaissance Humanism and the Reformation are seen as in part reactions against Scholasticism.

Quote from: S'mon;967919Is 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?

Let's see if I can address this without derailing the thread. There's neo-Nazis POS like Varg and then extremist reactionaries like Johnson. One is beyond the pale whereas the other is a bit of a bore who projects his politics onto talented pulp writers like Brackett. I mentioned Johnson's politics because like a 50s Marxist he insists on dragging it into his analysis and oftentimes profoundly distorts the writers he discusses. That's judging from his blog posts but to his credit he does seem to occasionally put aside his own politics and discuss a subversive and overtly leftie writer like Margaret St Clair fairly. I just don't know if I want to slog through all the pop culture rambling and politicing for the occasional gem.

As to whether the Pundit is far right...

Quote from: T. Foster;968008Here's Tom Moldvay, editor of the 1981 D&D Basic Set, talking about it in Dragon #52 (August 1981):

Everyone knows that B/X and BECMI were developed for kids and newbies. You use that as a slur and claim it was 'watered down.' We all heard that disparagement back in the 80s but many now believe from experience at the table that there were significant advantages to the stripped down approach of those versions.  

And its not just in retrospect, Imagine magazine carried a review of the Red Box that praised its simplier rules and superior presentation for newbies.

Just because it was made simplier (or perhaps more accurately not made pointlessly complicated) and 'for kids' is no more a measure of quality than the fact that Through the Looking Glass and Treasure Island were written for children makes them inferior to The Da Vinci Code or 50 Shades of Gray.

You have a right to prefer AD&D but you don't have a right to shoot your mouth off on the net and not have people disagree with you. Seems like many on the net you can dish it out but not take it.

Quote from: robiswrong;968030I'm a believer in understanding how Gygax ran his tables.  But a big part of that is understanding how the rules evolved around that style of gameplay so that you can - get this - be better informed about which rules should be changed or removed if you're *not* playing that way.

Exactly.

The weirdass thing is that people assume Gygax's old rules don't work, rather than they are perfectly functional but for a different style of play.  Which baffles the fuck out of me.  Nobody writes rules that don't work, and especially nobody writes rules that don't work and then go from a standing start to a million dollar company in less than five years.

Assume that Gygax wasn't a complete moron, and assume that the rules work as intended.  You don't have to like that play style, but don't be an utter fuckwit.

Quote from: Voros;968091Just because it was made simplier and 'for kids' is no more a measure of quality than the fact that Through the Looking Glass and Treasure Island were written for children makes them inferior to The Da Vinci Code or 50 Shades of Gray.

Using the words "inferior to" before "The Da Vinci Code" and "Fifty Shades of Grey" must be some sort of oxymoron. And comparing those to "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" and "Treasure Island" is the literary equivalent of a hate crime or at least tantamount to treason.

Quote from: estar;967888That 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.

And if i thought this thread had started for any other reason then your need to show off your epenis I might even care.

Quote from: robiswrong;968030I'm a believer in understanding how Gygax ran his tables.  But a big part of that is understanding how the rules evolved around that style of gameplay so that you can - get this - be better informed about which rules should be changed or removed if you're *not* playing that way.

Personally I find it interesting to listen to but don't care if I ever recapture that at my table what I care about is what works at my table.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968092Exactly.

The weirdass thing is that people assume Gygax's old rules don't work, rather than they are perfectly functional but for a different style of play.  Which baffles the fuck out of me.  Nobody writes rules that don't work, and especially nobody writes rules that don't work and then go from a standing start to a million dollar company in less than five years.

Assume that Gygax wasn't a complete moron, and assume that the rules work as intended.  You don't have to like that play style, but don't be an utter fuckwit.

I agree with you wholly on this he pretty much started are hobby as we know it single handed that means no mater what you think he did something right.