I realize I'm guity of this myself but it would be nice if not every discussion regarding the OSR was a debate about the OSR and the worse reactionary elements in it, which I agree does exist and should be criticitzed.

Anyone reading James V. West's Black Pudding OSR zine? I think the second issue is excellent with a solid dungeon included. I prefer when he designs more NPCs, monsters and magic items than to the creation of more subclasses. It seems to me one of the strengths of B/X and BECMI is their limited range of classes, making the game simplier and more elegant.

I prefer when the OSR focuses more on the creation of content than endless tweaking of rules. I understand the attraction of coming up with one's variation on a rule or class for rule wonks but find it the least interesting element of the OSR.

In terms of bringing the OSR to a wider auidence what do you think has been the most effective, the free rules clones or the original content of LotFP and others? For me, it was the DCC modules and LotFP modules.

At first though I did ignore a lot of DCC because the retro trade dress made it look like a lot of second-rate amateur productions. The irony to me is how they always have that goofy blurb about 'remember the old days...dungeon crawls' but many of the DCC modules are far from conventional dungeon crawls. Not sure if they are still including that on the new stuff but I defintely think they should retire that reactionary blurb which often in no way reflects the actual content of their product, if it ever did.

Quote from: estar;960071... I can't think of a single RPG or editions hasn't been mocked or criticized in someway...

Agreed, didn't many wargaming grognards dismiss D&D itself when it appeared?

There's always going to be rearguard critics but I do think it is good to not allow them to dominate the conversation and I'm not convinced that Finch and the Pope were making productive contributions (although Finch made some decent, but not stellar, adventures).

Quote from: estar;960071And the reverse doesn't occur or it doesn't occur with regularity in regards to Shadowrun, Fate, Star Wars, GURPs, etc, etc? I can't think of a single RPG or editions hasn't been mocked or criticized in someway. Yet somehow you are specifically singling out the OSR, and you are implying that mocking newer editions of D&D is standard procedure within the OSR.




1) Why wouldn't I encourage people to make the material I like.
2) Somehow I get the feeling that the you are on the only thinking that my post was the work of somebody who is scared. The thing with open content that I didn't touch on is that it always there to be used. If and when interest in classic editions of D&D wanes the same pieces are still available for the next generation to be used in the ways they see fit.

You cannot reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to.

Quote from: S'mon;960066I just read the Poul Anderson one - one of those Unbelievers didn't like Three Hearts & Three Lions! :eek:

Disclaimer: S'mon has not read Three Hearts & Three Lions.

That's okay. Poul Anderson got on whole "RPGs make people go crazy" train when it was fashionable in 1982, so fuck that guy anyway.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;960081You cannot reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to.

Quote from: Baulderstone;960084That's okay. Poul Anderson got on whole "RPGs make people go crazy" train when it was fashionable in 1982, so fuck that guy anyway.

To be fair, upon reading the debates on the various fora, he may not have been wrong. People argue about the damnedest things.

Quote from: Baulderstone;960056Been reading some of those entries. So far I have read the ones on Vance, Dunsany, Brackett, and Leiber, and they really enjoyed them all. I guess if I keep reading, I will hit some they didn't like, but I am not seeing anything like a systematic attack on Appendix N here.

It's the ones on the older authors that set my teeth on edge. Lovecraft and Howard, like some others, are viewed through the lens of modern sensibilities and political correctness.

Quote from: Dumarest;960101To be fair, upon reading the debates on the various fora, he may not have been wrong. People argue about the damnedest things.

Fine. Let's just say he was wrong about the way that RPGs drove people crazy. His story "The Saturn Game" is just the fake version of the Egbert story with roleplaying astronauts instead of college students and an alien world instead of steam tunnels. It somehow won a Hugo and Nebula.  

Quote from: chirine ba kal;960115It's the ones on the older authors that set my teeth on edge. Lovecraft and Howard, like some others, are viewed through the lens of modern sensibilities and political correctness.

That can get old,but overall, they did seem to be approaching the project with the intention of finding real inspiration, not just looking to crap on everything. I think they deserve at least partial credit.

Quote from: Baulderstone;960120That can get old,but overall, they did seem to be approaching the project with the intention of finding real inspiration, not just looking to crap on everything. I think they deserve at least partial credit.

Agreed. I'd like tho think so, too; as you say, the politics do get old.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;959641Though I do not consider myself part of the OSR because I never stopped playing this sillyass game the way I always have, I am extremely grateful that the OSR has become a thing, because at least there are other people acknowledging that yeah, these games can be fun in their own right.

I'm kind of the same way. One of our campaigns is still running once in a while that I joined in '86. I used to play on and off in a BECMI/RC campaign during the same era, but the fellow who ran that converted to 5e, as his 20 something kids are very much into it. Mostly I play in a campaign which could be best described as Gonzo played straight. Over the years pretty much anything that used compatible rules was brought in at some point. Gamma World, Buck Rogers XXVc, a WWII German Unit from an old Dragon Magazine. I still have conversion notes from bringing Marvel Superheroes (which led to me rescaling and expanding Strength, using something like a linear progression based on the square root of two) in. Psionics from Will and the Way/Skills and Powers was hacked a lot for that.

Anyhow, back to the topic. We've always picked up material that we could use. When the OSR started coming around, all of a sudden there was all this material I could use. OSRIC meant I could go play 1e and just bring one book with me for reference because it's close enough. Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion impressed me enough that I pretty much went to Sentry Box and just pulled everything Goblinoid off the shelf. The first gaming kickstart thing was an Indigogo for Starships and Spacemen. Conveniently, I was able to buy Apes Victorious off of Lulu which has a facility in Canada so shipping is reasonable. Same thing with Stars without Number and related items. I have as much in print that I can get, and filled the rest with PDFs. Actually, I buy stuff most often on Lulu. I think I got Low Fantasy Roleplaying at the same time as Apes Victorious, and I picked up Dark Dungeons because it's BECMIish and I still have a soft spot for that.

The nice thing about the OSR is that it can bring in decades of innovation, and almost anyone can produce a product that's sharp and recognizable. I can flip through a book or look at an online preview and can tell right away if it's something I'd use, and I like that. Even if they aren't designed to be modular, OSRs by their definition are modular, being pieced together from existing rules sometimes in combination with new content. Everything is plug and play and print on demand means I don't have to walk blindly into Sentry Box or a used bookstore, hoping they have something I like, even if I still walk blindly into game and book stores. My FLGS does carry OSR stuff, though I do still order online. I prefer the brick and mortar store for newer material like Adventures in Middle Earth which would have ridiculous shipping costs if I ordered it online.

Another thing with the OSR. Each one is it's own monster. It lets you see the games you remember through someone else's looking glass. Everyone has a different ideas as what they think is essential to a game. You may or may not agree with it, but the nice thing is you only have to use the bits you like, unless you agreed to run the game on it's own rules as written which can be fun as well.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;960040Well, you know, the OSR hates D&D.

I fucking HATE grognards. I can't fucking stand them and can't wait for them to all die off from their bitterness. On that day the sun will shine just a little brighter and the birds sing just a little more. I understand the irony in that statement.

(and I'm using a very specific definition of 'grognard' which is very similar to the one I use for my elderly relatives. They smack of bitterness because no one will play their Weapon vs AC games with them anymore. They demean and disparage anything new because it didn't suck Gary's cock. Anything different is bad.)

That's actually the funny thing though. Most of the OSR doesn't hate D&D, they hate AD&D (1st Edition, they ignore 2e) and worship OD&D, especially White Box. The less Gygax the better, it seems, even though I'm not sure Dave Arneson ever actually wrote down a damn thing in his career, relying on others to actually do the grunt work of the writing.

Yet, OD&D is objectively broken in places. Is there any good reason that armor class starts at 9 instead of 10? It made sense with the chainmail combat system, but not in D&D. The experience progression is poorly balanced, which was largely corrected in AD&D (save the Druid). Is there any rational reason that the Cleric levels up twice as fast as other classes? 50,000 per level compared to 120,000 for the fighter or 100,000 for the MU? (and the poor thief  needs 125,000 the most of any class despite being the weakest, but this is apparently justified because the Thief is a heretical addition that disrupts the purity of the original game by the heretic Gygax, never mind he borrowed it from a group who felt they needed it in their game). And the original hit dice system of everyone having 1d6, but for some levels you don't get a full hit dice, just a +1 or +2. Does that really make any sense compared to the later one whole hit die per level of varying types? (But then to some in the OSR, polyhedral dice are heretical. Especially the d10. But not the d30 for some reason)

There are some big Gygax fans, at least at Dragonsfoot, but they aren't really even part of the OSR, they just like 1e and that's it.

While Grognards might stick with the same game they play warts and all, it's harder to explain people who not only embrace the warts of their favored game, but glorify and embrace them the way White Box fans have.

He said "objectively broken." Can't wait to hear the rebuttals. Or at least a link to the definitions of objective and subjective.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;960115It's the ones on the older authors that set my teeth on edge. Lovecraft and Howard, like some others, are viewed through the lens of modern sensibilities and political correctness.

I read the first one on "Red Nails" and couldn't continue. It felt like leftist student lunch hour.

First off The OD&D rules were a result of actual play with dozens of players for a year and a half. The rules were also written for the wargaming community of the early 70s which had a lot of shared experiences and assumptions. Not in the least of which is that the default mode of play was to think of something they want to wargame out first, and come up with the rules second. There were little to no published set of rules that the players could turn too. Instead there was a body of common knowledge as well as sources from libraries people knew to look for. This is state of the hobby when D&D was put together.

What OD&D served was as a framework to run a campaign of interlinked sessions where the focus was on players interacting with a setting as individual characters with their actions adjudicated by a referee using the OD&D rules as guideline. There was other kinds of campaigns being run at the time that were being adjudicated by referees most of which were focused on grand strategy of fighting out a war with the battles resolved by using miniatures.

Quote from: JeremyR;960130Yet, OD&D is objectively broken in places. Is there any good reason that armor class starts at 9 instead of 10?

There are eight categories of armor in OD&D. In one wargame article about archey (you can looked this up in the book Playing at the World) Gygax listed them them as 1 to 8. In D&D it got changed to 2 to 9. Gygax had a habit of using tables to show what to roll and win in Chainmail, Don't Give up the Ship and other games he authored or co-authored. So for some unknown reason he changed to 2 to 9. Better known is the shift from 9 to 10. In AD&D he added other armor types and decided the way to handle it was to make the lowest armor class 10 and work his way up from there. So in AD&D plate +shield is still AC 2 but no armor is now 10 to accommodate scale and ring mail.

Quote from: JeremyR;960130It made sense with the chainmail combat system, but not in D&D.

Chainmail didn't have armor class, it had armor type.

Quote from: JeremyR;960130The experience progression is poorly balanced, which was largely corrected in AD&D (save the Druid). Is there any rational reason that the Cleric levels up twice as fast as other classes?

Dave Fant.

The deal was this, from what I understand from reading everybody account that the Blackmoor campaign not only had players playing characters that are heroes but players playing the "bad guys" as well. While there was some NPCs run by Dave by and large the campaign was bout two opposing groups of players going at each other. One on the side of law and the other on the side of chaos. One players named Dave Fant became a Dracula style Vampire. Which at that time is one of the toughest monsters in the campaign. Well he started dominating and Dave figured that Fant needed a Van Helsing type to opposed. Added a dash a Charlesmagne Paladins, and some healing and you have the cleric.

Now Gygax runs his campaign and the vampire is still one of the tougher monsters. Plus the Cleric probably considered to be more of a support roll compared to the Conan style fighter and Merlin/Gandalf style Wizard. Who wanted to be Friar Tuck in the party? So my guess is that Gygax at one point made it attractive to play a cleric by having the class progress faster. But I have no anecdote or documentation to support that.

Quote from: JeremyR;9601305 And the original hit dice system of everyone having 1d6, but for some levels you don't get a full hit dice, just a +1 or +2. Does that really make any sense compared to the later one whole hit die per level of varying types? (But then to some in the OSR, polyhedral dice are heretical. Especially the d10. But not the d30 for some reason)

Well for one thing you have to remember that aside from the Fighter being able to wear armor. The Cleric being able to turn and have spells at higher levels, and the Wizard with his one spell. Low Level OD&D character are roughly equivalent in capability. In Chainmail combat both Magic User and Cleric fight as a regular warrior and Fighters get +1 to the 2d6 rolls. In the d20 alternative combat all three classes have the same to hit chances. Regardless of weapon they all did 1d6 damage. Not to say there no difference but compared to later editions and later supplement the difference were not that drastic.

Again from reading books and anecdotes the campaigns were more about using your wits to survives than the mechanics. In general you look at the situation as if you there as the character. Figured out something that could work given the character's capabilities, then tell the referee who would then tell you to roll such and such dice to see if you succeed.

In that sense OD&D isn't broken at all and work well 'as is'

Finally who gives a shit about the god damn rules. Read what I wrote more carefully. The deal with the open content is that is allow people more way to share what they do and make with ANY classic edition of D&D. That revolutionary, not debates over whether this edition is fucking broken or not. Moreso because the ways of sharing has opened up it easier for people can see how other folks use a particular edition in actual play. I don't know if you understand this but you and a lot of people don't seem to get that referee have and continue to make each and every edition of D&D work in a campaign including the "broken" OD&D.

If you wonder how OD&D can possibly work in a campaign, well we got one guy here who hasn't stopped playing it from even before it was published. You got me who been running OD&D campaigns since 2008. Or you do a google search and possibly find other folks who wrote up how they handled OD&D like this guy named Philotomy.

The rules are the least of your problems when running a tabletop campaign. You should be worrying about your damn setting and making sure it is something fun, that the rules work with it, and that your prepared to handle the things your players try to do that are not covered by the rules. Because if this doesn't happen then your players are not going to find the campaign fun.

Quote from: estar;960139... The rules were also written for the wargaming community of the early 70s which had a lot of shared experiences and assumptions...This is state of the hobby when D&D was put together.

I've seen this argument advanced before and it is true as far as it goes but I'm not sure what the point of it really is. Does that excuse obtusely written rules? While it is pointless to harp on about the original rules at this point I don't see much purpose in playing apologist for the lack of clarity and (relatively minor) flaws in design. Besides as you say soon after publication people from all kinds of background far beyond the wargaming community started to innovate and take the rules apart. Obsessing that daggers are OP in the early rules now seems pretty pointless.