Quote from: Phillip;861767For 20 or 30 years, the D&D publishing scene has been thoroughly given over to Hickman-esque stuff. From what I see of the official 5e line and of Pathfinder, that continues to predominate.

  Sort of in-between, from my perspective, and more inclined to "D&D for D&D's sake" than I'd like. There are reasons beyond the OSR I don't think I'm really in D&D's target audience.

  Although a) if one counts from Dragonlance, it's been more like 30 years; b) it's swung a bit back and forth during that time. WotC launched a radical reaction against that kind of stuff when they took over, remember--"Back to the Dungeon", "What the @#(&)! is a Baatezu?", and the like.

QuoteThe OSR sure as heck has no say in what Margaret Weiss or whoever does with Dragonlance.

  The OSR, no; WotC, yes. That's one of my few complaints about the varying but almost obsessively conformist ways that WotC has handled D&D since it took over--there's a whole lot of IP for D&D that, due to ther marketing plans, not a lot can be or has been done with in years. But D&DClassics helps alleviate the lack of access to the old, and the benign neglect of hobbyist work means that fans can more or less build on it without too much trouble.

  So as I've said before and will probably say again, let me take 4E, the 2E settings(*) and some odds and ends, and I'll happily leave 'D&D' to the OSR, semi-OSR types like Mearls and Tweet, and Paizo.

   *Although Dragonlance itself I've burned out for numerous reasons, of which almost none are shared with either the OSR or broader Dragonlance fandom. I said my major farewell with my Anti-Canon several years ago.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;861745I will admit that I have a handful of OSR items--a few C&C products, mostly, from when I was looking for a good '2E lite', and a lot of the cool stuff off of the Engine of Oracles blog.

You hypocrite!
Naw, it's good - actually I think C&C (a) predates OSR and (b) has more of a 2e AD&D feel, so not surprising you might like it better than the hardcore OD&Dist OSR stuff.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;861772'Benign neglect' seems to be the description of the moment. Since ENWorld has an e-magazine for it and Troll Lord Games has just released a conversion of one of their adventures, I expect that will continue unless someone really crosses the line.

People are mostly using the OGL and the d20 SRD, or at least avoiding use of WoTC Trademarks. While you can legally use other peoples' TMs to indicate compatibility, most publishers are scared of a C&D, so just put "compatible with 5th edition" or similar.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;861742The condescension and contempt for other modes of play in Matthew Finch's infamous Primer.

While the other two points are fair enough, excepting in that I see no reason why you would expect a group who prefers older games to say nice things about newer games, this point is one I have heard a lot but simply don't see at all. Every explanation of how the Primer is hostile to different styles of play always comes down to the person either ignoring what the Primer specifically says or reading something into it that isn't there.

Voted not me, more due to my early days of RPing was BRP and not D&D. The whole D&D System and I do not click and it is independent on edition it seems. So I cannot be excited or care much about OSR.

Quote from: Phillip;861763That reminds me: What's the 5e licensing situation?

According to Enworld, Mearls has stated that there will be a third party license "soon".

In the meantime people are using the terms from the d20 SRD to replicate 5e stats.

This the Enworld article on the topic.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2967-What-s-All-This-About-Third-Party-5E-Stuff#.Vi0x236rRhE

I would say it is mostly accurate. I would add that from what we know of the genesis of 4e there are probably factions within Wizards that are hostile to any open license.

But then there are no translations of D&D 5e so it could something unique to the present day going on. Perhaps a lack of resources and manpower because they are not hitting a certain threshold of sales in absolute terms.

Anyway the cat out of the back for any game that remotely close to the d20 SRD which 5e is.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;861775Sort of in-between, from my perspective ...

  ... it's swung a bit back and forth during that time. WotC launched a radical reaction against that kind of stuff when they took over, remember--"Back to the Dungeon" ... and the like...

... So as I've said before and will probably say again, let me take 4E, the 2E settings(*) and some odds and ends...

The OSR, as the first fruits of a renaissance in hobbyist initiative, may be a rising tide that lifts the boats of a "middle school" resurgence as well.

If it is, we can expect the same accusations of "just nostalgia," exclusiveness, ideological rigidity, etc., to get levied at folks of all ages who just happen to enjoy the style of game that might be said to have had a golden age in the 1980s and 1990s. It seems more immediately than "old school" to be what the Forge crowd was in reaction against.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;861742Sure.

  The hostility of Grognardia, and apparently much of the OSR in general, to Dragonlance and I6 Ravenloft--things that really brought me into the hobby (albeit mostly through their spinoffs and ancillary material) and that I have a lot of fondness for, despite admitting their flaws. Closely related to that is the idea that that model of adventure somehow 'ruined' D&D, rather than merely providing a new model of play--at the possibly regrettable expense of other models, true, but that and abuses do not of themselves invalidate the idea.

And yet I rarely see people defend the Dragonlance modules as adventures. It's mostly about the spin off material. Which I did read and enjoy as well.
Even as a "new mode of play", I think the DL modules could have done a much better job of it. I can almost forgive them for being as railroady as the old modules were rudderless. (I just re-read Bone Hill, and goddamn that adventure is pointless.) But Weiss and Hickman seemed to want a very specific mode of play, and a tut-tutting of anyone who didn't "get" the story.

QuoteThe repeated hostility of many fans--predating the OSR--to 2nd Edition, another formative influence for me, and the criticism was so focused on the 'lack of flavor' (read: no half-orcs, assassins, demons or devils) that it gives the impression that 'real' or 'Old School' D&D is about the dark, foul, grimy and vile side of the game. This is reinforced by my memories of reading Leiber and Moorcock about 20 years ago, and my more recent exposure to Howard. For an excellent example of this, see the original marketing blurb for Dungeon Crawl Classics--the one that starts "You're not a hero."

I think in the absence of agency, a lot of players will resort to being jerks in reaction.

https://youtu.be/AP2FfsV1x4Q

Quote from: Warthur;861743But to continue the analogy: how many people are playing OSR editions of D&D compared to 3.XE/4E/5E? How many people are playing pre-1500 variations on chess as opposed to the standard game?

What do absolute numbers have to do with anything? So you are saying the most popular variant of a game should not be mocked for being obsolete regardless of age?

Quote from: Warthur;861743D&D as a whole is still going through its years of flux and has yet to produce a standard edition that can stand unaltered like chess has for centuries. Even DIY D&D sees innovation taking place in rules sets like ACKS.

My point is that games are games and don't go obsolete. You are saying my analogy of chess is false for a bunch of reasons that has noting to do with my point. I use chess because it a good example where a game developed several centuries still is found to be fun and enjoyable by people today.

It not about popularity or which version of D&D gets to be called the standard. It about addressing people who (holding up the three brown booklets) can't figure out what fun about that game and claim because it is old it is no good. When people criticize OD&D there are two main complaints; it is poor written and explained, and that it is old and RPGs have evolved and left it behind.

The first point in my opinion is valid, as much of a seminal work OD&D was we learned how to present RPGs better. However the second point is wrong. Even presented with a clearly written version like Delving Deeper, or S&W White Box, those who are critics still persist in claiming OD&D is obsolete. Claiming that it is missing important elements of modern RPGs. Yet many of these critics also fawn over games with lite mechanics like Fate that have as much or fewer mechanics than OD&D.

Quote from: Warthur;861743Partitioning D&D into "classic" and non-classic variations and then applying the chess analogy to only one part misses the point that to a large extent the general acceptance of standardised chess rules is about popularity, and specifically popularity and how that factors into finding players who understand the rules the same way as you do.

Yes modern chess is popular and that is a factor why the rules developed in the 16th century persist to this day. However the thing is that Intellectual Property law never applied to chess' development. There was never a commercial interest with SOLE CONTROL creating variants just to get more sales.  Instead it was a mass of people who voted by what they chose to play that caused modern chess to persist over its variants.

However even with this freedom people in the 18th, 19th, 20th and now the 21st chose to play chess rather to seek something different using the general mechanics of chess.

Now thanks to the OGL D&D has the same chance of developing in the same way. I don't think it is likely. Chess is a game focused on the limited goal of forcing a checkmate with a certain number and type of pieces. While RPGs are pen & paper virtual realities with the potential of presenting anything from real life and fiction. Campaigns often benefit from mechanics tailored to their situation.

But you point has nothing to do with my point that OD&D is not obsolete because of the fact it was published in 1974.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;861742The repeated hostility of many fans--predating the OSR--to 2nd Edition, another formative influence for me

Since you admit that it predates the OSR, then how is this evidence of how the OSR touched you the wrong way? In fact, 2E hatred is completely orthogonal to the OSR. There's a lively 2E subforum on Dragonsfoot that actually has more posts than the Classic D&D forum (even though the latter combines three different editions: OD&D, B/X, and BECMI).

Quote from: S'mon;861777You hypocrite!
Naw, it's good - actually I think C&C (a) predates OSR and (b) has more of a 2e AD&D feel, so not surprising you might like it better than the hardcore OD&Dist OSR stuff.

I encountered an astonishing (to one who knew nothing of the background) amount of hostility toward C&C in some quarters when I picked up a copy and mentioned it online. Turned out there was a lot of bitterness among some participants about how that project turned out.

I on the other hand had an initially negative response to Matt Finch's proposal of what became OSRIC. However, that ended up being I think not only a salve to many who resented what Troll Lords had done, but a watershed for people with a wide range of preferences.

Quote from: aspiringlich;861807Since you admit that it predates the OSR, then how is this evidence of how the OSR touched you the wrong way? In fact, 2E hatred is completely orthogonal to the OSR. There's a lively 2E subforum on Dragonsfoot that actually has more views than the Classic D&D forum (even though the latter combines three different editions: OD&D, B/X, and BECMI).

Call it ' sizeable overlap'. And I admit, these may not be perfectly rational or well-founded reasons. They do at least seem to have cooled down the thread a bit, though.

Quote from: TristramEvans;861797While the other two points are fair enough, excepting in that I see no reason why you would expect a group who prefers older games to say nice things about newer games, this point is one I have heard a lot but simply don't see at all. Every explanation of how the Primer is hostile to different styles of play always comes down to the person either ignoring what the Primer specifically says or reading something into it that isn't there.

As I recall, it expresses a very strong reaction against slavish devotion to printed rules. That phenomenon is almost off the radar screen of my own play experience, but I can see how many people could be quite steeped in it -- some much more contentedly than Mr. Finch was.

There are those who seem utterly baffled by the proposition that the 'rules' are not really rules, which apparently seems to them a threatening nihilism. It's a fairly common human nature that treats what is not understood as by default dangerous.

Most of the time when people have a hostile reaction to the primer, they are upset that the newer-style game is presented as such a boring thing.  

Matt tried to head off this reaction with the following disclaimer, but it wasn't enough for many (bolding supplied):

QuoteNote: The modern-style GM in these examples is a pretty boring guy when it comes to adding flavor into his game. This isn't done to make modern-style gaming look bad: we assume most people reading this booklet regularly play modern-style games and know that they aren't this boring. It's done to highlight when and how rules are used in modern gaming, as opposed to when and how they aren't used in oldstyle gaming. So the modern-style GM talks his way through all the rules he's using, which isn't how a good modern-style GM usually runs his game.

Matt has given a follow-up to these thoughts on Dragonsfoot, when another poster also said he disliked the primer for its perceived hostility to more modern games (bolding in original):

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1576707#p1576707

Quote from: MythmereFor those like Sauna who probably know me as mythmere, I'm also Matt Finch.

I post, from time to time, that the Primer was a response to comments on ENWorld that people had tried playing OD&D but it was "incomplete" and they needed to "use the 3e rules to fill in the gaps." It was never supposed to fully define "old school," which was at that time still a derogatory term being used by many ENworld posters.  It's about how to give OD&D a fair test drive, on its own terms, if you've never played a system before 3e, and you're trying to check out this "old school" thing without the benefit of one of us old fogeys at the gaming table with you.

For someone who learned to play using the 3e rules, when using a simpler ruleset, it appears to them that the simplicity of the OD&D rules is actually the absence of required rules. It is really hard to "un-think" rules. I continue to hold that playing using the OD&D rules, using the premise that these rules are intended to be fully complete in the same way the 3e manuals tried to be complete, will produce a pathetic gaming experience and the assumption that the rules are simply incomplete on all kinds of levels. Note that I'm talking OD&D, not AD&D. The 3e-to-AD&D jump is harder to explain, and I didn't try to. I don't think the person who quoted me in the earlier thread quite realized I was talking about something as narrow as I was. I wasn't insulting 3e, I wasn't insulting gaming that uses complex rules. I was trying to express that you have to judge a system on its own merits; it can be very difficult to step from complex-to-simple rules when you're trying to do it just by printing out the simpler rule-set, and playing it with the memory of the "fully-resolved-as-rules" version still operating in your head. There is a qualitative step, not just a quantitative one.

That said, I don't want to namby-pamby it, I definitely prefer OD&D (and Swords & Wizardry) and AD&D over third edition. It's a subjective preference, though, and although it does leak out in the Primer, the purpose of the Primer wasn't to make that argument. The purpose of the Primer was to get people to try out OD&D with a fair test, not a test based on the assumption that OD&D was written with the same design objectives as 3e.

Some years ago, before WotC released PDFs of the OD&D booklets, some folks online expressed interest in the differences from BX (the Moldvay, Marsh & Cook edition).

In my view, the 'mechanical' differences are not a big deal, and if BX does not convey the essential ideas clearly enough then the "little brown books" are likely to be only more confusing. For practical purposes of playing a game, I can't see paying collector's-item prices.

All the TSR editions, though, were increasingly hard to come by even if not terribly expensive when located for sale. Even Internet mail-order service is to my mind a long way from being able to stop by a local store and walk out with the book.

There are cultural values beyond the algorithms, ways in which a retro-clone is not an adequate substitute for the original writers' voices. However, the clones and spin-offs serve much wider interests very well. Unlike for instance UNIX, the continued ready availability of which was not really in danger without GNU-Linux, old D&D was in a perilous situation.

The OSR thus (with the generous assistance of the OGL) provided, and continues to provide, a service not only to old timers but also to presently new and future generations.