Quote from: Doughdee222;861327I voted Mango Chutney because I have no idea what it is or what you mean by it.

You just lost your Team Blue Jersey.

Definite "Not Me."

Herewith the reasoning.

As has been the case with every pastime, hobby, sport and entertainment in the history of the world, longtime aficionados got nostalgia for the Old Days -- the Old Days being, as is always the case with this syndrome, that time when said aficionados first discovered RPGs.  That time when they could play for many hours on end, they couldn't get enough of it, everything was breezy and marvelous and thrilling.

For a certain demographic, this meant OD&D.  It had nothing to do with the rules set, it had nothing to do with "simplicity."  It really had to do -- as is always the case with this syndrome -- with OD&D being the game the great majority of the nostalgic grognards having played at the time.  (I'm minded of the people on this board who've expressed similar nostalgia over EPT and TFT, those being the games they played in the 70s.)

Now this is fine.  However much of a trainwreck OD&D was as a rules set, it does today everything it did when it was first written.  It is as good a set of rules today as it was in 1975.  I'm glad people are having fun playing it.

But conflating this into a "movement," and ascribing certain generic virtues to "OSR" games, has to me two giant glaring errors.  

The first is that there's some kind of date range before which All Games Had These Mechanics, and after which Those Mechanics started cropping up, which is a fallacy: about 15 minutes after D&D was first published, people started coming up with new ways of doing things, and most of those "non-OSR" ways were entrenched in this game or that well before the end of the 70s.

The second is that this has anything to do with D&D, really.  D&D isn't the Holy Grail of the nostalgia movement because of any virtues it has.  It's the Holy Grail because it was the game the great majority of the nostalgia buffs were playing, back then.  If Chivalry & Sorcery had been the first RPG out of the gate, that would be the headliner of the OSR.

I chose "not me" because the genuinely interesting stuff coming out of the DIY D&D scene doesn't involve some sort of ideological reversion to the "old school" so much as it does a rich and parallel alternate direction of tabletop RPG evolution. Sure, most of the game mechanics involved in Stars Without Number were out there in the wild in the late 1970s, but could SWN have actually been written then without the intervening decades of context and hindsight we now have, and without the ongoing evolution of other strands of tabletop RPG development to provide the DIY crowd with something to compare themselves to and seek to distinguish themselves from?

For that matter, can any of you seriously imagine Vornheim coming about without Zak? The thing is dripping with the guy's personality and the material in there is both far too novel to really be called "old school" and far too crammed with Zak's signature style for anyone else to fake. And regardless of how you feel about Zak or his online persona or whatever, he's always been upfront about the fact that doesn't have any qualms about borrowing from more recent versions of D&D, and has taken stick from OSR ideologues for it.

Now that all the old editions save for OD&D are available legally on PDF (and I'm fairly sure that will change in the not-too-distant future, just as it did for the other books that got a reprint in the run up to 5E), straight retroclones of D&D are a pointless endeavour. If you want to turn heads these days you need to bring something novel to the table, and so fussing about trying to recapture how things were done back in the day is a fruitless endeavour. Historical research is interesting enough, but trying to recapture the experience of yesterday at your gaming table rather than thinking "What's going to be the most fun/entertaining/fulfilling for us today?" is a sterile exercise.

Quote from: Warthur;861416Now that all the old editions save for OD&D are available legally on PDF (and I'm fairly sure that will change in the not-too-distant future, just as it did for the other books that got a reprint in the run up to 5E), straight retroclones of D&D are a pointless endeavour.

Well, there's still a point to the OSRIC model, in that you or I can publish a module for OSRIC, while we can't for AD&D. I'm not sure what that gets you over publishing a module for "the world's most popular FRP" or something, but there is still a point to it, I feel.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;861426Well, there's still a point to the OSRIC model, in that you or I can publish a module for OSRIC, while we can't for AD&D. I'm not sure what that gets you over publishing a module for "the world's most popular FRP" or something, but there is still a point to it, I feel.

You don't need a fully-featured OSRIC rulebook to do that though, just a template for OSRIC-compatible statblocks (if that).

Quote from: Warthur;861416I chose "not me" because the genuinely interesting stuff coming out of the DIY D&D scene doesn't involve some sort of ideological reversion to the "old school" so much as it does a rich and parallel alternate direction of tabletop RPG evolution.

And the real Renaisssance was different from Classical Greece & Rome, too!
Your objections seem really silly to me.

Quote from: S'mon;861435And the real Renaisssance was different from Classical Greece & Rome, too!
Your objections seem really silly to me.

Not half as silly as comparing the OSR to the real Renaissance in the first place.

Quote from: Ravenswing;861414Definite "Not Me."

Herewith the reasoning.

... It's the Holy Grail because it was the game the great majority of the nostalgia buffs were playing, back then.  ...

I agree. Well said.

Quote from: Warthur;861416I chose "not me" because the genuinely interesting stuff coming out of the DIY D&D scene doesn't involve some sort of ideological reversion to the "old school" so much as it does a rich and parallel alternate direction of tabletop RPG evolution. ...

Yes! There is a great bunch of really great games and supplements coming out of the self-described "OSR Movement" but frankly all these great things would stand on their own merits IMHO.

I support creators, so if you're passion is to create stuff for games of bygone eras and that pushes all the right buttons, I say hells ya, do that!

Quote from: Warthur;861437Not half as silly as comparing the OSR to the real Renaissance in the first place.

BURN! I stood back.

I went with reasons because I could give a fuck about clones of D&D.  What I care for are games that modified D&D to make their own games.  Stars Without Number being the best example.

Quote from: Ravenswing;861414The second is that this has anything to do with D&D, really.  D&D isn't the Holy Grail of the nostalgia movement because of any virtues it has.  It's the Holy Grail because it was the game the great majority of the nostalgia buffs were playing, back then.  If Chivalry & Sorcery had been the first RPG out of the gate, that would be the headliner of the OSR.

So how long does it have to go on before it ceases to be a nostalgia movement. The publishers of material for classic D&D edition have been getting accused of this since the first product was released.  Now we are 9 years out from the publication of OSRIC. So what is it going to take before you will realize that just maybe classic editions of D&D are games like chess that while old are enjoyable in their own right.

As for OD&D yes the original books are badly formatted compared to later RPGs. People worked at it and come up with newer versions that are the same game but better formatted.

Quote from: Warthur;861416Now that all the old editions save for OD&D are available legally on PDF (and I'm fairly sure that will change in the not-too-distant future, just as it did for the other books that got a reprint in the run up to 5E), straight retroclones of D&D are a pointless endeavour.

The reason that OSRIC became a full rulebook in its edition was that more than a few people like to use it as the primary reference than the original. The prere-lease and 1st edition were laid out as a publisher's reference only. This was not expected by OSRIC's authors due to availability of print books for AD&D. OD&D was always expensive but AD&D 1st edition books are very common to find.

But due to a combination of people adversion to buying stuff off of ebay and Wizards pulling PDFs all the classic editions of D&D got a straight retro-clone. And those retro-clones developed a fanbase that liked how Stuart Marshall, Dan Proctor, Matt Finch, and others  presented the rules compared to the original.

So what we have now is a mix of fans of the original, and fans of the clones playing the same games.

Now a John Doe authored clone version of B/X D&D  could gain a audience like Dan Proctor's Labyrinth Lord. But I would advise John Doe that not very likely. He would be better off in coming out with a B/X inspired set of rules that heavily reflect how he plays D&D.

Finally having been publishing stuff for a number of years for the OSR there is one remaining compelling reason, availability of the core book for print sales. If you have a line of supplement based on one of the current straight retro-clone (Like I do with the Majestic Wilderlands and Swords & Wizardry). It is a pain if the core book for your stuff can't be easily obtained by a game store.

I have sold a fair amount of print copies to various game stores in my region and been hindered by the availability of Swords & Wizardry. Matt Finch, Frog God Games are great guys but it just don't work for what I do. So I am writing a complete rulebook version of my Majestic Wilderlands. I am not really interested in competing in the RPG system market so I still plan on advertising it on-line as a Swords & Wizardry supplement. But when it comes to hand selling to game stores, I can now say that like any other RPG out there the Majestic Wilderlands comes with all the rules needed to play it.

Quote from: estar;861464As for OD&D yes the original books are badly formatted compared to later RPGs. People worked at it and come up with newer versions that are the same game but better formatted.

Which explains why retro-clones are not a "pointless endeavor," as was asserted earlier. Since playing old school games is not an exercise in recreating the past but in playing a fun game in the present, I'd much rather use a clean and clear presentation of the rules I want to use than a pdf scan of the original, poorly (or at least not quite as cleanly and clearly) formatted version. I'll take Labyrinth Lord over B/X, or Swords and Wizardry over the LBB's, every time.

Mango Chutney for me.

I care not a fuck about the OSR as movement. I do not follow OSR blogs, etc, and don't care about edition wars and gamer fandom flamewars.

I like games and some fun ones have come out of or been inspired by the OSR.

This adds flavor, so mango chutney.

Quote from: estar;861464So how long does it have to go on before it ceases to be a nostalgia movement.

When they stop trying to capitalize on a so called 'playstyle' that didn't actually exist as they would like us to think it did, so that we buy their products.

Quote from: trechriron;861460I support creators, so if you're passion is to create stuff for games of bygone eras and that pushes all the right buttons, I say hells ya, do that!

THIS x 1000!

Trechriron nailed what OSR is about for me. The rest is just noise. But in any endeavor involving human beings, there will be lots of noise and some signal.