Supplement V: Carcosa (split)
Clinton R. Nixon:
I hope you don't mind me jumping on the tasks of providing a guide to the Old School Renaissance, as they like to be called. Outside of the Forge, my infant's crib, so to speak, the OSR is my favorite RPG community on the Internet.
James Maliszewski's Grognardia is by far the best weblog to read on the topic. His 4-part review of Carcosa was level-headed and well done. (Part 1, 2, 3, and 4)
The other major OSR weblog I read is Lamentations of the Flame Princess which can be more inflammatory, but is good. Both weblogs have a serious set of links to follow to see more of the community.
I find the best description of the dungeon part of D&D to be found at Philotomy's "The Dungeon as a Mythic Underworld." The viewpoint here isn't universal in the community, but I think it explains a lot of the love of OD&D and its recent set of "retro-clones."
I'd be amiss not to include a link to the Dragonsfoot forums or "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming", the movement's major treatise.
James_Nostack:
Clinton's hit the major places: I'd throw in The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope and Sham's Grog & Blog among the blog sites, in addition to the aforementioned Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia--Rients and Malizewski are both pretty insightful, with Rients favoring a more "Wahoo!" style of gaming (and writing) and Malizewski favoring a more mannered approach to "Gygaxian Naturalism."
The most active discussion forum for OD&D specifically appears to be Original D&D Discussion, though there's a lot of bleed-over into Dragonsfoot, which is far more ecumenical with respect to "early edition" D&D play.
Of course, none of this Internet-based discussion makes any dang sense without the Three Little Brown Books which are available in PDF for pennies. It's a fascinatingly unplayable game, just on the sane side of complete gibberish (possibly because we've lost contact with the 1970's war-gaming culture which gave birth to it). But considering that this is D&D's "indie press" years, I think it should be of some interest to RPG designers.
But as to Carcosa and Sorcerer & Sword...
Demon: Scrying Glass of the Old Ones
Type: Object
Telltale: A hundred pound chunk of obsidian... its center appears to swirl with an even deeper blackness
* Perception (user): Great Old Ones' location
* Perception + Ranged (Great Old One): user's location
* Hint
* Taint (d): user
Stamina: 4
Will: 5
Lore: 4
Power: 5
Desire: Knowledge
Need: To be used within total, stygian darkness
James_Nostack:
Oh shoot, I totally forgot something else that's pretty germane to the Forge crowd: these guys are publishing their own "retro-clones" of D&D, usually under some kind of Creative Commons or OGL type of deal, so that they can publish their own adventures and other supplements without running afoul of Wizards' intellectual property rights.
I don't really pay close attention to this, because I'm not a publisher or designer, but I think there's...
* Swords & Wizardry - "open" version of the 1974 rules
* Microlite74 - "open" verison of the 1974 rules
* Mutant Future - "open" version of Gamma World
* Labyrinth Lord - "open" version of the Basic Sets from late 70's / early 80's
* Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game - "open" version of Basic Sets from late 70's / early 80's
All of these versions are pretty faithful to the originals, but they contain either design "fixes" to recurring problems in OD&D (how to run combat, how often you roll hit points, how to create an Elf PC), or else deliberately changed other elements so as to avoid possible litigation.
Naturally these "retro-clones" don't contain too much innovative RPG design because they're meant to imitate, as slavishly as possible, a game already published--but in principle they're a ground floor for people to create a bunch of innovative adventures/modules/Situations, whatever they're called. I'm not sure this part of the plan has really come to fruition, but I do like Eldritch Weirdness, a list of very strange Jack Vance-flavored spells, quite a bit.
greyorm:
There's also
* OSRIC
* Mazes & Minotaurs
* Castles & Crusades
* Encounter Critical
OSRIC is a 1e clone, so I'm only including it for completeness, and C&C is a pastiche of various editions with a solid old school foundation/feel. M&M is interesting in that it starts with a "1972" version (the original D&D) and also has an expanded and streamlined "1987" version (1e) called Revised Mazes & Minotaurs. Like M&M, EC is another alternate history "inside joke", but I know little about it at this point (I only recently discovered it, but I've been aware of the others for quite some time).
All of these have active lists and/or Yahoo! groups and such where the members communicate.
There's also The Red Box Hack and Vincent's own Storming the Wizard's Tower, both of which are individuated as attempts to re-do Red Box D&D that go beyond the purist revivalism of (most of) the above endeavors and twist things up (and I think Donjon also counts here, spiritually at the very least). But we know about these efforts.
On the whole, the revivalist scene is a really vibrant and interesting movement with perhaps surprising variety, given the fact we're talking about multiple faithful recreations of another product; though, just like the larger RPG culture, there are places I won't go inside of it--for example, unlike Clinton I find absolutely nothing of value in the one of the blogs he mentions).
However, complete disclosure: I was actively involved only some years ago--AFAIK the list I used to participate in has long since gone the way of dust or possibly moved to Dragonsfoot--and I've basically been an intermittent sideline lurker since.
robertsconley:
Quote from: James_Nostack on January 10, 2009, 11:42:51 AM
Naturally these "retro-clones" don't contain too much innovative RPG design because they're meant to imitate, as slavishly as possible, a game already published--but in principle they're a ground floor for people to create a bunch of innovative adventures/modules/Situations, whatever they're called. I'm not sure this part of the plan has really come to fruition, but I do like Eldritch Weirdness, a list of very strange Jack Vance-flavored spells, quite a bit.
The essential problem for fans of older editions of Dungeons and Dragons is that their game is out of print. They don't get new material for their games, they have a hard time finding new players as the years go by. While the release of original rules in PDF form helps, people still like to have physical books in hand, Also the largest number of fans for any RPG still comes from people browsing in stores. If players of older edition want to expand their base they need to address these issues.
Castle and Crusades was one of the first. People dissatisfied with it's approach went on to crease other version of older games. Today we have a wide range of "retro-clones" that you and use to made NEW material. For example for fans of the 1974 rules can turn to Swords & Wizardry, B/X (Basic D&D/ Expert D&D) edition fans can turn to Labyrinth Lords, AD&D fans have OSRIC. The fundamental reason that these retro-clones can exist is that the Open Gaming License has made the terms needed for these games available.
Dragonsfoot (http://www.dragonsfoot.org)has produced a series of high quality non-commercial modules and supplements for older editions. But in recent years many commercial release have been created. Fight On! is a quarterly magazine devoted to original D&D (http://www.fightonmagazine.com/), Eldritch Weirdness mentioned in a previous post is another. I myself have had Points of Light (http://www.goodman-games.com/4380preview.html) published by Goodman Games. Points of Light is suitable for any edition of D&D. It contains four settings designed for a sandbox style fantasy campaign.
Now the base estabilshed the Old School community is now moving beyond just rehashing old material. We are now using the rules and concept to make new material that hasn't been seen before.
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