"Okay, but what does [Simulacrum X] bring to the table?"

[libertad]

This is a bit of a thought experiment I came upon recently after seeing the Old School Essentials community blow up on social media and other sites in a relatively short period of time.



To those familiar with me on other sites, it should come as no surprise that I'm an avid collector of RPGs. For old-school rulesets, there’s already more than enough material to ape one’s favorite Edition of choice, and as pretty much every official Edition besides 5th is now legally for sale online, there’s not as much of a draw for ‘straight clones’ anymore. From personal experience a lot of OSR/Simulacrum Games are heading off in new directions while striving to keep the core foundations we know and love.



In regards to the ‘straight clones’ like Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry, most of the enduring ones hail back at least a decade and served as the foundational building blocks for more individualized adventures. Old School Essentials is a peculiar rarity for sticking close to “Basic era” without any novel spins, although from a meta standard I believe part of this is the extreme ease of use of the layout and visually-distinctive colors and art made in finding things. There’s also the fact that some of the straight clones’ larger publishers have either been enmeshed in some scandal or drama or went on to publish other things that furthered OSE’s alternative appeal.



Just looking at the more popular OSR books the last few years and by top-selling categories on Drive-Thru RPG, most simulacrums are offering something ill-found in the myriad other products out there. Five Torches Deep is a combination of TSR-era D&D with 5th Edition. Troika! Is a weird fantasy RPG but goes less for the “blood and gore heavy metal” aesthetic in favor of a multiversal plane-hopping acid trip. Dungeon Crawl Classics is quite old, but still batting strong due to its extensive supporting material and being very much its own thing in the kind of game it wants to run. Wolves of God, Vigilante City, and Esoteric Enterprises are set in very different worlds than traditional fantasy and sci-fi, and even in Wolves of God’s case it’s during a pseudo-historical period of Dark Ages England newly rising out of paganism which drastically sets it apart from the High Middle Ages most gamers imagine of the era.


I can only speak from personal experience, but this has been an overall positive trend for both long-time and newer players. I played many sessions with Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and even BECMI D&D, but books like Wolves of God and Magical Industrial Revolution have helped keep things fresh as both inspirational material and seeing how far one can stretch the system while remaining recognizable. In terms of new players, a lot of people already have pre-conceived notions of what TSR-era D&D entails and are quick to ask what such Editions and clones can give them the newer ones cannot. Easing them in with something like The Nightmares Underneath or the other games listed above has been easier when you have "like Game X but with this!"

[Finarvyn]

In the old days, folks with a new take on D&D published "D&D Variant" articles in Dragon magazine. Nowadays they make their "own" game. (I put "own" in quotes, as most of the material therein is highly derivative.) I think the value of the simulacrum games originally was that they made the game available to the masses while WotC refused to sell D&D PDFs. That is now a moot point, as these PDFs (and often print versions) are easy to acquire at DriveThruRPG and similar sources. I think that the value now is mostly that of clarification, as I find that I prefer the original to the simulacrum games nowadays, but I don't always play BTB either. I like to tinker, and perhaps that is what the clones are all about.

So, the actual question of the thread comes down to what you get from the clones. My answer is pretty generic:
(1) Better explanation and/or clarification of rules.
(2) Potential inspiration from topic of specific rules set.
(3) Variety of rules mechanic; folks try new and different things.

What do you get from the originals?
(1) Gygaxian prose. Some like it, others don't.
(2) Nostalgic feel. I'm inspired just by reading the old stuff.
(3) Brevity. In general the older stuff is short and sweet.

Just my thoughts.

[Piper]

May 10, 2020 6:24:26 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

In the old days, folks with a new take on D&D published "D&D Variant" articles in Dragon magazine.

I've obviously got nothing against retroclones, I'm a big fan in fact, but here comes the "but!" ... I've always thought many (not all, everyone put your flame guns away) could have been released as campaign supplements in the vein of GH and BM supplement/changed the boxed set rules.

[libertad]

May 10, 2020 6:24:26 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

In the old days, folks with a new take on D&D published "D&D Variant" articles in Dragon magazine. Nowadays they make their "own" game. (I put "own" in quotes, as most of the material therein is highly derivative.) I think the value of the simulacrum games originally was that they made the game available to the masses while WotC refused to sell D&D PDFs. That is now a moot point, as these PDFs (and often print versions) are easy to acquire at DriveThruRPG and similar sources. I think that the value now is mostly that of clarification, as I find that I prefer the original to the simulacrum games nowadays, but I don't always play BTB either. I like to tinker, and perhaps that is what the clones are all about.

So, the actual question of the thread comes down to what you get from the clones. My answer is pretty generic:
(1) Better explanation and/or clarification of rules.
(2) Potential inspiration from topic of specific rules set.
(3) Variety of rules mechanic; folks try new and different things.

What do you get from the originals?
(1) Gygaxian prose. Some like it, others don't.
(2) Nostalgic feel. I'm inspired just by reading the old stuff.
(3) Brevity. In general the older stuff is short and sweet.

Just my thoughts.

I cannot place specific dates, but I think that the era of "straight clones" more or less ended with the release of all the major Editions as PDFs. Books like Old School Adventures are clear exceptions nowadays.

For original books and brevity, the individual books are quite short in comparison. I believe that Print-on-Demand services made it easier to mass-produce larger books.

[thegreyelf]

This thread has accomplished one thing.

I now must create an RPG entitled Simulacrum X.

[tdenmark]

My take on some Simulacrums/Retro-Clones (far from an exhaustive list):

Holmes "Blue Book" Basic: the original retro-clone. It was a remarkable feat to take the original books and synthesize them down into a single, friendly, digestible book. It is amazing that it's only 48 pages!

Castles and Crusades: Troll Lord was way ahead of the curve when they took the OGL and made a 1st edition retro-clone. While I don't play this version, I appreciate the quality of writing and how well edited the books are. I absolutely love the supplement and resource books they make for it. In particular Codex Nordica and Codex Germanica are my go-to books when I want to get some Viking flavor into a game.

Labyrinth Lord: the best Basic Edition simulacrum until Old-School Essentials came out.

Dark Dungeons: I want to love this, it is a nice recreation of the Rules Cyclopedia, but doesn't quite go far enough for me. I can't get past the name, that is a silly thing to get hung up on, but if you're going to call a game Dark Dungeons it should be a lot more Grim Dark Fantasy, or do a real parody of the old Jack Chick tract.

Warrior, Conqueror, King: a well done synthesis of BECMI, streamlined and simplified. Unfortunately my copy is a really crappy POD back when DriveThruRPG made even worse quality POD than they do now. So I don't even like opening the book. It sits on my shelf and is only used for reference once in a while.

Mutant Future: if you like Labyrinth Lord and you like Gamma World, you'll probably like this. It is well written and designed and is probably the version of Gamma World that TSR should have published back in the day. 2nd edition Gamma World is still the best though.

Swords and Wizardry: a recreation of LBB + Greyhawk, there are essentially two other versions; White Box which is only the original LBB, and Advanced Edition which basically turns S&W into 1st Edition. The best thing about S&W is the clear writing style, their use of Strunk & White's Elements of Style writing philosophy applied to original D&D. It is a bit of the Rosetta Stone of simulacrums, and they give away a clean minimally formatted text version for free which has helped it become the standard go to retro-clone. I love just about everything about this, with some mixed feelings about Saves, and it is the game that brought me into the OSR fold. It goes a little too far in house ruling LBB, even the White Box version.

Old-School Essentials: this is the best. Writing style. Clarity and focus. Layout. Graphic design and art. Necrotic Gnome really knocked it out of the park. If you want the best BECMI clone this is it. I'm a grumpy old grognard who nit picks everything and doesn't like anything, and I love this.

Single Volume Edition: this one is really special and WotC really should have made this when they did their big special edition release. It is the original LBB text (literally) reorganized and lightly edited. I'd love to see one of these done with the entire line of original books LBB through Swords & Spells.

Worth Note: Basic Fantasy is on par with Labyrinth Lord, B/X Essentials is an excellent recreation of Moldvay Basic, The Big Brown Book is a bastard child of LBB and d20 that is every bit as good as S&W just not as well known, there are so many others...

So many of those others are just S&W with modifications. Like literally taking the free S&W text and tinkering with it, which was the purpose of the OGL and S&W so nothing wrong with that, I just got a little tired of seeing so many that are low effort.

Five Torches Deep: I don't consider this a simulacrum, its a hybrid of various OSR and 5th edition game mechanics. It is well done, but is more of a tool kit than a complete game.

Almost a Simulacrum:
Warriors of the Red Planet: put Original D&D and Warriors of Mars together and it creates a great Sword & Planet RPG. Probably the best of all the Simulacrums, maybe even the best RPG of all time. jk

[eldradwolfsbane]

There is also my monster Neoclone Back to the Dungeon RPG which is Original meets D20 written in old zine form.

[Deleted]

I got into Clone collecting for a while but I've slowed my role in recent years and relegate myself to buying either system-neutral supplements like Tome of Adventure Design, or any new supplements for Basic Fantasy or Iron Falcon since Gonnerman Games has been consistently awesome and affordable since 2006.

As for justifying their existence - well, with the meteoric success of OSE and the day 1 kickstarted Swords & Wizardry box set illustrate, people are still willing to pay for them. Clearly they still excite people and inspire people. My personal take is that I stepped back and re-evaluated why I was paying for so many variations of the same rules and decided to take Chirine Ba Kal's advice and to start collecting more books in general as opposed to rpg books, specifically, on the assumption that most RPG players own too many rules already and not enough inspirational books.

So, my current approach to OSR is "Mastery of OD&D and B/X concepts + a deeper understanding of Appendix N and classical literature", which is one valid approach. But I can sympathize with the people who continue to excitedly collect more clones, hacks and variants. There are a lot of great ideas in the OSR and the blogosphere and I wouldn't be here if not for that. It's a beautiful thing and it's gonna help keep the spirit of OD&D alive for another generation or two.

[aldarron]

May 9, 2020 17:27:48 GMT -6 libertad said:

To those familiar with me on other sites, it should come as no surprise that I'm an avid collector of RPGs. For old-school rulesets, there’s already more than enough material to ape one’s favorite Edition of choice, and as pretty much every official Edition besides 5th is now legally for sale online, there’s not as much of a draw for ‘straight clones’ anymore. From personal experience a lot of OSR/Simulacrum Games are heading off in new directions while striving to keep the core foundations we know and love.

The best reason for a straight clone has always been to take a mess and clean it up. Becmi for example doesn't "need" a clone - it's got the Rules Cyclopedia - though the RC Companion author would argue that needs to be cleaned up too.

OD&D in my opinion has yet to have a satisfying straight clone, but I have faith in Simon's efforts on 5th ed. Delving Deeper.

As for my own ZED, I find it hard to categorize. It is not a clone of any ruleset, but it is a straight simulacrum of Arneson & Gygax rules. BTPbD and 3lbb form the base, but a host of other Gygax and Arneson statements on those rules informs the whole; all woven together as faithfully as I could make it while maintaining playability and a proper respect of IP. It's unique in that regard, and thus hard to categorize. I suppose "retro re-edit" suits but perhaps there is a better term.

[peelseel2]

I like a lot of the retro clones, but in the end they are all house-ruled (insert edition) D&D. If I am going to play house ruled D&D, I might as well play the D&D edition I want to and house rule it. Marketing wise, it is a better starter. Everyone has heard of D&D. So you can explain to new players, or old, that you play x game that is a 'retro clone' of D&D, or say we play D&D (insert version). The name has traction and recognition.

For me the retro-clones are an incredible resource on my side of the screen. New monsters, different takes on monsters, new adventures, etc.

[Vile Traveller]

Jun 16, 2020 8:08:34 GMT -6 peelseel2 said:

If I am going to play house ruled D&D, I might as well play the D&D edition I want to and house rule it. Marketing wise, it is a better starter.

I would say that's only the case if you play BTB. Your players might not be happy if you advertise your game as D&D and then reveal a lot of house rules. The same goes for a clone. I find there needs to be a significant level of trust and familiarity in a group for house rules to work. The D&D name recognition only works with gamers who have little or no knowledge of other systems, if you are recruiting more experienced gamers it's rarely an issue.

[scottenkainen]

I saw one mention of neoclones so far. Some of us had, some time ago, embraced a distinction of retroclones and neoclones, with a retroclone trying to legally recreate our old favorite game, while a neoclone takes that game as a foundation and turns it into something new.

No one mentioned my Hideouts & Hoodlums yet, but I considered its 1st edition to be a retroclone. Despite not being the same in content, I was going for a recreation in form and style to to the original game. With its 2nd edition, I now consider it a neoclone, because I've deviated so much from recreating the original rules, even though the feel of TSR circa 1977 is still there.