[Poll] Which aspect of the OSR is most important to you?

[lazylitch]

I just made this poll : strawpoll.com/s967e5e5y/

Would be interested to hear all your guys opinions

Thanks!

[jeffb]

I voted.

Rantish-


I think the OSR in general has become so fragmented, that seeing it all as one big bucket,is no longer practical or accurate.

IMO- it is no longer dominated by the "nostalgia" or "clone" group and instead has become the face of those wanting to flaunt how "edge-y" or "old school punk" they are. Another stupid clique. It's a design space for the way out there stuff that would never get published prior to the SRD/OGL, and has veered way off even from the weird fantasy of D&D's literary roots. These writers needed something to latch on to, and the OSR took the hit.

Certainly some good stuff is still being written , but it is largely overshadowed by the biggest mouths,podcasts and social media accounts.

On a positive note, we have sites like this- without the piss-poor signal to noise ratio of reddit, discord, and social media platforms.

[Greyharp]

Thanks for the poll lazylitch, I was happy to participate and both interested and surprised to see my minority position. The following has nothing to do with your poll, but is just my observations about some peoples observations about the OSR...

I'm largely bemused by much of what I read about the OSR these days. There seems to be a lot of people dismissive or even angry at an OSR that bears little or no resemblance to the early years of the revolution. The early years were a wonderful fusion of various things happening at the time - online forum/blog communities, desktop publishing programmes, print-on-demand services, and the SRD/OGL - a fusion that saw a glorious profusion of publishing (physical and digital), whether clones, adventures or whatever. And of course at its heart, a collective effort to bring TSR era D&D back into print in the face of the juggernaut that was official D&D, WotC's 3.0 and 3.5, a very different beastie that didn't appeal to some of us. There was never any central organisation, no leader, no one way. Just people excited by the possibilities and joining in.

I do however understand that nothing stays the same and the OSR of the last few years has grown and changed from its beginnings. People have taken it beyond TSR D&D into weird and wonderful directions. Some have chosen to politicise it in various ways. Some have been self-elected champions, others labelled such by others. The OSR was never a creed or organised movement, so diffusion was inevitable. People have always been free to make it their own. Thus my bemusement at the criticism and sneering in some circles at "The" OSR. It seems to be aimed at something that doesn't exist and never has. This anger has always reminded me of an English folktale of fools trying to rescue the moon's reflection from a pond with nets. I suspect the anger is more about personalities than philosophy.

The desire and need that sparked the OSR - TSR D&D being out of print - is a thing of the past. The original books are available for all. The revolution is over, the renaissance is the past, but the urge to create will always be there. So while "The" OSR is no more, the acronym still lives and for me it will always now be Old School Rules.

[grodog]

I voted for the clones and the playstyle options

Allan.

[Finarvyn]

I voted nostalgia, but I think that this response also includes some of the other elements of other answers. What am I nostalgic for? Certainly, the style of the games back then -- the feel, the DYI nature, the non-reliance on modules but instead playing "wing it" adventures, stuff like that.

One thing I like about OD&D is that when I read it I feel like it came off of somebody's typewriter and I think, "yeah, I could have done that." Same for Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, which looks a lot like my old campaign notes. Nowadays games shelves are dominated by hardbacks with slick pages and professional artwork. They are pretty but no way that I would make something that fancy, so I feel kind of like I'm playing someone else's game. OD&D always felt like my game.

[robertsconley]

Jul 20, 2020 16:14:32 GMT -6 jeffb said:

I think the OSR in general has become so fragmented, that seeing it all as one big bucket,is no longer practical or accurate.

From my experience it been that way from the beginning. But the good news there are still folks who promote, publish for, and play the classic editions including OD&D irregardless of what the label means in the view of the wider hobby.

[tetramorph]

To me, it is about play style first and foremost.

I would play in a 5e campaign if they ran it old school. No plot points, no narrative. Sandbox. Gold for XP. Zeroes to Heroes. Encounters are not scaled. Rulings not rules. Etc. But they don't. So I won't.

Next it would be about campaign style. In this case, I am a hobbyist, rather than some consumer of professional "adventure" products. So, DYI, with a community that supports my creativity rather than slick professional production that replaces my creativity.

It is interesting to me that my two main reasons are not high up in the straw poll.

Oh well.

[jeffb]

Jul 21, 2020 10:37:28 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

Jul 20, 2020 16:14:32 GMT -6 jeffb said:

I think the OSR in general has become so fragmented, that seeing it all as one big bucket,is no longer practical or accurate.

From my experience it been that way from the beginning. But the good news there are still folks who promote, publish for, and play the classic editions including OD&D irregardless of what the label means in the view of the wider hobby.

I think at the beginning there were differences, but it was mainly centered around clones/rules. I'd say the disparity now is far greater as the stylistic differences, playstyle differences, and where the inspiration is coming from is completely different. Heck, I'd wager a large chunk of people today involved in the OSR never experienced the OS in OSR. They started with the RC, or 2E, or WOTC version of the game. Nothing wrong with that, at all- Let me repeat that cos I know we have people here who who are discovering OD&D as "new and shiny" NOTHING wrong with it. However it puts them in a very different headspace than say those of us whom played before TSR moved into the bigger office and sent Gary to CA. Or those of us who started before AD&D, or those of us who started before Greyhawk.

The OSR is pushing out the "O" at this point- or at the least, making it insignificant.

[asaki]

I just like the rules better (or the lack thereof). People tell me "just take 5E and remove what you don't like about it", but that would take forever. I'd rather just start out with something I already like, and add little bits here and there.

[tdenmark]

That individuals own and contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Not owned or controlled by a corporation or single entity. And some recognizable connection, even tenuous, to the original 1974 fantasy roleplaying game.

[lazylitch]

Thank you for all your detailed opinions here - this is a very interesting discussion.
I am thinking about the points made and will give a longer comment if I think of any
useful responses to contribute to the discussion.

I hope some more people here give their opinions too

[Deleted]

Jul 21, 2020 16:19:32 GMT -6 asaki said:

I just like the rules better (or the lack thereof). People tell me "just take 5E and remove what you don't like about it", but that would take forever. I'd rather just start out with something I already like, and add little bits here and there.

I feel the same way about AD&D at this point. It's much easier to add elements from other versions to the really simple versions of the game than it is to trim down the more complicated ones. The simplicity of the early rules sets are the big draw for me.

[robertsconley]

Jul 21, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -6 jeffb said:

I think at the beginning there were differences, but it was mainly centered around clones/rules.

There were stylistic differences. The whole TARGA and Carcosa made made that evident.

Jul 21, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -6 jeffb said:

Heck, I'd wager a large chunk of people today involved in the OSR never experienced the OS in OSR. They started with the RC, or 2E, or WOTC version of the game. Nothing wrong with that, at all- Let me repeat that cos I know we have people here who who are discovering OD&D as "new and shiny" NOTHING wrong with it. However it puts them in a very different headspace than say those of us whom played before TSR moved into the bigger office and sent Gary to CA. Or those of us who started before AD&D, or those of us who started before Greyhawk.

I saw new blood since the begining. Folks who started playing well after the debut of AD&D 2e. With the growth of the OSR and the passage of a decade and more. Now we are seeing a lot of hobbyist who only seen D&D 3.X on up.

As for being in a different headspace, it always been an issue to explain how to run campaign with the minimal detail and assumptions found in older edition. Remember that the AD&D 2e era was also during and after the expansion of rules detail and complexity that started in the mid 80s with many RPGs. In early 90s, you had Rolemaster, GURPS, and Hero System among others holding their own. A

Jul 21, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -6 jeffb said:

The OSR is pushing out the "O" at this point- or at the least, making it insignificant.

For a brief period it was possible to track what was being done by everybody using the OSR label to describe their effort and include some that refused to use the label yet still were working with a classic edition. By 2010 that became hard. And by 2012 it became virtually impossible. And it doesn't help that Google Plus was shut down scattering the promoters across a half-dozen social media platform. Mostly facebook but more than a few on Reddit, MeWe and twitter.

However we have a good way of taking a "core sample" so to speak. Just hop over to DriveThruRPG and uses the OSR category.

www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45582_0_0_0_0

If you look you will see that there are 5831 products that the author labeled as OSR. That quite a bit and grows

If you go here you will see as of Apr 2019 there were 3902 products. So in a year plus a few months over 1800 products were added by author labeling their work as OSR.
web.archive.org/web/20190401185451/https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45582_0_0_0_0

So what about OD&D which folks in this forums are most interested in?
For that we will have to use Swords & Wizardry as a shorthand. Right now there are 673 products in that category.
www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45583_0_0_0_0&sort=4a

I have my search setup as 50 items per page and sorted by date added. If I jump to page 3 then I see there was a product added on 7-30-2019 about a year ago.
www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45583_0_0_0_0&sort=4a&page=3

So in the past year 150 products were release where the authors labeled it as Swords & Wizardry. Which would also include my release of Wilderlands of the Fantastic Reaches. A little self promotion there.

The elephant in the room is just how many of them are really OD&D products. The category only get policed infrequently when the publishers complain about. However I will say that even if it is only a quarter of them, 35 products a years for a 40 year old system is a very good number to have. And going back through the history it not slowing down.

So that is why I respectably disagree with the idea that the Old in OSR is being lost. That fans of the oldest editions have lost anything in recent years compared to the beginning. Of course to prove somebody has to be willing to come through DriveThruRPG, Blogs, and social media and try to figure year by year the number of OD&D release there been.

What may be missing is somebody who has a trusted reputation promoting various OD&D compatible release in a way that all of us here can read up on in the time we have for a hobby. Personally I keep tabs on the following two.

OSR News
osrnews.blogspot.com/

and Tenkar's Tavern
www.tenkarstavern.com/

Along with the occasional glance as Hoards and Hordes

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LUFmadXbg67pp9dEu_KsLc2-2Gf-0t5mVOvzetAqdFw/edit#gid=0
From the author
The list is for print & pdf products published since the year 2000 (approximately) for Gygax-era flavors of D&D: OD&D, Holmes Basic, AD&D, B/X, and BEMCI.
Castles & Crusades, for example, is not included. (But the Castle Zagyg products are included because of their strong thematic relevance to Gygax-era D&D.)
(There are fewer after Apr 2012 only because I stopped searching for them, except where various specific interests took me.)

For example how many of you aware of Castle Xyntillan (which I did the interior maps for).
beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2019/12/module-castle-xyntillan-now-available.html

Another bellweather are reports by the various Virtual Tabletop companies
For example the Roll20 Orr Report
blog.roll20.net/post/617299166657445888/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2020

[Falconer]

Jul 22, 2020 9:11:45 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

For example how many of you aware of Castle Xyntillan (which I did the interior maps for).
beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2019/12/module-castle-xyntillan-now-available.html

Me!

Stuff by Gabor Lux and stuff by Rob Conley are auto-purchases for me (well, I plan to buy them; sometimes it has to wait for funds to come in)!

[Parzival]

Jul 21, 2020 16:19:32 GMT -6 asaki said:

I just like the rules better (or the lack thereof). People tell me "just take 5E and remove what you don't like about it", but that would take forever. I'd rather just start out with something I already like, and add little bits here and there.

This is my position.

I have run 5e (for teens) and am currently playing 5e (with teens and a teen DM), and while it’s playable, and a bit of a return to an older style of play, it’s still far too “rulesy” and kludgy for me. To strip it back to an Old School approach requires too much work, especially when one looks at the spells and the power progression of the character system. Why should I do all that when I can just take an older version of the game and trick it out however I need it to be, and wing the rest? OD&D or BX/ECMI let me do that in a way that other editions don’t. Besides, I’ve got ‘em already.  

[robertsconley]

Jul 21, 2020 16:19:32 GMT -6 asaki said:

People tell me "just take 5E and remove what you don't like about it",

Yeah I hear you. I finally did some work with a 5e version of my stuff after a friend got me excited. Nothing like ego inflating "Hey Rob, you know I really like your Wilderlands stuff, but I would find it awesome if you could make a 5e version."

So I had some one off stuff done but was put off by the fact that you need come up with 20 levels of stuff. Not necessarily 20 class abilities but about a 8 to 12 things that work across those 20 levels. I got pretty far before stalling out on the Warlock.


Fighter (Knight, Soldier, and Warrior (renamed Champion))
drive.google.com/file/d/1nSW1bbNw0ieuQ0gkaAo0yfiBD1Dl10Px/view?usp=sharing

Rogues (Burglar (renamed Thief), Thug, Mountebank, Claws of Kalis (assassin they), Merchant Adventure )
drive.google.com/file/d/1Flf21gtHAUN_UFdnMk0Oy4O6flLptep_/view?usp=sharing

The problem with the Warlock is that the class has multiple things going that require lists invocations, pacts, etc.

The experience has been instructive on the nuts and bolts of designing things for 5th edition. All and all I enjoy working on Majestic Fantasy RPG stuff and Swords & Wizardry a lot more. Seem I get more material out of the time I put into it.

One thing is that I am wondering what would happen if I reworked everything to a classic D&D style level spread. It a lot of work though.

[cometaryorbit]

Jul 21, 2020 18:37:35 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

That individuals own and contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Not owned or controlled by a corporation or single entity.

This.

There's a difference to how hobbyists produce materials vs. how large corporations do it. Fans can invest more time and effort into "niche" areas than a company can afford to do. Some of the niche aspects of the Known World/Mystara setting for example have had tons of material produced after TSR stopped supporting it.

And some of the niche areas are the most interesting to me. Stronghold building/domain management for example, and the SF/Weird Fantasy aspects mixed with sword & sorcery rather than fairly "cookie cutter" high fantasy (eg Forgotten Realms). I actually like 5E, but some things I'm interested in just haven't had attention in "official" D&D in ages.

[asaki]

Jul 22, 2020 13:25:54 GMT -6 Parzival said:

To strip it back to an Old School approach requires too much work, especially when one looks at the spells and the power progression of the character system.

Yeah, that's the other part...they focused so hard on "balancing" 5E that, much like a literal balance, taking any one piece out just unbalances everything. I don't want to pick up that mess.

[Punkrabbitt]

Jul 21, 2020 12:55:41 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

So, DYI, with a community that supports my creativity rather than slick professional production that replaces my creativity.

This right here is what it's about. This is what I look for in games.

[hamurai]

Jul 22, 2020 14:03:44 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

The problem with the Warlock is that the class has multiple things going that require lists invocations, pacts, etc.

I'd say you don't have to reinvent the wheel and take several ideas as they already exist. Just add a few options on top which add specific MW flavour and you're done. Now, I'm not aware of the special novelties MW may or may not introduce for the warlock, but if it's somewhere along the line of the original (which I'm guessing by your required lists sentence), that should work.

Jul 22, 2020 14:03:44 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

One thing is that I am wondering what would happen if I reworked everything to a classic D&D style level spread. It a lot of work though.

Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials (OSE, for those who don't know it yet) has really got a lot of people interested in B/X (again) and there are some other works coming out as well. So, that might be a good idea for a few sales. The good thing (for you as a publisher) is, there aren't that many community modules out there (yet), but 5E has a huge load of stuff that might drown some works.

[robertsconley]

Jul 22, 2020 23:25:00 GMT -6 hamurai said:

I'd say you don't have to reinvent the wheel and take several ideas as they already exist. Just add a few options on top which add specific MW flavour and you're done. Now, I'm not aware of the special novelties MW may or may not introduce for the warlock, but if it's somewhere along the line of the original (which I'm guessing by your required lists sentence), that should work.

Rather than derailing this thread I replied here
odd74.proboards.com/post/231291/thread

Jul 22, 2020 23:25:00 GMT -6 hamurai said:

Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials (OSE, for those who don't know it yet) has really got a lot of people interested in B/X (again) and there are some other works coming out as well. So, that might be a good idea for a few sales. The good thing (for you as a publisher) is, there aren't that many community modules out there (yet), but 5E has a huge load of stuff that might drown some works.

Sure, OSE is excellent and got a lot of folks excited for that edition. However I like Swords & Wizardry Core and hitched my stuff on that. But luckily the differences are a matter of inches so it all grist for the classic edition mill so to speak.

The main reason? Not a fan of Race as Class.

[asaki]

Jul 23, 2020 10:36:51 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

The main reason? Not a fan of Race as Class.

Just change "Halfling" to "Halfling Fighter", etc. etc.
Presto: no more race-as-class.

[tdenmark]

Jul 23, 2020 14:17:14 GMT -6 asaki said:

Jul 23, 2020 10:36:51 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

The main reason? Not a fan of Race as Class.

Just change "Halfling" to "Halfling Fighter", etc. etc.
Presto: no more race-as-class.

It's not exactly that simple. We're back into the race limitations territory: what about my halfling magic-user? You still have to extract the halfling from the fighter.

But in general I agree the differences are mostly trivial.

[jeffb]

Jul 22, 2020 9:11:45 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

Jul 21, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -6 jeffb said:

I think at the beginning there were differences, but it was mainly centered around clones/rules.

There were stylistic differences. The whole TARGA and Carcosa made made that evident.

Jul 21, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -6 jeffb said:

Heck, I'd wager a large chunk of people today involved in the OSR never experienced the OS in OSR. They started with the RC, or 2E, or WOTC version of the game. Nothing wrong with that, at all- Let me repeat that cos I know we have people here who who are discovering OD&D as "new and shiny" NOTHING wrong with it. However it puts them in a very different headspace than say those of us whom played before TSR moved into the bigger office and sent Gary to CA. Or those of us who started before AD&D, or those of us who started before Greyhawk.

I saw new blood since the begining. Folks who started playing well after the debut of AD&D 2e. With the growth of the OSR and the passage of a decade and more. Now we are seeing a lot of hobbyist who only seen D&D 3.X on up.

As for being in a different headspace, it always been an issue to explain how to run campaign with the minimal detail and assumptions found in older edition. Remember that the AD&D 2e era was also during and after the expansion of rules detail and complexity that started in the mid 80s with many RPGs. In early 90s, you had Rolemaster, GURPS, and Hero System among others holding their own. A

Jul 21, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -6 jeffb said:

The OSR is pushing out the "O" at this point- or at the least, making it insignificant.

For a brief period it was possible to track what was being done by everybody using the OSR label to describe their effort and include some that refused to use the label yet still were working with a classic edition. By 2010 that became hard. And by 2012 it became virtually impossible. And it doesn't help that Google Plus was shut down scattering the promoters across a half-dozen social media platform. Mostly facebook but more than a few on Reddit, MeWe and twitter.

However we have a good way of taking a "core sample" so to speak. Just hop over to DriveThruRPG and uses the OSR category.

www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45582_0_0_0_0

If you look you will see that there are 5831 products that the author labeled as OSR. That quite a bit and grows

If you go here you will see as of Apr 2019 there were 3902 products. So in a year plus a few months over 1800 products were added by author labeling their work as OSR.
web.archive.org/web/20190401185451/https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45582_0_0_0_0

So what about OD&D which folks in this forums are most interested in?
For that we will have to use Swords & Wizardry as a shorthand. Right now there are 673 products in that category.
www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45583_0_0_0_0&sort=4a

I have my search setup as 50 items per page and sorted by date added. If I jump to page 3 then I see there was a product added on 7-30-2019 about a year ago.
www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45583_0_0_0_0&sort=4a&page=3

So in the past year 150 products were release where the authors labeled it as Swords & Wizardry. Which would also include my release of Wilderlands of the Fantastic Reaches. A little self promotion there.

The elephant in the room is just how many of them are really OD&D products. The category only get policed infrequently when the publishers complain about. However I will say that even if it is only a quarter of them, 35 products a years for a 40 year old system is a very good number to have. And going back through the history it not slowing down.

So that is why I respectably disagree with the idea that the Old in OSR is being lost. That fans of the oldest editions have lost anything in recent years compared to the beginning. Of course to prove somebody has to be willing to come through DriveThruRPG, Blogs, and social media and try to figure year by year the number of OD&D release there been.

What may be missing is somebody who has a trusted reputation promoting various OD&D compatible release in a way that all of us here can read up on in the time we have for a hobby. Personally I keep tabs on the following two.

OSR News
osrnews.blogspot.com/

and Tenkar's Tavern
www.tenkarstavern.com/

Along with the occasional glance as Hoards and Hordes

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LUFmadXbg67pp9dEu_KsLc2-2Gf-0t5mVOvzetAqdFw/edit#gid=0
From the author
The list is for print & pdf products published since the year 2000 (approximately) for Gygax-era flavors of D&D: OD&D, Holmes Basic, AD&D, B/X, and BEMCI.
Castles & Crusades, for example, is not included. (But the Castle Zagyg products are included because of their strong thematic relevance to Gygax-era D&D.)
(There are fewer after Apr 2012 only because I stopped searching for them, except where various specific interests took me.)

For example how many of you aware of Castle Xyntillan (which I did the interior maps for).
beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2019/12/module-castle-xyntillan-now-available.html

Another bellweather are reports by the various Virtual Tabletop companies
For example the Roll20 Orr Report
blog.roll20.net/post/617299166657445888/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2020

You bring up several good points. However, I feel you are looking at this from a publishing standpoint as a creator, and seeing things as "a numbers game", more or less. Valid, but different viewpoint/approach than my own.

To keep things from veering off, I will just say I agree to disagree in key areas such as degrees of change over the years, and stylistlic diversion from the early days and leave it at that.

[Deleted]

I'm on mobile right now so this will be brief and won't cover my full breadth of opinion on OSR, but I feel like OSR emulates that wild west, sky-is-the-limit feeling of very early zines right after D&D '74 came out. I feel like, even with all the changes over the last two decades and even with a reduced emphasis on what we're calling old school, that DIY aesthetic is the only truly fundamental and irreplaceable cornerstone, and it's as strong as ever.

[tedopon]

A thing I've noticed recently with most of the social media based OSR places is a "hardest of the hardcore" attitude. I will make a reasonable statement and people will jump down my throat because it's not En Vogue. It's tiring. I like od&d because there is a ton of freedom at the table. IDGAF about what the Kool-Aid drinkers think and don't understand why they're so combative.

[Deleted]

I really enjoy the breadth and depth of ideas that come out of the OSR. My taste runs to pseudo-historical (Averoigne & Bran Mak Morn), Sword & Sorcery (Hyboria), and Weird (Lovecraft et al.) so the last 10 years or so have been quite good although I really wish there were more adventures and settings that removed armoured saints. But I am also sick and tired of seeing yet another set of game rules. I really wish we could just focus on TSR era D&D. Put your houserules on your web-pages but don't build your adventures based on your particular "game." It gets tiring having to convert from one game system to another. Yes, I know that I contradicted myself with "remove clerics but be compatible with TSR D&D." If I ever publish professionally, I would include an appendix on how to run a given module or supplement without divine casters. So I ask of other authors --> write for your favorite TSR D&D rules and create an appendix for your house rules, if you want my money. I have zero interest in learning yet another game system.

[tdenmark]

Jul 21, 2020 6:58:42 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

One thing I like about OD&D is that when I read it I feel like it came off of somebody's typewriter and I think, "yeah, I could have done that."

That sums it up perfectly. Because the original is so crudely made there is something about the fantasy of imagining if you had been in that time and place to launch the most influential (and best!) game in the world off of your typewriter.

[jeffb]

Sept 3, 2020 16:10:56 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

Jul 21, 2020 6:58:42 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

One thing I like about OD&D is that when I read it I feel like it came off of somebody's typewriter and I think, "yeah, I could have done that."

That sums it up perfectly. Because the original is so crudely made there is something about the fantasy of imagining if you had been in that time and place to launch the most influential (and best!) game in the world off of your typewriter.

And for those who don't have it, I highly suggest grabbing the PDF of Tunnels & Trolls First edition and giving it a serious read through. It's 2 bucks on drivethru. You will most assuredly get that "author's voice" from Ken, that done a typewriter vibe (a LHanded typewriter from 1917 at that!) and it's a extremely interesting reaction piece to OD&D, and I can't help but sympathize with Ken's feelings coming from a completey different gaming perspective than the Midwest OD&D groups.

[makofan]

Just going for it - Fight On! magazine exemplifies and encapsulates what the OSR meant to me