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Post by Marcia B. on Oct 22, 2023 20:29:02 GMT -6
So glad you like it, Hamurai!! And I’d be happy to work on a coil version as well! Shouldn’t be too hard, would just need to resize the cover files (I think).
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Post by hamurai on Oct 24, 2023 23:27:09 GMT -6
Coil binding would be great indeed! Thank you very much!
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Post by blindaudelay on Nov 20, 2023 14:54:59 GMT -6
I can’t wait for my hardcover copy to arrive! What a great project.
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Post by blindaudelay on Nov 22, 2023 15:07:04 GMT -6
Following up on hamurai's post above, here's a picture of what the B&W softcover looks like:
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Post by tdenmark on Aug 11, 2024 22:56:07 GMT -6
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 11, 2024 23:06:58 GMT -6
That sounds very Medieval to me. Those were not sunshine and flowers kind of times.
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Post by Morandir on Aug 13, 2024 3:51:37 GMT -6
“What does that sound like?”
It sounds like adventure, and it sounds awesome. If the author is going to clutch pearls about it this isn’t the game for him.
This article is tripe and doesn’t belong here.
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Post by machfront on Aug 13, 2024 5:55:55 GMT -6
You may say “interesting article”, I say “total bulls***”, and nothing else.
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Post by machfront on Aug 13, 2024 6:06:05 GMT -6
“The truth is that D&D is about violent colonialism in its very structure.”
Wow.
Guess we all better stop it.
This is far worse than when it was “the Devil’s game”!
We used to be engaging in demonic activity….now (somehow worse?) we’re engaging in colonial whateverism for….also whateverism? Stop your fantasy fun this instant!
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Post by tdenmark on Aug 13, 2024 15:36:33 GMT -6
Yeah, it did seem a bit much. Did anyone read the "blank page" in FMC?
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 13, 2024 19:42:27 GMT -6
Yeah, it did seem a bit much. Did anyone read the "blank page" in FMC? I read it. It didn't bother me. I see medieval fantasy roleplaying games (and tabletop wargames) as reflections of those historical times and I have no qualms about that. I was once running a Dark Ages style fantasy campaign and my players were AGHAST that I was so casual about the slavery present in the society (not race-based slavery like in the USA in the 1700s and 1800s, but more "classical" slavery.) Less "advanced" times have less "advanced" societies, and there is nothing wrong with a game representing that without necessarily glorifying it.
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Post by Finarvyn on Aug 14, 2024 8:24:47 GMT -6
It's interesting to see how things look, when viewed through a lens 50 years later. Back in the 70's one of my best friends liked to play Germany in Avalon Hill's wargame Third Reich and at no point did I ever think that he might be a Nazi because of this. (As far as I know, he still isn't.) Going into dungeons to kill stuff and take its loot was never a problem, as this was long before "murder hobo" became a thing, and back then we all had read Tolkien and we all knew that orcs are bad. As far as I know, Luke Skywalker was never criticized for killing thousands of stormtroopers when he blew up the Death Star. Robert E Howard's Conan character was a barbarian who had a keen dislike of Picts and also he didn't like evil priests and most civilized noblemen, and it was okay because he was Conan. That was just the 70's.
Vampires used to be bad, then White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade game made them cool and edgy. Funny that it's modern D&D that made up rules to play monsters (dragonborn, half-orcs, those demonic dudes whose name escapes me at the moment) and then wants to apologize that OD&D was too "good versus evil" in its alignment. OD&D was very much "us versus them" in the way that good guys (of any race or type or whatever) would band together to fight the forces of evil or chaos. Nobody really cared about your ethnicity or gender -- as long as you wanted to fight evil you were cool.
It just seems weird to me that folks today seem to want to apologize for things that they didn't do, and to apologize to people who never said they were offended. Turns out that orcs aren't real, so there aren't any orcs to feel bad that they were discriminated against.
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gonyaulax
Level 3 Conjurer
I still miss the 1970s . . . @:^/
Posts: 80
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Post by gonyaulax on Aug 14, 2024 16:09:06 GMT -6
Having a clone of OD&D that is cleaned up but very little altered is nice, but . . .
I don't like the judging of historical events and personages by modern standards. Unfair.
I don't like the judging of old 1920s - 1950s Science Fiction and Fantasy by modern standards. (I read a LOT of that literature.)
I don't like the judging of 1950s - 1980s music (pop, rock, jazz, blues, etc.) by modern standards. Unfair.
And I don't like the judging of old games by modern standards. Unfair.
Some of this stuff is still enjoyable as long as a) we don't make the same mistakes with newly created stuff, and b) we quit trying to make the old stuff into something that it is NOT. I can still read (and greatly enjoy) the writings of E. E. "Doc" Smith on their own terms despite the fact that "new" science fiction is much more developed. The same goes for Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Beatles, CCR, the Doobie Brothers, and OD&D (up thru 2nd Edition).
As Fin said, you can play a WWII game and run the Nazi side without supporting Nazi ideology. And as Punkrabbit said, you can display a given feature of a past culture without glorifying it.
If you want to write a paper about the horrible, awful, mind-destroying ideology present in all of the stuff from the past, go ahead and do so. But lecturing people within a set of role-playing rules is NOT the place to do it.
"Pearl-clutching" indeed . . .
In the meantime, I'll play what I want.
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Post by Morandir on Aug 14, 2024 17:54:10 GMT -6
Yeah, it did seem a bit much. Did anyone read the "blank page" in FMC? I read it. Insulting the people whose game you’re cloning is pathetic.
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Post by Morandir on Aug 14, 2024 17:55:35 GMT -6
“The truth is that D&D is about violent colonialism in its very structure.” Wow. Guess we all better stop it. This is far worse than when it was “the Devil’s game”! We used to be engaging in demonic activity….now (somehow worse?) we’re engaging in colonial whateverism for….also whateverism? Stop your fantasy fun this instant! Same reaction as the Satanic panic, just a different religion.
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Post by verhaden on Aug 14, 2024 18:56:58 GMT -6
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't a compelling argument. Maybe if you actually explored why people might think D&D glorifies a colonialist mindset you might re-evaluate the games you play and how you play them.
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
Posts: 387
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Post by flightcommander on Aug 14, 2024 19:40:44 GMT -6
I’m not in the least “offended” by anything in FMC or ancillary materials.
It’s not ”judging” the creators or players of OD&D or any later edition, and FMC was obviously composed with attention and care for the original text, and the game itself.
I think it poses a question that’s worth considering, nothing more.
I would like this thread to not blow all to hell.
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Post by Finarvyn on Aug 15, 2024 6:55:09 GMT -6
I would like this thread to not blow all to hell. Agreed. A friendly reminder to play nice. (1) FMC seems like a good product. (2) The author of FMC clearly has an agenda that isn't aligned with that of many old school gamers. Let's not explode over this.
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Post by tdenmark on Aug 15, 2024 7:56:13 GMT -6
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't a compelling argument. Maybe if you actually explored why people might think D&D glorifies a colonialist mindset you might re-evaluate the games you play and how you play them. OK. It was just a bit of a trojan horse and we were all quite cordial to her when she posted this. I think FMC is an interesting distillation of OD&D, the venom wasn't necessary.
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Post by captainjapan on Aug 15, 2024 8:04:27 GMT -6
flightcommander said: And there's the rub. The energy spent to research/design/publish a full blown retroclone is non-trivial for most of us. I don't believe the author set-out to make the game a vehicle for criticizing OD&D or Gary Gygax or older players. I think that Marcia B. is one of those people that just has that energy in abundance. Fantasy Medieval Campaigns isn't Marcia's first or her last completed game. It's a writing exercise, one of many. Unfortunately for the uninitiated, Marcia B. also subscribes to some unconventional ideas that find their counterpoint in OD&D/Gygax/etc. The "blank page" is the tip of the iceberg. On Marcia's blog, criticism runs stream-of-consciousness style from gaming to economics to gender to psychoanalysis and back again. It is criticism unsuitable to this or many other OSR focused communities because it reframes roleplaying as an expression of contemporary life with political ramifications rather than as a recreational diversion a.k.a., "just a game". Where these two aspects, the compulsion to write and the off-beat politics, converge, we might have gotten an essay. That could have easily been ignored. But, because the delivery method is something we want, a polished OD&D clone, there is a decision to make. It's the same decision as with the WotC OD&D book. There's no issue if your purpose is to read and interrogate your motives for enjoying games about invading the homes of others, killing them, and stealing their valuables; and to link that desire to your real life cultural heritage. If, however, your idea of fun is escaping for a few hours into the role of a character who can act in ways totally unacceptable in real life, that extra commentary is a buzz-kill.
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
Posts: 387
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Post by flightcommander on Aug 15, 2024 12:19:45 GMT -6
Vampires used to be bad … Ok here is where I draw the line. Vampires were always cool AF! 😅
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Post by Finarvyn on Aug 15, 2024 12:31:29 GMT -6
Vampires used to be bad … Ok here is where I draw the line. Vampires were always cool AF! 😅 Sure, as in a "we all love Dracula but eventually VanHelsing will win" kind of way. If you like good-guy Dracula you might check out Fred Saberhagen's series. There are around a dozen or so and they are mostly modern-day instead of 1800's, but the ones that come to mind offhand are "The Holmes-Dracula File" and "An Old Friend of the Family." In the book AOFotF Dracula is pulled in to help a family rescue a kidnap victim. www.goodreads.com/series/40505-dracula
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
Posts: 387
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Post by flightcommander on Aug 15, 2024 21:41:57 GMT -6
No I do not like “good-guy Dracula.”
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rhialto
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 128
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Post by rhialto on Aug 16, 2024 4:44:08 GMT -6
I have no important opinion on the page in question, other than it makes you wonder what they will write about us decades on, when we're all dead and our names forgotten. If anyone is left to sift through our ashes.
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Post by rredmond on Aug 16, 2024 5:11:29 GMT -6
I mean if we are forgotten then they won’t write too much about us methinks. But in general the opinions will go from awesome person through the spectrum of vile person. Depending, of course, on who is saying it when.
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Post by captainjapan on Aug 16, 2024 7:01:36 GMT -6
What I'd like to know is how to navigate itch.io. If that's where all this material - games, zines, etc. - is originating, I might like to browse there. So far, I'm having about as much luck as I do trying to search Discord convos. Which is to say, not much. Anyway, between the two there seems to be a vibrant, and also fractured, community of content creators. Itch.io/Discord seems to be where the young people are.
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Post by ochrejelly on Aug 16, 2024 23:46:35 GMT -6
God d**n, the sad old man factor is wild on this forum.
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rhialto
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 128
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Post by rhialto on Aug 17, 2024 11:00:25 GMT -6
God d**n, the sad old man factor is wild on this forum. Well, 2 of 3 adjectives are appropriate, and inspired a change. Peace!
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Post by tdenmark on Aug 19, 2024 16:33:33 GMT -6
God d**n, the sad old man factor is wild on this forum. That is the saddest old man comment I've read on this forum.
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Post by rredmond on Aug 19, 2024 16:51:59 GMT -6
My first Mod voice post I think. OD&D74 isn’t about insulting or sniping at each other. Please constructive, on topic, conversation in this thread. Thanks all!
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