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Post by MilkManX on Jan 9, 2013 13:56:42 GMT -6
Whats going on with S&W? This board and the site boards are a ghost town.
The google plus group is semi active. It seems like ever since the "complete" version that S&W has been "shunned" or something...
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Post by Falconer on Jan 13, 2013 1:04:53 GMT -6
Is there any clone that DOES get a lot of discussion? I follow all OSRIC discussion on the internet, and there’s just not much. I assume it’s only natural that most of the time people prefer to discuss the “real” game they emulate.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2013 5:31:54 GMT -6
Goblinoid Games "Labyrinth Lord" gets a lot of activity on its home board. It's mostly PbP games but the board is quite busy.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2013 6:06:28 GMT -6
The Goblinoid Games forum opened the same year as this one and was going strong, but then two years ago Dan swapped software after problems with the original and the new forum never quite reached the same dynamic level.
At first I thought it was because of the change, but then I noticed other forums seem to lose their momentum around the same time (including the S&W forum, Dragonsfoot and K&KA). The only forum that seemed to buck the trend was this one.
Around that time the popularity of blogging was at its peak, although I wouldn't say that was the sole cause of the slow down in forum activity. Google+ started up around 18 months ago, several months after the forums became quieter places, so I wouldn't think G+ was the reason either.
There may be some truth in what Falconer says, but that certainly wasn't the case initially, not in the first few years of the retro-clones. Perhaps the wonder and mystery is now over and the community realises that most clones are just D&D with house rules. Maybe the tribalism that naturally occurred around the different brands then dropped off with the understanding that it is all just D&D, which had a flow-on effect on some forums. Although this wouldn't explain why the two 1e AD&D forums also seemed to have had a slow down around the same time.
Whatever the cause I'm just glad this forum has stayed a fresh and happening place. The egos are few, the creativity is great, the friendliness and geniality is encouraging.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 13, 2013 6:37:28 GMT -6
I think that most of the simulacrum games have their own spot on the web, which is why they don't get much chatter here. The main focus for this place is OD&D, obviously, and some of the threads could apply to the clone games without having to be specific about an individual clone. Other than that, we have a lot of focus on some games (Dragons at Dawn, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperboria, etc) that don't have their own boards, plus old-time TSR games (Boot Hill, Gangbusters) that don't have their own boards either. And, honestly, I'm not playing most of the clones at the moment. I tend to discuss games that I play and don't pay as much attention to those I don't play, and perhaps others are the same way. Just guessing.
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Post by MilkManX on Jan 14, 2013 16:17:04 GMT -6
Yeah that must be it. I just remember a few years ago this place and the boards at swordsandwizardry.com were booming with talk.
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Post by Falconer on Jan 14, 2013 16:42:39 GMT -6
I think, with the diversity and indeed exponential proliferation of TSR and OSR games, there are only so much interesting things that can be said anymore about the differences between them all.
What ties this community together is the focus on OD&D. There’s some essential wisdom in and around OD&D — a sort of “zen,” to quote Mythmere — that I feel people who play any “system” can and do benefit from tremendously. At least, we feel so, I think, and with that as a “given,” conversation rarely goes too far afield from topics of common interest. Small wonder, for example, that we return again and again to Conan and John Carter.
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Post by Mr. Darke on Jan 19, 2013 14:12:19 GMT -6
I think that currently the attention has been drawn away from S&W thanks to Delving Deeper coming out. Let the new of DD wear off and you'll probably see things rebalance a bit. That is, until the next new thing in OD&D comes around.
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Post by verhaden on Jan 19, 2013 14:44:30 GMT -6
White Box, the only S&W product analogous to DD, has been largely ignored for years. I can't see DD stealing S&W's thunder, because S&W doesn't have any beyond its Kickstarter (for rules that go beyond what DD targets) -- which, by the way, you'd never know about because it was never mentioned on the front page of the S&W website. Your prime source of information is Myth's blog, which is hosted on Blogspot, again, as opposed to the S&W website, and there's no obvious link to his blog on the main S&W page.
Not that I've seen much talk regarding DD, either. BHP's website has the boxed set listed as 'No Longer Available' (which is true, but damaging for people looking for the rules given there's no link to the reference rules and if you searched for them at DriveThruRPG you'd have to sit through a bunch of other Delving Deeper products to get to the rules). The Immersive Ink website also lacks a link to the download, doesn't even mention the game being released, and doesn't look to have been updated in months. If you happened to want a free copy of the reference rules, it's the 8th link down when you google 'Delving Deeper'.
I love both games equally and I have a lot of respect for all those involved in each respective project, but nobody's going to talk about your games if they don't know they've been released, if they don't know what support exists/is on the way, or where to even look for this information beyond lucking into a third-party forum like this one and scrolling past the non-clone sections for news and updates.
Compare this to Labyrinth Lord and Dan Proctor. His website is updated frequently, he has links to the Goblinoid Games Facebook page and his blog on the front page, he has clear print and pdf (and text) links on his page, and his forum and product are much more active as a result. If you've never heard of the game before today, you could get an up-to-date, broad overview of the product in less than 5 minutes on one site, no Google necessary.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2013 15:45:24 GMT -6
Julian, I remember looking at the S&W forum around 2 years ago and thinking to myself that you could just about see the tumbleweeds rolling down the main street. That was back when DD was just an idea and S&W was at the height of its popularity. I don't believe DD was the cause of that forum going quiet.
And verhaden, while I can't speak for Simon I believe he plans to wait until John has done his thing with the BHP version of DD before then throwing his energies into making DD the Immersive Ink product. When that happens I suspect we'll see DD begin to get promoted with enthusiasm by the publisher.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 19, 2013 16:59:49 GMT -6
It's possible that there are so many clones and old school revisited style games that none gets much specific chatter, even though the collective discussion is decent.
I know there is a lot of love for BFRPG, S&W, DD, AS&SH, C&C, OSRIC, LL (and variants of LL) Blueholme, and so many others. Not to mention that old-school D&D has OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI/RC, AD&D, 2E, and so on. Spreads the discussion out a lot -- some here, some on DF, some on boards devoted directly to specific clones, etc.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jan 19, 2013 20:53:47 GMT -6
See here if you're interested in more Delving Deeper specifics...
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Post by Mr. Darke on Jan 25, 2013 16:15:01 GMT -6
Julian, I remember looking at the S&W forum around 2 years ago and thinking to myself that you could just about see the tumbleweeds rolling down the main street. That was back when DD was just an idea and S&W was at the height of its popularity. I don't believe DD was the cause of that forum going quiet. You have a point. And I am not blaming DD for any of S&W's slow down. I think it may have been a small factor in recent months. That said, I have to echo something similar to what Fin has said. There are a lot of clones out there and there is a good portion of those that are OD&D related. There may be a bit of over saturation going on which is causing a decline in discussions. Also, most of the OD&D clones are pretty compatible with one another so many may just lump them all together as OD&D and do not specifically discuss a single clone. In the end, I have no idea why one does so well and another doesn't and I have no idea why discussion one place does better than discussion in another.
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Post by scottenkainen on Jan 26, 2013 11:05:59 GMT -6
Looking even further back, I remember how surprised I was by the passivity of the fans of Kingdoms of Kalamar setting after being a part of the vibrant and prolific online World of Greyhawk fan community. The difference was that, most of the time, nothing new was coming out for Greyhawk unless the fans did it, while Kalamar fans had a "let's just wait and see what Kenzer comes out with next" attitude.
I think we're seeing that now with Swords & Wizardry. Now that S&W is prolifically supported by Frog God Games, it feels more like *their* game, and we're just passively waiting and buying. When a game isn't that successful, we all feel more comfortable jumping in and contributing as equals.
Anyway, that's just my impression, and I can't even speak to the other retro-clones, as I never looked into them as much.
~Scott "-enkainen" Casper
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Post by blackbarn on Feb 12, 2013 14:29:29 GMT -6
I think some of it is a problem going back a long way - too many versions of the rules. Also, White Box is apparently the red-headed stepchild, but feels like it ought to be the core rules the rest is based on. S&W is just an odd duck of a system (though I like it).
I do see some blogs and so forth still making new things for the game, but the feeling it once had that is is some kind of key to unlock the original D&D rules seems to be gone now. Maybe people have realized that with all these slightly different clones available now they can just as easily make their own rules and still be playing "D&D"?
I also agree with verhaden and scottenkainen's ideas, particularly... but there are likely a number of reasons behind the ghost town effect.
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Post by MilkManX on Feb 20, 2013 12:14:53 GMT -6
I think between the spam on their main boards,the product itself being divided into 3 items and one of them being promoted by Frog they have divided their own small fan base.
I love S&W Core and I will continue to use that for my fantasy games. Right now I am playing some Robotech(2nd ed) so we are on a break from our S&W campaign.
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mythmere
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Post by mythmere on Mar 2, 2013 9:05:56 GMT -6
The main issue is that people are abandoning forums, I think, in favor of newer modes. Check out the Google+ community on Swords & Wizardry here: plus.google.com/communities/105496313464716843665There are 421 members there over the course of a couple of months, many of them being gamers who aren't exclusively OOP/retro players, but alternate between Pathfinder and S&W as the two poles of a spectrum. Before that the Facebook page eclipsed the forum as well but facebook got swamped by the Google+ group. The migration from platform to platform in the social media illustrates that a single game can't easily support multiple big platforms (not at the size of S&W, at least). Swords & Wizardry itself is booming, with the almost $80K Kickstarter, being used as the rule set for projects like Rappan Athuk, etc. Its prominence in the mainstream is growing very, very fast.
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Post by scottenkainen on Mar 2, 2013 10:57:15 GMT -6
I find this funny because I was so hesitant to migrate from listservs to message boards because message boards seemed too new-fangled. Then I migrated to Facebook only because my girlfriend got me hooked on Farm Town for awhile. I can't imagine migrating yet again to the next newest fad. I'm glad I've got other old-fashioned types on here I can hang out with while the rest of humanity leaves us behind.
~Scott "-enkainen" Casper
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