goblinoidgames.com

...is the echo of my own footsteps.
Sure is quiet around here!

The whole board's been kind of quiet lately. I'm going to attribute this to summer and the con season...

Call me a pessimist, but I think the silence is a result of OSR-burnout. Eventually the glut of "Old-School D&D but better" games that have been inflicted upon us were going to have an effect, and not a good one. It really saddens me that the two true clones, those two that actually thought the games they emulated were worth preserving with as little change possible, might go down with the multitude of house-ruled/home-brewed D&Dish games.

I do see a ton of buzz and support for games like DCC and LotFP. Just goes to show you we'll never get away from the shiny and new must be better syndrome, even in the OSR. Ah well.

It has been quiet. But Labyrinth Lord continues to get good mentions at places such as RPG.net. Mutant Future doesn't get as much attention, unfortunately. It'd be nice to generate more buzz about the Pacesetter stable; Rotworld's name comes up whenever zombie games are mentioned.

Plus I think some of our hard-working stalwarts here are busy working on other projects at the moment.

seneschal wrote:
Plus I think some of our hard-working stalwarts here are busy working on other projects at the moment.

I've got about three of my own LL projects in the works, one of which (A Guide to the Duchy of Valnwall) is only about 2 years overdue. Dang real world promotion and now a baby on the way has really cut into my fun time! Not to mention putting Brave the Labyrinth - Issue #2 together.

Pete

Skathros wrote:Call me a pessimist, but I think the silence is a result of OSR-burnout. Eventually the glut of "Old-School D&D but better" games that have been inflicted upon us were going to have an effect, and not a good one. It really saddens me that the two true clones, those two that actually thought the games they emulated were worth preserving with as little change possible, might go down with the multitude of house-ruled/home-brewed D&Dish games.

If you mean the "next wave" draws attention in a negative way, I both agree and disagree. But I think that is a separate discussion from why the boards are quiet. Summer is always a slow time. Also I've had a low profile lately because my daughter was born in May, been very busy! Was out of town a few weeks for a wedding, etc. Also working on some projects behind the scenes.

As far as the "D&D but better" games, I agree with petespahn in that the new shiny generally attracts people. But the shiny wears off. We've seen it time and again. At the end of the day people just want to play D&D. I emphasize play because there is a lot of cheerleading for various games going on by people who don't really play them. You start to figure these things out over time as a publisher and filter out some of what those people say because their opinions only mean so much to overall gamer preferences, but also buying habits. People naturally want to release their "own" D&D, which is great, I understand that completely. But it is mostly a vanity exercise and even many of the seemingly popular ones right now will fade into the background in 6 months or a year. Again, people just want to play D&D.

seneschal wrote:It'd be nice to generate more buzz about the Pacesetter stable

Working on it! I started an info page about Pacesetter that can be found here:

pacesetter.us

Majus is coming in August. Can't say much more right at this moment, but keep an eye out for more announcements about Pacesetter in the near future.

Skathros wrote:Call me a pessimist, but I think the silence is a result of OSR-burnout. Eventually the glut of "Old-School D&D but better" games that have been inflicted upon us were going to have an effect, and not a good one. It really saddens me that the two true clones, those two that actually thought the games they emulated were worth preserving with as little change possible, might go down with the multitude of house-ruled/home-brewed D&Dish games.

I sure as hell hope not. My LL books just shipped and I intend to try and run some games at the cons and game store around here. I just bought the Blade of Vengeance adventure and am trying to con one of my players into giving it a go.

Skathros wrote:It really saddens me that the two true clones, those two that actually thought the games they emulated were worth preserving with as little change possible, might go down with the multitude of house-ruled/home-brewed D&Dish games.

I can't see that happening. These old games are here to stay now -- with the efforts of Dan and others we have an open source rules set!

I agree that there does seem to be a kind of cycle of people drifting away from the basic D&D rules (largely due to the "ooh shiny!" factor, it seems... perhaps also due to a feeling of "the OSR has to *do* something NEW!"), but I think people will drift back to the origin again as well. Lots of us have already experienced this cycle, and that's what brought us to LL.