squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
It's Holmes Basic + leans a little AD&D (before it was published) --- a weird hybrid.
The state of Post-OSR content
- Thread starter Yora
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Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
To be clear, "/s".
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Is that reddit slang? It's lost on me.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I suddenly imagined a Steven Brust spoof of this, written in the style of Paarfi of Roundwood.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
Great. While reading that article, my eyes rolled so hard, one of them dropped out of my head. Now I'm in the ER holding an eyeball in a bag of ice.
The author is absolutely correct on one point though, in that the best adventures ever written were written for AD&D. Lightning in a bottle. That's why we're all here now; looking for that vibe. I think we now know the reason why module quality went downhill: There's no money in it for the corporation. If there was some way to make it a profitable enterprise, I'm sure we'd see a renaissance.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
I was in a Barnes & Noble yesterday and to be sure D&D has lost shelf-space. To your point, the core books where there --- but zero adventures!
Actually "books" were also looking anemic --- SciFi in particular. Graphic novels and manga dominated.
I used to love books stores. This was sad.
Actually "books" were also looking anemic --- SciFi in particular. Graphic novels and manga dominated.
I used to love books stores. This was sad.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Well there was also X1, X2 and especially B2. With an honourable mention to B1.
EDIT: B4 is pretty good too.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
This true of bookstores in general though. Every year, when I'm back in Canada, I head to the bookstore to pick up some reading (mostly childrens books these days) for the coming year. Every year, there's more non-book detritus blocking the entryways. At this point, I estimate fully 1/3 of Chapters/Indigo shelfspace is given over to the kind of crap that belongs in a Pier1 (or a garage sale...) They're fighting for their lives; I get it. I hate my tiny, shitty Kindle but god DAMN it's just so convenient!
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
B5 is the BEST. I've run it so many times; it's falling apart.
Also filthy heresy: Return to the Keep on the Borderlands was super fun to read/run! (Return to White Plume Mountain, not so much)
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
X1 & X2 never really floated my boat...but by then I had moved away from running TSR modules. Heck, all of B/X was such a massive turn-off for me.
B1 was great, but very DIY.
I own an original B4 (Lost City) and I know lots of folks love it, but I never played it.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
No, I see the appeal of RttKotB. It's built on B2's chassis and uses B2's engine, and B2 was designed to be restocked and reused.
Hmmm. This is an attractive hypothesis, but... I'm not so sure it's really true. Even today's WotC still sells a lot of adventure paths, which are just bloated modules (usually but not always tied to a railroad of some kind).
Reflecting on lessons of The Elusive Shift, I suspect module writing shifted more as a result of playstyles than monetary constraints. As D&D grew beyond the community of cash-strapped working-class midwesterners (including Gygax himself) who dreamed of striking it rich and quitting their day jobs and into communities of those with different creative agendas such as feeling heroic or impressing other people at the table or whatnot, playstyle shifted to something that's harder to capture in a module than early dungeon crawls were. They may have made modules less profitable, but unprofitability is more of a symptom than a root cause. I think.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
I think customers started buying modules to collect and read them more than play them as well. A pretty product with a cool story became more desirable. Modules became aspirational. I remember my friends, who were players rather than referees in the group buying adventures. I remember when I had a couple of dry years where I couldn't scrape together a group, buying adventures anyway. Playability wasn't necessarily the first criterion. I know I wasn't alone in that buying habit; the corporation followed the money.
Oh, absolutely. I own a ton of WotC-authored 5E modules that I bought out of sheer curiosity, to know what other people were talking about (e.g. monster appendixes at the back), even though I already knew I had no desire to run them. (There are others that I didn't buy because I wasn't even interested in discussing them.)
But that still seems like a consequence of a playstyle shift. It's not "good modules are expensive" ==> "module quality goes downhill." More like "dungeon crawling becomes less popular among players" ==> "dungeon crawl modules stop selling well" ==> "other kinds of content, like adventure paths, become more relatively popular" ==> "industry doesn't know how to write them" ==> "module quality goes downhill."
I'm sure WotC would happily write a good mystery module if they could, just like they would happily write a well-formatted PHB index if they could, but for some reason they can't. I don't think lack of profitability is the reason for their inability. Maybe it's some kind of Dunning-Krueger thing where they're just not competent enough to recognize their own incompetence, and think what they've got is actually pretty good.
As far as non-WotC stuff goes... I do buy a lot of stuff that Bryce recommends, even if I don't necessarily expect to have time to run it, but that's because I expect to learn from it, maybe steal some ideas or segments. Also I just like supporting good adventure-writers.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
I agree with the notion that a different (more common/larger) demographic of player arrived and was catered too. Likewise the game morphed to become more mainstream accessible. No doubt.
What I don't know is if TSR/WotC orchestrated it intelligently or just went with the flow.
Similarly the style of fantasy, sci-fi, comic-books etc. that are hugely popular right now are also some weird mash-up up of things I used to like and things I very much never did. Despite the ridiculously huge amount of genre-product out there, so little of it is appealing---because ultimately the content has changed, disguised in the old dress-up. I can no longer say "I like Sci-Fi and Fantasy" to discribe my tastes because it bears little relation to its roots in 97% of the cases.
When I was a kid, I was reluctant to say I play D&D because of the nerd label. Now everyone wants to identify as a nerd, but I still don't want to say I play D&D because people might think I like playing TODAY'S kind of D&D...which could lead to even more embarrassment when I might have to disentangle myself from an invitation without insulting.
What I don't know is if TSR/WotC orchestrated it intelligently or just went with the flow.
Similarly the style of fantasy, sci-fi, comic-books etc. that are hugely popular right now are also some weird mash-up up of things I used to like and things I very much never did. Despite the ridiculously huge amount of genre-product out there, so little of it is appealing---because ultimately the content has changed, disguised in the old dress-up. I can no longer say "I like Sci-Fi and Fantasy" to discribe my tastes because it bears little relation to its roots in 97% of the cases.
When I was a kid, I was reluctant to say I play D&D because of the nerd label. Now everyone wants to identify as a nerd, but I still don't want to say I play D&D because people might think I like playing TODAY'S kind of D&D...which could lead to even more embarrassment when I might have to disentangle myself from an invitation without insulting.
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I don't remember TSR days (I started AD&D around 1992, after the module transition had already taken place) but my guess based on what I've read and also observed about WotC is that module writers basically follow Steve Brust's Cool Stuff Theory of Literature:
The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool.
The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff.
Gary was an impoverished-but-industrious entrepreneur in real life. Clearly he found the idea of outwitting deadly traps created by an archlich in order to gain fabulous
But bottling the good parts about Critical Role and selling it in book form is not as easy as bottling the Tomb of Horrors experience.
P.S. I get your point about not wanting to be invited to... a certain kind of D&D game. For me I just ask up-front what the game is "about" from the 8 Kinds of Fun perspective (https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/, best article AngryGM ever wrote), and then decline based on that instead of getting into a semantic argument about what "D&D" means.
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The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
This!
I remember the shift! Suddenly the dungeons part of Dungeons & Dragons was dreadfully immaTure
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
Dude, just start going on and on about your character. Or your campaign. No one wants to hear about either of those things (they'd rather talk about their own). You will find they look for ways to extricate themselves from the conversation shortly thereafter. Anyone who isn't sent packing immediately will eventually realize a) they have an incompatible playstyle, and b) (and I say this with all due respect sir) you are an irascible dinosaur
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
It's probably the fault of Weis and Hickman.I remember the shift! Suddenly the dungeons part of Dungeons & Dragons was dreadfully immaTure
But also, like you I had times where finding good, stable gaming groups was hard. People were too busy with college, or going out into the real world. I desperately wanted to play higher level stuff, and it was hard to get a group to level that high, especially with the 1e paradigm. When 3rd edition came around, it seemed like a godsend. The characters were tougher! They had more to do at low levels! (wizards with 2-0 and 1-1st level spells, with INT bonuses to boot, woooooo!). The encounters were balanced and were meant for the PCs to win, so they could level faster. Wheeeee!!! Only later did it become apparent how bad and boring that would get.