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First, great post. My experience with the Big Model has been very similar. Second, the above is probably useful advice. However, to me, the Big Model seems very squarely in the realm of Social Psychology (I wouldn't recommend telling a Social Psychologist that they are part of the humanities...

I won't deny that there are edition-warriors and haters who also esteem (or at least claim to esteem) OS games. But I don't think the "resurgence" or "revival" or "rennaissance" (whatever you want the "R" to mean) is based on that kind of negativity. I don't think we would have seen a new...

Does the free version contain PHB2 content? That's cool. I was under the impression that they weren't going to add any content to the free version beyond the PHB1 and preview Dragon and Dungeon issues. That makes the free version even more generous than I originally thought. Way to go WotC! :)

What you're saying is that the OSR basically gained strength through negativity. I've never seen that. In fact, most of the OSR blogs and messageboards had a few posts/threads about 4e right after it first came out and everybody was talking about it and then dropped the subject to focus on the...

If you think WotC reproducing 1e AD&D would have meant the "end" of the OSR, then we obviously have a very different perspective on what the OSR is. I think in most people's opinion, the world's biggest RPG publisher going back to an old school ruleset as their flagship game would have been seen...

The free version includes all options for level 1-3 from all books and supplements published through September 2008.

1 - I never suggested the OSR was the invention of a single person. I have, in fact, been saying the exact opposite in this thread. 2 - The point I am making is that the release of 4e was not a major impetus in the development of the OSR, not that nobody on the face of the earth was every...

Perhaps there's a difference in nomenclature between different fields, but in the fields I'm familiar with (Psychology, Biology, Neuroscience) there is a clear distinction made between a model and a hypothesis/theory. Models are purely descriptive. Models describe the known interactions of their...

The fact that the OSR was born on internet messageboards and blogs dedicated to pre-3e versions of D&D suggests otherwise.

Keep in mind that 1e would probably appear to be about the same if the first time you encountered it you sat down at a table with a bunch of strangers and did nothing but play through a single combat encounter.

The OSR exists because people were ALREADY alienated from WotC's version of D&D ca. 2005. Really, no really, it has nothing to do with 4e. The people blogging about OS games and making retroclones were alienated by 3e, not 4e.

I totally buy that. I'm just saying, I find it much more likely that Wizards listened to feedback from their organized play partners that said their materials weren't up to par and decided to rectify the situation on their own rather than in response to some mandate from on high via Hasbro. I...

Wizards. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that these promotional events, rewards and incentives for customers and retailers are WotC's ideas? I know it detracts a little bit from the "OMG the sky is falling!" conspiracy theories to think that people at WotC actually have their own ideas...

This is exactly what I was thinking. The PCs are not Charlie, they are the Angels. The PCs are not Oscar Goldman, they are Colonel Steve Austin. They are important to the organization and can even be involved in policy decisions, but there is an older, wiser person who shoulders the mundane...

1 - It's a model, not a theory. 2 - Models are descriptive, not predictive.

This seems to be a common perception here at EN World, but I think it's probably a misperception. The level of activity in OSR spheres really took off a year or so before the release of 4e, fueled primarily by clone games like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord becoming available as print products and...

It doesn't seem to be a problem with the GNS model as much as it's a problem with the definitions provided not accurately reflecting the GNS model. Any system mechanics (like rolling all dice in the open and not fudging, for example) are called Techniques in the Big Model. A Technique isn't...

I'm not sure it's "about" anything. I think it just IS. Around the time that 3e came out a lot of players who didn't migrate to the new edition (or who migrated and weren't happy with it) started getting together on the internet to talk about their games and sometimes to write and distribute...

Is my reaction really that unreasonable? The OP writes a blog post critiquing other bloggers for being too focused on attention seeking, then proceeds to cross-post his blog entry on no less than 4 gaming messageboards. Dragonsfoot, TheRPGsite, Knights & Knaves Alehouse and Enworld. It's pretty...

I think it's been replaced by the "1e/2e/OD&D" tag, as in this thread for example... http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/273893-if-wizards-coast-decided-revitalize-support-ad-d-would-you-play-buy.html