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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertsconley" data-source="post: 9372940" data-attributes="member: 13383">Yes experience matters but it applies differently to things meant for our entertainment as opposed to functional things like planes. We know how to present RPGs better. We have developed a kaldioscope of creative design tools to choose from when making a system. Whether the RPG is entertaining or not is a matter of taste. Some works get it right from the start, while others done by authors with a lot of experience are duds.  Now that I have worked with it for some time now, my opinion is that OD&D is an example similar to that of chess. A system that took one more iteration to nail down its essential elements (The Greyhawk supplement) and turned into a timeless classic. One that still holds up today definitely would benefit from a better presentation than the original.As for writing and organization, yes, I agree that OD&D needed (and now has) a better presentation. The popularity of Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, and Old School Essentials shows what can happen with OD&D with a good presentation. As for design the fact that OSR been going on now for nearly 20 years settles that question.As a OSR publisher and given the feedback and sales I get, it not a few. But it not burning down the RPG industry either. After 20 years of interest and support, OD&D 'as is' is equal to any other mid-tier system that is being played today. Folks revisit OD&D because one assumption that got left out is how folks ran campaigns in the early 70s. See they didn't have shelves of published products to choose from. So if they thought of something fun they wanted to try what they had to come up with their own rules. But they didn't start from scratch. They had a bunch of techniques from zines, word of mouth, actually playing, and some from the few published games that they could mix and match from to play whatever campaign or scenario they wanted to try. OD&D is basically Gygax and Arneson advice to this audience on how to play out a fantasy medieval campaign. And it was written for an audience that had experience in wargaming and running campaigns. So it focused on the stuff that was unique to fantasy medieval campaigns. OSE, Swords & Wizardry, and so on are not carbon copies of the original rules. Mechanically they are really close, but they are written with the voice of the author. Just as I write my own take in my own way. So people in the OSR have an interest in reading the original precisely because it advice written in the author's voice. It may be similar to what I wrote, what Matt Finch wrote, but it also not the same. Hence its value to the modern gamer.</blockquote>

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