Are the Retro Clones doing well?

[P1NBACK]

What the heck, I will give some pretty solid numbers.

Red Box Fantasy (which is one of the newest Retro-Clones and written mostly by me) has been out for about 2 months, has barely been promoted in any way and is still getting about 30 downloads of the free book a week and averaging about 5 or 6 purchases of the pay books (about 75 percent downloads and 25 percent physical copies).

Paige Oliver's Storefront - Lulu.com

You can add me to the list of peeps who've downloaded the free Player's Portfolio or whatever.

I've been very interested in Retro Clones as of late, mostly probably for nostalgia purposes, but of all the clones I've checked out Red Box Fantasy does seem to intrigue me. I usually read about the first few pages of a retro clone and realize why I don't play 1st Edition... But, upon glancing (yes, just glancing) at yours, it's a bit more inspiring. I particularly like the "archtypes" approach to classes. Very cool.

Anyways, just wanted to say kudos to you and if I do try to run a retro-clone game, I might just run Red Box Fantasy.

 

[Jhaelen]

Our local gaming store is constantly sold out of all its retro books.
Maybe it's a stocking thing, but there is a ton of 4e stuff just sitting there.

Mhm, it's the other way around in my local gaming store. But the owner's a real grognard and doesn't really care about any rpgs or accessories (like plastic minis...) that didn't exist when he was an active player. I guess, he doesn't do it for the money...

 

[Nellisir]

Whether that style can be achieved with newer rulesets is a persistent question. IMO, that style is fundamentally about [brace yourselves] realism, with characters who are largely bound to the laws of physics (yes, plus magic) and spend much of their careers facing mundane, non-world-threatening challenges. The default adventuring party in newer D&D editions - a roving fantasy Justice League - is a far cry from the mortal, often short-lived characters of editions up to 1e.

Whether newer rulesets are actually capable of playing down to that level of power is another question. Some have had luck, but a great appeal of retro-clones is that the bare-bones rules can't help but start the power dial at zero and allows groups to scale up from there.

Conversely, it's not so easy to run a gritty, swords & sorcery game with a ruleset that assumes laser-beaming half-demons as a default starting character option, so retro-clones are often considered to be the best tool for that particular job.

If that's the attitude you, as the DM, walk in with, then I think you've already abandoned the fight and decided it can't be done. It continually amazes me that fans of the OSR praise it for it's "DM control" and how they can change things as they like, but complain that they have no control over the options in "modern" rulesets. I'm not even talking about rule changes - if you don't like tieflings, don't use them. Cut laser powers out of 4e if you don't want those - I suspect there are enough other powers to make up loss. If you don't like the options, change them. Blaming it on the ruleset is bull. Do the dynamics of the game change? Probably. But no more than cutting thieves, or demihumans, from an earlier edition ruleset - both of which seem to be popular among the "grim n' gritty is real roleplaying" crowd.

 

[Aurumvorax]

I'm going to take the silence as meaning there isn't a 2e clone yet. If there is please let me know.

Oh, there's a 2E retro clone in progress and it's about 50% complete. It started around the end of November and is progressing rather rapidly. There's still some inconsistencies to be wrapped up but it's mostly playable as is.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm the creator

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh, there's a 2E retro clone in progress and it's about 50% complete. It started around the end of November and is progressing rather rapidly. There's still some inconsistencies to be wrapped up but it's mostly playable as is.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm the creator

Fantastic!

In my own game, I want to include notes on converting kits as well as prestige classes, and an OGC reference is exactly what is needed. Thanks!

RC

 

[Oni]

Whether that style can be achieved with newer rulesets is a persistent question. IMO, that style is fundamentally about [brace yourselves] realism, with characters who are largely bound to the laws of physics (yes, plus magic) and spend much of their careers facing mundane, non-world-threatening challenges. The default adventuring party in newer D&D editions - a roving fantasy Justice League - is a far cry from the mortal, often short-lived characters of editions up to 1e.

Whether newer rulesets are actually capable of playing down to that level of power is another question. Some have had luck, but a great appeal of retro-clones is that the bare-bones rules can't help but start the power dial at zero and allows groups to scale up from there.

Conversely, it's not so easy to run a gritty, swords & sorcery game with a ruleset that assumes laser-beaming half-demons as a default starting character option, so retro-clones are often considered to be the best tool for that particular job.

I don't know, this seems like kind of a narrow view of retro gaming. There seems to me to be a movement in the OSR toward embracing a more gonzo style of gaming. Besides retro is not just D&D, look at a game like Mutant Future, would anyone really blink at a laser-beaming bear as a PC in that game for instance or 1st level PC's with double digit HP?

 

[Votan]

If that's the attitude you, as the DM, walk in with, then I think you've already abandoned the fight and decided it can't be done. It continually amazes me that fans of the OSR praise it for it's "DM control" and how they can change things as they like, but complain that they have no control over the options in "modern" rulesets. I'm not even talking about rule changes - if you don't like tieflings, don't use them. Cut laser powers out of 4e if you don't want those - I suspect there are enough other powers to make up loss. If you don't like the options, change them. Blaming it on the ruleset is bull. Do the dynamics of the game change? Probably. But no more than cutting thieves, or demihumans, from an earlier edition ruleset - both of which seem to be popular among the "grim n' gritty is real roleplaying" crowd.

While I agree that any ruleset can be adapted to a specific style of play, sometimes the relative effort to adapt a ruleset can be fairly high. 4E is a fine game and very well designed. But as part of the design, the developers made decisions about how to balance things and about the style of play that would be most easily supported.

Other games (for example, GURPS or Rolemaster) make different assumptions and provide different balance points. You could turn 4E into GURPS but the effort seems high compared with simply picking a ruleset that fits well with a playstyle. Nothing in 4E can compare with seeing a 25th level Fighter die from a single arrow from a lucky critical from a 2nd level Orc (which I have seen in Rolemaster). It's a whole different style.

4E makes a lot of inherent assumptions about player strength and has an extremely dense system of options. This makes for a very fun game. But the same richness makes tweaking it into a "grim and gitty" rules system complicated unless there is a simple trick that is easy to balance.

It's not so much removing races and classes (an all-elf, all-primal 4E campaign would be possible without anybody being in trouble) is the issue as the assumptions for what a 1st level (or 5th level) character should be able to do.

So I do think that ruleset does help define the game and that there can come a point where you tweak so much to reach the ending that it makes more sense to start at a different point. 4E accelerates this a bit with options like the character builder (a marvellous tool that manages the complexity of 4E rather well) which is difficult to use in conjunction with extensive house ruling of powers and classes (absent a straightforward "banned list").

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I do think it's possible to define a retro-clone as a "success" or "flop", even if it's released as a free .pdf. You count the number of downloads a day. Some proportion of the downloaders go on to become players--though I do not think the conversion rate is very high, and I do tend to assume that many of the downloads are repeats, where someone has lost a copy or wants a copy on a different computer.

When I first released OSRIC, I measured its success against the number of downloads I was getting for other free material. For example, I have a number of .pdfs of adventure modules uploaded to Dragonsfoot; the least successful of these gets 20-25 downloads a day, while the most successful is just over 50. I defined "success" for OSRIC as over 100 downloads a day.

In the event OSRIC rather significantly exceeded (and though I haven't checked recently, I do not doubt that it still exceeds) my early guess. Luckily for us, wiser heads than mine had bought a generous hosting plan so the document didn't come offline during those first few weeks.

I don't have the numbers for LL or S&W but I would be astonished if they were much behind OSRIC, and one or both might very well be ahead.

BFRPG I think may have achieved fewer downloads, though it has (and richly deserves) many loyal and vocal fans.

 

[Hairfoot]

If that's the attitude you, as the DM, walk in with, then I think you've already abandoned the fight and decided it can't be done. It continually amazes me that fans of the OSR praise it for it's "DM control" and how they can change things as they like, but complain that they have no control over the options in "modern" rulesets. I'm not even talking about rule changes - if you don't like tieflings, don't use them. Cut laser powers out of 4e if you don't want those - I suspect there are enough other powers to make up loss. If you don't like the options, change them. Blaming it on the ruleset is bull. Do the dynamics of the game change? Probably. But no more than cutting thieves, or demihumans, from an earlier edition ruleset - both of which seem to be popular among the "grim n' gritty is real roleplaying" crowd.

There are two components to that. The first is what the rules do or do not allow, and the other is what sort of playing style the assumptions of the game strongly suggest.

The ultra-balanced mathematical basis of 4E is a huge part of its sales pitch, and regarded as a great strength by its fanbase. It's simply untrue to claim that a system like that can be tinkered with to any significant degree and not disrupt what's at its core. That doesn't apply to games that are thin frameworks to which the players add their imagination.

In addition, the default strength of the PCs and their abilities is much greater than in older editions and retro-clones. All the pushes, pulls, marks, bloodied abilities, damage multipliers, limitless magical powers, minion foes and boo-yah dailies necessarily push each character far above the potency of a bare-bones PC. That element can't be removed from 4E because it is 4E.

That's not just 4E, of course. 2E began that trend, but it's moved ever upward since.

The second element is the presentation of the game. This topic invariably gets wound up in arguments about WoW and anime, but the fact is that a retro-clone assumes the PCs are daring mortals, while 4E assumes tieflings, laser beams, dragon-people, healing surges (in all their dissociation) and a metric crapload of magical gear. A DM can cut those elements out, but he's still running the game in a system that assumes them, with books that employ an artistic style which reinforces it on every page.

I didn't think my post was belligerent, but I certainly don't think a "fight" is necessary. Not all games can do all things. Recognising that frees everyone up. I understand that hardcore 4E fans would like to believe that it's a truly universal fantasy game, but it isn't, just as a retro-clone can't provide a RPG/wargame hybrid the same way 3E and 4E can.

I don't know, this seems like kind of a narrow view of retro gaming. There seems to me to be a movement in the OSR toward embracing a more gonzo style of gaming. Besides retro is not just D&D, look at a game like Mutant Future, would anyone really blink at a laser-beaming bear as a PC in that game for instance or 1st level PC's with double digit HP?

I agree. The gonzo-ness is a great thing, and I hope it becomes more prominent in the OSR.

Like most posters, however, I'm arguing from a position of wanting an RPG system to be able to provide a particular type of game, which for me at the moment is about mortal, Indiana Jones-y parties facing fairly human-scaled challenges.

When I'm ready for lasgun bears I'll be reaching for Mutant Future or Star Frontiers!

 

[Nikosandros]

Oh, there's a 2E retro clone in progress and it's about 50% complete. It started around the end of November and is progressing rather rapidly. There's still some inconsistencies to be wrapped up but it's mostly playable as is.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm the creator

I'm no expert in legal matters, but I think that as the author of a clone game that uses the OGL, you should refrain from indicating compatibility with D&D (or with any Trademark, for that matter).