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<blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9544218" data-attributes="member: 7045072">Yes this is true - many designers seem to focus on creating a game ecosystem around their products.&nbsp; It's a savy business move, a walled garden for your fans who don't then have to use (or buy) anyone else's work ... It's just not something I think is very good or interesting ... it's a business move, not a design one.It's a change sure, but it's an example of what I'm talking about.&nbsp; Assuming much of the system is otherwise B/X a new class or two is fine ... but during the OSR a new class or take on a class was material for a blog post ... not reason to release a game. Now of course, blogs aren't fashionable and discussion of OSR design is fractured into many small groups, so that kind of blog content might not be as realistic. The question though is if 80% or even 40% of your &quot;game&quot; is directly the material&nbsp; of B/X rewritten, why not release it as a setting?&nbsp; Instead of spending that B/X percentage of pages telling the reader that fighters have 1d8 HP per level etc, just add the &quot;monk&quot; as a new class and spend the saved pages on more setting stuff? an adventure? something new?&nbsp; I think I know why - and I think it's a the above desire to wall off one's adventure design for commercial reason, but also because creation is a lot harder then just rewriting 40 year old rules down and hiring some artists.This is why I much prefer something like Dolmenwood over something like OSE (though OSE has an excellent SRD that is quite valuable). The number of retroclones out there is staggering, and most are cross-convertible, so just writing the setting changes into the B/X baseline (heck you can write new classes into an adventure - look at ASE) and concentrating on the setting itself seems far more worthwhile.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gus L, post: 9544218, member: 7045072"] Yes this is true - many designers seem to focus on creating a game ecosystem around their products. It's a savy business move, a walled garden for your fans who don't then have to use (or buy) anyone else's work ... It's just not something I think is very good or interesting ... it's a business move, not a design one. It's a change sure, but it's an example of what I'm talking about. Assuming much of the system is otherwise B/X a new class or two is fine ... but during the OSR a new class or take on a class was material for a blog post ... not reason to release a game. Now of course, blogs aren't fashionable and discussion of OSR design is fractured into many small groups, so that kind of blog content might not be as realistic. The question though is if 80% or even 40% of your "game" is directly the material of B/X rewritten, why not release it as a setting? Instead of spending that B/X percentage of pages telling the reader that fighters have 1d8 HP per level etc, just add the "monk" as a new class and spend the saved pages on more setting stuff? an adventure? something new? I think I know why - and I think it's a the above desire to wall off one's adventure design for commercial reason, but also because creation is a lot harder then just rewriting 40 year old rules down and hiring some artists. This is why I much prefer something like Dolmenwood over something like OSE (though OSE has an excellent SRD that is quite valuable). The number of retroclones out there is staggering, and most are cross-convertible, so just writing the setting changes into the B/X baseline (heck you can write new classes into an adventure - look at ASE) and concentrating on the setting itself seems far more worthwhile. [/QUOTE]

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