Going Retro

[Rogue Agent]

I took it from your first post in the thread where you said that WotC producing a retroclone will never happen because:
1) the market is too small,
2) people playing 3E like 3E,
3) people playing 4E like 4E,
- and therefore nobody would ever buy it.

That's not actually what I said. In fact, I said the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

Playability for an RPG does not require that every course of action be covered by rules.

I didn't say that, either.

It is, of course, just fine if YOU don't care to ever play such a game. Heck, I prefer a much more thorough set of rules than OD&D as well. But that doesn't make them unplayable. Just unplayable with the level of input that you yourself care to expend.

Using that logic, a blank sheet of notebook paper constitutes a fully-playable RPG with enough mainstream appeal that Hasbro/WotC would be interested in publishing it.

Like I said: I know Rule 0 fallacies are fun, but I stand by the factual accuracy of my statement. Just upping the ante on your Rule 0 fallacy doesn't actually make it any more persuasive.

Unless you're a Hasbro shareholder, I don't know that anyone should be terribly concerned about how much Hasbro makes.

I don't actually care. But we're in a thread that's explicitly about predicting what Hasbro/WotC are likely to do. If you don't think the amount of money they make has anything to do with the decision-making process at Hasbro/WotC, then you're just kidding yourself.

Here's how it broke down:
I made as much or more than most any WOTC freelancer would've (and I asked around). As did James, the publisher.
This was because only 2 of us were taking pieces out of the pie.
The average WOTC product has about 2 million people that need to get paid.

That's basically what I'm saying: The fact you've made more money than a WotC freelancer doesn't mean that the OSR is actually competing with 4E or Pathfinder in terms of sales.

The other question would be comparing the money you've made to the money made by the writer AND artists on a WotC supplement (since they're never the same person).

Congrats on a great success, BTW. You deserve it for putting out a great product.

 

[Zak S]

Congrats on a great success, BTW. You deserve it for putting out a great product.

Cheers!

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

The THAC0 vs. BAB argument always amazes me. To me, it's the same thing, just like subtraction is merely the inverse of addition.

I find the main difference to be the size of the numbers, rather than the operation being used. The editions that use THAC0 tend to use smaller numbers than the editions that use BAB and target-AC.

If THAC0 *really* bothers you, all the TSR editions (except 2e, I guess) have tables that you can reference without performing any THAC0 or BAB calculation. A player can write down the line of the table that is relevant to his PC and not worry about the math at all.

The whole thing is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, from where I'm standing.

 

[Stormonu]

It is literally unplayable without either (a) extensive house-ruling or (b) a completely different product (which you still have to kit-bash). It's great that, in 1974, the game captured the imagination and encouraged people to do that house-ruling and kitbashing, but in 2011 you don't have the kind of classy glory of Hasbro's retro releases: You just have a poorly organized, typo-ridden rulebook that can't actually be used to play a game without a lot of elbow grease.

Now you've got me curious. Glancing over the OD&D PDF, everything appears to be in place (the attack tables to replace Chainmail are on p19-20 of Men & Magic). So what's missing that makes it unplayable?

 

[Gentlegamer]

Now you've got me curious. Glancing over the OD&D PDF, everything appears to be in place (the attack tables to replace Chainmail are on p19-20 of Men & Magic). So what's missing that makes it unplayable?

Tables are there, but does it ever explain how to use them? That is, if you don't have Chainmail, would you know how to use the alternative D&D combat?

 

[Stormonu]

Tables are there, but does it ever explain how to use them? That is, if you don't have Chainmail, would you know how to use the alternative D&D combat?

The title at the top of the chart states:

"20-sided die score to hit by level". Rows show AC (and the Armor that it represents), Columns shows level of the attacker. Looking at the chart, you can see that the higher level you are, the lower the number (and the less protective the armor, the lower the number, i.e.: Level 1 to hit AC 2/"Plate & shield" is 17, hitting AC 10/"No Armor" is a 10). I don't think it's difficult to infer that if you roll the number or higher, you hit. And beneath the table, it states "All attacks which score hits deal 1-6 points of damage unless otherwise noted."

Looks straight-forward to me, but I may be reading too much into it with my modern D&D knowledge.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Original D&D was so incredibly unplayable and lame that it sunk like a stone, which is why no one has even *heard* of a game called "Dungeons & Dragons."
</sarcasm>

As is obvious to anyone reading it, original D&D wasn't the most elegantly edited and presented game out there, and perhaps even assumes some pre-existing gaming knowledge (wargaming, back in the day, but RPG experience will do nicely, today), but saying it's unplayable is going just a bit too far with the criticism, IMO.

 

[grodog]

The whole thing is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, from where I'm standing.

You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Philotomy Jurament again.

Someone help me out?

 

[Jhaelen]

Original D&D was so incredibly unplayable and lame that it sunk like a stone, which is why no one has even *heard* of a game called "Dungeons & Dragons."
</sarcasm>

Yeah, well. On the other hand, no one can tell how many people looked at the game and never played it because they couldn't for the life of them figure out how it was supposed to be played.

A somewhat related anecdote: My first contact with an rpg was caused by one of my classmates having received all published material of a new rpg system as a christmas gift. He invited me to have a look at it because he had no idea what to do with it and knew I was interested in all things fantasy.
In cooperation we _almost_ managed to find out how to play it. The one thing we didn't get right was that the player wasn't supposed to play a whole party of adventurers...

Now, this wasn't D&D, but if this guy hadn't thought to ask me, would he ever have played an rpg?

"Unplayable" may be an exaggeration but it hits pretty close to the mark.