Looking for Advanced Role-Playing Content

[Doug McCrae]

If you're interested in old school and OSR rpgs, and the literary sources for D&D, you might want to look at the Grognardia blog. Authentic Role-playing sounds very different though.

 

[Simon T. Vesper]

If you're interested in old school and OSR rpgs, and the literary sources for D&D, you might want to look at the Grognardia blog. Authentic Role-playing sounds very different though.

It is very different. I recommend checking it out.

I'm familiar with Grognardia. I don't know that I'd put it at the same level but that's because I haven't made my way through the whole thing yet. Unless I'm mistaken, the blog stopped in 2012; any idea of the author is producing anything currently?

 

[Morrus]

It is, which is why I'm asking.

I'm not sure a summary would really do it justice. Maybe an example? One of his recent posts is about building realistic towns for a fantasy world. There's an underlying assumption about the game, that the DM should make an effort to present a logical world. To do that, we should understand how towns in the real world developed.

I've found quite a few sites where authors share a lot of content, but very little that takes the game this seriously.

Well, we discuss that sort of thing right here all the time.

Start a thread about building realistic towns for fantasy world. I'm sure you'll get plenty of interesting discussion.

Also, I strongly recommend A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. An invaluable resourceful for that topic. It's available on DTRPG and other places.

 

[Doug McCrae]

any idea of the author is producing anything currently?

I'm afraid I don't know anything about what James Maliszewski is up to these days.

Most of the best Grognardia articles are early on - 2008, 2009 - imo, where Maliszweski advances his theories about the nature of D&D and its relation to pulp fantasy, old school play, and 'how Dragonlance ruined everything'. The good stuff that appears later on is his discussion of obscure pulp authors. Again, this is just my opinion and I'm biased by what I find interesting ofc.

 

[Celebrim]

Alexis Smolensk, at the Tao of D&D, recently wrote: "NO ONE else is creating the content I'm creating." I understand this reference in terms of the game rules he's posted online, the literally thousands of posts he's written about D&D specifically (and role-playing in general), his recent podcast (Authentic Role-Playing, where he interviews everyday DMs and GMs), and so on.

My question to this forum: is he correct? Is there gaming content out there that matches (or exceeds) the quality or clarity of his work?

Well, in my incredibly not so humble opinion, "Yes. Yes there is."

Honestly, I'm not that impressed. Granted, much of this is a matter of taste but I find that people who do nothing but snear at the work of others tend to just have particular tastes and don't critically look at their own work. That isn't to say that their work might not be good - they might be Luke Crane - but often the quality of their work just doesn't quite warrant the high opinion that they have of it.

For example, he wrote this:

http://tao-dndwiki.blogspot.ca/2018/04/dragon.html

Ok, fine I guess.

I wrote this:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?580811-Revised-and-rebalanced-dragons-for-1e-AD-amp-D

Which of us actually met the goal of "a full-grown dragon should be the scariest, most powerful monster in the game" while at the same time creating something that was readable, playable, and matched well the spirit of the original AD&D rules?

In short, I'd look around more widely. There is a lot of good content out there if you are looking for it, and in general of course every home brewer thinks his content is he best, because otherwise why would he use it?

 

[Simon T. Vesper]

I strongly recommend A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. An invaluable resourceful for that topic. It's available on DTRPG and other places.

Found a copy, thank you. Only just started looking it over. Has quite a few tables and even some economic data; how accurate or useful any of it will be remains to be seen.

For example, he wrote this:

http://tao-dndwiki.blogspot.ca/2018/04/dragon.html

Ok, fine I guess.

I wrote this:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?580811-Revised-and-rebalanced-dragons-for-1e-AD-amp-D

Which of us actually met the goal of "a full-grown dragon should be the scariest, most powerful monster in the game" while at the same time creating something that was readable, playable, and matched well the spirit of the original AD&D rules?

In short, I'd look around more widely. There is a lot of good content out there if you are looking for it, and in general of course every home brewer thinks his content is he best, because otherwise why would he use it?

The emphasis is mine because I didn't specify a goal. I'm quite unsure where you came up with that. For one thing, the Tao of D&D isn't the same as AD&D. It stopped being AD&D years ago.

I appreciate the work you've done on dragons. There's certainly enough material there to pick and choose for my own game. However, I'm not certain that I would call it "advanced."

That's probably something that needs a better definition to continue this conversation...

(... edit made. thanks for the patience.)

 

[TwoSix]

If you're looking for increased complexity in the name of simulationism, you probably can't go wrong looking into some OSR resources, where simulationism is heavily prioritized. ACKS is probably the best one in terms of building a functioning, fairly realistic fantasy world built on D&D assumptions.

 

[Simon T. Vesper]

As far as advanced, non-light DnD? It's DnD. It's not deep, no matter how many rules you bolt onto ADnD, or how many fiddly bits you track, or how realistic your towns are.

Respectfully, I have to disagree. There are plenty of hobbies that receive far better treatment and deeper examination than you suggest D&D is capable of ~ many of them simpler at their core than D&D.

Mind you, we don't have to limit ourselves to one particular RPG. We can just as easily talk about how to make any RPG more advanced.

 

[Simon T. Vesper]

If you're looking for increased complexity in the name of simulationism...

I don't think I am. Simulationism isn't really desirable because of the difficulties involved. At some point, the complexity grows unwieldy and we're forced to abandon it because it bogs down the game.

I'm looking for well researched material, well developed principles and well designed game rules.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't think I am. Simulationism isn't really desirable because of the difficulties involved. At some point, the complexity grows unwieldy and we're forced to abandon it because it bogs down the game.

I'm looking for well researched material, well developed principles and well designed game rules.

Well, I'm simply extrapolating from the material linked, which seems focused on development of extensive rules for game world process. Honestly, it's not really a focus of most RPG development these days.