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<blockquote data-quote="Mythmere1" data-source="post: 4791365" data-attributes="member: 26563">I'm probably stating the obvious when I say that there's no one &quot;profile&quot; of a retro-clone gamer, or of players who play the underlying original games.&nbsp; For some people it's about what the rules cover (there's a changing emphasis on this across the editions), for some people it's about how complex the rules are, for some people it's about the &quot;feel,&quot; per NG, for some people it's about the ease of house-ruling, and the list goes on.&nbsp; Nostalgia is pretty low on that list, actually - and nonexistent for those who never quit an older edition. What's to nostalgify if you never stopped? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />From what I can tell on the Swords &amp; Wizardry boards, there are a lot of gamers trying out the older editions (mainly through retro-clones in the case of OD&amp;D and Basic) who never played them before.&nbsp; At least, this is what it appears from the active posters; the lurkers might have a different demographic.OSRIC (1e) and Swords &amp; Wizardry (0e) have been gaining traction steadily, but there seems to have been a surge in interest relating to the release of 4e.&nbsp; There was another (smaller but very noticeable) bump in downloads/page views when WotC pulled the pdfs of OD&amp;D and AD&amp;D.Really, I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of people are realizing the older games aren't just rules-lite versions of the newer ones, that they represent an entirely different model of gaming.&nbsp; It's one of those situations where a quantitative change has effected a qualitative change.&nbsp; Some people prefer the newer model, some people prefer the older model, but they are different &quot;gestalts,&quot; if you will. The retro-clones like S&amp;W and OSRIC are simply a more organized, more familiar-format way of introducing that different gestalt of the open-ended, free-form style of gaming.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mythmere1, post: 4791365, member: 26563"] I'm probably stating the obvious when I say that there's no one "profile" of a retro-clone gamer, or of players who play the underlying original games. For some people it's about what the rules cover (there's a changing emphasis on this across the editions), for some people it's about how complex the rules are, for some people it's about the "feel," per NG, for some people it's about the ease of house-ruling, and the list goes on. Nostalgia is pretty low on that list, actually - and nonexistent for those who never quit an older edition. What's to nostalgify if you never stopped? :) From what I can tell on the Swords & Wizardry boards, there are a lot of gamers trying out the older editions (mainly through retro-clones in the case of OD&D and Basic) who never played them before. At least, this is what it appears from the active posters; the lurkers might have a different demographic. OSRIC (1e) and Swords & Wizardry (0e) have been gaining traction steadily, but there seems to have been a surge in interest relating to the release of 4e. There was another (smaller but very noticeable) bump in downloads/page views when WotC pulled the pdfs of OD&D and AD&D. Really, I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of people are realizing the older games aren't just rules-lite versions of the newer ones, that they represent an entirely different model of gaming. It's one of those situations where a quantitative change has effected a qualitative change. Some people prefer the newer model, some people prefer the older model, but they are different "gestalts," if you will. The retro-clones like S&W and OSRIC are simply a more organized, more familiar-format way of introducing that different gestalt of the open-ended, free-form style of gaming. [/QUOTE]

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