Classic Reprints and Modern Sensibilities

Gary Con is an Old School Renaissance (OSR) convention.

It's not my thing but I've never been much of a convention goer anyway. I mainly hit the convention scene to either run games or to find out the latest news and of course, buy the latest and sometimes exclusive products.

At this Gary Con, Goodman Games made a few announcements.

One of them was Kickstarter for DCC Lankhmar. This news didn't strike me as particularly impressive because it's the worst kept secret ever. Goodman Games already has a few adventurers out for it and it's a known factor that it was going to be coming out anyway.

On the other hand, the announcement of Classic D&D Modules being reprinted and having original stats and 5th edition stats? That was interesting.

And for most, it was met with a cheer.

Some insisted it was needless and a cash grab.

Cash grab? The old joke that applies to so many hobbies also applies here. "How do you get a small fortune in role-playing games?"

"Start with a large fortune."

But are all of the complaints about the nature of reprinting the classics invalid?

1. It's a cash grab: Well, it's true that Goodman Games may find it more profitable than Wizards of the Coast to publish a book. Looking at Wizards of the Coast, they've only done the work on a handful of the 5th edition books. A small handful in a small handful of products. If it's a cash grab, it's a weirdly designed one.

2. Goodman Games boasted that 4th edition was the game that Gary would have developed! As a gamer, that sounds like nonsense. As a person who knows what marketing is? Why wouldn't he say it? And in actual Dungeon Crawl Classics? Here's where I challenge you. If you never played Sellswords of Punjar, you missed out on a great heavily Appendix N influenced adventure. Slums, beggar kings, hidden dangers, hidden treasures and more! Hell, I wish that we were getting a Kickstarter of Punjar as opposed to Lankhmar.

It's not that I don't love Lankhmar, but man, I'm a mature gamer. That means I've seen TSR's version, I've seen Mongoose Games version. I've read the books the material is based on a few times. I'm not sure how much "new" material that Goodman will be able to bring to the table.

3. How can they afford to do it? They can't do anything without a Kickstarter. Again, as a gamer and regular dude, I can see the 'questioning' here. But let's come to reality. Many companies aren't using Kickstarter JUST for the funding, they're using it as a marketing tool. As the fees and issues of Kickstarter rise and ebb, the utility of the device may change. But for now? It's 'hip, Kickstarter' and it's 'cool' and it acts, regardless of what Kickstarter or any publisher tells you, as a great preorder system so publishers can figure out how much to print and make. Does every game publisher NEED to acKickstarter? Probably not. Is using it right now still a good deal and a great way of advertising and building a community? Apparently so.

Now feeling that the whole system of Kickstarter is being abused as only a preorder system? Again, I can see where that line of thinking is coming from. But hey, actually DOING things is hard. You know, like coming out with a rival system to Kickstarter? Like putting your own skin in the game? Like having some system where you can't be an established player? And who's going to vet all that? Counter culture is weird to me sometimes. "OMG! I can't like the thing anymore! But I used to love the thing!"

4. These adventures don't need any conversion! What next? Conversion for the old coloring books and the hex maps? Some of these points were pretty funny when posted with the covers. There seems to be this weird bit where the fact that the product is covering multiple functions, a reprint with more than just a single thing in it, is getting mixed up with the 'need' for there to be any conversion. It's a matter of convenience and WoTC would be foolish not to take advantage of print medium having conversions for the game that's actually on the shelves right now.

5. Gary Con was ruined by these announcements! It stole all the air out of the room! Blinks. Man, I didn't go to the convention but if a product announcement messed up your convention you got problems. Having said that, several other people whose opinions I put pretty good stock on and would give them high ranks in terms of 'honesty' in keeping the spirit of OSR alive, had great times. Maybe it's a problem where commercial issues start meeting reality but man, that complaint is highly personal so more power to someone who earnestly believes it.

6. Goodman Games blah blah blah: Sometimes I see some complaints about character or validity or 'old school creed' and all I can think is shut up. It's not that you shouldn't have an opinion of what is old school and what isn't, but damn, role playing games are going to be split so fine down these self-made definitions that it's going to look like a record store right before they went out of business with ten thousand different music sections that just made things harder to find.

For me, Goodman Games has 'earned' it's old school creed not necessarily in game mechanics but in the spirit.

I've played numerous adventurers in the line. Some are old school death traps. Some are exploration. Some have a mix of both.

The design and art and other bits are often, I don't want to say slavish imitations of the older games, but pay a lot of homage to them.

Their own game, if you feel does not draw heavily on Appendix N, or worse, you feel that Appendix N in its original guide, isn't what the game should be based on, you are not playing with the same reference as every other player who is playing with that reference, which, may not even be old-school in its mechanics but is certainly old school in its feel and origins.

Good for Goodman Games and hopefully it brings MORE of the older stuff back.

Goodman Games 4e Sale at DriveThruRPG

So I see that the sale that Goodman Games is having on their 4e material on Drivethrurpg is making the rounds.

Strangely enough, I have most of it, and reviewed a fair amount of it.

Now I'm thinking of the whole Punjar thing because I hear that it may be the next project that Goodman takes onto Kickstarter.

That's very interesting because I enjoyed Punjar. I thought it was very sword and sorcery feel, despite the 4e ruleset. My review of that can be found here.  

For those who've read over the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition stuff and found it wanting, will you be buying any of the Goodman Games 4th ed material?

Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Art

Dungeon Crawl Classics gets a lot of 'play' from the old Internets. It's already gone through a printing and two special edition covers. While offered a PDF for review purposes, I opted to wait until there was a sale as my reviewing patterns, thanks to my old job consisting of working seven days a week an an ill mother have converted to a new job that I'm still learning and a still as yet ill mother.

But a sale?  I figured that it probably wasn't going to get any less expensive than the GM's Day Sale. Ah, then I can just poke around when I want to and not have to worry about it. One of the things I did first was 'page' through the PDF.

Let me say that art is highly subjective. Some are going to love one specific type of artist over another, one specific type of style over another, and so on. Overall, the whole book feels like a 'retro' effort with some emphasis placed on modern design. I say some mind you.

In terms of art, the company wasn't afraid to use full page spreads which to me, is a good thing. The bad thing is that in going to 'capture' that old school feeling, it's all internally black and white. Not necessarily a bad thing but this isn't an inexpensive book. On the third hand, for a PDF, I wouldn't want a full color book. It's so armature when companies put out these PDF's that are saturated with color and would look great as a professionally printed book, but as a PDF take forever to open, flip between pages and even thinking about printing it makes you shudder and lose 1d6 SAN. If only there were a way to include multiple types of files so that you could have one for printing and one for on screen reading... hopefully one day... one day...

Anyway, I like the cover. It's a simple piece in that it's the lone adventurer getting ready to enter the unknown. Good use of color. The similarity between the cape and outline of the door makes some nice symmetry.

The first interior full color piece is also like a trip on acid but a pretty one. Full out dungeon crawl madness there brothers!The gods, one from law, chaos, and neutrality, waiting in the upper left hand corner as a group passes through some strange dungeon with massive worms devouring and attacking the party. Great stuff. I had to point out to one of my friends the neutral deity had a tentacle coming from his mouth. He thought maybe it represented something from the sea, while I was thinking of the Twain's mentors and the weird things they often had hidden under their cloaked hoods.

When it comes to those full page pieces, Mullen does several I enjoyed right off the bat. His style is of the 'old school' vibe. For example, there is a picture of a dragon that appears to be possessed by a demon burning a group of adventurers not with his fiery breath, but with fire shooting forth from his hand even as some strange type of winged minions wait for orders while a fighter type is commanding more soldiers into the fray.

Another great Mullen piece is a wizard among his patrons, or what I assume is a wizard among his patrons, those who grant him his dark powers. It's a great piece as all these strange and alien things of anathema wait on the cloaked stranger's words.

Another nice nodd to the old school bits are the various joke comics. Some feel that newer editions of Dungeons and Dragons take themselves too seriously. I can see it but I'm not quite so sure every book needs a Bigby's Back Scratcher bit in it. Here it works well because it's part of the genre they're trying to capture so when you see such jokes, they work.

Some bits though? Well, on one page talking about languages, you have this dark picture on top taking up about a quarter of the page and it's an intense looking situation but then on the bottom right hand corner you have a clear line illustration of some dude that looks like he's be the morning page delivering the news before getting a tomato in the face. It's distracting and cuts into the flow of the text even thought it's not a bad picture, it just doesn't 'jive' with the rest of the page in my opinion.

Another example is the table with the cleric information. We get a break down of the cleric names from first through fifth level, one for law, chaos, and neutral, and another one of these clear lined illustrations. It's already in a box separate from the rest of the text. There's already a table there. Would too much white space be a problem? Possibly. Maybe some more cleric names as opposed to random cleric?

But hey, speaking of old school art, one of the artists is Jim Holloway, a real old school artist whose works range all over the industry but include TSR. Jim does some great stuff here but, and this is going to sound weird, his art isn't necessarily 'old school' outside of it being well, original old school. If you compare him and Mullen for example, completely different styles and while both solid, I'd still say Mullen's is far more old school to my eye. Mind you for me it's not an issue but I can see someone whose knowledge of OSR is from forums wondering what's up with all the different styles of art.

Lastly, when discussing nods to old art, ranging from style and you know, actual artists of the time, there are also several homage images to the original book and its a nice nod to the AD&D you might have played once upon a time.

Now I just need to start reading the book eh?

And that's another impressive thing. There is a lot of art here. While I think the book could actually use some purging and removal of art to make it a cleaner looking book, especially on the old PDF side, if you don't like one particular style of art, there should be more than enough variety to keep you going through the book.

The Kickstarters That Weren't

I figure since I discussed the Kickstarters I've supported, I might as well talk about the ones I didn't and give a brief run down of why. Please note these are my own depraved opinions and my own cynical brain working so they are not necessarily the reality of the situation. Proceed with caution!

Appendix N Adventure Toolkit: Two things here. Well, three things. The amount of playing I've been involved is in small. Two, I don't own the Goodman Games RPG this is for. Three, I missed it. No, really, I was going to back it. The funds were relatively small for even some of the better rewards and I was going to. Figure I'd try to do a whole renaissance thing of gaming for myself with the Goodman book and some other bits. It's not that I won't get into it eventually but so much painting to do...

Norsgard: Well, this one didn't receive that much funding at all. The figures they do have look nice but I think they're a little too indie and unknown right now to go for such a huge goal. Another company that's been around for a while had a large goal and almost didn't make it. Might be better to start with smaller goals when your this new.

Avatars of War Dwarf Army: This is the one I was talking about that almost didn't make it. I know, you look at the total know and you're like, "Is Joe crazy?" For a long time that meter didn't move. It seemed to be a surge at the last minute. I didn't back it because Sedition Wars and Mantic kicked me in the face and left my wallet bleeding and unable to fund ANOTHER miniature scale at the size I'd want to. I was also slightly put off by shipping fees. I know things aren't free but most of the ones I've participated in didn't have shipping.

City Of Clocks: I love city campaigns. I love city books. Not too fond of generic books. Still, I was about to support when I saw their updates. They were going to provide some gaming notes but they started off with what I consider some fairly popular systems but left the most popular systems at the very top of the food chain. My cynical brain decided they were doing that to lure people into pledging in order to get up to those higher levels. That's just me. Probably completely wrong but when I see Savage Worlds and Pathfinder after some OSR stuff? M'eh. If it comes to retail and I have funds I'll probably take a look at it then.

Jeff Easley/Scott Taylor: Another retro project. I love the art involved here. However, if you're going to sell the completed product at the exact same price at the finished product, why I am getting in ahead of the game? Sure, if I was a die hard fan the answer would be to insure that it's created. For me, I have hundreds of books I haven't read yet. I've got a bit of a collector's problem but it's also a cynical bit so while the various Half Price books have numerous dollar racks, I have no problem buying the occasional e-book or kickstarter project. But when you're charging the same thing for people to buy it from you direct as the kickstarters? And again, that's just my opinion. And here's the other thing. While some may hate Amazon, I love that I can sync my Kindle books from any purchases from the store automatically. Have to do it manually when you buy the files individually.

It's something another Kickstarter did where they were selling it on Amazon before you got your Kickstarter copy. So.... I could buy it from Kickstarter, wait around for it to be sent or pay the same price and download it to all my devices with no problem? I know which route I'm taking in the future.

Again, I'm sure I'm missing some and there are some things I want to kickstart but have to wait on the old funds to see where what lands when but those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Have there been any kickstarters you've looked at and said.... "You know... outside of... but really..."