Editionless Gaming...Also Why I Won't Write a Retroclone

I haven't wanted to keep posting what I'm doing lately, because I keep changing my mind, going back on myself. Tonight though my wife gave me a great idea, that Greyhawk Grognard says he does too: develop a mantra. I need to remember why I'm making Arcane Adventures, and not get distracted by nostalgia glasses (I never even wore...). So here it is:

Arcane Adventures will be Simple and Efficient.

Arcane Adventures will be Modular; Ignoring rules and House-Ruling will not break the game.

Arcane Adventures will be an Edition-Less game.

Abovea all Arcane Adventures will make sense.

Edition-less gaming? I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, and I can't be bother to check, but that's what I want. I want a game, and supplements that can be used with ANY form of D&D ever. It shouldn't matter what skill system you use, or whether its descending or ascending armor class, etc. My monsters should work for any edition, with minimal tweaking; my classes should be able to fit easily in another game. My optional rules for skills, combat, etc. should all be just that; optional.

Now onto why I'm not going to write a retroclone, and why I'm probably not going to publish Arcane Adventures. Read this:

http://oldguyrpg.blogspot.com/2011/01/wheres-our-ept-and-blackmoor-is-osr.html

This sums up pretty much everything I feel. Now go and read a million other blogs, and forum posts about how the OSR is essentially restating, and stealing other people's works and ideas, and making money at it. While I'm not quite so hostile, and not so negative, I can appreciate the sentiment; Retroclones are just that, restatements of other people's works and ideas.

I don't want to retread what everyone has already done to death, but if I want to make a stand alone game system I'll have to. I'd have to write down my, slightly different, version of the Orc again. More so than that I'd have to re-explain what strength is, what an attack roll is, what armor class is; all things that have been explained thousands of times. You can only re-write the definition of strength so many times.

I'm not very good at writing, and I'll admit that. I have no ability to sit there and essentially plagiarize, and make it seem like my own work, I'm not going to even attempt it. If someone, one day wants to release my rules collection (that's what it is), in a nice shiny book for everyone to buy, I'll work with them to get that done. As it stands, I don't see anyone having interest in my game but me. So for right now I'm happy copying and pasting rules into my own house rules document.

What do I foresee happening? Writing down, and keeping track of all my original ideas, and possibly releasing those as edition-less supplements for any D&D style game.

I'll probably keep writing on here because it's fun, and who knows, maybe one day I'll get that interest from people I keep talking about. It's all about supply and demand; I have no demand, so why create the supply?