Not if you count the "Premium Reprint" of course, but nonetheless OD&D is currently in limbo. I don't think anyone is going spend $100+ on a premium set of stapled booklets to play with. I know plenty of people who have bought it for collectable purposes, but those same people have "play copies" they've printed from PDFs. What's more is that most people don't consider OD&D as written to be "playable".
There's still Swords & Wizardry, but they've shifted their focus to the "Complete" book, and to supporting Pathfinder conversions. They've all but abandoned "Whitebox". What I find more interesting about Swords & Wizardry is that they aren't putting out anything else. They made "Complete" (which in my opinion isn't it), and it has tons of extra classes from the Supplements, but they've stopped there. Nothing from the Strategic Review or Dragon, tons of stuff left out from the Supplements. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's just kind of a downer: there's just so much untapped stuff.
I'm actually hopeful for Delving Deeper now, because I really like the guys who've taken over. I really agree with their general philosophy on OD&D, and it looks like they have a long term plan for adding a bunch of cool material and conversions. However, the Brave Halfling still has a huge back log of orders. I'll admit I was wrong. I still think what he did was wrong, but he definitely wasn't doing it intentionally. By the Gods he's still sending out shipments, and making sure the job gets done.
However all of this leaves OD&D in Limbo; especially because as of right now, the "Premium Reprints" seem to be a one time thing.
What am I getting at? Am I just complaining for no reason? Not really. I love OD&D. I love D&D in general. This is in fact close to the state every other edition is in right now. 2E is dead sadly; it gets no love, and the one retroclone for it turned out to be a huge disappointment. You have all of these lovely retroclones and reprints (whether "supported" or not), but they're just there.
Now maybe everyone else is cool with having their old games, just the way they were, and essentially staying in a stasis, but I'm not. I don't want my edition of the game "redone", and that's just that. It's a real shame, because early on it seemed like there was going to be progress and additional material. Labyrinth Lord released two companions to expand game play; Basic Fantasy had tons of new supplements coming out; and my personal favorite Adventures Dark & Deep re-envisioned 1st Edition. Adventures Dark & Deep seems to be the only still pumping out new material.
Let me clarify really quickly, that when I say new material, I don't mean adventure modules. We have millions of those, and people are constantly popping those out. I mean new classes, new spells, new monsters, new races, etc. I'm fairly certain I talked about Grey Matter before, and I think stuff like that is awesome, and we need more of it. Same goes for Blood & Treasure, another awesome project, with a dedicated creator who just keeps going.
Lets get back to the point. OD&D, the game I love, is in stasis. It's stuck; at least "officially". I love the OD&D74 forums, because man, there's always something going on. However several people have pointed out that a forum isn't the best media for usable game material; as in a lot stuff just gets lost in time and buried under new discussion.
Now I'm going to stop complaining. Instead I want to do something about it. I've admitted I'm crap at authoring, but thanks to Microlite20 I don't have to be a good author. I'm going to make a game, the way I like it, and I'm going to make stuff for it on a frequent basis.
It's going to be modeled after Microlite20; as in shorthand rules, to the point, and no fluff. I'm going to make it digest size for now, so it will be easier to format, and it will have the OD&D feel to it. It's going to be a bunch of 30ish page booklets. Most importantly it's going to be free.
Now I just have to come up with a game plan. I'm not so sure another OD&D "clone" is what we need, nor is what I'd actually use; otherwise like everyone else I know, I'd just use my printed out LBB's. I am thinking something more along the lines of Swords & Wizardry or Castles & Crusades, with the focus being expansion and continued support. After all I just talked about how everyone keeps "cloning" their favorite edition and going "well I'm done here...". Nothing wrong with that of course, but I want more.
No comments:
Post a Comment