Gus L
Adventurer
So first, designers' politics do matter to me. There are some designers who voice beliefs that want to deny basic human rights to people I care about. I don't want to give those people money and I don't promote them. I think this is good. It's good because platforming these people drives those they would victimize away from the hobby and away from ones games - justifiably. I want my hobby and society to be open and available to people, and all I can do in the context of the hobby is kicking someone who says bigoted crap off my table, not buying their book or and warning other people that they said X or Y then I suppose I have to do that. It's important.
As to the issue of retroclones... I've been in this hobby a long time, and it's just tiresome to see the part I like stagnate. Spinning its wheels and endlessly recreating the same half century or even 15 year old ideas.
Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry, OSE, etc ... There are dozens of retro-clones that are basically B/X with a couple of changes. Personally I just don't need anymore of them. I get that people have houserules and I like it when they share these ideas. Where every new retroclone loses me is that I don't really see how six or seven house rule changes - even something as big as a bolt on skill system - require one to also reiterate the same 40-50 year old design of AC, HP, GP=XP and a monster list that includes all the old standbys etc. It seems like a waste of time and energy on the part of the designer and it reminds me that whatever the OSR was, today a lot of people using the term spend most of their time "reinventing" one blog post or another from 2012 and trying to charge $30 for it.
Retroclones originally existed because the OGL wasn't around, digital publishing was in its infancy and so it was hard to find old rulesets. This is no longer an issue - you can get copies of the old rules cheaply - though hard copies are a bit trickier.
To me the joy of the OSR was always in creation, pushing beyond what had come before and building off it.
This is also to an extent the source of my distaste for vernacular fantasy and very heavily nostalgia coded products. I can still run B2 or Tharacia if I want - I don't need someone to make another reimaging of "Orcs in a Hole". If I (or really anyone else) doesn't want to run B2 but wants the vibe - sketching up a map, marking where some bags of coins and +1 swords are, and then adding various gangs of humanoids with 1/2 - 3HD shouldn't take more then an hour.
Again, I've been blogging in the OSR/Post OSR for over ten years, so a lot of my strident rejection of bland vernacular fantasy is likely jaded exhaustion. It's like some kind of eternal reoccurrence and not in a good way. If people are just discovering how much they like older style D&D, that's great! I highly recommend going to the source itself and reading the old books. Then one can start undertaking the enjoyable project of building your own game, your own house rules and campaigns. It's really half the fun.
