A Post I'm Not Happy About Writing...

[chirine ba kal]

As I'm sure some of you are aware, there's a discussion going on over on another forum about the original campaign and creation chronology of Dave's Blackmoor. I used to be a member of that forum, and recently reactivated my account there. I feel that was a mistake, and I have closed the account again and will not be back to that forum.

To be frank, I have been appalled by the turn that the thread has taken; it's no longer about Dave and his creation, but about 'who has the biggest pile of stuff!' and I am very sorry to see that the producer/director of "Secrets of Blackmoor" taking the line that he is with the author of "Playing At The World", and find that this kind of thing is just not to my taste. I have had several unpleasant experiences with him and his rivalry with Mr. Pederson; one was after Gary Con, some years back, when he called me to accuse me of 'selling out' to Mr. Pederson by selling my original Harchar (and his officers) miniatures for $1,000 as there were photos of the check I'd gotten on the Intenet. He was mistaken - The check was given to Bill Hoyt for the purchase of Jon of Bill's collection of documents and I still have my figures. He also called me during the local game convention, Con of the North, this past spring where I was helping Bill with his "History of RPGs" display, to crow to me about how he'd scored point off of Jon in some sort of Facebook debate. I found that quite distasteful, and quite unsettling.

If this is what passes for civilized conduct in gaming circles, these days, please count me out. If anyone needs to contact me, please use the e-mail address here or on my blog. Thank you for all of your time, and your love of Blackmoor!

[finarvyn]

I'm sorry to read your post. As the Admin of that forum I try to maintain a balance between freedom to post ideas and an iron fist to stop trolling. I split the Blackmoor chronology thread into two parts -- one which discusses the actual chronology and one which allows for the other stuff. I gave one member a "time out" of a week for his attacks on Jon. I really want that community to be a good one and I'm sad that you left it (twice).

[chirine ba kal]

I'm sorry to read your post. As the Admin of that forum I try to maintain a balance between freedom to post ideas and an iron fist to stop trolling. I split the Blackmoor chronology thread into two parts -- one which discusses the actual chronology and one which allows for the other stuff. I gave one member a "time out" of a week for his attacks on Jon. I really want that community to be a good one and I'm sad that you left it (twice).

Thank you for your very kind words! I fully understand what you mean - it's a delicate balancing act, and I think you're really doing a good job of being the admin for the thread. Splitting it was a good choice, I think. I honestly don't know what else you could be doing in this situation, frankly.

I do think I made a mistake in reactivating my account; my perception, coming from some years exploring the modern gaming scene, is that I simply don't fit in with what most (if not almost all) think of as 'gaming' these days. I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time with my obsolete observations, and my antique play style. "Too hand-wavy, too loosy-goosy"; and I understand that. It's why I'm leaving the 5e Blackmoor campaign at the end of this month; too many rules, too much number-crunching, not enough Dave Arneson. I don't fault the GM or the players; this is their Blackmoor, and thy should be able to have lots of the kind of fun that they like with it.

My issue is that it's not my Blackmoor, a time when Gertie took wing as Dave Arneon took over the GM chair from Phil Barker; it was magical - it was as if I was visting Disneyland as Walt's guest, with the same astonishing genius and whimsy in the driver's seat.

I'm not leaving gaming; too much in the game room to carry up the stairs and out to the trash.
I'll be around. E-mail if you need to talk to me. Thanks again, everyone!

[RobJN]

I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time with my obsolete observations, and my antique play style. "Too hand-wavy, too loosy-goosy"; and I understand that. It's why I'm leaving the 5e Blackmoor campaign at the end of this month; too many rules, too much number-crunching, not enough Dave Arneson. I don't fault the GM or the players; this is their Blackmoor, and thy should be able to have lots of the kind of fun that they like with it.

I, for one, love reading about the earliest days of my favorite hobby, especially from those who stat at the table of those with direct hands in the making of said hobby. When the hand-waving was all there was, because there wasn't a rule for this or that. I'm very glad they didn't give up the ship when they hit uncharted waters, and thoroughly enjoy reading accounts of the formation of one of my favorite settings.

My issue is that it's not my Blackmoor, a time when Gertie took wing as Dave Arneon took over the GM chair from Phil Barker; it was magical - it was as if I was visting Disneyland as Walt's guest, with the same astonishing genius and whimsy in the driver's seat.

Another thing I love about this hobby is that something like this is totally okay, and, in fact, is to be expected: "Take my world, please... and run with it!" Every group's take on a setting and adventure will be different from anything that's been done before at a gaming table. I know my take on Blackmoor is vastly different than those presented in the myriad of official sources, which are, in turn, vastly different from how the setting looked at the table with Dave Arneson DMing.

I don't particularly care about the squabbling of historians, or the duh-rama as they play at tin soldiers, using source material as their pawns. It would be nice if they would all set egos aside, and work together to weave a tapestry that paints a whole picture of the earliest days of the hobby, rather than tugging at the threads of their 'competitors'' tapestries to enhance their own. Ah, well... In a perfect world...

I'm not leaving gaming; too much in the game room to carry up the stairs and out to the trash.
I'll be around. E-mail if you need to talk to me. Thanks again, everyone!

That, alone, is as much a reason as any not to leave the hobby

Thanks for taking the time over the years to pop in and share, and hope to see you 'round the Inn!

[finarvyn]

I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time with my obsolete observations, and my antique play style. "Too hand-wavy, too loosy-goosy"; and I understand that.!

No, I think there are quite a few of us who wish for those old days again. My family gaming group tends to not know the rules but instead lets me run a game that they can enjoy as a hand-vavy loosy-goosy campaign. It's not dead, but getting harder and harder to find.

You are welcome on OD&D Discussion any time. I could even set up a section for you to make observations, much like Dave and Gary and Gronan have.

[chirine ba kal]

I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time with my obsolete observations, and my antique play style. "Too hand-wavy, too loosy-goosy"; and I understand that. It's why I'm leaving the 5e Blackmoor campaign at the end of this month; too many rules, too much number-crunching, not enough Dave Arneson. I don't fault the GM or the players; this is their Blackmoor, and thy should be able to have lots of the kind of fun that they like with it.

I, for one, love reading about the earliest days of my favorite hobby, especially from those who stat at the table of those with direct hands in the making of said hobby. When the hand-waving was all there was, because there wasn't a rule for this or that. I'm very glad they didn't give up the ship when they hit uncharted waters, and thoroughly enjoy reading accounts of the formation of one of my favorite settings.

My issue is that it's not my Blackmoor, a time when Gertie took wing as Dave Arneon took over the GM chair from Phil Barker; it was magical - it was as if I was visting Disneyland as Walt's guest, with the same astonishing genius and whimsy in the driver's seat.

Another thing I love about this hobby is that something like this is totally okay, and, in fact, is to be expected: "Take my world, please... and run with it!" Every group's take on a setting and adventure will be different from anything that's been done before at a gaming table. I know my take on Blackmoor is vastly different than those presented in the myriad of official sources, which are, in turn, vastly different from how the setting looked at the table with Dave Arneson DMing.

I don't particularly care about the squabbling of historians, or the duh-rama as they play at tin soldiers, using source material as their pawns. It would be nice if they would all set egos aside, and work together to weave a tapestry that paints a whole picture of the earliest days of the hobby, rather than tugging at the threads of their 'competitors'' tapestries to enhance their own. Ah, well... In a perfect world...

I'm not leaving gaming; too much in the game room to carry up the stairs and out to the trash.
I'll be around. E-mail if you need to talk to me. Thanks again, everyone!

That, alone, is as much a reason as any not to leave the hobby

Thanks for taking the time over the years to pop in and share, and hope to see you 'round the Inn!

Thank you for your very kind words!

[chirine ba kal]

I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time with my obsolete observations, and my antique play style. "Too hand-wavy, too loosy-goosy"; and I understand that.!

No, I think there are quite a few of us who wish for those old days again. My family gaming group tends to not know the rules but instead lets me run a game that they can enjoy as a hand-vavy loosy-goosy campaign. It's not dead, but getting harder and harder to find.

You are welcome on OD&D Discussion any time. I could even set up a section for you to make observations, much like Dave and Gary and Gronan have.

Thank you for your kind words, and I'm delighted that you and your players are enjoying your games - they sound quite fun!

Thank you for your invitation, too! I don't think that it would be very useful; what few observations that I make are usually found on my little blog. I feel, after a number of years on the web, that my musings and comments have no real relevance or resonance for modern gamers - I am from a much too alien time and place, I think. You do have Gronan, who knows a lot more about OD&D then I do, and I think his section is going to be far more handy then I could be.

So, thank you anyway, and I hope you go from strength to strength on the forum!

[Rafael]

I am late to the party, and I am glad that Fin has spoken out on this already. Now, since I am the same Rafael as on OD&D'74, as you all know, I would like to say - nothing that has not been said yet. I endorse how this was handled.

The oldschool movement has gained in significance in recent years, and the segment of the market that depends on it has grown; that changes how people interact. I dislike that change, and I am changing my own attitude to any involvement to the hobby accordingly.

It's a crying shame that on the grounds that we've spent decades building here, a culture of intolerance and bullying is nurturing itself. All of us are aware of it, and it's high time something is done about it. - Now, I have no skin in this game, and my contribution to fandom has long concluded. So, I won't do it. But sooner or later, someone else will have to.

Take care, brothers. :wink:

[chirine ba kal]

I am late to the party, and I am glad that Fin has spoken out on this already. Now, since I am the same Rafael as on OD&D'74, as you all know, I would like to say - nothing that has not been said yet. I endorse how this was handled.

The oldschool movement has gained in significance in recent years, and the segment of the market that depends on it has grown; that changes how people interact. I dislike that change, and I am changing my own attitude to any involvement to the hobby accordingly.

It's a crying shame that on the grounds that we've spent decades building here, a culture of intolerance and bullying is nurturing itself. All of us are aware of it, and it's high time something is done about it. - Now, I have no skin in this game, and my contribution to fandom has long concluded. So, I won't do it. But sooner or later, someone else will have to.

Take care, brothers. :wink:

Agreed! I think Fin did the best he could - I'm simply startled that he had to do it in the first place. I don't mind lively discussions - I find them fun and informative - but I do mind rude and arrogant.

Agree with your other points, too. When I first started looking at gaming as seen on the Internet, I had some very bad interactions with self-described 'pillars of the OSR', who kept telling me that my gaming experiences with Dave, Phil, and Gary were all wrong, and that the gaming we did back in the day could not have happened that way as what I was describing was not in accordance with The Sacred Texts - 'badwrongfun', as the phrase goes. Some of these 'gatekeepers of the hobby' were pretty rude and strident about it, and about all they did was cause me to reconsider my participation in the hobby - which is why I've closed down all but this and the RPGsite account. No sense putting time and resources into something I don't like, if I may make that observation.

So it goes; time and tastes change, and I haven't seemed to change to suit either.

[finarvyn]

I had some very bad interactions with self-described 'pillars of the OSR', who kept telling me that my gaming experiences with Dave, Phil, and Gary were all wrong, and that the gaming we did back in the day could not have happened that way...

That is so sad. I think that the problem we have at the moment is a glut of "scholars" who are trying to research something which was very fluid and ever changing. Some of them are careful in their research and have access to primary documents, others are not and do not, but on the internet everyone speaks with the same volume. Bill James, the baseball sabermetric research guy, made a statement around 30 years ago about how the internet was destroying research because in the old days you had to submit research to a journal for fact-checking and review but now anyone can get published by visiting a message board and saying something.

Personally, I have no idea how Dave, Phil, and Gary did stuff. I know what rulebooks and magazines were in the hands of myself and my group and what we did with them. In that way I can attest to how we did things "back in the day" but I have no idea if other groups did things the same way because Dragon magazine was pretty much the only lens that I had to view the ideas of outsiders at the time. That's all of the scholarship that I can personally lay claim to, and that has little value in the arguments that erupt on message boards. For example, I can say with certainty that Chainmail influenced my OD&D campaigns in the mid-'70's because I know that we played it just before we got OD&D, and OD&D seemed like a natural extension of the rules found in Chainmail. Whether this was even remotely similar to the experiences for the pioneers (in Lake Geneva and/or the Twin Cities a few years before that) I have no idea.

What I value most about what you have to say (as well as Greg and Gronan and others) is their take on things from that era. My experiences were from reading and interpreting a rulebook. Yours were from person-to-person interaction, and that carries a heavy weight in my opinion. 8)