I deleted all the blogs, i don't have a blogroll now. It's the only way i can (maybe) blogging again.
That said, i beheld a shameful situation again. This blog is not part of the old-school renaissance, that phrase means Dungeons & dragons and nothing else, it's far too clear.
I almost never visit Dragonsfoot or other similar forums, and i deleted many blogs from my blogroll because most of the posts i read there are pointless to me and very boring.
Honestly, i should have kept several blogs because there are several blogs that i like and that i always read, you know who you are: Grognardia, Randall (my esteem for you who dared speak about Bifrost) , Dave from Aussieland, Hill cantons, Thoul's paradise, servitorludi, savevsdragon, Ramblings of a Great Khan, gothridgemanor, packofgnolls, daddygrognard, inplacesdeep, underworldcleaningservice, rathergamey, mikemonaco.wordpress.com (one of the best out there), just to cite a few. There are others, but my memory doesn't serve me well now, forgive me.
So i don't want to be part of this, because i can't STAND to be confined to the one many of you call "THE fantasy game". d&d is NOT the fantasy game, there is no such thing as THE fantasy game, each one is just an interpretation of what a fantasy game should be like. So please shut up D&d professors out there.
And it's a BIG shame and a sign of lack of mental awareness when we see that an announcement such as this one
http://theresdungeonsdownunder.blogspot.it/2012/03/fantastic-news-heroes-rpg-to-live-again.html
generated just 9 coments (counting my mockery).
Grognardia has 1212 members, so as a minimum there are more than one thousand fellow guys out there interested in the OSR, is it possible that most of them were aware of this news and just skipped Dave's post without commenting?
Yes.
Those one thousand persons are interested in Dungeons & dragons, the game that ate your brains.
So to sum it up: i would be offended to be considered part of the osr because the osr means nothing to me because it means d&d to you's.
Not for everyone, but for most of the bloggers out there.
This doesn't mean that i'm not going to post from time to time something d&dish, you can see for instance that i quoted in their entirety two rare articles from Different worlds recently because i deemed they were worthy of notice.
But all in all, i am not willing to be part of this big shame.
And, besides Heroes by Dave Millard, i have another paradisial news for those who care, that is Melanda rpg (of which i spoke here) might be resurrected from oblivion again.
For the majority of you zombies out there, my advice is to stay at homes playing Dungeons & dragons, while for the ones interested in such an happening, what follow here are the mails i exchanged with one of the authors of Melanda a few days ago.
Keep me exempted from the osr.
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Hello, i am the guy who wrote this post
http://mesmerizedbysirens.blogspot.it/2011/12/i-will-uncover-melanda-to-world-once.html
i noticed your comment only today, thanks for that.
I have been interested in Melanda for quite some time, i recently bought a copy on ebay (Melanda 2nd edition) and it's about to arrive, so i will be perusing it soon.
I think there might be some interest among rpg players worldwide about this game, as you probably know Dave Millard is about to do the same for "Heroes" as you can see yourself here:
http://theresdungeonsdownunder.blogspot.it/2012/03/fantastic-news-heroes-rpg-to-live-again.html
Why don't you consider re-publishing Melanda, following these examples? It would be fantastic (provided it can be done, from a copyright viewpoint).
bye for now
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REPLY:
I will mention it to co-author. Copyright won't be an issue, but as you will see, it will need some quality control clean up and as, over the 30 years since, both he and I have made changes. But I will be interested in hearing what you and your group think. It's biggest knock at the time came from D&D'ers who were used to having MANY books with everything one could ever want to know in one of them at least. We were gearing for a mechanic that would allow the creative GM who is designing original material to build stats right into his adventure design based upon his/her view of each encounter and challenge within the game. This was missed by many readers.
For instance, we give sample monsters and a mechanic for designing your own, or assigning your own stats based upon the level of challenge you intended for the encounter. Also, using word descriptors rather than a high reliance on numbers meant you could simply describe each door as weak, average, exceptionally strong, remarkably well made, etc. and then you would know what the strength requirement would be to 'force' it open. If your hero has remarkable strength (above exceptional on our scale) and the door was of average or exceptional strength, the hero can force it. All that's left to the GM is to describe his or her efforts in words, not numbers or die rolls and the story continues. If there is no hero in the party strong enough to open a particular door, but you the GM want them to open it, either lower the strength of the door or find a way to suggest that perhaps they should try opening it with two or three of their number...then once again, the saga goes on. That was the goal behind the whole system, so read it with that in mind. Feel free to write me anytime.
Good gaming. And thanx for the references to the other games...
lee mccormick
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Thanks Lee for your quick reply.
it's really exciting to hear there actually exist the possibility of seeing a resurrection of Melanda!
Nowadays we are living in the so called "old school renaissance" so i'm sure there is a "market" for such a product, and you could easily publish it on rpgnow or on Lulu.com as a print on demand.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you when you have spoken to the other fellow author. I'll surely let you know what my impressions are about the game when i get my hands on it.
In the meantime, do i have permission to copy-paste the email you just sent me and publishing it on my blog? I'm tempted to do that, in order to make a sort of pre-announcement stating to the blogosphere the chance of seeing this game to live again. (i'm not even sure i'm going to do that because my blog is officially closed, but i'm just asking)
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REPLY:
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Thanks Lee for your quick reply.
it's really exciting to hear there actually exist the possibility of seeing a resurrection of Melanda!
Nowadays we are living in the so called "old school renaissance" so i'm sure there is a "market" for such a product, and you could easily publish it on rpgnow or on Lulu.com as a print on demand.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you when you have spoken to the other fellow author. I'll surely let you know what my impressions are about the game when i get my hands on it.
In the meantime, do i have permission to copy-paste the email you just sent me and publishing it on my blog? I'm tempted to do that, in order to make a sort of pre-announcement stating to the blogosphere the chance of seeing this game to live again. (i'm not even sure i'm going to do that because my blog is officially closed, but i'm just asking)
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REPLY:
Yes, you have my permission.
lee
