Continuation of the D&D brand (from a business perspective)

[Eric Tolle]

Please do not conflate old-school gaming with FATAL.

FATAL is it's own strange bird, a grotesque exaggeration of certain extreme elements in roleplaying not specifically D&D oriented.

But on the other hand, I've seen enough sexual harassment, misogyny and enforced gender stereotyping justified either through "That's what the rules say" or "that's how our it was historically" (usually with very little knowledge of history), that I'd say a fair dose of sexism is standard fare in classic games. It's not necessary, but it's common, in part due to the culture of older gamers.

Of course to me classic gaming is also: the guy relating excitedly how his character was slowly dismembered as he fled through his first and last dungeon; The custom random encounter table where there was an equal chance to meet any monster (roll of 186: the first level party on the road encounters a liche- they all die); DMs eagerly installing everything from Grimtooth's Traps in a dungeon; the DM getting annoyed that the players can't figure out the simple riddle solution to the trap, and "no you can't just disarm it, tell me exactly what you're doing"; parties of ten players, 20 characters, and 60 henchmen and hirelings; extensive lists of magic items, and no character backgrounds; writing a BASIC program to print out hundreds of PCs; and the Bard getting mugged by another players demon henchmen, while the paladin is carefully far down the hallway.

Oh yeah, you didn't need the rape scenarios, there were so many other ways classic D&D could suck.

It does provide a horrifying example, though, that preferred styles differ wildly. Someone out there apparently did think, "yknow, this roleplaying thing is pretty good, but what it needs is...". If that ain't proof of subjectivity, I don't know what is.

And the thing is, if someone had asked that DM, he probably would have denied that he was engaging in harassment, or that he was doing anything other than standard D&D.

Of course back in the day, the idea of standard D&D was a lot more flexible than it is today. We grabbed anything that took our fancy, and stirred it into our games. Classic D&D included stuff from Arduin Grimore and Traveller, if someone wanted to take a Jedi Knight through Greyhawk, well that was what the psionics rules were there for, and so on. This is why I don't get a lot of the purist attitude; it's like someone saying beef connsume is the only REAL soup, and adding vegetables to broth renders it not-soup. I really blame Third Edition for that attitude.

The idea of a hardcore ad-on module is a solid one, though. I'd buy it.

By hardcore I take it you mean "3D6 in order, don't bother putting on the character sheet a section for background and personality? Your character is created in front of the dungeon? Because that's what a lot of hardcore games I saw boiled down to.