Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Landifarne wrote:Question to Stuart: Did you and Matt fight, in OSRIC's nascency, over which spelling convention to use?

No, not at all. Matt's got plenty of English family and, I believe, dual nationality.

Well, I guess it doesn't matter now because WotC has pulled two of the books off of Print-on-demand (the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide), the posting of modules as PoD has ground to a halt, and future "revised editions" of modules are apparently going to be sold by Goodman Games (ptui) rewritten for fifth fucking edition.

Thanks for not a single god-damned thing, WotC.

When dmsguild started to make the material PoD-ready, I rejoiced. However, I was disappointed that they were predominantly making available much later stuff than what I would have bought (e.g. 2E). Also, I was puzzled as to why they had released the pastel G2 and G3, but, to date, there's been no hide nor hair of G1.

Not really happy with this: http://www.dmsguild.com/product/189455/ ... -Giants-5e



I wouldn't say "F**k the OSR", but I would issue a very vocal chastisement of Wi$bros for dropping yet another ball. Truly, WTF?

There are days where I wonder what they value the back catalog at. How hard, really, would it be to buy the rights outright?

Yes, I'm asking rhetorically, but it's a question I'm seriously considering.

It's never been the game, it's always been the fevered speculation that there's tie-in gold in them thar hills from movies, toys and video games that drives the value/price of the (A)D&D assets.

Flambeaux wrote:There are days where I wonder what they value the back catalog at. How hard, really, would it be to buy the rights outright?

Yes, I'm asking rhetorically, but it's a question I'm seriously considering.

The problem is that they're still very aggressively mining the IP - their latest release is, literally, a 5E conversion of Tomb of Horrors and the G-series, and before that they were pushing the umpteenath version of Ravenloft - which they wouldn't be able to do if they sold the rights off. WotC doesn't care about the actual old products, but they definitely care about continuing to squeeze money out of the brand IP contained within those products.

I understand that they're mining the IP. That's the smart thing to do because there isn't enough gold in the the hills reselling old products to an aging fan base. At least, on paper, the way finance and marketing guys who don't get gaming thing about these things.

But even the most ambitious plans eventually run out of steam in corporations. And I expect this one will, too, sooner rather than later. I just hope I'm there to pick up the rights when it does happen.

Heaven forbid the staff at WotC actually strive to make something new, which is as good as the G series for 5e, instead of swapping in new stats into stuff written around the time they were born.

The official/unofficial word on the AD&D hardback POD books is that WotC is fixing some problems with the files. Some print copies had multiple printing errors. Benoist commented on this very recently on Facebook.

tacojohn4547 wrote:The official/unofficial word on the AD&D hardback POD books is that WotC is fixing some problems with the files. Some print copies had multiple printing errors. Benoist commented on this very recently on Facebook.

Great!

So no more 7HD dwarves?
I still say the rulebooks should have been straightforward scans -- sans OCRing: quick, efficient, *Boom*, done.
If they had actually followed through with PoDing the old modules and put them up on DMsguild, I would have bought up a slew of them to array on my gaming bookshelf most proudly for guests to oggle, but that ain't likely gonna happen.

ThirstyStirge wrote:So no more 7HD dwarves?
I still say the rulebooks should have been straightforward scans -- sans OCRing: quick, efficient, *Boom*, done.
If they had actually followed through with PoDing the old modules and put them up on DMsguild, I would have bought up a slew of them to array on my gaming bookshelf most proudly for guests to oggle, but that ain't likely gonna happen.

I doubt there were copies clean enough to break down and scan, even in "museum" copies.

They've got a good chunk of old modules up for PoD still. I say get 'em while you can.

Wouldn't correcting the typos necessitate WOTC having someone on staff who had both prerequisite INT & WIS scores over 7 and at least 1st level of experience with 1e AD&D? Jesus, cut them some slack...where could they ever find such a person?

Kellri wrote:Wouldn't correcting the typos necessitate WOTC having someone on staff who had both prerequisite INT & WIS scores over 7 and at least 1st level of experience with 1e AD&D? Jesus, cut them some slack...where could they ever find such a person?

LOL.

grodog wrote:

Kellri wrote:Wouldn't correcting the typos necessitate WOTC having someone on staff who had both prerequisite INT & WIS scores over 7 and at least 1st level of experience with 1e AD&D? Jesus, cut them some slack...where could they ever find such a person?

LOL.

They probably don't have Read Magic in their spell book, either...