Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

I have a question that has to do with OSG in general. Let me preface this by saying that I absolutely love BFRPG and it is now my game of choice. My question is this; "Labyrinth Lord was the hot thing for a while but now it seems to be dead as in not really supported." Thoughts? Opinions? I'm just curious.

I don't follow LL very closely, so I don't know anything about it's "aliveness."

Similar to Solo here, BF is the only one I actively follow and participate, I sometimes check other games but not LL.

I played LL mainly last year, having a sweet spot for races as classes, but mainly for the excellent Red Tide setting by Kevin Crawford, and yeah unfortunately the support for the game seems pretty much dead. Which is kind of sad if you ask me, because it is really a good retroclone.

That being said, if you guys haven't checked out Red Tide, I can't recommand it enough even if you don't want to use the asian-ish-post-apocalypse-ish setup, the random tables are just friggin awesome.

Hi!
Probably too late for a reply here, but I'll give my opinion.
Thing is: I started two weeks ago to actually jump heavily back to Retro stuff (even if I'm playing AD&D mostly).

I think BFRPG are two different beasts: LL is more a full clone with some re-organisation, cosmetic changes and very little re-writing in terms of rules. I find it compelling and even if support seems dead, the real point is that who plays and/or likes the B/X feel chooses it because you can play decades with basic book and home made settings, with added house ruled classes (that's what I'm doing right now). The nice addition of AEC gives more depth if you like the race + class thing and need more btb options from AD&D without adding complexity.
Two books are basically everything you need.

On the other hand, BFRPG gets the best of both schools and, even if I like "real" old school more, I don't blame who doesn't feel confortable with its weirdness (descending AC, matrixes, and so forth), and I feel like BFRPG has more hidden weapons for any possible hacking.

I like them both: even if they basically come from the same school, they're good in a different way.

Many "Old School" games are meant to be played, not sell anything, and many players spend time with buddies, dice and adventures, making things up as they go, not on forums. The need for "supporting" material can often be small and thus you really won't see that much activity in the "support" arena. How many people actually play any game? Its impossible to tell, since even a forum poll will only be answered by a very small minority of the gaming community. The rest of the people are playing, not reading forums.

IMO, as fantastic a game as LL is/was, it's simply outlived it's usefulness more than anything else. It was created, and thrived, at a time when the real thing was essentially unavailable outside of eBay and third party resellers. Now that B/X and BECMI are available through RPGNow, there isn't any need for a clone. The same could be said for OSRIC (AD&D 1e) and Swords & Wizardry (OD&D). There is a great deal of supporting material - settings, additional classes, monsters, adventures, etc still available, but not much need for the rule sets themselves. I see them being used to create other systems now, rather than being played on their own.

BFRPG (and S&W too, really) still hold interest for me at least, because they take the feel of those original games but bring some modern mechanics to them (Ascending AC, and AB, primarily).

jdn2006 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 10, 2016 2:30 pm Many "Old School" games are meant to be played, not sell anything, and many players spend time with buddies, dice and adventures, making things up as they go, not on forums. The need for "supporting" material can often be small and thus you really won't see that much activity in the "support" arena. How many people actually play any game? Its impossible to tell, since even a forum poll will only be answered by a very small minority of the gaming community. The rest of the people are playing, not reading forums.

If I wasn't in therapy with adamaged foot I would be gaming instead

PendragonTX wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 6:29 pm If I wasn't in therapy with adamaged foot I would be gaming instead

Ah! I was wondering why you were digging up so many of these old threads!

A thread necromancer...