Here Zachary talks about the movement towards an association of Old School Publishers. Specifically the goal is to have a booth at GenCon showcasing the various products that have been released.
In the comments Gleichman points that various parties in the Old School revival will have trouble working together because of objections over content. This is referring to the recent controversy over the Carcosa supplement.
Quite simply any Old School Association should focus on Business. If people expect it to police content whether it for moral standards or just to anoint what is "officially" old school then it will quickly devolve into cliques and fragment the publishers.
The market will sufficiently punish people who stray to far in both circumstances by simply not buying the product. Right now the market is small enough that word quickly spread. Even if the current efforts are a total success we are talking thousands for a least next few years.
If the Old School Association gets off the ground I plan on joining. As long as it is focused on the business of getting our stuff into the hands of players and referees I don't care who else joins.
For those of you who write old school material and read this blog I hope you will seriously consider joining a business oriented Association. If we can bundle our products then we have a shot of getting the volume needed to get them into the distribution chain which will seriously increase our ability to reach the entire RPG market.
2 comments:
Thanks for the link, Rob!
I'd love to get some organized coverage at Gen Con this year, but we'll see what TARGA has on its plate. FWIW, I've also been working on sort of an old-school style primer for our homebrew setting (inspired in a lot of ways by 1980's World of Greyhawk in terms of scope and lead-in world info), and am considering self-publishing. If that happens, I'd be thrilled to know there's a support network in place.
As a gamer of almost 30 years who has recently gotten a new group for AD&D first edition games (after a few years off), I'm so jazzed to see this old school revival. To think, I started this 1st edition campaign because all I had were the old books (at least two copies each). OK, I also never liked many of the changes, starting with 2nd edition.
To have accidentally stumbled into a movement for old school, I feel especially blessed. Sort of revitalized for gaming, I'm all over it checking out blogs like this and starting my own.
I look forward to keeping an eye of what goes down with OSA. Maybe I'll finally go to my first Gen con someday soon. As a kid, that was the mecca I dreamed of going to.
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