Well hey there Stuart, welcome back. ;>

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ExTSR wrote:Well hey there Stuart, welcome back. ;>

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Hey Frank.  

I never really went away; I just don't post on the Acaeum much.  I'm not a collector, and I'm not really in the business of trying to sell things to collectors.  But I do read here from time to time because occasionally someone says something I feel the need to reply to...

Not having a business side to OSRIC may abso be short sighted, if any of these ripoffs manages to become a credible business. The general problem with all these D&D ripoffs is that they are just that. They are all the same goddam ruleset dressed up in rhetoric and semantics. There is not a single one of them that can't be surplanted by the basic and expert rulebooks they're ripping off. It's just a bunch of people jumping on a bandwagon that isn't going anywhere in a hurry.

The only interest any of them have is the possibility that a relatively rare collectable my emerge by accident somewhere, but that holds no interest to me as a collector as I have not got the disposable income to be buying up everything in this area on the off chance, and I am unlikely ever to open or read any of the stuff, let alone play it, when I have a perfectly decent D&D play set, and the majority of the stuff published is of questionable quality anyways.

There will be a PoVQ in there somewhere in 30 years time, I suspect those with the 1st edition of Raggi's Esoteric Creature have a future rare as no PDF was released, and the numbers were very limited pripr to Goodman Games making the bid to publish it. But it seems to be an exception.

mbassoc2003 wrote:There will be a PoVQ in there somewhere in 30 years time, I suspect those with the 1st edition of Raggi's Esoteric Creature have a future rare as no PDF was released, and the numbers were very limited pripr to Goodman Games making the bid to publish it. But it seems to be an exception.

One of the reasons I am not interested in collecting the OSR stuff is that I don't think there will be.  The Non-TSR collectibles are largely collectible because they are linked in some way to the history or start of D&D - PotV being a prime example.

Unless Lamentations of the Flame Princess takes off in a big way I can't see the same happening to Esoteric Creatures.

Therefore I think what matters is quality.  If stuff is good then it is worth me picking up.  (And by good I think I probably mean exceptional.)  Otherwise it might be rare but I don't think it will necessarily be collectible.  It will belong to the margins of our hobby.

I see most of this OSR fan produced stuff in the same way that I see most thord party 3ed stuff.  I don't own lots of the non-WotC stuff and I don't think it will be collectible.  Crucible of Freya, Three Days to Kill and Rappan Athuk are different and are collectible (and of interest to me and probably others) because they are decent (or at least interesting) products.

I believe you'll see quite a bit of third party 3.0/3.5 stuff grow in value.

Sardan wrote:
Which stuff and why?

There's an entire thread in the "Non TSR" forum dedicated to this.

Mike B.

clangador wrote:But there should be a business side to OSRIC. It might sell more if it were available in stores. My FLGS has OSRIC-compatible modules, but not OSRIC or any other retro-clones to use them with.

I'm not trying to sell it, mate.

I was only prepared to create OSRIC and put my name to it if I was convinced it was both legal and ethical.  The legality of it was a complex decision, but the ethics were very simple.

I didn't invent these rules.  Therefore I'm not prepared to make any money from them.  And that should have been the end of the story, except there's a twist...

To my embarrassment, the Black Blade imprint of OSRIC is accidentally going to make some money.  (This is because Black Blade used an offset printer, thus reducing their print costs, and they choose to match Lulu's price.  Being decent folks, the Black Blade people are going to donate a proportion of their commercial profit to K&KA.)  I've put the situation to the few of us who comprise K&KA's "governing body", so to speak, and I think the consensus is that we'll donate the proceeds to various charities for disabled veterans.

I am in the business of selling OSRIC-related products, such as Monsters of Myth, but that's (a) an original and unique creation, and (b) mainly meant to cover K&KA's hosting costs.

None of this is going to make me very popular in the collecting fraternity, mind you.    OSRIC puts a cap on the value of poorer-condition 1e rulebook sets, because a paperback OSRIC costs £10.39.  Or more likely, 80% of £10.39, because Lulu have a sale every few weeks.

And like Ian says, none of the OSRIC stuff is going to be collectable unless (a) 1e experiences a sudden and massive upswing of popularity and (b) Lulu mysteriously implodes.

So yeah, the Acaeum isn't my target audience.  My original priority was, and my main priority still is, the people who want to buy new, freshly-written 1e material in print.

Ian's got a point when he talks about quality: not everything ever written for OSRIC has been excellent.  But then, some of the stuff has been pretty good.  As a set of products, OSRIC's never produced anything as good as the G-series.

But it's never produced anything as bad as Terrible Trouble at Tragidore, either.

Sardan wrote:
Which stuff and why?

Pretty much anything from Necromancer Games in the original hardcopy, most of the 3.5E and 1E Goodman Games stuff, some more quickly than others. The Witchfire Trilogy Collection book because, like RAR, it has more in it than the individual volumes. Anything with Castle Zagyg in the name. Yggsburgh in time. Shackled City. The list must is quite long, but there are precious few real winners in there. Most are steady investments that will either not depreciate or increase in value gradually over time.

FormCritic wrote:
I think it will increase in value because:

a)  There are some excellent products out there.

b)  Some of the non-excellent products will be rare and therefore valuable.

It's pretty much like Judges Guild...which has been growing in value for a decade.  

Some Judges Guild products were neither a) good nor b) rare.  These products are still out there on Ebay for close to what they were selling for in 2004.  (Book of Treasure Maps III, for instance.)

Some Judges Guild products currently meet the quality criteria but not the rarity criteria (Verbosh, for instance).  These are still low in price.

Some Judges Guild products meet both criteria and are growing in value every time they show up on Ebay.  (Wraith Overlord, for instance, is growing in value every time it appears.  Dark Tower or First Fantasy Campaign have always been excellent finds.)

A number of these products have become rare only recently as leftover containers of Judges Guild products have emptied out.  (Tarantis would be an example of a product that used to cost $5 but now costs larger money.)

My point is...anyone who collects game products knows that there was a moment when AD&D and 2nd Edition failed and whithered and items from both games were on the $1 shelf for some time, not selling.  Now, we kick ourselves for not buying them up.  The same will be true of the D20 explosion...for those who have ears to hear.

And finally, for those who can remember this sort of thing....I told all of you to acquire the Castle Zagyg products when they first came out.  Items like Dark Chateau and The Upper Works hung around for some time without buyers.  Just sayin'....

Go to the D20 Collecting thread and start reading.

Very well written, Mark. I agree completely.

Mike B.