Dan Proctor, the mind behind Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future, has created a publishing group on Lulu.com -- the Old-School Renaissance Publishing Group -- that brings several retro-clone publishers under a single virtual "roof." At the moment, the group includes Dan's own Goblinoid Games, Matt Finch's Mythmere Games, John Adams's Brave Halfling Publishing, and Fight On! magazine.
My hat's off to Dan for getting this moving. This is a terrific idea and it's something I hope more old school publishers get behind it and work together to raise the visibility of all their products.
Speaking strictly as a consumer, I've found browsing for old school stuff on lulu to be an extraordinary pain in the ass. OSR allows for window shopping with fewer hassles. I hope all the old school publishers hop on board.
ReplyDeleteI've found browsing for old school stuff on lulu to be an extraordinary pain in the ass
ReplyDeleteAin't that the truth. I just bought Jason Vey's OS Editions of Spellcraft & Swordplay, and wanted to browse for other similar publications. ha. Even doing sorts by "rpg" and terms realted to d&d brought up all sorts of unrelated books. I would have bought Swords & Wizardry right then and there.
OTOH, this new storefront is great, and I see I'm going to have to go shopping. Again! Thanks for the heads-up, James.
We can only hope that it's the start of something bigger, IPR anyone?
ReplyDeleteI've read about it on a number of other blogs and forums so far, anyway.
Even the group store is a bit of a pain. Nothing is in any recognizable order, for example, and there seems to be no way to change that. But it is a start, so we'll see how things go. Maybe we can expand this idea later.
ReplyDeleteHow are most of these products licensed -- do they use the OGL, or are they simply unlicensed?
ReplyDeleteAnyone know what Goodman Games did for licensing with their 1E products?
Most of these I think use the OGL, but some, like Fight On! Magazine, operate without it. So it's a mix, and probably will be more mixed as time goes on.
ReplyDeleteI think Goodman used the OGL with their 1e stuff, as did Rob Kuntz in his more recent modules.
"I've found browsing for old school stuff on lulu to be an extraordinary pain in the ass."
ReplyDeletePainfully true. It will be great to have all this excellent Old School material in one place!
If the OSR cats can find some way to sell their stuff on Amazon, under the OSR umbrella, that would also be great.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a really good development - agreed, even this group's storefront won't be well organized, but that's because of the limitations Lulu's format offers. And it's got to be done through a print-on-demand service, and right now, Lulu is the only one with consistent quality ... so we're limited to what can be done through Lulu. Kudos to Dan for discovering the possibility of doing a "group" through Lulu.
ReplyDeleteDo you think there is room in this for Neo-Retro games. I am slowly writing one and it is a grand trainwreck of old school and new school ideas that fit well with old school thought. It was recently called Codex but I have changed that to a different name that reflects a core principle of what I am trying to do with the game and is actually a play on words.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, if there is room for a frankenstein such as this, I would love to add it when I am done.
This is a great development, and I'm going to tell everyone I know that would interested about it.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen what some of the Forge/indie/whatever people have done recently with their "un-store"? (http://games.indie-rpgs.com/) I like their idea of collecting links to all their stuff in one place and pointing to individuals' PayPal links, Lulu pages, or whatever else. A similar OSR setup would help people who don't use Lulu, and allow more control over presentation.