FOLKLORE - Tales of These Isles Kickstarter

 FOLKLORE - Tales of These Isles

FOLKLORE - Tales of These Isles

A dark and whimsical illustrated anthology of folkloric tales and creatures from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Tales of SF&F Noir, upended Fairy Tales, & Brave New Worlds! Kickstarter

Tales of SF&F Noir, upended Fairy Tales, & Brave New Worlds!

New SF&F Anthologies from Zombies Need Brains!

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology Kickstarter

 The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology

An illustrated encyclopedia about mysterious cryptid creatures from around the world

Crimson Escalation Kickstarter

Crimson Escalation Kickstarter

What if you could speed-up DnD combat while making battles more exciting, realistic, and fun? All that with a minimum of bookkeeping!

Back it for only $1 or more if you like.

The 'Zine Scene from Past, Public Service Post

Bretts RPG Magazine and Zine Index 

A long Index with info. In sidebar, some have links to more info. The latest work on this was 2012 or earlier. Now found in Internet Archive only.

The classifications that the author used.

Classfications

APAzine=Amateur Press Association fanzine
Clubzine=games club fanzine
Dipzine=Diplomacy fanzine
Perzine=personal fanzine
Prozine=professional magazine
Subzine= smaller submission inside a compilation zine

The bare list, add names to it with whatever you can. What is your favorite name from below, tell me. Mine The Hungry Maggot.

#
20 Years On
2300 AD Resources
A
Abyss
Acolyte, The
Adjuntant, The
Adventure Gaming
Adventurer
Adventurer, The
Adventurer's Anonymous
Adventurers Club
Adventurers Unlimited
Aerial Servant
Alarums & Excursions
Albion
Alice
Alien Realms
Alien Star
Alignment Toung
Amberzine
Amulet
Amulet
Apocalypse, The
Apprentice, The
Arbalest, The
Arcane
ArgleBargle
Aslan
Atu XVIII
Australian Realms
Autoduel Quarterly
B
Backstabbers United Monthly
Balrog Banter
Bandsaw
Bat, The
Battletechnology
Beaumains
Beholder, The
Belladonna
Between Worlds
bIG pICTURE, the
Black Freighter
Black Knight
Black Mole
Black Rider
Black Seal
Black Sun, The
Blood Guts & Beer
Blue Shaboo
Blurred Vision
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bone of Contention
Bolt from the Blue, A
Booklet of Many Things, The
Book of Dark Wisdom
Book of Drastic Resolutions, The
Boris
Borkelby's Folly
Brain Damage
Breakout
Brick in the Face
Brothers Grimm, The
Bubonic Plagiarist, The
Burning Rubber
C
Canticle
Carnel
Cassandra
Celestial Homecare Omnibus
Cerebral Cortex
Cerebreton
Chain-Mail
Challenge
Chaos Lord
Chimaera
Cipher
Citizens of Grenada
C.O.D.
Codex
Codpiece
Combat is Glory
Concepts
Conflict of Chaos
Continum
Controversial Repertoires of an Alcoholic Prat
Convert or Die
Corrosive Comix
CRAP
Creature
Crimson Steel
Cruel Worlds
Cryptych
Crypty of Cthulhu
Cult of Anubis
Cut and Thrust
D
Dagon
Dancing at the End of Time
Danse Macabre
Dark Elf
Dark Hemisphere
Dark Realm
Dark Star
Dark Star
Dark Star II
Daughters of Dool
Dead Elf
Dead End
Death's Dance Taken Slowly
Decending Darkness
Deck of Many Things
Delusions of Grandeur
Demon Issue
Demonsblood
Demons Drawl
Descending Darkness
Destiny
Devil Advocate, The
Devine Rites
Dialos
Dice Bag, The
Diceman
Die Rubezahe
Different Worlds
Dig My Dogma
Dimension Zero
Dispatch It
DOOL
Doombook of Chaos
Doomed Dwarves’ Journal
Doomtown Epitaph
Drache
Dragon
Dragon
Dragon
Dragon Aid
Dragonfire
Dragonlords
Dragonlore
Dragon's Breath
Drak Con
Dross
Drow
Drune Kroll
Drunk & Disorderly
Dtalos
Dungeon
Dungeoneer, The
Dungeoneers Journal, The
Dungeoner Digest
Durin's Bane
E
Edgeworks
Eiledon
Eliminator
Elsewhere
Enclosure
Ether Society Newsletter
Excellent Prismatic Spray, The
Exeunt
Explorer
Explosive Rune
Eye of All Seeing Wonder
F
Fallout
Familiar
Familiar
Fantasia
Fantazia
Fantasy Chronicles
Fantasy Gamer
Fantasy Herald, The
Fantasy Tomb
Far Away
Far Traveller
Fat Knite
Fiery Cross, The
Fire and Water
First Strike
First Encounter
FIST
Five Year Plan
Five Years Unplanned
Flames of Albion
Floating World
Flying North
Fnordly World News
Fractal Spectrum
From Kain's Den
Fugitive, The
Fusions
Future Roleplaying
G
Game News
Gamer, The
Gamer's Afoot
Gamers Connection, The
Gamer's Guide
Games International
Games Master International
Gamesman
Gamesmaster
Gamesreview
Games Unplugged
Games Without Frontiers
Gammazon
Gateways
Generals, Dragons and Dice
Glesis
Glamdring
Glarg!
GM
Goblins Kneecaps, The
Good Games Guide, The
Grav Gauss and Pods Rifles
Greatest Hits
Green Goblin
Grey Worlds
Griffin
Grimlord
Grim Reaper
Grimtooth's Friends
Ground Zero
Gryphon
Guilder, The
Guildsman, The
H
Hacking Times
Harnlore
Harvest Time
Havoc
Hellfire
Heroes
High Passage
Hits to Kill
Hobbit Hole
Hogwash
Hocus Pocus
Holy Avenger
Hopscotch
Home of the Brave
Horror Gamer, The
Horse Manure
Hounds of Avalar
Houwl't
Hungry Maggot, The
Hybrid, The
Hyperactive
I
Idolum Quarterly, The
I Don't Wanna Go Back in the Box
Interactive Fiction
Illusionist's Vision
Imagine
Imazine
Immoral Minority, The
Impaler, The
Imperial Herald
Imperial Lines
Imperial News Service, The
Imperium Staple, The
Infernal Desire
Infiniverse
Inflammatory Material
Inphobia
Input/Output
Instant Karma
Intellect Devourer
Interaction
Interface
Interplay
Into the Darkness
IRM
Iron Orchid
Iskra
IT
It's Clobberin Time!
Ivory Tower
Ivory, Peacocks and Apes
J
Jagged Cross, The
Jawa Melting Pot, The
Jester, The
Journal of the Britannic Technological Society
Journal of the Senseless Carnage Society, The
Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society
Journeys
Judges Guild Journal, The
Jumpspace
K
Ka@ge
Kayleigh
Kirkwood
L
Laboratory, The
Lac Ta
Lankhmar Star Daily
Lasers and Lycanthropes
Last Province, The
Legion
Lion & Lamb Chronicles
Living Galaxy
Living Greyhawk Journal
Living the Orclife
Lokasenna
M
Magic and Mayhem
Maestrom
Magia Miecz
Making Moves
Malkuth Scripts, The
Manic Depressive
Marsh's Adventure Gaming Ideas
Martian Chronicles, The
MegaTraveller Journal, The
Mektek
Mimesis
Mindless Slaughter
Minds Eye Theatre Journal
Miser's Hoard
Monstrous Perversion
Moronica Ripsnore
Morrigan
Multiverse
My Father Killed a Man
Mystic Crystal
Mythic Perspectives
N
Necromancer
Necromancer, The
Necronomicon
Necronomicon
Necropolis
Nemesis
New Beholder, The
New Fusions
News From Bree
Next Stop Jupiter
Nexus
Nightflyer
Nightdreams
Nightmare
NMR!
Norst Claw
North Coast Roleplaying
Northwest Gamers Newtork
Now Eat the Rabbit
Now Worship the Rabbit
O
Obscurity Inc
Obsidian
Obsidian Rex Quarterly
Ode
Olympus
Omniverse
Once in a Lifetime
Oracle of Almost All Knowledge
Orc's Revenge
Oracle, The
Orc Torc
Origin of Tree Worship
Other Hands
Outlore
Outposts
Out of the Mist...
Owl & Weasel
P
Palantir
Pandemonium
Pandora
Panzerkreuser
Paragon
Parasec
Pavic Tales
Pegasus
People of Innsmouth
PerChance
Perspiring Dreams
Phantasm, The
Pink Elephant
Planetside
Play it!
Players Association Broadsheet
Players Association News
Polaris
Polyhedron
Polyhedron UK
Polyhedron Germany
Postal Roleplayer, The
Power, The
Prisoner's Of War
Proteus
Protoplasm
Psychobabble [Irish]
Psychopath
Punt & Pass
Pyramid
Q
Quality not Quantity
Quasits & Quasars
Que
R
Rage in Eden
Ragnarok
Random Writings
Rapscallion
Raven
RCM
Read Pheasant Throughout
Realms of Aerlath
Red Giant
Red Giant
Red Shift
Reviewer
Re:Quest
Ringwraith's Shadow
Roleplayer
Roleplayer Independent
Roleplaying
Roleplaying Kama Sutra, The
Round Table Gaming Magazine, The
RQ Adventurers
RuneRiter
Runestone
Runezine
S
Sacrificing the Goat
SAGA
Samhain
Sanity Claws
Sarceen's Knowledge
Sauce of the Nile
Save Our Souls
Sauron Stricks Back
Scan
School for Scandal
Scribe, The
Scroll
ScrollSeal of the Imperium
Secrets of the Koan
Security Leak
Security Leak Newsletter
Sedated
Serendipity's Circle
Seventh Sin of the Salamander
Sewars
Shadis
Shadowfire
Shadowland
Shadows
Shatter
Shire Talk
Sholari
Signal GK
Signs and Portents
Singing Citadel
Skeleton Crew
Skullcrusher
Slave
Small Worlds
Snot Rag
Sodder
Soft Construction
Soleil Noir
Sorcerer, The
Sorcerers Apprentic
e Sorcerers Scroll, The
Sound & Fury
Space Gamer
Space Gamer Fantasy Gamer
Space Operations
Spawn of Chaos
Spectral Vision
Spectre
Spit
Spitting From the Battlements
Splat!
Splattered Exploits
Spread Sheet
Starquester
Starships, Starports and Vehicles
Start up
Star Wars Adventure Journal
Star Wars Gamer
Star Wars Roleplay
Stary Wisdom
Stielkrieg
Storm Lord, The
Storm Ruler
Stormwatch Newsletter
Sumo
Super-Heros
Superhero UK
Super Zine
Swansea With Me
Sword of Sylvian
Swordplay
Swords Edge
T
Take That You Fiend
Tales After Dark
Tales from Hobbiton
Tales from Tanelorn
Tales of the Reaching Moon
Taliszman
Tech Factory, The
Telegraph Road
Tempestuous Orifice
Tentacles Tome
Terror Australis
Theater of Pain
The Thing that Came from the Dungheap
Thingy
Third Imperium
This Way Up
Thunderstruck
Thunderwind
Timeblade
Tidewater Traveller Timer
Tinnyoro
Tome of Horrors
Tome of Passive Violence, The
Tome of the Ancient Magus
Tootha
Tortured Souls
Tortured Souls
Torturer's Apprentice, The
Torturer’s Apprentice 2
Totally Zane
Tradetalk
Tragsnart
Traveller Cronicle, The
Trizine
Troll
Trollcrusher
Trojan Horse
Troup in the Milk
Trump Call
Tunnel Talk
Twinworld
Twin World revies, The
U
Ultimatum
Underworld Oracle
Unnamed, The
Unspeakable Oath
Unspoken Word
Untold Visions
Utter Drivel
V
Vacuous Grimoire
Valkyre
Valkyrie
Variant
Verbal Diarrhoea
Vartex
Virtual Lore
Visions
Vollmond
Voom Vat
Vortex
Voyages
W
Wanderer, The
WarlockWarped Sense of Humor
Warpstone
Weird
Wereman
Westron, The
What's Stirring?
Which?
Whisperer, The
Whispers in the Tavern
White Dwarf
White Elephant
White Rabbit
White Shadow
White Wolf
Wild Hunt
Wizards Notebook
Wobbly Wobbly Fis Bang,Up Left, Two Three
Wolvesbane
Wolvesbane
World Builder
Worlds Apart
Writings of a Converted Wraith, The
Wyrm's Claw
Wyrms Footnotes
X
Y
Yardsticks and Yarns
Y Draig Goch
Year of the Rat
Ye Booke of Tentacles
Z
Zadragor, The
ZadragorZette
Zine With No Name, The
Z0pah

 

More Public Service Post for gaming material

OSRIC™ - Wiki and Other Goodies - Index

OSRIC™ First Edition Fantasy Roleplaying Game

Dangerous Dungeons A Supplement for OSRIC™ They call this an Unearthed Arcana that doesn't suck.

Do the Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg Constitute a Megadungeon?

The question is, were megadungeons a feature of D&D during the pre-publication days or shortly thereafter?

Let's review, the information available about the Blackmoor dungeons show a small dungeon. The information available about the Greyhawk dungeons are they too, are a small dungeon, with each level of Gygax's original dungeon limited to a single 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper.

So how about Tonisborg by Greg Svenson? Like the other two dungeons it is a very nice dungeon, larger than the Blackmoor dungeons going by The First Fantasy Campaign information, and smaller than Greyhawk. So it is another small dungeon. The only megadungeon from the early days that I am aware of is from Arduin and if IIRC from a site that is now only partially existent in the Internet Archive, that dungeon had over 100 levels, although the size of each level is a mystery to me. 

So Tonisborg is a great dungeon, but also not a megadungeon.

Some claim that these are megadungeons, but nothing proving that has been published that I am aware of. I have seen nothing on the last, but if it is a megadungeon that would be a surprise. The below is quoted from the first forum of which I have been speaking.

- DA's Castle Blackmoor - published twice (JG and d20 versions)

- EGG's original Castle Greyhawk - mostly unpublished save some extracted pieces

- RJK's Castle El Raja Key - first version mostly-published via ERK Archive and some extracted pieces (S4, S3, WG5, etc.)

- EGG + RJK's expanded Castle Greyhawk - mostly unpublished save some extracted pieces

- PB's Jakhallan Underworld - unpublished but soon to be published by the Tekumel Foundation

If your Forum Pirates Games are you still Old School?

If your forum facilitates, encourages and supports the pirating of games, even games that are not out of print, are you still an old school forum? If your members take illegal pdfs and coverts them to text/word files is that a good old school place to hangout?

Maybe we cut them some slack if the item is truly out of print, but new stuff currently for sale, stuff by small one man operations, "C'mon man!"

The Hidden area where this is done is called The Underdark and although I have access, I don't use it. I own hard copies of everything I want and need. Have I ever downloaded a pdf, yes and used it as a preview, if it was garbage I deleted it and if it was good, I went and bought it. There are people who have tens of thousands of pdfs they have pirated, more than you could read in a lifetime. Why?

BTW it used to be that access to The Underdark was passed from friend to friend and the password was "drow" which is funny because drow is about as new school as new school gets. Now the access is limited to a small group of "trusted reliable" people.

My kind of old school are honest, decent everyday people. They don't run around stealing from the little guy and the bulk of pdfs are from the little guys. Previewing is like browsing a book store and looking at the book, if you don't want to buy it you put it back on the shelf, if you want to use it in your game you buy it. So review the pdf you downloaded, if you don't want to pay for it after you have looked at it, delete it, if you are going to use it in your game, then go buy a copy. If it is out of print, then join the chorus of "there is not excuse for every game not being available as print on demand these days or at least for sale in pdf with permission to print."

Your DM Style

 Now you would think that if you put up a poll about people's DM style it would be both realistic and interesting, well except when it is not. Check out these three options, the only options in the question.

Stoic poker face.

Cackle like a cartoon villain.

I'm just a playa.

Wait what?!?! That is your options, really. That does not describe me or anyone I have met over the years. You choices are stick in the mud or an idiot or a someone who gets women drunk for nefarious purposes. Is that all you have? You need to get out more and meet some halfway normal people who game.

A Few Signs Your "old school forum" might be a fake

What are the signs that your "old school forum" is a fake and is not really old school? Here are several signs, if you forums has any of these you might be fake old school.

1. BtB dominates your discussion to the point that you have specific areas that are for BtB only discussion.

2. Your AD&D 1st Ed and your AD&D 2nd Ed forum areas react strongly to anyone who makes a post that does not support the orthodoxy preached at the forum and consider house rule discussion to be heresy.

3. You have a guy that is a global moderator, at two of the forums, make the claim that railroading was part of the game from day one. See my previous post here. Fact: railroading was NOT part of the original game. It came about after D&D was published and spread beyond the original audience.

3a. Your forum fails to condemn railroading and scripted play that players are forced to follow as the filth that these things are.

4. Your forum is woke and you persecute those who are not woke. You think that games have to cater to every perversion under the sun and that if they don't they are bad. You think that certain types of deviants can never, ever be criticized.  Most of us game to escape the bad things in the real world, not wallow in those bad things in the game.

5. Your forum has prime discussion areas that are hidden from the public or even minor general interest areas that are hidden from the public.

6. You think your forum and your group are old school, but at close examination you are found to be from a later school.

7. You describe your forum like this "The old stuff done with modern production values.

Then you link to this video

Somehow massive implants do not spell old school to me.

These are just a few, I may update this post.

TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies found at theRPGsite

 As a public service I am linking to this thread over at theRPGsite. 

TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies 

They have split the companies into three categories

Green
Not Woke or Indifferent

Yellow
Sort of Woke or Panders- If it's there it's subtle. They "bend the knee" to the grifters, or maybe they themselves are woke

Red
Woke,These people probably despise you if you don't fall in line and they aren't afraid to let you know it.

I only see one error in the list and that is that Frog God Games/Swords and Wizardry should be in the Yellow category, possibly even in the Red category, but definitely not in the Green category.

Bloggers/First Generation Roleplayers 1970-1976

Or the "If you are reading this, then I am dead movement."  A way to record a history that would otherwise be lost in the mists of time.

Over on MeWe, Adam Bragg said "In 10+ years get ready for a wave of "end of an era" style retrospective posts as RPG bloggers cover the death of the first gen roleplayers... " to which I replied, "Maybe all those who belong to that era and blog should write their own post for that. In blogger you can set a future date for the post and you can keep moving the date forward so when you die and can no longer move the date forward it will automatically post. All those posts can start with the phrase, if you can read this I am dead... and then offer your final thoughts about the "end of an era" from those who were part of it. That is a great suggestion, I think I will do a post on it."

So with his permission I am quoting and using the idea.

Now some of the First Generation Role Players of which a few have blogs or other public presence have either passed away already or will be over the next 10 or more years and at some point someone(s) are going to write "end of an era" style retrospective posts as RPG bloggers cover the death of the first gen roleplayers... "

Now I ask you guys, do we really want to leave this to those who may not even understand old school gaming? I say that we should not! So here is my proposal.

If you are one of us old guys (or girls) that were part of the first generation of Dungeons and Dragons, that first generation of Role Players and maybe you wrote your own game or you just house ruled D&D, I want to suggest that you should each write your own retrospective, your own epitaph of the era that you were part of. If you have a blogger blog it is easy, write you post and put the publish date a few months in the future and keep updating that future date until one day you pass away and then it automatically gets published.

I suggest that we all format it as a follows: First a little gallows humor by starting it off, "If you are reading this I am either dead or too close to it to prevent this from being published." Or something along those lines, then talk about how you got into playing D&D in the first place, and then whatever you want to say about the game, your participation, etc. When the history is written about the end of the era once all of us old gamers are gone, we need to have our voices and our perspectives out there so we are heard too.

Most of us are not famous or even semi-famous, but we have seen what they wrote about Gygax and Arneson and the others that have passed, those well-known enough that they got a mention, even one or two.

Someday in the dim mists of the future when they write about our day, those early days, lets give them more to go on than the more mainstream stuff. 

Here is another tip. When you post anything to your blog, after it is posted go to the Internet Archive and use their Save Page Now feature after every post.

 Save Page Now

 

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Only available for sites that allow crawlers.

If you use it after every post, it will do two things, one is preserve every post and you won't be one of those blogs that only has a post here and there saved and it will IMO improve the odds that your site will be crawled and remembered by the Internet Archive when you final post, your epitaph drops.

If you are one of our younger readers, when those epitaphs drop, do yourself and future writers a favor and save that post to the Internet Archive for your departed fellow gamer.

If you will commit to do this, then post in the comments and say, "Yes, I will write my own  retrospective, my own epitaph, so that all of us ordinary blokes can be remembered when the histories are written.

Also please share this post everywhere and spread the idea. All of you younger gamers. When these final posts drop. Share them a lot and then back up the shared post to the Internet Archive. Let's not give future historians any excuse to get it wrong. Remember many historians don't use primary sources, only secondary or more removed from the original source, so quoting and citing is key. You younger people may want to remember all of this for your own stuff to.

Demographic of xxx74 membership?

Over at the forum that is my second home, they started a poll/thread about the age demographics of members with these categories

How many years have you seen so far?

Up to 20 years

21-30 years

31-40 years

41-50 years

51-60 years

61-70 years

71-80 years

81-90 years

91-100 years

101 years or more

Before we look at the results, let's put these ages in perspective. D&D was published in 1974, which is  47 years ago, which means that if you were 50 you were 3 years old that year and if you were 60 you were 13 that year. Since we know that D&D was first introduced to the war gaming community, that is to say virtually all adults or 18 and up, it means that those people are now 65 years old and up. Over the first few years D&D started to penetrate the college age market or that is the same age group of which now the 65 year olds are the young end of the original D&D players which the majority of the original players being over 70 years old/

So let's look at the results of the poll. As of today they have 98 votes and the poll is locked.

The up to 20 years group - 1 vote or roughly 1%.

The 21-30 years group - 4 votes or roughly 4%.

So we can see that this forum has not done much to attract youth to the forum to talk about OD&D.

How about the next part of the demographic?

The 31-40 years group - 18 votes or roughly 18%.

These people were not even a gleam in the eye at the time OD&D made its debut.

The 41-50 years group - 35 votes or roughly 36%.

Again most these people were not even born yet at the beginning of the RPG era.

The 51-60 years group - 37 votes or roughly 38%. 

The oldest few of this group were 13 when OD&D began, but it would be a few years before D&D entered the older part of this demographic. These people were 4-13 years old when D&D began and the earliest that any of them began to play D&D was 1978 or 1979 and most of them did not start playing until 1982 or 1983. 

See my previous post here. The first players from this group started playing with the second Gygaxian D&D was fully dominant and the later players of this group started playing as the third Gygaxian D&D became dominant.

As noted in my previous post this means that all of these people started playing under this paradigm, that is this philosophy, 

3. Then there is the third Gygaxian, this is after the money went to his head and he started preaching that BtB AD&D is the One True AD&D and that any alternations mean you are not playing AD&D. This is the BtB zealotry and OneTrue Wayism. This was where the most damage was done to D&D and the whole RPG genre. 

This is where the railroaded gaming, rules lawyers, munchkins (not defined by age), powergamers/min-maxers, murder-hobos and BtB zealots became the mainstream and continues to be the mainstream to this day. This is when all games moved from open-ended to closed. This was when people where told they had to buy the setting and buy the modules for the setting because DIY is too difficult for ordinary people.

So you need to ask the question of just how old school is this forum if in more exact numbers 97% of you membership was not part of the original few years of D&D players.

So how many of this forums members are old enough to be old school?

The 61-70 years group - 2 votes or roughly 2%.

and 

The 71-80 group - 1 vote or roughly 1%.

These are respectively the 14-23 age group and the 24-33 age group. Of the first group, you are unlikely to be an original player if you are currently younger than 64. So this forum has 3% or less of its members are old enough to have played D&D in 1974, 1975 or 1976. Even by 1976 the descent into the madness of adventure modules had begun.

So we have a forum where 97% of its members did not start gaming under the original play style whose dominance only lasted barely 3 years before it was supplanted by a steadily more closed and less open-ended play style that became more railroaded and more murder-hobo by the year.

It would be of great interest to run this on the older forum that is primarily AD&D, to see if that forum skews older with a higher percentage that are 61 or older. My gut tells me it might be as much as 6% instead of 3% but not higher than 10% at a max.

The number of people that started playing D&D in 1974, 1975 or 1976, outside of the still living Twin Cities and Lake Geneva crowd, who are also active on forums/blogs or other social media are vanishingly small. There is a 3rd forum that is also primarily AD&D that is a few years older and much larger and I would bet that it skews younger than either of these first two forums.

So what do we learn here? That the vast majority of those who claim to be old school grognards are just talking through their hats, because they were not even around for the original play style of the original days. That original pool of DMs was so small, that few people ever played under those DMs outside of an appearance by one of them at a con. Many of even the oldest of the old school DMs at cons soon defaulted to Killer DM mode, because it was expected and because of other social factors.

What is Gygaxian in terms of D&D ?

What is Gygaxian in terms of D&D is a question that was recently asked over on a forum where I am an active member and poster. The question was framed as being specific to oe and early to mid 1e.

We should first consider the elephant in the room. What do I mean elephant in the room you might say? The big, fat, freaky, elephant is where you consider just which Gygaxian are you referring to.  What does that mean you say? Let me explain.

1. There is the original Gygaxian, where Gygax emulated Arneson in his gaming style. This is the exploration game, open-ended, no modules, no railroads and no murder-hobos. It is important to point out that Arneson considered Gygax to be a Monty Haul DM. Gygax would defend himself on this point by saying that he had to give out all that magic so it could be play tested. If you consider that later on when Gygax was railing against Monty Haul DMs, the examples given made him look extremely stingy.

My comrades preach this, but in practice this is not what they do and if you watch their comments for very long you will see that their commitment to this is lacking in fervor.

2. The second Gygaxian, occurs when he starts to realize that there is money to be made in adventure modules and while it is possible to design an adventure module that is not a railroad that can be integrated into a campaign, it is much easier and quicker to build modules that are completely linear and thus are railroads with a script that the player must follow. So Gygax designs B-2 Keep on the Borderlands, non-linear, but very quickly TSR under his leadership defaults to linear, railroaded modules. This misguided focus irreparably harmed D&D and the whole RPG genre, as this is where the railroaded gaming, rules lawyers, munchkins (not defined by age), powergamers/min-maxers, murder-hobos and BtB zealots got their first foothold.

This what my comrades at the forum truly believe in and practice, watch what they do and not what they say.

3. Then there is the third Gygaxian, this is after the money went to his head and he started preaching that BtB AD&D is the One True AD&D and that any alternations mean you are not playing AD&D. This is the BtB zealotry and OneTrue Wayism. This was where the most damage was done to D&D and the whole RPG genre. 

This is where the railroaded gaming, rules lawyers, munchkins (not defined by age), powergamers/min-maxers, murder-hobos and BtB zealots became the mainstream and continues to be the mainstream to this day. This is when all games moved from open-ended to closed. This was when people where told they had to buy the setting and buy the modules for the setting because DIY is too difficult for ordinary people.

Some of my comrades at the forum fit into this category, this is what they believe and practice.

One is the early oe, two is later oe and early AD&D and three is mid AD&D. Once Gygax degenerated to step three, the later abominations became inevitable. Take 5E and the easy healing of full recovery from wounds with just a nights sleep.

Take some of what my comrades say, there is good stuff to be found there, but please don't do as they do, you and your players deserve better than that.

Let us be clear, mode one is old school, modes two and three are not old school.