I set up the OSR Compatible Website today, and it's officially a published standard. The logo above, based off of Stuart Robertson's Creative Commons-licensed original, is my first stab at this; if anyone else wants to release an OSR logo via CC-BY-SA and email me (my gmail address is wrossi81), feel free to design any alternate versions you want.
In the mean time, any publisher can use it. I just ask that you include a box indicating compatibility (there are instructions here) and attribute the image to OSRCompatible.org .
Once people have published books carrying the OSR Compatible logo, there will be a Products page with a listing of all products available.
I think this is a great idea, Wayne! Instead of using Stuart Robertson's first draft for the OSR logo, why not do a version using the improved second take? I notice you have it on your sidebar. The "O" is fully visible the second time around, whereas it might be mistaken for a "C" in the version you used above.
ReplyDeleteDo you have the black & white version of that logo? I would be happy to make a version using that - but I didn't want the logo to be blue because that would limit how well it will show up on different products.
DeleteSent!
DeleteI really don't want to sound like a party pooper but choosing a name like 'OSR Compatible' can create more confusion than streamlining. For example, I have some projects planned/in the works. I intended to use Stuart Robertson's logo and was going to write 'OSR Compatible', or something extremely similar to that, on the cover. I've read your guidelines and while nothing about them seem wrong to me, it's not necessarily how I want to go about with things. So to try and keep it short, I think your idea is good, but I think your name was too generic regarding all of the OSR. Naming it 'OSR Compatible' seems to me like you're taking it away from everyone else. It's as if I said "Here are the guidelines for 'Fantasy RPG'." Or in other words, if you actually succeed in spreading this concept, people will only be able to use 'OSR compatible' on their stuff if they actually intend to use your guidelines because readers will expect it then and won't be as open-minded when reading stat-blocks, no matter how simple/intuitive they might have been anyway. I don't mean to offend you or belittle your efforts, but that's how the whole thing makes me feel.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's sort of the point of having a standard, and the OSR Compatible Standard is literally as straightforward as you can get - explain how you're doing AC, list what stats you're using, give a short definition for anything like movement rates or morale that you're using.
DeleteSorry if it steps on your toes, but one reason I picked "OSR Compatible" is that it hasn't generally been used on products to this point and it seemed like an obvious choice for people who want to go neutral on clones and so forth.
Here's a third take on a compatible stat block by the Random Wizard (quoting Hack'n'Slash) that might be interesting:
ReplyDeletehttp://randomwizard.blogspot.de/2013/10/osr-standards.html#comment-form
It proposes to give just the AC difference, so a DM may calculate his own AC regardless of the base number (which in turn would work for all possible variants...).
And if you wanted to do that in a book using the OSR Compatible Standard, as long as you described it at the beginning of the product, it would be an acceptable scale for armor class. So you'd say:
Delete"Armor Class is given as an offset from a base value of 0. An unarmored character has AC (0) and chainmail gives AC (5)."
Which would let referees know how to use your AC system. Simple!