Welcome /rpg Goons from the Something Awful Old-School D&D and Retroclone Thread

Hi there!

Apparently, after 5 years and 101 pages of the first one, there's finally a new Old School and DIY D&D thread on Something Awful /rpg.

And, surprisingly enough, it starts with shout-outs to a lot of games and bloggers Something Awful has previously ignored or tried to. This is cool and thanks :)

Business to address. Since the DIY RPG blog list put up there (while good) trends consistently white and cis and straight and male, let me link you to some more of the diversity of the old school because women, trans and nb and not-white people are doing a lot of the best work in game hacks right now:

Scrap Princess is my favorite game artist, a true D&D dadaist as a writer and an important not-full-of-shit voice in the community.  She's working on a Weird Planes supplement and, yes, she did sew every monster in the manual from pants.

Emmy Allen is doing some of the best work in the intersection of OSR and horror right now.

Kiel Chenier of Dungeons & Donuts is Mr Positive Attitude and produces smiley queer-friendly body-positive adventures. Obviously his blogs a Tumblr.

FM Geist has only recently started blogging but for years she's been one of those names that would pop up in comments saying something stunningly scholarly or sane. Watch this space, she's got ideas.

Zedeck Siew posts fantastically well-written and creepy stuff mixing D&D with local Malaysian traditions.

Brendan S over at Necropraxis thinks for real about process and the structure actually, like, is a scientist. Also I totally forgot him when I first put this up and feel stupid bc I've been reading almost every Necropraxis for years.

Mabel Harper does wonderfully creepy stuff with a kind of black metal sensibility.

Ramanan S does some of the best OSR web-widgets and also is a consistent source of very commonsense commentary on products and gamey things.

Stacy Dellorfano's con-within-GenCon, Contessa, while not specifically an OSR project, has been a great force for getting more diverse players and GMs into the hobby, and Stacy is working on a project for LOTFP right now.

....please be nice to them.  Like me, some of the authors above have had to deal with a lot of static and smears from the old guard at Something Awful /rpg left over from back in the days when the board was ruled by hardcore 4e and Dungeon World fans who wanted to pretend Old School Gaming was all Republicans and harassers so goons could feel ok about dunking on them. I would hate to see any of the old hate campaigns started up again just because somebody at /rpg was trying to do the community a solid and link over here.

Anyway: Hi again! Welcome to DIY RPGland! I'm happy to point you to any resources, field any questions (about literally anything) you might have here in the comments or, if you prefer, via email at zakzsmith AT hawtmayle or, if you prefer to be anonymous, go here.

For a guide to stuff on this blog (it hasn't been updated in a while but it still covers a lot of basics, go here.
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