The RetroRoleplaying web site has a new site design. It still needs some work in places, but it is complete enough to be usable. I think it looks much better. Best of all, it is a much more flexible design.

This is also a good time to announce a slight change in direction for RetroRoleplaying. The site focus is changing from “Tabletop RPGs before D20” to “Out-of-Print and Out-of-Style Tabletop Roleplaying Games.” I know this is going to upset some people because it means games like D&D 3.x will be covered (eventually) as well as older games. I’ve gone this route not from any love for D&D 3.x but from a desire to avoid further fragmenting the community of people playing out-of-print games.

I had been thinking about this for the last month and was leaning in this direction when I read this in a post by Warthur on theRPGsite:

The problem I foresee is that as more and more editions exist, the die-hard crowd gets more and more fragmented. The current edition of D&D will always have the advantage that it’s the current edition, and I’d be inclined to suggest that barring truly grotesque mismanagement of the line it’ll always be in the majority. Meanwhile, the die-hard crowd gets ever more finely-divided (Dragonsfoot, for instance, will never accept 3.X, and Knights-and-Knaves Alehouse even refuses to countenance discussion of B/X and BECMI D&D…).

After reading this, I decided that the poster was correct, we don’t need further fragmentation into web sites and forums that only discuss the hosts favorite old RPGs. Those who want such communities already have some excellent sites. There really is no need need for yet another. RetroRoleplaying is going to be a web site that welcomes all players of out-of-print RPGs — even ones I personally might not want to be caught dead playing.