BX Advanced... a retro-clone clone?

[Gringnr]

http://drivethrurpg.com/product/232920/ ... ced-No-Art

The above link is for the "no art" (i.e., free) vesion of the newly released BX Advanced retro-clone from Retro Roleplaying. The same outfit publishes the "Microlite" line of OSR games. BX Advanced promises, as do so many other retro-clones, to be D&D the way many of us played it: a gumbo of various ingredients from Basic and Advanced, added to taste. This is what appeals to me about Labyrinth Lord (which has become my fantasy RPG of choice). The idea of having all of this in one book instead of two or more (and I hear Daniel Proctor is working on something similar for Labyrinth Lord) appeals to me, so I checked it out.I gotta say, it nears a, er, rather striking similarity to LL. I'm not trying to be a shit-disturber here, or throw shade on this project. I like it. But part of the reason I like it is that it seems to be, well, basically, Labyrinth Lord. I have heard the term "copy-paste" used more than once by people who have loooked it over. And, in looking at the two games side by side, I can see that being a valid criticism.

That having been said, BX Advanced does have a more complete section on psionics.

I was just curious to see what others thought about this. On the one hand, it is OSR, so a certain amount of derivation is to be expected. But the concept of OSR depends on the idea that you cannot copyright the mechanics, but only the presentation of a game. And as much as I like BX Advanced at first glance, there are many areas where it seems to do both.

I hesitate to criticize BX Advanced, or its author, because I know that he is trying to pay medical bills for his wife (see his blog for details), and I have donated to his PayPal for that reason. Indeed, this post is not intended as a criticism, but rather to start a discussion. Are the two games too similar? Is such a thing even possible within the realm of retro-clones?

[finarvyn]

I just found this as well and downloaded it. Not sure how it is any better than a dozen other clone games out there, but I haven't given it a proper read-through yet. They advertise that it's AD&D stuff as seen through B/X rules, so I guess that's a good thing, but I always assumed that AD&D and B/X pretty much cover the same thing already....