In one years time, the 50th Anniversary OD&D will arrive in January of 2024. 50 years of RPGs, 50 years of roleplaying, 50 years of homebrew DIY gaming.
And 50 years of being told that the old ways are obsolete, and that you should switch to the latest new thing. Nah, not for me, I am an OD&D player and that is what I am going to left a cold one for. If you play the latest thing and every time a new edition comes out, you run out and buy it and transition your game to the new system, good for you, WotC loves you. But I have never seen the point in replacing something that works just fine, is flexible and most definitely is not broken. That is what I am going to write about and that is what I am going to celebrate.
Strange to start a blog, we are told no one reads them anymore. Well I do, I read quite few blogs and I will eventually get a blog roll posted and you can see which ones I read. To me it is odd that people don't read blogs. I can go back to any post and read it again. I know, some people, curse them, delete their blogs and all of that is lost, but G+ was deleted and all of that was lost too. Whether it is an individual or a corporation, things get deleted and we all lost out when that happens.
Those old blogs that have been deleted some of it is available at the Internet Archive and some was never saved. But if you like a blog, then go to the blog archive (for blogger blogs) and click on each individual year, copy paste the link at the top in the bar and then go hear - https://web.archive.org/save - and save year individually, you don't have to do each post individually (I think), just each year individually and then check to make sure all the posts were saved. you can also save individual posts that you want to make sure stay around. If you just use the main blog link (and you should) it will only save the most recent stuff.
Also if you create an account at the Internet Archive you get more features when saving websites.
Sign in
to use extra features: "Save outlinks", "Save screen shot" and "My web archive".
The "My web archive" is a great feature for keeping your own records of websites.
Think of all the D&D and AD&D websites that were created back in the 1990s and the 2000s and even the 2010s that no longer exist and have either no backup in the Internet Archive or only a partial backup.
Any website that is a gaming resource for you, take the time to run your own backup, don't assume a complete backup exists. Also donate a few bucks to the Internet Archive, because the deep pockets that should be funding them, are not.
You know what else has been lost, game notes from millions of OD&D, D&D and AD&D old school games. Millions of pages of house rule notes, unique monsters and magic items and dungeon maps all lost. Only a tiny minority over the years kept those records, I did not, did you? It is not too late start now. IMO that is one way be can honor the 50th Anniversary OD&D, start doing your part to preserve websites and your own game records.
