Can You Go Home Again? +

[soviet]

I've gone back several times. In the last eight or so years I've run AD&D 2e, MERP/Rolemaster 2e, and WFRP 1e, all from the eighties. All of them worked really well and I would go back a further time for sure. I think nostalgia is sometimes underrated, I can't recapture the magic of being twelve years old but these games have a certain period charm of their own. I think most modern trad RPGs are pretty soulless by comparison.

Still on my list: red box basic, Rifts, original World of Darkness stuff (probably Werewolf).

 

[innerdude]

No, you really can't go home.

I'm now coming up on 5 years removed from having run or played in a Savage Worlds game. Savage Worlds was hands down my favorite system from 2012 through 2019. Nothing even came close. I wouldn't have chosen to run anything else.

But I'm not sure what happened when SWADE was released, but something had just . . . shifted in our group's approach to SW around that same time (fall of 2019).

SWADE is objectively a better system than SW Deluxe. It's clearer, the shaken rules are less punitive to players, the edges are more refined, the magic system is better. But there was just something more . . . raw, I guess, about SW Deluxe that I liked better.

I'm only passably familiar with GURPS, but long-time GURPS players I've talked to described the same thing about the change from GURPS 3e to 4e. GURPS 4e is objectively a better system than 3e, they would say, but it somehow made things even more . . . sterile, less raw. Or it may be that they simply didn't want to have to figure out how their 3e rules mastery had to be updated to 4e, I don't know.

Anyway, between the change to SWADE from SW Deluxe, the pandemic, and then just generally knowing all of the system's faults and weaknesses (in addition to its strengths), our group kind of decided collectively that it was probably time to take a break from Savage Worlds. And it makes me wonder if going back to it would recapture the same magic we had playing it.

We had some AMAZING gaming experiences playing Savage Worlds Deluxe. But I don't know that going back to it now, if I would approach it with the same vigor, energy, and enthusiasm---which may be the larger point. It's not that the game has changed, it's that I've changed, and I'm more interested in exploring new and different possibilities. I know it's there if I ever want it again, and I know nearly exactly what I'll get, but I just don't get a thrill thinking about running it anymore.

 

[Wolfpack48]

No, you really can't go home.

I'm now coming up on 5 years removed from having run or played in a Savage Worlds game. Savage Worlds was hands down my favorite system from 2012 through 2019. Nothing even came close. I wouldn't have chosen to run anything else.

But I'm not sure what happened when SWADE was released, but something had just . . . shifted in our group's approach to SW around that same time (fall of 2019).

SWADE is objectively a better system than SW Deluxe. It's clearer, the shaken rules are less punitive to players, the edges are more refined, the magic system is better. But there was just something more . . . raw, I guess, about SW Deluxe that I liked better.

I'm only passably familiar with GURPS, but long-time GURPS players I've talked to described the same thing about the change from GURPS 3e to 4e. GURPS 4e is objectively a better system than 3e, they would say, but it somehow made things even more . . . sterile, less raw. Or it may be that they simply didn't want to have to figure out how their 3e rules mastery had to be updated to 4e, I don't know.

Anyway, between the change to SWADE from SW Deluxe, the pandemic, and then just generally knowing all of the system's faults and weaknesses (in addition to its strengths), our group kind of decided collectively that it was probably time to take a break from Savage Worlds. And it makes me wonder if going back to it would recapture the same magic we had playing it.

We had some AMAZING gaming experiences playing Savage Worlds Deluxe. But I don't know that going back to it now, if I would approach it with the same vigor, energy, and enthusiasm---which may be the larger point. It's not that the game has changed, it's that I've changed, and I'm more interested in exploring new and different possibilities. I know it's there if I ever want it again, and I know nearly exactly what I'll get, but I just don't get a thrill thinking about running it anymore.

I can say without reservation that the most efficient, clean and smooth system rarely matches the fun of one that's rougher around the edges. The same goes for dive bars vs martini bars.

 

[DammitVictor]

I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday and we were discussing favorite RPG experiences as GMs, and I realized most of my favorite GM moments were during the 2E era. I think that is partly because it was a long, formative era for me (mid 80s to late 2000s, through adolescence into young adulthood).

I don't know. I cut my teeth on AD&D 1e years after AD&D 2e was published, and was an eager early adopter of 3.0-- and I didn't even actually play BECMI until coming back to D&D after walking away from 3.5-- so my "formative years" with my nostalgic favorites were short and not marked by the same frequent, dedicated play as my 3.X years and/or my "professional years". Certainly... the moments by which I define all of the good things about my gaming history, and the shaping of my playing and running styles, all happened in my thirties and I didn't really develop my abiding love for the "D&D of my teens" until coming back to it from years of decidedly non-D&D games.

When he asked if I would run 2E again, my kneejerk reaction was a resounding YES!, in a New York minute.

But, on reflection, I don't know that I would, because I am pretty sure it would not be the same experience. It isn't just that post TSR D&D systems have been generally better (for some subset of definitions of "better").

Honestly... there's just so much content from AD&D/Player's Option and from 3.PF that I want to include in "my D&D', but the basic mechanics of AD&D and WotC/Paizo D&D are just impossibly overwrought. Whenever I want to "go back", I find myself constantly struggling to translate the material I want without having to deal with the sheer mechanical weight of the cruft the game has been accumulating since before I ever played it.

What do you think? Can you go home again? Can you return to old games and old campaigns and recapture what you felt 5 or 10 or 30 years ago? Do you, personally, feel like there is more to that desire than nostalgia?

I feel like my "nostalgic gaming"-- my attempts to recreate the feeling of gaming thirty years ago-- is actually way better than anything I ever actually played thirty years ago. I understand better what I fell in love with so long ago, but now I know that I don't have to play with with the people or the rules that ruined so many of those early experiences.

 

[Blue Orange]

I was actually thinking of watching that movie again, I started listening to the soundtrack a few weeks ago.
I remember almost nothing about it from when I was a kid.
Other than a profound love for Peter Cullen (RIP).

I had fun showing a colleague where that whole exchange from Saints Row 4 comes from.