If you can find a group that plays a pre-3.0 version of D&D or Retroclone would you:

[I'm A Banana]

Look, if I had phrased my criticism as someone who loved the old school revolution and wanted it to be even better, no one would have even been bothered by my actual point.

The actual point that people accept bad games only out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia?

Heck, everyone who plays a TTRPG plays a game with flaws. Where it breaks down is which flaws are dealbreakers for you, and that varies pretty wildly between people. What makes a game good or bad is rarely universal, which is why one of D&D's big strengths has always been it's mod-ability.

There's been a lot of observance -- especially in the wake of 4e -- about the substantive change in playstyles that the game has gone through: Sword and Sorcery to High Fantasy, Dungeon Survival to Narrative Action, DM Fiat to Rules-Based Rulings....and more.

If you don't see the appeal of retro-clones aside from nostalgia, you aren't looking hard enough, and you probably should educate yourself if you're going to discuss them.

 

[Cadfan]

Oh, so in addition to throwing around baseless smears about "nostalgia", you're also a troll who deliberately insults people to get them to read his posts. That's clever of you.

And this coming from a vocal 4E fan. How entirely surprising.

Of course, on EN World, you're allowed to say I enjoy my games out of nostalgia (even though that's both insulting and untrue).

How do you go from this...

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. Hating your fun. Not you, not your game, but the fun itself.
Look, if I had phrased my criticism as someone who loved the old school revolution and wanted it to be even better, no one would have even been bothered by my actual point.

...to intentionally insulting people to get attention? That doesn't even make sense.

I'm not saying that I criticized the alleged old school revolution for to get more readers, I'm saying that I think that my basic criticism, that old school games copy the warts along with the positives instead of building from the ground up to support a specific style of play rather than a clone of an older system that may or may not have supported the style of game desired as well as something specifically designed to do so, would have been happily accepted if I pretended to love old school games.

Think about it: "I love retro clones, but I think that there are many types of old school games, and most retro clones try to group them all together. You can't serve so many masters, you know? I wish they'd just focus on one type of gameplay. Plus I think they spend too much time trying to recreate the mechanical aspects of older games and not enough trying to really identify and serve the *feel* of the game. There's too much focus on things like the math of dice rolling and how it matches old school D&D, and too little focus on figuring out how to focus your project."

Fact is that I'm not a fan of the old school revolution. The reasons I gave were some of the reasons why. If I personally feel like playing a game that matches my old school experiences from back in the day, I'll play Paranoia. Total mismatch of theme and mechanics, but actually a very similar experience. That may be completely different from your opinion.

And all I'm saying is that a game designed to be Paranoia in a dungeon might not be fully compatible with a game that does whatever it is that you feel is old school, and that I wish people would stop trying to do both at once. If you're publishing a retro clone you're already a niche, might as well clearly identify your niche and focus on it.

As for the nostalgia thing, well, I do think that's a factor.

 

[Cadfan]

If you don't see the appeal of retro-clones aside from nostalgia, you aren't looking hard enough, and you probably should educate yourself if you're going to discuss them.

Read my post again. As far as education goes, reading all of the article before filling in the little bubble is a big part of doing well on the test, no?

I totally see the appeal of retro clones aside from nostalgia, and said so. I wish that we could take the appealing things, wash the nostalgia off, and focus on them one in manageable chunks.

Like I said in part earlier, and have said in other threads, I've played two types of games using early D&D versions. I really enjoyed both.

1. I played a game that was basically Paranoia in a dungeon.
2. I played a game that was focused on magical engineering and problem solving and McGuyver like escapades using spells, magic items, and whatever else we could cobble together.

I don't think that a game can do both at once. D&D didn't, in my opinion.

I would LOVE a game that did one of these specifically, and solely. Particularly the second. 3e came close, with its huge number of magical items, particularly non combat ones. But it certainly didn't focus on it. If a game came out that promised me specific focus on this style of play, I can guarantee that I'd buy it.

For the Paranoia-in-a-Dungeon game, I think Paranoia might have beaten D&D at its own game on that one. Don't know if medieval fantasy is ever going to take that one back. The debriefing with the computer is such a great set piece that it might give Paranoia an insurmountable lead. A game that promised that would have to convince me.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I have moved beyong 1e and 2E, and am thinking about moving past 3.xE.


Luckily I ahve the internet and will never be in this situation.

 

[ggroy]

A one-night game or a long weekend marathon using a retroclone or pre-3.0 version of D&D/AD&D would be fine. For games of this sort, the simplicity of the rules in the old basic D&D box sets moved things along at a fast pace. Less so using the 1E or 2E AD&D rules.

For longer term games (ie. more than a few weeks), it would be highly dependent on the DM and maybe the other players. Of the 1E AD&D games I've started to play in over the last decade, many of them I ended up quitting after a few months for all kinds of reasons. The main reasons for me quitting was typically stuff like:

- the DM was really boring
- the game was dragging on at a snail's pace
- everybody thought the DM sucked
- the adventure was rudderless with no clear goals
- the DM made the adventure really frustrating
- no sense of accomplishment in the game
- poorly designed adventures
- the other players were constantly arguing with the DM, where more time was spent arguing than actually playing
- ill-defined house rules which the DM would not elaborate on, and/or were applied completely arbitrarily in an uneven manner

 

[mach1.9pants]

I would vote for play but it I am not sure if I will sque your poll. I wouldn't stop playing 4E but the chance to PLAY any another RPG would be great I have the time to play... not DM (as I have since I was 13... I wanna play!)

 

[The Shaman]

As for the nostalgia thing, well, I do think that's a factor.

The "nostalgia thing" can be the insulting part to those of us who've played more contemporary games and choose to play older games instead. It dimisses the preferences of gamers who favor older editions as nothing more than rose-colored glasses.

 

[Orius]

It would depend on the group and what they wanted to play. If I was DMing, I'd probably go 2e with some amount of house rules to cover up the rough spots, because that's mostly what I have. RC might be ok, if I had the book. I don't have any 1e books, so I wouldn't be running that, but I'd play with a competant DM. I'd probably say no to the original game, since there are a lot of holes in it.

I wouldn't mind running a 2e campaign if the group absolutely insisted on pre-3e, but I'd probably use a base that's somewhere between core and Player's Option. The 2e core is okay, but it isn't perfect. If they wanted to go full PO, I'd likely end up restricting some of the stuff (hello broken subabilities!), but I wouldn't mind. I'd rather run 3e myself since it does a lot of the stuff a cleaned up late 2e game would do, but with a lot less prep work for me as DM.

 

[sjmiller]

I not only would play, I am playing. I play in a group that is running OD&D and has been for over 20 years. I joined about 5 years ago, and have had a ball. The players in the group fluctuate and change over the years, but the campaign world has stayed the same all that time. It's fun, silly, and not what one would call a serious game at all, but it is a great diversion.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Cadfan, I was so intrigued by the Paranoia & D&D question I started a new thread on it...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...oia-dragons-forked-if-you-can-find-group.html