*ahem* mimimimimimi /ME/… let's do this...
TRIGGER WARNING: I'm going to use the dreaded N(ostalgia) word. I'm only using it because it applies to me, and how I feel about revisiting the classic games I played decades ago. And, since I am applying it to myself, I hope it's clear I'm using it in a positive sense (yes, there are some).
So ...
based on another thread, I had to ask myself, "Self, why do people go back and play OSR, retroclones, B/X, and 1e?
(still funny, btw)
[sblock="Contains Nostalgia"]For /my/self, I have to admit that when I'm in the mood to paleo-game, as I like call it, retroclones aren't what immediately call to me. I just pull out my faded 1st Edition Gamma World rulebook and run a crazy game of random mutants mucking about with random artifacts. Of course, when that urge first hit me it was c2000, the d20 phenom set me itching to play the classic games, and there weren't a lot of re-boots yet. OSR wasn't a thing, the re-boot of Gamma World they eventual came up with was horribly disappointing. So I dug up this crumbling old boxed set, figured out how to efficiently build characters /super fast/ at a con, and off I went. I must've run it 4 or 5 years in a row, sometimes at two cons each year. It was that awesome.
So it was nostalgia, pure and simple, for me - with a leavening of that specific flavor of nostalgia, that didn't-get-to-play-this-particular-game-as-much-as-I'd've-liked-back-in-the-day, and a bit of lampshading of Murphy's Rules and other archaisms - because I immediately loved Gamma World when I first read the book, but got to run & play it only a little back in the day. Enough to go 'wow' this is crazy-broken-awesome, not nearly enough to get bored with it. Then it was continuous frustration with new editions that didn't really hit the same notes, or had whacked alternative systems - 4th & 7th & Omega World were bright spots.[/sblock]
I mean, given the sheer number of posts stating that these rules are objectively trash, people would have to be crazy AND stupid to play them, right?"
The same could be said of many a brand-new TTRPG (and has been, often very mean-spiritedly). I think it just comes with the territory. RPGs are complex, in any given RPG, old or new, there'll be sub-systems that work well, others indifferently, and some that are a little borked. And there'll be those who are just looking for something to take a hatchet too.
But, old or new, whatever the borked rules may be, if I fix 'em up just the way I like 'em, they're justfinethankyou, for me. And if, decades later a new version comes out and fixes 'em up a different way, well, that's not the same, is it? It's a different experience, a different feel from what I got back then, and may be looking to re-experience and/or share now. For that matter, I can evoke some of the feel of a classic game specifically /by/ lampshading it's old "Murphy's Rules," it gives me that sense of "this is how it was, this is the real deal" - and, if I'm sharing it with someone who wasn't there for that, it gives them a version of that experience, too, because it's like, this is history, this is part of how we got to modern RPGs, was playing this early stuff, and figuring it out, and having a blast with it.
Well, unfortunately, I am both crazy and stupid
Fixed that for you.
Never Change.