Tell me about "Any RPG" from before 1990!

[ProfessorPain]

I recall playing some of the pre-1990s games. But it really was a while ago, and I don't remember that much. One thing that stands out in my mind is that the philosophy governing rules design seemed to be very different--maybe a little more tied to Role Playing's wargame roots.

 

[Knightfall]

In the first draft of Call of Cthulhu it was impossible to gain SAN. The PCs really were doomed to go mad. The playtesters complained it was too depressing and SAN gain for victories was introduced.

Krensky's comment would have been entirely true for the first draft but isn't quite correct for the published version. It is possible to win in Cthulhu, just not likely.

Hmm... interesting.

 

[Knightfall]

. . . after trying Star Wars d20 and reading Star Wars SAGA edition, I've gone back to Star Wars d6, though I'm now using the 2nd edition revised rules, released shortly before WEG lost the license back in '97, I think.

2nd Ed is what I have too for Star Wars. I have Star Wars SAGA, but I still like the d6 system the best. It just "works" for me.

So, what's the deal with Star Wars d6? I've heard about it but that's it. I had the d20 version of Star Wars but it didn't really feel like "Star Wars." So, what's cool about the WEG version?

 

[FringeworthyFan]

Noteworthy...<snip> There was also a City State of the Invincible Overlord boxed set priced at CAN $45. It was definitely an older product, not a d20 product. However, I can't figure out exactly what it is. The box is brown and has two books and some nice color maps inside. The store didn't have it shrinkwrapped, so I had a chance to look inside the box.

City-State of the Invincible Overlord was a Judges' Guild product for 1st-Ed AD&D. Not a bad campaign base, but not very well-organized, if I remember correctly. Judges' Guild also produced City-State of the World Emperor (which is equally hard-to-find) as a companion in the same game-world as CSIO.

Aftermath! was originally produced by some outfit called Phoenix Press (if I remember rightly) who quickly sold the product to another publisher. If you check the spine of the box, you should be able to tell. The new publisher (I think it might have been GDW?) put stickers over the Phoenix Press logo on the unsold stock they'd purchased... a variation on the Beatles' "Butcher Cover" technique in RPGs, maybe?

All I remember about Aftermath! was that it took hellishly long to generate characters, the best way to get characters with a decent number of skills was to push the boundaries of old age, and it had one of the most lethal firearms systems I'd seen in a game (to that point). My friends and I tried playing it using a Road Warrior setting, and gave it up after most of us died in the first battle with some mutant cockroaches.

My personal favorite games (pre-1990) were Fringeworthy and Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic from Tri Tac Games (both used the same base mechanics). Richard Tucholka, the brains behind Tri Tac, has kept up support for those games over the years, recently releasing a D20 version of Fringeworthy. You can see more of them on Tri Tac's website...

http://www.tritacgames.com/

 

[Knightfall]

I would like to get some opinions on the Star Trek Roleplaying Game from Last Unicorn Games and how it compares to the older, original boxed sets by FASA.

One of the local comic/game stores (Wizard's) has this book for around CAN $53.

Star Trek Roleplaying Game​

If I buy it, it will only cost me half of that.

Is it a good game? What about the other Star Trek game books by LUG? What would I need in addition to the main book?

(Wizard's has the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Roleplaying Game hardcover as well and at least one or two others but I didn't look at those ones.)

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Empire of the Petal Throne is a great setting. My favourite published rules set for it is the first edition. Curiously MA Barker wrote increasingly complex rules systems for later editions, while admitting that his own campaigns are much more 'seat of the pants' stuff. Later versions had additional interesting setting detail, but I didn't like the mechanics. RQ2 actually fitted particularly well, substituting Chlen-hide for bronze, psychic magic for battlemagic and ritual magic for Runemagic (quite a bit of work had to be done making up battlemagic and runemagic for the more oomph spells though!)

I so want to see this.

 

[Festivus]

V&V (Villains and Vigilantes).
You played yourself as a hero, which meant you decided what your stats were. It was random, so the power levels were across the board. Each power pretty much was its own sub-system.
Yet, it was the most successful longest running campaign my group in the 80s/90s had. But, I am a firm believer that Super Hero games should not have all players at the exact same power level.

RKW

I got a lot of milage out of my yellow covered book that looked like a term paper too. Great game, I wish I could find it again.

 

[FringeworthyFan]

I got a lot of milage out of my yellow covered book that looked like a term paper too. Great game, I wish I could find it again.

A buddy of mine had one of the first pressings (with the errata sheet), and we played a fair amount of V&V during the early '80s. Death Duel With The Destroyers was an entertaining module, and all the great Jeff Dee and Bill Willingham artwork made for a fun time.
(Trivia: The description of Rat Man's bedroom in that module is a verbatim description of Jeff Dee's bedroom. Willingham slipped that in as a personal joke, right before the final proofs got sent to the printers. I got this story from a brief conversation I had with Bill Willingham at GenCon in 1982.)

 

[Dyson Logos]

Villains & Vigilantes got a lot of play out of my teams of gamers. We had two different groups that both played it in High School and College. It is SERIOUSLY made of awesome and stuffed full of Willingham and Jeff Dee art. It was a great "escape from the dungeon" for us. I heartily recommend it to anyone looking at running a superhero game - even if you are already sold on another supers RPG, the collection of villains and adventures for V&V is excellent and impressive. The adventures in particular are a lot more interesting than the ones I played through for Marvel (although I did prefer the Marvel SuperHero system).

Actually - last Monday I posted a "Top Five FGU Classics" post to my blog about exactly this. Pimping some of the FGU classics of the 80's that are on my shelf. It's kind of terrifying how many FGU games I bought based on their ads in Dragon Magazine.

Bushido was another game I was very impressed with and that made it's presence felt - not necessarily amongst the FGU fans, but you can track back some of the mechanics and choices made in the 1e Oriental Adventures to this game. There's a quick overview of the game along with a sample PC Here.

But not all the FGU classics were worth writing home about. Just check out "Other Suns" - a game where character creation involves calculating derived ability scores like hand to hand accuracy (STR + 2 x (INT + DEX) + WIL – 63) and Parry ((2 x DEX) + WIL + ( (STR + INT) /2 ) – SIZ – 22). And Aftermath! is another example of overly complex mechanics... it has a two-page flowchart to explain how the combat system works. TWO PAGES. The rules are only about half as complex as Phoenix Command, which means they are still an order of magnitude more complex than needed.

 

[Kralin Thornberry]

A couple of "campy" (but fun) rpg's that we played before/around 1990 were It Came From the Late, Late Show, a game where you were B Actors in B(ad) Movies. Fun times, especially when it broke down, and ended up being made up on the fly!

Then there was Tales From the Floating Vagabond (yeah, yeah 1991, whatever, close enough, right?). Just fun stuff there. Where else could you have Superheroes from the future and medieval drunken elven fighters together in the same group, all with different, funny schticks? Good times!