Official Nostalgia Thread (thread necromancy)

[Hunter Simon]

Posted this on rpg.net and thought I'd start it up here too. Enjoy!


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WARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS SERIOUS NOSTALGIA ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 30 YEARS OLD TO CONTRIBUTE MEANINGFULLY.

Remember the good old days, when men were men, women wore chainmail bikinis, and monsters were for killing? What’s that, you say? You’re all too damn ** young **? You’re all under 30? WTF? Eh? Wassat? You don’t even know when the Good Old Days WERE? WHAT? You think the Good Old Days occurred during the release of the first PlayStation?

Kids today.

Just for the record, shorty, the Good Old Days began in the early 1970s and ended in the mid-1980s. Got it? Good. In that case, let me give you a glimpse of what those days were like:

1. We all hid our Dungeon Master’s Guides under our beds, cause our moms thought they were Satanic after seeing the Geraldo Rivera special on Satanism. And you have to admit . . . the AD&D 1e DMG *did* look rather Satanic:
http://www.rpgnow.com/products/WOTC/tsr2011.jpg

2. We all thought Advanced D&D was better than Basic D&D because it was, well, “advanced.” Mind you, why this made it “better” none of us could explain. Nor did we need to.

3. Our dice came with a damn crayon that you used to color in the damn numbers! And we thought this was COOL!

4. Pewter? Bah! Our miniatures were made of REAL LEAD. And we've got the poor report cards to prove it!

5. We only ever used about 10% of the rules (especially when playing Advanced D&D). [Come to think of it, I still only use about 10% of the rules when I GM . . . ]

6. “Character background”? “Character development”? “Playing in-character”? My character's "family history"? "Last name"? WTF?

7. All of our character information could fit on one index card.

8. Skeeels? Hah! We don’ need no steenkeen skeeels!

9. Low Armor Class was GOOD! And the coolest thing imaginable was a NEGATIVE Armor Class! WHOA! Sometimes you would hear a comment like, “Whoa! Dude, did you see Dave’s Paladin? He’s got Armor Class negative frickin’ two!”

10. If your character, Bardok the Brave, died, you simply rolled up his brother, Bardok II. (See #6)

11. All character parties met in a tavern. Their “mission”? To go adventuring. Their “story”? To go adventuring. Their “purpose”? To go adventuring. Their “premise”? To go adventuring. Their “motivation”? To go adventuring. The "plot hook"? "Story arc"? To go adventuring. Listen, you Vampire-playing drama queen, what part of "To go adventuring" do you not understand?

12. Charisma? Don’t make me laugh. Who even put that on the sheet, anyway? (For that matter, we didn't really know what "Dexterity" "Constitution" and "Charisma" actually *meant* until the one guy in the school who was even a bigger geek than we were explain them. He then wanted to play with us. We said no.)

13. “Unified mechanics”? WTF? What is this, auto shop class?

14. Dungeons were for plundering.

15. Monsters were for killing.

16. All-night sessions at your buddy’s house were mandatory, especially if they involved tons of Pepsi, cheap take-out pizza, and a glimpse of your buddy’s hot mom in her bath robe. (Uh, never mind that last one . . .)

17. Dungeons & Dragons was number one. All other games were one-shots.

18. We played loudly and boldly in the high school library at lunch, and didn’t even care when the Grade 12’s came by and laughed at us. When they started hitting us hard in the upper arm, we left.

19. We had one teacher who was “cool” and ran the D&D club. Until the fundamentalist parents made him stop.

20. We pronounced “Paladin” as “Pad-ah-lin”.

Excuse me for a second (stubbornly wipes away tears). Okay, now add to this list.

21. . . . . .

 

[Dark Jezter]

6. “Character background”? “Character development”? “Playing in-character”? My character's "family history"? "Last name"? WTF?

7. All of our character information could fit on one index card.

10. If your character, Bardok the Brave, died, you simply rolled up his brother, Bardok II. (See #6)

11. All character parties met in a tavern. Their “mission”? To go adventuring. Their “story”? To go adventuring. Their “purpose”? To go adventuring. Their “premise”? To go adventuring. Their “motivation”? To go adventuring. The "plot hook"? "Story arc"? To go adventuring. Listen, you Vampire-playing drama queen, what part of "To go adventuring" do you not understand?

12. Charisma? Don’t make me laugh. Who even put that on the sheet, anyway?

14. Dungeons were for plundering.

15. Monsters were for killing.

17. Dungeons & Dragons was number one. All other games were one-shots.

Actually, these ones describe most of the 3.0 and 3.5 campaigns I've been involved in as well.

Oh, and by the way...

Listen, you Vampire-playing drama queen, what part of "To go adventuring" do you not understand?

This is one of the greatest quotes I've ever seen on EN World.

 

[Crothian]

21) a character sheet was a blank sheet of paper that was written on in pencil. The good character sheets where worn thin in areas by constant erasing, folded many times over to fit into pockets, went therough the wash once or twice when we forgot to remove it from our pockets, and had cheese stains on it from the doritos.

 

[Mark Hope]

Heh, excellent

On the same topic, I have no idea where I got this from, but it's been sitting on my hard-drive for a couple of years and bears an uncanny resemblence in some places to the above post...

OK. I've been reading all this balderdash and hooey about you people not "not likin' this" and "not wantin' that." Well, you guys today got it made! If it weren't for us "old-timers" you guys wouldn't know a Dungeon Masters
Guide if it broke into your house and stole all your Rush albums! Here's what it was like back in my day:

We didn't have FANCY, SPECKLEY, SWIRLY DICE back in the old days. Our dice were PLAIN and they were BLUE! If you threw the 12-sider too hard, IT EXPLODED! Then you had to buy another Expert Level Set to get another one! And we COULDN'T EVEN READ THE NUMBERS on our dice! We had to COLOR them with
a CRAYON for crying out loud! We had Cruddy, Blue, Exploding, Crayon-Coated Dice - AND WE LIKED IT!!!

Our MONSTER MANUAL was BLACK & WHITE for Pete's sakes! We had to COLOR in all those pictures! And we didn't know what color things were back then – we HAD TO USE OUR IMAGINATIONS! God forbid if we used all our Red Crayon on our dice! Then all of our monsters had Orange Eyes! And what kind of crazy ecosystem was represented on the cover of that thing anyhow? They had every monster in the food chain living together in perfect harmony! We had Colorless Monsters that lived together peacefully - AND WE LIKED IT!!!

Then there was that DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE! It had that SCARY BIG DEMON LOOKING THING on the cover! And every time your Mom saw it SCARED THE BEJEEZUS out of her and she would RIP IT UP or THROW IT AWAY or sell it to your best friend at a garage sale for $1.25! We had to buy the same book over and over again cause our Moms threw it out - AND WE LIKED IT!!!

And, don't get me started about SOURCE MATERIAL! We didn't have "Complete This" and "Player's Option" that! We didn't have any Core Rules for the Computer-thing-a-ma-jig! All we had was some CRAPPY INTELLIVISION GAME. All of our dungeons were drawn on graph paper! All of our rooms were 10' x 10'. But (and this is where we got you young fellers BEAT) ALL of our dungeon rooms were FILLED WITH TREASURE! Heck, all you had to do back then was BREAK DOWN THE DOOR, KILL THE MONSTER, and TAKE THE TREASURE! We didn't have PLOT LINES or CAMPAIGN WORLDS or STORYLINES to bog us down! There was MOUNTAINS of TREASURE! Heaps of it!!! You know why you don't find treasure in every room in your silly dungeons and modules anymore? CAUSE WE TOOK IT ALL! HA! AND YOU CAN'T HAVE IT! We had plotless, storyless, 10 foot by 10 foot dungeon rooms FILLED WITH TREASURE, AND WE LIKED IT!!!

Now you all are complaining about the quality of a "Dungeons and Dragons" movie! Oh My Stars and Garters! Count your sheep lucky that you get a MOVING PICTURE! We had a cartoon with a Unicorn that shot a laser beam from his horn, and an 8-year-old barbarian...AND WE LIKED IT!!!

Finally, you guys with your "LEAD FREE" miniatures! I had to get a new puppy every month because of the things I grew up painting! Heck, now I feed my dog Vrock entire Warhammer Armies cause they're nothing but 28 millimeters of cheap scrap metal and plastic! We had lethal, cancer-causing miniatures that killed our pets, AND WE LIKED IT!!!

Maybe this post will knock some sense into your ungrateful noggins, and you'll stop your whining about petty things like TURNING THE ARMOR CLASSES BACKWARDS! You're gonna BUY Third Edition and you're gonna PLAY Third Edition and you're gonna LIKE Third Edition. And if you wanna scrap with me about it - I'LL TAKE ALL OF YOU ON! You go ahead and keep playing those older editions that I grew up with, and I'll convert my character to Third Edition - then we will see whose Armor Class is better! Besides, it will take an army of you whippersnappers to get my treasure!!!

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

22. We had no problem with the idea of a 40' dragon randomly wandering down a 10' hallway hundreds of feet underground.

 

[Napftor]

10. If your character, Bardok the Brave, died, you simply rolled up his brother, Bardok II.

Heh, this is too true. I'm not sure what number my halfling thief Agarzal Halfcloak was on, but all I can say is the original must have had MANY siblings.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

20. We pronounced “Paladin” as “Pad-ah-lin”.

I remember someone doing that in my games.

23. All new characters started at 1st level.

24. Balance?? WTF? 1st level characters adventured with 8th level characters, and they liked it!

 

[Melkor]

This thread is officially dubbed "Frickin' Awesome".

 

[Napftor]

25. The only "5-ft. step" was the one you took after dumping soda on your neighbor's precious (but unlaminated) character sheet.

26. Ability scores rolled by 4d6--drop nothing!--method.

 

[sfgiants]

#27) There was no internet. There was no FLGS. There was no summer job. If you found a d+d book you kept it, you fought for it, and yes, maybe even felt a little special for having it.

#28) Hand in hand with above. For those poor cheap suckers who couldn't find a monster manual, you used the stats from the back of the DMG. And liked it. So what if it only said Demon Type 4, had no picture, and no information. You had no MM and liked it!