Retro-gaming

[Lars Porsenna]

One of the things I've noticed recently is the growth of the "retro-game," or rather the game that tries to evoke past editions of D&D. We already know that pathfinder is coming out (the "big" retro-game, although not really retro in my mind...), but there are a number of other older retro-style games or outright clones out there. When did this all start, and what is the appeal?

Note: blogged about it at bookslikedust.blogspot.com

Damon, this is a serious question...

 

[Umbran]

I would guess that it began with the Open Gaming License, and attendant policies at WotC that made folks feel that older-edition rulesets could and should be available and supportable.

This was coupled with the rules and style changes with 3e and 4e, that brought many folks to feel that earlier editions suited their tastes better.

basically, it started when folks were given motive and opportunity.

 

[Henrix]

It started as soon as 3e was out, I'd say. But it took a little while until people had grokked the idea of open licenses and com up with their own versions of the games they loved when they were kids.

There are many different appeals, it looks like to me.

One is to recreate and spread the game they used to like (the one they started with, it seems). Nostalgia.

Another to have a simpler and more open ended game, which perhaps leaves more place for imagination (or at least forces people to use their imagination, as there is notheing else).

A third is to recreate their favourite rules, but in a better, revised, dressing. Like Castles and Crusades. And Pathfinder, perhaps (or partially).

Yet another aim is to make something like the SRD, but for the preferred pre-3e edition. One of the things with the OGL is that it cannot be recalled, whatever happens people can continue to play D&D3/SRD, and make new stuff for it - so people want to make sure that is possible with their favourite earlier edition. OSRIC started out this way.

But the main appeal to me seems to be nostalgia and a harkening back to earlier, simpler, times - when dungeons were endless and monsters random.
Generally to the times when the players (and authors) were first introduced to RPGs.

 

[Betote]

This thread reminded me...

Does anybody know if/when is OSRIC 2.0 going to be at lulu.com?

I want my retro-collection to be complete: Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC and, now, Pathfinder

 

[Dragonbait]

Its pretty normal for people to start to reminisce about retro things whenever there is a major change in something they are used to.

When 3e came out, people were talking about the good 'ol days of 1ed (I recall this movement started around the time 3E was announced). I started to hear people talking about 2ed when 4E was announced (even though it was the ignored bastard child of D&D during the reign of 3E).

 

[Ariosto]

Gods & Monsters did not avail itself of the OGL, but was perhaps not so closely a "clone" of AD&D as to make that a concern. It was released under the GNU Free Documentation License, and (from what I've seen) did not attract a lot of attention.

Castles & Crusades turned off some old-school gamers as too "3E lite" -- especially those who felt they had been misled into expecting a more faithful recreation of AD&D.

Things really got rolling ca. 2005-06, if memory serves.

Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game "tested the waters", using the OGL to recreate elements of Moldvay Basic (something WotC never released on PDF). Those were further modified partly out of caution and partly to suit the author's preferences -- as he was primarily designing a "house rules" set for himself.

Labyrinth Lord "pushed the envelope" with a package even closer to Moldvay in many details. Although still available as a free download, it has also gone into commercial distribution. Besides game stores getting it that way, Barnes & Noble gets it (I presume) via Lulu -- but will save you the shipping. Mutant Future is not a "clone" of Gamma World but a similar kind of game based on LL .

OSRIC initially was meant less to be played than to provide some security for commercial publishers of modules for use with 1st. ed. AD&D. However, it turned out that many people -- especially those not already playing 1E -- really liked the "restatement" as a text for actual gaming. OSRIC2 is greatly expanded, and some sort of bound edition (perhaps an "economy" and a "deluxe") is in the offing.

Swords & Wizardry is an attempt to do something similar for OD&D, although it takes some more fundamental liberties and tries as well to please those who like such "modern" touches as ascending AC.

Mazes & Minotaurs sprang from a humorous "alternate history" fiction in which Gygax and Arneson took their cues not from medieval war games, Tolkien, and so on ... but from "sword and sandal" fantasies such as Jason and the Argonauts.

Encounter Critical took a similar conceit to the extent of a hoax, fooling many people for a while with its presentation of a supposedly "rediscovered" RPG -- the "second, corrected edition" published (with "scientific accuracy") by "Battlestar Games" in 1979. It won the hearts and fevered minds of people everywhere dissatisfied with the shortage in so many other offerings of Robodroid Psi-Witches and Wooky Doxies, those who appreciate that the first principle of good game design is "more lasers!"

 

[Ariosto]

Spellcraft & Swordplay is a sort of "alternate D&D" going back to the roots in the Chainmail miniatures rules.

Epees & Sorcellerie is a work likewise reaching back and "around the corner" for a different perspective -- so far only in French.

 

[Ariosto]

Don't take my word for it -- check the license -- but I think that anyone would be free to publish a print edition of OSRIC this very moment, for free or for profit.

 

[rogueattorney]

...what is the appeal?

The appeal is simple: Some people like the older versions of D&D better.

Equating it with nostalgia is like saying the reason some people still listen to the Beatles or play Monopoly is nostalgia.

As for when it started... The first, a proto-clone if you will, was Hackmaster in 2000.

 

[tankschmidt]

The appeal is simple: Some people like the older versions of D&D better.

Equating it with nostalgia is like saying the reason some people still listen to the Beatles or play Monopoly is nostalgia.

RA's right. Dismissing the interest in these older games as based primarily on nostalgia is way off base, especially when you consider that there are lots of young folks becoming interested in games that were published before they started playing RPGs or even before they were born. Some of us just prefer the qualities of those types of games.