What I really miss from "the olden days"...

[TarionzCousin]

I miss eating nothing but cheetos and drinking nothing but soda for days and having my stomach feel fine.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Having my friends come to my dorm room to "force" me to run my silly, utterly plotless Planescape game. As if they really had to twist my arm.

 

[invokethehojo]

I have to say that the gaming you describe is great for when your young, but it doesn't work quite like that when your older. I used to love Star Trek TNG, now when I catch a rerun it just seems meh. My young self had a lack of options coupled with lower expectations or maybe a more open mind. You could sit your players down right now and just tell them a story for most of the session, but there are a million places they can get that in their lives.

Imagine the star of the football team likening his former days of glory to the weekend games of flag football he can scrounge up now. Sure, the game is a little different, but it's us that has really changed. I say spend less time remembering how great things used to be, and focus more on how great things can be. If you went back and played AD&D just like you used to it still wouldn't be the same, because your all adults now and things are different, you are different. That doesn't have to be a bad thing.

I don't know what philosopher said, "you can never go home again" but I have to say: Ya, what he said.

 

[Jhaelen]

If each feat/power/skill required in-game justification to acquire, then you'd see less "building" and more character changes based on what happens in-game.

True, however, my past experience with e.g. Runequest has shown me that players tend to 'game the system' regardless.

In Runequest you have to successfully use a skill to get a check mark. Then, when you have time to train each of these check marks are evaluated to see if you manage to improve them.

What happened was that players went out of their way to find uses for the skills they were interested in. As soon as they had the check mark, they stopped using the skill and tried to find uses for another skill they were interested in - or sometimes even skills they weren't interested in:
E.g. once a pc would have check marks for all interesting weapon skills, they would start using kicks, fists, and even head butts.

Also common was looking for excuses to take a break after getting the most interesting skill checks. Sometimes this even led to adventures/quests being abandoned.

Now could try to invent an even more involved system that circumvents some of the abuses, but the thing is: Players will still find ways to game the system.

In the end I've come to the conclusion that I prefer systems that let the players create the kind of character they're interested in right away, without having them jump through hoops.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I miss having the blurry in-character/out-of-character knowledge line that we had when first roleplaying. Our characters were often us as an elf or us as a cleric, so the mental and social challenges were more challenges for us more than our characters. After a session was over my brother and I would discuss for hours about how to tackle whatever trouble we were in. That planning and plotting was incredible fun.

Now we keep a harder line between in-character/out-of-character knowledge. So while we are much better roleplayers now, that out-of-character planning that was so enjoyable has been lost.

 

[LostSoul]

True, however, my past experience with e.g. Runequest has shown me that players tend to 'game the system' regardless.

I don't think this is a problem - not when you're playing a game designed to do what you want. I've gamed the Burning Wheel system. Since BW is well-built for the type of game I wanted to play, when I game BW it works even better.

(The key point in BW that made it work for me: you have to fail in order to get better. This causes all sorts of interesting problems and changes your characters in ways that you wouldn't expect. This "fail to advance" mechanic interacts in interesting ways with the rest of the system, ie. beliefs, instincts, and traits.

I've never played Runequest, but it sounds like that mechanic is a good one: it gives the players a reason to have their PCs try out new things in the setting. From what I can tell, exploring the setting with your PC in new ways sounds like a big feature of the game.)

 

[Mark CMG]

I miss having the blurry in-character/out-of-character knowledge line that we had when first roleplaying.

Our old school game of Gamma World this last weekend saw a lot of hedging in this regard. Tough to describe a truck so it isn't recognized by people who have seen a truck so their characters who have not seen a truck can meaningfully interact with the large box(?).

 

[The Shaman]

*snipped*

As the wise man once said, there are two sorts of fools in the world. The first says, "This is old, therefore it is good." The second says, "This is new, therefore it is better."

 

[kaomera]

I miss having the blurry in-character/out-of-character knowledge line that we had when first roleplaying. Our characters were often us as an elf or us as a cleric, so the mental and social challenges were more challenges for us more than our characters. After a session was over my brother and I would discuss for hours about how to tackle whatever trouble we were in. That planning and plotting was incredible fun.

Now we keep a harder line between in-character/out-of-character knowledge. So while we are much better roleplayers now, that out-of-character planning that was so enjoyable has been lost.

This. I also think that knowing what you need to know to progress the story and trying to work out how your characters could reasonably have or obtain that information is more fun than not knowing because you rolled poorly. (Not that rolling poorly and still being able to progress the story, just in a different direction, is bad. I'm just not sure it's better, or at least not always better, than the above.)