BECMI is Old School

[Kersus]

Is it?

Whenever I see BECMI



I invariably think BESM



I actually owned Immortal first and then Basic and Expert. I never played them having started out on OAD&D in maybe 78? 79? My understanding is my older brother and his friends started playing OD&D with some poor photocopies that were missing pages, so they made a lot up. In retrospect and considering their poor memories, I suspect it might have been Holmes. When AD&D came out, it was their first view of a full ruleset and that's what we played.

So, to me OAD&D (with cthulhu and melnibonean stuff in the DD) is old-school and everything after that is new munchkin style stuff wheras D20 and forward is 'modern.'

That said, when I finally went back in later years and tried Holmes and then OD&D (3 booklets) I was astonished at how fast furious and fun it was. Savage Worlds eat my pimple.

Why did I post this? Shrug. To amuse my two readers and hope for a flame war devoid of fact.

[Lunamancer]

I don't really have a high opinion of most post-80's RPGs. Except for the Gygax ones. This has nothing to do with being a Gygax fan. The reason is, I constantly have the feeling that they're all just ripping off D&D. Except for Gygax, who specifically set out to not repeat his earlier efforts.

No matter what bizarre hippie nonsense a so-called "modern" RPG has, without fail, it is an identical match to that one odd D&D session I played back when I was a kid. And if I had no life, I bet I could even search through every issue of Dragon Magazine and find an article that shows it wasn't just me. Every so-called "original" idea in RPGs is something that was already done in D&D, and that's where the idea came from. It's just modern design wants to pervert it, by blowing it up under a magnifying glass and excluding most other elements. And then it loses its context, it loses all its power.

Oh, the people who claim to love such things, of course, love it, because it's spelling out explicitly what they were consciously setting out to do. I have my doubts as to how great it is at the gut level. And the endless list of "problems" posted to RPG message boards seems to confirm that, yeah, real fun is pretty hard to come by for those gamers who are plugged in to the "scene." It seems like it's the endless struggle, the striving for fun, and the hope to recapture the pure enjoyment they felt when they first were introduced to RPGs is what drives them.


Here's the key. What made RPGs so much damn fun when we were kids, or when we were first introduced to it, was the element of mystery. Not only did we not know what was behind the door, we didn't know what could possibly be behind that door, and we didn't even know what to roll to find out.

But the whole modern mindset of RPGs is to neatly codify everything into a set of rules. Whether its a rules-heavy game that accounts for every possible action, or a rules-lite game where you can do infinite different things, but they all come down to the same one die roll with 3-7 possible degrees of modifiers. And everything's gotta be on the same die roll. Whether it's a d20, a fistful of fudge dice, a One-Roll-Engine, etc. Everything must be shoe-horned into one core mechanic, that every player knows.

I observed the most common mental handicap of otherwise extremely intelligent people is the ability to deal with ambiguity or the unprecedented. RPGs used to swim in that stuff. Now it's been killed and replaced with an ungiving system. Like one you might use at work.

[Oedipussy Rex]

I knew I was unimaginative and derivative but you didn't have to be so mean about it.

*sniff* <-- (That's a sniff to hold back the tears, not of moral superiority.)

[Kersus]

SCHWA is awesome. A little backwardsee, but awesome. If the twitter die-roller would handle the system easier, I'd run that. I had really wanted something simple, but OSRIC won out as that was what it was designed to use. Already it's causing issues for the newbie gamer who knows twitter well but has never played AD&D (some Lejendary Adventure, SCHWA, and maybe a few others) but he still finds gaming a foreign thing. What was cool is how he always tried completely crazy things with LA and my eyes would open wide knowing it was a good idea and then set me to figuring out how to adjudicate it.

Here's the key. What made RPGs so much damn fun when we were kids, or when we were first introduced to it, was the element of mystery. Not only did we not know what was behind the door, we didn't know what could possibly be behind that door, and we didn't even know what to roll to find out.

d24. Always d24.

I think those few sentences would make a good signature.

[Lunamancer]

SCHWA is awesome. A little backwardsee, but awesome. If the twitter die-roller would handle the system easier, I'd run that. I had really wanted something simple, but OSRIC won out as that was what it was designed to use. Already it's causing issues for the newbie gamer who knows twitter well but has never played AD&D (some Lejendary Adventure, SCHWA, and maybe a few others) but he still finds gaming a foreign thing. What was cool is how he always tried completely crazy things with LA and my eyes would open wide knowing it was a good idea and then set me to figuring out how to adjudicate it.

I can relate to that. Our group is playing LA, but I was just informed by the LM a few hours ago that we'll be switching to D&D because some of the newbs are having difficulty getting traction. He's my brother, and it's his game, so I'm going to let him do what he wants, learn from his mistakes, but otherwise help him out where I can. But as a player in his game, I can speak to what I feel, and I can certainly speak to what I observe. And it ain't the game system. So I don't anticipate the shift to a different RPG will improve things.


The problems I'm seeing are:
1) The start-up blues. We're kind of thrown in to a ready made situation without clear individual motives/goals nor an idea of how we relate to one another, both as players and characters. Things are improving as we go on, and I suppose things are better than having no ready-made situation and no clear motives/goals. But individual motives/goals and initial introductions are something that could improve (and improve the fun). This is true regardless of system.
2) Most players don't know the rules. This is also something that's improving as we go and we'd face the same challenges regardless of system. A primer on how the system works procedurally (like what it means when the GM shouts common things such as "roll initiative," "roll to hit," "roll damage," "make a check against . . .," etc.
3) Combat is just f---ing slow on line, no matter how simple the system is. Just get used to the fact that it's going to feel like everyone involved in this big battle is wading in molasses. Personally, that does make the game slightly less fun. To some of the new players, or those form whom combat is not especially engaging, it's killing the experience for them entirely. Again, that's just not going to change with the system.
4) A good character sheet can go a long way to helping #2 and #3. All relevant stats and modifiers should be conveniently listed and accounted for. The irony here is, in this instance where system might matter, good systems fair worse than bad systems, as I consider good systems to be those that, while being lite and simple in and of themselves, because they adjust organically to specific situations, in practice it involves too many variables to do this effectively.

Sort of a disclaimer: Now that you can find several examples of actual play posted to YouTube, it makes me realize, even in live table-top gaming, people seem to just play f---ing slow by my standards. No wonder why so many gamers bitch about every last thing on line. Flush game theory down the toilet. I just solved the internet. People are playing the game too slow.

So the advice here is again regardless of system. Know your craft. And teach or make sure your players know what they're doing, too. Demand competence. Learning the game = Respect for your fellow players. Settle for nothing less. Having a guy who knows Twitter but not AD&D, or a guy who knows AD&D but doesn't know Twitter is clearly a reality. But it shouldn't be a permanent state of being. These should be viewed as temporary challenges. Not conditions that dictate how you must tailor your game set-up. It's certainly not something that can't be changed in a month or so if everyone works at it.