The "Barriers" to Old and Out of Print RPGs.

 

Thought I would put an AD&D PHB cover here didn't you?

This post was spurred by a couple of things:

1. A post asking why anyone would choose to play AD&D (1E) over another game
2. A post discussing the best ways to get players to try a new game where one of the responses was that a game needed to have merch, like T-shirts, because that helped get players interested.
3. Discussions on "when is an RPG dead?" and "what a successful RPG looks like"

So let's discuss ...

First up - Why would one choose to play an "old" game? Or at least an old edition of a game with newer editions? "Because I like them better" is all the answer anyone needs to give. RPG's are not technology. Newer is not automatically better - which is not even true of technology but that's how people tend to see it. RPGs are art, not science, and don't let anyone tell you different. Are there innovations in game design from time to time? Sure. Does that make a game that uses them "better" than one that does not? No.

Innovative but not a replacement for many

Let's talk about an example: Advantage/Disadvantage as described in 5E D&D. It's a solid mechanic. It simplifies a lot of what used to be separate modifiers, often found in charts, and lets the game play faster. It can be included in new games (and should be in some) and is pretty easy to retrofit to existing games, even non-d20 games like Traveller. But ... some people like granularity. Some people don't mind checking multiple modifiers for range, light levels, target movement, attacker movement, etc. That adds to the fun or immersion or realism for them, and abstracting it into advantage/disadvantage just feels less good. Sometimes this could vary by genre or specific game for the same person. Sometimes speed of play or simplicity is not the ultimate goal but that's where a lot of recent game design trends have been headed. "People don't have time to play games with complex rules" - maybe you don't. Maybe I do. Maybe I want to count every bullet in my Twilight 2000 game and not really worry about it in my Star Wars game.

Also nostalgia should not be discounted. I suspect that for many people the edition of D&D that you first played, or the one that "clicked" for you is what D&D is for you and that person would always be open to giving it another try. I started when AD&D was still coming out and we played it (and the various Basic, B/X, BECMI sets too) for a decade+ and so while clunky in places we know it is eminently playable and it feels like home to some degree. To someone else it may well look clunky, needlessly complex, and just old. That's fine. No one can make you play a game you don't want to play.

As someone who has taught multiple members of the Next Generation to play RPGs I can tell you they have been interested in some old games because they are good, not because of any nostalgia. Moldvay Basic, Runequest, and Warhammer FRP are all old at this point and all feel very different and the younger set liked all of them when they got the chance to play. RQ 1-2-3 in particular is not like any modern RPG and has a whole different feel to it. It's nostalgic for me to run these - it's  just cool and different to them to play them. Heck Blaster started out loving d20 Saga Edition Star Wars and then after playing just a few sessions became a d6 Star Wars Die Hard and refuses to play any other version - and this is a game that published its last supplement the year before he was born.

For the second part let's just combine those other two entries- "merch" and the current state of a game:

Right up front I will say I don't care about either of these things when it comes to RPG's.

Merch? Seriously? Does having a t-shirt for Game X make it a better game? A more interesting game? Does it make playing it more fun? I suspect this is the mark of some of the newer type of player we see that is more interested in tying themselves to a thing than in actually playing a game. I really don't understand this mindset when there are so many other hobbies out there one could join. It's the same with "does it have a YouTube following" or some other social media presence - who cares? Why does it matter? Does any of that make the game better?  How did we survive before these things existed? This kind of stuff is really satisfying something else as it has no bearing on actually running or playing the game.

It's the same for "is a game dead?" or "is the game still in print?" - why does it matter? A good local game store will have a used game section, there are online used game sellers like Noble Knight, even Amazon sells quite a few old games, and eBay is basically the world's attic or garage where you can find the most obscure stuff for pretty reasonable prices most of the time. That doesn't even get into PDF's which are widely available for the more known games, legally and not. So the question can't be a concern about availability.

Definitely on the TBD list

Is it about finding players? It's not on store shelves or it's not widely discussed on the socials so someone thinks finding players might be more difficult? I mean, it might be, but isn't everything outside of 5E a bit challenging now? maybe your players have never heard of Lords of Creation - if you want to run it then it's time to make a pitch*. You really only need 3 players for a fun time with most RPG's, maybe as few as two, so this is not an insurmountable obstacle. 

* You are talking about running it right? Otherwise you're going to have a hard time with any slightly obscure game. 

I'd be happy to run this tomorrow if someone asked

A fair chunk of the games I've run over the last 20 years were out of print, sometimes drastically so, at the time I ran them. The aforementioned d6 Star Wars, RQ2, WFRP 2E, Mechwarrior 3E, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, B/X D&D, 4E  D&D ... the publication state of a game means very little in reality. If you have the core book for any RPG I can think of you could run a campaign for years with no outside support if you have interested players. Maybe you need to spark that interest at the beginning but that's often the GM's job, regardless of how current the game is. There's really no reason to not pull out that old game you've been thinking about running and make your pitch - take the grognards home and take the noobs somewhere interesting.

40K Friday - The Practical Side of 3D Printing

 

He's upset about being resized

I know the dream of 3D printing is "I can print all the miniatures I want for almost free" with a side order of "any time I want them" and to a point this is true. It's more true with a resin printer than a filament printer in many ways but I am happy starting out with the melted plastic option. One of the reasons I feel that way is because I already have too damn many miniatures - what I need is more time to play them. Barring a terrible physics accident that alters the flow of time (and hopefully grants some cool superpowers) one of the areas a 3D printer can help with is the supplementary stuff that you will use -with- all of those miniatures that you already have.

One of the big ones is Terrain with a capital T. I have a lot of plastic ruined buildings - because that's kind of a 40K thing. I do not have as much Fantasy/Medieval type terrain - because those fights tend to happen more in open fields like the historical fights of the medieval era did. I don't have a lot of building type terrain that isn't "blasted Imperial gothic architecture" because that's what GW sells and what GW used to show in White Dwarf and what 3rd party makers think everyone wants based on what's in all the GW photos and artwork.  I don't have a lot of WW2-appropriate terrain. As it turns out a lot of terrain is perfectly amenable to FDM printers as the occasional layer line doesn't really get in the way or ruin the look compared to how it would impact an elf face for example. 

I have some spaceship corridors. I bought two sets of the stuff GW put out a couple of years ago for that whole Boarding Action thing they did with Kill Team and for 40K. It's cool. I can see using it for all kinds of things. I'd like more but I'm not buying another one of those sets. As it turns out there are a lot of people making those kinds of things and putting the STLs out online at very reasonable prices. 

People and companies run kickstarters for big sets of terrain and the costs there are pretty affordable with those as well. You can acquire models for an entire table's worth of whatever you like and make extras of the parts you really like at almost no additional cost once you own the files. It's great. It can work for RPGs too - if you thought the Dwarven Forge stuff was cool, well, you should see what's out there now that you can print yourself.

MiniWargaming did a Kickstarter recently for this set of interesting stuff.
"The Ruins of Drakenfell"

The other side of supplementary materials here include my personal nemesis: Base Expanders. These have been a pain for a very long time. The main culprit here is once again Games Workshop. The triggering incident is when they decide that a certain army, most of whom have been on 25mm round bases for decades, really look better on 32mm round bases. So all of the new units now come on 32's, the sure-to-be-coming-upscaled-new-versions-of-old-units will come on 32's, and random strangers whether at a store or at a con assume that all of your fully painted armies should be on 32mm bases the day after this is noticed - because they don't actually announce something like this. They just start putting new bases in all of the boxes and let people discover it on their own. 

Yeah, it's a sore spot.

You could say "but if you play with friends they probably won't care. Sure. But if I go outside the friend circle it's tricky and I also do not like to see one marine army on 25s and then my other marine army on 32s. Or mixing in Ork boyz on various differently-sized bases - that's not a good look.

Guess the main two armies this has happened to? Guess which are two armies I have tons of? Bonus if you can guess which are two of my oldest armies and thus more likely to be on 25mm bases?

Somewhere around 2017 GW started shipping new marine boxes with 32s in them. I noticed it with the new Blood Angel sets first but I don't know for sure they were the first offenders overall. Then in 2018 we got the new Primaris Marines and we all saw why they really went to 32mm bases - bigger figures need bigger bases!

Somewhat later -  it might have been earlier but I noticed it later - they decided to do this with Orks as well. Now I have a lot of marines across multiple armies but I have 120 2nd edition Goff Ork boyz in just one Ork force - so you can imagine I was not pleased to see this change. People also get a lot twitchier about orks being on smaller bases than they do marines as it means you can pack more of them into melee where they are a lot more dangerous than a tac marine.

So what does one do when one's old classic 40K figures are deemed to be on too small of a base? Well I did write a post about this a few years ago that has pictures of the base expander options I had found at that time. I have used all of those at some point but some of those were very unsatisfying as I dug into them more. The silver half-ring things gave me a lot of trouble trying to line them up straight and level. The wooden rings were definitely the cheapest and I was planning to use them on my Orks but ... I hate the way they look once they are on. The cup-style are the best looking and the least trouble in my experience but were also the most expensive. Not stupidly expensive, but when you're buying them 100 at a time you start to think about how much you are spending on stuff for your miniatures that is not actually a miniature. I had a bunch of orks, a bunch of loyalist marines, and a bunch of chaos marines that all needed this treatment. In my head, at least.

I've been trying to finish up the Goff boy updates this year and then I acquired a 3D printer ... and one night while putting the new shoes on the boyz it occurred to me that I had bought 3D printed versions on eBay - maybe I could just print them myself! As it turns out I could! You can too! I poked around various sites and found several styles of the things including some that looked pretty much like the ones I had been using. 

The tan-ish ones are the expanders I purchased a year or two back (sprayed with Zandri Dust). The black ones (and the white one) I printed myself this week. I stuck one of my Evil Sunz boyz in one to do a test fit and then printed the rest. This will save me some money, even more time, and just makes things a lot easier going forward as I don't have to worry about  buying more of them, shipping them here, or keeping some on hand for future acquisitions of old miniatures - if I need some I can print some. Case closed.

There are other practical benefits. You can print custom bases too, not just expanders! You can print objective markers and banners and nifty score-keeping things and a bunch of other stuff that you might have a use for in a particular game. Spell or area effect templates and other measuring devices seem to be a popular option. 

A lot of rank-n-flank games like Warhammer Fantasy and Kings of War use blocks of figures moving around the table. Movement trays are a way to facilitate this and have been in use for many years but before you had to make them out of plastic sheet or wood or something that took at least a little effort. Now you can just print them - do search, pick the correct size, and off you go.

The crowning jewel of this is the "Movement Tray Adapter" which combines the powers of a movement try AND a base expander into one handy option. Behold:

GW brought back old school fantasy in the form of The Old World (yay) but decided to bump all of the bases up a notch (boo) so all the old humans and elves that were on 20mm squares are now on 25s and the orcs and chaos warriors that were on 25s are now on 30s  <sigh> because that's just what they do. But, by using one of these beauties you can keep your figures on their old bases but still have them take up the correct amount of space on the table. It's a triumph of human ingenuity.

Anyway much like base expanders vs. actual miniatures, here's a 40K Friday post that's not really about 40K very much. Sometimes it's not a hobby - it's a lifestyle choice.

 

Top Ten Anticipated RPGs for 2025

 

EN World does this every year and I usually try to comment on them. I'm running a little late but I thought it was worth bringing up. The list and discussion is here.

10 - Starfinder 2E: Well I own a PDF of 1E but that's it and I've never run or played it so while I'm very aware of it I am not feeling a ton of anticipation. The straight up fantasy-in-space thing just has never really been my thing despite a love for Rifts and 40K and the occasional D&D/Gamma World crossover back when. I'm not sure why but I think a lot of it is the setting - expanding outward from their fantasy planet while leaving a big gap in recorded history as far as what happened to the place just does nothing for me. Maybe it's topo generic-feeling. So many other interesting settings out there that mix magic and tech - this one just never clicked for me.

9 - Alien Evolved: Another new edition of a game I haven't played.  We don't do a lot of horror here and if we did I'd probably lean more towards something like Mothership but I haven't done anything with that one either so ... no real anticipation here either.

8 -13th Age Second Edition: Well I did the Kickstarter for this one so yeah, I'm interested. Some genres just click with you and D&D-style fantasy will always be one of those for me. I liked 13th Age when it came out but I never ran it. I will make room to at least give it a tryout this time as I like what I see in the previews. It's just different enough to make it interesting. So yes, "anticipated" for sure.

7 - Coriolis The Great Dark: Well if you either haven't heard of it or weren't paying attention to it ... at all ... it's hard to say you were anticipating it. I've heard the name over the years and after perusing the Kickstarter page it looks interesting. I'm getting Expanse vibes from it and that's not a bad thing. I'm just not sure my players would choose it for "dark exploratory sci-fi game" over say 40K Wrath and Glory. It was not "anticipated" but I'll keep an eye on it.

6 - Dolmenwood: I did the Kickstarter here too so yes, it's definitely anticipated. It's another OSR thing but it has what looks to be an interesting setting and a lot of support material. I think it's a sandboxy campaign one could finish, to some degree, and not just another generic fantasy world. It's a big forest with specific inhabitants and an English folklore-y background and that approach and the art really pulled me in - all of the art on this post is from Dolmenwood.

5 - Discworld: I love the Discworld series of books and I've been reading them since the 80's but I've never felt compelled to make it an RPG setting. Even when the GURPS version came out I didn't really feel the need to get it, run it, or play it, and that is still true today. I don't think anyone could run it the way Pratchett wrote it and it's just not going to feel right in my opinion. Humor is a huge part of these books and running a comedy RPG that everyone at the table finds funny is damn near impossible in  my experience. I've been very aware of this new edition as a big time Kickstarter but I have no interest in it as a game.

4 - Draw Steel (the MCDM RPG): I became aware of this one only after the Kickstarter had run and I will say I am interested in seeing how it comes out as a lot of the descriptions of the rules look really interesting. For something that originated with D&D it looks like it's dumping or changing a lot of the core D&D concepts and I do wonder how that will go over with people who came in with 5E. I'd say it's "anticipated" here now.

3 - Daggerheart: Never heard of it, don't know anything about it. Looking at the web page doesn't tell me enough about how it works, what it aims to do, or how it's different from the endless supply of other fantasy RPGs to make me want to dig into it beyond that. So no, not anticipated.

2 - Cosmere: I am certainly aware of this one after the Kickstarter hype but I haven't read enough  Brandon Sanderson to care. I can't see much about the mechanics but it looks like it uses standard RPG dice. Yet another fantasy RPG ... I don't have any attachment to the books so I'm going to give this one a pass. Not anticipated here.

1 - Legend in the Mist: I know City of Mist has had gained some attention  - lord knows I see enough ads for it online - but I haven't played or run it, don't own it, and the modern urban fantasy thing is just not my genre. It looks fairly FATE-y or Apocalypse World-y and that's fine but this new version says it's a rustic fantasy using a similar system and ... just not my thing man. I would probably play it if I encountered someone excited about running it but this is not a game I'm going to drive with my players. So no, not anticipated here. 

Things not on this list that I am anticipating:

• d6 System Second Edition
• Ashes Without Number
• Deadlands: Abominable Northwest
• Savage Rifts: Europe

Among others. There are definitely games to look forward to this year and if tastes vary as to which ones well, hey, that's part of the fun of this hobby. 

The First 2023 RPG Challenge - Scheduling!

 

Similar to last year I don't have a lot of hard, set goals for this year. Last year was interrupted by the big move but this year should be steady - I do not need to do that again! - and is mainly about getting back in a rhythm in my mind. 

Assuming I can keep the Deadlands game on track then that is the RPG priority for the year - until we wrap it up. I've done pretty well maintaining focus on it and not trying to work in side games or getting distracted with the "next" game on the roadmap. That said given some recent schedule complications I am changing my approach for '23 ...

For several years now my approach to scheduling has been to keep it very short-term: Sometime during this session, we pause and schedule the next session. That's it - no advance planning, just a conversation while everyone consults their phone calendars. Occasionally we scout out a whole month and plan two sessions, but the basic goal is to set the next gathering date. This has worked pretty well but trying to get the train rolling again post-move we have hit a lot of blockers. November & December are always challenging but now even January has been bad. Combine this with my own (and the group's) desire to have everyone present for each session and we would not be playing at all for Q1 2023. That's just not viable.

So I talked to the crew and pointed out the complications we've been having and now we are going back to a fixed schedule like we have used previously. I'm aiming for two sessions of Deadlands and then 1 each of a couple of other games which I am still in the process of determining - I'd like to work in a Superhero game on a regular basis and then maybe a Star Wars or one of several other options. It's all TBD for now. 

Of course this also means we have to let go of the Full Attendance mandate so people are going to miss some sessions. It's not great but we are hardly the only group to encounter it and it's not like this is the first time it's come up.

It's one of the regular challenges when managing an RPG campaign, especially as the adult players get busier. I've tried various approaches before, including pretty much this same thing, and they worked well for a while but I also had some built-in players at home back then which made the Agile thing work and I do not anymore, so, time for a new plan.

I did think at one point having a backup game for when everyone couldn't show would solve the issue but right now I would end up running the "backup" game more than my primary game for the next few months so that wasn't going to work.

Committing to every weekend is optimistic but it's an offer, not a promise. I will have conflicts and have to cancel occasionally but doing this means that theoretically we can run something every week regardless of who is available and I think that getting that momentum going will improve all of our games. Plus it may allow me to rotate through some short runs in systems I might not otherwise get to run and expose my guys to something they want to explore further without taking away from the Deadlands campaign.

Dating myself here, oof ...

So anyway there's the first dilemma of the year. Hopefully this sorts out and I'll have some decent stories to tell here down the road. 

Translocation Complete

 

Well the trip is finally complete! It took way too long ... apparently I have a lot of stuff ... but it's finished now and we are fully transported to the new estate. We've integrated Fred the Yard Panther into the routine as well so we are one big happy family including Ranger the bulldog (on patrol up there) and Rockstar the House Tiger.  The new game room is a big step up from what I had before and the painting room might just be able to hold everything I need it to hold. There is still some stuff in boxes but not all that much - should be able to finish that up this month. Overall it's been an amazing refresher on what you can accomplish when you're teamed up with someone and have similar goals and priorities.

The crew comes for a first visit this weekend where we should hammer out our plans for the next few months and into next year. We need to get back on the Deadlands train that was rolling along quite nicely before I complicated things. Paladin Steve has been talking about running the new Dragonlance campaign for 5E so we need to talk through that and who knows what other options might come up?

As things settle down and we develop an actual routine I should be posting here again so stay tuned! 

The Summer Update

 

Well it has been a while since I posted anything but that up there is not a direct commentary on the blog. That said it feels like it's time for a general update at least. 

It's been a busier than usual year. The apprentices have finished up the college run and are making their ways out into the world - I suppose I'll have to pick a new title for them at some point. I've officially picked up a new co-pilot. We lost one of the canine companions. Mostly ups with a few downs. The Deadlands campaign has been steady though it has been on pause for a bit because of the annual convention obligations of some of my players and also because the Tower is preparing to translocate!

After ten years at the current location it's time for some new scenery and preparations have been underway for a while now and this kind of thing definitely interferes with keeping a regular schedule and with regular blog updates too as it turns out. Once we are settled at the new site I expect things to pick back up again. Right now minis are being packed, not painted. Dice are being stored not rolled. I've packed 46 boxes of RPG books and boxes and binders alone (U-Haul "small") and I'm not quite finished with that yet. My friends have said several times over the years "man if you ever have to move all this ..." - yes, well, that time has come and no I'm not asking them to help 😀

With it down to just me and my in-house editor and the animal companions there was an opportunity to make some changes ... so we are. 

Things should be settled by late September or early October and getting back to normal. In the mean time this seems like an opportunity to maybe possibly catch up on posting about the Deadlands campaign when my back is tired of packing and lifting and moving things so there might even be some updates here over the next few weeks. 

Anyway there's the news of the day/week/month/year. As always, more to come ...

 

How it Started versus How it's Going

 

Barking Alien had a great post about those games we started with and which ones we still play. It's been awhile since I've gone down this road but let's see ...

I started with Holmes Basic D&D. Still have my copy though it is in rough shape from major use. This was 1979-1980. It was pretty much just D&D for the next few years though I did start writing up my own game with Jedi and Cylons and things in there too. Lots of graph paper was consumed as I dove into AD&D and the new Basic Set and then the new Expert Set and Dragon magazine. 

By the summer of 1982 I added Traveller. That was the second game I really dove into. So many cool things - character generation, ship construction, star system generation - so much in those 3 little books.  

I had been aware of the other TSR games for some time but had not acquired any of them. Later that year I had picked up Star Frontiers and it was not all that much like Traveller but it had its own attractions - the maps! The counters! An interesting take on actions and combat and races and gear - I really liked playing it. 

During 1983 things really exploded as I added Gamma World, Star Trek (FASA), Top Secret, Boot Hill, and Champions. 

The 80's were a great time for RPG's as by the end of the decade I had jumped into Marvel and DC supers games, Twilight 2000, Star Wars, Warhammer Fantasy, Ninja Turtles, Runequest, GURPS, Mechwarrior, and Shadowrun. There were new editions of various games in there as well plus starting up a miniatures hobby with Warhammer, 40K, and Battletech.

Out of those first few let's see ... I do still play and run D&D. Not that same version but I have run Labyrinth Lord (briefly) in the last 3 years. I'd like to do more as it does feel different than "normal" D&D now but schedules are such a constraint we are lucky to keep one game going steadily these days. 

Traveller is one I have taken off the shelf and considered but I haven't run it in at least ten years. Another one I would love to run but it just gets squeezed out every time.

I haven't run Star Frontiers since the 80's but I do still have everything and I do still love a lot of things about that system and setting. Nowadays it mainly serves as a source of inspiration for a potential Star Wars campaign - the adventures in particular. 

As far as the batch from 1983 ... 

• Gamma World is another of the want-to's but I haven't run it in ... 20 years at least? I really should put together a short run at least.
• Star Trek - I haven't run FASA Trek since maybe the 90's but I still have all of that material ... and the LUG Trek stuff ... and Decipher Trek ... and I just picked up the Klingon book for Modiphius Trek. So the systems have rotated over the decades but the setting is definitely still a player. Just have to convince at least two of my players to give it a shot. 
• Top Secret - another box unused since the 80's. I did do the kickstarter a few years ago for a new version from the original creator but it is not a good game. These days when I get the itch for a spy game I'd say Spycraft comes to mind the most but it's just not a genre my guys care a whole lot about. Odds are this will keep gathering dust on the shelf. 
• Boot Hill was a lot of fun back when but has since been rendered obsolete by Deadlands. Considering we had the most fun with Boot Hill crossing it over with D&D anyway this was not really a surprise. I usually hate "tech" analogies when it comes to RPGs but this is the best case for one that I can think of - everything we wanted to do in Boot Hill can be done easier, faster, and better in Deadlands ... any version of Deadlands. 
• Then there is Champions ... so good and yet so long since I've actually run a game with it. I still love the system even if it's been bumped aside by M&M a lot over the last 20 years when a superhero game is discussed among the crew. I would still like to run it again so I picked up the lean and mean version and then earlier this year I grabbed the full double-textbook version. It may take a little while but it's on my radar and it will happen eventually.

So most of those early games are not major players for me these days. The oldest thing I've run aside from a D&D game with some regularity these last few years is probably d6 Star Wars and that will continue - it almost became the new game I'm running now. 

BA asks a good question about how people play only one game and for so long and I admit I have no idea. I love the bubbling concoction that is RPG design where new and innovative things emerge and change the way we look at things. D&D is a nice constant in some ways but there are so many other things to do out there that I cannot imagine sticking to one game only and ignoring everything else.  

Campaign Length

I'm looking at campaign options for when the current situation winds down and we can begin gathering again. This means I'm poring through old binders and spirals looking at what I've done before and I thought I would share some numbers from the last 20 years:

• 3E Seas of Kalamar campaign - 34 sessions
  This was set in Kalamar and combined the original Freeport trilogy (which we finished) and the Savage Tide adventure path from Dungeon magazine (which we did not). This was my last 3rd edition campaign.

• 3E Scarred Lands campaign - no fancy name here - 54 sessions
  This was set on Ghelspad in the Scarred Lands and covered quite a bit of territory from Vesh and Mithril out to the Blood Sea and eventually spent a bunch of time in the city of Amalthea. I used a lot of Necromancer Games and Goodman Games modules in this one - Seroent Amphora, The Wizard's Amulet, Idylls of the Rat King, The Dragonfiend Pact, Tomb of Abysthor, Bloody Jack's Gold, White Plume Mountain, The Blackguard's Revenge, and Iron Crypt of the Heretics, where the whole thing ended in a TPK around 11th level.

• 4E Return to the Ruins of Adventure - 30 sessions
  Yes it's Phlan,from the AD&D Ruins of Adventure module and the Pool of Radiance computer game! It was a lot of fun.

• 4E Savage Swords of Impiltur - 30 sessions
  Most of this campaign was following the Red Hand of Doom mega-adventure from D&D 3.5. I had heard good things about it, never ran it in 3E, so I converted it to 4th and we got very close to finishing it but not quite. 

• 4E Temple of Elemental Evil - 11 sessions
  This was a side campaign I ran for the boys in between other games. It didn;t last as long as the others but they did explore Hommlett, cleared ourt the Moathouse, and cleared the ruins of the Temple. We just didn't dive into the dungeon beneath as other things took priority.

• Pathfinder  Wrath of the Righteous - 38 sessions
  I've written about it, particularly why it ended, elsewhere on the blog but it was fun most of the time. We've discussed picking it up with PF2E but we all want more experience with that system before we try to go high-level with it. 

• 5E Cormyr Classics - 21 sessions so far
  This is set in Cormyr and has included conversions of Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread and is ongoing though it's been a few months since we last played.

I ran an earlier 3E campaign set in Greyhawk but I didn't keep notes like I did with later games. It ended in a self-inflicted TPK in the middle of the crater ridge mines in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. There have been various other one-off, short runs, and faded campaigns with other games over the years but I'd say these are the "core", longer-running games I've had.

Seems like 30-50 sessions is my sweet spot - should I consider this in planning a campaign? No more epic adventure path type runs? Maybe shorter ones? Or should I go for it - buckle down and aim for a full level 1-20 progression, even if it takes 100+ sessions?

Something to think about.

Catching Up - RPG Burnout

There are a variety of reasons for the blog going silent last year. I wasn't playing as much tabletop gaming and I wasn't playing as much online either (I burned out on City of Heroes after about 4 months) so I did not have as much to say. The single biggest reason though was that for the first time in 40 years of playing RPGs I ... burned out.

This was a new experience. I've never gone more than a few months without playing or running something, and I've usually also worked in some prep work or some board or miniatures gaming even in those gaps. This time I let almost all of it go for roughly six months.

The last couple of years I've mostly been running 5th Edition D&D and playing in a Pathfinder campaign and a Savage Worlds 50 Fathoms campaign. There have been some smaller runs and one-offs with other games mixed in there but those 3 have been the core.

The 50 Fathoms game has been steady but hits bumps sometimes. We aim for weekly and sustain that for a bit and then hit stretches where we're lucky to play once a month. It's a weeknight game so it's especially vulnerable to schedule issues. It was frustrating at times but it's been a lot of fun and we should wrap that one up later this year.

The Pathfinder campaign had been running for over 5 years, theoretically once a month, but had gotten really spotty over the past year and 2019 was not really going any better. We had 5 players and it seemed as though it just was not a priority for any of them. After months of rescheduling without actually playing a couple of us finally told the DM it was time to let it go and he eventually agreed. It was not the way any of us wanted it to go, but that's just how it worked out. Regardless, I felt bad about how that went.

My campaign ... let's talk about that. I had been running Keep on the Borderlands intermittently with several players as our intro to 5th Edition. I've run it in every edition of the game so why not keep that going? A few years back with some variation in player availability I started running Storm King's Thunder as the "other" 5E campaign and scheduling sort of depended on who was available on any particular weekend. The SKT game was eventually sidelined as we regrouped and everyone decided to focus on the Old School game. I picked up Goodman Games "Into the Borderlands" super-version of B2 and used some of that material and then we moved into Isle of Dread - also guided by Goodman Games new-at-the-time-super-hardback-edition.

Things went well at first - enthusiasm and attendance were high and it felt like we were really accomplishing something. Then in the second half of 2019 it felt like we hit a wall. We were playing every other Friday, I had six players in the campaign, and vowed to run as long as 4 of them were available. Well ... pretty soon we were regularly having 3 or more unavailable. This jammed up the schedule, frustration grew for all of us, and I finally threw up my hands and said I was done even trying to run thru the end of the year. This was one big reason for the burnout - running a campaign as an adult means facing schedule conflicts and I've been doing it for years but last year it just exploded and all of our games were getting kneecapped by scheduling issues.

The other major thing was that some of the shine came off of 5th Edition D&D for me. I've been a fan of simpler rulesets for RPGs for a long time now but 5E is maybe too simple. After 20 years of 3E, 4E, and Pathfinder I've come to expect a certain level of crunch in my fantasy RPGs. While it does play faster than those other versions it is ... really really simple. I know it's super popular and tons of people have come back to the game this edition and I've not been a system mastery snob for a very long time but ... there's just not a whole lot there mechanically.

Character progression is really simple - you have a lot of choices those first 3 levels but once you've chosen your sub-class at 3rd most of your choices have been made. About the only customization you have left is the option to pick a feat at 4-8-12-16-19 but the game recommends you just stay with the stat boosts - how boring is that?

Monsters are mostly bags of hit points with 1 or 2 ways of doing damage and that's it - there are very few interesting monsters in the published book. In interesting here meaning they give the DM something to do besides roll a d20 and tell you how much damage you took. After 4E and Pathfinder I expect more - inflicting various conditions ... forced movement ... team-up abilities ... there are so many ways to challenge players in interesting ways beyond "The ogre hits you for 10 points". I'm pondering a post to illustrate this in more detail but for now most of the 5E monsters feel like a let step down from what we've seen before.

Bonus negative thing: I realized I am tired of running other people's material. My 4E stuff was almost all loose homebrew conversions of older material and I was very happy with it. My Pathfinder and 5E campaigns have all been published stuff and it is time to get back to writing up my own adventures.

So yes, the combination of disrupted schedules in all of our games, to the point of permanently ending one, plus the lowered enthusiasm about the main game, plus just a general frustration with the whole thing led me to "cancel the season" last fall and set the whole RPG hobby aside for months. I've gotten better since then, played some more, and even run a few sessions of  Pathfinder Second Edition to see if that satisfies that mechanical need - and so far it does seem promising. Now of course we have Ultimate Virus Lockdown as a worldwide status effect and that is this year's schedule killer.

Despite that, I'm planning to get some things moving. Interest has returned and as the year moves along I expect a return to at least one regularly scheduled campaign. I will also be getting back to keeping up the blog on some kind of regular schedule as well.

It's time to get back to work ...

He must be ...

.... working on a new campaign ...

Greatest Hits #22 - "Unplayable" RPG's

An opinion piece but still relevant as I still hear this today ...

I've been listening to a podcast that talks about old RPG's and it's been pretty entertaining both with games I know well and games I passed by. I'll talk more about them later but one thing that comes up in some of the conversations is "unplayable". I'm not going to pick on them specifically because I hear it all over the place. The recent listening just brought it to top of mind and I decided to discuss it in a post.

A strong "get off my lawn rant" advisory is now in effect. 

First, let's talk about what people mean when they describe a game this way. To me it really breaks down into two categories:

• Literally, mechanically unplayable - I mostly hear this from younger gamers describing older games. I suspect it's more "I looked at it and looked too complicated for me to enjoy so I went no further with it" or "I've heard stories about it". I personally have yet to find a game that is literally "unplayable".
• Complicated to the point that it's not worth playing, especially when there are alternative games available that cover a similar niche - this is far more common and it's how I feel about quite a few games out there. Really, it's more "not as enjoyable" rather than "unplayable". 

I make this distinction because every so often I hear a game dispatched as "unplayable", sometimes with a bonus of sneering attitude to go with it, which happens to be a game I've played or run for an extended period of time. This of course immediately puts the lie to the "unplayable" description. 

Somewhere along the internet's lifespan theoryhammer/theorycrafting became in some people's minds as valid a set of thoughts about a game as actual experience. Someone looks at the math of the game and declares it unworkable. Someone finds a rule with some kind of logic flaw in it and declares the entire game invalid as a result. 

It's bullshit.

RPG's have never been "here's a book - do everything exactly as it is written here." Never. Different people have interpreted things differently, modified rules into something they liked better, and added new rules to cover something they felt was missing or underrepresented. 

A typical response to this from the non-players is something like "well sure if you start changing the rules it works" - no! It probably "worked" just fine before! I'm changing the rules because I think it works better!

Another common cry: "Why should I pay for it if I have to modify the rules to make them work". If that's your attitude you probably shouldn't! In fact if that's your attitude I'm not sure you should be playing RPG's at all! I don't say that to be some kind of snob - I say it because it's a just part of what people do with  these kinds of games!

Let's get into some specifics:

• Rifts - I regularly hear when the game comes up about how it's "unplayable". I ran a game for over a year, pretty much by the book. Core book plus whatever add-ons struck our fancy. yes, the rules are clunky and sometimes inconsistent. Yes I think the new Savage Worlds version is going to be a much better experience for most people. By no means though is it "unplayable".
• Shadowrun: one of the things 4th edition SR touted was the new "better" task resolution system that made it much easier to figure the odds of success compared to the older editions where it was "almost unplayable". Seriously? One of the most popular RPG's of the 90's was "almost unplayable". I played in and ran multiple campaigns through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions and we typically thought the system was damned innovative at the time. 
• Twilight 2000: I was surprised when I ran across "unplayable" applied to this game online last year. When games like Aftermath exist? T2K 1st and 2nd are fairly simple games really. 1E is a percentile skills system not unlike BRP games and 2E simplifies it down from ratings of 1-100 to 1-10. Sure, you'd better like playing with military hardware as that's one of the attractions of the game, but there's nothing particularly complex about either one. Again I have played and run multiple campaigns in both versions so it's completely playable if you're interested.
• Champions: "Combat takes so long, characters are so complicated, it's just unplayable" - one of the pillars of superhero gaming, something we played a bunch when we were 13 years old and  somehow figured out even though we didn't have the internet to explain things to us is now described by people at times as "unplayable". Please. 
• GURPS: I actually saw GURPS described as "unplayable" online in the last month. It's not my favorite game anymore but "unplayable"? Sure you have a lot of choices when making a character but once your character is finished the game mechanics are pretty simple. It's 3d6 roll low! For almost everything! I assume this is mostly because it has a bunch of thick hardbacks for rules, despite the fact that you won't be using more than a few of them in most campaigns. 
• Aftermath: Exhibit A for the classic over-complicated games of the 80's. I own it  - it's playable, it just not much fun IMO. Heck, it has a flowchart to show you how the mechanics work! Actually it has several of them. "Not something I want to play" is not "unplayable.

Even AD&D gets this nowdays - "This game is a mess, how did anyone play this?" - well, we read it, used our brains, and figured it out. 

"Weapon speeds?" - not in first edition.

"Grappling?" - not usually. We used some replacement system form an issue of Dragon.

"Level limits" - sure. Multiclassing was cool.

"AH-HA! So you just ignored the parts of the game that didn't work!" - Pretty much. We still do. There are parts of ICONS that I mostly ignore, and that's a pretty simple very modern system. That doesn't make it a bad game or, god forbid, "unplayable". It means we modify something we already like to make it better in our eyes. Like people do with clothes. Like people do with cars.  Why is this so shocking to some people? Are they under the impression there's a trophy for following the book as written? Have you seen the errata documents for most big RPG books?

Does this really look all that complicated?
Boring, sure, but complicated?

This usually happens though after we have played the game as written a few times.  Not before we ever play a game. Not after we play it once. After 3 or 4 sessions though you have a fair idea of how your group works with a game and what might be better for your group. The games I discuss on this blog are almost always a game I am running, a game I have run in the past, or a game I am about to run - there's a reason for that. I'm not terribly interested in opinions about a game from someone that's never played or run it so I try not to do that. I'm much more interested in practical experiences. 

As one example Savage Worlds suffers from the "let's change stuff after reading the rules once" problem quite a bit.  It mainly seems to happen with people whose only other experience is with some form of D&D, but that's not a strict rule. Someone comes into a forum or a Facebook group and announces how much they like the game and they have a couple of genius changes that they're going to use. Inevitably they've played once and something fluky happened or they haven't actually played at all yet. SW players tend to be a friendly lot but the usual response is "OK, but you may want to try it by the book rule a little longer before you change it." You want to know why? because the game has been around with only minor changes for 15 years now and it works. It works very well for fast playing pulpy RPG campaigns. There may  be a genre-specific thing someone is trying to do and that's cool but there isn't much that needs to be tweaked in the core rules. A more common problem is people not understanding the rules and trying to make changes based on a misunderstanding but there are parts that are tricky to explain purely on a page so that's not always the reader's fault.  Someday Pinnacle will find the perfect way to explain the Shaken rule and we will enter a new golden age I am sure, but until then a little conversation helps explain it much easier. 

Maybe it's the guns that make all of these "unplayable"?

My closing take: no game is "unplayable". Some are harder, some are easier, some will be less fun for your group than others, and that's how it's all supposed to work! I don't have any interest in playing or running Rolemaster but I know groups that have played it for years - clearly it's not unplayable. There was a Kickstarter last year for an updated rulebook for original Deadlands and it blew my mind - why would anyone play that when Reloaded is available? Apparently quite a few people because it funded quickly and went way over the goal. 

Oops! - Nope, that's not it!

I suppose I could re-title this "a word I don't like" because that's what it boils down to. I think we can do better. 

Greatest Hits #10 - New Games, Old Games, New Gamers, and Old Gamers

I think this is still completely relevant, even if we have another layer of editions for some games on top of what's discussed here. 

Barking Alien had a post yesterday inspired by a post from Monsters and Manuals last week that started some wheels turning for me. Rather than restrict it to a comment on those worthy blogs I decided to make it a post here as it goes to the heart of what I do with the hobby. So go read those really quick if you haven't then come back here for the next chapter.

Noisms uses the phrase "the tiresomeness of new systems". I sort of get that, but for me the "tiresomeness" usually comes in with new editions of games I already have that don't really change anything. Especially when they come out far too quickly. Truly "new" systems are interesting to me. For example:

• Third edition D&D was amazing at the time - such a radical revamp of the game that still felt like the game!
• I thought D&D 3.5 at only 3 years into the new system was an annoying money grab on many levels, even if there were some areas that could stand to be tuned up. 
• Pathfinder, 6+ years after that, with a stated goal of re-balancing and reexamining the whole system without completely changing it made sense to me, even if it wasn't completely new. 
• Fourth edition was so much change I hated it at first but I eventually came around and got to like it for its strengths and it definitely felt like a completely new game. 
• Fifth edition I am not settled on. There are innovations there, but there is a lot of change that I am not sure is an improvement. I need more time with it, but I enjoyed reading through it to see what had changed.

Did you miss this one?

There are other examples:

• After 20+ years of picking up Champions books I skipped the latest edition because I just didn't need another slightly tweaked set of Hero rules. 
• M&M 3E was a fairly significant revamp to M&M 2E - recognizable, but not instantly compatible.  
• ICONS was a very different approach to supers and I loved it. Mixing elements of Fate (which I did not have at the time) and Marvel Super Heroes (which I love) with an emphasis on simplicity and speed made a very entertaining mix and introduced me to some new ways of doing things.
• Marvel Heroic then came along and turned everything upside down with a radical new approach to Supers that I still think is one of the bigger innovations of the last ten years. It's completely different mechanically than the others I mention, but still feels at least as much like a superhero game as they do. 

There are many older games I like just fine. I prefer older versions of Gamma World, for example. If I wanted to play a "pure" cyberpunk game then CP2020 is what I would reach for on the shelf. For Star Wars I'm doing d6 or Saga Edition, not FFG's new stuff. One of the primary reasons may be that I almost never feel like I have exhausted the possibilities of any system that I like. Run a game for a year and I probably have a dozen new ideas for campaigns that I will never get to run. About the only reason I would skip an old game is if there's a version I think is truly better mechanically, to the point it's not worth the hassle of that older version.  

There are many newer games I prefer - Marvel is one example. I like Mongoose's edition of Traveller probably best of all. Newer is not always better, but it's almost always worth a look. Icons is better to me than Heroes Unlimited. 

Sure, there is some attraction to running a game that I already have, that's not being expanded every month by a publisher in the form of $35 hardbacks, and that I know like the back of my hand. I'd happily run that game, and I have.

However, I also like to see what's new, what someone is doing with an old setting that has new mechanics, or someone tweaking old mechanics to use with a new setting. Just, show me something innovative or interesting, don't just sell me the same old thing with a couple of tweaks (40K, I'm looking at you). Push me to the point I dislike it at first and that it takes a second or third reading to truly grasp it. Take a good setting and system and streamline it like Deadlands Classic vs. Deadlands Reloaded. Take an old setting and give it a new mechanical overlay like DC Heroes to DC Adventures. Do something completely different like Numenera. In short give me a reason to care, something new to chew on besides replacing d20 rolls with 2d10 rolls or changing up the skill list. 

As BA mentions in his post, it's an ongoing experience, a learning experience. I don't ever expect to find that one perfect game - I pretty much reject the concept - but I do think some games can just be flat out better than others and I acknowledge that someone may have a way  of looking at things game-wise that is awesome that I would never have come up with myself. That's part of what makes it fun.

Coda: The preference for existing systems is not restricted to the older generation:

• When FFG's Star Wars games came out I talked with them about getting a copy of the Beginner Set to try it out. "Why?" was the response. "We have Saga and it works just fine" - and this is coming from the then 14-year old. He didn't want to be bothered with learning the new system, he just wanted to play the one we already had. In contrast he hated d6 when we tried it because for him and his generation the prequel movies carry a lot of weight and the d6 system just is not good for that. Of course, neither is "Edge of the Empire" and that's probably at the heart of it. Saga best fits his vision of Star Wars and that's that.
• He likes pretty much every edition of D&D (and Pathfinder) but he's cautious about 5th and would just as soon play one of the older editions as spend time figuring out yet another version. 
• He will play pretty much any superhero game if he has the chance and recognizes that Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Heroic, M&M 3, and Icons all have a different feel and likes that he has so many options. 

Charging to Play at the FLGS

There was a discussion of game stores on EN World a few weeks back and the hot topic was a proposal that they should be charging players for playing space at their tables.  I decided to chime in with some history and my own personal views. I thought it was a good discussion so I thought I would share my post - edited to remove other names and for some context.


Let me dive into this with one perspective - I've been playing RPG's since 1979 when I was ten years old and I've never gotten away from the hobby. My longest break is measured in months, not years, so it's pretty much continuous for almost 40 years now.

I've never played a single RPG session in a store.

I live in DFW and have for most of this time and there are plenty of FLGS's within a 60 minute drive.

We have always played at someone's home. When we were kids that's because that was the easiest place to go. We sat around somebody's kitchen table and played for hours.

Once we could drive we still did it this way because it still worked.

College - it was somebody's apartment, house, or dorm.

As adults it's the same way - most of us have a dining room or living room where we can do this and some of us have a dedicated game room set up for it.

So in my experience you don't need a dedicated neutral space to play. I get why it's convenient for some and if it works for you that's cool but for at least some of us it's a total non-factor. I have all of my books, miniatures, props, mats, markers, dice, and all of the things you accumulate for gaming organized and stored at home. If I play at someone one else's home they typically have the same situation.

The idea that people should have to pay to play in your space ... I get the economics from that side but I've never seen a store that was nice enough that it made me say "wow I'd pay to play here." Especially in the sense that it had more positives, and fewer negatives, than playing at home. You buy books specifically for a game, you buy dice for a game, but space - space is the easiest thing to find and it's not something specifically tied to the game. Paying for some kind of special event - sure, I get that. Paying for 4-5-6- friends to get together and play a session? You'd better have a truly compelling "something" there or it makes no sense at all to me.

I simply don't understand why there is such pushback: you don't balk at paying for bowling, miniature golf, billiards, target shooting, batting cages, and the like; and what you're paying for are the tools to do the thing with and the space. Why are FLGS so incredibly different? There's not much money in the people who only play at home--but there is a definite need for a place to *play*.

I don't have a bowling alley at home; I don't have a mini golf course at home; I don't have batting cages in my backyard; I don't have a 75 foot wide movie screen at home. Those are specialized things necessary for a certain experience and I will pay to use them. Pretty much everybody has a table and chairs or some couches or some beanbag chairs and some empty floorspace - those are all that's needed to play an RPG. Some hobbies require the use of specialized facilities, from bowling to drag racing - RPG's do not. So attempting to monetize your space means you're swimming upstream right from the start, business-wise.

The entire FLGS industry owes its origins to RPGs and minis games. In the 80s, they were the only places you could get them

Well, in the 80's you could buy RPG's and wargames (and the associated miniatures) everywhere from Toys R Us to Kmart to Target to Michael's craft stores, not to mention the Sears catalog and various mail-order houses. There were also "Hobby Shops" that covered a variety of hobbies and games were just one of many things they included. The FLGS wasn't a thing in much of the country until later.

More importantly, the only way you could meet other people to play those games with; and from there grew everything we have now.

Oh no no no - you realize there were at least 3 separate generations of D&D'ers that got started without game stores being a thing right? The OD&D crowd mostly seems to have picked it up in college. The Holmes edition basic players like me mostly bought it at a retail store and started up our own crew or joined in to one we knew at school. A few years later the Moldvay Basic set brought in another wave and again it was not store-centered playing that drove this - it was playing at home or at school with your friends or through some kind of high school / college gaming club.


Most Magic players in the early days were RPG players first. Without a space to play, these days, the games all die.

Magic, 40K, X-Wing are all competitive type games with a tournament/event component that drives playing with strangers in a neutral space. RPG's are an entirely different animal. Without that neutral space those games might die, but they also seem to be where stores make most of their money so that seems to be a self-settling kind of thing, right?

When the online competition to buy product makes the margins & volume so low that FLGS go out of business...the space goes away, and the people and communities go away, and the home game groups eventually age out, so there's no one new and enthusiastic to greet and play with people face to face...and the future is nothing but virtual tabletop, less human interaction, and less friendships built.

How many Napoleonic miniatures players do you come across in stores? How many WW2 mini gamers? Heck, how many historical miniatures players period? How many people do you see playing ASL or other board wargames in stores? These games are still produced, supported, and played. They still have a community. Much of it is online these days because stores do not support those hobbies. There are events like meetups and cons where face to face play does happen.

As for home game groups aging out leaving no one new ... it's a good thing none of us are raising kids who are interested in some of these things and who then go off the high school and college and find new players and start their own gaming groups - except that we are.

I have nothing against the FLGS. I've spent plenty of time in them over the years and I have one in particular that I use and like. But I do not know how you get to "stores have to charge people for playing space or they're all going to close and then RPG's are going to die out". The FLGS is a cool thing when done well but it is not a necessary thing for RPG's to exist.