"Feel" and Old School RPGs

 

Around here we've had a lot of talk comparing DCC and other old-school rules to D&D 5E and our recent Tales of the Valiant campaign. It has a very different feel from 5E D&D and its variants which tend to rapidly develop into superheroic levels of power. While that's fun, some of the group is very interested in the more bare-bones stuff where the answer to every problem is not "what class ability or feat can I use here?" Some of these old-school games not even having a skill list is a real shift in perspective back to the old days. We've had plenty of fun with the more modern games but this experience had me thinking back to 10-15 years ago when I was introducing the boys to Basic D&D and they were just doing all kinds of improvising and thinking on their feet too. 

I don't hate modern games of course - I've run them quite a bit over the past ten years+ - but I do see the difference in attitude that much more clearly right now. Online discussion is so tied up in "balance" - between classes, party vs. monsters, and encounters in general, that it amazes me. It feels like so much of the talk around the game gets wrapped around its own axles that it misses the point of what the game is for: you're supposed to play it!

Someone in this picture may well be complaining about balance ...

I think there are far more people talking about RPGs than are actually playing them. This is not a new or revolutionary take, I'm just feeling it more after diving in to a different game for a few weeks. People comparing builds, people doing a bunch of math comparing classes to each other, people running the monster numbers in similar ways ... it feels like pointless electron burning to me most of the time because most of it occurs in a featureless clean-room situation with no campaign details of note. Stuff like "this dragon is a poor opponent for a party of 8th level PCs because it's AC and damage output are under-spec for what's expected at that level". OK, sure. Is there a lair involved? Offspring" Worshippers? A mate? A river of bubbling lava flowing through it's rest chamber? Does the party have a sword of dragon-slaying?  Does the dragon have some magical trick or effect that makes it immune to normal weapons? Does it speak? This kind of stuff is mostly ignored in these mathematical exercises which brings me back to wondering  - what's the point? 

If you love the game, maybe it's D&D 5.5, is this all you have to say about it? Is it what you want to focus on? Anyone with the books or PDFs can run the math on these things - it's not hard. What about your campaign? What's the setting? What's going on there? How many people are playing in it? What kinds of characters do you have in your group? Is there something going on you've never seen before? Tell me about the special parts - the math of the game is not the special part!

It just feels like so much energy is expended on stats, product announcements & debates, rules talk, edition talk, and balance yet far less is spent on things coming out of actual play in actual campaigns. You know ... the thing we're all trying to do with this mass of paper & words & possibly electrons.

A wizard, a warlock, and a sorcerer debating who is breaking the game this week

I can say digging into DCC conversations there are no balance debates about a new warlock subclass and whether it's free zap power should be 1d4+1 auto-hitting or 2d4 with a hit roll. There's very little complaining about monster damage or AC or hit points. Questions about encounter balance tend to be coming from people new to the game who are coming over from 5E and similar games, not from people already playing the game. The atmosphere and mechanics of the game help point out that not everything a party encounters is meant to be defeated in combat by using character powers. This leads to some interesting situations and some creative thinking, moreso than I typically see in more modern games. I've seen PCs run away, set up traps and ambushes, use the environment, and generally just engage with the game more, beyond doing some math and burning some metagame resources. 

Now I'm not going off into some one-true-wayism here. I'm just enjoying a refresher course in why these games work for many people. By all means, if a game tells you that balance is tremendously important and gives you an elaborate mathematical framework to ensure it, then it really should should work. If it doesn't then the company should be griped at for it - the later D&D 3E Monster Manuals were notorious for violating their own monster creation rules and there were people whose main claim to fame in the forums was going through and checking the math on every monster as the books came out. If that gives you some joy then hey, that's cool, but hopefully you're also using them in your campaign while you do this. I can read the monster entry myself - if it looks interesting I'll end up using it somewhere. If it looks boring I probably won't - the math doesn't really affect me one way or the other because I don't care that much about theoretical balance in a roleplaying game!

I don't get too caught up in edition debates for say, D&D, because I've run and played every edition and I've had fun in all of them! Balance and edition-warring is not really a thing that comes up at a table during a game in my experience. It mainly shows up in online forums. 

Even newer but say, less "rules-heavy" games tend to fall into that old-school side of things. If you don't have a detailed skill system then tasks tend to be resolved fairly quickly and you don't have endless debates about the utility of various skills.  

Classless games avoid some of this as well - a lot of the Traveller discussion I see is more about the setting, its technology, and interesting situations than it is about "builds" and balance. 

Maybe "were mad" ...

Savage Worlds does this too - discussion tends to be more settings, using tests and tricks in play, and "would you allow this" type questions than rules. I mean there are rules questions but they tend to be from new players trying to figure out initiative, arcane backgrounds, bennies, and shaken vs. wounds ... so many questions about "shaken" ... the single most misunderstood part of the game for the last 20+ years.

The last thing I'll point out here is that games (like a lot of OSR games) where there is a real threat of character death do tend to play differently as well. Aside from all of my other takes up there, Feeling like their pc is vulnerable makes a huge difference with the players I know. Low level D&D in most versions, most OSR games, DCC, GURPS, Traveller, and Savage Worlds all have some of that feel because even an experienced character in those latter games can die with a few bad rolls of the dice.

So hardcore they named a station after it!

Anyway that's enough ranting for today. Crossing the streams by sampling the online discussion around some different games sent me down a rabbit hole so I thought I would share. Tomorrow: 40K talk, where balance is never a topic of debate.

See it's a cloud giant because I'm shouting at ... oh never mind ...

My RPG List Ten years On - 2016 vs. 2026

 

I keep track of my RPG and miniature purchases as I go each year and I have done this for more than a decade. I was updating my list for this year and it occurred to me I ought to go look at what I was buying and what I was playing and compare it to now plus mix in some hindsight.

What I was playing:

• The year started off with some Marvel Heroic
• Most of it was spent running my Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous campaign into the ground
• Lots of talk about the new Savage Worlds Rifts books that were getting Kickstarted back then. Lots of Savage Worlds talk in general from cards to using it with different settings.
• Managed to work in some Deadlands and some d6 Star Wars
• Later we managed to work in some FFG Star Wars
• Holiday time meant it was time for the Time of Crisis in Mutants & Masterminds!

It's funny that it took me ten years to finally finish Time of Crisis - at least it was with a couple of those same players! Otherwise this year it's been playing DCC and then hopefully in a bit it will be back to some Savage Worlds. I do have some consistency I guess even a decade later.

Miniatures-wise it was Eldar ... so much Eldar. This was the year I built what is still the core of my Eldar army.

What I was picking up:

• Perhaps not surprisingly it was a lot of Savage Worlds stuff
• There was also quite a bit of Pathfinder
• A fair amount of d6 Star Wars
• A little FFG Star Wars - they were still putting out new material then
• Some Mutants & Masterminds books
• Some DCC books and dice
• A few 5th edition items

It is good to see that most of what I was adding was being driven by what I was playing or thinking about playing. This year was effectively the end of that Pathfinder campaign as it just ran out of gas after 3 + years. I officially ended it in January 0f 2017.  Both Star Wars games and M&M and Deadlands remained intermittent occasional games for years.

For 2026 so far it's been a few DCC books, catching up on some 5.5 D&D books, and then weirdly picking up some old GURPS books. I don't know exactly what bit me there other than some long talks with Blaster about old school non-D&D grittier systems where I mentioned GURPS as a very different flavor of fantasy campaign compared to modern D&D. I then went to look for it on my shelf and at some point, maybe in a move, I lost half of my old GURPS books - I didn't even have an old 3rd edition core book anymore. So I went on a tear for a bit here recently filling in some of that stuff - you know Magic, The Grimoire, High Tech, Ultra Tech, Supers, a core book or two. They are not particularly pricey especially if you can find several of them in a lot and I wanted them back on the shelf.

Considering how much of what I am doing now is similar to (or the same damn thing) I was doing then I guess I can claim a "consistency" medal. Some might whisper "stuck in a rut"* but I prefer to think of it as being at a point in my life where I know what I like and I prefer to spend my time there. I still do a little exploring now and then. We try new games via one-shots or short limited campaigns, get a consensus on them, and then either put them aside or consider them for a bigger campaign down the road. I see people online struggling to find people and places to play - well, I have time, a place, and a group of friends that are interested so let's spend most of that time playing stuff we like. It makes sense to me, anyway.

* Considering the number of games I've run and played over the last few years it's a pretty wide rut.

Midsummer RPG Action

 

Things have been on hold for a few weeks while I was touring the local hospital but we are finally getting back in the saddle today with more Dungeon Crawl Classics. We're all level 1 and whoever survives will likely make it to level 2 after tonight which will be about as far as any of us have gotten in this game. it is a lot of fun regardless. 

One of the interesting things that has happened is something I wish for anytime I bring up a new (or old) game with the crew. We played it as a one-off that I ran a while back. The group kept talking about it occasionally as we played through Time of Crisis and as we finished that up and started looking at the next round we decided to play some DCC before we started up the next longer campaign with Necessary Evil. Plus we decided to have Variable Dave DM it so I could play for a bit. It has really hit something with our crew as there's a lot of talk about the openness of the old school approach compared to all of the modern versions of D&D and I am happy to hear it. 

One example here being the "Mighty Deeds of Arms" ability of the fighter which lets a character pull off a cool move with a combination of a good die roll and coming up with a relevant stunt. It replaces all of the cruft around Disarm, Bull Rush, Shove, and more - all of those nifty fighting man/swashbuckler type moves that get tangled up in overly specific rules and feats and skills and class abilities in the more recent versions of the game. There is a defined mechanic associated with it, and one does get better at it as one levels up, but it's one mechanic followed by suggestions and examples of what one could do with it rather than a discrete list of all the possibilities. It's a great approach and it does work in play. 

It's been liked enough that we are probably going to run up through 3rd level and then pause to start Savage Worlds with an eye towards dropping the DCC option in here and there over the rest of the year. I'm going to be looking for some obvious break points where we could take a session or two to sidetrek into some weird adventure before going back into supers-land. It may not be viable but it's worth trying out and it would be good to keep some system familiarity alive for a while.

Anyway that's where things stand here at the moment but there is definitely more to come. 

40K Friday - Armageddon Updates

 

I found myself forced to the sidelines here for most of June thanks to some hospital time - there's a first time for everything! - but I am getting back into the swing of things. I'll focus on the miniature stuff today and talk about the rest in another post.

I did manage to order and receive the new big box set while I was entangled. It's good but I do have some comparisons and some thoughts. On the marine side - there is always a marine side with these - it's not as exciting as the past few sets. 

• 8th edition brought us the initial wave of primaris stuff which were all new models and units, even if some of us were not entirely thrilled at this approach to a marine update.
• 9th edition (Indomitus) brought us some cool characters and new units which were pretty well-received:
• 1 Primaris Captain (Sword and shield captain)
• 1 Primaris Lieutenant (Pistol and shield lt.)
• 1 Primaris Chaplain (first primaris version)
• 1 Judiciar (new character type)
• 3 Bladeguard Veterans (new unit)
• 1 Bladeguard Ancient (new character type)
• 3 Outriders (first primaris bikes)
• 3 Eradicators (new unit)
• 10 Assault Intercessors (first primaris assault marines)
  
  Nothing here was a straight-up rehash of an existing model or unit. They all either brought things into the new Primaris Era or added interesting new options, or both. It was a great box.
  
  
• 10th edition (Leviathan) was another great box full of new or newly-primaised units:
• 1x Captain in Terminator Armour: new upsized version of a popular character type
• 1x Librarian in Terminator Armour: ditto
• 1x Lieutenant with Combi-Weapon: yet another primaris lieutenant but with a new ability
• 1x Apothecary Biologis: Not a normal apothecary and with some useful abilities
• 1x Ballistus Dreadnought: New type of dreadnought
• 5x Terminators: Upsized to fit the new scale but otherwise the traditional squad we all know and love
• 5x Sternguard Veterans: upsized version of a popular squad type
• 10x Infernus Marines: a new squad (or two) of flamethrower specialists 
  
  So there was not as much pure new stuff in this one but it was still well received because of the new terminators and dreadnought. This was also the "shooty" batch of marines to balance out the melee-heavy group from 9th. 

Old non-primaris Librarian

• For 11th now though it's a little different. This one is not mainly ranged or melee it has more of a balance of the two but it also has the first duplicates of existing primaris units which is not really anything anyone was crying out for:
• 1x Captain with Relic Shield: It's another sword & board marine captain ... we just had one of those in the 9th edition starter set. I like it but it seems a little soon to do another one.
• 1x Librarian: This is another walking-normal-power-armored libby and while I love the pose - a callback to a prior librarian model - there is an existing primaris librarian that hasn't been out that long. 
• 1x Chaplain with Jump Pack: I've loved the idea of the jump-chaplain since the RT days and one of my first "finished" models was an old metal chaplain with an old metal jump pack. This guy looks good and I'm happy to finally have one officially updated to the newer scale.
• 1x Ancient: We just had an ancient in the 8th edition box - granted that's not new - but there is also one available in a standalone character box and another one available in the "company heroes" box and probably a few others I am forgetting. Did we really need another ground-ponding banner guy in normal power armor? 
• 10x Intercessors: This is where it really feels like filler. Sure every box like this needs some basic shooting marines - though 9th didn't and 10th didn't so much - but these look very much like what we already have and they have no special loadouts or new equipment options. They have a few different pieces here and there like a helmet or a breastplate but we had the first intercessors in the 8th edition box and then we had the multipart kit later in that edition and those intercessors have been packed into many if not most of the combat patrols and battalion boxes and starter sets ever since. No one playing today lacks basic intercessors. I know this unit was expected but it feels dramatically uninspired.
• 5x Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs: They're fine but the old Vanguard Vets were know for versatility and having options for a bunch of different melee weapons. Now we may lose that in this edition (like we did in 10th on the old kit) but even if we do from a modeling point of view "everyone has a power sword" feels a little dull. I think we are all hoping the inevitable new multi-part kit will have more choices.
• 3x Eradicators with Heavy Bolters: Sure, ok. Eradicators came out with the 8th box with melta weapons and heavy bolters are pretty widely available in a marine army but they might have some utility. Their special rules are kind of ridiculous. The models do look good so I'll give them that.
• 1x Land Speeder: This is the one I like the best. I was always a fan of the Land Speeder going back to my metal RT speeders and I was disappointed to see the basic super-versatile model disappear awhile back. The heavy speeders felt like they were a little much for a fast scout and strike vehicle. This one though is a genius creation coming in a smaller size more like the old versions and packing all of the weapon options onto a single chassis! I think this is a great unit that almost any army can use and I plan to end up with multiples of them.

New Librarian! What a refreshing new design!
(I do love this pose for these guys though)

• The only really new thing here is the speeder with half credit for the eradicators. The chaplain and vanguard vets are a scale update and everything else is a new primaris update of an existing primaris model. There's a reason people were calling this part of the box "boring" and they are not wrong.

The Xenos half of the boxes has usually been interesting at least:

• 8th edition gave us a major Death Guard refresh that gave us updates to old models and a bunch of new types, expanding the army to the point it became its own force with a separate codex for the first time. It was a very cool set. Maybe someday I will finish painting mine ...
• 9th edition gave us a major Necron update with refreshed warriors and scarabs and some characters both new and refreshed, and a new unit type. It was great for them and I did manage to finish painting mine a couple of years ago.
• 10th gave us a major Tyranid refresh with some redesigned models and a bunch of new ones, units and characters alike. It was also a great set and no, I have not even finished building mine. 

Now for 11th the OpForce is Orks and it is a big refresh for them too:

• 1 Warboss: An important unit in an Ork army and as much as I love the previous version it has been a while. This guy looks great and he's a fair bit bigger (on a 50mm base now) plus we know there's a multipart kit coming too so we will have some good options here.
• 1 Bannernob: Orks have had these for quite a while (they were metal before) but they pulled them out of the list in either 9th or 10th. This unit looks good and thankfully means we get our banner unit back in the army list.
• 1 Bigboss: These have been gone for a while too but they were a well-known unit a few editions back. Glad to see him return and fill the "Ork Lieutenant" niche.
• 1 Painboy & 1 Grot Orderly: We do have models for these already but it has been awhile since they came out. Still not sure about the look but at least if you want more than one the old and new should mix together fairly well. 
• 1 Weirdboy: Not a big fan of this mini but at least we do have a new model. 
• 20 Ork Boyz: Well, they had to be in this box and they do look good. Not sure how customizable they will be as I haven't started in on them yet but more boyz is not a bad thing.
• 10 Gretchin: OK, sure. Did they really need to be in the big box though? I know the whole thing is a tribute to the 2nd edition starter set but I feel like these could have been something more interesting and I don't know of any Ork player that lacks for grots.
• 1 Wartrakk: This ... yes! A longtime staple of Kult of Speed lists finally returns after a few editions away, and it looks amazing! I've already ordered a couple more and dug my old ones out of storage.
• 1 Big Mek Dakkarig: The one truly new unit here. I had mixed feelings about it on first sight but it has grown on me. It leans heavily into the dakka side of things with limited melee capability but that may be OK. It looks a lot like a looted and upgunned imperial guard sentinel but I think I'm ok with that too. It's supposed to be driven b a Big Mek but it has no repair or leadership type abilities, just a 5+ inv save to represent a force field of some kind I suppose. It's taken a while for me to warm up to it but now I think I do like it.

Now to build it all. It's going to take a while but hopefully I can get the parts I like built and basecoated and into action soon. 

40K Friday: More Orks

 

Progress was slow this week but I have another Grey Knight Terminator squad almost ready to go in the case. I'm still fighting the stupidly fiddly nature of the "almost done" model where the last 10% of finishing it takes as much time as the entire process before that. It's why getting to that clearcoat & flocking stage feels so good.

Most of the time however went to Orks. I am trying to maintain focus on them right now. There is some finishing happening here too - mainly the Morkanauts - but there is a fair amount of building happening too as I try to finish out stuff they should have had years ago. The goal is to get it to a certain point and then see what the new edition brings, knowing full well I will still be building as the new edition starts too. 

They look good painted up - this one is obviously not mine

The other wild idea that has crept in is the one I mentioned last time about a potential Blood Axe force in half track-ish looking vehicles. It's been in my head for a few years now as the ork battlewagons look like a half track of some kind if you leave off the top. Some head-swaps for the boyz riding inside and suddenly we have a old-school-looking new force using mostly stuff I already had. I might throw in some of those new guard vehicles as trukks and a looted Russ or three as tank support. It would be far more sensible to not do this and instead roll it all into either my Goffs or my Evil Sunz but I'm really feeling this as it's own sub-force that I could use on its own or team up with other parts.  

I mean it -is- a halftrack technically anyway already!
(Imagine this in a kind of camo grey scheme) 

So now the question really is do I compile the parts to do this but save it for later once I have finished more of the stuff I have started? Or do I work some of it in too and just make a mess of it - though it would still be "working on orks" which at least sounds better than switching over to Guard or Dark Eldar or something else. 

More to come.

May RPG Action

 

With Variable Dave running his DCC interlude campaign - next session this weekend - it's a weird feeling to not be the one prepping stuff. I had forgotten how much less there is to do to be ready for a game as a player once you have a character ready to go. I mean, I'm relishing the chance to just play, especially with some of my regular crew, but it is a change in perspective. I think it's good for a GM to get to play every once in a while to get a refresh on how that feels but it has been awhile since I've had the chance. Being a party of 1st level DCC characters I expect there to be some carnage but it will be fun regardless.

That said there's always some level or prepping going on - right now the plan is still to run Necessary Evil as my next campaign so I've been skimming back through the Savage Worlds rules and powers. Then I'll hit the Super Powers Guide and the NE book itself. There is a pile of RPG books on the to-be-read shelf but I'm trying not to get distracted beyond reading back through the DCC rules and the Savage Worlds stuff.

Really trying not to get distracted by this ...

It is nice to have a steady group going - we always have a game running even if we skip a week or two here and there. Consistency is hugely important to keeping a group connected. Everyone knows that the default is "there's a game Saturday night" and exceptions will be discussed in advance. For me now it's nice to know I can hand things off to someone else and play and keep things going too. 

Anyway, more to come next week.

40K Friday: Orks!

 

I am still working on the GKs part of the time - got to move a terminator squad and a dreadnought into the "done" case last week - but as 11th edition draws closer I decided I ought to take a serious look at my Orks and try to get them into shape/fill in some gaps/grab some units that may be disappearing or getting replaced soon.

On the Replacement Candidates front it matters because I like some units to fit together, to look like they go together, and while it matters less with orks than with some other armies it does still matter. I assume anything new will be bigger and a least slightly different style-wise. I like most of what I see in the new box for orks though I am not a huge fan of that new weirdboy. So if I am going to fill in some units alongside some existing units I am inclined to pick up more of the existing kits and use whatever new stuff comes out for something new. Also - parts! I am not sure that some of my alternate ork heads, for example, will fit right or look right on the newer boyz or whatever they end up doing with nobz so I need to make sure I have enough heads and bodies that are compatible with each other before these old kits go out of production. 

This guy is great, no complaints here

Right now I have a good-sized Goffs force that is the bulk of force. It's mostly infantry with walker support and I think I'm going to stick with that theme. So the first round of painting time went into improving the pair of black partly-painted Morkanauts I've had sitting around for a few years. They've been used but I've never been ready to call them "finished" so why not try to get them into that state? Plus it's a nice break to paint something orkish that doesn't come in batches of 20. A bunch of boyz, nobz, meganobz, dreads, kans, 'nauts ... i think this makes a great core ork force.

Not as crazy about this guy ... I like my weirdboys to have crazy hair, not Doc Ock tentacles

For a long time now the other part of my ork army has been an Evil Sunz force. Buggies, bikes, trukks, battlewagons - you know, vehicle heavy! There are some boyz here too, plus a unit of meganobz, and some walkers but the emphasis was on the speedy stuff shooting things up and dumping out smaller units of boyz here and there. I'm probably going to stick with that here but there are a lot of things that need to be finished - concepts are easy, building is pretty easy, but finishing things is clearly a stretch for me. 

There may be a third element lurking around now. For a long time I was thinking I might add a Bad Moons force, mostly big gunz, some lootas, probably some walkers and tanks here too, but it never really coalesced into "yes I want to do this now". Recently though I've been looking at how my official battlewagons are built and some of the custom ork heads I picked up a while back and I've been thinking a lot about a Blood Axe force. This would be 50-60 boys, possibly some burnas, packed into 3 battlewagons and then maybe a few trukks. Not sure what else yet but I'm really stuck on the visuals in my head for this and a lot of it is stuff I already have. If the Goffs are my ground pounders, the Sunz are my Recon in Force element, then maybe Blood Axes would work for mechanized infantry.

This just screams "Ork Trukk for Blood Axes" to me

Do I need this many orks? No. Would I ever let that stop me? Also no. Lord knows it hasn't so far ...

So anyway there's the update on the latest area of focus. Yes, I've jumped around a lot this year but I am actually getting things done with these armies so I feel pretty good about it. More to come!

The Perpetual Golden Age of RPGs

 

This post is driven by some YouTube stuff I saw recently but it's been  showing up anywhere people discuss RPGs - forums, social media, reddit ... everywhere. The "it" is the shocking discovery that there are a lot of other games out there besides D&D! Really? Incredible!

I know that new people come into the hobby all the time and that's a good thing. I know that D&D is the first encounter for a lot of people - which is cool, it was for me as well. I just don't understand how people could spend, say, months getting into D&D and looking into it online, and remain blissfully unaware that other RPG's exist. I mean you have to run into references to, discussions about, and ads for things like Pathfinder, right? Shadowdark? You'd at some point hear that there is a Marvel RPG, or a Star Wars RPG, or a Star Trek RPG, plus various other pop-culture relevant games too, right?

There is a similar thing with Warhammer players too when they first notice/discover/get into other miniatures games, especially other genres. "Hey did you know there are miniature rules for WW2 battleships?" Yes, yes I am quite aware and I've even played some.

I think the latest surge of this is probably due to the 5E changeover to 5.5E - an edition change is always a good place for people to jump off the bandwagon - as over the past year or two the game that so many people were attached to became less of a stable, settled thing. I suspect that 5E D&D was the only game that was big enough to support blogs, YT channels, Discord channels, 3rd party companies, and the like as far as running a single-focus channel. Even Pathfinder seems to have trouble supporting narrowly-focused media. As that monobloc is shaken up, cracked even, people start looking around and realize there are other options and the (re?) discovery process begins. 

One example: I actually played my first session of Dungeon Crawl Classics over the weekend. I've run it a fair few times over the years but I've never gotten to experience it as a player. You'll see people mention it when they find it as if it was a hot new OSR game. It's been out longer than 5E has! DCC came along in 2012 and has been continuously in print the entire time, supported by a stupidly huge line of adventures from the publisher and a pretty good pile of 3rd party support as well. It's cool when you see someone discover it but it's weird when they act like it's new. Sure, it's new to you, now, but it was there the whole time while you were caught up in 5th Edition.

One of the older covers - not the oldest, but it's up there

Another example where this happens a lot, at least on the internet roads I travel, is Savage Worlds. I feel like Savage Worlds might be the king of this. D&D players and groups are excited to find a game that works completely differently to D&D - although they do often struggle to grasp the mechanics - they can tell that it's a cool thing and want to give it a whirl. While it does get some coverage online there is not anywhere near the blather on this game that there is on D&D. I guess this makes people feel like it must be new - it's not! It's over 20 years old now! And it stings to say that! Because I remember when it was new and radical and we were all just figuring it out and we had the email lists and google groups to help us along! But no, SW has been around for over two decades and with a few rules tweaks along the way is still pretty much the same game now that it was then. 

You don't see much about this one anymore

I think maybe this being the first big edition changeover since the juggernaut of 5E D&D becoming a modern media centerpiece might be why so many people keep proclaiming it as "the golden age of RPGs". My beef there is with the "the". It's easily "a" golden age of RPGs but every decade has a great run of new or revitalized games that earn that title for that decade all over again. For example, what are the big games now besides D&D itself?

• For fantasy we have Pathfinder, Shadowdark, OSR games...
• In the 80's besides D&D we had Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, Chivalry and Sorcery, Pendragon, Warhammer Fantasy RP, Fantasy Hero, GURPS Fantasy, and a bunch of small press games that were tweaked versions of D&D. 
• In the 90's we had most of those plus Earthdawn, a resurgent Palladium Fantasy RPG, and possibly Torg and the various White Wolf games depending on how you want to count those.
• For Science Fiction we have versions of Traveller, a Star Trek game, a Star Wars game, Cyberpunk Red, and the various Alien space-horror games.
• In the 80's we had various versions of Traveller, we had a Star Trek game, we had a Star Wars game, we had other takes like Other Suns, Star Frontiers, Space Opera, plus GURPS Space and Star Hero and, of course, original Cyberpunk
• In the 90's we had a new Star Trek game, a new version of Traveller, a new version of CP,  and increased multi-genre weirdness like Rifts, Shadowrun, and Torg
• We have superheroes both name-brand (Marvel, Justice League) and do it yourself with Mutants and Masterminds, various FATE and PBTA games like Masks, Icons, and others.
• In the 80's we had a Marvel game, a DC game, and do it yourself games like Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, and Heroes Unlimited
• In the 90's all of those were still going with new edition and we added GURPS Supers, Aberrant, and the awesomeness of Underground to the mix as well. 
• For more universal systems I'd say Savage Worlds is exhibit A today, plus maybe the Cypher System from Monte Cook, the AGE games, and maybe even BRP making a late comeback these days
• In the 80's it was Hero, with GURPS coming along late
• In the 90's it was definitely Hero, GURPs, and then maybe BRP even then as a third. The White Wolf games were kind of a multi-genre system as time went on but not really one for playing normal people. 

Man this makes me want to drag this game out again

So RPGs have always inspired people to make something new, whether it's "like D&D except for ..." or "nothing at all like D&D". Anime is way too popular now and has inspired multiple games but even in the 80s & 90s when popular anime was mostly "robots and spaceships" we had Mekton for generic giant robot type games and Robotech for your licensed robot/spaceship game, and then BESM for everything else by the late 90's. Post-Apocalyptic games feel less popular but we have a new edition of Twilight 2000 for the rougher edges of post-nuclear life, Mutant Crawl Classics to keep the spirit of Gamma World alive, and a newer version of Rifts via Savage Worlds to keep that particular flavor of 90's cross-genre game going into yet another new decade. The more things change ...

Before the cartoons ... before the movies ... this was already a thing...

So when I hear proclamations of a new golden age I just shrug my shoulders. Sure, there may be some innovative mechanical approach. There may be an awesome new setting. That's all good but those of us who have been at this for a while have seen a lot of it before and it's weird. I do want to see the expansion and innovation continue and I want to see the next new trend but we have had interesting choices and options with RPGs since the late 70's! It's not going to stop anytime soon but it didn't just start this decade!

The last 50 years have been a Golden Age for RPGs and the fun rolls on ...

Fainting Goat's Pew Pew Returns

 

Fainting Goat is running a small Kickstarter for the latest version of their Pew Pew game  - see it here. I've posted about them before and went into the rules there but if you want a light, loose, Star Wars-ish RPG this is something you should look into. Each booklet is a one-shot adventure and there are a few of them out now already so it could be a recurring thing for your group if one goes well. I figure it would be a great game to run at a con - the right players could make it pretty memorable. It's all of $8 to jump in so if it pushes any buttons at all take a look.

40K Friday: Grinding Away at Grey Knights

 

I should probably post something about all the new rule reveals but in my experience it's very difficult to draw any real conclusions when you only have part of the picture. Sure, we've seen the contents of the big box for the new edition, and some of the new combat rules, and WarCom is banging away every day now with details on some detachments and it's a lot of fun ... but it's not enough to actually play a game of 11th and until I can do that it's all speculative and incomplete. I may put up a post about it next week but I'm still not sure there's a ton of value there. I'm watching and reading for sure but it's a little early to say one army is going to be terrible or that another will be amazing. Nobody who knows anything can talk about it yet ... so we wait. Looks like the new stuff is coming out in June so we will all get a chance to check it out then.

In the meantime ...

• Primary focus has been the Grey Knights because theoretically they are the closest to completion. As often turns out to be the case, getting them from "almost" to "done" feels like a whole bunch of work because I want it to look a certain way and until it does it is not "done". It's not quite perfectionist - I outgrew that a long time ago - but it is still amazing sometimes how much more work a "90% complete" model takes to finish. Some examples: 
  
  
  

  

  Those extra antenna things stick up just far enough and are just fragile enough to be absolute nightmares over the lifespan of a miniature trooper.

  
  
• My Interceptor squads - I had 3 completed before - took a little bit of a beating, probably in the move and while one of them was good and is now in the "done" case the other two had some weapons break (@#%@#$@$ force halberds!), some arms pop off, and those little teleport nubs on their power packs broke off on multiple models. So now I'm very slowly working through the process of matching up broken weapon heads with broken shafts, weapon arms with bodies, and figuring out how exactly I want to deal with the power pack situation. Yes, it is very tempting to just remove the remaining nubs on the broken ones and call them Strike squads but I'm trying to make it work without throwing in the towel like that. We will see if my resolve holds.
  
  
  

  

  See without the gun the piston/support plugs right into the arm ...

  
  
• My "painted" Dreadknights took a beating as well so I am fixing broken bits here as well. One that was fully painted did not have a second arm weapon - in the age before one could save some points by not paying for a second gun and just charging them into melee. In the points-less now, you might as well load them up. The problem is that adding an arm-mounted cannon is blocked by one of the many cables on these things. If you put the gun on first, the support/piston/cable plugs into it. If you do not, the thing goes directly into the arm. So now I am working out what I have to cut to do the last damage to the paint and still get it on there. Of course I also need to paint the gun too. Cut and reposition the support? Cut off half of the gun? I may just give up and say there's an invisible incinerator there and not cut or paint anything.
  
  
  

  

  ... but to attach the gun that same support plugs into the gun - which is tricky to do when it's already there.

  
  
• The Paladins and Terminators - <sigh>. The variable number of these guys in a squad has kind of turned into a pain because I have multiples but some are 3, some are 4, and some are 5. You can still use them that way in 10th edition, but I know there is a big reset coming for the GKs in 11th and I hate to do work that won't matter in six months. Of course, that could apply to the whole army so who knows? I'm getting to the point now where I'm just going to finish them up in whatever numbers they are in and build some new 5-man  squads to try and be ready for the redux. My concern is that even if they leave most of the army structure intact - no guarantees there - that they might get weird with say, Paladins and put them in 3-man squads. There is no assurance that all of the current squad types and character types and vehicles will say as they are or even stay in the army at all so it's probably pointless to try and pre-game this stuff. Ah well, one of the perils of trying to update an older army going into a new edition. It will all be playable in older editions so that's my ultimate refuge I suppose. 

Anyway I'm working through this stuff and will hopefully finish soon. I have started looking at my orks and counting up numbers and types because yes, they are the poster-fungus for Armageddon and I'd like to get them on the table again. I expect some model and unit updates here as well so it's another battle of "what will still be useful" for the new edition - I'll talk about that next time.