Well the #1 Up is that I'm still around to play them and a close second is that I have friends I have known since the 80's that I still play with regularly - that's important.
At times though the years catch up and I get to feeling a little cranky when I see something praised as a brilliant new innovation that has been around for most of those same decades. Over the past year or so one of the highlights has been "Shadowdark has you roll to cast spells"-OK? And? People constantly praise games for innovation that they didn't innovate.
I realize a lot of people came into D&D specifically and RPGs in general with 5E but c'mon: we've had "rolling to cast spells" in games for 40+ years. Fantasy Hero (85) had it, GURPS (86) had it, Shadowrun (89) had it and if you want a more D&D-descended game Dungeon Crawl Classics has had it since 2012! I don't expect every teenager who starts playing D&D to know the complete history of RPGs but you'd think that somewhere in the online discussion around this stuff there would be some ancient guardians of knowledge who would emerge and share some enlightenment but maybe there are fewer of us out there than I realized.
So yes a downside is that very little these days seems innovative. When I read a new set of rules I can quite often start picking out where certain mechanics came from. It doesn't make a game bad - there are a lot of good mechanics out there that work very well in an RPG and deserve to see more playing time. I'm always happy to see something I liked in an earlier system make a return in a new one.
The counterpart of this is when you see an online discussion lamenting how a game works and someone mentions how they think it could work better and, well, yeah - it used to work that way and then they changed it. For whatever reason. There was a long discussion on EN World recently about high level play in 5E D&D - mainly about how it's so uncommon - and it was mentioned that high level characters had too many options and one solution was that it would be better if lower level abilities were replaced by higher level abilities as one leveled up rather than everything being additive and just piling up.
<sigh>
Just tell me you never played 4th edition D&D - at least not for long - as this is one of the things 4E does, Starting at 13th level you replace attack powers instead of adding them. Since the game runs up to 30th level that is starting at not even the halfway point of the leveling process and yes it does solve a lot of the "pile-up" problem. If you want to make high level play work in a D&D type game 4E did a ton of good work on that. But a lot of people decided they didn't like that version - mostly without playing any of it in my experience - and so some of the really smart, innovative, mechanics go unnoticed 10+ years later.
I suppose one of my main points with all of this is that it's worthwhile to read other RPGs, even if you aren't running or playing them at the moment, to see how other people are doing things. You may see something that can be stolen for a game that you are running.
- Take Advantage/Disadvantage from 5E D&D. This is a tremendously useful concept for a looser/more casual RPG and gets rid of almost all of those wonderful lists of modifiers we used to see in older editions. It has shown up in a ton of games over the past decade and I think it could be used in more. Any game that has long lists of +1 for this and -1 for that ... ask yourself "do we really need that level of precision? Is it actually precision or just the illusion of that? What would we lose by taking another approach?"
- Besides Advantage there is 4E D&Ds approach of +/-2 or +/-5 for all modifier scenarios. A lesser condition or situation = a +/-2 and a major condition or situation = +/-5 and that's it - there are no more levels to it. Limited visibility? then it's a -2. Full darkness? It's a -5. No need to refer to charts for specific modifiers - that's it.
- Now for a bit more granularity consider mixing those two options. Minor advantages or complications = +/-2 to a roll and for a Major situation you could go to Advantage/Disadvantage. I haven't tried it this way but it might work better for some games.
I suppose that's an "up" - I've seen a lot of cool innovations with mechanics over the years. It's a "down" when so many newer players are unaware of them.
- If you think rolling for spells is a cool idea try "no levels". Traveller was the first game I played that had no levels and it was pretty damn revolutionary to see it in action the first time.
- Traveller was also the first game I played with a skill system - remember early D&D did not use skills - and that was mind-blowing as well.
- In the early days Champions was the first game I played where you didn't roll for stats. Nowadays point-buy stats are pretty common but Champions with point-buy for everything - again no classes here but points for stats/skills/powers - was again revolutionary. This was also the first place I saw advantages and disadvantages for characters. This was not rolling multiple dice but could be seen today as the forerunner of Feats in D&D terms. From having a code of honor to missing a limb to going berserk when injured it was a new way to codify a character beyond stats or skills or class abilities and make yours unique.
- The FASA Star Trek RPG was not the first but was probably the biggest game to use Action Points. Early D&D really only accounted for move, attack, or cast a spell as things you could do in a round. Champions kind of had it's own system for all of the things one could do in a round, and Snapshot was the first AP system I know of but it was a separate boardgame-type optional add-on to Traveller that not everyone had or used. Star Trek built it into the game for resolving personal combat and I loved it. Opening a door might cost 1AP, drawing a weapon 1AP, movement might be 1 AP per square, applying first aid might be multiple AP ... basically everything you could do in a round had an AP cost and every character/NPC had an AP allowance, typically based on Dexterity. it was pretty easy to adjudicate costs if something unusual came up. if you needed to arm and load a photon torpedo in the middle of a gun battle in the torpedo room maybe that's 6AP or 10AP - the GM could make a call there based on other costs and the situation. How is this relevant to today? You think Pathfinder 2E's 3 actions per round with variable action costs came from nowhere? That's a 3AP/round system in action.
This doesn't even touch on so many other "firsts" over the years - the first dice pool systems, the first fate point mechanics giving players some control over die rolls, the first time we saw templates for characters, the first abstracted chase systems ... there are a lot of games from 30-40 years ago that have directly influenced what's popular today.
The last thing to note in my rambling notes on longevity is that over the years you will see both rules and settings show up again and again and again and something to keep in mind is that games are not technology - the newest is not always the best and a new edition is not automatically superior to what has come before. Many times you will find improvements mixed with unnecessary changes. Another thing to remember is that you don't have to play the latest and greatest version of an RPG - or any tabletop game.
Rules-wise I started with Holmes Basic D&D. After that you get Moldvay B/X, Mentzer BECMI, the Rules Compendium if you want to count it as a separate edition from BECMI - that's 3-4 editions of a relatively simple early version of D&D in slightly more than a decade. Then we have 5-ish versions of what was AD&D. Plus Pathfinder 1E & 2E. Plus all of the OSR stuff like Labyrinth Lord and Black Hack and OSE and the rest. Plus offshoots like DCC. There are 15 versions of D&D type gaming rules just with what I have mentioned here. The companies that own them are not going to stop putting out new versions and other people are not going to stop riffing on those versions with their own versions.
Traveller has at least 5 versions of Marc Miller Traveler, a couple of Mongoose Traveller editions, plus a GURPS version or two, plus a d20 version. Roughly ten editions of Traveller. I doubt we have seen the last.
Champions has become the Hero System and we're on the 6th version of that unless you want to count the "completes" as a new edition in which case we're up to 7. Down the road I'm sure we will see another. At least these are fairly consistent and compatible with each other.
Shadowrun is a fairly niche game and we're on a 6th edition of that. You'd think something like that could settle out for a long edition run but like most games someone new comes in, wants to put their stamp on it, and decides to put out a new edition where you will no doubt see some innovations and a bunch of unneeded and likely unrequested changes that will not be playtested nearly enough leading to ridiculous levels of errata and FAQs.
That's another takeaway from all of this time I have spent - there is never enough playtesting. Many times I expect there is near-zero playtesting based on how quickly people find broken or nonsensical things in RPG rulebooks. A designer playing with his home group is not "playtesting" at anything approaching useful levels because they are right there to explain. Let people learn it cold, straight from your draft rulebook - and I mean multiple groups - and then you're getting somewhere.
Then we get into IP games - we've seen at least 5 versions of Star Trek - Heritage, FASA, Last Unicorn, Decipher, and Modiphius and they are all dramatically different from each other. Considering FASA and Modiphius both have second editions I suppose we are up to 7 total editions. That's a lot for one setting but Star Trek has been adding new material for most of the last 40+ years so maybe there is some need for it but I'm pretty sure you could do everything one might expect to do in a Star Trek game using FASA or Last Unicorn's rules. New aliens, new spaceships, sure - but are they really doing anything significantly different in the newer shows and movies?
With Star Wars we have 2 West End Games d6 editions, 3 WOTC d20 versions, and one (kinda) version with FFG. Again, these are radically different mechanical takes but having played them all I can say - they all work. It really comes down to personal preference for feel and what kind of support you want for a given era or type of campaign though lord knows given that it's Star Wars there is a vast array of fan-created material for all of that across all versions.
Lord of the Rings has what, two editions with Iron Crown, a Decipher edition, and then One Ring with Cubicle 7, One Ring 2E with Free League, and a 5E sidestep edition with both? So around 7 different versions? I've never felt compelled to run a LOTR campaign but I know the people that love one of these systems really love them and often continue playing them after an edition change. I mean ... it's not like the lore changed so if edition x works for you and your players why not?
Them there are the superhero licenses - we've had these for 40 years as well, mainly Marvel and DC, and a lot of them have been good. A few of them have been terrible so again, newness and a name brand are absolutely no guarantee of quality. I won't enumerate all of the versions here but superhero games tend to be pretty innovative when it comes to mechanics because they push all of the boundaries of a roleplaying game both physically and dramatically. If you want a universe-spanning campaign with time travel, soap opera drama, and ridiculous physical and mental powers along with all of the stupid technology and magic you can think of this is where you come. They're not all good, but a lot of them are and a lot of them are also really interesting even just to read - but if you get the chance try a few test scenarios at least, just to see what they can do.
I'm not even getting into things like Conan, Babylon 5, Ninja Turtles, Robotech, Battlestar Galactica, Call of Cthulu, James Bond, and other former or potential licensees here. There are a ton and they can get really niche-y - we're getting a new Invincible RPG I see. I wonder what it's going to do that you couldn't do in an existing superhero game? I guess we will see.
Again, and especially with licensed games, there will always be a new version sooner or later. Someone will come along and think they have unlocked the secret to making money with a property in the RPG space but I can promise you two things:
- It will have a limited lifespan. The deal only lasts so long or the licensing fees will increase and the publisher will have to let it go. Even if it's published in-house - looking at you here new Marvel RPG - the odds are that it will not make enough money to be worth the hassle and the line will be cancelled and eventually handed off to an outside team that will try to do it once again. So my advice is to just hope that it lasts long enough to crank out all of the supporting material you could possible want or need before it ends.
- When it ends, all of those wonderful PDFs will become unavailable to buy. because of the way licensing an IP works that's just how it is. Can you buy any of the d20 Star Wars material from WOTC these days? No. They didn't really do PDFs then but a lot of their odder D&D material is available - because they own it. The MWP Marvel stuff was all available in PDF - until a little while after they announced the end of the license - and then it wasn't. SO if a new version of one of these IP games comes out and you like it then grab it as it does because it gets trickier later.
Also many times the physical books get a lot more expensive too. Not always, but quite a bit of the time it will cost more to acquire them once it's out of print than before.
Finally there are the settings. RPG companies love to reprint setting material. Presumably it sells well but also I suspect it's because most of the work is already done. All they have to do is update the timeline if it has one that has advanced - and/or update the metaplot if it has one of those - and look, here's a book that's ready to go, barring art - and they will probably reuse some of that too. Should we be upset about that? Probably not but that means you end up buying a lot of material that you already own if you stick with a game for a long time.
Take the Forgotten Realms as an example. We have had:
- An AD&D 1E box set
- An AD&D 2E box set
- A 3E hardcover book
- Two 4E hardcover books
- A 5E hardcover book ... kind of ... and then other campaign material spread across multiple adventure books ... it's messy here.
Sure, there is some timeline advancement here so there is a layer of new history and current events added on with each one, and there are usually some new edition game mechanics included as well, but a huge chunk of each of these is pretty much what you got in the prior version.
Do you want it? Well, if you're a fan of the setting, probably.
Do you need it? Well, how much of that new stuff actually affects your campaign? Some of the mechanics, maybe. The change to which obscure god is now worshipped in Narfell? Which new continent has arisen or sunken or teleported in from a moon for this edition? The current order of battle for the Mulmaster Beholder Corps? Eh, probably not.
But with every new edition of a game a setting update will be published. In fact, you will probably get a basic overview of the setting in the main rulebook and then a separate setting book with the full story on it. I mean, would be real new edition of Shadowrun without a "Seattle 20xx" book incrementing the last one by 10-20 years?
Yes this is very much like buying a movie on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K Blu-Ray, and whatever 8K or 16K comes next ignoring side trips like Laserdisc, or a digital copy. It's the same content, possibly even the same special features, as what you bought 20+ years ago with some updates that don't really change what you are watching. It may be prettier but it's unlikely to surprise you. Vader is still Luke's dad (spoiler).
Sometimes they break things here too. A lot of people hated the 4E changes to the Forgotten Realms. A lot of people hated the Rebellion in Megatraveller splitting up the Imperium. A lot of people then hated the next edition with Traveller the New Era making the setting a sort of interstellar post-apocalyptic thing while also changing all of the rules mechanics at the same time. This did not help GDW. The GURPS version avoided it by ignoring it for one version and dropping back hundreds of years in the next. I believe Mongoose has also gone with the approach that "we are a separate timeline where none of that stuff you hated ever happened" and it seems to be working out for them.
To me it seems that the best long term solution for setting stability after the top choice of "make your own" is "pick one that you already like, pick a version of it or a time period in it that you like, and stick with that - regardless of rules changes". it will save you a lot of time and churn over the years.
Anyway that's more than enough rambling for today. I've been digging into games and systems a lot lately which spurred this epic monologue and I'm sure that drive will continue for a while longer. It's an interesting time in the hobby and it feels like changes are in the wind. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
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