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.