Do you like the older RPG systems better than the newer ones?

[Morty]

Of all the old-school things people remember fondly, I have to say that XP for gold is among the weirder to me. Not that XP for killing stuff is all good either, but to me the answer is to just award XP or levels for accomplishing goals or story milestones. XP for gold perplexes me.

[BigBadHarve]

Of all the old-school things people remember fondly, I have to say that XP for gold is among the weirder to me. Not that XP for killing stuff is all good either, but to me the answer is to just award XP or levels for accomplishing goals or story milestones. XP for gold perplexes me.

It still use it, and honestly I have grown to prefer it.

For years I used the individual awards from 2nd Ed (AD&D), but ultimately find them to be a pain. XP for treasure value, XP for monsters = less for me to do as DM.

Granted, I do offer story awards too because there is merit there. But at the base level, XP for treasure and monsters is the absolute.

As to the origin of XP for treasure, that simply stems back to the notion of characters being treasure hunters, and the game was about getting as much loot as possible.

[Anonymouswizard]

[shameless self-plug]You should check out STaRS, it's set up around those principles.[/shameless self-plug]

*shoinks PWYW version without paying a penny*

Of all the old-school things people remember fondly, I have to say that XP for gold is among the weirder to me. Not that XP for killing stuff is all good either, but to me the answer is to just award XP or levels for accomplishing goals or story milestones. XP for gold perplexes me.

To be honest, I feel like 'XP for gold' was intended as goal oriented XP. Because the goal was to travel into the dungeon, get the gold, escape before the monsters notice you have the gold, and get back to town to spend it on more wenches and mead. It's also relatively easy to quantify.

Honestly, I switched to milestone XP pretty quickly, and XP/session pretty quickly afterwards, and in the system I'm working on I recommend the latter because any system for awarding XP is arbitary anyway.

[Telok]

Question for the "yes" crowd: Do you feel there is anything new systems have forgotten? Is it just a matter of it is not enough of a step up to worth learning new systems or do you feel something has been lost?

Or - as a third option - do you just like an old game despite it being bad? That's fine too. I'm not going to argue my favourite system is actually the best by any universal measure.

Forum are a big reply post. So, short and sweet version.

The games I like turn out to have more focus, they acknowledge that focus, and they talk about it.

The focus can be the style of game (Pendragon does chivalry, knights, and Arthurian legend), the style of play (Traveller pushes the characters to be scrounging about on the frontier in order to keep the ship going), or even the purpose of the system (Gurps is a toolbox of rules to build a game with).

The games also cover why they made some of the choices and rules the way they did, the purpose of that choice, and what happens if you chang that. Paranoia talks about playing zap, classic, and straight styles. AD&D DMG talks about why making caster access to new spells is difficult and expensive, and about how different stat generation affects the game. Traveller talks about why the jump drives and economics are set up the way they are and what changing them might do.

Newer versions of the games I like are generally either modest refinements with new art (don't need) or rewrites that often ignore why rules were written a certain way (don't like, often breaks things, displays a failure to learn from past mistakes).

I don't end up playing diceless or heavily narrative systems, more because my local gaming culture doesn't favor those than any personal bias. But my understanding is that those systems have been steadily improving over the last decade or two. So for those, if I get to play them, I might well prefer the newer versions.

[Willie the Duck]

To be honest, I feel like 'XP for gold' was intended as goal oriented XP. Because the goal was to travel into the dungeon, get the gold, escape before the monsters notice you have the gold, and get back to town to spend it on more wenches and mead. It's also relatively easy to quantify.

Honestly, I switched to milestone XP pretty quickly, and XP/session pretty quickly afterwards, and in the system I'm working on I recommend the latter because any system for awarding XP is arbitary anyway.

Pretty much. D&D was 'about' going into dungeons to pull out loot, so EGG made loot provide a mechanical benefit. Magic items (plus better mundane equipment, at low levels) had clear and obvious benefit, but beyond that gold was XP because it was what you were seeking. Interviews with him, plus with those who knew him, infer a response to questions like, 'what about people who don't want to make the game about getting treasure?' would be something along the lines of, 'I always figured by the time people got bored with dungeon-crawling, they'd be good enough at DMing that they wouldn't need my advice on how to build their own xp-reward structures.'

[HouseRules]

I'm pretty sure that Dungeon Gold and Urban Gold are different. The Gold needs to be recast (re-mint) by an authority; usually a local noble such as a "Village" Baronet, "Town" Baron, "City" Viscount, "County Capital" Count (Earl), "Prefecture Capital" March Lord, "Province Capital" Duke. Only by getting and authoritative figure to acknowledge that you have taken those gold from a Dungeon would give you experience points.

Crown Royal Prince are ranked Grand Duke. The Royal Princess are ranked Royal Duchess. Other Royal Princes are ranked Royal Dukes.
Crown Ducal Prince are ranked Marquess. The Ducal Princesses are ranked Marchioness. Other Ducal Princes are ranked Earl.

Among Nobility, when attaining adulthood, Male Heirs and Daughters are 1 rank lower. Other sons are 2 ranks lower.

[Morty]

To be honest, I feel like 'XP for gold' was intended as goal oriented XP. Because the goal was to travel into the dungeon, get the gold, escape before the monsters notice you have the gold, and get back to town to spend it on more wenches and mead. It's also relatively easy to quantify.

Honestly, I switched to milestone XP pretty quickly, and XP/session pretty quickly afterwards, and in the system I'm working on I recommend the latter because any system for awarding XP is arbitary anyway.

This may have worked in the past, but I'm not sure why not just replace it with "you found the treasure, you gain a level" nowadays.

[Willie the Duck]

This may have worked in the past, but I'm not sure why not just replace it with "you found the treasure, you gain a level" nowadays.

How are the two substantively different? I mean, yes, one is more granular, but otherwise they seem functionally identical.

[LibraryOgre]

This may have worked in the past, but I'm not sure why not just replace it with "you found the treasure, you gain a level" nowadays.

How are the two substantively different? I mean, yes, one is more granular, but otherwise they seem functionally identical.

The problem with that is that AD&D used XP tables for balance (not always well, but that was the plan), so if you give a mage a level at the same time you give a thief a level, you're short-changing the thief, 9 times out of 10. Making it work would require a significant rebalancing of the classes.

[HouseRules]

2E has the per hit point experience that allows combat classes to compete. Of course, instant death spells do not gain this portion of experience points, so evocation spells are better because they cause damage.

Combat Classes have Hit Points based experience.
Thief Classes have gold based experience.
Magic Classes have spell research based experience

Of course, there is partial No Experience Points For Medic in the game.

[Cluedrew]

To Grod_The_Giant, Anonymouswizard, 2D8HP, Faily & Telok: (Hope I didn't miss anyone.) Thank-you for replying to my question. I have nothing of significance to say in response to it right now. I could comment that some of the new age games are recapturing those old fashioned sensibilities. Like you can figure out how to play most of the Powered by the Apocalypse from the character sheets. I think the only thing that isn't explained there is that when they say "roll" they mean roll 2d8... 2d6, you are not rolling for HP.

[Burley]

I was a die hard d20 RPG player for a long time. I think somebody tried to introduce me to GURPS (it was a Xd6 system, I think). I almost wretched.

But, I've been running Monster of the Week, which is a "Powered by the Apocalypse" system. I love it. There's less rules, which lets my player be more focused on role-play and doing cool stuff, instead of trying to get one of the three spells they prepared to do what they want it to do. Plus, as the "Keeper" I never roll a single dice, so, everything that happens is a reaction to the players and I think they feel more in control of the game.
It feels more communal, like we're all in the same game, which I didn't realize until I stopped playing D&D that, as a DM, it felt like two different games were being played at the same table.

[1337 b4k4]

I generally like older systems because to me they strike a satisfying balance between free-form / hackable and details. Stick me on a desert island with only 3 TTRPG rule sets and I'll pick BECMI D&D, Classic Traveller and GURPS. Between the first two I could either run the game as designed or pull a perfectly workable system into any number of other settings and for the few cases where neither one of them would work, GURPS can do anything, it's just a bit crunchier than I prefer.

I find both newer systems and versions that try to lock down the rules too much (D&D 3.x for example) or go hard in the opposite direction (Fate) leave me unsatisfied. Either I feel too restricted by the system, or it just feels like something is missing. Which isn't to say I don't appreciate (or willingly steal) concepts from newer systems (Compels from Fate are a good example, gameist tokens in exchange for doing something interesting but clearly against the interests of the party). And to be fair, despite my choice of BECMI, I have described Dungeon World as "everything you thought D&D would be before you read the rules", and my current go to SF system is Starts Without Number (admittedly an old style system, but definitely a "new" system age wise).

However, one thing I do love about new systems are ones that build a system to play a specific world. Eclipse Phase is a great example of this. The system is complex, sprawling and character creation (depending on if you use the main book or the later additions) can range from headache inducing to painful. But my god does the setting invoke such incredible ideas and imagery and the rules are designed to play into that. Likewise Red Markets is an incredible post apocalyptic game that absolutely uses rules to invoke that feeling of hard scrabble helplessness. It's shameless in how it uses the rules to drive the fiction and so while it would never be a system you could transplant to a new setting, when you want to play the setting it was written for, there's no better system for it.

So to sum up I guess, broad mechanics, yes give me an old school loosey goosey but still defined system. Then give me access to pick and steal individual concepts from the decades of gaming experience we've had since those systems were written. And while I'm playing that as my main game keep pumping out setting specific systems that use the rules to push the fiction hard, so I have something cool to try out and mine for new ideas.

[Silva]

I prefer the newer systems as they're usually faster to learn and play, while delivering more of what I want at the table ( = more interesting choices, less physics simulation).

My go-to games these days are of the "Powered by the Apocalypse" family (Blades in the Dark included).

[Silva]

Honestly, I switched to milestone XP pretty quickly, and XP/session pretty quickly afterwards, and in the system I'm working on I recommend the latter because any system for awarding XP is arbitary anyway.

Are you saying this in the context of D&D default "xp per kills/loot" right? Because I see a lot of games with "XP per goals/behaviour/milestones" that work fine, and swapping those for XP/session would not have the same effect at all.

[truemane]

As to the origin of XP for treasure, that simply stems back to the notion of characters being treasure hunters, and the game was about getting as much loot as possible.

The game designers explicitly stated that the reason PC's got XP for treasure (and often more than they got for monsters) was to encourage players to find ways to overcome encounters without killing.

[Burley]

Are you saying this in the context of D&D default "xp per kills/loot" right? Because I see a lot of games with "XP per goals/behaviour/milestones" that work fine, and swapping those for XP/session would not have the same effect at all.

I like the newer XP systems a lot, especially when using small numbers. Monster of the Week has characters leveling-up every 5 XP and you get XP for using certain "class skills" and whenever you fail a role (you learn from your mistakes). It encourages people to play to their strengths and still take risks, which means PLAYER ENGAGEMENT!
It's so subtle, but it pulls everybody in, keeps them all listening for a thematic time to join the conversation/action, instead of waiting for their turn in initiative order to come around.

[Willie the Duck]

I like the newer XP systems a lot, especially when using small numbers. Monster of the Week has characters leveling-up every 5 XP and you get XP for using certain "class skills" and whenever you fail a role (you learn from your mistakes). It encourages people to play to their strengths and still take risks, which means PLAYER ENGAGEMENT!
It's so subtle, but it pulls everybody in, keeps them all listening for a thematic time to join the conversation/action, instead of waiting for their turn in initiative order to come around.

Okay, but RuneQuest was doing approximately that in the 70s, so I don't see it really as contributing to the new/old dichotomy.

[Anonymouswizard]

Are you saying this in the context of D&D default "xp per kills/loot" right? Because I see a lot of games with "XP per goals/behaviour/milestones" that work fine, and swapping those for XP/session would not have the same effect at all.

I'm saying that, for the groups I tend to be in, XP/session works well. It's not the only system I use, but when players engage in the game anyway I find the opportunity to raise a skill every session or two makes players happy. But yeah, it's generally meant to replace XP for kills/loot/milestones, but not for character goals or archetype appropriate behaviours (although in non PbtA style games I tend to find that metagame currency* work better).

For the game I'm currently planning, XP it's being awarded for: a session going by (100XP/level), the discovery of historical artefacts and their return to civilisation (XP varies depending on artefacts artefact), the completion of a character's personal goal, changes to the political landscape, and so on. Treasure doesn't give XP, but can be used to buy new skill points and languages (to make it desirable but not the end-all). Bit the game is also more of a sandbox, and I can't do explicit milestones easily.

* One of the few RPG innovations I think work amazingly well. I played two games of Mutants and Masterminds 3e, one has complications come up rarely and the read a lot of focus on the GM's pretty villains (to the point he once started complaining about not getting to read his prepared with as we'd *shock horror* decided to explore the creepy dimension we'd been teleported to. The other had a liberal interpretation of Complications because 'Hero Points are fun' and intentionally kept the main villains in the background, it was significantly more fun.

[Florian]

Do you like the older RPG systems better than the newer ones?

Yes and no.

I like clean and functional mechanics, that's why I prefer "modernized" versions of old systems. Swords & Wizardry or Adventurer, Conqueror, King (ACKS) over oD&D, Mongoose Traveller over Classic Traveller and in a sense, something like Hidden Earth Expedition (HEX) or Trenchcoats and Katanas over VtM, Warhammer Fantasy (2nd) or the Dark Heresy line over Warhammer Fantasy 1st, etc.

Personally, I find what got added to already long established franchises beyond the point of straightening out the internal mechanics most often didn't add anything beyond complexity for complexities sake. Which, honestly, added more levels and layers of problems than it solved, most of the time. Ex: While I prefer 3E to previous editions, I prefer some of the retro-clones over 3E because they tackled my problems without adding new problems.

Ok, I´m quite flexible in my approach to gaming, so I don't have the pressing need that something like The Shadow of Yesterday, Lady Blackbird or Mountain Witch has to "feel" like the stuff I've been socialized into the hobby (D&D, Traveller, DSA, CoC and such), so I also hold them in high regard.

[MoiMagnus]

I prefer newer systems, by far.

In newer systems, they are getting rid of things that were complex but not worth the complexity. (And I still think there is room for improvement). And then either they keep the system simple, either they try to add other complex concepts to it, which hopefully are more interesting to play with than the old ones.

This does not mean that I prefer every newer system to the old ones. New systems make experimentations, and they often fail.

Note that I've also come to love more and more homebrews RPGs where the rules are minimalist and specialised to the scenario.
(For example, you have a set of personality traits, a set of skills with a value, and a set of resources, everything you need to know being on your character sheet, and most of the rules being up to the DM's judgement).

[Burley]

Okay, but RuneQuest was doing approximately that in the 70s, so I don't see it really as contributing to the new/old dichotomy.

Because I can't even spell "the 70s?"
Seriously, though, the difference is in the simplicity of the rolls. RuneQuest was doing percentages for checks, where MotW has 2d6+Skill, with your success being dependent on unchanging numerical ranges.

[Anonymouswizard]

Because I can't even spell "the 70s?"
Seriously, though, the difference is in the simplicity of the rolls. RuneQuest was doing percentages for checks, where MotW has 2d6+Skill, with your success being dependent on unchanging numerical ranges.

Ah, so RuneQuest has the simpler system?

I mean seriously! What do people have against roll under systems, especially roll-under percenticles? I quite like them!

[2D8HP]

Because I can't even spell "the 70s?"
Seriously, though, the difference is in the simplicity of the rolls. RuneQuest was doing percentages for checks, where MotW has 2d6+Skill, with your success being dependent on unchanging numerical ranges.

I understand RuneQuest's (and CoC's, and Ringword's, and...) percentile system, but this 2d6+Skill thing is new, thus unfamiliar, thus suspect!

Ah, so RuneQuest has the simpler system?

I mean seriously! What do people have against roll under systems, especially roll-under percenticles? I quite like them!

I'm guessing some people are just used to high rolls = better.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm guessing some people are just used to high rolls = better.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm currently debating whether to move my homebrew system from 'd20 roll under' to 'd% roll under'. It allows me to have more degrees of success/failure without much complexity (standard, match, critical), as well as letting me very easily simplify attacks to one roll, but it's also got to deal with the smaller step size. I quite like the result though, I was already going for 'higher=more extreme' as a general rule, and this makes it easier to judge your chance of success.

[Lord Torath]

I actually really like 2E AD&D's "The Price is Right" mechanic for NWP and psionic tests: As high as you can get without going over.

As to the main question: It appears so?

I mean, yes, I like 2E AD&D better than the new stuff, and 2E Shadowrun better, and 2E WH40k better (noticing a theme here?). Part of this is because I can't be bothered to purchase and learn a new rule set when the old one works just fine for what I want it to do. But part of it is mechanics. I've read a LOT about D&D 3.X+ here on the forums, and they really don't appeal that much to me. I've played 3rd and 4th Editions of Warhammer 40,000 (not technically a role-playing game) and was utterly unimpressed. 3rd Edition Shadowrun did a few things I liked, and a bunch of stuff I didn't. Nothing I've heard about the later editions makes me think they are any better than 2E (just differently bad, as we Shadowrun fans tend to say).

On the other hand, I'm enjoying Deathwatch (not 2nd Edition, which doesn't exist), which is relatively new (okay, newer - published in 2010).

So while I'm not rabidly against anything new, it's got to be worth the time and money required to learn and master the new ruleset, or a setting/premise that doesn't work in a ruleset I already know.

[HouseRules]

0E, 1E, and 2E: Saving Throws, Weapon Proficiency, Non-Weapon Proficiency scales with To Hit Armor Class Zero.

3E and Newer: Saving Throws, Feats, Skills scale with Hit Dice (instead of Base Attack Bonus).
Maximum Caster Level Scales with Hit Dice.

Saving Throws to Saving Throws
Weapon Proficiency to Feats
Non-Weapon Proficiency and Thief Skills to Skills
To Hit Armor Class Zero to Base Attack Bonus

Pretty much many things scale with Hit Dice makes the game more imbalance. If they return to scale with Base Attack Bonus then they would have a similar balance to old school levels.

[Cygnia]

I fully admit, for non-D&D, I prefer the 1st edition of 7th Sea than 2nd. To me, it seems like I've already finished that Hero's Journey in 2nd whereas with 1st, I'm becoming the Hero. They streamlined too much in my opinion.

[2D8HP]

Yeah.

I mean, I'm currently debating whether to move my homebrew system from 'd20 roll under' to 'd% roll under'. It allows me to have more degrees of success/failure without much complexity (standard, match, critical), as well as letting me very easily simplify attacks to one roll, but it's also got to deal with the smaller step size. I quite like the result though, I was already going for 'higher=more extreme' as a general rule, and this makes it easier to judge your chance of success.

For me the "roll d100 under" system is much easier to gamemaster, as making up "percent chance of success" without extra steps is just easier.

I'm also just used to "attack" and "skill rolls" being d100 or d20 (after first dividing the percent chance by five), and "attributes" and damage being multiple d6's (for a bell curve).

BRP and "almost BRP" (Pendragon) just seem intuitive, though as a player I'm getting pretty comfortable with 5e D&D now, but just not DM/GM'ing any WD&D yet.

[LibraryOgre]

For me the "roll d100 under" system is much easier to gamemaster, as making up "percent chance of success" without extra steps is just easier.

So, something Hackmaster does is those % skills... but they also have a simple system for opposed check.

Sneak v. Listen? Roll d%, add your skill, highest total wins.