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

[emeraldstreak]

By and wide contemporary systems aren't as crunchy as early 2000s systems. Whether this made the latter better or not is subjective.

[FaerieGodfather]

I really only like roll-under in Alternity. Anywhere else, it just reminds me that the scale of the game is limited.

[Silva]

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

Are you saying Runequest already did what PbtA does now back in the 70s? If so, I tend to disagree. I would say the game that did more or less what PbtA does back then was Pendragon, with it's enforcement of genre tropes and situations.

And I don't say that to ditch RQ, as it's one of my fave games.

[MeeposFire]

I straddle this.

I really like playing pre 3e D&D which I tend to lump together. D&D (in its many variations), AD&D 1e, and and AD&D 2e are all separate games and they all have slightly different mechanics but they share a LOT of mechanics and you can easily swap stuff between the versions (as an example I accidentally used a module from D&D with my mishmash of 2e and 1e AD&D group without even knowing it though I did wonder what the deal was saying elf level 4 and the like at the time).

Why I like it is the relative simplicity of it all. I also oddly enjoy being able to not care about stats so much since unless you have very high or low stats in AD&D it often does not make much of a difference. A 17 str is just +1 to hit and damage for example. It allowed me to play very effective fighters who had their highest stat in intelligence and that stat was an important part in how effective he was.

Now I also really like 4e D&D due to how the game works especially in regards to teamwork. Getting a group with a fighter, warlord, bard, and other classes was just a lot of fun. The game is also easy to run and easy to design adventures which was a big plus.

I am also enjoying 5e which sort of the middle ground between 4e and pre 3e D&D.

The only version of D&D which I have no niche for and really do not play anymore is 3e. While I am willing to play 3e I have sworn off DMing it anymore. The amount of fun I get from being a DM in 3e is completely eclipsed by the amount of work it takes for me to make a good game. 4e gives me a tactical gaming experience, AD&D and the like scratches my nostalgia itch, and 5e gives me a good easy to play game. I just have no niche for 3e anymore so I do not play it. I used to be into creating characters (in many ways building characters was more fun than actually playing the characters) but now I get so annoyed since in order to play my preferred characters (weapon users) you have to choose your way to game the system to make them work (if I lose almost all of my offense because I moved 10 feet I consider that character not usable anymore) and I am really sick of the most common ones such as charging.

Not sure what that makes me. I suppose I like the feel of older games but I do like newer games especially if they bring something important and new to the table (such as tactical combat in 4e).


I am also playing Battletech lately and I am having a love annoyed relationship to it. I enjoy the mechanics that let you take apart your enemy but at the same time I get annoyed by the amount of rolling the game forces you to do for everything. Rolling a bunch of SRMs that are about to potentially crit is awesome but also a pain in the butt to get through. Looking at the forums for Battletech I am not alone in that regard in liking what the older rules bring to the table but also getting annoyed that they feel full of clutter and more rolling than we may want. On the whole very happy but still kind of wish it did not take as long as it does.

[Florian]

Classic BT is a curious case. The detail level is excellent and it mostly doesn't contain complexity for complexities sake (outside Tech III and Experimental Tech level, which are optional), but that also makes it cumbersome to handle.
Fully adapting it to a digital platform would add speed to the game-play, but at the same time reduce the transparency of following up each and every salvo, track heat, ammo and armor / critical hits, which are a main component that this game is so damn good. Reduced complexity models like Alpha Strike miss the mark because of that.

It´s been a while since I last played a full scenario, it´s been nearly two decades since I've last played a full contracted Mercenary campaign with all that entails.

I´m a die hard Liao fan and my last 2 Lance match fielded... Two Gûns. The rest were (stealth) tanks (Pixiu), troop carriers (Zhan), some Amazon battle armor, field-towed guns, gun trailers (Arrow IV), artillery (Heavy LRM crawler, Arrow IV assault Vehicle, Tufana Hovercraft), VTOLs (Aeron Strike VTOL), mines, more artillery, much more infantry, (stealth) inferno bombing runs and a slew auf auxiliary vehicles, from scouting buggies (Kruger, Savannah Master), to M.E.S.H. to refueling and rearming stations (and a Teppô Support Vehicle).

... all that against two very conservative FedSuns Lances....

My kind of game, but god damn!, it took ages. Personally, I think that kind of app that you could enter the whole starting arrangement and that keeps track of the individual unit status and can be used to make the die rolls would be a boon there.

[Willie the Duck]

Are you saying Runequest already did what PbtA does now back in the 70s? If so, I tend to disagree. I would say the game that did more or less what PbtA does back then was Pendragon, with it's enforcement of genre tropes and situations.

And I don't say that to ditch RQ, as it's one of my fave games.

RuneQuest was rewarding people for using their skills, which is what Burley said. I do not know if or how that ties to PbtA (is that what Monster of the Week uses?).

[Cluedrew]

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

But if you want simple rules, in Powered by the Apocalypse can usually play the game off the character sheet and the reference sheet. I would call that pretty simple.

Then again what is on those sheets is really hard to memorize because outside of the roll ranges (-6, 7-9, 10+) every move is pretty much custom made and has a its own text to be understood. At least in the better Powered by the Apocalypse systems. But it is easy to look up so I find this "dense" complexity easier to deal with than "broad" complexity that most other rules heavy systems use.

To Willie the Duck: I'm not sure about rewarding skill in general, but most Powered by the Apocalypse systems cover a lot of ground and tend to have only one or two options to be good at a thing. And picking both is usually allowed and the best way to be good at a thing. Tends to be more about expression than mastery.

[Drascin]

Oh heck no. By and large, the newer systems have significantly more thought put into them, and so many more years of meta-analysis to draw on have helped focus a lot more on delivering the kind of experiences that the authors have in mind.

[Telok]

Newer systems probably are. New versions of old systems tend to bring along piles of baggage and may or may not keep what made the old systems good.

Unfortunately I can't speak much to truely new systems (save perhaps 4e D&D which was good at it's style of combat and didn't seem to really do anything else) because I have to bully, bribe, cajole, and trick the players around here to get them to even try anything but a D&D 3.p derivative or a WotC flavor of the month.

[Silva]

RuneQuest was rewarding people for using their skills, which is what Burley said. I do not know if or how that ties to PbtA (is that what Monster of the Week uses?).

Some PbtA reward xp for failed rolls (Monster of the Week, Dungeon World) to incentivate players to take risks. I don't really see similarities to Runequest in this respect, as the later "improve through use" philosophy has more to do with realism/verisimilitude.

[Rhedyn]

My favorite RPG content is new, but I almost prefer every older edition of D&D to the current one, and all the new-age storyteller games don't jell with me.

[Cluedrew]

Newer systems probably are. New versions of old systems tend to bring along piles of baggage and may or may not keep what made the old systems good.

That might be true. Actually the most common favourite edition* seems to be second. You can make improvements but it seems hard to do that for long without shifting the game's focus or losing sight of what the game was about.

(save perhaps 4e D&D which was good at it's style of combat and didn't seem to really do anything else)

I've said it before and I will say it again: 4th is the best designed edition of D&D. They were just designing something most people didn't want.

* Although considering the sub-forum we are on that is probably biasing things somewhat.

[HouseRules]

The joke is the Doctorate Effect.
A game only last 10 or so years before it becomes difficult for new comers to join because all the players have Doctorate Degrees (I mean 10+ years of experience and expectation).
Ten Years is a long time that allow many house rules and implicit assumptions that new players cannot catch on easily.

Ten is not exact. Sometimes, only 8 years, and other times as long as 4 decades.

[Florian]

save perhaps 4e D&D which was good at it's style of combat and didn't seem to really do anything else

D&D 4E might be the best-designed D&D there ever was. There are more or less two problems:
- The split between PHB and DMG. The PHB only contains tons of mechanics, but didn't manage to explain how the game itself is going to be played. So players did make some assumptions based on what they saw, quite often in combination based on their experience with 3E.
- The designers created it with their own experience with and understanding of D&D in mind, which was basically grounded in AD&D 2nd. The same thing already happened before with 3.0E. But they didn't manage to express what their understanding of D&D is in the DMG, apparently expecting that everybody will know it once they see it.

Anecdotally, I ran two different groups through the same module. The first group started with 3.5E and were quite frustrated that things didn't work as they expected them to work, the second group started with AD&D 2nd and didn't make the switch to 3E, they had a blast as things worked as they were expecting them to work, just more and better so.

[LibraryOgre]

Anecdotally, I ran two different groups through the same module. The first group started with 3.5E and were quite frustrated that things didn't work as they expected them to work, the second group started with AD&D 2nd and didn't make the switch to 3E, they had a blast as things worked as they were expecting them to work, just more and better so.

Funnily, I played in mixed groups... me, the ODB, and the rest of the folks, who got started in 3.x (not even 3.0, the whippersnappers). I would agree that I adapted a lot better to the changes.

[Florian]

Funnily, I played in mixed groups... me, the ODB, and the rest of the folks, who got started in 3.x (not even 3.0, the whippersnappers). I would agree that I adapted a lot better to the changes.

Not to sound denigratory, but that seems to be quite common with folks who entered the hobby via 3.5E. They are not very flexible and lack the broad interest and experience that some of us ODBs show by trying out various systems and styles.

[LibraryOgre]

Not to sound denigratory, but that seems to be quite common with folks who entered the hobby via 3.5E. They are not very flexible and lack the broad interest and experience that some of us ODBs show by trying out various systems and styles.

I wouldn't go there, myself, as I know a lot of other ODBs who get extremely uptight at the suggestion you play a game different than their preferred version. I mean, there was an entire message board who called 3.x "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named".

[HouseRules]

5E is very weird in the timing of release as in it is too early.
5E over-emphasize the weakness of 4E.
4E was not managed well, and it releases books too fast that players cannot catch up to the content.
4E is like the old school more than 3E in that it has rules for combat exclusively because players should know how to role-play.
3E social skills like diplomacy, gather information, spot, listen, search, and many others screwed player's role-playing capability, but it creates fairness.
3E prefers fairness over Dungeon Master's discretion, and we call that fairness character skills.

Character Skills and Player Skills are mutually exclusive most of the time.
Too Much Information on a Character could drown away Player's Creativity on Role-Playing Actions.

[emeraldstreak]

If crunchy = sheer breadth of options and height of synergetic power ceiling, then 3.X > other DnDs.

This isn't true just for DnD-verse, eg. Exalted 2.X towers the same way over the WoD-verse. Both are 2000's systems, while presently we're almost in the 2020s.

Nowadays it's either "lite" versions of the popular games which focus more on the core experience of playing said games, or cool new settings with the majority of the system forever crammed in the corebook due to lack of system-notable splats.

[oxybe]

Depends.

Focusing on D&D, depending on the type of game I would feel like running I could swing between 2nd, 3.5 and 4th eds.

horror or survival type games would benefit from the more barebknes and lower power, as well as relatively simple task resolution of 2nd ed.

action oriented games and those focused on big damned heroes style of play thrive in 4th ed.

3rd ed is more of a sandbox toolkit to do whatever you want, so those games fit well in that generally unrestrained system.

On the other hand, we played a Call of Cthulu campaign (7th ed) and from my understanding, CoC is far more of an iterative system, where the newer system doesn't try to reinvent the wheel but make a better wheel, and it does feel like an older game, even if the system is technically newish.

On the whole I prefer newer systems in theory, but my preferences also don't like the low-crunch/storygame focus of many newer games so it's a bit of a complicated answer. I like that we can take advantage of 40 years of development, now if only we would develop something that I liked with it, lol.

[Willie the Duck]

Some PbtA reward xp for failed rolls (Monster of the Week, Dungeon World) to incentivate players to take risks. I don't really see similarities to Runequest in this respect, as the later "improve through use" philosophy has more to do with realism/verisimilitude.

Um. Okay. I guess I don't see the motive as a primary concern when specifically looking at the question of whether something is new or not. Re-purposing for new goals is a time-honored tradition.

I wouldn't go there, myself, as I know a lot of other ODBs who get extremely uptight at the suggestion you play a game different than their preferred version. I mean, there was an entire message board who called 3.x "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named".

It's hard to disentangle that sentiment and how it might relate to ODB flexibility from the sense that a lot of them (including, yes, the guys on the 'TETSNBN' board) that they are under threat (of being called relics for liking this old thing, I guess).

[ZorroGames]

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

Since 1973 I find 5e D&D best but looking at TOR and AiME for getting wife back into FRPGing.

So, in a general sense, very clearly No but some nostalgia for some aspects of 0D&D and AD&D/1st edition.

[Narmer]

I prefer older systems. Moldvay Basic, Classic Traveller with a few newer games that fall into the lighter end of the spectrum like Barbarians of Lemuria.

[kyoryu]

Some of each?

For D&D, I'll take old-school (Moldvay, 1e) over the other stuff. I'd like to try 5e, and I'd play 4e, but have zero use for 3rd.

I still love GURPS, though Savage Worlds seems to strike a lot of the same notes with less crunch.

BRP games still rock.

But I also love newer games like the PbtA and Fate Core.

What I really don't like is high-optimization games, especially where being effective at that optimization requires that you do counter-intuitive things. Zero tolerance for that. I also highly prefer games that emphasize at-the-table decision making over before-the-session decision making.

[Luckmann]

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

I don't want to say yes, but.. yes, kinda. Newer RPGs often seem to have an obsession with balance, and try to create formulas for interactions instead of trusting the GM to make calls, it then tries to reduce the rules complexity and ends up relying on GMs to create the scenario anyway, and emphasizes "shared storytelling"... which it then creates rules for. It then goes on to pretend to not be a game, and tries to down-play risks and lose conditions

And I don't see any inherent value in "balance", because this isn't a boardgame meant to be fair, and I believe in toolboxing rather than limits, and I prefer to see narrative-mechanical interaction rather than limitations that seem artificial, like, yes, I understand from a balance, meta perspective why Starfinder tries to limit magic items to 2 per person, but when it comes to actual play, the conceptualization of this limit continues to bother me because it doesn't make any sense. The only logic given is that magic interferes with.. magic.. but at the same time it makes no difference if I'm using one, two, three, or four magic weapons, I just can't have a magic ring and a magic belt at the same time, or a pair of gloves and a pair of boots (and let's ignore that that is 4 articles of clothing).

It is also often evident that many new designers get involved in projects where they haven't really understood or read the source material. I don't fault people for not having read Michael Moorcock or Jack Vance, but perhaps it is important that you understand their influence when you're discussing things like Alignment, Chaos/Order in Warhammer, or Vancian Spellcasting.

And it's not just the literary foundations I'm talking about - one of the best parts of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition is the career system, which is great for creating "natural" characters that evolve over a long time, taking careers that make sense to the character then and there. It is antithetical to the idea of "builds". But then WFRP3 tries to turn it all into a board game, and WFRP4 obviously didn't see the appeal of this at all.

This isn't to say that I hate new games for being new. For example, despite using a bunch of things I generally dislike, such as proprietary dies, etc., I found the Star Wars RPG from FFG extremely entertaining, and I love aspects of Starfinder (save for constantly running into annoyances and weird design decisions). And this is strictly sticking to mechanical/conceptual issues, by the way - if I open up for tonal/cultural shifts and politicizing, we'll be studying a completely different can of worms, and I'm not a fan.

Addendum: Ivory Tower game design was retarded from the start, but toolboxing wins over balance concerns any day of the week.

[Telok]

Something I've realized, a lot of the older games on my shelves have a fiction. The newer games tend to have a system.

Classic Traveller, Paranoia, Pendragon, Call of Chtulhu 3e, Champions 3e, Warhammer 1e, Shadowrun 2e, they all have one or more sets of stories within a genera of fiction that they strive to emulate or promote. Even AD&D 1e did to a great extent, a sort of Dying Earth post-apoc frontier settlement fiction. These games focus on a particular mode, style, and set of assumptions. They may not always explicitly or clearly state them, but they have a focus.

The WotC D&Ds, Starfinder, and... I know I've played a couple other more recent systems but it's late and the didn't leave lasting impressions on me. Any ways they seem to have a system, sort of a game engine, but not a fiction. They don't seem based on stories or a definite genera. They just seem to have rules for how to build characters and roll dice, and maybe a setting partially or wholly cribbed from another game.

Interestingly I have Palladium and Rifts, but I don't prefer them as games. Although Palladium has mostly been around to steal ideas from anyways. They aren't great systems. Playable with effort, but that category includes rock-paper-scissors so... And the couple GURPS splats I have are genera focused, space and horror, and get used for ideas and inspiration. But I don't have the main GURPS rulebook.

I think that I like games that have a fiction level goal and are set up to try to accomplish that. I seem to dislike games that just have a system.

[Silva]

Something I've realized, a lot of the older games on my shelves have a fiction. The newer games tend to have a system.

Classic Traveller, Paranoia, Pendragon, Call of Chtulhu 3e, Champions 3e, Warhammer 1e, Shadowrun 2e, they all have one or more sets of stories within a genera of fiction that they strive to emulate or promote. Even AD&D 1e did to a great extent, a sort of Dying Earth post-apoc frontier settlement fiction. These games focus on a particular mode, style, and set of assumptions. They may not always explicitly or clearly state them, but they have a focus.

The WotC D&Ds, Starfinder, and... I know I've played a couple other more recent systems but it's late and the didn't leave lasting impressions on me. Any ways they seem to have a system, sort of a game engine, but not a fiction. They don't seem based on stories or a definite genera. They just seem to have rules for how to build characters and roll dice, and maybe a setting partially or wholly cribbed from another game.

Interestingly I have Palladium and Rifts, but I don't prefer them as games. Although Palladium has mostly been around to steal ideas from anyways. They aren't great systems. Playable with effort, but that category includes rock-paper-scissors so... And the couple GURPS splats I have are genera focused, space and horror, and get used for ideas and inspiration. But I don't have the main GURPS rulebook.

I think that I like games that have a fiction level goal and are set up to try to accomplish that. I seem to dislike games that just have a system.

If by fiction you mean those exhaustively detailed settings from the 90s I agree with you, they're not as popular these days as they once were (though there are a bunch of those around*).

But if by fiction you mean genres and themes then I must disagree. Most books in my shelf are of the newer crop and all them are designed to explore specific genres or themes, or even actual settings but in more looser fashion/less obsession to canon and more improvisation. Ie: Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Marvel Heroic Role-playing, Blades in the Dark, Beyond the Wall, Hillfolk, Mutant Year Zero, Tales from the Loop, etc.

*See Shadowrun 6e, Eclipse Phase 2e, The Witcher, FFG Star Wars, Runequest: Glorantha, Fragged Empires, Kult: Divinity Lost, The Spire, etc.

[Telok]

But if by fiction you mean genres and themes then I must disagree. Most books in my shelf are of the newer crop and all them are designed to explore specific genres or themes...

This, but you missed something. None of your newer systems are on my shelf and I haven't gotten to play them. I may very well like some of them if I got to try them. However as I mentioned somewhere up-thread (I think it was in this thread) I don't live in a place with a large or diverse gaming community. Literally the last person I met who ran non-D&D/non-Pazio games was more than 15 years ago, probably closer to 20 years now. Since then I've been the only person who'll run anything that isn't a D&D knockoff.

My previous post wasn't "new games don't do this". It was a recognition that, of the games that can be played in my area, the older versions of the games I prefer have a focus on the fiction that the game tries to emulate or promote, while the newer versions seem to have a focus on the mechanical system and don't seem to perform as well at our tables.

[Cluedrew]

Fiction/Setting is one of those things that seem to be coming back with newer games. Actually a lot of features of old games, like rules-weight and the wiliness to leave things to the table to decide, seem to be coming back. Often (I feel, having not played a lot of different systems) with a bit more purpose. Some old games seemed to just have the first rules they thought of, newer ones (the good ones at least) seem to have learned a bit more about the rules we actually need and reduced it to that.

To Telok: I understand that, although I am making progress in convincing people to join a short campaign of a indie system I really enjoy it hasn't happened yet.

[Corsair14]

I still hold 2e ADND as the benchmark to compare to later games and it is still my favorite overall. I didn't read past the first page as I am late to this thread but someone mentioned caster vs martial disparity. True high level wizards were good, but incredibly weak at low levels, couldn't tell you how many 1st and 2nd level wizards of mine died. Martials also got troops and followers that essentially formed a line to protect said wizards and a high level fighter while useful in combat was more of a leader type character. The multiclassing options were so much better in 2e than they are in the silliness of what we have had since 3e. Pick your classes at 1st level and exp is divided between them with all the negatives and bonuses of each. It was very balanced and didn't lead to optimizing and OP characters which the current system pushes. You were gaming the game in 2e instead of gaming your character in later editions.