Quote from: DavetheLost;1012012I spent much of the last thirty years playing stuff like Blue Planet, Metamorphosis Alpha, Tribe 8, Whispering Vault, Kult, and T&T.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1999[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Dumarest;1011743Just off the top of my head Villains & Vigilantes and Champions (1st and 2nd editions) were brief but complicated and messy sets of rules.

I see.  I never played these two games back then, my introduction to 'Champions' was HERO 4th.  Thanks!

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1011205I'd say mechanically, 2E and 1E were pretty close together, particularly compared the difference between those two editions and later editions of the game. Not saying they are identical. There are important differences. But you could easily run a 1E module with 2E (which we did all the time) and you could easily port in things like the Monk to 1E (which again, we did).

Yep, anyone who trots out the "long list of vast differences" should be subject to laughing long and hardy at their expense.

It's so simple to use 1st edition stuff for 2nd. My preferred is 2nd with a late 1st edition feel (no kits, no PO). Plays very well with the morass of problems of 1st.

Vampire The Masquerade came out in the 90s, and it was pretty good for the first nine years or so of its existence until Justin Achilli ruined the game with Revised Edition back in 1999.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011989Interesting to see people actually played and liked Indiana Jones and Conan. At some point I've owned both and after reading thought, this is a game?

The major issue people had with IJ was the lack of character generation in the core book, and that was fixed by the Judge's Survival Kit which also made the good chase rules even better. I'd say the character generation issues was the main reason the game flopped.

It was stunningly ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Chase/action scenes in that game were fun in a way that I wouldn't see again until D6 Star Wars.

This game also seems to get hit with a lot complaints that flat out aren't true. It rare to see a discussion of it without someone making spurious complaints about it. The Wikipedia page on it seems entirely built of these kind of complaints.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it says, "No formal system of hit points or determining actual character death is put forth, and instead is left to the referee as a role-play element."

The game is pretty clear: four serious wounds and you are dead. Maybe the guy who wrote it was too thick to understand a system of accumulating wounds rather than one with decreasing HP.

I remember after running Indiana Jones for a while, we tried Palladium's Road Hogs, and going from the zippy, fun vehicular chase rules in IJ to the joyless, three hour slog of RH vehicular combat was so painful.

Quote from: Willmark;1012109Yep, anyone who trots out the "long list of vast differences" should be subject to laughing long and hardy at their expense.

It's so simple to use 1st edition stuff for 2nd. My preferred is 2nd with a late 1st edition feel (no kits, no PO). Plays very well with the morass of problems of 1st.

Nobody in my gaming group picked up 2E precisely because none of us could justify buying the core books on our limited teenage budgets. It still seemed to be the same game we already had.

Quote from: Itachi;1011169Well remembered. Coincidently, I think this dark age of adventure design covered the exact period I mentioned in the OP, from mid/late 80s to late 90s. I remember some Dragonlance and Shadowrun advice where the GM is instructed to not let players deviate from the plot, and if the players insist, then "stop the game and ha e a conversation" with them.

You and I remember Shadowrun 1st ed verrrry differently. Maybe if you were dumb enough to run a module but that would be true for all games using a module.

Quote from: Voros;1011472Obviously essential in a game about playing a Cyberpunk Elf.

You'd be surprised.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1012144Vampire The Masquerade came out in the 90s, and it was pretty good for the first nine years or so of its existence until Justin Achilli ruined the game with Revised Edition back in 1999.

Not going to enter an edition war argument, but for accuracy's sake Vampire: The Masquerade 1st edition came out in 1991, second edition 1992 and the Revised edition 1998. It was, arguably, the most significant RPG of the 1990s, along with the rest of the World of Darkness line.

It has attracted criticism over the years for it's design, although when it came out in the early 1990s it was considered novel for things like picking dots-on-the-character sheet, Jungian personality mechanics and the avenues towards live action play. The actual design parameters reflected the attitude of the time that game rules and systems were secondary to setting and content - something that can be jarring to gamers from later generations who are conditioned to the notion that "system matters". The mantra in the early 1990s was that system didn't matter and should essentially be so simple and unobtrusive as to fade into the background. The most prominent design feature of the World of Darkness was the use of 'splats' to create groups of affiliation and build up some complex political overtures in the games setting, while the general layout and presentation of the books were a step up in style to what had come before in RPGs.

Over the years, where White Wolf were publishing some 50+ World of Darkness books per year, the rules and setting became increasingly complex and messy. The success of the line also brought in other pressures in order to maintain the business - hence the Revised line (essentially third editions in all but name) began in the late 90s, which in turn led to problems of edition wars and the like. The ebb and flow of the game's publishing seemed to go on six-or-so-year cycles - which accounts for the 'ending' of the original World of Darkness in 2004, to be replaced by the 'New' World of Darkness which meant there was less friction with previous editions so less edition wars, theoretically. In 2011, we then got 20th Anniversary editions (actually the 4th edition in all but name). Now we are getting a 5th edition in 2018. The cycle goes on.

I don't agree with the premise of the OP, that game design was particularly bad in the late 1980s/1990s. Some of the best RPGs ever were designed in this period. However, there were some ingrained conventions (like big skill lists, for example) that were just lazy trends at the time - and these things were often just coalesced into games over resultant new editions being made (the original Vampire in it's 1st edition being less than half the page count of the 20th Anniversary, for example). Then again, I don't see that the tendency to simply copy other game designs in the design of new games has really changed today - its just different conventions being copied. Hence we have copious numbers of Apocalypse World or Fate style games now instead of BRP or Champions style games.

With the exception of D20/3e, there were a lot of way better games being made in the early 90s than the indie (and some non-indie) garbage that was being made in the early 2000s.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1012169The major issue people had with IJ was the lack of character generation in the core book, and that was fixed by the Judge's Survival Kit which also made the good chase rules even better. I'd say the character generation issues was the main reason the game flopped.

It was stunningly ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Chase/action scenes in that game were fun in a way that I wouldn't see again until D6 Star Wars.

This game also seems to get hit with a lot complaints that flat out aren't true. It rare to see a discussion of it without someone making spurious complaints about it. The Wikipedia page on it seems entirely built of these kind of complaints.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it says, "No formal system of hit points or determining actual character death is put forth, and instead is left to the referee as a role-play element."

The game is pretty clear: four serious wounds and you are dead. Maybe the guy who wrote it was too thick to understand a system of accumulating wounds rather than one with decreasing HP.

I remember after running Indiana Jones for a while, we tried Palladium's Road Hogs, and going from the zippy, fun vehicular chase rules in IJ to the joyless, three hour slog of RH vehicular combat was so painful.



Nobody in my gaming group picked up 2E precisely because none of us could justify buying the core books on our limited teenage budgets. It still seemed to be the same game we already had.

At the time TSRs Conan RPG and Indiana Jones just seemed like cheap opportunistic crap. Keep in mind in the mid 1980s I was hardcore into crunch, Aftermath, HERO, GURPS, Phoenix Command, so some licensed games resembling pamphlets probably had no chance of winning me over.

I initially didn't even like Danger Internationals abstract chase rules at the time (coming off of detail heavy Carwars), although after giving them a chance they grew on me, and today I think they are a pretty solid set of rules. HERO would have done well to keep them in later editions instead of the cludgy vehicles are just like PCs map based rules they have used since 4th ed.

Bit of a side track, but there was an interesting Steve Jackson / HERO collaboration in the 1980s, Autoduel Champions. It had the best vehicle rules for HERO and in my opinion did a better job of combining Carwars with a full RPG than GURPS Autoduel did a few years later.  


It appears that TSR did both a Conan game as well as Conan D&D modules. I may have only seen the modules and reading reviews of them, they sound pretty bad and railroady. It also explains my thinking TSR did 2 Conan games, and hearing that the second one was better (that being the actual Conan game, not the D&D modules).

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

No, I think it sounds like you are asking people to agree with you that complexity is bad, and goals are important for an RPG system.

Ars Magica is interesting because it offers solid rules for interesting and different types of play. I'd prefer to play that to D&D, not to mention PbtA.

And I still prefer GURPS (1986) for most things.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1012032I see.  I never played these two games back then, my introduction to 'Champions' was HERO 4th.  Thanks!

I bought 1st ed Champions when it came out. We had fun making characters but I never really played it. The game seemed interesting but the supers thing never really did much for me. I really got into HERO a few years later with the 3rd ed when they were doing stuff other than Supers, so Fantasy HERO, Danger International and Justice Inc.

I couldn't say for sure 1st was a mess, but you go 1st to 3rd ed in 3-4 years? Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if there were some issues with the early rule sets. Of course 1,2,3rd ed were more additive rather than rewrites of the rules, being done in the form of Champions (1981), then Champions 2 (1982) which brought in 2nd ed, and the Champions 3 (1984) which led to 3rd ed. Espionage (1983) was the first and only non-supers game based on the pre-3rd ed HERO. Third edition properly started with a new Champions game (3rd ed) which absorbed the rules added in Champions 2 and 3, 3rd Ed Champions and and Justice Inc (pulp) came out in 1984, followed by Danger International and Fantasy Hero in 1985. Fourth edition Champions came along in 1989, and the HERO core rules marketed as a generic system came out the following year.

3rd ed was pretty solid but was a house system and not 100% compatible across the lines (but pretty close, mostly differing point values, or damage levels). It wasn't until 4th ed that the idea you had to build "everything" started to be a thing, the heroic 3rd ed games had quite a few abilities that you just bought, no worrying about exactly how it was built.

I think the real loss with 4th ed was that it was the beginning of the idea you had to build things the same way across genres, and that idea got reinforced with 5th ed. One of the neat things about the game in the early years was it encouraged building things differently to fit the genre. An anti-tank missile for Danger International would turn most supers in Champions into a fine mist, while one built for Champions was rather anemic (they are super heroes and supposed to be able to survive being hit by a missile).

Quote from: Toadmaster;1013470At the time TSRs Conan RPG and Indiana Jones just seemed like cheap opportunistic crap. Keep in mind in the mid 1980s I was hardcore into crunch, Aftermath, HERO, GURPS, Phoenix Command, so some licensed games resembling pamphlets probably had no chance of winning me over.

I initially didn't even like Danger Internationals abstract chase rules at the time (coming off of detail heavy Carwars), although after giving them a chance they grew on me, and today I think they are a pretty solid set of rules. HERO would have done well to keep them in later editions instead of the cludgy vehicles are just like PCs map based rules they have used since 4th ed.

Yeah, based on what you were into at the time, Indiana Jones was not the game for you.

 

QuoteIt appears that TSR did both a Conan game as well as Conan D&D modules. I may have only seen the modules and reading reviews of them, they sound pretty bad and railroady. It also explains my thinking TSR did 2 Conan games, and hearing that the second one was better (that being the actual Conan game, not the D&D modules).

I never looked at the TSR Conan stuff. At the time, I liked the movie, but I hadn't actually read any Howard yet, so true appreciation of the character and setting hadn't developed yet.

Looking back, I suppose the IJ adventures were pretty railroady too. It didn't bother us at the time. I think pulp McGuffin quests probably work better just going in a straight line than the adventures of a wandering barbarian.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1013500I bought 1st ed Champions when it came out. We had fun making characters but I never really played it. The game seemed interesting but the supers thing never really did much for me. I really got into HERO a few years later with the 3rd ed when they were doing stuff other than Supers, so Fantasy HERO, Danger International and Justice Inc...

For Fantasy Hero, 1E was OK but flakey.  It was built on the Champions 3E model, but not nearly so clear.  In fact, if we weren't already playing Champions, I might have had trouble getting the campaign off the ground.  We were already discussing a Champions hack for fantasy when FH was released.  FH 4E fixed a lot of problems with the fantasy side.  But as you say, it also introduced some.  At the time, though it wasn't so bad.  Everyone we knew had started with Champions 3E, and thus had the basics already.  So we felt fine picking and choosing stuff from 4E, and treated it like the toolkit it was.  As the starting place for an introduction to Hero, 4E left a lot to be desired.

It was still better than 5E or 6E, though.  Steve Long's ability to pick exactly the wrong things to break rules on and exactly the wrong things to be a stickler to the design, is amazing in its consistency.  Hero is, at heart, a much simpler system than GURPs.  If the same team that produced GURPs 3E were charged with producing a clean version of Hero, it would be amazing.

OK, here it goes.

Spell components.

95% of them are nonsense and unnecessary, only adding to the heap of tracking scrap & junk in your char sheet.
Mind you, I have no idea how most systems handle this, only D&D, and I don't know D&D 5th Edition yet.