Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 14, 2022, 04:20:19 PM

Considering TSR sued him and buried Dangerous Journeys for being "too much like D&D," he had a serious incentive to rename stuff...

I am assuming they were worried about the competition.

I wonder what gaming would look like if Dangerous Journeys was still around.

I see Trond mentioned Powers & Perils.  I last played that in 1986 along with the optional rules from AH's Heroes magazine. I bet with Trond that no one is playing that nowadays.

Quote from: Tallifer on September 01, 2022, 11:22:03 AM
I see Trond mentioned Powers & Perils.  I last played that in 1986 along with the optional rules from AH's Heroes magazine. I bet with Trond that no one is playing that nowadays.

I have my box somewhere and the nearly finished new edition from online.

I get excited to try and run it, get it out, and remember why I never did.

Kind of like the various Red Book versions of C&S out there.

Quote from: dungeon crawler on August 20, 2022, 05:52:44 PM
FTL:2448. I know of know one playing this old game at all.

I've given serious thought to using its background with a variety of other games. The Tri-Tac system is just too weird for me anymore, but SW, True20, GURPS, maybe a couple of the OSR games, would be great for it.

I'm not sure in my skim if anyone has mentioned it, so I'll throw out Nightlife by Stellar Games. It was Vampire before Vampire, but picked the wrong aesthetics in a few ways, both in going splatter punk instead of goth and by not putting nearly the emphasis on style White Wolf did.

Quote from: Akrasia on December 12, 2009, 04:58:40 PM

As for Space Opera, though, I'd be shocked if there was anyone on the planet playing it now.  It was pretty much unplayable when it was in print.

I'm running a game of Space Opera. There is a Mewe group for the game. I'm part of it. I've posted my custom game charts to make the game playable there as pdf files. Basically I went through the book and found every resolution mechanic (sans space combat) and put it on one sheet.

PCs needing to write down their weapon stats and penetration numbers, while clunky, is still something which must be done in most every ttrpg so nothing odd there.

The combat system is straight forward and robust. Gear lists are ample. Character creation is simple, but adding and subtracting skill points during build is straight clunky 80's processes. Once done though you don't need much off the sheet during a typical game. In the old school tradition you get tools to play your game. The actual playing of the game must come from you and your imagination. There are no "moves".

Quote from: J Arcane on December 14, 2009, 08:05:06 PM
Much as I hate to say it:  DC Heroes.

I've been running my own supers game with these rules (3rd edition) for two years. Sooo much better than Champions in my opinion. I like the system so much I am trying to hash out a retroclone which doesn't violate copyright law.

Quote from: Tallifer on September 01, 2022, 11:22:03 AM
I see Trond mentioned Powers & Perils.  I last played that in 1986 along with the optional rules from AH's Heroes magazine. I bet with Trond that no one is playing that nowadays.

I played a couple of years ago with an online group of 5.  It worked well enough for a while, but there were a couple of players who NEVER tried to master the rules and the other 3 eventually got tired of the additional overhead that was introduced.

Quote from: PulpHerb on September 01, 2022, 11:32:31 AMI have my box somewhere and the nearly finished new edition from online.

I bought the boxed set because it was written by Richard Snider who was one of the early DMs in Dave Arneson's game. According to the First Fantasy Campaign (Judges Guild 1980) he was the one who came up with how dragons worked in early D&D where they got more hit points per hit die as they grew older. He also came up with level drain which is something many would not appreciate.

Having read other rules he wrote, I can only say that Richard must be very good at doing math in his head as calculating complicated equations on the fly is a characteristic of many of the rules he wrote or helped write, such as the earlier Adventures in Fantasy.

Quote from: GhostNinja on August 25, 2022, 01:02:15 PM

Considering TSR sued him and buried Dangerous Journeys for being "too much like D&D," he had a serious incentive to rename stuff...

But his nomeclature choices... DUDE!

Makes some of his later stuff borderline unreadable.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 14, 2022, 04:20:19 PM

I am assuming they were worried about the competition.

I wonder what gaming would look like if Dangerous Journeys was still around.

The Gygax name has a lot of cachet in gaming circles - I think to a degree TSR was right to be worried.

But when you look at what he actually designed post TSR - They really had nothing to worry about.

The move for Gygax to make in hindsight was to take an established system - and modify it to essentially do D&D all over again.

Gygax + Palladium*, or + R. Talsorian.

i.e. a "Dangerous Journeys" using a modified house system from another publisher...



* All right, all right, you got me; no way in hell a Gygax and Siembieda arrangement would have lasted ten minutes...

Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 02, 2022, 09:58:17 AM
Having read other rules he wrote, I can only say that Richard must be very good at doing math in his head as calculating complicated equations on the fly is a characteristic of many of the rules he wrote or helped write, such as the earlier Adventures in Fantasy.

The math doesn't bother me per se, but I know I'm not most people (I'm very good at doing it in my head).