Apocalypse World 1e > 2e

Shadowrun 3e > 4e

Runequest 2e > Runequest 6e

For WH40K rpgs Dark Heresy compared to Wrath and Glory.

Dark Heresy 1e vs 2e is slightly more complicated because there wasn't the support for 2e before it was cancelled but overall I'd say 1e was better.

As for WFRP, 2e was probably better than 1e. However 1e material and source books feel richer. 4e is quite a convoluted and overworked game. At its core I like the focus on skills and how careers work but combat is so very convoluted.

Everything before OSE. What a lifeless tome laid out like a cookbook. or flash cards.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 27, 2022, 08:00:45 PM
Are the Mechwarrior games better today, or was 1E the best?  I ask as I only own 1E.  I've actually never played it, but used it as lore and repair rules for our regular BattleTech 3025 games.

A lot of people swear by 2e, but I have personally found the newest Mechwarrior: Destiny to be the most solidly playable in that it really takes into account the different needs of an rpg vs. a wargame.* It had both quicker character creation and better character survivability than the previous iteration (you could still die fairly quickly if you weren't careful, but the 1-in-36 per attack odds of instant death found in the previous iteration were largely removed (basically, they greatly increased the odds of successfully performing an emergency ejection in cases where the wargame would inflict automatic death to the pilot).

However, the caveat here is that Mechwarrior: Destiny is actually a repackaging of FASA's old Legionnaire (Renegade Legion) RPG system... so it's actually slightly older than even Mechwarrior 2e (Legionaire was 1990, MW2e was 1991).

* the biggest problem with the previous version (A Time of War) was that character creation was made deeper, such that it could take an hour to make a character as you record all the lifepath effects, only for the PC to suffer the same 1-in-36 chance per attack of insta-death via headshot that quickly adds up to virtual certainty of unceremonious random death. Such deaths would be fine if character creation were fast and easy... but an hour to make a character who could be dead in less than a minute just made the whole endeavor feel pointless.

There are quite a few I could name, but Stormbringer is the first that comes to mind.

Quote from: the crypt keeper on November 02, 2022, 10:27:07 AM
Everything before OSE. What a lifeless tome laid out like a cookbook. or flash cards.

Wow; someone pushing back against the current darling of the OSR.  Frankly, I like the OSE rulebooks as references when writing my own B/X adventures because they are well-organized and easy to use for someone who knows the rules and system.  And I appreciate the digest size.

That being said, I do agree that there's a degree of sterility to the writing.  And I'm not as big a fan of the art as many seem to be.  Also, I find the presentation of their modules, with all the bullet points, to be distracting and harder to use at the table than old fashioned modules from the 80s with boxed text etc.  So I sold all my official OSE modules after playing them once.

Recently both Dan Proctor (Labyrinth Lord) and Matt Finch (Swords & Wizardry) have announced they'll be introducing new versions of their games next year.  LL will be a full-blown second edition with some significant content additions, plus updated formatting, organization and presentation.  It sounds like the S&W changes will be almost purely cosmetic, as it's coming out under Finch's Mythmere Games moniker. 

It will be interesting to see what these look like in comparison to OSE.  Proctor has explicitly acknowledged that he wants to "modernize" his presentation while Finch doesn't seem to care, though personally I think he's a better writer than Gavin Norman. 

Now some might say, "Who cares; they're just retroclones anyhow.  Why not use the originals?"  Fair enough; I do still have all my books from the 80s in pretty good condition.  But I'm a sucker for a complete game in one streamlined book.  And my players don't have all the old books but will buy 1 new one (or I can share the pdf).  So I will at least check these out.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 25, 2022, 08:21:30 AM
Hero 5E and 6E are respectively the 2nd and 3rd editions of "Hero System", and they were not nearly so well received.  They managed to hit two of the major edition pitfalls hard, being excessively bloated in the name of completeness without fixing anything, and then making an attempt fix the issues while retaining the bloat.  A slimmed down game with the 6E changes that was billed as a easier version of 4E might have done well.  Then it could have been followed up with an options book to add back in the examples and complexity without changing the core.

  I'd dispute this; Fifth Edition was well received, and was really just a cleanup and expansion of 4E, although there were some gripes about the dryness and depth of the presentation. It was Sixth Edition--which tried to rebuild the game from the ground-up, and was the first time the game's rules had to be split into multiple volumes--that was the real division point.

  For Rolemaster, the conversion from 2E to the Standard System was also extremely divisive, and the collapse of Iron Crown Enterprises a few years later probably didn't help. The new ICE says that "Rolemaster Unified" is due any day now. We'll see how it unfolds.