TheRPGSite

Alright, over in Pundit's sub-forum we were discussing the merits of "old-school" gaming and what constitutes an "old-school" game. And Tristram Evans made a post that placed various tabletop games into various generations and categories ranging from "Pre-Old School" (OD&D, Braunstein, The Fantasy Trip, Car Wars, Fantasy Wargaming, etc.) all the way to so-called "Story Games". And it is that "Pre-Old School" category that interests me the most. The early RPG's and small-scale battle games that were made in the 1970s and early 1980s (around 1974-1981 if you have to have an official timeline)

To paraphrase the post, the "Pre-Old School" generation of RPG's assumed players were familiar with wargames and used a lot of wargaming tropes. Imagination and improvisation are key as many of these systems were bare-bones.

From what I gather, there was a lot of improvisation on the part of both players and referees and while role-playing, immersion, and stories were part of these games from the get-go, it was more implied rather than enumerated. Sandbox gameplay also seemed to be commonplace If Gronan is interested, maybe he can give some input on this first generation of gaming back in the 1970s and hopefully clarify these points (as well as correct any errors I may have made in my assumptions).

It seems to me that many of these early RPG's were basically tabletop combat engines (in the One-on-One scale, of course) that encouraged immersion and it was the job of the players and the referee to bring the role-playing, character immersion, and story elements that are the core of RPG's. Again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in this assessment and I'd love to hear everyone's input on this subject.

If one were to make their own game (or at least their own campaign) in that "Pre-Old School" style of first-generation RPG's, how would one best capture that feel in both style and gameplay? What systems would work best and how would you go about in developing your own base system for it?

Comments, discussion, and input would be greatly appreciated.

I'd say that's a pretty accurate assessment--based purely on your summary, since I haven't read the original thread. My bona-fides: first played White Box D&D circa 1975 or 1976, also began playing Avalon Hill and SPI wargames around the same time. In RPGs, from about 1977 to early 1983, also dabbled in Traveler, TFT, Dragonquest (SPI), High Fantasy (by Dillow), Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World, and Top Secret 1e. And of course 1e. After that point, I was still gaming but the environment was a lot different.

Something I'd point out about those early days: getting your hands on any set of rules was pretty iffy. Prior to 1980 I never saw a specialty gaming store. ("What's your Game" in Baltimore; "The Compleat Strategist" in NYC (founded 1975 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/columns/thegauntlett/12776-A-Look-Inside-the-Workings-of-the-Compleat-Strategist)) was a name I saw in magazines along with "Strategy and Fantasy World" (existed by 1977 in NYC (https://books.google.com/books?id=kugCAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA89&ots=2UMZ9clC0R&dq=%22strategy%20and%20fantasy%20world%22&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q=%22strategy%20and%20fantasy%20world%22&f=false)) which merged with TCS around 1983.) Wargames and RPGs were sold in hobby shops and toy stores, which at the time weren't as likely to be big chains so there was probably a lot more variation in what was for sale depending on the owner/staff. AD&D was probably the first game that you might find in a book store such as Waldenbooks or B. Dalton; meanwhile, Basic D&D was the first game to appear widely in department stores (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?5963-RPGs-should-be-in-toy-sections-again&p=100342&viewfull=1#post100342).

The point of all this is that you often had spotty access to rules options, let alone what's nowadays referred to as "support". And even if you did have access to the latter, (a) there wasn't a whole lot of it and (b) IME people were much less interested. The core rules were all you needed, and they either instructed you in how to create a campaign, or you already knew how to do so from playing and reading other games. D&D/AD&D of course was the main template.

So that takes us up to your question...just as I find myself running out of steam. But I'd say the best way to see the style you're talking about would be to get your hands on the OD&D rules (you just need the white box, available from OBS/DTRPG/RPGNow) and carefully read The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. If you need to see a copy of the Outdoor Survival map, look here (https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1401190/outdoor-survival?size=original). Swords & Wizardry isn't necessarily an adequate substitute, although Kevin Crawford's games (e.g. Other Dust) come close, with some innovations that don't necessarily undercut the core ethos.

Oh, to add: IME stories weren't implied at all--what the game gave you was something much more like a virtual environment that you could play in. It wasn't until later that I started finding groups that engaged in high-stakes quests rather than just trying to survive and get ahead in the world. Immersion certainly wasn't named or explicitly enforced. (Leaving aside the fact that even today it's a contentious term that mixes several contentious  concepts.) But 1st-person POV was implicit in the structure of the game even though a lot of people ignored it in favor of a more wargame-y approach. In fact the 1970s saw a number of attempts to "do RPGs" that, whether or not they were good games--and many were--they basically failed to understand the compelling quality of the new sub-hobby. Examples:

• Magic Realm showed that Avalon Hill thought the core of RPG was fantasy and controlling a single character; it failed to be an RPG because it was so highly procedural and rules-bound; without a GM, you couldn't "do anything". (Otherwise, it was a great game.)
• Squad Leader (AH) claimed to introduce elements of role playing by offering the option to have one of your leader counters carry over from from scenario to scenario while improving. Of course SL ended up a massive success but merely including continuity of an individual with advancement doesn't an RPG make.
• Commando (SPI) can't evaluate personally, but this may be the only game that's entered in both BGG and RPG Geek, with comments in both places disowning it as "not an RPG" or "not a board game". I would guess that the non-RPG reactions come from limited character continuity, limited scenario structure with limited campaign continuity, lack of GM discretion/free form interpretation of actions, and possibly having players control more than one character at a time. Again, these are just guesses about how the game played.
• Practically every CRPG from the early days, which were generally unable to do more than emulate the basic mechanical elements of dungeon crawling, occasionally hex crawling, and character advancement. Nevertheless some of these are probably good models for the "pre-old school" if you just imagine that a human being is doing what the computer does, giving the players the ability to talk to NPCs and get outside the strictures of the rules. Some of them can be played now using an Apple II or C64 emulator.
  

Quote from: Arminius;950893I'd say that's a pretty accurate assessment--based purely on your summary, since I haven't read the original thread. My bona-fides: first played White Box D&D circa 1975 or 1976, also began playing Avalon Hill and SPI wargames around the same time. In RPGs, from about 1977 to early 1983, also dabbled in Traveler, TFT, Dragonquest (SPI), High Fantasy (by Dillow), Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World, and Top Secret 1e. And of course 1e. After that point, I was still gaming but the environment was a lot different.

Something I'd point out about those early days: getting your hands on any set of rules was pretty iffy. Prior to 1980 I never saw a specialty gaming store. ("What's your Game" in Baltimore; "The Compleat Strategist" in NYC (founded 1975 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/columns/thegauntlett/12776-A-Look-Inside-the-Workings-of-the-Compleat-Strategist)) was a name I saw in magazines along with "Strategy and Fantasy World" (existed by 1977 in NYC (https://books.google.com/books?id=kugCAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA89&ots=2UMZ9clC0R&dq=%22strategy%20and%20fantasy%20world%22&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q=%22strategy%20and%20fantasy%20world%22&f=false)) which merged with TCS around 1983.) Wargames and RPGs were sold in hobby shops and toy stores, which at the time weren't as likely to be big chains so there was probably a lot more variation in what was for sale depending on the owner/staff. AD&D was probably the first game that you might find in a book store such as Waldenbooks or B. Dalton; meanwhile, Basic D&D was the first game to appear widely in department stores (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?5963-RPGs-should-be-in-toy-sections-again&p=100342&viewfull=1#post100342).

The point of all this is that you often had spotty access to rules options, let alone what's nowadays referred to as "support". And even if you did have access to the latter, (a) there wasn't a whole lot of it and (b) IME people were much less interested. The core rules were all you needed, and they either instructed you in how to create a campaign, or you already knew how to do so from playing and reading other games. D&D/AD&D of course was the main template.

So that takes us up to your question...just as I find myself running out of steam. But I'd say the best way to see the style you're talking about would be to get your hands on the OD&D rules (you just need the white box, available from OBS/DTRPG/RPGNow) and carefully read The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. If you need to see a copy of the Outdoor Survival map, look here (https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1401190/outdoor-survival?size=original). Swords & Wizardry isn't necessarily an adequate substitute, although Kevin Crawford's games (e.g. Other Dust) come close, with some innovations that don't necessarily undercut the core ethos.

I will keep that in mind and do my best to get a copy of the OD&D White Box. I'd love to run a campaign in that old-school sandbox style and from there, see if I can make a retro-clone game in that style.

If I can get support for it, I may run a Play-By-Post campaign in that style.

Hey, Doc Sammy--I edited my post; see above for some notes that came to mind later.

Theres no such thing as "Old school" its just another in a long line of derogatory terms made up so some new kids could have someone to sneer at and look down on.

Nothings changed. Everything touted as "NEW!" was there from pretty much the start in some form or another.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;950887It seems to me that many of these early RPG's were basically tabletop combat engines (in the One-on-One scale, of course) that encouraged immersion and it was the job of the players and the referee to bring the role-playing, character immersion, and story elements that are the core of RPG's. Again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in this assessment and I'd love to hear everyone's input on this subject.

I know this sounds snarky but the best way to think about the pre-OD&D situation is to think about what you would do to run a campaign where a dozen players or so want to fight out the Napoleonic Wars where the individual battle are fought with miniature armies without any published rules to use. That the kind of creativity that was being used back then.

What there nothing to use? No there was stuff, if you are talking 1970 you had a decade worth of people talking about odds, dice, and research into actual weapon data to come up with the rule to fight a miniature wargame scenario. You had some semi-related wargames produced by Avalon Hill like Diplomacy to serve as a starting point. But by and large if you had an idea, you had to come up with the rules to play it.

The problem with recreating that today is we are already "contaminated" having read dozens of rules book. The closest a modern referee can come is to do what I been advocating and that is define the setting of the campaign first and the rules second. And if the base rule set needs to be pounded or torn to make it work for the setting you chosen, then by god pound it or tear it to make it work like you want it to work. If at any point in the campaign the players proposes something that makes sense for his character to do but the rules read the other way, fuck the rules, make a new ruling and pencil that in for later.

If you do that then you are playing in the spirit of how gaming was done in the early 70s.

Ester, I was trying to find a statement you made (several times now) about how a sandbox setting can be destroyed. It's kind of a definitional test for you. I thought the quote was great.

Also this:

QuoteThe problem with recreating that today is we are already "contaminated" having read dozens of rules book. The closest a modern referee can come is to do what I been advocating and that is define the setting of the campaign first and the rules second. And if the base rule set needs to be pounded or torn to make it work for the setting you chosen, then by god pound it or tear it to make it work like you want it to work. If at any point in the campaign the players proposes something that makes sense for his character to do but the rules read the other way, fuck the rules, make a new ruling and pencil that in for later.

Is kind of genius. I'm going to have to mull this. It seems absolutely awesome -- and little bit overwhelming. As in: Since I could create with utter control anything I am responsible for everything.

Doc Sammy, what do you want your readers to do with your product?

What experience do you want them to have?

How would you create an audience for a "Pre-School" game today when numerous rules light games exist, often for free?

BTW, Doc Sammy, you are bringing up lots of good questions that were very popular in the early OSR (10-15 yrs ago). I highly suggest visiting Dragonsfoot forums and asking for links to resources. Many OSR bloggers discussed these issues so much of these discussions exist in archives in the depths of the web. Also, I believe a game, Dragons at Dawn was built based on pre-OD&D ideas, and I believe a couple others popped up as well.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;950911Ester, I was trying to find a statement you made (several times now) about how a sandbox setting can be destroyed. It's kind of a definitional test for you. I thought the quote was great.

I think it is this

The heart of a sandbox campaign is that you have to be willing to be comfortable with players trashing your setting. For me at least it is the starting point 30 years ago that lead to what I write, advocate and referee today. Back then I was known as the referee who let players trash his setting. The challenge is to make it fun and interesting. To make it not easy but remain fair. Juggling all that over the years has lead me to try a bunch of stuff, some worked and some didn't.

QuoteAlso this:

Is kind of genius. I'm going to have to mull this. It seems absolutely awesome -- and little bit overwhelming. As in: Since I could create with utter control anything I am responsible for everything.

Glad to help and I will kee reading this thread and answer where I can.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;950887If one were to make their own game (or at least their own campaign) in that "Pre-Old School" style of first-generation RPG's, how would one best capture that feel in both style and gameplay? What systems would work best and how would you go about in developing your own base system for it?

Comments, discussion, and input would be greatly appreciated.

We worked right from the beginning to make the game interesting did this for the most part by putting out our individualized campaign settings. Each GM had one or more unique campaign settings, that featured things that they liked from fantasy and science fantasy literature. Unique settings included things that were simply invented and added to the setting at the whim of the GM as well.

One of my early campaign settings was very Tolkienesque with lots of Dwarves,  elves, orcs, and goblins. Instead of the Shire and Middle Earth all the players started in a kingdom named Brandywine, but there was no dark lord, and there was no Istari wizards. Instead there were many many humans including Sorcerors, Warlocks, and Wizards, and dragons, centaurs, unicorns, as well as Pegasus. Most of the primary continent was mountain chains that varied from 5-40 miles thick interspersed with mixed hills & woods, meadows & valleys, high mountain parks along with vast and ancient deep forests.

My second campaign world featured multiple continents that included vast open areas, mixed with mountain ranges. There were also deserts, jungles, great swamps, large marshlands on like four continents all separated by small shallow seas insterspersed with very dense island chains and clusters. Going over the top I added some of the favorite places from my favorite fantasy fiction books, and just dropped them in the setting. There was Revelstone and Glimmermere from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeleiever, mixed right in with a nearby desert country that heavily resembled ancient Egypt. I had added Keeps and Castles from Estcarp in Witchworld, as well as Crydee and Carse Keep from Midkemia. There were T'suranni invasions included and at the time, I was completely unaware the T'suranni were really Legions from Tekumel. An easter egg I would only discover many years later around 1984 when I  played in my first EPT game.

In my second game world you could ride across Hyborea, and Travel north to visit for a time the Barbarian tribes of Cimmeria, then double back to the Southeast and find the sorcerer kings in the deserts of Stygia, then go search for a long forgotten Dragon lair. You could train with a swordmaster in Hykrania, or trade herbs in Koth or Shem. You could find Human Weyrs complete with hundreds or thousands of people, and many hundreds of tame Dragons, along with the Bards/Dragonsingers that could tame these large beasts. There were Princes of Amber, and portal wizards, and hedge wizards, and necromancers who summoned armies of undead. There were footsoldiers, knights, and cavalry, and bandits, and nomads.

Basically I just mashed in everything I liked, and fitted it haphazardly into a continent just a bit smaller than North America. Then dropped TSR modules and Judges Guild supplement settlements wherever it suited me into the game world. Later on from 1980 on I added Sanctuary from Thieves World, and swords and locales from Shannara and Earthsea, and many, many, more fantasy settings from literature...

It wouldn't be until the 80's before we really started looking at making our own Fastasy roleplaying systems, and this was pretty much after we had exhausted every other option (such as writing the game publisher to change a stupid rule...). We did spend lots of time houseruling our games though, and that was usually, but not always, based on unique features in our campaign settings.

A lot of this information is very useful and I will take all of this into account.

Now from the looks of it, I want to make a fairly rules-light sandbox game in the vein of OD&D (possibly by making my own cheap homebrew retro-clone using the knowledge I have of OD&D). I'm thinking I'd make this separate from my more prominent Black Castle project (a Castlevania-esque horror version of B/X D&D/Basic Fantasy) but it could be used to run a Black Castle campaign.

I'll work on this rough draft of a simplified OD&D retro-clone and post it here when it is in a presentable form, either as a forum thread or maybe post it on Google Docs. Or both.

For years we worked under the assumption that every game referee would roll their own campaign world or worlds.  Didn't matter if we were playing D&D or Traveller, or something else altogether. The world was always a home-brew. Often there wasn't even a well thought out world per se, there was just the adventure and the bare minimum "world" around it needed for that adventure.

If we were playing a carvan crossing the desert the world might only consist of the desert and the starting and ending points of the caravan. Even that might not be fully mapped out.

Mash in what ever you liked. Remember OD&D had creatures from Barsoom and Middle Earth on the encounter tabes.  We also made a lot of stuff up from whole cloth. Magic items did whatever the DM decided they did. We didn't follow an "crafting rules". Creatures in Gamma World could have all sorts of strange mutant abilities, remember Hoops and their ability to turn metal to rubber with a touch.  That one was never explained more than "this is what they do".

I did one massive dungeon that had layers of construction and clues to hidden spaces laid out in different types of stonework from different phases of construction. When the players looked at their maps and saw a big area in the center that was seemingly void space, they got to thinking and dug through the bricks to find a "hidden" mini-dungeon.

Characters could pick up skills and abilities by player or DM saying "the character is a skilled glassblower", when we needed to see if they succeeded in doing something it was usually "roll high".

I tried to apply my skills at learning well-edited complete wargame rules (as were published by SPI & Avalon Hill) to learning white-box D&D, and eventually realized that there were quite a few ambiguous mysteries and missing pieces (seemingly at random) and that if you want to pay, you need to make up those parts yourself (and/or buy Chainmail and Wilderness Survival). It feels to me like a starting point for making up your own game where the mechanics will probably involve more GM rulings than written rules.

The Fantasy Trip has much more complete and consistent rules, and was much more focused on the details and tactics of fighting.

Quote from: Omega;950903Theres no such thing as "Old school" its just another in a long line of derogatory terms made up so some new kids could have someone to sneer at and look down on.

Is it actually meant as an insult though?  I mean, maybe it was at first, but now it seems as much a design bandwagon/label as d20 or "Powered by..."  It's something some people actively look for, to consume and not avoid.

Personally, I find the whole "OSR" thing somewhere between people trying to get around license/IP restrictions on the old BECMI D&D ruleset and an attempt to justify their fantasy heartbreakers as being more relevant than they are.  Which isn't to say there aren't any good OSR books out there, but in my opinion they're adventures/supplements for forgettable ruleset derivatives rather than the games themselves.

Quote from: DavetheLost;950994For years we worked under the assumption that every game referee would roll their own campaign world or worlds.  Didn't matter if we were playing D&D or Traveller, or something else altogether. The world was always a home-brew. Often there wasn't even a well thought out world per se, there was just the adventure and the bare minimum "world" around it needed for that adventure.

If we were playing a carvan crossing the desert the world might only consist of the desert and the starting and ending points of the caravan. Even that might not be fully mapped out.

Mash in what ever you liked. Remember OD&D had creatures from Barsoom and Middle Earth on the encounter tabes.  We also made a lot of stuff up from whole cloth. Magic items did whatever the DM decided they did. We didn't follow an "crafting rules". Creatures in Gamma World could have all sorts of strange mutant abilities, remember Hoops and their ability to turn metal to rubber with a touch.  That one was never explained more than "this is what they do".

I did one massive dungeon that had layers of construction and clues to hidden spaces laid out in different types of stonework from different phases of construction. When the players looked at their maps and saw a big area in the center that was seemingly void space, they got to thinking and dug through the bricks to find a "hidden" mini-dungeon.

Characters could pick up skills and abilities by player or DM saying "the character is a skilled glassblower", when we needed to see if they succeeded in doing something it was usually "roll high".

Now this I like. I will definitely do homebrewing and meshing in whatever I like with my OD&D-esque "Pre-Old School" game. That would work very well for the old 70's style sandbox play I am envisioning for the game.

I am focused on this conversation from the angle of Classic Traveller (which I've been drilling into and consider one of Tristram's "Pre-School" games).

With that in mind I think we can take DavetheLost's post (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?36287-The-Early-Days-of-RPG-s-Capturing-an-Old-School-Essence&p=950994&viewfull=1#post950994) and build a set of bullet points that would be right at home in swinging the original intentions of Traveller Books 1-3 back into play...

• Every game referee rolls their own campaign world or worlds.  
• No well thought out world needed.
• The Referee needs just the adventure and the bare minimum "world" around it needed for that adventure.
• Even the adventure might not be built at the level of bare minimum.

Example: If playing a carvan crossing the desert, the world might only consist of the desert and the starting and ending points of the caravan. Even that might not be fully mapped out.
[/LIST]

Right there, comparing the sort of play DavetheLost describes agains the expectations of later Traveller play shows a sharp contrast.

To head into setting up a Traveller campaign almost destroys most expectations. As Ester says, "The problem... is we are already 'contaminated' having read dozens of rules book." To really read Traveller Books 1-3 with their original intent in 1977 means really being aware of this "contaminated" point-of-view and stripping out it out carefully.

Quote from: estar;950905I know this sounds snarky but the best way to think about the pre-OD&D situation is to think about what you would do to run a campaign where a dozen players or so want to fight out the Napoleonic Wars where the individual battle are fought with miniature armies without any published rules to use. That the kind of creativity that was being used back then.

What there nothing to use? No there was stuff, if you are talking 1970 you had a decade worth of people talking about odds, dice, and research into actual weapon data to come up with the rule to fight a miniature wargame scenario. You had some semi-related wargames produced by Avalon Hill like Diplomacy to serve as a starting point. But by and large if you had an idea, you had to come up with the rules to play it.

The problem with recreating that today is we are already "contaminated" having read dozens of rules book. The closest a modern referee can come is to do what I been advocating and that is define the setting of the campaign first and the rules second. And if the base rule set needs to be pounded or torn to make it work for the setting you chosen, then by god pound it or tear it to make it work like you want it to work. If at any point in the campaign the players proposes something that makes sense for his character to do but the rules read the other way, fuck the rules, make a new ruling and pencil that in for later.

If you do that then you are playing in the spirit of how gaming was done in the early 70s.

#BaskingInMyOldSchoolness.
Funny part, when I started doing more or less that, I thought I was inventing something new:D!

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;951032No well thought out world needed.

But as Tekumel shows since 1975, it certainly helps;).

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;951032No well thought out world needed.

Quote from: AsenRG;951036But as Tekumel shows since 1975, it certainly helps;).

And yet we know Barker startled people with claims that many elements of the world were not thought out because he had no need of them yet.
I don't really want to go down the rabbit hole of defending what "well thought out" means, but I think one has to be careful about how complete and/or thought out an RPG setting is.

I would also offer, based on evidence I've seen online from certain fans of Tekumel, Glorantha, and The Third Imperium, focusing on "well thought out worlds" can often be a sand trap that has little with getting around to actually playing a game. (Not knocking the settings. But pointing out some people stop seeing them as starting points and see them as doctoral programs.)

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;951041But pointing out some people stop seeing them as starting points and see them as doctoral programs.

If I'm going to get a degree that has nothing to do with my job anyway, I can think of worse things than having to play games I love for 20+ hours a week for 6-10 years.  :D

(EDIT: yes, I know your point was that people bitch about the games more than play them, but stop tramping on my dreams!)

So, I'm currently working on my Chainmail Hearts game (the OD&D retro-clone) and so far, it's going along well.

I also sort of want to write a fanfiction about OD&D as well. It'd be a Naruto AU set in 1970's Chicago in which Kakashi, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are gamers playing OD&D when it first came out. Kakashi is the Referee of course. It would be a story within a story in which the scenario of 70's Chicago serves as the framing device for the main story, the in-character events of the OD&D campaign.

The cast I have so far is as follows...

Kakashi Hatake: Referee
Naruto Uzumaki: Human Fighter
Sasuke Uchiha: Human Magic-User
Sakura Haruno: Human Cleric

There may also be a sub-plot within the framing story in which Sasuke's older brother Itachi Uchiha is a street tough rolling with the Almighty Gaylords street gang of Chicago (or maybe the Simon City Royals, haven't really decided yet)

My background started D&D in '77-'78 played wargames before, mostly Blitzkrieg and Squad Leader but some other more esoteric ones through Project Warrior.  Played Traveller and The Fantasy Trip and Car Wars all when they came out, as well as Space Opera, Star Frontiers, Aftermath!, Call of Cthulu, Bushido, etc .etc.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;950887...
To paraphrase the post, the "Pre-Old School" generation of RPG's assumed players were familiar with wargames and used a lot of wargaming tropes. Imagination and improvisation are key as many of these systems were bare-bones.

The Fantasy Trip and Car Wars were anything but bare bones.  Elegant yes, but not bare bones.

QuoteFrom what I gather, there was a lot of improvisation on the part of both players and referees and while role-playing, immersion, and stories were part of these games from the get-go, it was more implied rather than enumerated. Sandbox gameplay also seemed to be commonplace If Gronan is interested, maybe he can give some input on this first generation of gaming back in the 1970s and hopefully clarify these points (as well as correct any errors I may have made in my assumptions).

It seems to me that many of these early RPG's were basically tabletop combat engines (in the One-on-One scale, of course) that encouraged immersion and it was the job of the players and the referee to bring the role-playing, character immersion, and story elements that are the core of RPG's. Again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in this assessment and I'd love to hear everyone's input on this subject.

I first say this was long before the age of the internet, when a long distance phone call cost a pretty penny.  Gaming styles could be very local.  We loved RPG because they got us out of the pure combat of wargames.  We had already started making an advancement system for certain Squad Leader leaders.  Damn you Steiner!

QuoteIf one were to make their own game (or at least their own campaign) in that "Pre-Old School" style of first-generation RPG's, how would one best capture that feel in both style and gameplay? What systems would work best and how would you go about in developing your own base system for it?

Comments, discussion, and input would be greatly appreciated.

I like a more simple dice pool mechanic it is very similar to a 6 is a hit mentality of chainmail.  Otherwise I would go to a 2d10 mechanic, more flexible than the 2D6 mechanic of The Fantasy Trip.  The key is basic broad rules that can be adapted to many situations instead of a feat for everything and everything a feat.  You can go to town on detailed accoutrements, like spells and magic times, but keep the core rules simple.   I really found d20 to be too rough grained for much more than abstract combat, and percentile systems too fine grained.  I can go on about why as have been doing my own dice pool mechanic ala Atomic Highway for a year or so and the 2d10 for about 20 years.   ON classes, keep 'em unless you are willing to really work on your system.  A class based system is easy to implement well, a skill based one is very hard to implement well.

Quote from: Xanther;951090The Fantasy Trip and Car Wars were anything but bare bones.  Elegant yes, but not bare bones.

I'm not as familiar with Car Wars and The Fantasy Trip as I am with OD&D or even Boot Hill. Sorry if I made any errors.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;951091I'm not as familiar with Car Wars and The Fantasy Trip as I am with OD&D or even Boot Hill. Sorry if I made any errors.

You should check out The Fantasy Trip then, it is a great take and great start on skill based.  It does have a problem of dynamic range, i.e. the mechanics break down after a certain "level."  Car Wars wasn't really an RPG, although there was some experience mechanic, but simply motor vehicle mayhem.  It had it's own rule balance issues over the years through various editions and had a tendency to get gear heady.   I think Atomic Highway does a much better take on car battles, simple with all the car wars flavor.  I don't miss the movement tracking of Car Wars.  Car Wars is a great miniature type car combat game.  If you want to track movement specifically, it can't be beat.  I've many a fond memories of Sunday Driver and combat in the Arena.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;950894I will keep that in mind and do my best to get a copy of the OD&D White Box. I'd love to run a campaign in that old-school sandbox style and from there, see if I can make a retro-clone game in that style.

The pdf of the OD&D books are available on Drivethrurpg.

Quote from: Voros;951113The pdf of the OD&D books are available on Drivethrurpg.

I know, I will be buying the PDF's probably later this week.

Quote from: Xanther;951093You should check out The Fantasy Trip then, it is a great take and great start on skill based.  It does have a problem of dynamic range, i.e. the mechanics break down after a certain "level."  Car Wars wasn't really an RPG, although there was some experience mechanic, but simply motor vehicle mayhem.  It had it's own rule balance issues over the years through various editions and had a tendency to get gear heady.   I think Atomic Highway does a much better take on car battles, simple with all the car wars flavor.  I don't miss the movement tracking of Car Wars.  Car Wars is a great miniature type car combat game.  If you want to track movement specifically, it can't be beat.  I've many a fond memories of Sunday Driver and combat in the Arena.

You can get the Classic Rules (http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/games/classic/) for Car Wars free, so there's no reason not to have it. :D I've even templates for rulers and turning arc stuff that's scaled to Hot Wheels/Match Box cars. Yes it wasn't an RPG, though later on there was Autoduel for GURPS. I figure if I decide to run it, I'll be making a trip to the toy store and getting some tools printed out.

Quote from: Krimson;951123You can get the Classic Rules (http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/games/classic/) for Car Wars free, so there's no reason not to have it. :D I've even templates for rulers and turning arc stuff that's scaled to Hot Wheels/Match Box cars. Yes it wasn't an RPG, though later on there was Autoduel for GURPS. I figure if I decide to run it, I'll be making a trip to the toy store and getting some tools printed out.

I might do the same as well, download the free version of Car Wars and buy me some Hot Wheels. From there, I'll be recreating the original Mad Max but in Virginia instead of Australia. Might even take the classic rules and mod them into an OD&D-esque RPG.

Open highways, car chases, and gun battles against roving gangs of Anarcho-Communist thugs all the while as society collapses around me. It will be awesome.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;951124I might do the same as well, download the free version of Car Wars and buy me some Hot Wheels. From there, I'll be recreating the original Mad Max but in Virginia instead of Australia.

Open highways, car chases, and gun battles against roving gangs of Anarcho-Communist thugs all the while as society collapses around me. It will be awesome.

Matchbox and Hot Wheels use a 1:64 scale... Sort of. The cars can range from like 1:50-1:75 or even more but they're supposed to be 1:64. So anything you use should be of a similar scale, though you might get away with using a smaller scale for roads and props, so long as you're measuring movement rates properly. So if you need to use people or other props, you can get away with using 25-28mm miniatures. Something to consider if you shop online. I'd probably make buildings out of cardboard with scaled printouts glued on, though I suspect the building would end up being a regular box that probably has a cat sitting in it.

Quote from: Xanther;951093[Car Wars] had a tendency to get gear heady.

I tend to think the gearheadiness was the actual point of the game.

Quote from: Krimson;951123Yes it wasn't an RPG, though later on there was Autoduel for GURPS.

There was also Autoduel Champions, which was released before GURPS Autoduel (or GURPS, for that matter).

Quote from: Krimson;951129Matchbox and Hot Wheels use a 1:64 scale... Sort of. The cars can range from like 1:50-1:75 or even more but they're supposed to be 1:64. So anything you use should be of a similar scale, though you might get away with using a smaller scale for roads and props, so long as you're measuring movement rates properly. So if you need to use people or other props, you can get away with using 25-28mm miniatures. Something to consider if you shop online. I'd probably make buildings out of cardboard with scaled printouts glued on, though I suspect the building would end up being a regular box that probably has a cat sitting in it.

I will keep that in mind.