Nostalgia for that which never was...

I definitely dont think its nostalgia for me. I played Star Frontiers back in the day and had a blast. About a year ago I ran a SF campaign and it too was a blast. I even introduced people that had never been exposed to SF and they to had a good time. So in my case at least the rose colored glasses mean nothing. I play games because I like and enjoy them. Not because I used to.

It's not nostalgia for me; I DM'ed my group of six present and one remote players today through the beginnings of Level 2 of the Temple of Elemental Evil and it fucking rocked.  It rocked because it is awesome.  Not because it was or because we all stopped every two minutes to reflect on how awesome it was the first time we played the module when it was published.

Nostalgia my ass.

Anyway, what wrong with nostalgia of something that was good, worked, was fun, and could not be achieved with modern games? :confused:

The theory is that "nostalgia" fun isn't real fun. It's the No True Scotsman fallacy yet again.

Implicit in it all is the New Is Always Better fallacy. If you enjoy the old, you have no chance to enjoy the new, and are missing out on the better stuff, the theory goes. This idea is essential for our consumerist culture. If you like the old, you don't have to spend money on the new, do you?

The alternative is - like Abyssal Maw does - to pretend that the people saying they enjoy the older games actually don't game at all.

"New is always better than old and maybe the old was fun when you were just a dumb kid but it can't be fun now so obviously you don't really game, or if you do then you don't have fun, and if you do game and do have fun, well really you don't have fun, you just think you have fun."

Mental gymnastics

And of course I don't play in the same way as I did when I was 12. Even if I kept using the same rules , my games has becomed much more refined and effective, I hope. But maybe new schoolers think it's all about the rules. :idunno:

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;302972The alternative is - like Abyssal Maw does - to pretend that the people saying they enjoy the older games actually don't game at all.

I may not agree with AM's take on 4e, but as far as I know, when he says that certain people don't game at all, it's unrelated to the "nostalgia" meme. It's true that many of the anti-4e folks are also old school fans, however AM doesn't claim that all the old school fans are driven by nostalgia or never game. If you'd like I could draw a diagram...

Anyway, regarding the original post, it's mostly bollocks as illustrated by Zulgyan and, I believe, Melan.

I think there is a big difference between saying that the "only reason people play old school game is nostalgia" and "some people may get a special buzz from and generally be more forgiving towards games with which they have formed an emotional bond when they were much younger."

And there is nothing wrong with that. Let's be clear, fun is not about rationality, it's an emotional reaction.

Nope. I play many of the games I've played for years--Marvel Superheroes (yes still, despite loving H&S more, I've friends who prefer MSH.) I still enjoy them. Just because I enjoy something doesn't mean I don't see the flaws, just that I accept them and go on.

 I've noted flaws in NEW games too, not more, not less, just some flaws of comparable scale. I think there are people who think "new" is better, yet I've played games too long to think that myself. That doesn't mean I don't think some games are better than others. Just that new or old, the quality of play often has to do with the people and the rule set involved. Not how recent they were made.

Sure my favorite--MSH isn't without some things I'd like to change. Hence SMITE, will hopefully fix those things. (Based loosely on 4C.) Yet who knows, someday it may be "old school" as all tabletop games when we plug our brains into the Synthetic Network Reality. (making all of us sinners..)

I think there are certain phenomenons to consider here:

1. There is a kind of rose-coloured glasses, which do exist among some self-described old schoolers, which are those who are NON-gamers.  That is, they played RPGs 5 or 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but don't now, and so they are "old school" in the sense that they had a ton of fun more than a decade ago, but aren't actually playing any games, old-school or otherwise now.

2. This leads to a similar level of crapulence as you see in some of the Swine on RPG.net or the Forge, who pontificate all about RPGs, and even own and read some RPGs, but haven't actually played any in ages.

3. The opponents of old-school gaming want to pretend that everyone into old-school is like the people in point #1. The basic point of the original quote is right: you can't be having "nostalgia" if you're actually playing RIGHT NOW. And usually its not too hard to tell the difference between gamers you could class as "old-school" who are actually playing and gamers who call themselves old-school and haven't played in years.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;302977I may not agree with AM's take on 4e, but as far as I know, when he says that certain people don't game at all, it's unrelated to the "nostalgia" meme. It's true that many of the anti-4e folks are also old school fans, however AM doesn't claim that all the old school fans are driven by nostalgia or never game. If you'd like I could draw a diagram...

Anyway, regarding the original post, it's mostly bollocks as illustrated by Zulgyan and, I believe, Melan.

I stopped paying attention or attempting to interpret anything AM says when it became abundantly clear that he will say basically anything to distort reality into a place where it allows him to completely dismiss and insult everyone who doesn't follow in the heard and play only whatever is the current edition of D&D.

IT is really the most fascinating of hypocrisies though, the way so many rejects like him and others really do just switch gears immediately.  I have no doubt in my mind that the second D&D 5e comes out, even if it literally turns back the clock and returns to everything AM and the like claim to repudiate about 3e all of a sudden, they will hail it as the second coming of Christ, 4e will become the worst piece of rubbish ever designed, and they'll conveniently forget the fact that everything the new edition is doing we've had all along.

Hell, there's really a lot of 2e in 4e as it is . . .

As for the nostalgia thing, I think there's at least some factor involved somewhere.  If nothing else, it's the only way I can explain grown men who can actually watch GI Joe or Transformers cartoons and not see them for the bald-facedly awful drek that they are.

The rose-coloured theory is a load of crock.

I grew up in Central Europe. Iron curtain. Warsaw Pact. We didn't have roleplaying games in the eighties (or seventies, but I'm too young for that, anyway).

When RPGs really started getting here in the nineties, it was already AD&D 2E and Vampire: The Masquerade. I kind of started with an interest in 2E, then shifted over to first edition which just felt more "right", and also read BECMI and other earlier editions. I don't have anything to look back on with nostalgia: I just compared the earlier and later games with a fresh eye, and found the latter to be shite.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;302972The alternative is - like Abyssal Maw does - to pretend that the people saying they enjoy the older games actually don't game at all.

Not something I've ever said. I do think some of the people who show up on these boards are pretty obviously no-longer gaming. some of them will even admit to it.

I do think a certain amount of the appeal of older editions is nostalgia. Certainly not all of it.

I also think there is a certain amount of "fake" nostalgia- for example the old schooler who discovers the old editions within the last year or so and isn't necessarily gaming, but rather researching the history of the game.

I have no opinion on whether they are having fun or not. I don't see why it wouldn't be fun, in any case.

I think there is a certain fetishism apparent in some old school gamers.  Some of them tend to accept unconditionally all aspects of old games without stopping to think which parts are good and which are not so good.  Many old school gamers don't just respect Gygax et al., they attempt to deify them.  I'm not contending that they're not having fun; just that they might have more fun if they dumped some of the baggage.
 
But that's only part of it.  Many people seem to be playing cleaned up, stripped down version of old school games.  This is just a preference for rules light games without abandoning old advetnure formats or switching to emo games.

I have to confess to a degree of Gygax fanboy-ism; but I think I can be forgiven.  I knew the man, gamed with him on occasion and worked for him.  I've heard some of the hair-raising tales about him in his "youth".  I temper my feelings about him accordingly.

but

Gary doesn't sit at my table, Gary doesn't DM my games (I do).  While there are parts of AD&D I embrace that a lot of post 1e folks just get frustrated at and ask my why, when those elements are so illogical or (even worse) unbalanced, there are other parts that I throw out and use what makes more sense.  That is an admittedly short list of rules, to be sure, but I am "[hewing] the line" when it comes to "consistency of rules"