I'm not dead, I still have 3 HP!
Okay, so it's been a while since I posted here. I had a lot of shit going on, is all. I'm finally getting the range on my new job, new schedule, all that. I've been working on finishing a novel that has been lying around unfinished for a year, which is nearly done. For about 2 weeks there, I was having computer difficulties as my old machine (7years old) finally bricked, and I had rather involved drama getting new one that actually worked. Suffice to say I now have a machine that works wonderfully: talks to my Mp3 player, copies porn DVDs - everything I ask of it. Things have actually been pretty good here, though Naamah has been a bit tosky - those of you who read her will know what I mean.
So today I'm going to get all curmudgeonly and bitch about RPGs. Yes. And the first lash of the rant goes out to those of you who think "RPG" means some computer-game abortion where people talk for hours and hours in pre-scripted scenes and then you fight some guy with green vertical hair and a nine-foot sword. THAT is not an RPG - how the hell can it be an RPG when there is no 'Role-Playing' to be seen? All you do is move little computer sprites around on the screen. So that shit is not playing an RPG, shame on you for thinking so. I'm talking about real RPG's - games you play with some books, a lot of paper, a bunch of friends, and enough plastic dice to choke a purple worm. That's an RPG people, when you spend three hours rolling up characters, swapping jokes and insults and then you have to go home. When the one guy swears on his mother's grave he really rolled an 18 3 times and the one guy who always plays a thief gets mad because the DM says there will be no kender in his game, and if you don't like it, you can go hump a displacer beast.
In my day you had like three games you could play if you wanted to play a fantasy RPG, and if you didn't play AD&D you were just weird. The cool thing was in those days no two groups played it the same way. It was expected - nay encouraged - to mod and frankenstein the rules until they suited you. Gamer magazines in those days were filled with new spells, races, classes and rule variants which would be unthinkable in this day and age. It was also the rule, rather than the exception, to build your own world for adventuring in. In fact I would say world-building was and still is my favorite part of the whole process of running a game. I was a sad witness to the ascendancy of mass-produced, cliche-ridden, heavily-marketed game worlds pushed on lazy DMs by cynical and greedy game companies: Forgotten Realms, Krynn, Planescape, Dark Sun and other high-concept, low-brow nonsense. Pretty soon all the fun went out of gaming with new people - everybody played the same game in the same damned worlds. Nobody remembered the fun of playing in a world you had invented yourself, added to and made richer by years of characters playing in and altering it, so that they felt as much a part of it as you did. No, it's just "Oooh the new expansion pack for the Northern Sea is out, now I can find out about ice pirates!" What happened to making it up yourself? What happened to imagination? What happened to the DIY ethic I loved when all you had was a Player's Handbook, a DMG, and a Monster Manual somebody borrowed from their big brother?
All this came to mind yesterday when I was down at Gardner's used books looking through their used gaming stuff. I collect old 'classic' era gaming detritus - old modules, rulebooks, and oddball games from the 70s and 80s. The stuff that was out when I had the most fun gaming in groups. I always look through the stuff they have, and sometimes I get lucky. Not yesterday, yesterday it was a wasteland of castoff crap that I didn't have to wonder why it was cast off. A bunch of huge, fat hardbacks from White Wolf and their atrocious 'Storyteller' (read: I can't do basic math) system. A few AD&D supplements from the post-2nd Edition era (the last good version of the rules, or at least the last playable one). A fistful of worldbooks from Kevin Siembieda's wrongheaded, unplayable RIFTS game. And the one that really pissed me off: a Champion's supplement from maybe 10 years ago, a persual of which indicated to me that they have altered the sacred Hero system to make it easier for morons to use! Yes, they have 'streamlined' the rules so that idiots can play it, heck you probably don't even need a calculator to make a character anymore. You know, when a rules system works fine, like the old AD&D system, they feel compelled to update it like they were Microsoft or something so that everybody *has* to go out and buy the new rules, and when a system is crap, like RIFTS, they never change it, just keep piling on the supplements until the game can barely move - there is such a thing as too much worldbuilding.
I know the reedy cry of "why can't things stay the way they were? It was so much better that way!" is pure grumpy old man territory. But this time, in the face of TORG, Amazing Engine, and 'The D20 System', I really think I am right. In fact, everything has been going to hell since David Trampier stopped doing "Wormy", and you can quote me on that.
So today I'm going to get all curmudgeonly and bitch about RPGs. Yes. And the first lash of the rant goes out to those of you who think "RPG" means some computer-game abortion where people talk for hours and hours in pre-scripted scenes and then you fight some guy with green vertical hair and a nine-foot sword. THAT is not an RPG - how the hell can it be an RPG when there is no 'Role-Playing' to be seen? All you do is move little computer sprites around on the screen. So that shit is not playing an RPG, shame on you for thinking so. I'm talking about real RPG's - games you play with some books, a lot of paper, a bunch of friends, and enough plastic dice to choke a purple worm. That's an RPG people, when you spend three hours rolling up characters, swapping jokes and insults and then you have to go home. When the one guy swears on his mother's grave he really rolled an 18 3 times and the one guy who always plays a thief gets mad because the DM says there will be no kender in his game, and if you don't like it, you can go hump a displacer beast.
In my day you had like three games you could play if you wanted to play a fantasy RPG, and if you didn't play AD&D you were just weird. The cool thing was in those days no two groups played it the same way. It was expected - nay encouraged - to mod and frankenstein the rules until they suited you. Gamer magazines in those days were filled with new spells, races, classes and rule variants which would be unthinkable in this day and age. It was also the rule, rather than the exception, to build your own world for adventuring in. In fact I would say world-building was and still is my favorite part of the whole process of running a game. I was a sad witness to the ascendancy of mass-produced, cliche-ridden, heavily-marketed game worlds pushed on lazy DMs by cynical and greedy game companies: Forgotten Realms, Krynn, Planescape, Dark Sun and other high-concept, low-brow nonsense. Pretty soon all the fun went out of gaming with new people - everybody played the same game in the same damned worlds. Nobody remembered the fun of playing in a world you had invented yourself, added to and made richer by years of characters playing in and altering it, so that they felt as much a part of it as you did. No, it's just "Oooh the new expansion pack for the Northern Sea is out, now I can find out about ice pirates!" What happened to making it up yourself? What happened to imagination? What happened to the DIY ethic I loved when all you had was a Player's Handbook, a DMG, and a Monster Manual somebody borrowed from their big brother?
All this came to mind yesterday when I was down at Gardner's used books looking through their used gaming stuff. I collect old 'classic' era gaming detritus - old modules, rulebooks, and oddball games from the 70s and 80s. The stuff that was out when I had the most fun gaming in groups. I always look through the stuff they have, and sometimes I get lucky. Not yesterday, yesterday it was a wasteland of castoff crap that I didn't have to wonder why it was cast off. A bunch of huge, fat hardbacks from White Wolf and their atrocious 'Storyteller' (read: I can't do basic math) system. A few AD&D supplements from the post-2nd Edition era (the last good version of the rules, or at least the last playable one). A fistful of worldbooks from Kevin Siembieda's wrongheaded, unplayable RIFTS game. And the one that really pissed me off: a Champion's supplement from maybe 10 years ago, a persual of which indicated to me that they have altered the sacred Hero system to make it easier for morons to use! Yes, they have 'streamlined' the rules so that idiots can play it, heck you probably don't even need a calculator to make a character anymore. You know, when a rules system works fine, like the old AD&D system, they feel compelled to update it like they were Microsoft or something so that everybody *has* to go out and buy the new rules, and when a system is crap, like RIFTS, they never change it, just keep piling on the supplements until the game can barely move - there is such a thing as too much worldbuilding.
I know the reedy cry of "why can't things stay the way they were? It was so much better that way!" is pure grumpy old man territory. But this time, in the face of TORG, Amazing Engine, and 'The D20 System', I really think I am right. In fact, everything has been going to hell since David Trampier stopped doing "Wormy", and you can quote me on that.