It's been called various things, such as the "Old-school Revival," or "Old-school Renaissance." But why is it happening, and where is it going? I've been thinking about this for some time and decided to write down some of my thoughts. This isn't an exhaustive treatise or anything of the sort, but is presented as an open discussion. So here is how I've been structuring my thoughts. It could definitely be fleshed out, but here are the basics.
Origins of the Old-school Revival
Before we can really talk about the old-school revival, we have to define what we mean by the phrase. To me it means the resurgence of interest in old out of print games and game styles that has happened over the last several years.
An interest in old-school games has always been on the internet. The internet is the main thing responsible for the revival, since people with the same interests who would otherwise never meet are able to share common interests. For many years communities have come together to talk about older games, and have produced a plethora of support for the games in the form of netbooks and other sorts of internet postings. However, I think old-school gaming got a major adrenaline shot in the arm, ironically enough, with the advent of Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5 along with the Open Game License (OGL) and system reference documents (SRD) by Wizards of the Coast.
With the WoTC D20 license and the OGL, suddenly people could legally (or maybe more accurately, safely) create supplemental material for the D&D game. The result is the birth of the electronic book/supplement market for RPGs. There is a whole lot that could be said about that, by people who are much better informed and experienced than I, so I want to jump to the part I think is most relevant to this discussion.
So we already have in the background small internet communities that support old-school games. One of the marketing tools used by WoTC when they released D&D 3.0 was the rhetoric that the game was getting back to the dungeon, or in other words, back to its roots of game play as opposed to AD&D 2e which placed considerable focus on wilderness settings, and game worlds overall. A few prominent 3rd party publishers (or I should say, publishers who became prominent) used this idea to help sell their products. Goodman Games came up with their line of Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure modules, using a sort of "back to the dungeon and simpler times" theme. This was and is an extremely successful product line. Then we have Necromancer Games, with their trademark phrase, "3rd Edition Rules, First Edition feel."
So we have an atmosphere in which consumers are being told that old-school=more fun, so long as you are grabbing that "old-school feel" and using it with the current published rules. So I think in a sense the old-school revival owes something of a debt to these marketing elements, because it communicated to gamers that there is something worthwhile about the "old-school" that should be preserved. There is so much more that could be said about the effects of this, but I will move on. Of course, as is always the case, you can't please everyone. Some people got tired of the rules bloat in 3.0/3.5 and decided to use the OGL for purposes it wasn't intended for.
To be fair, it wasn't the first time. As soon as publishers realized that the d20 logo didn't help for most of them with sales (which IMO is there own fault, but I'll discuss that somewhere else), many dropped it and used only the OGL for supplements and, unexpectedly for WotC, to create entire RPGs that actually compete(d) with D&D. Someone can correct me if I am off here on the timeline, but at about the same time, the Basic Fantasy RPG was created, and Castles & Crusades was created.
Basic Fantasy (BFRPG), by Chris Gonnerman and a number of other contributors, was the very first of what is now commonly called a "retro-clone" game. It uses the OGL and the SRDs to essentially recreate many of the rules from the Moldvay/Cook edition of Dungeons and Dragons, but the rules are tweaked with AD&D elements and other elements to allow a number of other features. Castles & Crusades (C&C), on the other hand, is created as a game that is really a mix of Basic D&D, AD&D, and D&D 3.x. C&C really made a lot of people angry in the old-school community, because they were hoping for a product that more closely emulated AD&D. the battles around that were bitter and continue today, though they have diminished, but the important thing that came from that dissatisfaction, and I think the event that really changed the course of the "old-school revival," was the advent of OSRIC by Stuart Marshall and Matthew Finch.
OSRIC was created as a reaction to the dissatisfaction of C&C. OSRIC emulates 1e, and it met a firestorm of debates about its legality and so on. The positive outcome of those debates is that it really made a big difference in drawing attention to itself, so that the name OSRIC is recognized by the majority of gamers who frequent online RPG communities. OSRIC opened a lot of peoples' eyes to just what might be accomplished with the OGL, and it somehow inspired people to begin producing material, not just for 1e through OSRIC, but for several other old games.
So to draw things together, the old-school revival, in my eyes, is the result of the following. An existing presence of old-school game fandom on the internet, combined with the advent of the OGL and SRDs, advertising from 3.x publishers that "old-school" is a desirable style of play, the creation of C&C and OSRIC, and all of this combined with the ease of PDF publishing and, in more recent years, viable print on demand services. Suddenly, anyone with a computer and minimal desktop publishing software can produce not just a PDF, but also a physical, high quality product.
Current State
So today we have a number of games that are either "retro-clones" or near clones, of games. As already mentioned, we have BFRPG, OSRIC, and then came Labyrinth Lord, and then Mutant Future, and soon also Swords & Wizardry. I group these together because they were/are produced within sort of the same "circle" of creators. There are now several other similar efforts, probably most notably the 4c System.
These are the "big" projects that were taken on early in the "movement." Now it seems there are old-school periodicals popping up with great frequency, the first of which was the Old-School Gazette, then the Scribe of Orcus, Fight On!, and more that are planned by various parties.
The big question right now is how far will things go, and will old-school games ever become more mainstream. C&C has been very successful, as they were able to dip into the D&D 3.x buyer pool, but other efforts that stick more closely to older rules have not enjoyed quite the popularity, and though some success has been achieved in traditional distribution (Expeditious Retreat Press with their Advanced Adventures OSRIC modules) most efforts are still circulating only with a small audience "in the know" on the internet.
The Future
It will be interesting to see how things progress. Rather than offer too many predictions, I will note some challenges (in my opinion) the "old-school revival" faces.
Probably the biggest challenge is that older games do not broadly appeal to younger gamers who play D&D 3.x or 4th edition. I think that while there are many reasons for this, we can narrow it down to three big ones.
1) The idea of game "evolution." It is true that in our culture there is a misconception, broadly, that cultural evolution evolves "upward," so that changes are for the "better." This social Darwinism is deeply ingrained. It is only natural that people translate that false assumption to games, often equating role playing games with technology, as if the next edition of an RPG is quantitatively better just like the next generation computer games that have better graphics. Of course this is false. An RPG is only "better" in the eyes of the beholder, not quantitatively.
2) Taking advantage of #1 above, in the case of Dungeons & Dragons, WotC encourages this thinking because it justifies creating and buying a new edition. I'd argue the push was less with TSR in the shift to AD&D 2e, greater with WotC in the change to 3.x, and the rhetoric was drastically increased in the shift to 4e. In order to sell more books WotC communicated strongly that 4e is better, and more evolved, than previous editions. They even took this so far as to create a video in which they depict earlier editions as being silly and primitive.
3) Gamers have changed. Or rather, the next generation of gamers have a very different gaming culture than the previous generation of gamers. Popular culture has influenced how gamers play (it always has), especially with MMORPGs that present a different kind of actual play, and with what they expect from imagery. Gone are the typical Tolkien races (what was, I think, the "conservative race lineup"), and in are the more "comic bookish" images of bizarre races. The entire artistic representation, and sources of inspiration, have changed. All of this makes it difficult to attract younger gamers to older games, because older games seem less fun due to the absence of super-power like game options that minimize character death, combined with the imagery around the games, making them seem quaint and primitive (see 1 and 2).
Finally, reaching a wider audience is a problem. It is difficult to reach a wider audience so long as the old-school games remain solely on the internet. To that end some people are making efforts to get the games out there in physical stores. There are also various psychologies at work. People often question the need for retro-clone games, citing the fact that to one degree or another used books are available of the original systems. This is true, but the problem is that it is hard to appeal to a new audience with an out of print game. Desire for and sales of modules for 1e games, for instance, in theory would be better if 1e is actually in print. Many gamers simply will not look at out of print games, and I think "bringing them back" through retro-clones is the answer to that dilemma.
The whole Old-school Revival is still in its infancy, so it will be interesting to see where it goes. I think a good conservative prediction would be that there will be some break into the "mainstream," but at least for a while it will exist as primarily an internet phenomenon. Print on demand technology makes it easy to create books, and if there becomes a cheaper and more effective way to get these books into distribution then I think all bets are off on what might happen. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible that the current produced by more "modern" expectations of games is far to strong for the old-school to ever gain much popularity. We'll see.
Showing posts with label Mutant Future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mutant Future. Show all posts
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Mental/Psionic Combat
I'm slowly plodding away at a project I haven't announced yet, and likely won't until I have more of it finished. One of the things that it requires is a system to handle psionics.
My initial idea was that I would use the SRD to recreate the algorithms in AD&D 1e. As I investigated it I realized that not only had I never really read the 1e psionics rules, but that mental combat had already begun in just trying to figure out how it all worked!
I played a lot of 2e back in the day, and we did use psionics in that, but the system was much simpler. So I went back to the source with the OD&D and found psionics to be even more convoluted.
This is all probably one reason why most people didn't like or use psionics to begin with.
I don't like the 1e psionics system for several reasons. One reason is that psionics is far less effective against non-psionic characters. So if you incorporate psionics in your game, even if just for monsters, most characters will not have psionics in the first place, thus handicapping your psionic creatures. I don't like that a lack of psionic powers actually grants a form of immunity to psionic attack.
Another reason, and probably the biggest, is that 1e (and OD&D) psionics is a LOT of book keeping and needless point exchanging. You see, with 1e psionics non-combat powers only cost one point of psionic strength, of which say an average character will have 70+ to as much as over 150 points. Given that with complete rest a character can recover a lot of points per day, this makes point expenditure needless. You will never run out of points anyway.
Psionic combat in 1e is another matter. The combat powers do cost more points, as do defense points, but opponents could fight several rounds before they have broken through defenses and finally do something useful. Say 10+ rounds (if each side as an average amount of points) of playing with each other's points. This makes psionics sort of pointless in combat since most of the butt kicking will happen in the first several rounds of combat, and if your character is sitting around not doing damage or something else useful for 10 rounds or more, he may as well not be in the fight. Not to mention that all things being equal, say when opponents have about the same points available to them, by the time an attacker breaks through defenses he won't have any points left to attack anymore!
So, what is the solution? I think the best course of action is to revert to a simpler system that is not point based. If I'm going to do that, I'd like to keep the system compatible with my previous work. So I think I will port over the mental combat system from Mutant Future, and treat psionics in the same way as mutations, so that they will be cross compatible. This will be convenient because I can envision this book I'm writing as something someone would use as inspiration in creating campaign worlds for the Mutants & Mazes aspect of Mutant Future.
For people unfamiliar with mental combat in Mutant Future, it is essentially a test between opponent's willpower ability scores, so that when opponents with equal abilities pair off, the attacker has a 55% chance of succeeding. The probability is adjusted in either direction by 5% for each ability point difference higher or lower between the opponents. In Mutant Future all of this takes place using a d20, so an attacker with WIL 15 against an opponent with WIL 13 would need to roll 8 or better on 1d20 to succeed.
An interesting thing about this algorithm is that while it is used in Gamma World 1e, it is also used in the Basic Roleplaying System (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, etc) where it is call the "Resistance Roll" and uses a d% instead of a d20 (also the percetage is 50% when abilities are the same), but the overall probability increments are the same. When I noticed this it made me wonder whether one game borrowed from the other, or whether these algorithms were arrived at independently. In either case it is a system that works very well.
My initial idea was that I would use the SRD to recreate the algorithms in AD&D 1e. As I investigated it I realized that not only had I never really read the 1e psionics rules, but that mental combat had already begun in just trying to figure out how it all worked!
I played a lot of 2e back in the day, and we did use psionics in that, but the system was much simpler. So I went back to the source with the OD&D and found psionics to be even more convoluted.
This is all probably one reason why most people didn't like or use psionics to begin with.
I don't like the 1e psionics system for several reasons. One reason is that psionics is far less effective against non-psionic characters. So if you incorporate psionics in your game, even if just for monsters, most characters will not have psionics in the first place, thus handicapping your psionic creatures. I don't like that a lack of psionic powers actually grants a form of immunity to psionic attack.
Another reason, and probably the biggest, is that 1e (and OD&D) psionics is a LOT of book keeping and needless point exchanging. You see, with 1e psionics non-combat powers only cost one point of psionic strength, of which say an average character will have 70+ to as much as over 150 points. Given that with complete rest a character can recover a lot of points per day, this makes point expenditure needless. You will never run out of points anyway.
Psionic combat in 1e is another matter. The combat powers do cost more points, as do defense points, but opponents could fight several rounds before they have broken through defenses and finally do something useful. Say 10+ rounds (if each side as an average amount of points) of playing with each other's points. This makes psionics sort of pointless in combat since most of the butt kicking will happen in the first several rounds of combat, and if your character is sitting around not doing damage or something else useful for 10 rounds or more, he may as well not be in the fight. Not to mention that all things being equal, say when opponents have about the same points available to them, by the time an attacker breaks through defenses he won't have any points left to attack anymore!
So, what is the solution? I think the best course of action is to revert to a simpler system that is not point based. If I'm going to do that, I'd like to keep the system compatible with my previous work. So I think I will port over the mental combat system from Mutant Future, and treat psionics in the same way as mutations, so that they will be cross compatible. This will be convenient because I can envision this book I'm writing as something someone would use as inspiration in creating campaign worlds for the Mutants & Mazes aspect of Mutant Future.
For people unfamiliar with mental combat in Mutant Future, it is essentially a test between opponent's willpower ability scores, so that when opponents with equal abilities pair off, the attacker has a 55% chance of succeeding. The probability is adjusted in either direction by 5% for each ability point difference higher or lower between the opponents. In Mutant Future all of this takes place using a d20, so an attacker with WIL 15 against an opponent with WIL 13 would need to roll 8 or better on 1d20 to succeed.
An interesting thing about this algorithm is that while it is used in Gamma World 1e, it is also used in the Basic Roleplaying System (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, etc) where it is call the "Resistance Roll" and uses a d% instead of a d20 (also the percetage is 50% when abilities are the same), but the overall probability increments are the same. When I noticed this it made me wonder whether one game borrowed from the other, or whether these algorithms were arrived at independently. In either case it is a system that works very well.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Welcome to my blog!
Even though I operate a small-press publishing effort (Goblinoid Games), this blog is not solely focused on matters related to my publishing company.
Rather, I want to use this space to talk about gaming in general. The name of this blog is inspired by the spectacular cult classic animated movie Heavy Metal, wherein the "Den" segment there are two factions fighting over the Loc-Nar so that they can summon Uhluht'c and gain unspeakable power. Of course, "Uhluht'c" is merely Cthulhu spelled backwards.
I find Heavy Metal to be very creatively stimulating, due to its diverse imagery and no-punches-pulled gritty presentation of fantasy and science fantasy. It was definitely an inspiration when my friend Ryan and I where working on Mutant Future. I think the Den segment is my favorite in Heavy Metal because it seems to be a Lovecraftian science fantasy world, which I think is ripe for use in gaming. I will have more to say about this later, for the mean time, welcome and I hope you enjoy the blog!
Rather, I want to use this space to talk about gaming in general. The name of this blog is inspired by the spectacular cult classic animated movie Heavy Metal, wherein the "Den" segment there are two factions fighting over the Loc-Nar so that they can summon Uhluht'c and gain unspeakable power. Of course, "Uhluht'c" is merely Cthulhu spelled backwards.
I find Heavy Metal to be very creatively stimulating, due to its diverse imagery and no-punches-pulled gritty presentation of fantasy and science fantasy. It was definitely an inspiration when my friend Ryan and I where working on Mutant Future. I think the Den segment is my favorite in Heavy Metal because it seems to be a Lovecraftian science fantasy world, which I think is ripe for use in gaming. I will have more to say about this later, for the mean time, welcome and I hope you enjoy the blog!
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