What Aspects of Older Games Have Aged Well? (+)

[jdrakeh]

Scene-based conflict resolution (as opposed to individual action resolution) as it first appeared in Maelstrom Storytelling by Hubris Games has enjoyed a particularly long life in story games and indie RPGs since then (with permutations, of course).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Though the game has a reputation as being overly complicated, I think Aftermath! actually had one of the best generic ongoing-task systems that's ever been done. Its general survival mechanics were not bad, either.

 

[Jahydin]

Earthdawn, without a doubt. Game was way ahead of it's time. It had healing surge/hit dice spending type effects to let characters heal without needing magic spells to do so throughout the day. Non-spellcasters had abilities that let them far exceed normal mortals, and there was no caster that got everything- each one, from Elementalists to Illusionists, to Nethermancers, to even Wizards, had unique and thematic spell lists.

A wide variety of races, a fleshed out fantasy world that could be as gritty or epic as you want it to be, great artwork with full color splash pages- I really miss that game.

Oh boy, I had the original FASA book and read it so much as a kid it fell apart on me.

I've wanted to get back into so bad, but saw there are a ton of editions under different companies. Any idea which one is the best?

 

[Jahydin]

I think the 1981 Basic/Expert edition of D&D is still the best RPG ever made. Even with the silly attack roll and armor class calculation and the weird spell slot mechanic.

AC was silly cause it was off by 1 right? Were the spell slots weird cause of the odd slot progression?

 

[James Gasik]

Oh boy, I had the original FASA book and read it so much as a kid it fell apart on me.

I've wanted to get back into so bad, but saw there are a ton of editions under different companies. Any idea which one is the best?

I prefer the original. The later books added more complex concepts like "half-magic" that I'm not sure are needed.

OG Earthdawn does have a few things that need a little patching up, but I never saw anything egregious enough to be super problematic. My only issue with it was that, since Adepts are intended to use their Talents to overcome problems, they don't get many Skills, and Skills are expensive to buy with Legend Points compared to the benefit they grant.

Plus they don't help you advance in Circle which means people might not think they are worth the effort. I haven't figured out how I would solve this problem (since I can't get people to try the game).

Another minor issue is the fact that Legend Points are used to advance your character and buy Karma (or raise ability scores, which you have limited opportunities to do, and are also quite expensive). This might make players with expensive Karma dice (like Trolls) loath to use their Karma.

The solution a friend suggested was to offer "Legend Rewards" for completing goals and achieving milestones in the adventure, that are Legend Points that cannot be used on Talents.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Half-magic appeared in the first edition, it was just in one of the supplemental books.

 

[James Gasik]

Ah ok, thanks, I don't own that one then, when I first looked at a later edition of Earthdawn and there was this huge section on "half-magic" my reaction was "what is this? why is this?".

But I had the same reaction to Physical Adepts in Shadowrun...

 

[Yora]

AC was silly cause it was off by 1 right? Were the spell slots weird cause of the odd slot progression?

No. AC was weird because 1d20 + attack bonus against AC is much simpler, more obvious, and all out objectively better than whatever the hell all the old D&D editions did. Attack tables should not exist.

Spell slots are weird in general.

 

[James Gasik]

And yet, I know so many old school players who will scoff at d20+bonus to hit target number and say "there was nothing wrong with it before, people just need to learn to do math!"

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Classic Traveller, 0-3. I am even more in awe of it now than I was 40 years ago.