I've played with Oldhammer guys because I love Mordheim. I prefer small squad skirmish so stuff like Mordheim and Lunchhammer (500 point WFB) are more my style.

I know guys at cons who still run awesome 40k Epic events and they always get a bunch of players. Nobody is showing up for the rules however, just the coolness of the mass battle.

Sadly, Warmaster, the 10mm Warhammer Fantasy game never got an audience. The rules were very good. More fun than WFB for me.

I've played a few Rogue Trader games for nostalgia, but I prefer the current rules in 40k. Sure I miss the Squat and Ogryns, but overall 40k gets better with each edition (with some bumps in the road).

I would love to play some Oldhammer type games. I keep trying to get into Warhammer and the price of the freaking miniatures and books just puts me off after a bit. I do wonder just how much the presence of the OGL was needed to prime the OSR movement? I don't see Oldhammer ever really taking off, in part because of the lack of clones, which I think given Games Workshop's testy nature over their IP are not likely to happen. It does seem like GW really likes to shit on their better work, I hear nothing but good things about Mordheim, Epic, and the like.

Quote from: Catelf;651966GW started to lose contacts with their roots already in late 90's, when they decided to "streamline" their armies, and removed the Squats and the Beastmen from 40K .... not to mention their discontiuation of their Epic line.
Sure, streamlining was something interesting to try out, but it was also obvious that they were focussing on the "big sellers" ...
Their own magazine, White Dwarf, used to include articles on non-GW-things, and they practically endorsed using whatever was appropriate for their games.

Today ... They are just a moneyhungry company that just happens to make great miniatures (since Citadel Miniatures was absorbed into GW).

No it goes right back to the gw / citadel merger.
Before that white dwarf was a generic game mag with intersting ideas. GW produced some great board games, rogue trooper, block mania, judge dredd, chainsaw warrior, fury of dracula and had kicked off warhammer fantasy role play.
They had a nice 2000ad inspired programme and that cynical humour.
Then with the merger every game needed collectable minis, gw stores started just selling gw products which became citdel minis and warhammer books all the board games were discontinued and they were no longer a place for young designers to take new game ideas.

If you want to play some fantasy battles just create your own rules or download something from the web.
The only reason to play official rules is if you need to find players at at a local club where you don't know anyone.
I don't know why you would want to play an old version of a game when you can just create your own rules or grab some free ones.

Quote from: Arkansan;651974I would love to play some Oldhammer type games. I keep trying to get into Warhammer and the price of the freaking miniatures and books just puts me off after a bit.

Minis wargaming is expensive. But you can minimize costs via eBay. Lots of people buy stuff, half paint them and drop out of the hobby. You can usually get their stuff for half price or much less if you know how to hunt eBay.

Back when I played a lot, I would buy in bulk, then sell back stuff I didn't want and my final price was often a tenth of retail.

Old edition Warhammer books are usually pretty cheap. You can't use them in any tourney play at cons or game stores, so they don't have much value beyond the very limited Oldhammer market.

Thanks for the tips, I had noticed that some real deals can be had on EBay if you are patient. Miniature war gaming does seem to be rather expensive in general. Right now I am doing historical war gaming in 1/72 scale, those things are super cheap, around ten bucks for an average of 40 minis with some companies doing really good sculpts.

I personally am not interested in the tournament scene, I have been looking into doing most of my war gaming solo. I like the Warhammer fluff to a large degree and think the rules are okay, so at this point I am really looking into just doing up army lists for a different rule set (Rally Round the King which is designed with solo gaming in mind) and using miniatures from other companies. There are some decent fantasy sets out there that are cheaper, I hope to see more released in plastic as well.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;651960Last time I played Monopoly, we used an actual shoe, an actual iron, and an actual Scottie as playing pieces.

The battleship was deemed impractical, however.

Heh! That Scottie must have been bloody well trained as well

Quote from: soviet;652257Heh! That Scottie must have been bloody well trained as well

Unfortunately, he kept chewing on the shoe, which resulted in constantly trying to remember where that player's token was supposed to be.

Quote from: Arkansan;651838Yeah it does seem like many times there is a great game that gets further fucked up with every new edition. It seems like nothing ever really gets fixed you just end up with a new set of inconsistencies in place of the old ones

I also wonder if the drive to justify selling new rules books plays a role into the general bloat.

I've had this basic problem with Star Fleet Battles. When I first discoverd the game in the 1980's SFB was a microgame and then a "Designer's Edition" game. Not too complex. Over time, SFB evolved into an ugly monster with three 3-ring binders full of rules and additional expansion material coming out all the time.

A few years ago I dumped it all and went back to the microgame version. I'm a lot happier with it.

Quote from: finarvyn;653205I've had this basic problem with Star Fleet Battles. When I first discoverd the game in the 1980's SFB was a microgame and then a "Designer's Edition" game. Not too complex. Over time, SFB evolved into an ugly monster with three 3-ring binders full of rules and additional expansion material coming out all the time.

A few years ago I dumped it all and went back to the microgame version. I'm a lot happier with it.

I played a lot of crazy Star Fleet Battles years ago; actual fleets of ships battling it out, and campaign games to rule the galaxy.

I wonder if I could even handle it now, so many years later.

Might be too much crunch for my current tastes.



But I would not mind at all taking a Killerhawk for a spin

Quote from: finarvyn;653205A few years ago I dumped it all and went back to the microgame version. I'm a lot happier with it.

My crew was jonesing for some SFB a few years ago and we did one session. It was slow agony so I sold off my SFB stuff and bought a copy of StarFire off eBay and that gave us a lot more fun.

A lot of what attracts the OSR crowd also are the free games.  The hope is that  being free will get GMs more players at their tables and re-interested in RPGs again.

Quote from: Bill;653248I played a lot of crazy Star Fleet Battles years ago; actual fleets of ships battling it out, and campaign games to rule the galaxy.

I wonder if I could even handle it now, so many years later.

Might be too much crunch for my current tastes.



But I would not mind at all taking a Killerhawk for a spin

I used to play SFB back in the day, too. A few days ago I broke down and cracked open my Dragon Pass boardgame...can't believe I used to play this as kid/teenager, lawdy the rules.

Fun at the time, but nowadays I let the computer handle the rules crunch...been playing lots of Titans of Steel (a sweet knockoff of battletech, turn-based like it's supposed to be).

To me, in answer to your original question, it is called OSR, Old School Renaissance, and it is gaining momentum across every place, forum, and RPG sale site that I can see. It is good to talk about what it means, and what the future of gaming could look like. Forget the "bling", the shiny character accoutrements, remember the imagination, and the ability to improvise.

Hi Again, Right. It is not a movement. OSR is an awareness.