The topic of rules badly aged rules came up in another thread and the idea kind of stuck with me. There are a host of games with third, fourth or more editions now and other games that still linger on in older formats.

Games like Apocalypse World and Fate took very different tracks from more traditional role playing games. One could probably argue there is a generational difference in these types of games but I think the crux of the idea is when is it time to update a rule set?

What makes rules feel dated?

If you are doing a new edition is there a general accepted level of deviation, or can the authors start fresh?  Such as the leap from 3.x to 4th D&D and 2nd and 3rd editions of Synnibarr.

Main thing that seems dated to me is extremely detailed and involved rules, especially if justified by "realism". Seems very 80s-90s to me.

Edit to add:
Especially since the Games that seemed most realistic to me - CoC and CP2020 (and their relatives) have very streamlined and intuitive rules (CP2020 gets more dated due to its 80s "kewl" factor but that's not the same thing).

I think a lot of it is just in how they look. Lots of charts... pages and pages of dense type that looks to have been laid out by hand... illustrations that would be substandard in grade school. Still, some of PDFs I've bought lately aren't that far off of that look (which I'm kinda fond of, being as I'm a hipster and all).

Most of the rules I know and like haven't changed that much since their earliest incarnations... Call of Cthulhu and the core BRP system, GURPS... classic Traveller vs. its Mongoose edition (ignoring what's come in between).  
With them it's mostly the art and layout... the move from boxed sets to hardbacks. From black and white to full color.

Something like WFRP 3rd though, seems like a wholly new game, IMO... more than just a new edition.

I wonder. If you were to take some old 'dated' game (as long as it doesn't have charts, kids hate charts)... change its name to protect the innocent... give it a fresh coat of paint... give the writing a gloss... redo the layout with some zippy new graphic design program... put it out in a fresh new hardcover with glossy pages laden with top notch full color artwork... but keep the core mechanics the same... should probably add in some fiction to fluff up the page count because most old rules I know weren't very long compared to modern ones.
Would anyone scream about how 'stale' the rules were?

Probably.

Quote from: Certified;786110The topic of rules badly aged rules came up in another thread and the idea kind of stuck with me. There are a host of games with third, fourth or more editions now and other games that still linger on in older formats.

Games like Apocalypse World and Fate took very different tracks from more traditional role playing games. One could probably argue there is a generational difference in these types of games but I think the crux of the idea is when is it time to update a rule set?

What makes rules feel dated?

If you are doing a new edition is there a general accepted level of deviation, or can the authors start fresh?  Such as the leap from 3.x to 4th D&D and 2nd and 3rd editions of Synnibarr.

Games used to grow up organically. This meant that there were all sorts of different rules systems to use for different things. Some people liek this some people find it grates.
I am of the school that a simple unified mechanic allows me to make effective rulings without slowing the game down looking for some obscure section of the rules were the particular subsystem is detailed. So if we are in d20 world where d20 + bonus vs DC is the core mechanic i can rule on the pirate swinging between ships, I can rule on a contest of wills between 2 wizards trying to control a magical artefact or I can rule on the chance of a thief catching a hand hold as he falls off a castle roof. I can do this all almost without any thought. thsi enables me to concentrate on the roleplaying stuff rather than the mechanics.

Other people like that different subsystems have their own niche rulesets becuase they feel it games the game colour. This is a focus on the Game aspect of RPG rather than the RP bit. Horses for courses and all that.

So take 1e D&D as a classic and nicely contentious example. If you look at skills in early 1e there are basically 4 separate subsystems all of which are used differently. 1st off the thief has skills expressed as % which start low and progress as they level. Then Rangers have a tracking skill also % based but much higher base numbers and a whole different set of modifiers. Then there are secondary proficiencies which indicate that all PCs had a previous occupation (the logic of which is not well explained) and can use any skill fromt hat profession as the DM sees fit. Lastly there is the default although unoffical "stat check" where you roll under a stat to do a skill.
later 1e AD&D brought in Non-weapon proficiencies to add a fifth mechanism to replace secondary skills. NWP start with high based chances drawign from stats so a 1st level thief has much more chance of say forgery then they do with any of their core thief skills.

So this is a prime example of system that has aged. It grew up over time with no real thought about how the bits compare or work together. Plenty of people are fine with it as it is and even like the quirkiness, but show them a new system that has the same discontinuities and they are likely to be more critical. So unifying this would seem to be advantageous.

I recall a few years back playing in a demo game of Alpha Omega the combat section with mixed sorts of dice for different weapons and lots of rolls and unclear subsystems for autofire etc felt to me at that point as an aged rule system , even though it was brand new.

Quote from: jibbajibba;786116So this is a prime example of system that has aged. It grew up over time with no real thought about how the bits compare or work together.

The way you are using 'aged' though is a bit different than what I usually see where someone is implying that the rules now seem clunky, where they didn't at the time they were first played... with no changes to the system but changes to the person's tastes and perspective.
By your usage D&D has 'aged' strangely, getting more baroque and byzantine before bursting forth in it's current 'fresh and new' form... whereas something like Call of Cthulhu has barely 'aged' at all and remains mostly compatible with its earliest materials.

Mechanics -- the actual physical actions and math procedures - don't age. Rolling dice and adding them together to beat a score doesn't suddenly stop working, although maybe it will go out of fashion... but may come back into fashion again.

Some other things, like layout and artistic styles, may go out of fashion as well. Arguing that this is example of "aging badly" may be argued over without reaching an agreement one way or the other, but it's not really "the game" or "the rules".

The ideas in the prose itself, though, especially ideas attached to the conditional rules surrounding mechanics, may be out of date. For example, the gender-based ability caps or modifiers in AD&D 1e and a couple other games are based on outmoded, sexist ideas that were already going out of fashion even in the '70s. Game books that mention a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union are also out of date, although they're more laughable than uncomfortable. Many cyberpunk RPGs have gone out of print and stayed that way because their tech and cultural details are way out of date.

I'd argue that it's only in this last sense, of ideas showing their age, that an RPG can really "age poorly". Everything else is just preferences and fashion trends. However, it's important to emphasis it's not the mechanics attached to an out-of-date idea that is wrong, it's only the idea that the mechanics are designed to implement.

Quote from: Certified;786110What makes rules feel dated?

Fashion. Clunky highly simulationist systems scream '80s Silver Age' to me. Then you have the Metaplot & Rails '90s, the d20 '00s, and the glut of Dramatist mechanics of recent years. An example of an in-print game I bought recently that feels dated is Daredevils, one of the clunky '80s systems.

The very earliest systems that have stood the test of time don't feel dated to me - stuff like BX D&D, 2e Runequest, and Classic Traveller are design classics that have aged very well. There are some more recent classics, eg WEG d6 Star Wars from 1987.

Quote from: talysman;786124Game books that mention a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union are also out of date, although they're more laughable than uncomfortable.

Yeah, need to replace 'USSR' with 'Russia'. Otherwise the idea of US tank divisions fighting WW3 in eastern Europe per Twilight: 2000 is a lot more plausible now than it was in 1984. In 1984 they'd have been fighting in West Germany.

Quote from: talysman;786124The ideas in the prose itself, though, especially ideas attached to the conditional rules surrounding mechanics, may be out of date. For example, the gender-based ability caps or modifiers in AD&D 1e and a couple other games are based on outmoded, sexist ideas that were already going out of fashion even in the '70s.

My mid-'80s copy of 3e Runequest still has a lower STR roll for female NPCs for simulationist reasons, but there was a recognition that PCs should be treated differently, so female PCs got treated as male. This is so that male & female players can play viable female warrior type characters and not be disadvantaged.

The meme that female human NPCs in RPGs should have the same STR as male NPCs is much later, a product of Political Correctness in the US, which only became dominant around 1990.

Quote from: Simlasa;786118The way you are using 'aged' though is a bit different than what I usually see where someone is implying that the rules now seem clunky, where they didn't at the time they were first played... with no changes to the system but changes to the person's tastes and perspective.
By your usage D&D has 'aged' strangely, getting more baroque and byzantine before bursting forth in it's current 'fresh and new' form... whereas something like Call of Cthulhu has barely 'aged' at all and remains mostly compatible with its earliest materials.

They are clunky though
They were then but as we had nothing to compare them to we didn't realise.

I don't count new editions as relevant here. If I talk about 1e AD&D aging I mean those specific rules not any subsequent iteration.

S'mon's idea of overly simulationist rules at the expense of smooth play is spot on as something that feels out of place and this is what I felt playing Alpha to Omega as detailed in my previous post.

I think, as others have alluded to, you could sort of chart the history of RPGs as starting off rather simple but disorganised (think of OD&D and how disunified the mechanics are), gradually becoming more organised and complicated (CP2020, Rolemaster, d20), and returning to simplicity while being more organised and unified (Apocalypse World). Although obviously this is impressionistic and there are many exceptions.

The implication would be that rules get updated when it becomes apparent that there is simpler and more streamlined way of doing things. But that's the charitable view; I expect with D&D especially new editions are mostly to do with the need for revenue.

Quote from: Certified;786110What makes rules feel dated?

As I don't believe that game rules are a type of technology that always improves, there is not much rule-wise that will make a game seem dated to me. OD&D doesn't feel any more dated than 5e does, for example.

Modern day and SF games do feel dated if real world technology and events have passed them by. Most of the spy games from the 1980s focused on the US/USSR seem really dated. Traveller's computers seem dated. Twilight 2000 and Invasion America really seem dated. Etc.

QuoteIf you are doing a new edition is there a general accepted level of deviation, or can the authors start fresh?  Such as the leap from 3.x to 4th D&D and 2nd and 3rd editions of Synnibarr.

Rules-wise, the more people who play a game, the less authors of a new edition can change its basic setup without driving a portion of the current players away. Slaying "sacred cows" that designers do not like in new editions is generally a bad idea because those items are often what makes the game popular with its current audience.

Quote from: S'mon;786128My mid-'80s copy of 3e Runequest still has a lower STR roll for female NPCs for simultionist reasons, but there was a recognition that PCs should be treated differently, so female PCs got treated as male. This is so that male & female players can play viable female warrior type characters and not be disadvantaged.

The meme that female human NPCs in RPGs should have the same STR as male NPCs is much later, a protect of Political Correctness in the US, which only became dominant around 1990.

If I'm reading this correctly, are you endorsing gender specific modifiers? If so, why? It seems like a very odd thing to me.

Full disclosure, I'm not a simulationist gamer. So, there are a host of games I read and generally avoided for their breadth of minor rules or variants.

Oh God, can we please not have the gender modifier argument in this thread? I liked where it was going and that will only derail it. Just go necro one of the dozen threads that have already beaten the subject to undeath.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;786148Oh God, can we please not have the gender modifier argument in this thread? I liked where it was going and that will only derail it. Just go necro one of the dozen threads that have already beaten the subject to undeath.

My apologizes, I didn't realize this had been an ongoing issue. It just struck as a dated concept.

Please don't let my comments derail the rest of the conversation.