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

Maybe not an interesting question as it implies that those rules are: out of touch, no longer relevant, or simply bad rules. However, the relative strength of the OSR shows that, for a lot of people, these dated rules are neither: out of touch, irrelevant, or bad.

This is an opinion question and will get answers like "here's the old stuff I hate".

Mechanics, broadly speaking, go in waves. So there are things linking 1980s games, 1990s games, etc. So a less-opiniony question could be what mechanics/design-layout make you think of the 1970s, 80s, 90s...

Hell, for me d20 D&D 3e seems dated: massive stat blocks, endless lists of powers and classes, hours spent on my character sheet every level gained, bending situational rules over backwards to fit a single die mechanic, and so on. We left that crap behind long ago (it seems). But these are the rules of some of the best selling games right now, so what do I know.

bump

ok, past the horrible stretch


What feels dated to me are non unified tasks systems, such as having a different mechanic for each action. Bad art is another biggie, art direction is not so tough, and artists hard to find now that there is the internet. Un-necessary crunch, it's fine if you want a tactical combat game, but I don't want it in my rpg.

Quote from: Ladybird;786203So... yeah, I'd agree it feels dated, but not for the reason you describe

I must just be me then... because I'd never look at something like that and think 'dated'... I'd just think 'clunky'... and similar to why I'd prefer to keep skill lists and Feats and Inspiration out of 5e when/if I run it... even if they run smooth in RAW.

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

40% fad/taste/design.
60% presentation

With the caveat that bad design trumps everything no matter what tropes it uses or how it is presented.

For example the original D&D rules feel extremely dated to me because of the crap presentation. But cleaned up the rules themselves are timeless.

Quote from: languagegeek;786204Hell, for me d20 D&D 3e seems dated: massive stat blocks, endless lists of powers and classes, hours spent on my character sheet every level gained, bending situational rules over backwards to fit a single die mechanic, and so on. We left that crap behind long ago (it seems). But these are the rules of some of the best selling games right now, so what do I know.

When it came out it was often called the ultimate 80s RPG that was just in time for the year 2000.

Quote from: estar;78621040% fad/taste/design.
60% presentation

With the caveat that bad design trumps everything no matter what tropes it uses or how it is presented.

For example the original D&D rules feel extremely dated to me because of the crap presentation. But cleaned up the rules themselves are timeless.

Well put.

Frex CP2020 would hardly feel dated at all if it got the 80s thing and the kinda toghguy poseur thing removed and its everyday tech got updated. Allthough I personally kinda like its 80s thing.

Quote from: noisms;786198Both card games and board games like chess are interesting cases in point, though, because they have undoubtedly evolved continuously over the course of hundreds or thousands of years. The rules have aged in the sense that they've been slowly developed and refined over the centuries. I'm sure the version of chess that the Vikings were playing is a fun game and would still be fun to play now, but chess has changed since then.

True, but irrelevant to the timescale we're dealing with. These games have had remarkably preserved rulesets for the last 100 years and are none worse for the wear.

A bottle of wine or a wheel of cheese ages because its intrinsic qualities change over time. The content of a science textbook might age, even though the text remains the same, because it can be held against a more or less consensual standard built on the accumulation of scientific evidence. But a game's rules? It might go out of print, fall out of favor with designers and fans, lose large chunks of its audience to other games or to other forms of entertainment... but that's no indictment of the rules themselves. If the rules haven't changed, what standard are we holding them against?

I suppose a case could be made that games "age" in the same sense as art does. Remaining enjoyable (or playable) while at the same time "showing their age" by dint of bearing the character of the time that saw its creation (which, I insist, has a lot more to do with presentation, and very little with rules). But I'm not a humanities major, so WTF do I know.

Quote from: Certified;786146If 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.

Eh, if for some reason I need to stat a normal human female NPC she's certainly likely to have lower strength than a normal human male NPC. That's for simulation/immersion.

I don't want my Amazon warrior PC to be penalised in STR. And I don't want female PCs to have fewer 'build points' than male NPCs. I like a level playing field among PC concepts. If I choose to play a STR 18 female NPC to be combat effective I don't want to have to pay extra.

As far as something like Runequest 3's different stat lines for male and female NPCs, well I don't really care, I would be fine with a single 'human' stat line. I don't want the game author or anyone* else telling me that normal human men & women have the same strength IRL, though, or presenting a 'normal world' where the sexes are supposed to be of equal strength while everything else stays the same.

*I could have written 'any man' - because it's always and only men who say this. I've known women soldiers, police and one ex bodyguard who would happily discuss techniques to defeat men in unarmed combat despite their strength advantage, but no woman who actually fights men thinks women are as strong as men. In fact, IME no woman I've ever met thinks women are as strong as men.

Quote from: Will;7861833e changing things to all use D20 + stuff? That was evolutionary, and, I maintain, better.

You're quite obviously wrong, because that's a 100% subjective preference.  Sometimes different mechanics to accomplish different things is appealing to certain people.

One man's elegant simplicity is another man's dumbing down and losing subtlely.

Quote from: languagegeek;786204Mechanics, broadly speaking, go in waves. So there are things linking 1980s games, 1990s games, etc. So a less-opiniony question could be what mechanics/design-layout make you think of the 1970s, 80s, 90s...

A better phrasing of the concept for sure.
Mention of rules having lots of charts definitely reminds me of the late 80s when I briefly flirted with the 'realism' thing and bought into Phoenix Command... and my dip into Spacemaster/Cyberspace.
DCC has loads of charts though... and I love stuff like 'The Dungeon Dozen' blog... so not a problem.

I'd also argue with the use of 'evolution' in regards to games to imply 'improvement'... but that's my background in biology getting all persnickety.

Quote from: CRKrueger;786225You're quite obviously wrong, because that's a 100% subjective preference.  Sometimes different mechanics to accomplish different things is appealing to certain people.

One man's elegant simplicity is another man's dumbing down and losing subtlely.

FATAL has a rule where you roll d100 to determine a target number, and then another d100 to see if you beat the target number you rolled. IE: 50/50. That's stupid.


Explain to me how % chance to break down doors has more meaningful nuance and subtlety than giving it a d20 rating.

Quote from: CRKrueger;786225You're quite obviously wrong, because that's a 100% subjective preference.  Sometimes different mechanics to accomplish different things is appealing to certain people.

One man's elegant simplicity is another man's dumbing down and losing subtlely.

Ding!  Winner.  "Unified Mechanics" is a stupid idea to me, honestly.  Or at VERY best, irrelevant; as in, "makes no difference."

"OH MY GOD!  I HAVE TO REACH FOR PERCENTILE DICE INSTEAD OF 2D6!   THE HORROR!!! THE HORROR!!!!!"

Quote from: Old Geezer;786235Ding!  Winner.  "Unified Mechanics" is a stupid idea to me, honestly.  Or at VERY best, irrelevant; as in, "makes no difference."

"OH MY GOD!  I HAVE TO REACH FOR PERCENTILE DICE INSTEAD OF 2D6!   THE HORROR!!! THE HORROR!!!!!"

Obviously, because when you have a thousand different skills and tasks, it is much easier to stop the game to sift through the rules for each individual mechanic. Kind of like taking a half hour break every fifteen minutes.

Quote from: Old Geezer;786235Ding!  Winner.  "Unified Mechanics" is a stupid idea to me, honestly.  Or at VERY best, irrelevant; as in, "makes no difference."

"OH MY GOD!  I HAVE TO REACH FOR PERCENTILE DICE INSTEAD OF 2D6!   THE HORROR!!! THE HORROR!!!!!"

But... why?

I mean, if there's _no point_ to using different mechanics, why are you bothering?

Quote from: Will;786238But... why?

I mean, if there's _no point_ to using different mechanics, why are you bothering?

The point is different probability curves.

If I only have a few choices I'm going to use something like 2d6.  If I have a table full of magic items I'm going to use percentile dice, especially since I'm not going to want them all to have an equal chance of occurring.  And why should I convert "Heavy foot remains on a 7+ on 2d6" to percentile dice?