Computer rules have typically aged badly (Traveller, I am looking at you).  

Conspiracy games (the truth is out there) need to be rethought in the world of cell phone cameras.  It can still be done with clever tricks, but the whole men in black shtick is harder.

top secret and top secret s/i. both fun games, but very rooted in spy movies of the late 70s and early 80s.

Quote from: TristramEvans;676082WEG's Star Wars. No midichlorians, no Boba Fett clones, no JarJar Binks, there aren't even any rules for Trade Embargos! Doesn't even feel like Star Wars.

See, to me, that's a selling point...

Quote from: Dimitrios;676155On topic, I'm not a real Mage afficiando, but my impression is that M:tA really went in for 90s style postmodernism in way that might make it feel dated now.

....ya think?

jg

Quote from: CRKrueger;676221Cyberpunk of any kind for me is both dated as hell as topical as fuck.  It's not what happens, but how, that's different.

We don't have a Global Japanese Economic and Cultural invasion and everything doesn't look like Blade Runner.

We do however, have an ever-increasing Corporate control of government, which is resulting in everyone becoming a Sarariman consumer.

Really all Cyberpunk has done is changed from an alt-future to an alt-history.  The themes and tropes though are as valid now as they ever were, it's the trappings that have gone out of style.

We're about halfway through the "How it Came to Pass" in Shadowrun.  We've had Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission but we haven't yet had our version of the Shiawase Decision.

I just wanna throw Fireball and Turn to Goo spells, okay?

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;676335I just wanna throw Fireball and Turn to Goo spells, okay?

This. We're getting the shit bits, and not the cool bits.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;676086Oh oh oh, every fucking word of Cyberpunk:2020.  And Shadowrun.

I hate to agree, because I loved CP, but both Cyberpunk and Cyberpink are... not so fresh anymore. Even if we do live in a world of corporate rule, omnipresent mass communication, runaway consumerism, fucked up subcultures, metropolitanism and social devastation. The basic message is more urgent than in the 80s, but the wrappings around it are sillier than Metropolis.

But there is more. The "language" of cyberpunk gaming is rooted in a lower technology level; basically, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with cyberarms and sunglasses. But that's also not how the world works anymore, because information and communication are everywhere, as is surveillance. That massive, massive information flow is described in cyberpunk writing but never really thought through. I don't know how I could run a plausible action adventure for a group of people outfitted with modern, everyday consumer-level (!) communication technology, let alone the things corporations and the military/private security have access to. Anything I can come up with would be completely ungameable or completely unrealistic.

I don't remember if I liked any RPG that had characters in the book drawn with mullets?  I know now I won't even touch such a book.

I think I agree with many posters as to the "near future" settings tend to be dated as heck just with all the changes.  Some people like the "retro-future" theme as part of their games, and that's okay, but when stuff like Cyberpunk settings originally came out there were meant to be cutting edge.  

The nature of the changing world.  Monte Cook's new game takes place Millennia from now, so it's likely to be safe, but how much you wanna bet 20 years from now we'll be looking at GURPS Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase in the same way as we're looking at some of these games from the 90s.

Quote from: TristramEvans;676082WEG's Star Wars. No midichlorians, no Boba Fett clones, no JarJar Binks, there aren't even any rules for Trade Embargos!

Quote from: Nexus;676288You say that like its a bad thing...

+1000

Quote from: TristramEvans;676082WEG's Star Wars... Does feel like Star Wars.

Fixed your typo.

Quote from: RPGPundit;676074What games were in some sense or another a product of their time, and something about their setting or their style (this isn't a discussion about mechanics) make them seem amusingly or ridiculously dated these days?

RPGPundit

Late '80s/Early-'90s Cyberpunk stuff seems painfully naive to me now; 'Home of the Brave' is an excellent example.  The sociopolitics is like a ten year old wrote it. I hear Shadowrun is similar.

Quote from: Settembrini;676178Mt, TN:E, T4 (Milieu 0), T20 (M: 1000); 4th imperium
nuff said and to the ignorelist with you!

NO - The Assassination and Rebellion /NEW Era stuff was all CRAP!!!

Thank Goodness GURPS: Traveller put things back to the way they mostly should be.

- Ed C.

Quote from: CRKrueger;676224Would the Internet even be useful in CoC?  I mean sure, you can have a whole host of great scenarios like when McDonalds comes up with a new Logo and ad campaign "Have you seen the Yellow Arch?", but trying to research Mythos stuff on the internet?  Sweet christ, what a load of bullshit you would have to wade through.  I'd rather go the CoC route of trying to gain access to the Vatican catacombs.

The internet would be a magnificent vector for "Mythos Invasion" and practically useless as a scientific or academic research tool, kinda like real life.

Well, we like to jest that Internet is for Porn (TM), but while finding specialist stuff is sometimes hard indeed (and at times impossible - after all, professional books need to exist for a reason), it's often also possible. Not to mention my special pet peeve - Necronomicon scans on ThePirateBay. Of course I also admit that the thousands of conspiracy theory pages could provide Cthulhu Mythos knowledge...as well as meaningless lies. And of course there is the DeepWeb, where one may indeed find more than one bargains for, even now.

Myself though, I pondered upon some scenarios also where Internet is either a device of Mythos, or perhaps a Mythos creature itself. Remember Gibson's original predictions about cyberspace as "massive dream of computers"? What if it is nothing but a fragment of Yog Sothoth's eternal corpse? What if you could suddenly reach a web page that will be created 1000 years into the future, or a page that is a dream of Caligula? And of course, perhaps a computer virus that destroys everything in it's wake, but is actually a disease of Yog, trying to kill his bloated corpse, forcing heroes to save him in order to save something that has nowadays become one of foundations of our civilisation's ability to communicate.

Possibilities are endless, and I think we ought to dare to take Mythos beyond books and tentacles (which as we remember, Lovecraft loved to insert so much, because he had phobia against sea and it's creatures). For example - wouldn't it be a much more cost - efficient way to turn King in Yellow into a film?

Quote from: Melan;676369I don't know how I could run a plausible action adventure for a group of people outfitted with modern, everyday consumer-level (!) communication technology, let alone the things corporations and the military/private security have access to.

I've done it. It's essentially the same as these discussions about information on the internet: you actually have too much information, the time taken to wade through it to find what you need may be crucial time. For example, terrorists are able to carry out their acts in London, perhaps the most surveilled city in the world - because by the time the security forces find the guys, they've already committed their act. On the flipside, the British police shot an innocent man they thought was a terrorist... essentially because of mistaken identity, the guy was in the same block of flats as some genuine suspects, and

   A surveillance officer admitted in a witness statement that he was unable to positively identify Mr de Menezes as a suspect because the officer had been relieving himself when the Brazilian left the block of flats where he lived. [...]

One firearms officer is quoted as saying: "The current strategy around the address was as follows: no subject coming out of the address would be allowed to run and that an interception should take place as soon as possible away from the address trying not to compromise it."

But the report shows that there was a failure in the surveillance operation and officers wrongly believed Mr de Menezes could have been one of two suspects.

"Someone just left the building, was it the guy? We're too far, we can't see closely enough."
"I dunno, I was taking a piss."

There's still plenty of room for action-adventure scenarios in today's world, since though surveillance is ubiquitous, you still have to find the useful needle in the information haystack, which takes time - time in which the subjects can make and carry out their espionage, sabotage, assassination or terrorist plans. Whether the PCs are the officers or the subjects, that time gives you a lot of room for adventure.

Quote from: Claudius;676506Fixed your typo.

Missed my joke.