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What old school games do you really dislike?

Started by thedungeondelver, August 29, 2010, 07:13:04 PM

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thedungeondelver

August 29, 2010, 07:13:04 PM
Elric and Elfquest spring to mind immediately.  Traveller.  God damn guys!  Vector math?  Really?!  is 2e AD&D now "old school"?  Because I dislike that one too.  I never cared for "BECMI" D&D.  

Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway, but I think it's pretty much universal - everyone dislikes that one.
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

Quote
Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

Benoist

#1
August 29, 2010, 07:21:03 PM
Multimondes, a failed French attempt at a Traveller-type sci-fi game.

Bloody Stupid Johnson

#2
August 29, 2010, 07:31:46 PM
Does "Powers & Perils" count as old school? (egad what a mess).

ColonelHardisson

#3
August 29, 2010, 07:58:05 PM
Hmm. This is a much tougher one to answer.

I never liked Basic D&D, the one that paralleled AD&D and came in boxed sets. Mostly it was because I disliked the lack of good and evil alignments, which is a superficial thing, and the way races were also classes, which is more substantial.

I was badly disappointed by Star Frontiers when it was released. The lack of starship combat rules in the basic set, and having to buy Knight Hawks to get them, really took the wind out of the sails for SF in my gaming group.
"Illegitimis non carborundum." - General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

4e definitely has an Old School feel. If you disagree, cool. I won\'t throw any hyperbole out to prove the point.

thedungeondelver

#4
August 29, 2010, 08:05:16 PM
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;401848Hmm. This is a much tougher one to answer.

I never liked Basic D&D, the one that paralleled AD&D and came in boxed sets. Mostly it was because I disliked the lack of good and evil alignments, which is a superficial thing, and the way races were also classes, which is more substantial.

I was badly disappointed by Star Frontiers when it was released. The lack of starship combat rules in the basic set, and having to buy Knight Hawks to get them, really took the wind out of the sails for SF in my gaming group.

See I thought Star Frontiers was rad and I liked the support it got in Dragon; I wished I'd gotten Knight Hawks.  I too was irked by the lack of star ship support from the get-go though.
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

Quote
Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

skofflox

#5
August 29, 2010, 08:08:00 PM Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 12:14:50 AM by skofflox
Quote from: thedungeondelver;401843Elric and Elfquest spring to mind immediately.  Traveller.  God damn guys!  Vector math?  Really?!  is 2e AD&D now "old school"?  Because I dislike that one too.  I never cared for "BECMI" D&D.  

Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway, but I think it's pretty much universal - everyone dislikes that one.

hmmm...Elric,Elfquest,Trav. and Fantasy Wargaming all made my Favorite "old school" list in the recent thread...the magic/religious (unified field approach?) rules in FW are so full of cool ideas that have yet to be surpassed IMO, though the system as written is hard to grasp.Just had to comment on your selection.

Now in regards to this thread..least fave."old school" in no particular order.

Powers & Perils
Space Opera
WOD crapolla...et. al
D&D 3rd ed. (Does this qualify as OS?)
Battle Tech RPG
Form the group wisely, make sure you share goals and means.
Set norms of table etiquette early on.
Encourage attentive participation and speed of play so the game will stay vibrant!
Allow that the group, milieu and system will from an organic symbiosis.
Most importantly, have fun exploring the possibilities!

Running: AD&D 2nd. ed.
"And my orders from Gygax are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to play in my beloved milieu."-Kyle Aaron

Benoist

#6
August 29, 2010, 08:11:52 PM
Quote from: skofflox;401850D&D 3rd ed. (Does this qualify as OS?)
LOL. Not to me, no.

skofflox

#7
August 29, 2010, 08:21:21 PM
Quote from: Benoist;401851LOL. Not to me, no.

Yeah... :o I was stretching just to get that in! ;)
Form the group wisely, make sure you share goals and means.
Set norms of table etiquette early on.
Encourage attentive participation and speed of play so the game will stay vibrant!
Allow that the group, milieu and system will from an organic symbiosis.
Most importantly, have fun exploring the possibilities!

Running: AD&D 2nd. ed.
"And my orders from Gygax are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to play in my beloved milieu."-Kyle Aaron

The Butcher

#8
August 29, 2010, 09:00:19 PM
Rolemaster. Character generation feels like a horrible, boorish chore. But if you axed the advantages and disadvantages, and performed some radical surgery on the skill list (reducing it by 50%, at very least), I might be persuaded to try it. Which is wh BTW is what MERP did, and what I've heard HARP does, so I'll gladly play MERP and try HARP.

And I've never read or played Chivalry & Sorcery (or Bushido), but what little I've heard didn't particularly thrill me (though I grudgingly admit that statting out from Balder to the Virgin Mary is kind of awesome). :D

ColonelHardisson

#9
August 29, 2010, 09:05:05 PM
Quote from: thedungeondelver;401849See I thought Star Frontiers was rad and I liked the support it got in Dragon; I wished I'd gotten Knight Hawks.  I too was irked by the lack of star ship support from the get-go though.

Yeah, the game wasn't awful, but my group was big into starships. To us, that was an instant dealbreaker. I recall how we tore through the SF box, and the resulting collective "WTF?!?" as we realized that starship combat rules were not present. By the time the KH box appeared, our disgust had turned to apathy for the entire game. We went back to our Rube Goldberg system cobbled together from D&D, Gamma World, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Traveller.
"Illegitimis non carborundum." - General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

4e definitely has an Old School feel. If you disagree, cool. I won\'t throw any hyperbole out to prove the point.

thedungeondelver

#10
August 29, 2010, 09:07:07 PM
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;401865Yeah, the game wasn't awful, but my group was big into starships. To us, that was an instant dealbreaker. I recall how we tore through the SF box, and the resulting collective "WTF?!?" as we realized that starship combat rules were not present. By the time the KH box appeared, our disgust had turned to apathy for the entire game. We went back to our Rube Goldberg system cobbled together from D&D, Gamma World, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Traveller.

Yeah, the few times we tried to do starship stuff in SF we just treated ships like huge robots and assumed hexes were in km instead of m, and other things I can't recall that we did to make stuff "work".

We did however have oodles of fun when the power armor articles came out in The Dragon! :D
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

Quote
Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

Insufficient Metal

#11
August 29, 2010, 09:20:22 PM
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;401848I was badly disappointed by Star Frontiers when it was released. The lack of starship combat rules in the basic set, and having to buy Knight Hawks to get them, really took the wind out of the sails for SF in my gaming group.

I was very bummed about that, too, and when Knight Hawks came out, I was really disappointed with that as well. It seemed very flat and not space opera at all (I was really never much of a hard sci-fi guy, especially in a setting with giant shapeshifting amoeboids).

Also, MERP was an object of much scorn in my group.

Jason D

#12
August 29, 2010, 09:25:45 PM
Marvel Super Heroes
Top Secret
Twilight 2000
Star Frontiers
D&D / AD&D
Traveller
Space Opera
Aftermath (which we labeled "forever math")

mhensley

#13
August 29, 2010, 09:27:27 PM
T&T - combat is way too abstract for anything other than solitaire play plus there's no way that adding up 50 d6's is either fast or easy.

Rolemaster - I couldn't even get through making a character without getting tired and quit.  Also, triple digit math is too hard for my brain late at night.

Runequest - the whole magic system rubbed me wrong.  I don't want everyone to cast spells.  If I wanted that, I'd play 4e.  Oh, and the ducks.

Chivalry & Sorcery - good lord was that complicated.  I had actual nightmares after reading the rulebook.

ColonelHardisson

#14
August 29, 2010, 09:34:05 PM
Quote from: Insufficient Metal;401868Also, MERP was an object of much scorn in my group.

I'm very torn when it comes to MERP. The game system just didn't fit the setting at all, but the supplements and adventures were generally very good. They were pretty well-researched, even the ones that went off the rails. I like them enough that I wouldn't hesitate to adapt them for use with another game, and the percentile system makes that fairly easy for NPCs and magic items.
"Illegitimis non carborundum." - General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

4e definitely has an Old School feel. If you disagree, cool. I won\'t throw any hyperbole out to prove the point.
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