Why do "Retro" games sabotage themselves?

[Shrieking Banshee]

Im looking at stars without number, and its a solid sci fi thing, with some fun organization mechanics for those that like that stuff, but why does it follow "Retro" to the limit? Why does it have some stupid Thatc0 combo that requires you to have lower armor values to have better armor.

And then for some reason past level 10 all the progression goes all screwy. Because it goes all screwy in AD&D I suppose.

But its a general trend I see of "Retro" games intentionally forgetting 30+ years of game development. Why you gotta do that?

[Kaelik]

Short answer, because they are stupid, long answer, I don't know why in particular they are stupid, maybe you should go ask therpgsite.

[codeGlaze]

I'm going to assume it's actually because most of the people releasing these things don't actually understand a few things about designing a game.

They, instead, create their setting and then plop it in rules they remember enjoying "back in the day". Or now, because they fear change.

So they try to force retro rules to fit the ideas they have. They don't really design a game so much as they design setting guides with some "rules" they took from someplace else, then "modded" to get results they want when they squint.

TLDR; They don't actually release the settings as games, they release them as free form settings with guidelines to play with a dice-based resolution mechanic.

[Longes]

Im looking at stars without number, and its a solid sci fi thing, with some fun organization mechanics for those that like that stuff, but why does it follow "Retro" to the limit? Why does it have some stupid Thatc0 combo that requires you to have lower armor values to have better armor.

And then for some reason past level 10 all the progression goes all screwy. Because it goes all screwy in AD&D I suppose.

But its a general trend I see of "Retro" games intentionally forgetting 30+ years of game development. Why you gotta do that?

Because the whole point of 'retro' games is to emulate the retro games. To cater to the audience that fondly remembers those games and will buy more of them. But the problem is that
a) Performing an autopsy on the AD&D to find the good bits and leave behind the bad bits sounds an awful lot like effort.
b) There aren't actually all that many good bits to work with. AD&D is archaic and full of bad design choices. You can't maintain the retro-clone identity if you start taking out everything bad, because then you'll have very few things left. Compare this to the video-game industry. When they decided to cater to the desire for retro, we've got a massive amount of '8-bit' games. But they are only like old games in terms of aesthetics, not in terms of gameplay. While the games that are making good decisions, like Shadow Warrior and Wolfenstein are basically nothing like the originals.
But retro-clones mostly can't copy the aesthetics, because tRPGs have no graphics. The 'aesthetics' are the setting and stuff, and that's all copyrighted. So they have to keep the old crappy rules to maintain the retro identity.

[Shrieking Banshee]

I guess I always knew the answer was: Because people are dumb. But thats just sad to know.

[Longes]

I guess I always knew the answer was: Because people are dumb. But thats just sad to know.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with liking AD&D or any of the retro clones. It's just, you should understand that when you take a retro clone, you get a game that's not using things we've invented since then.

[Prak]

Well, I mean, that opens another question, really- Could you make a game that feels "retro" while also building on 40 years of gaming being a thing? I can't imagine that bad design was the entirety of the feel of AD&D. A lot of the feel is probably "mostly meaningless dungeoncrawling, looting and killing, with maybe a thin veneer of plot" and some of it is probably limited character choices.

The first is just a play style, which you can confer by saying "don't try to run a campaign" and the latter you can confer by saying "[X], [Y], OR [Z], FINAL DESTINATION BECAUSE THIS IS A RETRO CLONE." But that doesn't mean those choices have to be actually poorly designed.

After that, I feel like the remainder of the retro feel is tracking equipment and a CoC/Paranoi-esque potential for character death, which aren't bad things if everyone's on board with them.

[Blicero]

Well, I mean, that opens another question, really- Could you make a game that feels "retro" while also building on 40 years of gaming being a thing? I can't imagine that bad design was the entirety of the feel of AD&D. A lot of the feel is probably "mostly meaningless dungeoncrawling, looting and killing, with maybe a thin veneer of plot" and some of it is probably limited character choices.

[standard shill]
In term of setting aesthetics and basic content loops, ACKS feels very retro (e.g. lowish, fantasy, dying elven kingdoms, isolated dwarven holds, generally human-dominated world, emphasis on dungeon crawling and hex crawling, etc.). But it takes advantage of modern computational power to implement a decently robust economy and a surprisingly deep procedural content generation system. Its proficiency system is sort of a mix between 3E's feats and AD&D's proficiency system. It emphasizes a playstyle that could plausibly be described as "player-empowering". So that is sort of modern.
[/standard shill]

[Dogbert]

This thread reminds me of that Dilber episode where he asks for budget to develop a submarine oven, and the first two questions the executives ask him are:

-Does it have to be submarine?
-Does it have to be an oven?

[K]

Designing original things is hard, but the important thing is to know why its hard.

Original game systems will immediately meet resistance because people don't understand them. People won't have any context, and wrapping your head around a new system is going to take time and effort that is going to be an obstacle to any efforts to convince people to play. For example, I have a friend with shelves and shelves of boardgames that he's played either once or never because the effort of learning the rules was too much effort for game-night.

Original systems are also going to have unique problems. NASA uses the cutting edge of 1960s tech for spaceflight not because it's the best, but because the problems are well-understood and so are the fixes.

Lastly, original ideas are going to have a personal cost. New ideas draw vitriol, especially when they make previous systems obsolete. When I wrote up the Tome Fighter, the WotC boards had an epic shitfit over what I considered a pretty conservative design not just because it was different, but because some people liked it and that popularity made the diehards crazy mad because it threatened something they liked.

It's a rare person who can tell a good idea from a bad one, so it's probably a good thing that most people subconsciously understand that they don't know a good idea from a bad one and stick to things that everyone around them believes to work.

[Sacrificial Lamb]

Im looking at stars without number, and its a solid sci fi thing, with some fun organization mechanics for those that like that stuff, but why does it follow "Retro" to the limit? Why does it have some stupid Thatc0 combo that requires you to have lower armor values to have better armor.

And then for some reason past level 10 all the progression goes all screwy. Because it goes all screwy in AD&D I suppose.

But its a general trend I see of "Retro" games intentionally forgetting 30+ years of game development. Why you gotta do that?

Short answer, because they are stupid, long answer, I don't know why in particular they are stupid, maybe you should go ask therpgsite.

The grognards are not "stupid", but they don't particularly understand their own motivations for gaming.....nor do they really understand game design.

Grogs rarely view newer roleplaying games as "better". They want to play games that gave them a joygasm when they were 12-years-old, and they run these games for some very specific reasons:

(1.) Nostalgia: Never tell a Gygaxian grognard that he likes old school games because of "nostalgia". That's his trigger word. Even though his love for these games is at least partially rooted in nostalgia, Gygaxian grognards (always middle-aged white men; women gamers never fellate Gygax) will go apeshit if you tell them this, and will vehemently deny it. Women might occasionally feel nostalgia for 2e, but NEVER for Gygaxian D&D (such as OD&D or 1st edition AD&D). Arguing with the grogs over this point is not worth the headache.

(2.) Perpetuation of Player Confusion: Gygaxian grognards use descending Armor Class to DELIBERATELY confuse players. They want you to NOT know if you hit your opponent, and want you to always be confused about this. Grognard DMs do not like it when players actually understand the rules to the game, so they often prefer to play D&D with NON-GAMERS. This type of nonsense gives grognards a "Power Boner". Ironically, most grogs you see on therpgsite or dragonsfoot don't understand old school D&D themselves nearly as well as they like to think they do. In fact, I would argue that even Gygax didn't fully understand what he wrote....and he certainly didn't understand his audience.

(3.) Gygaxian Cocksucking: Never underestimate a grognard's capacity for Gygaxian cocksucking. Gygax's legacy and his words are elevated by the grogs to the level of Holy Writ.....with his personhood practically ascended by these selfsame grogs to sainthood, or even near-deification. If you dare question the wisdom of ANY design choices of Gygax for D&D, the Gygaxian grognards completely lose their shit....and you can guarantee the perpetuation of a 50 page clusterfuck of an online argument. Fortunately, the grogs are getting older and have less testosterone....so their capacity for argument is diminished.

(4.) Hatred of Player Empowerment: Gygaxian grognards (usually DMs) absolutely hate hate HATE player empowerment, and the self agency that comes with it. The E6 game play of 5e (and the highly limited player control of one's environment in 5e) is not an accident (5e partly catered to the grogs), because grognard DMs really fucking hate it when players use carefully written game mechanics to overpower or sidestep encounters that DMs have carefully prepared for. If you have ever heard a grog say, "the DM is God", then you know what I'm talking about. Grogs HATE it when the rules are well-written enough (and carefully written enough) to insulate rule lawyers from DM wrath. Grognards HATE rules lawyers.....with the fire of a thousand burning suns, because they hate when players fully understand the rules....and exploit those rules to foil the DM's massive control over the game. They hate this because they fear being challenged on their mistakes, which absolutely interferes with the "Power Boner" that grognard DMs value so highly. If the rules are vaguely written, and open to interpretation.......then you will ultimately have to engage in DM cocksucking, and Gygaxian grognards totally love that shit.

(5.) Allergy to Clearly Written Rules: Grognards want rules to be VAGUELY WRITTEN and open-ended, so that they can insert their own house rules whenever they feel like it. If you've ever heard of the bullshit phrase, "Rulings, not rules".....then you will understand this. If your gaming philosophy is entirely based upon "the DM is God" paradigm, then you will probably be more focused on house rules.....and will never gain a real understanding of the intricacies of game design and game mechanics. Thorough playtesting and smooth game design is hard to accomplish and implement; it's extremely difficult to "idiot proof" a system. It's not really a surprise that Gygaxian grognards disdain the decades of game design that have appeared since then.

(6.) Hatred of Robust Skill Systems in Fantasy Games That Use Levels: For years, grognards on dragonsfoot and ENWorld (and dragonsfoot's sister sites) threw paint at the wall when making rhetorical arguments about how much they thought 3e sucked. One day, someone prattled on about how much they hated the complexity (unnecessary complexity, in my opinion) of the skill system in 3e. Grogs then collectively convinced themselves that ALL skill systems in D&D were a horrible evil that must be destroyed. They did this while failing to recognize that game mechanics for skill systems do NOT necessarily have to work in the precise way that they do for 3e. But it didn't matter. 3e was distinctly NON-Gygaxian.....so it had to be destroyed.

(7.) Desire for Smaller Stat Blocks and Faster Combats: Now this is something that actually makes logical sense. Stat blocks for D&D 3.x are too fucking large, and it's a painstakingly slow process to properly reverse engineer a high-level character in D&D 3.5. This is understandable. And old school D&D does have smaller stat blocks, which makes life easier. The problem is that the good innovations of D&D 3.x (and other newer games) are largely disdained (with the sometimes limited exception of ascending Armor Class). But when you're dealing with Gygaxian Cocksucking and Epic Nostalgia, that is certainly to be expected.

(8.) Desire to Use New Products With Old Material: Here's another point that actually makes sense. Grogs want to minimize the number of conversion rules they use for their old games. If someone is still playing Gygaxian D&D, then they'd rather purchase a product that is mostly compatible with it. This is certainly understandable, and I can't begrudge them that.

(9.) Grognards Don't Like Learning New Rules For D&D: There's no need to elaborate on that one. People are resistant to change (myself included), but this is far more true for grognards.

(10.) Because: I'm only adding a Number 10, because I figure you'll want a "Top Ten List". Or.....see #1 through #9.

I will admit that old school games make me feel nostalgic (sometimes in a good way). And don't get me wrong; I do like old school games very much....but I'm also realistic about the flaws that they have. Gygaxian grognards are not capable of acknowledging the existence of FLAWS in Gygaxian D&D. That's why I left sites like Dragonsfoot; because a "heretic" like me does NOT believe that Gygax is perfect....but rather believes that he made MISTAKES in basic game design. Granted, Gygax was a pioneer, and I give him props for that. He's the "Godfather of Gaming", and his games can sometimes be lots of fun. But Gygaxian D&D is not the only type of D&D, and isn't even necessarily the "best" type of D&D. And if you dare criticize the man or his writings, look out. The grognards will be on your ass like white on rice.

But whatever. It is what it is. D&D has existed in a certain form for DECADES, before being challenged by other roleplaying games (and other forms of D&D).....and before being challenged by other forms of mass media and entertainment. But I would say that "intentionally forgetting 30+ years of game development" is the entire point of the "retro-gaming" movement, so the publication of all these OSR games isn't really much of a surprise.

Never underestimate the power of nostalgia and Gygaxian fetishism.

[Mechalich]

But they are only like old games in terms of aesthetics, not in terms of gameplay. While the games that are making good decisions, like Shadow Warrior and Wolfenstein are basically nothing like the originals.
But retro-clones mostly can't copy the aesthetics, because tRPGs have no graphics. The 'aesthetics' are the setting and stuff, and that's all copyrighted. So they have to keep the old crappy rules to maintain the retro identity.

I think this is a very important point. People love the old school settings, both AD&D and WoD and even probably other ones like Warhammer that I'm only passively familiar with. And those settings were built around the old rulesets, which can at least nominally, despite all their faults, be projected to produce something like the worlds that people loved (and the novels and video games about those worlds that people also loved, a not unimportant sub-point).

The simple reality is that the 3.X ruleset doesn't map to a world like FR or Dragonlance or Ravenloft coming into being. AD&D probably doesn't either, but it is loose enough that people can think that it does. People think an AD&D style ruleset is an important element of producing worlds like FR, and Dark Sun, and Planescape, and since they can't simply produce those settings outright they reproduce the rules.

It doesn't help that, in the context of D&D at least, while 3.X produced a considerably better rule scheme than 2e, the reverse was largely true of the fluff (or at least this was perceived to be the case anyway). Further, with the kinda-sorta exception of Eberron, WotC failed to produce any worlds built from the ground up around 3.X assumptions.

[Chamomile]

Well, I mean, that opens another question, really- Could you make a game that feels "retro" while also building on 40 years of gaming being a thing? I can't imagine that bad design was the entirety of the feel of AD&D. A lot of the feel is probably "mostly meaningless dungeoncrawling, looting and killing, with maybe a thin veneer of plot" and some of it is probably limited character choices.

It's worth noting that dungeons used to be a lot better designed back then. Modern dungeons tend to be a linear sequence of encounters which only take place in a dungeon because dungeons are in the name and adventure designers feel obligated to throw a dungeon in now and again. Back when exploring the dungeon was basically the entire game, people put effort into making dungeons actually fun to explore.

I would hazard a guess that a sizable portion of the retro crowd would be absolutely fine with a game that has simple, modern rules, like a 3.5 mod where you removed feats and spells and replaced them with a handful of class features built directly into the classes (this would not be compatible with existing Monster Manuals or anything, but it would be very modern in its design sensibilities with its three-save system and BAB instead of THAC0 and so on), so long as you packaged that game with a few really well-designed dungeons to crawl with very simple 70s-flavored plotlines about the forces of evil menacing a nearby village from their underground fortress and please go stab them all to death brave heroes.

[ETortoise]

Could you make a game that feels "retro" while also building on 40 years of gaming being a thing? I can't imagine that bad design was the entirety of the feel of AD&D.

Torchbearer creates stories that are very similar to old-school D&D and identical to what most OSR fans say they want to happen in their games. It is also super-indy and modern. In my experience however, the grognardier guys at the table liked it the least. Torchbearer, like all Burning Wheel games, requires you to be constantly thinking about and engaging with the rules or else you character fails all the time and the party dies. So it feels like Basic D&D because you're worried about light sources and rations and getting killed by a kobold but it also doesn't feel like Basic D&D because you can't offload all the rules knowledge onto the GM.

[Dogbert]

Well, I mean, that opens another question, really- Could you make a game that feels "retro" while also building on 40 years of gaming being a thing?

Well, so far, I think we can agree on these features comprising "old skool"

1) Roguelike
2) Minimalistic rules taken to their ultimate expression.
3) No story, hexcrawls only, final destination (story is what the players did).
4) (optional) It must be a power trip for MC. (if Gygaxian)

From #1, we get
-Disposable, Cookie-cutter PCs that discourage players from any form of investment/attachment.
-Randumb deaths.
-Low magic/low powered

From #4 we get
-Shitting on the players' cheerios for teh lulz as an explicit goal for MC and a constantly encouraged behavior (on an interview, Don Bluth stated that the objective in Dragon's Lair was not to "win," but to get a laugh going through all the hilarious ways your character could die).
-No rules for anything other than combat and dungeoneering.
-Players should never be able to know which direction is up.


Our most notorious examples as of late are Numenera and Bearworld. In theory, yes, we can do better, but if Gygaxian, only possible if it's written as an explicit parody (see Paranoia) and played more like an "open-ended war game."

[tussock]

The 40 years of gaming includes such gems as AD&D, 2nd edition AD&D, 4th edition D&D, 5th edition D&D, not to mention World of Darkness, Shadowrun, ....

Which bit do they copy, if they don't get it? For most people the problems of 3e are inseparable from it's high points, if you don't like the feat prereqs and PClasses or whatever then you don't like any of it.

People take the THAC0 and stuff because they just can't tell which bits they like and which bits are useless busy-work bullshit that mostly gets in the way of their fun. People know almost all the grappling rules ever are pretty stink, but still have trouble picking the better ones because it's just part of that other system they mostly don't like.

--

My old-school features.

1: Quick character gen, so you can play most of the first hour you sit down.
2: Potted adventures where you start at the right door, so you can play ....
3: Playing is the reward, it generates all your bonuses and XPs and whatnot. Not shopping or any of that searching through extra rulebooks stuff.

Which gives you a game that's pretty close to Basic D&D. That's what it was for.

Misses all the other stuff people do with RPGs, but there's not many useful rules for all the other stuff anyway, unless you like Bearworld or Mousegaurd or whatever.

[Username17]

The truth is that most people have no real idea of what elements of things they like are contributing to their enjoyment and which are taking away. Many people, indeed millions of people might remember having fun playing AD&D, but few people could tell you with any certainty which individual rules were good or bad, let alone why.

The sad fact is that the only thing animating the OSR is a common memory of having played and enjoyed games that came out in the 70s and 80s. So they are going back to the games made during those eras and fiddling with them. But they are not doing so with the eyes of careful engineers looking for ideas that were ahead of their time, they are basically the Hamlet Typing Monkeys. And their games are going to be better or worse than the games they are recreating by the random chance of mutation rather than any reflection of designer skill.

In a thousand generations of evolving retroclones, we might get to something pretty awesome. But only if we had some selection mechanism that rewarded better rulesets rather than one that rewards better art departments and advertising.

There legitimately are good ideas to be had in the old editions. Not all of the changes made in the revamp to 3rd edition D&D were great, or even in the correct direction. Going back and looking at some of the things that worked well or well enough in earlier editions and seeing if they could be used to improve or simplify rules that aren't working or are too complex in more recent editions is totally reasonable. One of the things I would want any real new edition of D&D (as opposed to the lazy abortion that is 5th edition) to do would be to go back to look at 2nd edition, OD&D, AD&D, and all that shit to see if there were any elements that really were better in older forms (there are actually many, it's just the totality of 3rd edition which is much better than any of these older works).

But the big problem here is that a lot of the OSR people are basically just ranting nostalgia. They remember having fun playing older editions of games because they were 14 years old and got to stay up late with their friends. They aren't really remembering any rules that worked better then than now, they are remembering being young and in love. So there's no real chance of seeing any kind of intelligent critique out of these products. It's the Hamlet Typing Monkeys working on a substrate that never really existed of half-remembered teenage romance.

-Username17

[Prak]

Randomly generated treasure is a holdover from Basic, right? Is that part of the Old School feel, and could it be done well?

[Username17]

Randomly generated treasure is a holdover from Basic, right? Is that part of the Old School feel, and could it be done well?

Randomly generated treasure is in many ways better than what we've had in 3rd edition, and is in pretty much all ways superior to what we had in 4th edition. Randomly generated treasure has a number of advantages:

• It's "fair." The tables spit out what they spit out, so there's no charges or feelings of DM favoritism when one player gets gear that is more useful than another, or when one player does or does not get what they most want.
• It's fast. You get what you get, and you move the fuck on. You don't spend three hours with a spreadsheet and the magic item compendium to work out how best to spend your allotment.
• It's exciting. You don't know what you are going to get, and sometimes you get something wildly overpowered and get to go on a rampage with it.

Now, we all know that it has drawbacks as well. It's kinda stupid sometimes. There's no checking mechanism to make sure players get whatever the heck their characters "need." And if you only get one super-powered thingamajig, the player who ends up with it is going to spend a potentially long time lording it over the other players. These are real problems.

But are these problems actually worse than the problems that 3e's system of spending tens of thousands of gold pieces onto tiny christmas tree ornaments only to discover that the basic fighter equipment was too fucking expensive and WBL values weren't actually high enough for characters in the most played level ranges? I don't think they are. They certainly aren't worse than Treasure Parcels, which earned their own Anatomy of Failed Design thread because they were so fucking bad.

-Username17

[Longes]

Now, we all know that it has drawbacks as well. It's kinda stupid sometimes. There's no checking mechanism to make sure players get whatever the heck their characters "need." And if you only get one super-powered thingamajig, the player who ends up with it is going to spend a potentially long time lording it over the other players. These are real problems.

Frank, I think you forgot to mention the biggest, most glaring, most important problem with random treasure generation - that it's a lie. Every single discussion with the OSR people about random tables ends up with them saying that there are absolutely no problems with randomly generated loot because GM will just choose what loot players will get if fighter isn't getting his sword/wizard is getting too many scrolls/plate of etherealness has too low of a drop chance/etc. It doesn't matter what positives and negatives of the random treasure generation are, because people are just going to fucking cheat on it.

[Prak]

It's also always seemed to take way too long to me. That might, admittedly, be a proficiency thing, though. And a computer could be added to speed things up significantly.

[Mechalich]

One of the problems with randomly generated treasure is that is generates items that should not exist. Particularly, when dealing with combinations of weapon and armor types and abilities, rolling randomly leads to the production of large numbers of items that are so inefficient and inferior compared more common variants that it is difficult to generate a fluff reason for why someone expended the resources necessary to produce the darned things. This problem becomes worse and worse with rulebook bloat and you start generating things that are only of any use to some class variant that isn't being used in the campaign world at all.

So in order to use random loot generation the GM has to modify the tables in order to insure that they only generate loot that has at least marginal utility for the campaign. Of course most GMs don't want to completely reformulate the tables on their own, so they just pick off the tables in an ad hoc fashion, creating the lie Longes mentioned.

[Antariuk]

There legitimately are good ideas to be had in the old editions. Not all of the changes made in the revamp to 3rd edition D&D were great, or even in the correct direction. Going back and looking at some of the things that worked well or well enough in earlier editions and seeing if they could be used to improve or simplify rules that aren't working or are too complex in more recent editions is totally reasonable. One of the things I would want any real new edition of D&D (as opposed to the lazy abortion that is 5th edition) to do would be to go back to look at 2nd edition, OD&D, AD&D, and all that shit to see if there were any elements that really were better in older forms (there are actually many, it's just the totality of 3rd edition which is much better than any of these older works).

Would you mind elaborating on the elements that were better in older forms? I'm just now starting to actually read up on OD&D/AD&D, and I'd be very interested to know what might be worth salvaging for a 'modern' game.

[Prak]

One way to combat impossible treasures (like keen clubs, I take you to mean) is to make more generalised enchantments. But using a computer rather than dice would also solve the problem, as would saying "let the player choose the base weapon" instead of randomly generating it. I'd be perfectly fine with people looting "Weapon Essences" rather than full enchanted weapons.

[tussock]

It doesn't matter what positives and negatives of the random treasure generation are, because people are just going to fucking cheat on it.

The thing is, where most everyone cheats on random generation to patch up problems (with, say, the Fighter class), most people do not cheat when there are strict numbers to stick to.

So that's totally a benefit too. In the real world and stuff. Not in a "this rule isn't broken because you can fix it" sense, but "the way this rule is broken is better than any known fix". About level 8-10 your crappy AD&D Fighter finds your Belt of Giant Strength, and everyone is happy, in part because there was no actual rule that made anyone feel entitled to it.

One of the problems with randomly generated treasure is that is generates items that should not exist.

You don't have to include those things on your random tables. At all. It would in fact be better if you did not. 1st level characters probably shouldn't find +5 Vorpals at random, but your tables don't have to do that either.