Yeah, the Oathmark minis look great. Very kind of old-school vibe. Can’t wait to get the Goblins for FGV.
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I haven’t done proper RPG gaming in probably 30 years now as I found I liked tabletop battles more. With the kid now playing the odd game I have been peeking at the new D&D and Pathfinder books and while expensive probably not more so than what we paid back in the 80s when adjusting for inflation however the quality of printing and presentation is worlds better much like the quality of the miniatures today.
ETA Starfinder really really tempts me.
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The new books are amazing. Strahd, too. I got the books and the Tarroka deck. Also, Volo’s Guide to Monsters is also amazing.
I love all of rich art, pull-out color maps, and all of the other high-end content and production, but I kind of miss the funky and DIY aspects of early RPGs and wargames. You had to complete the games yourself. I was always drawn to that. In fact, still, my fave aspect of gaming is what’s called “gaming in the gaps,” where you build an army that is in the background but not commercially available, or you adopt your own house rules, pulling for several game systems, etc. Before GW came out with their Adeptus Mechanicus range, I spent untold hours designing and collecting the parts to build my own Mechanicus. I love this part of the hobby. And that’s one of the reasons I dig Frostgrave so much. It’s highly evocative, but they intentionally left a lot of it very open and unfleshed out, it’s miniature agnostic, and they created a game that requires lots of terrain for best effect, all
to encourage more DIY. Love that.
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As a youngster I just thought that was normal
Games as a cold medium!
I have a number of old games that would be collectible, but are full of annotations and extra tables and such.
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These adventures are all inspired by famous modules:
- Princes of the Apocalypse -> Temple of Elemental Evil
- Out of the Abyss -> Queen of the Spiders
- Curse of Strahd -> Ravenloft
- Storm King’s Thunder -> Against the Giants
- Tomb of Annihilation -> Tomb of Horrors
Tyranny of Dragons wasn’t as far as I know though. They also have conversions of some old modules in Tales from the Yawning Portal.
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Ah! There was some language up front giving tribute to other, earlier work. That explains it.
I never played the old modules Back In The Day. I got involved with playtesting at Fantasy Games Unlimited, so while the rest of the world was playing AD&D and the classic modules, I was playing Chivalry & Sorcery and various home-brews.
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There were whole storylines in Something Positive about kids making up or filling out rule sets
That’s a fake news game!
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Next time I’m in Tokyo, definitely. Except I don’t think my luggage weight allowance will cover the whole boxed set plus all of the stretch goals plus the other cutouts I got!
That 6e set on Amazon is too cheap to pass up so I’m getting that at least
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FYI, if you want to see some “new old school” check out Goodman Game’s DCC RPG (one core book), and it’s various adventures (for example the shackled tomb, or adventures on the purple planet).
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If you want to check out OSR adventures, the standard for best is still probably Vornheim and Maze of the Blue Medusa. The map doesn’t really have spoilers, but if you play it you probably don’t want to reference this post.
EDIT
Also a bit NSFW
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I’d like to second the plug for Playing at the World.
Caveat: This is a massive academic tome. There are a few other histories of gaming and D&D if you are looking for something lighter.
One weird-ditty: When I dabbling with war games around 1974, there seemed to be a long history to the miniatures games and hex wargames. Yes, I know that games like Kriegspiel were around for decades and decades, and military miniatures were a thing since H.G. Wells was young . . . I’m talking about “modern” military simulation games. Avalon Hill, SPI, Tactical Studies Rules.
From the perspective of today, the heyday of military games, when they “defined” adult gaming, was relatively short, dating from the 1950s and only hitting their stride in the 60s. RPGs were a weird, disrepected freak show when I went to my first gaming convention (Origins III, 1977). Now board wargames of the classic variety are the side show, while RPGs are thriving (again?) and “German” board games are a multi-national phenomena.
Anyway. A good book, recommended for those who want to know the history and roots of gaming.
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I got my start on wargaming from some books at the local library, imported from Britain, that had a set of miniatures rules and a bunch of scenarios with chapters of historical information about each. Not having minis, I drew them on index cards and cut those out to make my armies. Early on, casualties were crossed out or erased and redrawn for future games, until worn out when those units had to be officially disbanded.
Later, I built spacecraft and hovertanks out of balsa, bits of ballpoint pens and other junk, and sculpting clay. Even figured out how to wire up an armitage to make a humanoid or monsteroid sculpture able to stand. With PCs and inkjet printers, I played in paint/vector graphics programs and printed out a full set of OGRE GEV and Shockwave forces plus house rule additions. Then tried some OGRE Miniatures ones printed to scale with vehicles made to fold up in a box (top view on top, stats on side, flip it over when damaged for a damaged view).
My backgrounds and forces for a lot of things were the ones with expansions that were never released or powers hinted at in the canon but never developed. Even with historical rules, I’d often fight battles somewhere in the Pacific or South America that could have happened rather than the standard European scenarios.
I think I had as much fun playing with the games (if not more) than actually playing the games.
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You can just go out and buy a deck of cards these days
Steve Jackson Games has had Cardboard Heroes since back in the 80s.
I recall doing similar with leftover bits from model tanks and such. Was indeed all part of the fun!
Much of the fun I had gaming as a teenager was essentially recreational mathematics. I designed a lot more vehicles for Car Wars than I ever used. I used to carry around a pad in which I tried to work out the best possible mech for every weight class (in 5t increments) in Battletech.
I still occasionally write up GURPS characters just for the hell of it.
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