"Traditional," old-school style RPGs or "new age," flavor of the month style RPGs?

Neither. I prefer relatively recent games which have managed to maintain a reasonable player base after their initial flash in the pan success. You know, things like Mutants and Masterminds or NWoD.

What edition of M&M is the best? I'm inclined to try third edition, but I've never played.

I'd say 3e. 2e is closer to its d20 system roots, but 3e dumps a lot of the pointless legacy mechanics it didn't need and embraces its own identity.

It depends on your preferences. I agree with , both for the reasons he laid out but also because it fixes a couple of issues 2E had. On the other hand, it does have some oddities, like certain stats (Dodge) being significantly more useful than others (Presence) for the same price.

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>please report all on-topic discussions, they're pushing my magical realm threads off the bottom of page 10.

Completelly missed the point: the post.

Except running 5 miles is nowhere near impossible, even for an old fuck. A 20+ minute 5k isn't even that good of a pace that you couldn't continue another mile or two.

How about you define your buzzwords, baka desu sempai?

>this thing I make sound awesome, or this thing I clearly make sound like utter shit; let's have a polite discussion I'm totally not bait I swear gais!
Is this Virt?

I thought virt sucked 3.5's cock and hated anything to do with old school D&D

I like to play both for different reasons.

I don't like metamechanics which seem to more often then not reinforce cliches, versus the oracular power of seeing where the dice lead.

Welp, all this did is make me feel even worse about my shit life... thanks user.

Nah, he hates systems that don't use the Str-Dex-Con-Int-Wis-Cha model.

if something old is immediately displaced by something new, it was probably garbage kept only since there was no alternative

on the other hand, if it remains competitive, despite sharing space with other titles, it is probably worth looking into, since this means something about it allows you it to entice players

while you should always be on the lookout for new and exciting things, sometimes you just cant beat the classics

Grids weren't a regular part of D&D combat until 3e, before then they were optional and didn't have very many hard rules, most grid combat rules were introduced in splats.

Also, did you know you can do both? Because thanks to the OSR movement there's whole game lines dedicated to merging old school sensibilities with lessons learned from 40+ years of development.

Classic styles with house rules in general, flavor of the month to try new things once in a while.

"New Age" RPG's are played by sexy, socially competent people
"Old School" RPG's are played by crusty old neckbeards for whom being good at DnD 1st edition is the one aspect in life where they exceed average

Yeah there is a huge difference between actually old school RPGs and 'I played 3.5 once in high school'.

Most stuff from the basic and old DnD era is surprisingly rules lite compared to later stuff.

I prefer old school. Traveller, OD&D, GURPS, VtM, RIFTS, Amber, etc. are the types of games I think of this way.

They have a certain "tried-and-true" magic that most newer games I have played seem to lack. Not to say that they are bad, just most of them are different. Lower buy-in, but with lower overall investment and reward IMHO. Games designed as rules-lite narrative systems seem to rule the day now, but they are (to me) missing a certain 'I don't know what'. Particularly with games that lean heavily on narrative concepts and metacurrency as a way of artificially regulating the game's flow and player agency, which are realistically resolved by having a good group and GM all on the same page about things and being open to suggestions from the table which is kind of the entire point of an RPG; these social contract-smoothing frameworks, to me, seem to miss the point a bit (speaking to my personal playstyle; obviously not everyone's because many people like those types of games) and actually (again, in my highly anecdotal opinion) work against the fostered mystery, drama, and spirit of the table. They seem to simultaneously be a crutch for poor table habits of both of GMs and players, while also strangely requiring a very cooperative and experienced group of people to use properly anyway; in the process, distracting from the game itself and drawing extra attention to the RULES in play, which seems to contradict the whole point of what heavily narrative games are supposed to be about.

[Last disclaimer: personal experiences and opinions only, not shitting on anyone's parade. Play what you like/is fun for you and your group.]

To add to this a bit, I believe metacurrency is largely unnecessary partially because the human mind is already predisposed towards creation of a narrative. We have done that for ages, and we will always be inclined towards creating a satisfying story with characters that are enthralling to us in some way. This is natural, and is why participating in an RPG can be so rewarding.

In my view, the system is there purely to resolve cause->effect relationships and provide concrete results within the imagined game universe itself. The system is there to provide a consistent series of rules, relationships and boundaries which the human mind is poor at reproducing with either consistency or regularity. This is what the system helps provide framework and support for.

The narrative itself is something the human mind is amazing at producing on its own, particularly with a group of similarly minded and cooperative individuals; this, IMHO, should remain as unhindered and 'free' as possible. The more games try to regulate and mechanize this facet of the game, the more this emergent magic of the narrative is actually hampered in practice. And again, it repeatedly draws the focus to the rules outside of the world and imagined narrative, which is (for me) entirely undesirable. The rules are there by necessity, not a worthy pursuit in and of themselves.

Again, in my experience, just my opinion, so on and so forth. If you're having fun, you're having fun.

Not true.

Also untrue.

Why do people always bring up meta currency? The original Warhammer role-playing game had Fate points and that's about as old school as you get.

Guy with the last two big posts here.

Metacurrency in and of itself is not an absolute evil, per se. It's when the game becomes reliant on its exchange rate and the economy to function properly or it breaks down that the problem IMHO rears its head, or when these points are not used as "oh shit" points but rather a "convenience fee" to shape the narrative; there's no hard and fast wall, but generally speaking the more limited those points are and the more limited the application, the more palatable they are to me. This is how most oldschool games treat such points, if they have them at all.

Fate Points in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are an entirely different beast than the literal narrative metacurrency that Fate Core lives and dies by, as an example.

I guess I should have elaborated by saying not all currencies are the same, and there's no hard wall between "good" and "bad" that I can articulate aside from a general 'less is more' guideline; the less you are drawn out of the play, the world, the better. Even no meta mechanics whatsoever draws you out of the experience from time to time, my point is that those separations are ideally minimized in the mechanics as much as possible.

Because WHFRP doesn't completely rely on its "metacurrency" to function. Certain modern games have become so reliant on it that if the GM stumbles even a little bit with the back and forth of gaining and using points the entirety of the games mechanics will cease to function properly.

Flavor of the month means indie games I assume? I love them and both in vidya and other games one of the best parts is seeing new systems and mechanics, though I'd always want to have a long-term campaign going as well of a larger game, like D&D or Burning Wheel. If that's not the meaning I'm unsure what the categorization is for, I get OSR but "traditional" vs. "new age" sounds like literally nothing.

I think it's a result of game theory proceeding and breaking down how RPGs work, i.e. rewards shape how players behave so games are designed from the ground up to, for example, make you act as a pirate (7th Sea rewards you for talking like a pirate because that's what it wants you to do). Designers realized they didn't have to design very low-level mechanical systems and then try to nudge the players to play it as it should be played in their minds, see many licenced RPGs and why they are so utterly different from the source material, but they can just tell players "do x and I'll give you y" and they will do it. Metacurrencies are a good way to do this. It's not only because of theory, these things go way back (XP is a metacurrency, which e.g. in OD&D directly rewards getting treasure), and is not only found in new games, but I think it has become a lot more prevalent.

>in OD&D directly rewards getting treasure
Isn't that reversed? IIRC treasure could be used as XP. Which is kind of a reverse meta currency, in that an in-game thing rewards a character mechanically out of character.

It uses a meta currency (XP) to reward you for getting treasure, adding to the already existing in-game reward of being able to buy better gear. You then use XP to get stronger, meta currencies work both ways so I wouldn't say it's reversed I think?

Fate Points in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are an entirely different beast than the literal narrative metacurrency that Fate Core lives and dies by, as an example.
>Because WHFRP doesn't completely rely on its "metacurrency" to function. >using points the entirety of the games mechanics will cease to function properly.

Well i've always personally dislike WFRP because it reliance on fate points myself. Your chances at succeed in anything so low you basically require them to function. Fate was the undisputed God stat. It was almost always better to be luckier than skilled.

That said there wasn't any sort of disassociated narrative control meta game as such. So I think I understand we're you're coming from.

>reward you for getting treasure
Yeah but I mean I thought it was the other way around, getting treasure rewarded you with XP. Because you didn't buy magic gear in Od&d so you needed something to sink all that money in to.

Or am I thinking of the trainer rules?

Getting treasure is rewarded with XP, which means there is a reward for getting treasure, yes? I haven't gotten to play D&D yet but assuming you get 1 XP for every 1 gp I don't understand the confusion.

>
Well i've always personally dislike WFRP because it reliance on fate points myself. Your chances at succeed in anything so low you basically require them to function. Fate was the undisputed God stat. It was almost always better to be luckier than skilled.
That's a very fair gripe to have.

>That said there wasn't any sort of disassociated narrative control meta game as such. So I think I understand we're you're coming from.
Yeah, it seems like you got the gist of what I meant. And as I said, I don't think I could articulate an exact point at which a few such contrivances flips from "okay" to "bad" in my mind, it's really more of a gut sense than anything. WHFRP may offend mechanically, but not necessarily because of the nature of the points themselves, whereas Fate may function well mechanically but the nature of its currency sets off all my "this is wrong and not fun for me" flags.

>Isn't that reversed? IIRC treasure could be used as XP. Which is kind of a reverse meta currency, in that an in-game thing rewards a character mechanically out of character.

Originally your character literally got experience from finding treasure, that was what gave you experience not fighting monsters, as odd as it sounds.

It meant to reinforce the player role as a treasure hunt who's main intent is to simply *get past* the monsters. Fighting works but so does trickery stealth and diplomacy.

Neither.

Old school RPGs tend toward GM autocracy, imprecise rules, and a lack of real roleplaying.

New school RPGs tend to make the GM a slave to the overwrought rules and promote turning the game into a special snowflake improv theatre.

Yeah I think I understand. The mechanical aspects of building and dice rolling is more or less secondary to the invoking and application of aspects

The dice no almost no range or swing to them at all, so I personally felt FATE would have worked better as a fully diceless narrative system.

>The dice no almost no range or swing to them at all, so I personally felt FATE would have worked better as a fully diceless narrative system.
Agreed. Funnily enough, Amber Diceless is one such narrative game that I love, but it is also "oldschool" in the sense that it is old and (very much 'in my opinion') doesn't really follow the modern design philosophies of narrative/light RPGs coming out these days.

What kind of gamer loves OD&D, GURPS, Traveller and Amber (and even HeroQuest 2 and Over the Edge) but really dislikes Fate and Apocalypse World, I don't know... but I'm in that weird group I guess.

I think it's the idea of 'mechanically incentivising role-playing'.

Does the system try to mechanically encourage the player to act 'In character' or not.

In that sense FATE points really serve the same function that XP penalties for breaking alignment do.

Personally I think role-play should be it's own reward, rather than a carrot and stick.

So basically when some Indy RPG gets all pretentious about awarding players for accompishing goals instead of killing monsters, they're really just using the same ideas of original D&D

>I prefer old school. Traveller, OD&D, GURPS, VtM, RIFTS, Amber, etc. are the types of games I think of this way.

>They have a certain "tried-and-true" magic that most newer games I have played seem to lack. Not to say that they are bad, just most of them are different. Lower buy-in, but with lower overall investment and reward IMHO. Games designed as rules-lite narrative systems seem to rule the day now, but they are (to me) missing a certain 'I don't know what'.

Really? I think one of the reasons that narrative-type games got so popular was that gamist-type games dealt with mechanical problems by adding more rules or sub-systems or mechanics rather than evaluating the effectiveness of those rules even rethinking the assumptions those mechanics were based on.

I was going to mention Edge Points, but that's a good one too.

I blame AD&D as the point where the rot set in.

If Basic D&D came out today people would probably define it as rules lite to medium. The actual game rules of pre-AD&D are so fucking simple it's hilarious to hear Indy devs prattle on about how brilliant they are for making their rules light masterpieces that are sooooooo innovative for doing shit that was created in 1971.

Most people don't even realize it because unfortunately all it's simplicity is hidden behind atrocious organization and stupidly esoteric terminology with poor explanations.

With that mentality even a mobity scooter will beat you.

>Most people don't even realize it because unfortunately all it's simplicity is hidden behind atrocious organization and stupidly esoteric terminology with poor explanations.
Which is the REAL innovation of newer games. Better organization, consolidation of terminology and simplicity of language.

Apocalypse World, for example, uses Tags. Now tags in and of themselves are just keywords, which have been used in RPGs since its dawn. What makes them interesting is that tags get used for the broader semi-mechanical aspects (like Loud and Messy being for things that can't be used for quiet or clean kills), while much of the minor shit that would have gotten keywords before gets left out because they're considered rather obvious (like bludgeoning, slashing and piercing damage... no shit that machete is cutting you).

This cleans up and simplifies things that are overly complex in earlier games.

I don't know, where is GURPS in your classification?

Nah, 2.0. when they axed Gygax and let the superbitch run shit.