I found this new blog from Dreams in the Lichhouse's blog roll.
It's a thoughtful blog from an old school gamer who returned to gaming after stopping in the mid-90s.
It's a really interesting perspective, because his memories of the "old days" don't always match the description usually attached to the "old days." It's okay, his don't match mine, either, which is kind of the point. It's hard to generalize.
Here are some posts I found especially interesting:
Gygax said your D&D is fake and inferior (1982)
The Time before Sandboxes and Railroads
Player Skill versus Skillfully Playing Your Character
At this point I'm just reading the whole blog front to back; it started in February and just new seems to be getting really rolling. I'm enjoying it a lot and he's going into my blog roll, too.
I've recently been following your blog, too, but there is more than I can read. Thank you for the kind words about mine.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thank you for recognizing that I do not mean to say that my experiences are those of everybody else's. I do mean to say that role-playing games have never been uniform, and neither have player experiences, although some commentators today talk as if there was one way that it was. I do think that many players saw it the way I did and that those points of view seem to have disappeared, somewhere between D&D and OSR and Story Games.
Mostly, I'm just trying to sort out a flood of long-neglected memories and to get oriented toward how the hobby looks now. It sure doesn't make a lot of sense to me after a very long period of not paying attention.
By the way, GURPS was my system of preference for many years, playing with a group of experienced players in the late '80s and early '90s. I missed out on the birth of Dungeon Fantasy powered by GURPS, but I ran the original OrcSlayer with Man to Man and GURPS Fantasy and Harkwood as soon as they came out. My son would never play GURPS at this stage, and it's too complex for him and he's in love with 5e, but I recently introduced him to The Fantasy Trip to show him how a fantasy game could work completely differently. He's lukewarm about it but wants to try it more. For now it's just duels.
There is too much for anyone to read, at this point - over 3000 posts.
DeleteYour memories and experiences are a good addition to the pool of knowledge out here about gaming. I've been enjoying reading them, and I'm glad you took the time to write them down.
Your GURPS gaming goes back like mine does - I started with Man-to-Man, and then Orcslayer, and then GURPS Fantasy and the 1st edition boxed set. I never did get Harkwood, though. I would have if I ever saw it in a store but I did not . . .