No big surprise, given that I’ve bee gaming since 1979. I started out with 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, like many self-respecting nerds did. It was overly complex, and clunky, and didn’t always make sense, but we loved it. We were very much playing in what has come to be known as ‘murderhobo’ mode. Monsters existed to be slaughtered, and then you’d take any treasure they had. Your character would level up and then you go do it all over again.
I moved out into TSR Gaming’s other offerings – Star Frontiers, Marvel Superhero Role-playing, Top Secret. I have a copy of Gamma World but I’ve never gotten to play it. Still mostly in whatever version of the ‘murderhobo’ mode of the game’s genre happened to be.
Other game systems came out – GURPS, Tunnels & Trolls, Traveller, 2nd Edition AD&D, 3rd Edition AD&D, 4th Edition AD&D …. mostly we stuck with the fantasy genre, with Traveller being the exception. We got away from the ‘murderhobo’ style of play and got more into the character development mode. We went on quests to defeat the bad guys (which still involved a lot of combat) but we were doing it more to get Experience Points to apply to making our characters better / more powerful.
Our gaming group split up because of time and distance and we were reduced to playing a few times a year when we could co-ordinate our schedules so we could all get a Saturday off to gather and game.
New games were coming out and I still bought them, thinking ‘hey, this will be great to play if I can ever get a regular group together’. I usually bought them because of the setting, not so much the rules systems. The rules systems tended to still be complex and clunky but made a little more sense. They were sort of like reading a novel, or maybe more like a book of prompts, as my Muse would think up scenarios I’d like to run for games in that setting.
Then about ten years ago, I came across the whole ‘rules light’ genre of gaming. Instead of giant, thick tomes of rules, which were usually quite expensive, the rules for running a game were much shorter (and cheaper). My introduction was a game called The World’s Easiest Role Playing System, or T.W.E.R.P.S., being a play off of the name GURPS. It was put out a decade or so earlier before I got into it. Most games have several statistics to define your character. T.W.E.R.P.S. has one. Instead of having rules to cover every little detail (‘does my Elven-crafted arrow ricochet off the bell tower at a sixty degree arc, go through the window in the dining hall and knock the goblet full of poison out of the King’s hand?’) they leave things up to the Game Master to make a ruling. ‘Rules light’ games might just have you roll against a stat and trying to beat a difficulty number set by the GM. T.W.E.R.P.S. was followed by Risus, Fate, and Tiny D6.
I’m finding that I much prefer ‘rules light’ systems and not having to dig through the giant rulebooks trying to figure out how my character ties his shoes. I just want to have minimal rules, have my characters do cool things, and have fun. There is a great scene in The Three Musketeers where the Musketeers are at an Inn, but don’t have money to pay for a meal. They start a brawl and as they are fighting they are stuffing their pockets with food and drink. After they get tossed out they go around the corner and eat their repast. Pulling off something like that in 1st edition AD&D would be near impossible doing it with the rules as written. With a rules lit game, it’s much easier to pull off.
Overall, I’m more interested in the story that evolves during the game. I’ve always been interested more in the story than the game system, or even the setting. Reading systems can be fun, just to see what interesting mechanics it uses. And reading to see what cool settings a game has is also fun. A lot of times I immediately start thinking what other game system I might use for a setting because I may not like the rules system it comes with. But the story … ah, there’s the thing. Seeing how my character affects the events in the tale. Trying to inject cool things into the scenarios. Having fun with friends as we all create the tale together. That is my goal in gaming now.
I look way back to those ‘murderhobo’ days and remember the fun I had, but that style of play would bore me silly now. Having my Bard run for Mayor of the little Podunk town near where our characters have our keep so she can keep the locals misdirected away from it is much more interesting now.
Now, if we could just get our group together more than two or three times a year.
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