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leopard wrote:
hell I've had people call star fleet battles complicated for feths sake

if you can't win a rules argument by killing your opponent with a rulebook its not a game worth playing

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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
With Star Fleet Battles, your rule book was also your chair. Just bring in that storage tub and have a seat, good to go.

Looking at the storage tub my Star Fleet Battles stuff is in and realizing would, indeed, make a decent chair at need...




A d1000 chart? Heck, play Rolemaster and deal with their critical charts! Different charts for slashing, stabbing, crushing, animal attacks, and who knows what else? Anything from 'take extra damage' to 'you're dead, sucks to be you' over dozens of d100 charts. These kids with their 'double damage' critical hits just don't know how good they have it now!

Loved Rolemaster (and Spacemaster) back in the day

and Battletech was indeed better before the clans spoiled it

Back in my day, you had to make your own terrain. You couldn't buy it in a shop.

In fact, you couldn't even buy a book on how to make it! You pretty much had to piece together how to do it from dozens of magazine articles, snippets dropped in the comments of photographs, railroad modeling books, or hoping some old salt would tell you the secret.

More often than not, you learned by doing it, failing, and then trying again until it looked passable enough to put on your table of other suitably DIY terrain.

That's back when Wargaming WAS Punk Rock for NERDS!

 Vulcan wrote:

 Valander wrote:
Battletech was a great game before the Clan Invasion stuff completely wrecked the balance. We used to build lances by tonnage, but 200 tons of Clams grossly overshadowed 200 tons of Inner Sphere every day. Why would anyone not play Clans, now? Totally killed the game.

(Yes, I played Battletech back in the day and remember when TRO 3050 first came out...)

I'll go you one better. I started playing when it was BattleDroids, and then Lucasfilm got cranky about it...

Gods yes, I'm right there with you.

All these kids with their double heat sinks not learning how to manage their heat...

That last line really got me, goddamnit.

I was totally the newbie who took the Clan mechs. Back in the day I had a Clan Wolf patch too! My first exposure was the Battletech Compendium, and those full color pics of the custom Mad Cat model sold me so hard. That was my intro to wargaming. The only Inner Sphere mech I really liked was the Marauder. . . ahem, I mean the Zentraudi Officer Battle Pod . . .

Practicing my drawing skills by copying the Marauder pic out of the 3025 Technical readout, during summer camp, while all the other kids played on the beach. This was the way.

the idea that you have premade terrain, pre-painted even is an abomination unto Nuggen

In my day you made it yourself, or bullied a model railway nerd into making it for you the way nature intended

The only way to learn SFB was to get your teeth kicked in repeatedly with surprise rules. Kids these days don’t have the patience for that. They want fair games they can learn the rules and have a chance of winning in under a year.

Now come over here and let me show you how tractor beams, targeting rules, and drones a/o plasma torps interact…


But for being thicker then the yellow pages (another thing kids these days don’t know) the rulebook was so well cross referenced. Rules arguments were swift, sharp, and brutal. So we could spend the hour we could have been arguing filling out our EA forms.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Loved Rolemaster (and Spacemaster) back in the day

Ah yes, Chartmaster. I might have a book around here for that somewhere. I recall a critical hit through the ear, which instantly killed the victim while also removing excess wax.

The internet has totally changed the concept of gaming. Back in the day, the games came with catalogs, which were often the only way you could know what else was out there.

I remember these circulating among gaming friends as we debated what purchase might be worthwhile. Store selection was spotty, so mail order was often the only option.

When I got a little older, one of my stores carried copies of Fire & Movement as well as the resurrected Strategy and Tactics, both of which had game reviews. No unboxing videos back then, no sir. Just a few column inches of some nerd's take on it with maybe a grainy black and white photograph of parts of the map.

Kids these days are utterly spoiled.

There was a piercing crit, high on the chart that was “shot passes through both ears, hearing impaired” but did not specifically kill you. Which was odd, because at the place it was in the chart it should have, and rolemaster did not flinch from telling you in excruciating detail how messed up you were.

Great system in the hands of a good GM. But required a lot of system mastery. Which kids these days just don’t have the patience for.

 Valander wrote:
Battletech was a great game before the Clan Invasion stuff completely wrecked the balance. We used to build lances by tonnage, but 200 tons of Clams grossly overshadowed 200 tons of Inner Sphere every day. Why would anyone not play Clans, now? Totally killed the game.

(Yes, I played Battletech back in the day and remember when TRO 3050 first came out...)

Battle Value, my dude.

Love all the Star Fleet Battles references. I've got just about everything released for that game, currently in a large cardboard box that is probably too heavy for me to lift by myself (which has as much to do with my complete lack of physical fitness as it does to how many books and stuff are in the box). Never have played many games due to complete lack of players locally, but it's a cool system and a cool offbeat-Star Trek setting.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Loved Rolemaster (and Spacemaster) back in the day

What about Hackmaster?

+ + +

Going back to G.O.G mode for a minute - people who CBA to use the right word when posting on t'internet, and then throw a hissy fit when you point it out - moral instead of morale, for example, or calvary instead of cavalry.

How you use language is important, damn it - in a written medium, it's the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack...

Damn kids with their namby-pamby Dungeons.

In my day, you’d tear through the Dungeon, show a Bloodthirster who’s boss, make a small fortune, retire to the inn, then get horribly murdered to death off a street urchin when you went for a wee. Or fall off a cliff. And that’s if you were lucky, because you were dead and it didn’t matter. It’s when you got mugged and everyone knew the daemon slaying hero was in fact terrified of children.

They don’t know they’re born.

or take Traveller where most gamers today would be dead during character creation, a risk that any proper game system includes


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 ZergSmasher wrote:
Love all the Star Fleet Battles references. I've got just about everything released for that game, currently in a large cardboard box that is probably too heavy for me to lift by myself (which has as much to do with my complete lack of physical fitness as it does to how many books and stuff are in the box). Never have played many games due to complete lack of players locally, but it's a cool system and a cool offbeat-Star Trek setting.

the brats today who are not fit to lick the boots of proper gamers while they lounge on my lawn, sitting on my tank, wouldn't know a Lyran Wildcat from the Hydran Warrior, I blame the parents

Damn kids with their one Leadership characteristic for all purposes! In my day we had Intelligence, Cool, Willpower AND Leadership, and each one did a different thing.

Nowadays they have their telephones, photographic cameras, high fidelity systems, personal computers and paperless atlases all in their pockets. Grumble mumble rhubarb grumble

Juxtimon wrote:
Damn kids with their one Leadership characteristic for all purposes! In my day we had Intelligence, Cool, Willpower AND Leadership, and each one did a different thing.

Nowadays they have their telephones, photographic cameras, high fidelity systems, personal computers and paperless atlases all in their pockets. Grumble mumble rhubarb grumble

Intelligence, Cool and Willpower had to be removed as kids today lack all three

*shakes fists at clouds*

What have I been robbed of?

In a word, SENSEI!

The grimdark stuff is just fine, but I need that light at the end of the tunnel that isn't a freight train. I still love first ed, and I still have a Sensei warband, that I drag out whenever you consarned whippersnappers give granddad a chance to play.

Kelvis Kraen is his name. He wields a force sword and neuro-disruptor. Along with his beloved pet/pal Ogryn Stosh, the Navigator Estradio Deltovan, and a reformed Chaos champion (yep, the Sensei could make that happen!) named Kargryn Darkfire (dorky, but, hey, its 40k) he roams Twilight Sector, dodging and battling the Imperium and Chaos both and serving the Starchild and the Sensei Master Light of the Son.

Great times!

Spoiled kids and their instant gratification.

In my day, computer games took ages to load. And were quite often not worth the bother.

They think Elden Ring is hard? At least you can complete that. Try Jet Set Willy. Where you literally couldn’t complete the game, due to programming bugs. You think a Horse ascending into the upper atmosphere is a bug? You don’t know you’re born.

Graphics? We had ASCII art and we liked it!

/nethack.

ASCII? ASCII?

What’s wrong with doodling crude images on a school textbook, eh?

 NapoleonInSpace wrote:

Kelvis Kraen is his name.

If the Inquisition ever finds the location of Café Nervosa he's toast

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
ASCII? ASCII?

What’s wrong with doodling crude images on a school textbook, eh?

Do you know how long it would take to send that doodle over the internet with a 300 baud acoustic modem?

You fancy kids with your internet games. In my day we had play by mail. You wrote your moves on paper, stuck it in an envelope with a stamp, sent it in to be processed, and had to wait a month for the results!

Tsagualsa wrote:

 NapoleonInSpace wrote:

Kelvis Kraen is his name.

If the Inquisition ever finds the location of Café Nervosa he's toast

Inquisition? Buncha plodding dolts who'd wipe out a galactic sector to kill a mutated earthworm!

Turn to the light of the Starchild! It is the true way!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
ASCII? ASCII?

What’s wrong with doodling crude images on a school textbook, eh?

textbooks?

you had textbooks?

posh modern rubbish, we had to make do with scratching into slate, then being beaten to death with it at least three times a week, but never more than four, not like them posh swines

I'll keep it short and simple: I miss Avalon Hill.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I'll keep it short and simple: I miss Avalon Hill.

That’s a Hill to die on.

They made a great range of games, from beer and pretzels, to boxes full of maps and chits.

 Dysartes wrote:
As someone who had to play against it at the time, the 3.5E 'Chaos' Codex remains the greatest Codex-based travesty to ever emanate from the 40k studio.

Please, show us on the teddy bear where the Iron Warrior touched you.

And more importantly: please tell me what was the problem with the Night Lords list. I've asked this question multiple times to the 3.5 detractors, and have yet to get an answer. We didn't all play Iron Warriors back then, after all (and those of us that didn't had to deal with them just like everyone else).

 Nevelon wrote:
The only way to learn SFB was to get your teeth kicked in repeatedly with surprise rules. Kids these days don’t have the patience for that. They want fair games they can learn the rules and have a chance of winning in under a year.

Now come over here and let me show you how tractor beams, targeting rules, and drones a/o plasma torps interact…


But for being thicker then the yellow pages (another thing kids these days don’t know) the rulebook was so well cross referenced. Rules arguments were swift, sharp, and brutal. So we could spend the hour we could have been arguing filling out our EA forms.

And even if you can get a kid interested, they just can't cope with fractional power points during EA as you try to teach them the full rules...

 Vulcan wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
The only way to learn SFB was to get your teeth kicked in repeatedly with surprise rules. Kids these days don’t have the patience for that. They want fair games they can learn the rules and have a chance of winning in under a year.

Now come over here and let me show you how tractor beams, targeting rules, and drones a/o plasma torps interact…


But for being thicker then the yellow pages (another thing kids these days don’t know) the rulebook was so well cross referenced. Rules arguments were swift, sharp, and brutal. So we could spend the hour we could have been arguing filling out our EA forms.

And even if you can get a kid interested, they just can't cope with fractional power points during EA as you try to teach them the full rules...

two appropriate references

D17.0
D22.0

kids today

Sadly I no longer have my old SFB stuff. A log of games from that era were a bunch of us pooling out money and buying for the group. My friend Dave ended up with the SFB when we split it up years past.

I did end up with the 40k stuff and enough OGRE to crack the earth open, so can’t complain too much.

Cruiser duels using the tournament pack was our preferred SFB format, but we’d mix it up from time to time.

I flew Hydrans by preference. Hellbores, fusions, fighters, and phaser-g’s. Good times.

guy I gamed against, a proper gamer, sneaky swine, suggested a multi-way game, using "any officially published stuff"..

spider sense tingled..

got there, he had X-Ships, very proud of how good they were, especially how good they were against fighters at close range

that was, purely coincidentally, the first time he saw Hydrans..

I had a CVA...