Wow! You have a nice Star Wars D6 collection there! :-D I'm definitely looking forward to your full-length video on that game. Fantastic system... and that game deserves tons of credit for keeping Star Wars alive and also for expanding the universe and lore!
I can't say enough good things about it. The Free fan improved 2.75 version is amazing. I'm going to get as many subscribers as I can playing it. That's just how much I love it.
The 80s was indeed an Age of Wonders for TTRPG enthusiasts. I retain much of my collection, despite a gut-wrenching cull. You and I definitely explored some of the same worlds. I was pleasantly surprised to see Ghostbusters! I only played a one-shot, and it was fun, but didn't take for my group. Thank you for sharing, Aten! You do good work.
In retrospect, I think Rollmaster influenced many D&D games particularly in how we handled crit fails and hits back then. Even my game though I'd never even seen a Rollmaster book at that time.
We used the crit tables in Best of Dragon the most, but the ones in RM really inspired us to expand them. I really liked the concpt of Spell Lists, too. The best 5e version of that that I have found is KP's Deep Magic book. I liked the idea of elves being functionally immortal, too. @@dane3038
Same. I started on ours when OA came out. RM influenced it pretty heavily. 2e was better and most of my work was pretty easy to translate. 5e people have NO idea how revolutionary proficiencies/skills were in that day. :-D @@mikeb.1705
I began by adapting Arms Law/Claw Law to my AD&D/2nd Ed game, but we went full Rolemaster Dungeon Crawl Madness in the 90s and made memories we'll cherish all our lives. Important note, if your group, like mine, is composed primarily of "normal people" rather than hardcore gamers, the best way to sell and maintain a RM group is to handle ALL the rules and math yourself. Get good with a Ten Key/desk calculator, run all the numbers and just tell them what their final mod is and let them roll. Manage their character sheets for them. You are an accountant now, privy to all the arcane code and substructure, serving so your group can enjoy the ruthless chaos and equally pure catharsis that is Rolemaster. Or run it on a VTT and have the technology do all that.
"Got change for 25 million people?" Oh man, I have great memories of those Nuclear War games. Great "beer & pretzel" game and I can't remember any game ending without total annihilation of everyone at the table. lol
My first experience with roleplay games was "Het oog des Meesters", a Dutch translation of the German game "Das Schwarze Auge". As of a couple of years ago an English version, "The Dark Eye" became available. Unfortunately, outside Germany this game never got a lot of support. Then I read "The Legend of Huma" by Richard A. Knaak, and at the end of the book was a reference to playing your own Dragonlance adventures through Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (I read this just as it went from first to second edition. I still have many TTRPGs here, including some from Aten's list. And many, many that came after the 80s. My current favorites are the Narrative Dice system from FFG (Star Wars and Genesys), and Dungeons and Dragons 5th.
One of the downfalls for The Dark Eye is that they won't make physical copies, POV or printer friendly versions for anything other than a few books. Almost exactly like WFRP. This shuts out a lot of the potential market. Sad, because from what I've seen their adventures are well written. And those maps are the most beautiful in the industry, bar none.
Hey Aten - that was brilliant. I'd forgotten I'd played James Bond RPG - it was really good actually. I'd love to play Mutant Crawl Classics - most of us in the UK never even saw copies of Boot Hill or Gamma World in our gaming shops. Paranoia was okay...AD&D was the main thing in our lives. I had Runequest and no one wanted to play it and my friend had Traveller and he had the same problem, so we were the one player in each other's campaign! I remember seeing the Indiana Jones one. Friends also had Bushido, Stormbringer and Judge Dredd RPG which - as Brits - we were all avid fans of the comic. Great memories.
One guy in our group ran us in games that were an amalgam of James Bond 007 and Top Secret. We had a blast! :-) I honestly never played the pure versions of either of those games and my only experience was in my friend's homebrew version of his spy/espionage game, but we had so much fun. I did buy the books, eventually... and that Q Manual was just a fun book to flip through and read... all those crazy gadgets. :-)
I've played and studied several Supers RPGs including ( Savage Worlds, Marvel Universe *Playtest, Masks and City of Mists ) and Marvel Super Heros "FASRIP" is my favorite. The only RPG where a combat chart doesn't annoy me ( it's different ). Thor rolls a 100 on his "Slugfest" against Troll Lord's endurance roll of 01. Thor knocks Troll Lord across several streets into the base of the water tower which is now threatening to fall onto several residential homes. Mighty Girl, do you continue fighting Troll Minions or do something to stop the tower? *Failure to stop the damage could cost Karma and Publicity. Karma is used for those moments of power boosts that sups sometimes display in times of need. It just imitates Marvel comics bester than any other RPG. 10/10
Ya, AD&D still tops my list as well. Ravenloft, Chuthulu, Dragonlance...most of the games you presented I've never played. Some I didn't even know existed! TSR put out alot more than I ever realized! Thanks Aten 👍. Can't wait to see your future videos. I'm actually re-watching 🤣. Peace my friend! 🤘😁🖖🇨🇦
Also by the way I just have to give you a thumbs up on your show or your podcast here I love listening to you I listen to all your thing I am a subscriber and I've have hit the Bell anxiously wait week after week to hear what you know you're talking on this week and yeah think you're doing a great job please keep up the good work
Really enjoyed this video!! A trip down memory lane. I have 7 of the 12 games you showed -- however I started playing in 1977 so my list is skewed a little earlier with games like: OD&D, The Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Bushido, Tunnels & Trolls, DragonQuest, and more (and I never got into the light comedy games like Paranoia and Ghost Busters). On the supers side really got into Champions and then DC Heroes (DC Heroes was my favorite supers TTRPG from the 80s and 90s). Marvel was pretty good but only played it a few times. Favorite horror RPG from that era was Pacesetter's Chill RPG. Played a little Cal of Cthulhu -- but loved the lighter more action-oriented style of Chill RPG. Main game that I wish I had played that you showed that I never did was Star Wars d6 -- your collection of Star Wars books is impressive!!
I would like to give a shout out to my favorite TTRPGs from the 80’s. In particular the ones that aren’t DnD or published by TSR: Palladium Fantasy 1983 (My personal favorite from the 80s) Heroes Unlimited 1984 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1985 (my first ttrpg that wasn’t DnD) Ninjas & Superspies (1987) Star Wars 1987 Cyberpunk 1988 Shadowrun 1989 Advanced Fighting Fantasy 1989 I was incredibly lucky by having a local game store with a very passionate owner who wanted people to experience as many varied and different games as possible. So I was really spoiled for choice. I just found this channel and have been binging all of your videos and actually got really excited after about a dozen videos there is one that is actually discussing games that aren’t DnD… you know, living up to your channel name.
Those are all great. I have a D6 star wars video near completion atm. One of my close friends was talking about teenage mutatant ninja turtles in response to this video as well. I'll be covering all those and more in the future. Thanks!
Gamma World was great... it's biggest flaw was the lack of art in the book. It needed more art to help spark imagination and shape the world a bit more.
Great video down memory lane. The 80s game exoplosion bought some low qulaity games, but some absolute corkers. West End Games were hitting it out of the park, Ghostbusters was so much fun, Star Wars allowed us to be Han Solo and The Price of Freedom allowed the Reds to invade my home town. Paranoia allowed us to killi each other. But most of all these games made the game fun, we enjoyed it, and were more rules lite. I never played Gamma World back in the day but we did a few years ago, and had a lot of fun fighting mutant chickens and killer bots.
Yeah, I understand that Lucasfilm was really strict about the Indiana Jones TSR RPG having only pregen characters. Definitely a big mistake. Technically, it had fairly robust NPC creation, so if you "read between the lines," you could just use that to make proper PCs. Let's face it... who is going to want to play as anyone other than Indy with pregens?! heh The Judge's Survival Pack definitely is a plus... but I guess too late.
Aton I hope I'm spelling that correctly I did love this video and I had to comment I've been playing RPGs for probably about the same amount of time if not earlier than you but the one thing that you did kind of with the superheroes there came out and I'm not sure what year a collection called champions which was a superhero RPG and then later after that or shortly after that they had a fantasy hero which was I guess can meet competing with DND and I would love to know your comments on both of those what I liked about it was it gave you a point system to build your hero and play and I really liked it and I'm having a hard time trying to find the champions one I have most of fantasy hero and and would love to know did you ever play it did you like it and what were your thoughts on it
There's been a lot of Superhero TTRPGs and really I think they've all been pretty great. Like I was saying in the video I'm not qualified to try to judge one over the other but I can recognize the ones that have done well. Currently that new Marvel TTRPG hasnt impressed me but I just need to give it some time to see if my opinion evolves.
Yeah, thank goodness that racist version (New Genesis) of Star Frontiers by that impostor TSR company was killed in the womb. Thankfully, the company is now gone. Good riddance! EDIT: Did I spam you enough with too many responses here in the comments? lol
@welovettrpgs Absolutely concur. There are some pretty trashy YoutTubers out there but you have a quality product here and you obviously care about the look and content. Please keep going.
Wow! You have a nice Star Wars D6 collection there! :-D I'm definitely looking forward to your full-length video on that game. Fantastic system... and that game deserves tons of credit for keeping Star Wars alive and also for expanding the universe and lore!
I can't say enough good things about it. The Free fan improved 2.75 version is amazing. I'm going to get as many subscribers as I can playing it. That's just how much I love it.
@@welovettrpgs I have to admit that I didn't know about this fan improved version until your video! I'll need to check it out! :-D
The 80s was indeed an Age of Wonders for TTRPG enthusiasts. I retain much of my collection, despite a gut-wrenching cull. You and I definitely explored some of the same worlds. I was pleasantly surprised to see Ghostbusters! I only played a one-shot, and it was fun, but didn't take for my group.
Thank you for sharing, Aten! You do good work.
Thank You!!!
I really liked Rolemaster. The crit and spell tables were FUN in that day. We incorporated a lot of the ideas into our 1e/2e game.
In retrospect, I think Rollmaster influenced many D&D games particularly in how we handled crit fails and hits back then. Even my game though I'd never even seen a Rollmaster book at that time.
We used the crit tables in Best of Dragon the most, but the ones in RM really inspired us to expand them. I really liked the concpt of Spell Lists, too. The best 5e version of that that I have found is KP's Deep Magic book. I liked the idea of elves being functionally immortal, too.
@@dane3038
I used the Skills tables from the RM Companion books as inspiration to add more skills to my 2E game.
Same. I started on ours when OA came out. RM influenced it pretty heavily. 2e was better and most of my work was pretty easy to translate. 5e people have NO idea how revolutionary proficiencies/skills were in that day. :-D
@@mikeb.1705
I began by adapting Arms Law/Claw Law to my AD&D/2nd Ed game, but we went full Rolemaster Dungeon Crawl Madness in the 90s and made memories we'll cherish all our lives.
Important note, if your group, like mine, is composed primarily of "normal people" rather than hardcore gamers, the best way to sell and maintain a RM group is to handle ALL the rules and math yourself. Get good with a Ten Key/desk calculator, run all the numbers and just tell them what their final mod is and let them roll. Manage their character sheets for them. You are an accountant now, privy to all the arcane code and substructure, serving so your group can enjoy the ruthless chaos and equally pure catharsis that is Rolemaster. Or run it on a VTT and have the technology do all that.
I remember in the early 80's, all the ads in Dragon magazine for new RPGS. Was cool to see all the various attempts and the next big game.
Thanks!
"Got change for 25 million people?" Oh man, I have great memories of those Nuclear War games. Great "beer & pretzel" game and I can't remember any game ending without total annihilation of everyone at the table. lol
Oh that's great!
My first experience with roleplay games was "Het oog des Meesters", a Dutch translation of the German game "Das Schwarze Auge". As of a couple of years ago an English version, "The Dark Eye" became available. Unfortunately, outside Germany this game never got a lot of support.
Then I read "The Legend of Huma" by Richard A. Knaak, and at the end of the book was a reference to playing your own Dragonlance adventures through Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (I read this just as it went from first to second edition.
I still have many TTRPGs here, including some from Aten's list. And many, many that came after the 80s.
My current favorites are the Narrative Dice system from FFG (Star Wars and Genesys), and Dungeons and Dragons 5th.
One of the downfalls for The Dark Eye is that they won't make physical copies, POV or printer friendly versions for anything other than a few books. Almost exactly like WFRP. This shuts out a lot of the potential market. Sad, because from what I've seen their adventures are well written. And those maps are the most beautiful in the industry, bar none.
Obsessed with TTRPGs? well, I can relate to.
Thanks Aten! ❤
Thank you!
Hey Aten - that was brilliant. I'd forgotten I'd played James Bond RPG - it was really good actually. I'd love to play Mutant Crawl Classics - most of us in the UK never even saw copies of Boot Hill or Gamma World in our gaming shops. Paranoia was okay...AD&D was the main thing in our lives. I had Runequest and no one wanted to play it and my friend had Traveller and he had the same problem, so we were the one player in each other's campaign! I remember seeing the Indiana Jones one. Friends also had Bushido, Stormbringer and Judge Dredd RPG which - as Brits - we were all avid fans of the comic. Great memories.
Thank you!
One guy in our group ran us in games that were an amalgam of James Bond 007 and Top Secret. We had a blast! :-) I honestly never played the pure versions of either of those games and my only experience was in my friend's homebrew version of his spy/espionage game, but we had so much fun. I did buy the books, eventually... and that Q Manual was just a fun book to flip through and read... all those crazy gadgets. :-)
That is awesome!
I've played and studied several Supers RPGs including ( Savage Worlds, Marvel Universe *Playtest, Masks and City of Mists ) and Marvel Super Heros "FASRIP" is my favorite. The only RPG where a combat chart doesn't annoy me ( it's different ). Thor rolls a 100 on his "Slugfest" against Troll Lord's endurance roll of 01. Thor knocks Troll Lord across several streets into the base of the water tower which is now threatening to fall onto several residential homes. Mighty Girl, do you continue fighting Troll Minions or do something to stop the tower? *Failure to stop the damage could cost Karma and Publicity. Karma is used for those moments of power boosts that sups sometimes display in times of need. It just imitates Marvel comics bester than any other RPG. 10/10
I'm pretty sure that's where I copied the Karma (Inspiration Points) from for use in my old AD&D games as well.
Ya, AD&D still tops my list as well. Ravenloft, Chuthulu, Dragonlance...most of the games you presented I've never played. Some I didn't even know existed! TSR put out alot more than I ever realized! Thanks Aten 👍. Can't wait to see your future videos. I'm actually re-watching 🤣. Peace my friend! 🤘😁🖖🇨🇦
Thanks Colin!
It's interesting seeing how quickly the hobby branched out. Thanks for the video :D
Thanks for watching!
Also by the way I just have to give you a thumbs up on your show or your podcast here I love listening to you I listen to all your thing I am a subscriber and I've have hit the Bell anxiously wait week after week to hear what you know you're talking on this week and yeah think you're doing a great job please keep up the good work
Awesome, thank you!
Really enjoyed this video!! A trip down memory lane. I have 7 of the 12 games you showed -- however I started playing in 1977 so my list is skewed a little earlier with games like: OD&D, The Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Bushido, Tunnels & Trolls, DragonQuest, and more (and I never got into the light comedy games like Paranoia and Ghost Busters). On the supers side really got into Champions and then DC Heroes (DC Heroes was my favorite supers TTRPG from the 80s and 90s). Marvel was pretty good but only played it a few times. Favorite horror RPG from that era was Pacesetter's Chill RPG. Played a little Cal of Cthulhu -- but loved the lighter more action-oriented style of Chill RPG. Main game that I wish I had played that you showed that I never did was Star Wars d6 -- your collection of Star Wars books is impressive!!
Thank You my friend! I'll be covering all of the D6 Star Wars books and many others in the future!
@@welovettrpgs Yes, truly impressive set of Star Wars books!!
Yes Rolemaster 😊
We had some of our most cherished RPG memories with Rolemaster in the 90s. Long live Pete Fenlon and Coleman Charleton!
@sequoyahwright I am a Rolemaster GM. It's the system I cut my teeth on, alas it isn't for my current players 😊
Some fantastic ones here.
Thanks!
Cool games
I remember playing, and enjoying, the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game by Palladium Books and Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game by Games Workshop.
I would like to give a shout out to my favorite TTRPGs from the 80’s. In particular the ones that aren’t DnD or published by TSR:
Palladium Fantasy 1983 (My personal favorite from the 80s)
Heroes Unlimited 1984
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1985 (my first ttrpg that wasn’t DnD)
Ninjas & Superspies (1987)
Star Wars 1987
Cyberpunk 1988
Shadowrun 1989
Advanced Fighting Fantasy 1989
I was incredibly lucky by having a local game store with a very passionate owner who wanted people to experience as many varied and different games as possible. So I was really spoiled for choice.
I just found this channel and have been binging all of your videos and actually got really excited after about a dozen videos there is one that is actually discussing games that aren’t DnD… you know, living up to your channel name.
Those are all great. I have a D6 star wars video near completion atm. One of my close friends was talking about teenage mutatant ninja turtles in response to this video as well. I'll be covering all those and more in the future. Thanks!
Gamma World was great... it's biggest flaw was the lack of art in the book. It needed more art to help spark imagination and shape the world a bit more.
Yeah, and if TSR had promoted it more I'm sure it would be one of the greats today.
@@welovettrpgs Have to agree! It didn't get enough love!
Great video down memory lane. The 80s game exoplosion bought some low qulaity games, but some absolute corkers. West End Games were hitting it out of the park, Ghostbusters was so much fun, Star Wars allowed us to be Han Solo and The Price of Freedom allowed the Reds to invade my home town. Paranoia allowed us to killi each other. But most of all these games made the game fun, we enjoyed it, and were more rules lite. I never played Gamma World back in the day but we did a few years ago, and had a lot of fun fighting mutant chickens and killer bots.
Fun for sure!
A lot of gems you have there. d6 starwars is still the best version.
Thanks! And for sure! Star Wars is meant to be fast not slogged down with a bunch of rules and math.
Darn, I know i had many of these non-d&d games through the years, but sold them before college.
I have lost many through the years as well. Maybe we should hold a funeral for all of us who lost good TTRPG books over the years! (new video idea!)
Boot Hill and Gangbusters are cool, but I would use CoC's system to run them.
Yeah, I understand that Lucasfilm was really strict about the Indiana Jones TSR RPG having only pregen characters. Definitely a big mistake. Technically, it had fairly robust NPC creation, so if you "read between the lines," you could just use that to make proper PCs. Let's face it... who is going to want to play as anyone other than Indy with pregens?! heh The Judge's Survival Pack definitely is a plus... but I guess too late.
Yeah it was too late. I literally only learned about it while making the video and was able to buy a new copy from ebay for my box set.
Aton I hope I'm spelling that correctly I did love this video and I had to comment I've been playing RPGs for probably about the same amount of time if not earlier than you but the one thing that you did kind of with the superheroes there came out and I'm not sure what year a collection called champions which was a superhero RPG and then later after that or shortly after that they had a fantasy hero which was I guess can meet competing with DND and I would love to know your comments on both of those what I liked about it was it gave you a point system to build your hero and play and I really liked it and I'm having a hard time trying to find the champions one I have most of fantasy hero and and would love to know did you ever play it did you like it and what were your thoughts on it
There's been a lot of Superhero TTRPGs and really I think they've all been pretty great. Like I was saying in the video I'm not qualified to try to judge one over the other but I can recognize the ones that have done well. Currently that new Marvel TTRPG hasnt impressed me but I just need to give it some time to see if my opinion evolves.
Warhammer the miniatures game came out in 1983. Warhammer FRP came out in 1986.
I still play Gamma World. I am a Ward fan and play in some of his modern games. Check out Fireside Creations for those.
Thank you!
Ouch. Not a mention of games from either Palladium or Steve Jackson Games. I am disappoint.
Just wasnt my thing, man
Of course you never played Shadowrun in the 80s.... it came out when, 1989? maybe keep it for your later beloved games?
yeah i think 89.
Yes -- it came out in 1989.
Yeah, thank goodness that racist version (New Genesis) of Star Frontiers by that impostor TSR company was killed in the womb. Thankfully, the company is now gone. Good riddance!
EDIT: Did I spam you enough with too many responses here in the comments? lol
haha. Every comment helps! (My last few videos have totally bombed, it's been depressing. But I refuse to make clickbait negative videos)
@@welovettrpgs Don't let it drag you down... you are making quality stuff!
@@KabukiKid Thank You!
@welovettrpgs Absolutely concur. There are some pretty trashy YoutTubers out there but you have a quality product here and you obviously care about the look and content. Please keep going.
@@Geraint3000 Thanks!