Anyone here a fan of old school RPGs?

[Brian Legg]

These may not be that "oldschool", but a few of my absolute favorite RPGs of all time are:

Lunar 1 & 2 for PS
Final Fantasy 2 & 3 for Super Nintendo
Final Fantasy 7 & 8 for PS

I'm not going to list every RPG I've ever played, but those are my absolute favorites. I bring this up because I just rebought the collectors edition of Lunar 2 this weekend for $85 and I'm replaying it now. I guess it's become semi rare in the passing years, or something.

I also collect strategy guides for RPGs, and I've even got the very first strategy guide ever made. It was released by Nintendo and covered about 25 different games from Kid Icarus to Goonies.

I want to hear what some of your favorite RPGs are (or other game types). Have you ever paid too much for a game that you just had to have? Have any rare games?

Happy Friday all

[Mike Simmons]

To me, "old-school RPGs" means Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, RuneQuest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, etc. It's kind of annoying that the computer RPG crowd co-opted an existing term rather than making up a new one. Ah, well.

[Freddy Wong]

Chrono Trigger - SNES
Final Fantasy 7 & 8 - PS

[Henry Wong]

I was a big fan of the Infocom series of role playing games. My favorite was probably Enchanter. I also liked the sequel, Soccerer. As for the third installment of the trilogy, Spellbreaker, I didn't like it too much (didn't even finish).

Anyway, if anyone wants to try it out, these games are actually available as applets... just google for infocom games.

Henry

[David Newton]

Don't forget Gamma World and Top Secret (tried Boot Hill; not my cup of tea).

Ah, that brings back memories... I'm also replaying the Zorks using Zoom on the Mac (well, I will when I come up for air).

If I could find the old Star Trek game I played on the Mini-MARC (sp?) library computer in the mid-70's I'd be pretty stoked.

[Mark Spritzler]

Does Zork or Zork II cound as RPGs?

Also, I need to find the post I made yesterday that didn't get posted when I tried to post it.

Mark

[Mark Spritzler]

Oops, I thought I saved it to a text file.

So, I don't quite get the appeal of RPGs. I mean, I guess in theory I am addicted to Mafia Wars on Facebook, and you could classify that as an RPG, except there really isn't any variety to the game. And I am addicted, even though I know that I don't really enjoy it, but because I already have 2 characters over level 100, I am stuck and can't just let them die.

I do know that when Nintendo Power magazine released an issue just all on RPGs, it was the fastest I ever went through a magazine, because there was almost everything I could skip.

Mark

[David Newton]

Re: Zorks == RPGs? I don't know--not in the same vein as DnD/etc. I was just reminiscing.

[W. Joe Smith]

FF7 is (in my opinion) the best game, RPG or otherwise, ever made. It consumed more hours of my life when I was a kid than I'd care to admit here. Great story, truly evil villain, and some great battles. Man, now I want to play it....

[fred rosenberger]

To me, RPGs let you... Role Play. I am still in a paper-n-pencils group that (tries to) meet once a week. The funnest moments are when you do something the GM didn't expect... In other words, there may be 3 possible choices - the left hall, the right hall, or straight ahead. The team decides to go into the air ducts...

We have had sessions where the whole night was spent in the town arguing with the various shop keepers over how much we should pay for our 50' rope and our 10' poles (you know, standard dungeon crawl equipment that everyone carries).

I don't see the ability to do that on a computer RPG. Everything has to be pre-determined. You can't 'go off the script', even if that script gives you 12 choices. Every time I play, I start 'meta-gaming', and try and figure out which choice will give me what I want.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy them all IMMENSELY, but I don't consider them RPGs.

[Henry Wong]

I don't see the ability to do that on a computer RPG. Everything has to be pre-determined. You can't 'go off the script', even if that script gives you 12 choices.

Yes, but some of the scripts are cool. The fun is more about figuring out the correct sequence -- and less about different ways to explore.

One of my favs, from Soccerer, have you meeting "someone familar, yet more disheveled". And you must work with this person.... half way through the puzzle, you figure out that that "someone familar" is you, and the actions that you did may solve the puzzle, but will mess you up later, when you play the other role. Luckily, I had a older save (to replay the sequence optimally), or I would have screwed myself...

I also got really annoyed at myself during this puzzle. I have a habit of using "look" and "inventory" a lot, so I can reread the text to get more clues. So, when I was the more older and "disheveled" person, and starting to choke because the spell that protected me was wearing off -- my younger self kept taking inventories and looking around, instead of handing me my spellbook.

Henry

[Frank Silbermann]

RPG (Report Program Generator) is a 4th-Generation language dating back to the early 1970s and mainly used by small shops not quite sophisticated enough to use COBOL. Or did you mean "rocket-propelled grenade"?

[Brian Legg]

fred rosenberger wrote:To me, RPGs let you... Role Play. I am still in a paper-n-pencils group that (tries to) meet once a week. The funnest moments are when you do something the GM didn't expect... In other words, there may be 3 possible choices - the left hall, the right hall, or straight ahead. The team decides to go into the air ducts...

We have had sessions where the whole night was spent in the town arguing with the various shop keepers over how much we should pay for our 50' rope and our 10' poles (you know, standard dungeon crawl equipment that everyone carries).

I don't see the ability to do that on a computer RPG. Everything has to be pre-determined. You can't 'go off the script', even if that script gives you 12 choices. Every time I play, I start 'meta-gaming', and try and figure out which choice will give me what I want.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy them all IMMENSELY, but I don't consider them RPGs.

*sigh* I spend 20 mins typing up a responce only to have it lost somehow. I'm not retyping it all out again, other than to say I completely agree with you here Fred. The "go off the script" fun you refer to is something that is only a dream in the video game world and may never exist, also a video game is hard pressed to pump out as much fun and exitement as a group of real friends can. However, you still technically play a role in an RPG however limited that role is. I look at RPG video games more like an interactive book or anime than I do a virtual world where I play a character in that world. I think the closest video games have gotten to the D&D games you described would be MMORPG's which get that role playing feel again from real humans. I think that the closer video games come to creating a visual layer between actual humans without restricting thier imaginations the closer we'll get to true RPG games. Not to mention creating something so addictive I'd have to break my pc in order to keep my wife

[W. Joe Smith]

fred rosenberger wrote:To me, RPGs let you... Role Play.

Wait, does playing Life count as Role Playing?

[Brian Legg]

I play the role of a Java Developer with an overactive imagination and an unhealthy obsession with squids in real life.

[Mike Simmons]

W. Joe Smith wrote:Wait, does playing Life count as Role Playing?

Do you mean the Milton Bradley game? Or Conway's?

Eh, either way, no.

[Mike Simmons]

Re: Zork: if that were considered an RPG, why not Hunt the Wumpus as well?

OK, no one actually said it was an RPG of any type. But I just wanted to mention HtW. So there.

And it connects to real RPGs because its map layout was based on the faces of a 20-sided die. Or the vertices of a 12-sides die. What could be more representative of an RPG, after all?

@David: yeah, I should have mentioned both Gamma World and Top Secret. Also Star Frontiers. Great fun. Those were the games I went to after starting with D&D. My "old-school" list consists mostly of games that predate those, most of which I played little or not at all. But I guess it's all old-school by today's standards. I never tried Boot Hill; it never seemed like my thing.

@Frank: yeah, I figured someone would eventually mention those, and the moment I saw your name attached to this thread, I knew that's what you had posted.

[Mark Spritzler]

Just saw the latest Final Fantasy games at E3, very impressive visually, and a couple are more action like. The Crystal something or other seemed very much like a Zelda game, but they only had one "quest" done and that was to catch a ferret that is running around town. Very scary stuff. ;)

Mark

[W. Joe Smith]

I've said it before and I will say it again:

If they release Final Fantasy VII for PS3 I would buy one JUST to play that game.

When they showed the PS3 demo pre-release they used the opening sequence of FFVII as the cinematic to show the power. Ever since then I've just been hoping......