So why the attachment to older games?

Hi guys,

I was wondering why many of us are here and why are hearts are in older games. . . Is it reliving the initial excitement of first playing? The direction modern games have taken? Because it would seem like the variety is better now across multiple manufacturers than ever has been. Surely if one modern game didn't work out, there are many others. I bought X-Wing for a family trip to NC and my nephews loved it so much they want me to bring it back for the next trip. And I wouldn't dare let them touch any of my 40k 2nd edition stuff, but I LOVE my 2nd edition stuff. But I don't really get to play it much. And when I was playing the hell out of it with my old gaming group, we routinely found issues with the rules, and even had to keep a notebook that served as a sort of law book on the rulings of previous decisions. So I can't say 2nd edition was a great rule set either.

I will admit that 40k 7th looks like a big mess tho. But it isnt what drives me to 2nd or even 3rd edition 40k.

KTG17":22hu2try said:

Hi guys,

I was wondering why many of us are here and why are hearts are in older games. . . Is it reliving the initial excitement of first playing? The direction modern games have taken? Because it would seem like the variety is better now across multiple manufacturers than ever has been. Surely if one modern game didn't work out, there are many others. I bought X-Wing for a family trip to NC and my nephews loved it so much they want me to bring it back for the next trip. And I wouldn't dare let them touch any of my 40k 2nd edition stuff, but I LOVE my 2nd edition stuff. But I don't really get to play it much. And when I was playing the hell out of it with my old gaming group, we routinely found issues with the rules, and even had to keep a notebook that served as a sort of law book on the rulings of previous decisions. So I can't say 2nd edition was a great rule set either.

I will admit that 40k 7th looks like a big mess tho. But it isnt what drives me to 2nd or even 3rd edition 40k.

Click to expand...

Nostalgia.

I lost my someone very close to me when I was in my teens and GW games were escapism and a coping method. They're a security blanket that I don't want to give up, no matter what GW do to ruin them. They can't take my versions of them away, the only thing that can is no one playing them, so I play them to keep them alive.

I came to Warhammer in the Red Period, so a lot of Oldhammer was old even then, but the first set of rules I had was 3rd Ed (second hand from a friend) I thought the 80s paint jobs were much better. There seemed to be more life in them. Compared with the simple 4th/5th Ed rules the 3rd Ed rulebook seemed like an engagingly hefty tome filled with little glimpses of a complex and colourful world. As the 4th and 5th rulebooks had little background in them I spent very little time reading them whilst I would gaze at the 3rd Ed book for hours on end absorbing it all. There might be more background stuff available now in the forms of novels, army books, supplements etc. but few publications since have had as much within two covers, and that's even without looking at Realm of Chaos! That's what I love about it. There's so much stuff there and so little of it is fully fleshed-out so you have the freedom to interpret it however you like. Since then I've found a combination of not enough background and too many 'canon' details don't inspire me quite as much.

I realise none of that is about rules, rules ain't what interest me in a game, it's all about the world created.

Aye Nostalgia.

When I first started in the early 90's I was a fat lonely bullied kid that just moved to a new town and at that point was in a plastercast for smashed ankle. I already knew about wargames from the age of 9 but it was at 11 as I say I moved to a town with a actual GW.

Rather then feeling unwelcome in the GW store that I was used too pretty much everywhere else I found a place to escape and made many a friend some I still see to this day, plus my love for Rock/metal Music & Tattoos was also started from that same point.

So it's not so much the rules I like (I really don't like many old rules systems as they are clunky) but the mini's just bring me back to that safe place.

Also which is quite funny everytime I hear Chumbawamba - Tubthumping I think of playing GorkaMorka with my mates in the store while this song blazed in the background.

For me is a part of nostalgia, and a part of more funny games. Warhammer 40K today is a total mess, in organization and in rules. I never be so happy than when I was playing Second Edition. And related games, like Necromunda or Gorkamorka (hey, my real name is Gorka! ).

We're all just big kids who don't want to give up our favourite toys really.

Chico":9xt5ogly said:

everytime I hear Chumbawamba - Tubthumping

Click to expand...

Luckily, that doesn't happen much these days, unless it's self inflicted.

Coronel_Oneill":9xt5ogly said:

hey, my real name is Gorka!

Click to expand...

I thought you were just using another alias in your PMs!

Snickit":9xt5ogly said:

We're all just big kids who don't want to give up our favourite toys really.

Click to expand...

That's it.

For me it's the nostalgia and escapism. A way to ditch the demanding every-day of a grown up with two kids, wife, job and a mortgage - instead reminiscing about the good old days as a fuzzy kid.

phreedh":qxxvz1ab said:

Chico":qxxvz1ab said:

everytime I hear Chumbawamba - Tubthumping

Click to expand...

Luckily, that doesn't happen much these days, unless it's self inflicted.

Click to expand...

Oh how I wish that was the case hehe, still hear it far too often.. but then again it may not be that often but rather I'm more aware of it when it does.

"Never to be forgotten, that first long secret drink of golden fire, [...] Never to be forgotten, or ever tasted again." = White Dwarf 87 - the Broken Nose Goblin tribe. I couldn't afford much in the way of models, but that summer I yearned for my own goblin army. Warhammer 2nd & 3rd Edition is my 'Door marked Summer'.

I wouldn't chalk it up to nostalgia, in my case. I have a severe distaste for 6th onward as it seems they actively cut the fun out of the game, and I play games to have fun.

The exact elements of the game I enjoyed weren't there anymore. If you need a book of rules to guide a game, it better actively improve the experience.

Not trying to pick a fight over it, though.

That and there's way less netlisting for the more mature vintages of games.

I guess for me its part nostalgia but more that the systems I grew up playing (BB, WH40k 1st and 2nd, Epic) I am very familiar with. Then, in my late teens I stopped playing war games and put my stuff in boxes secured away in cupboards. As with many on here I came back to it in my later life (30's) and many of the games are very very different from those I remember. I don't get a lot of time to paint or game so when I do I like it to be something i enjoy. It also saves time if I play a game I know.

Are some of the new games interesting to me? They sure are, some of the new box sets look great. Especially some of the non GW stuff (Star Wars Armada to name one)

Do I have the time and spare cash to invest in them to make it worth while? No. However I already have everything readily available for the older systems I play all be it in boxes covered in dust!

I am not so much interested in playing the old games as using the old settings and figures. The figures because some I prefer the aesthetic but mostly that is what I have boxes full of - painted and unpainted. The setting was great fun - The Holy Roman Empire transported to an alternate universe. I love the feel of it, the creeping menace, chaos insidious. The setting is as nostalgic as the game play. What has actually revived my interest in playing (as opposed to just painting) are games like Lion Rampant. Not stupidly burdened with rules, enough tactics and strategy to be interesting, streamlined enough to play in an evening, luck still has the same effect (so the Space Marine that just won't die is replaced by the unit of archers that just won't activate). It really gives that feeling without the overhead.

For me oldhammer is the kind of setting. Not that fancy powermongering madness GW makes now. It was just a fantasy/sci fi world with endless possibilities (remember the long items/skills/whatever lists in Realms of Chaos???). It was more playing a story. Besides most of the older models had more character than the newer ones, and were not the bulky brutes we have today.

Ohhh and yes I am addicted to the nostalgia part of the hobby

At 13 I started on a project, collecting all the miniatures I wanted and gaming with them using the utterly awesome Big Orange Book. I have worked on this project steadily for almost thirty years now and still have much to do. Oldhammer isn't about returning to an old hobby for me because I never left.

It isn't nostalgia, these are the miniatures I collect, I collected them when they were new and I could only afford a few. When they became only slightly old and so outdated I collected them 2nd hand in market stalls and pokey shops, I could afford more because they were cheaper however you had to hunt them out. Then in the early 2000's I saw my friend at work bidding on ebay for little china ornaments. I wondered if my miniatures I collected would be on there. They were, they were plentiful and they were cheap and I happened to have graduated and had a well paying job. Life was good (I also met my wife then). Now thankfully my wages have kept pace with miniature inflation and I can still collect the range I like at prices cheaper than new.

Why woudl I pay more for an inferior product?

Time has ended. By the virtues of the internet and global secondhand marketplace there is no old, and no new. There are just things that are, and we make choices between them.

Personally I like black and white artwork, be it Aubrey Beardsley, Albrecht Dürer, Simon Bisley, Bresson, Lynch, Hitchcock, Tony Ackland, Eastman & Laird or Godmachine. The old games I like tend to be black and white, most new games seem to be primarily four-colour.

Personally I like game-systems that are flexible toolkits divorced from setting-specific trappings and rulings. The old games that I like tend to be reasonably independent of their settings so are flexibly ported to the settings that I do like, be it Middle-earth, Tékumel or my homebrew. Most new games tend to be riddled very setting specific mechanics, often as part of larger entertainment-franchises that I have little interest in (which is what Warhammer is now).

I think old editions of Warhammer (1st-3rd editions) have some specific virtues as games compared to later version that I wrote about some length here, nearly 5 years ago. Still haven't changed my mind much on that.

Erny":1pmlj7ik said:

At 13 I started on a project, collecting all the miniatures I wanted and gaming with them using the utterly awesome Big Orange Book. I have worked on this project steadily for almost thirty years now and still have much to do. Oldhammer isn't about returning to an old hobby for me because I never left.

It isn't nostalgia, these are the miniatures I collect...

Click to expand...

Same here really. I came in with the 3rd edition WFB era and when 4th edition came out I didn't care for it or a lot of the models so my interests stuck where they'd begun. There's a lot of nostalgia to my collecting but most of it's stuff I wanted back in the day but couldn't afford. Just like Erny I never left 'my era'.

For me it's dead simple. Always liked the fluff, namely 2nd edition books which really impressed on me how I thought the 40K universe was. The models were just cool enough while leaving some of the silliness from Rogue Trader behind (no offense). It wasn't full on grim-dark, but a nice mix between casual fun and serious fluff. The game rules were pretty decent and far more entertaining than later editions (even 7th is just a 3rd edition chassis with new parts). The company at the time was a failing business run by genuine gamer geeks.

Now it's a full-on business with business driven models and products - good for the company, not great for the gamer. The "fun" I saw around in 2nd has given way to nonstop bickering about tournaments, lists, mathhammer, etc. The atmosphere and admittedly the player base has completely pushed me away. I'm not a hugely old grognard, only in my mid-30's, but the immature bickering and constant tournament focus is nauseating.

I've started doing up a 2nd edition Eldar army because I've always liked the models. I'm building the army I dreamed about when I was 13. I may not ever get to really play a quality game with the stuff, but I won't mind having a nicely assembled army standing by for any sci-fi game that comes along. I've looked at other rules systems, and my friends and I are looking at streamlining the really rough bits of 2nd (it's still good fun). I'd rather have a couple of games with a few good friends than be in a constant plastic arms race with a bunch of bickering assholes.

Games Workshop seems to be making constant strides toward becoming a reasonable company with the new management...I'd like to "like" GW again, but it's driven me away completely from modern projects with prices and silliness. No worries, the majority of my army is built off ebay. I've always encouraged people to play any game the way they want to play it - and I'll continue to try to do so for my own enjoyment. I'll take story, narrative, common sense and good fun over tournament gaming against overly competitive jackwads any day.

Nostalgia. I discovered GW in 1992/'93 (I was born in '83) and utterly loved it. Between 1992 and 1996 I spent nearly every day after school in the local GW store, drooling over the artwork. I never actually played any games or bought anything, I just stared at the box-art for hours, immersing myself in the world of Warhammer purely in my imagination.

About 15-20 years later, married with children, I started taking an interest in tabletop wargames for the first time, then I discovered Oldhammer and I remembered the 90s and I thought: "I want to be there again" and that's how it all started. I still love the early 90s miniatures the best.

I think warhammer is the same game throught. I like the variants, including necromunda. 3rd ed is my favorite because it doesnt have loads of confusing special rules/cards and you can field any models you like, practically.

Im not sure its nostalgia, more like a good game is a good game and why not play what you have?

When I start something (circa 1983 1st ed) I like to do it properly and see it through to completion. I'm not a flighty, 'give it 20 years or so', type person. I'm way, way off from finishing what I've begun.