Casting Shadows

Investigating how games develop over time is definitely one of my major drives when adding to my library. Generally, these days, I would much rather buy an edition for a game I have other editions of than buy supplements. My reasons for that are simple. Supplemental material is what I get the most enjoyment out of creating. Where I enjoy diving into the text to learn, compare, and contrast things is with the system.

Today’s question in a subtle way makes me consider whether the age of a game, its oldness or newness, matters very much to me at all. I am curious about how alteration affects play more than when a certain rule first saw print or first became widespread. That said, I am not at all disinterested in those things!

Day 5: Oldest game played

A good friend that I do not get to see often enough inexplicably gave me his original copy of OD&D for my birthday in 2010. That is by far the oldest game that I own. We have never played it but reading it has been of both great interest and great value to me in the years since. I really wonder what my gaming life would be like if I had started with or encountered OD&D in my early gaming. My friend became a huge Tunnels and Trolls fan after his time with OD&D and Chainmail as a teen, so perhaps my gaming would not have been all that different if I had. Now though…. wow, I see a lot in the first roleplaying game (not that they were called that, yet).

As it turns out, the oldest game (so far) that I have played is my second dose of D&D, the Holmes Basic Set. Released in 1977, it beats out my other ‘really old game’ (RuneQuest / BRP) by a year. I still haven’t played the first edition of Tunnels & Trolls (’75) – which would have made it my oldest played game – though I have it and later editions as well. They say there is a time for all things. I wonder when T&T time will be?

One thing that I have learned over the years is to leave room in my expectations for older games to surprise me. There was a tremendous amount of design freedom and innovation in those days which can be hidden or masked by the production materials available to their publishers. The systems… those are at least as innovative as those appearing today, albeit often (but not always) in different aspects of play than warrant attention now.

Looking back on Holmes Basic now and how it interacted with our concurrent use of Moldvay/Cook Basic, and later addition of ideas from Mentzer’s BECMI, I see major foundational pillars of my gaming. While I developed away from D&D as a gamer, the basis on which I stand to do so is sourced in the lessons learned running and playing those old games – especially perhaps the oldest among them.