Casting Shadows

Today’s prompt is another which provides great flexibility by virtue of its built-in sliding scale of personal perception. “Oldness” is relative and habitually continuing an activity is practically human nature, so there are many directions we can take this.

Day 12: What is an old game that you STILL play?

For me, I think the only way to be relatively sure I am really done with a game is if I am willing to part with it. That has only happened once that I can think of. Still, that small detail aside, there are games which come up in rotation more often or get bumped by new ones less often. Among those games, most of which are really systems, which is the one which has seen the most play across the most years? That is a bit of a puzzle!

I will frame it in this way. Which game do I still play from time to time and keep current on, but tend to use an earlier edition for?

The list looks something like this: Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, and Shadowrun. We don’t need to drag the World of Darkness into this.

Of the three, Call of Cthulhu is the oldest, beating Pendragon by 4 years (though they share system elements in common), and Shadowrun by 8. However, I do not play 1st edition Pendragon as I only managed to get it a few years ago, and I have only played 1st edition Shadowrun a few times. I run 2nd Edition Shadowrun as a matter of preference but take forays into newer editions as they are released. For Pendragon I feel that I have shifted to 5.2 but have traditionally run 3rd. We will see what happens when 6th edition is released and its planned product catalog is revealed where that spirit takes me.

For Call of Cthulhu, I typically run 4th edition for familiarity, convenience, and atmosphere. That means directly running 3rd edition for all intents and purpose which was almost entirely the same as 2nd edition. The differences between 1st, 5th, and 6th are likewise so small as to hardly bear mention, but that’s how it was able to be with BRP for a very long time.

An old game that I still play is Call of Cthulhu. It is also the oldest game that I still play, and I pretty much play the oldest version of it out of preference and habit unless a reason compels me otherwise.