I Was Reminded Today by One of my "Old Players" What "Old School" Gaming Really Was...

One of the core players from my "Old Group" sent an email to the group earlier today, and although Tony won't be able to be a regular in the soon to be "reincarnated" (remember the Druid spell with the random roll for new race?) group, he did a fine job in reminding us that what we played wasn't just D&D / AD&D, but lots of other stuff.

I think that kind of gets forgotten with the focus the OSR has on D&D and it's various incarnations.

Tony, I hope you don't mind me sharing your letter, but it spells things out better than I ever could:

So the band is getting back to together?  I wish I had the time to join you guys. 

I agree with Bry about going old school but back in the day we played a lot more than just TSR. 

Some of the other games I can recall.

Traveller by Game Designers' Workshop.  This was my first rpg.  The books were inexpensive and small so was great for a kid around 10 to afford and read the whole thing.  I was always saving up for next book. I played with my cousins often.  not sure if we ever played but Paul joined out group at least a few times.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay  - the one with the dwarf slayer on the cover.  Was this also GDW (Games Workshop lad)? I am not sure.  I recall as very large group playing this at Erik's house.  was fun.

Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game -  I have no idea who published this (Palladium Books - the same fine folks that brought us RIFTS later on).  (of course I could look it up and also look up Warhammer but I am lazy). Erik was our main DM and was great but for this game Dave was sometimes the DM and that was cool for a different perspective and tons of fun too.

Rifts (role-playing game) - had a lot of fun playing this.  I never understood the rules even though I read many of the books. great classes and stuff and fun.  glad I wasn't the DM because I had no idea what was going in terms of the combat. I would just roll whatever Erik told me to roll. (Dave ran this more than me BY FAR)

Star Frontiers  - this was TSR. Was a great sci fi fun for a change of pace.  I enjoyed more than traveller/ 

Stormbringer -  again I don't know who published this one (Chaosium - yes, Erik is a big enough geek to know these all off hand) .  I really enjoyed it   probably casue I enjoyed the books a lot.  for some reason I really liked the runs on armour for this game (among other things) if I recall correctly if you were hit then you rolled to see how much damage your armor absorbed .  something like that.  so there was always a change to get a lucky shot on a heavy armour dude and do a lot of damage if you l had light armour and got hit there was a chance to avoid getting killed. I may have this all wrong since it was a long time ago.

to a lesser extent there was also runequest, rolemaster, middle earth rpg, call of cthulhul (don't think we played this but I played with my cousins and Paul), Villains and Vigilantes.
I am sure I am missing many others and there were also a ton of board games. 

Anyway - enjoy - whatever system you wind up using.

Yep, I'm glad I'll be getting the "band back together" with some old and some newer members, but the band none the less ;)