Thinking of getting into D&D, should I really though?

[Errant Tiger]

Zombie thread, but any thoughts on Call of Cthulhu, anybody?

I'm minutes away from my weekly CoC game. I love it (as a player; I've never run it) though it gets tricky these days because there's so much meta-knowledge about Lovecraft, the Mythos, etc. that it's hard to keep a straight face or get immersed in the game because people are always like "Who will be eaten first?" But done right, and with the right group, it's a great time.

[bloatedsack]

CoC: You either die, or you go insane. What a brilliant concept!

I started sometime in the early '80s playing my brother's redbox D&D set, and I remember ads for Chaosium's CoC in Dragon from way back then. So cool looking, but as I got older and more exposed, CoC had a reputation for being a really awful rules mechanic and it's one of the few I've still, to date, never played.

I can't stand new D&D. I tapped out of that after TSR flopped and WW picked it up. 2nd Edition was awesome, and still allowed the flexibility of the oldschool imagination based stuff, but D&D v3 and newer has jsut turned into an awful table top representation of video games, and I'm not sold on any of it. Last few fantasy games I did were Dungeon World, which is actually a pretty good throwback to oldschool AD&D in it's way.

But yeah, old AD&D, Car Wars, 7th Sea, Shadowrun etc.. I've played shittons of 'em, but my personal favourite was always, and is to this day, Gamma World 3rd Edition.

[sears]

traveller!!

[psychic vampire.]

CoC: You either die, or you go insane. What a brilliant concept!

I started sometime in the early '80s playing my brother's redbox D&D set, and I remember ads for Chaosium's CoC in Dragon from way back then. So cool looking, but as I got older and more exposed, CoC had a reputation for being a really awful rules mechanic and it's one of the few I've still, to date, never played.

I can't stand new D&D. I tapped out of that after TSR flopped and WW picked it up. 2nd Edition was awesome, and still allowed the flexibility of the oldschool imagination based stuff, but D&D v3 and newer has jsut turned into an awful table top representation of video games, and I'm not sold on any of it. Last few fantasy games I did were Dungeon World, which is actually a pretty good throwback to oldschool AD&D in it's way.

But yeah, old AD&D, Car Wars, 7th Sea, Shadowrun etc.. I've played shittons of 'em, but my personal favourite was always, and is to this day, Gamma World 3rd Edition.

As someone who's played a lot of rule sets, i think 5E is a vast improvement over 3E, 3.5, Pathfinder, and especially 4th edition. But i always loved the art and imagination of 1st and 2nd, but hated the awful, convoluted rules. And lets face it, post-Gygax TSR was content to turn AD&D 2E into a bloated cash cow with no heart or merit. The 90s products in that range were laughable farces that spat in the faces of fans, and it's the reason why TSR folded. These days I stick to some of the weird smaller D&D inspired games (especially stuff coming out of the OSR movement) or 5E. I would play AD&D, but never try to DM it.

[Inconuucl]

Burning Wheel and Mouseguard all the way.