I think most gamers would agree that their play style will evolve over the years. How have their games evolved?
I have had the pleasure and the privilege to have run many games over many years. Decades really.
The way I played in the late 70s and early 80s is very different than what I was doing in the late 90s and early 2000s and those are both very different than today.
I think if I had to describe my growth or change (who knows if a change is better until you test it) it is not Evolution but rather Assimilation.
Even in the very beginning, I was taking ideas from other games and making them part of my own game.
I have talked at length about my love of the RPG Chill. I have also talked at great length of my love for story and character of Dracula. I always wanted a vampire like Dracula in my games. But more than just the stats in the Monster Manual or the D&D Expert book. A real, un-breathing, un-living character to go after the characters. Or, more to the point, the character to go after.
Enter Chill Vampires.
This book and the Vampyre mini-game from TSR gave me something D&D was not. A playable Dracula (and Elizabeth Bathory and Jackson Dela Croix and more) with Dracula's castle. I worked it in and came up with a 13 HD version of Dracula and a brief adventure stolen from the pages of Marvel Comics version of Dracula.
Then in 1983 the Hickmans did it all several orders of magnitude better with Ravenloft. So yeah I grabbed that and all vampires in my games became named NPCs. There was no such thing as a random vampire, lich or spectre in my games after that.
I suppose then it is no surprise I ended up working on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.
In a way, Ghosts of Albion is that assimilation in reverse. Starting with my then pinnacle of achievements (the Buffy line) and adding in elements from my past (Chill, D&D, and WitchCraft).
Even today I grab what I want from other games and mix as I need. It is one of the reasons I have a Plays Well With Others feature here. I have a new one coming up too that is a subset of that. Can't wait to debut it.
This is also the reason I don't understand the attitude of "One True Wayism" even if I didn't take material from other games in my playing I would still change over the years, so I know there is no one true way. I have also worked on too many different games to believe that.
When I hear someone say "I only play D&D." or "I will never try game X." my first thought is "wow, how sad for you." There are so many great games out there and even if I never play them all (and I couldn't possibly) that does not diminish their worth. Who knows, maybe the next love of my life is out there now sitting on someone's computer waiting to be published. I might get to play it, but I will certainly adapt it for games.
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