TSR Box Games: RPG's iPad Apps

These are the games I miss. The classic TSR box games of the 1980's when you could make a roleplaying game about anything, toss a quick percentage system on it, and get playing right when you got home. Yes, often the first thing you did was have a shootout with space aliens, gangsters, mutants, secret agents, or cowboys - but that was the fun! It was the roleplaying equivalent of being able to run around the playground, point your fingers at each other and pretend they were space blasters, and go pew-pew-pew! They wersn't meant to be much more than quick character and combat simulators, and they were flavorful and fun in their own self-contained worlds.

We evolved out of these games, and into more generic systems like GURPS or Champions, after all, what good is a game that simulated just one world when you can have them all? The one game to rule them all syndrome hit, and we left these games behind. To me, it makes as much sense as forcing every game you play to use Monopoly rules, but the argument continues on today as a part of the "system mastery" marketing concept that says a roleplaying game has to be complicated so it takes up all your time and mental effort, and you don't have the time or energy to play anything else. We still have the "one game" thing with us today with d20 and its spin-offs.

We've given up simplicity to fill our shelves with roleplaying games that feel like their primary audience are book collectors. Why can't I buy a self-contained game, enjoy it for everything it is, and not have the thing expanded and super-sized until the point where only a new edition can save us by hitting the 'reset' button - only to have the same thing happen again? To me, these original box-set games are like classic editions of Risk or Parcheesi - self-contained worlds of fun in a single box with no need for a stack of "Monopoly expansion" boxes to pull out of the closet to have a complete game. These were worlds of adventure wrapped up in a single box full of promise and wonder.

They were also excellent examples of focused and tight game design to fit everything in a 64 to 128 page book. Compared with today's games, these were incredible, tight, and focused designs that did a lot in a very tiny space. Think about this the next time you play a game that goes on for 64 pages or more of character design rules.

Sure you had to learn a new set of rules - but that was a part of the fun! They were not that complicated anyways, and you could roll some dice and be playing in 15 minutes if you were familiar with how one of them worked. The generic games that supposedly did "all this and more" were about a hundred times more complicated with all of their options and settings, so there was a beauty to a game designed to do one thing and that one thing well. With a generic game, you had to sift through skills, equipment, powers, optional magic systems, and equipment lists meant to cover every era in history. Generic games did not feel like these focused and specific settings anyways, so you were often using the generic game and these games to get the full experience - which defeated the point in the first place.

They were, in a way, the first "casual RPGs" like iPad apps and games are today. Small, tight, focused designs meant to provide a singular experience and tiny world for you to lose yourself in. They weren't a political statement about what generic game you put your beliefs in, nor were they one game to rule them all that covered everything. They were designed to be fun, simple, focused experiences meant to get you lost in a specific place for an evening, and let you play a cowboy, gangster, space adventurer, mutant survivor, or secret agent. Being an involved, complicated game with a lot of options ran against their nature, and in fact would have made them less fun - these were roleplaying's first "casual games" and they still stand out today as high-water marks for tight and focused game design. They weren't perfect, of course, but nothing has came close to these masterpieces since they went out of print.