GURPS, RIFTS, We Hardly Knew Ye

I feel bad choosing AD&D second edition because I also played and enjoyed GURPS and RIFTS (aka Megaverse). They just didn't have the market or the momentum that AD&D enjoyed. I also had a lot more exposure to AD&D 2nd Ed, which honestly wasn't a lot either. I didn't get into any RPGs at all until I was in college, and then I was such an overscheduled introverted hermitical geek who spent all my time on a computer that I hardly interacted with other people at all, much less play some game. A few of my friends did drag me out and introduce me to some of these games, and I am very grateful that they salvaged some humanity in me.

That's also why you just can't compare a good RPG with WoW or Everquest or these other computer games. We dinosaurs used to drag our neat computers along sometimes to do the nug work of the calculations involved in our RPGs, and saw the future in computers making games more playable. However, I see my son play WoW today and worry. He's sitting in a dark room all day long clicking on a mouse and keyboard, and the only interaction he's having with his friends is virtually through those characters. A real RPG involves face to face interpersonal interaction. Moreover, a key REQUIREMENT for the group I played AD&D with was that you had to get into the head of your character and make decisions the way that CHARACTER would make decisions based on his/her world view, biases, and perceptions. This was one of the biggest payoffs for this socially inept geek--an ability to see things from other perspectives and other people's/culture's points of view. If a person got too over the top with their behavior, the companions quickly grounded them in the "reality" of the scenario, or let them know they were making them look stupid or suspicious to the other tavern patrons. We also used to socialize and BS a whole lot on the side--something I never would've gotten locked away in my room with my computer.

In contrast, WoW and Everquest are what my companions would've referred to as a "Hack and Slash" game--all whacking, and no thinking, figuring things out, story/plot development, or character development. Sure, WoW guys occassionally post some silly videos on the web of their exploits, but usually this has nothing to do with the game, they are more often staged stories patched together from various intentionally choreographed gaming sessions. There may be puzzles and such to solve, but not in the way that an interactive and creative DM/GM could produce, and moreover, once these things are released, the "cookbook" solution or "cheats" are widely available in about a day.

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