What Makes a Game a "Dead Game?"

Thoughts on the OGL, Indie Games, and Playing the Past

I’ve been reading through older posts of my own newsletter and many of those I follow. I’ve noticed lately that the majority of my unread emails are notifications of Substack publications. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I did feel a little ashamed as I saw that there were several posts by

Marc Normandin

and

Ethan Sabatella

I had to catch up on. Needless to say, there is only so much time in the day.

In my backlog reading, I came across an older newsletter written by

Jim Zub

that got me thinking about the “differences” between older role playing games and newer games. He was making a kind of “rulings vs. rules” observation. It’s an observation that is somewhat true, but not as true as many assert. Yes, Original D&D and Basic/Expert D&D were very much in the “rulings not rules” camp, but AD&D very much wasn’t and when it came to other games they spanned the “ideological design space” on this axis.

During my thought processes, I began thinking about how one way that the earliest of games were on the “rulings” rather than “rules” side was in how they treated the mechanics of mundane activities. There are no “knowledge checks” or “profession checks” in early role playing games, but you do start to see them with Champions. Even more interesting was that a lot of role playing games began having either mechanics for the RESOLUTION of mundane activities or mechanics that REWARDED engaging in mundane activities.

As I was coming up with lists of games in each category, it struck me how many of these games were “dead” and how some of them were being kept alive via modern publishing in the post-OGL world.

So I recorded a video about my thoughts on dead games, copyright, creator rights, and the exciting times we live in.

What’s your favorite “dead game?”