Recently, I had the chance to do something I never thought was possible. After 36 years, I returned to the table with most of my high school gaming group to play a game. I spent a few weeks preparing for it and ran two sessions during the weekend. It went fantastically, and along the way, I learned a few things about this specific type of session… Nostalgia Gaming. So let’s talk about it.
What is Nostalgia Gaming?
Let me make up a definition for this. Nostalgia is defined as, “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past”. Nostalgia gaming is when you run a session to bring about that sentimental longing or wistful affection for a past game or game group.
This was my goal. I wanted to play a game that would feel like when we played in our teens. I wanted us to forget about it being 36 years later, and transport us back to a time when we would get out of school on a Friday, run to the grocery store to stock up on drinks and chips, and then head to one of our houses to play games until it was way too late in the evening.
Because of this goal, I made some specific choices about what game we played, the adventure I wrote, and how I GMed it.
Picking The Game
For the group that I was going to visit and the years that I was the GM for them, the game that was iconic for our group was Palladium’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We played several campaigns of TMNT. One member of our group was an artist and drew character portraits for all the characters back when we were playing. While I could not remember too many specifics about the sessions of our campaigns, all of us could remember the characters. That was the kind of game I was looking for. One that everyone had fond memories of that could bring about that nostalgic feeling.
There was just one thing. Over the years, I have lost my love for that system, but lucky for me Julian Kay created Mutants in the Now. Julian had the same feelings about the original system and the same love for the source material. I wanted a game that would bring about a nostalgic feeling and was happy to do it with a game with modern game design.
Prepping The Game
The Adventure
I knew I would be writing the adventure. I wanted to go for something nostalgic, and it had to be a one-shot and playable in 1-2 sessions. I went with an assault on a big bad’s lair. It was an easy plot, with only one twist. I cut out the planning of the assault by making my Mad Lib plan. To make it nostalgic, I took the iconic villain from the TMNT RPG, Dr. Feral, and made him the center of the adventure.
My goal was for the adventure to be high-action, with lots of minions to mow down, and an epic battle for the finale. I also wanted to make sure that there were scenes where everyone got a moment to shine and do something cool. All of that was worked into my prep.
Pre-Gens
I did not want us to spend any time making up characters as time was precious. Mutants in the Now has a pretty extensive character generation system (though more streamlined than the source material). While that may have been fun if we had more time, I went with making all the characters beforehand.
In doing so, I emphasized getting the memory of the character more correct than any of the mechanical specifics. I remembered all the archetypes for the characters and created the pre-gens around those themes.
Abilities Sheet
Since none of the players were familiar with the system and none of them had any of the books, I made a Google Doc with the text of all of the character’s specific abilities so they could easily reference them during play. I wanted to avoid having to pass around the one table copy of the game during play.
Cheat Sheets
Mutants in the Now also has a helpful combat sheet, to aid during play. I made copies of that for the table as well, so that they could easily look up all the combat options.
That was a lot of prep, but I wanted to be able to hit the table and start playing as fast as possible. For this kind of gaming, I was ok with putting the burden of the work on me, to make the play experience better for everyone.
Running the Session
For the running of the session, I did just a few specific things to make the game go smoothly.
No Planning
I wanted this game to be about action and not bogged down in planning. That is why I prepped the game with the Mad Libs plan, and because this was the type of mission where a lot of planning would have happened, I gave each of the players a token that they could use for one flashback, where they prepared something for a given moment in the game. This would remove the need for planning but also would emulate the competency of a team that had planned their assault well.
The Spirt of the Rules…Not The Letter
During the session, I did not worry about if everyone exactly got the rules right, or if I was remembering each rule. The goal was to have fun, and so after a quick overview of how the rules worked we started playing, and when we hit any questions, I just made up answers and kept going, and did not check the rulebook. That is in contrast to how I run games at home or even at a convention, where I put more of an emphasis on getting the rules right or showcasing the rules.
I was also generous in making rulings in favor of the players, to make sure they all got to do some cool things. This game was not the place to worry about realism or how exact mechanics work. We played Theater of the Mind so that I could make the world fit what the players wanted to do.
Everyone Got To Kick Ass
I made sure in my prep that there was the potential for each character to do something cool. During play, I also made sure that those opportunities came up or I capitalized on something cool the players came up with, and in most cases, both. The vast majority of the enemies they encountered before the climactic battle were minions and plenty of them. I let them mow them down unmercifully. This mixed with the advice above, allowed me to make sure each of them had some awesome moment where they got to shine in their archetype.
For the climatic battle, I had a mix of combatants and non-combat objectives. The combat-focused characters could brawl while the non-combat characters could work on the other objectives all in the same dynamic scene.
They Were Going to Win
No matter what happened, we were here for a kick-ass time, and that meant that Dr. Feral was going to die, no matter what. I did not prep anything specific for this, but there are a number of GM tricks I could have used to ensure that he was taken down by the characters.
But in the playing of the game, I did not have to do any of that. In the climactic battle, one of the players scored a brutal Barrage maneuver, which took out Dr. Feral much to the joy of the table.
How Did It Go?
It was awesome. The game lived up to what I was hoping it would be. First, the Mutants in the Now rules are excellent and they make for some very exciting combats. For all my intent of streamlining rules, I had to do it only a few times. Most of the time we played the game pretty much as written.
Second, all the prep paid off and I was able to get everyone into playing the game quickly and kept the focus on the action. Lastly, the way I ran it maximized the fun over the accuracy, and it was the right vibe for a nostalgia game.
This Kind of Sounds like Convention Gaming…
For sure, I drew inspiration from running numerous convention games, to design the game for everyone to have a good time. I think the biggest departure for me was that I relaxed on rules accuracy/mastery and emphasized having fun. Also, in convention games, I will let a party lose, but that was not going to happen in this game.
Waxing Nostalgic
Thirty-six years is a long time to get that group back to the table. I wanted to make sure that our return would be an enjoyable time. It was. For that weekend, at that table, we were teenagers again, with our mutant animals saving the day. I was thrilled to be able to bring that experience to the group and to share the table with them once more.
The thing about nostalgic gaming is that feelings are more important than accuracy. Do what you need to do to make the game feel like it did back in the day. For me, it was to change systems and do a lot of upfront prep and just a minor change to my normal GMing style.
If you ever get the chance to run a nostalgia game for people in your past, I hope you have as much fun as we did. Have you ever run a nostalgia game and for whom? How did it go?
