Sitting on my bookshelf right now is a battered copy of Warhammer
40,000: Rogue Trader purchased by exacerbated parents for a creative
but socially challenged 11 year old in the hopes playing games with
other kids would help him make friends (For the record: it did and 29
years later most of them are still my friends). Not on my bookshelf:
any other edition of Warhammer 40,000.

That's weird, right? I know there are gamers out there who cling to
their red and blue box editions of Dungeons and Dragons, or original
editions of Traveler but most of us move on to the new editions when
they come out, or just sell the books when they stop playing. As a
game Rogue Trader is the hottest of hot garbage: slow playing,
needlessly complex, and often just plain confusing. Despite all of
those things you'll pry it out of my cold dead hands. I have a pretty
high opinion of myself so I'd like to think it is more than simple
nostalgia that keeps the book on my shelf. There has got to be a
reason I cling to this mess of a game over recent editions that (from
all accounts) are fairly decent games (if prohibitively expensive).

Recently, I became aware of a group of gamers who share my devotion to
the original edition of the game. A lot of people complain about the
price of the current editions and the publisher's policy of making
different factions of the game more powerful to boost miniature sales
every few months. But a few honed in on what I think the real appeal
of the original game is: creativity. The first edition of the game
encouraged the player to bring whatever models they had laying around
to the game, and to create their own rules for using those
models. There were scenario guidelines in the back of the book, but
the players were encouraged to create their own stories and expand the
setting GW had published for them. The game was a sandbox: as much an
RPG as it was a wargame. Players were creating stories while playing
the game and imagination was encouraged. 

As the game went through additional editions the focus shifted from
creativity to an increasingly grim setting with codified elements that
all players were expected to know and not deviate from. Using your own
models and creating your own rules are still possible of course, but
the publisher no longer provides helpful guidelines for players who
wish to do so and the player base can be hostile to players using
their own models or adding to the setting with their own ideas. The
game and its setting are very concrete and very focused on competitive
play. Those two traits make the game less appealing to those of us who
play because the setting captured our imagination, or because the game
provides a creative outlet.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking. If you actually read all of that
do me a favor: email me at adw@sdf.org and tell me what went wrong in
your life that you have time to read my thoughts on a thirty year old
game.