Quote from: Christopher Brady;1040147Maybe in your group, no one remembers.  Not in any of mine, to which I appreciate.  I also change those rules, should the need arise, but consistency is what makes a game playable for me, so I need, whether or not I GM.  Which I end up doing most of the time.

If I remember, I do what I did last time.  If somebody else remembers, I do what I did last time because I trust my players.  If nobody remembers, we don't sweat it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1040240If I remember, I do what I did last time.  If somebody else remembers, I do what I did last time because I trust my players.  If nobody remembers, we don't sweat it.

This is pretty much the way my games go. I might ask to see if anyone remembers how we ruled something, and if not we just make a ruling and move on.

One thing that I hated about AD&D when it first came out is that it had so many rules that some of our DM's would stop action totally to look up some rule just because he remembered that he saw some rule on it somewhere... well, for our group that was a real adventure-killer.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1040073My present difficulty with Newer School is that players tend to consistently quote the rules to their advantage and then forget the rules.. to their advantage. There's also literally no separation of player knowledge of game elements from actual character knowledge. Shit's annoying. Old school used to clamp down on a lot of that nonsense out by siding with the GM in most cases.

YES. Absolutely.

Interesting difference of opinion about  the subject of Bryce's latest review posted here and tenfootpole:
http://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=4214

Rare are the modules that receive such high praise. Oh and it's PWYW

Moreover Princeofnothing loves it too
https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/review-mines-claws-princesses-5e-3pp-holy-oldschool-holy-grail-batman/

However, Chris Kelly, the lead writer for Wizard's Laboratory, does not share the enthusiasm
http://www.wizardslaboratory.com/category/danddproductreviews/

QuoteThe lack of a compelling story that takes the characters beyond the dungeon entrance is one.  

Well there is certainly a plot but not the tiresome four(teen) pages of background that I usually find unusable because, guess what, my group of PCs are running their own story.

QuoteIf this module was released 30 years ago it would have been a hit.  

And this is a bad thing because.... Right there is a mind being tightly shut: old is bad and new is progress is good. Baa baa.

QuoteHowever, the D&D community has moved on to a more comprehensive story/character driven role play experience.

Is this the official Goodrightfun now? Speak for yourself Kelly, my lad.

QuoteI was also a little take aback by some of the artwork and mature themes that wouldn't be appropriate for D&D players under 18 years old. I'm not adverse to mature themes or artwork but I don't like works that leave out a large portion of the D&D community that is under 18 years old.

Oh Lordy! Won't somebody think of the children?

I have bought and read the scenario: LotFP it ain't FFS. And his kid has probably played GTA for thousands of hours by now.

QuoteFor want of a few words, sketches, and gratuitous themes that should have been edited out by Oswald Publishing, as a father I cannot recommend this adventure for D&D players under 18 years old.

Self-censorship is your new freedom of expression!

QuoteThe entire adventure is written for the DM which is great, but it leaves the DM without descriptions for the players. The lack of boxed text to read or even a paraphrase paragraph to engage th players is very troubling. Leaving it up to the DM to scratch build descriptions of rooms, areas, and encounters is quite a challenge and a lot of extra work.

No boxed text, you say?  SOLD! You have a deal, sir!

Yes, I can do without failed fan-fic writers and the purple prose, thank you very much.

Quoteif your looking for a pure hack and slash dungeon crawl "Mines, Claws, and Princesses" fits the bill.

Damned by faint praise, eh? I think I know a passive aggressive slur when I read one. Like when he leaves a defintion of Monty Hall for the young'uns in case they didn't pick up on the gist.


Besides being a terrible review imho (YMMV) is this a good illustration of the difference between old and new schools?

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1040427Besides being a terrible review imho (YMMV) is this a good illustration of the difference between old and new schools?

Certainly a difference. There aren't a lot of absolutes once you start talking about things as ephemeral as 'old school' and 'new school,' but one of the near-consistencies for old school thought is that old school prefers more white-space on the page, as it were, with a sign saying 'DM will fill in here, to make module fit their established campaign.'

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1040440old school prefers more white-space on the page, as it were, with a sign saying 'DM will fill in here, to make module fit their established campaign.'

Had I known that sooner, I would have saved a whole load of time and money. I can't quite put my finger on when, but TSR stopped writing those awsome modules that you could knit seemlessly into your own campaign. They started making lengthy backgrounds with plots and names and places that were frickin' boring as fuuuuu..because ultimately I had PCs and a campaign world that had all that stuff already. As for when that change came, I think it must have been around the late 80s, maybe a bit later. Being British I distincly remember White Dwarf adventures taking a nose dive around then.

It was also around then I jumped to Rolemaster and discovered the Loremaster series which were really sandboxy. Then ICE f@*ked that up too with their scenarios circling the drain that was the Shadow World Master Atlas in which there was a cast  "interesting" NPCs and factions there was little need for PCs. A plethora of uber GMPCs that PCs could meet if they played their cards right but, at 60th level (about 40th in 3.5 D&D terms)_ were frickin useless. In fact at one point Terry K Amthor had basically made his creation a vehicle for his own fiction.

Like Forgotten Realms post grey box, I guess.

That was pretty good Mike.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1040427No boxed text, you say?  SOLD! You have a deal, sir!

I like boxed text. For whatever reason, I do great ad-libbing of NPCs talking and coming up with conversations and personalities. (Although, I've had NPCs suddenly have a strange new accent after 2-3 session for some reason.)

But, I do horrible at room descriptions. So I like room descriptions. YMM(and does)V.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1040444Had I known that sooner, I would have saved a whole load of time and money. I can't quite put my finger on when, but TSR stopped writing those awsome modules that you could knit seemlessly into your own campaign. They started making lengthy backgrounds with plots and names and places that were frickin' boring as fuuuuu..because ultimately I had PCs and a campaign world that had all that stuff already. As for when that change came, I think it must have been around the late 80s, maybe a bit later. Being British I distincly remember White Dwarf adventures taking a nose dive around then..

It was earlier. TSR published Dragons of Despair in 1984. The same year, Hickman and Weis who introduced the railroad story adventure with Rahasia. I remember when I bought and read Rahasia at release, I recognized it as something new, and something that was not for me. There were no forums to define what was happening, and I doubt the term 'railroad' had been coined yet. But I called Rahasia an 'insert characters here' module. I read Dragons of Despair and recognized the same thing. Rahasia was the last TSR adventure I bought for almost a decade. It was clear that D&D was moving in an unwelcome direction, and I'd have to make up all more own adventures and settings going forward.

Quote from: Chris KellyHowever, the D&D community has moved on to a more comprehensive story/character driven role play experience.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1040427Besides being a terrible review imho (YMMV) is this a good illustration of the difference between old and new schools?

Well, it certainly shows the damage that accepting "Roleplaying is shared storytelling" or "Roleplaying is playing a story" or similar definitions in books as "close enough" has done.  People like this idiot Kelly don't even realize that "Story" and "Character-Driven" aren't the same thing, in fact, work in opposition to each other, because the more Story the GM brings, the less driving the characters actually do.  Based on the description of that module, my PCs would be all-in and RPing the fuck out of it without needing text to tell them what they are thinking and feeling.

Generally speaking:
Old School is Roleplaying characters in a world we're experiencing.
New School is Roleplaying characters in a story we're telling.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1040451Old School is Roleplaying characters in a world we're experiencing.
New School is Roleplaying characters in a story we're telling.

I agree with the distinction just not the labels. It been a mixed bag for a while especially since the issue is mostly been one of presentation not rules. For example done way AD&D 1st edition is the ultimate sandbox RPG, done another way it wraps the campaign tightly in a story like with Dragonlance. Done in one way, Vampire the Masquerade wrap the character in the tragic story of a cursed existence being driven towards a apocalyptic end.  In another it is monsters with super powers beating the shit out of each other.

The only way force a set of RPG rules into a narrow narrative niche is to limit the scope of what the RPG handles. Rather than presenting rules to make any character in a setting or genre, presenting rules that only makes characters that fit a specific situation doing specific activities. Taken to extreme the result would the same as a scenario/module/adventure presented with a cut down a set of rules one can use to run  it.

As far as I am concerned what Dave Arneson developed in Blackmoor and what he did with Gygax in the publication of Dungeon & Dragon was an activity that allow people to pretend to be characters in a imagined setting doing interesting things that are fun. To call it storytelling is as nonsensical as going to a travel agent and asking them to make them a story about visiting the Eastern Mediterranean or the Caribbean islands.  

A tabletop roleplaying referee can make something that could be an interesting experience just like a good agent can select a series of destination and a method of travel that could be interesting to his client. But the story comes afterwards as the experience is recounted.

People were wowed by the idea of Star Trek's Holodeck and the idea of virtual reality circa 1990 but we had that with pen & paper since the early 70s thanks to Gygax and Arneson.

As usual, I don't disagree in any way, but also don't feel particularly threatened or off-put but others wanting to do something different. Gygax & Arneson also made a game about warriors/fighters (mostly, plus some wizards, etc.) where the goals (if there could be said to be one) included doing as little fighting as possible, and managing scarce resources and no small number of people almost immediately said 'well good if you want to do that, but I'm going to take these rules, ignore encumbrance for the most part and fight every monster I run into.' I will not pretend I don't feel that they missed out on a really fun game. But if they had fun with hacking and slashing, more power to them. The only thing I want is separate, semi-formal names people understand to distinguish the two, such that I can find the peeps interested in the same experience. Old and New School (and moreso 'storygaming' and 'traditional RPG') are poor terms to have landed on, but they serve as long as everyone knows what we're talking about.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1040457AThe only thing I want is separate, semi-formal names people understand to distinguish the two, such that I can find the peeps interested in the same experience.

Yeah well people been trying to do that for a while. What muddies the waters is that the ideas behind tabletop roelplaying are just so darn flexible. And because of that people latch onto the rules as THE definition of this game is X and that game is Y. Which is the wrong thing to do because what makes a campaign X versus Y is what the players and referee choose to focus on and how they accomplish that. Hence my assertion that in one campaign AD&D 1st can be a experience about adventures in a fantasy setting and in another's a framework that a group use to tell a story about a characters in a fantasy setting.

To use a more recent example there nothing the rules that stops me from using Fate in the exact same manner as I do GURPS or OD&D for my Majestic Wilderlands. But the majority of the hobbyists that use it run campaigns that focuses more on narratives.

I think the best way is for you (or anybody) to do is the exact same thing that Wesely, Gygax, and Arneson did for their respective campaigns. Make a short punchy description of what the campaign is about and see who show up or in your case discusses things with you.

For example I would like to talk about setting formatted as a series of locations key to location on a hex map. Commonly known as the hexcrawl format.

Or I would like to talk about running a campaign where the setting has a life of it's own and while their larger event happening the focus is on the players driving the campaign by what they choose or not choose to do as their characters.

Or how about a campaign where we collaboratively build a setting together within the Old West of the United States. Then create some characters and adventure while rotating the referee duties between members of the group.

Back when I first started publishing hexcrawl formatted setting and material on sandbox campaign, the most popular terms in use were known only by a handful. So to get anyway I had to refine a short description to describe what I was presenting. Even to this date I find that short description far more useful then trying to push sandbox campaigns or hex crawl formatted settings.

Quote from: Tod13;1040446That was pretty good Mike.

Cheers! :cool:

Quote from: Tod13;1040446I like boxed text. For whatever reason, I do great ad-libbing of NPCs talking and coming up with conversations and personalities. (Although, I've had NPCs suddenly have a strange new accent after 2-3 session for some reason.)

But, I do horrible at room descriptions. So I like room descriptions. YMM(and does)V.

Each to his own, but I think boxed text can be done well (concise, salient, evocative), so as to do what you mentioned.

OTOH it can be counter-productive if it is verbose, irrelevant, or just waffle.

Case in point: Grave of the Heartless by Morten Greis
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/227738/Grave-of-the-Heartless

It works, and the guy can write! For not being a native speaker of English he puts us native speakers to shame, imo.

kudos once again to Bryce for flagging this one

Quote from: estar;1040456As far as I am concerned what Dave Arneson developed in Blackmoor and what he did with Gygax in the publication of Dungeon & Dragon was an activity that allow people to pretend to be characters in a imagined setting doing interesting things that are fun. To call it storytelling is as nonsensical as going to a travel agent and asking them to make them a story about visiting the Eastern Mediterranean or the Caribbean islands.  

A tabletop roleplaying referee can make something that could be an interesting experience just like a good agent can select a series of destination and a method of travel that could be interesting to his client. But the story comes afterwards as the experience is recounted.

Yes, and even then, telling a story about at RPG experience is only sometimes done, and when it is, is mainly done as a way of remembering the experience and fun playing and being immersed in the game and  generally not for the story itself.