Quote from: Nicephorus;448570As a point of reference, from games I knew about back then and recaps of old games online, it appears that there was much less consistency in game style in the 70's and 80's than there is now.  D&D was The Game and most people didn't even know about other games.  So, it was stretched to whatever people wanted to play.  There was also no internet so peeks of other games through Dragon magazine was the main source of what normal was.  You had slow grinds where it took months go gain a level and other games that were epic Monty Haul games vs. gods.  There was time travel, interplanetary travel, and whatever people pulled from books that they'd read.  Big lists of house rules were the norm.  

There's really no one thing that is old school.

The variation is "old school". The drive for conformity may be equally old, but it's not the ethos of the "school".

Not everything old is "old school", and the "old school" itself is a concept not nearly as old as the hobby. Indeed, as a reaction against views perceived as "modernist", it of necessity postdates some of those views.

Quote from: Nicephorus;448629There does seem to be a small group of zealot's dedicated to Gary's Way.  But they're a small part of the people playing old games.

That's because their attitude -- if not their devotion to AD&D books in particular -- more informs new games (which some of them went on to design).

The "Gary said" kids (who annoyed me) and the Runequest rules and presentation (which I liked) struck me back in the day as two new movements. A couple of decades later, WotC-D&D was their love child.

The fanatical (and often plain wrong) rules-lawyering and 'dogmatic' version of Gary's Way is not identical with the way of play that Mr. Gygax actually most consistently advocated. It is at best a shallow reading of certain works, more often a sheer mockery. It is not, for instance, the Gygaxian D&D that fascinates the habitues of the Knights & Knaves Alehouse -- but the dedicated AD&Ders there are also often not aligned with the more OD&D-ish "do your own thing" aspect of the "old school".

Quote from: Age of Fable;448451Or give XP for followers and land, not for gold.

I have used Dave Arneson's idea of gaining XP by spending gold.  That adds some interesting aspects to gameplay.  

Quote from: Fiasco;448621Perhaps a large part of OSR is not so much trying to recreate a 'golden age' that may or may not have existed, but rather adult gamers revisiting the games of their youth but filtered through their experiences of 20+ years of gaming.

For me, the experimentation with D&D and other RPGs is why I game.  Its not a new fad for me. My first fascination was combining GW and D&D and probably still my most enduring fun. Our group got into Champions 1e and customizing that game and "genre-tripping" was very normal for us.  Keep in mind that original Hero is quite rules light by comparison to Gurps 4 or Hero 5.    

I just completed two massive articles for the Rifter Zero PDF project which is all about expanding The Mechanoids based on various oddities and hints of a wider setting within the original text.

For me, RBO - Red Box Only - is much more than just limiting the game to 3rd level but building an entire world based only on the one text.  My core RBO is actually quite radical.  You may notice that there are no listings for horses, neither among monsters or equipment...but there are mules.  Thus, many domesticated monsters are pack and riding animals.  Even crazier is the lack of normal meats.  

But it leads to cool stuff, like breweries with Killer Bee nests that make honey mead and taverns that serve huge circular steaks of giant snake meat.  PCs are hired to go hunt wild boar which is a real hoot since RB boars can survive in the monster haunted lands.

Quote from: Fiasco;448621Perhaps a large part of OSR is not so much trying to recreate a 'golden age' that may or may not have existed, but rather adult gamers revisiting the games of their youth but filtered through their experiences of 20+ years of gaming.

Nail hit firmly on head. Brilliant post, and spot on.

Quote from: Fiasco;448621Perhaps a large part of OSR is not so much trying to recreate a 'golden age' that may or may not have existed, but rather adult gamers revisiting the games of their youth but filtered through their experiences of 20+ years of gaming.

Could it be?

Quote from: Nicephorus;448570As a point of reference, from games I knew about back then and recaps of old games online, it appears that there was much less consistency in game style in the 70's and 80's than there is now.  D&D was The Game and most people didn't even know about other games.  So, it was stretched to whatever people wanted to play.  There was also no internet so peeks of other games through Dragon magazine was the main source of what normal was.  You had slow grinds where it took months go gain a level and other games that were epic Monty Haul games vs. gods.  There was time travel, interplanetary travel, and whatever people pulled from books that they'd read.  Big lists of house rules were the norm.  

There's really no one thing that is old school.

True. So isn't it curious that none of the OSR variants start characters at level 8, encourage generous treasure hauls, have reams of detailed combat options, or set the goal of wiping out a pantheon from Deities and Demigods?

The underlying ethos of the OSR is a reaction against modern D&D. That's why the low-power, gritty, sandbox, simplified modes of play from 30 years ago are championed, and the high-powered, maunty-haul, and highly-complex modes of play from 30 years ago are conveniently ignored.

Pundit nailed it when he drew the analogy of the modern Christians appalled at vulgar modern culture who tell their children that back in the god-fearing olden days everyone was chaste until married.

Quote from: Haffrung;448762True. So isn't it curious that none of the OSR variants start characters at level 8, encourage generous treasure hauls, have reams of detailed combat options, or set the goal of wiping out a pantheon from Deities and Demigods?

The underlying ethos of the OSR is a reaction against modern D&D. That's why the low-power, gritty, sandbox, simplified modes of play from 30 years ago are championed, and the high-powered, maunty-haul, and highly-complex modes of play from 30 years ago are conveniently ignored.

Pundit nailed it when he drew the analogy of the modern Christians appalled at vulgar modern culture who tell their children that back in the god-fearing olden days everyone was chaste until married.

Dude, what has made you, a normally reasonable individual, turn into the goddamned D&D police this week? Here we have a thread about a D&D variant played "decades ago" by Spinachcat, a player who unashamedly enjoys 4e, and you are presenting it as a case study in contemporary revisionism by dogmatic old-school-come-latelies. Meanwhile, you yourself weigh in over in the 3e thread that,

Quote from: Haffrung;447585I've found all editions of the game start to break down at 7th level. I'm just not willing to learn every magical effect, and anticipate every clever or devious use of magic by my players. It becomes a game I'm not much interested in DMing at that point.

What is your point? And meanwhile. pundit is "analyzing the issues of WHY some people are finding it fun today." Now players need to enjoy D&D for ideologically correct reasons? If I think this variant might be a fun experiment, am I not approaching D&D with a sufficient ironic distance? Or is it the opposite, where I am supporting some intolerable OSR hipster irony to your and pundit's D&D true faith? Oy. I have a headache.

P.S. - the start-at-8th level, enhanced combat option OSR variants are out there in force in the form of 2.99 2nd Edition supplements on ebay.

Quote from: Cole;448765Now players need to enjoy D&D for ideologically correct reasons?

Dude, this messageboard is all about telling people which are the ideologically correct ways of enjoying games, which games are ideologically correct, and calling Swine to everyone who is not ideologically pure You cannot be surprised.

@ Haffrung.

Climb down from your high horse and talk to the real people in this thread instead of the scary OSR demons in your mind.  

This thread is about exploring an interesting variant of red box D&D. Feel free to leave your preconceptions a the door and join in the discussions.

D&D has pretty much always been married to a level treadmill (nothing wrong with that!)  But what would D&D be like without it? For mine, that is an interesting discussion.  Its in our nature to aspire towards things that are laid out in front of us.  If the rules go to level 20 (or 36), goddamit, we want to get there, cast a wish and slay the dragon with a +5 holy avenger.  I certainly did.  But what if this perfectly enjoyable way of playing D&D takes our focus away form other potentially interesting areas?  That is what E3 is exploring. Maybe its not for most and thats fine. Please don't mistake it for some mythical OSR orthodoxy.

Quote from: Fiasco;448621Perhaps a large part of OSR is not so much trying to recreate a 'golden age' that may or may not have existed, but rather adult gamers revisiting the games of their youth but filtered through their experiences of 20+ years of gaming.

As I said before

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.


With that, I will don't that if a publisher wants to sell to the group of people that been labelled as the OSR then that publisher needs to keep in mind that most of them are interested in playing a classic edition of D&D. Not something like it but the with one of the older rule sets.

However done the right way, a publisher can come up with a new Old School style RPG that appeals to most of the people labeled as the OSR.  Joseph Goodman and his team are making a good go of it with their playtests of the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG. Primarily by going to old school conventions (GaryCon for example) and game stores and running games.

Finally much of Old School publishing is based on material under the Open Game License. Coupled with Internet distribution and print on demand means that anybody can have a go at it with their idea. Doesn't mean it will be good or sell. But there are no gatekeepers, no mod clique, no Ron Edwards clique, to act as gatekeepers. It has grown to the point that a person will be hard press to keep it with it all.

As for back in the day, play styles were diverse.  The major difference is that there was no internet so aside from the letter pages of Dragon magazine there was little exposure to what other groups thought.  It wasn't totally insular as D&D was so popular that even

Quote from: HaffrungSo isn't it curious that none of the OSR variants start characters at level 8...

See Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide, pp. 110-111.

Quote...encourage generous treasure hauls...

You've read every "OSR" module to confirm that none has (whether on average or by instance) richer treasures than Rules Set X recommends? Really? I would be truly surprised if the results were much closer than TSR's or JG's output back in the day.

One might reasonably expect the simulacra or "clones" -- in the basic books, if not the modules -- to show about the same fidelity on this topic as elsewhere. BFRPG by default gives no x.p. for treasure, and partly for this reason has adjusted awards for monster slaying, but I don't recall how the treasure tables compare with B/X.

Quote..have reams of detailed combat options...

Again, this has already been done over and over for about 40 years (Arneson having pretty well rung the changes right at the start). We've had Chainmail, D&D Supplements I-III, Swords & Spells, Tunnels & Trolls, Chivalry & Sorcery, Judges Guild, The Arduin Grimoire, The Perrin Conventions, Runequest, Thieves Guild, Arms Law, the Tri Tac games, Players Option: Combat & Tactics, Hackmaster, articles in The Dragon and White Dwarf and Alarums & Excursions and The Wild Hunt and Different Worlds, and so on and on.

However, if you go to Dragonsfoot, or Knights & Knaves Alehouse, or Original D&D Discussion, then you will still find plenty of threads on considerations both medieval and fantastic.

I'll bet you'll find some relevant articles in Knockspell and Fight On! as well.

Almost everyone has house rules for topics of special interest. Combat is in this regard no different from magic, monsters, experience, economics, character secondary skills, or just about any topic.

Quote...or set the goal of wiping out a pantheon from Deities and Demigods?...

Hey, why not take that absurdly irrelevant criterion all the way by specifying a pantheon? Not that you actually know whether your claim is true or false, do you? You just pulled it out of the hole where your head is buried.

Haffrung: "AD&D DMs touched me in the wrong places as a child, and the OSR doesn't repeat their mistakes! What the hell?!"

Quote from: Haffrung;448762the high-powered, maunty-haul, and highly-complex modes of play from 30 years ago are conveniently ignored.

You simply do not know what you are talking about.

Tunnels & Trolls is not ignored (but naturally gets less attention than some other things in the D&D-centric "old school").

Empire of the Petal Throne is not ignored.

Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry are not ignored, although their particular implementations of combat elaborations (e.g., hit locations, action sequencing) are not very popular. Those tend simultaneously toward the "gritty" and the "highly complex", though, so of course you can damn everyone regardless of whether we use them or not!

Arduin is not ignored. I would not call Hargrave's game "monty haul", which connotes a too-easy setup. However, it has both high power and complexity probably to rival Rifts or SenZar.

Gamma World (by the original Monty Haul, Jim Ward) is not ignored.

The Dragon and other magazines are not ignored.

Unearthed Arcana is definitely not ignored among 1st ed. AD&Ders, who tend to hold strong opinions about it.

If there are not many 110th-level characters in evidence, I submit that neither are they swamping the discussions of "new school" D&Ders.

Why should we expect there to be? Where but in your fevered imagination do either they or "E3" games predominate?

You are thoroughly out of touch with the reality both of today and of "back in the day".

I'm of the understanding that during the glory days of the early 80s that tons of red-box Basic D&D were sold?

Starting with the assumption that (in my own opinion, based on the numbers I have seen in real life) significantly more copies of red-box Basic D&D were in circulation than Expert, etc., it seems to me that a considerable percentage of people that did play D&D in the past may very well have effectively been playing red-box E3.

A lot of people also got it for Christmas, didn't play it and put it away, tried to figure it out and then put it away, or played it once or twice and then put it away.

But that happens with all Christmas blitz toys.  Like Furby, they've got their one or two Christmas seasons of good sales and popularity, and then it starts to curve downward.