(Im not a D&D player, so Im taking in consideration other "Old School" games here, like Runequest, BRP, Rolemaster, Gurps, etc)

QuoteWhat's the one New-School thing you'd add to your Old School game?

Streamlining.

Thats the one thing newish games nailed it right in the head for me, using simpler (and innovative) resolution procedures to achieve the same intended effects but in much faster ways. Games like Over the Edge, Heroquest, Risus, Unknown Armies, Savage Worlds, Agon, 3:16, Barbarians of Lemuria, Freemarket, Apocalypse World, etc.

By the way, one great example of this is Unknown Armies: it has the same basic premise of lethality as, say, Gurps, but while the later ends up kind of convoluted and complicated for trying to depict lethality through its procedures, Unknown Armies ends up faster and simpler by depicting lethality through its effects, thus becoming much faster as a result.

Quote from: One Horse Town;581917Marleycat, stop spamming the board with irrelevant crap please.

Talking sports isn't spam and no more disruptive than a lot of tangents around here.

Quote from: Rum Cove;581925Talking sports isn't spam

I'm saying it is.

This isn't the ESPN forum.

Take it to PM.

Quote from: JRR;580597Honestly?  I can't think of a single damn thing.

You know, I was thinking the same thing. But I looked through the thread, anyways, just to see if there might be something I'd agree with. But the few things I can think of that I might add (or have added) to D&D are pretty much pre-'88. I've got a backgrounds system that some people might consider "new school", but it's really related to the secondary skills from the 1e DMG. If I were going to add an outright skill system, I'd do something like talents in TFT. Is using a formula instead of a combat table "new school"? I don't feel like it is, but if Target 20 is new school, then that's something I added.

I'd add cantrips, but the ones I propose are more like streamlined UA 1e cantrips than the modern ones. And that's 1985.

Quote from: silva;581921Streamlining.

Thats the one thing newish games nailed it right in the head for me, using simpler (and innovative) resolution procedures to achieve the same intended effects but in much faster ways. Games like Over the Edge, Heroquest, Risus, Unknown Armies, Savage Worlds, Agon, 3:16, Barbarians of Lemuria, Freemarket, Apocalypse World, etc.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, you really should have played our Castles & Crusades game.

Hey Butch, Ive always heard great things about Castles and Crusaders, ACKS, LotFP, etc. They are kind of "OD&D-lite", right ? If so, they could be a great way for introducing me to OD&D.

Quote from: silva;581949Hey Butch, Ive always heard great things about Castles and Crusaders, ACKS, LotFP, etc. They are kind of "OD&D-lite", right ? If so, they could be a great way for introducing me to OD&D.

Excellent question. Technically, "OD&D" usually refers to the 1974 wooden box game, and its Supplements. None of the games you've quoted is an OD&D simulacrum; the go-to OD&D emulator is Swords & Wizardry (White Box for core, Complete for core plus supplements). S&W Complete in particular does make a fair bit of assumptions beyond the admittedly vague text of 1974 D&D, and you could say it's a considerable streamlining or stylization nof the original engine; still, it's nothing next to C&C.

C&C is an AD&D 1e emulator built on a super-simplified OGL/3.x. engine. Which is to say, you have the trappings of AD&D 1e (classes, races, monsters, spells, etc.), but the mechanics are a 3.x minus Feats and Skills. Everything's a roll-high 1d20 + ability bonus + level versus a base DC of 12 or 18 (depending on which attributes you've desgnied "Primes") + a floating Challenge Level. You can't get much more "streamlined" than this.

LotFP is Holmes B/X and/or Moldvay/Mentzer BECMI D&D (the old "red box" and its sucessors) with some unique touches, such as a spell list that does away with some of the flashier stuff (e.g. no fireball or lightning bolt), and most daring of all, only Fighters get better at hitting people; all other classes fight as 1st-level characters, forever. That's not "lite" or "streamlined", that's just fucked-up and hardcore and I'm quite sure that this is what Jimbo intended all along. There's also no bestiary, encouraging GMs to make up their own unique critters.

ACKS is BECMI (or BEC, to be precise) D&D, with a massive revision to the Companion-level rules (which deal with building, mantaining and running castles and the fiefs around them), and several entertaining additions to high-level play (ranging from Traveller-like mercantile ventures, to cross-breeding monsters). It's entirely built on the idea that adventuring is fine and dandy, but that there's got to be something more than killing bigger monsters and looting richer treasure for PCs to do at high levels. It's "streamlined" all right, but I wouldn't call it "lite" (at least not at the upper levels; at lower levels it seems to play exactly like BECMI/RC D&D). It also happens to be my favorite version of D&D right now.

One of these days I promiss I'll drag you to the game table and we'll run you some proper TSR-era D&D ("old school" is a loaded word nowadays). But I'm derailing the thread.

Nothing at all against sports, but let's keep the thread on topic.

RPGPundit

I'd maybe add point buy to Golden Heroes, because I have players whose dice are genuinely cursed and the game uses random character generation.

For DC Heroes, ditching the bidding with hero points process and instead buying extra dice to roll, then discarding all but two and using them to determine the result. Speeds things up and reduces the chance of a hero point laden character smacking the hell out of a far more powerful character.