Quote from: Libertad;618788Lol I was about to edit the thread title but Benoist beat me to it.

I'm sorry for any confusion.  I'm not trying to use the term as a buzzword;  Dungeon Squad was a mistake to include.

To be clear my buzzword remark was targeted at games like 13th Age and Dungeon World. Not you.

Quote from: Libertad;618788I've otherwise been meticulous in trying to include games which emulated pre-4th Edition rulesets.

Yeah see that for me is a completely useless definition of old school, as far as my preferences in gaming are concerned. Anything pre-4th edition means pretty much anything under the Sun. It's really not helpful to me as a gamer. And what happens when D&D Next hits the shelves? 4th edition will be "old school" too? That's just ludicrous, to me.

Quote from: Benoist;618790Yeah see that for me is a completely useless definition of old school, as far as my preferences in gaming are concerned. Anything pre-4th edition means pretty much anything under the Sun. It's really not helpful to me as a gamer. And what happens when D&D Next hits the shelves? 4th edition will be "old school" too? That's just ludicrous, to me.

What is "Old School" is mostly a matter of time (3rd Edition came out in 2000, so it's "Old" to people who first got into D&D through 4E), but I see your point.

Many say that pre-3rd Edition is Old School, but in the consciousness of many gamers the term summons up specific definitions.  I think that 2nd Edition and before would be better definition, but I've seen some gamers decry 2nd as being "too exotic and gonzo" for things like Planescape and Dark Sun.  The majority of blogs and sites which discuss Old School do not often include 2nd Edition, with preferences heavily weighed towards Original, First Edition, and Basic Sets.

What time frame encompasses Old School to you?  This question is directed not just to Benoist, but to others as well.

Quote from: Libertad;618795What time frame encompasses Old School to you?  This question is directed not just to Benoist, but to others as well.

I consider everything released before AD&D 2e to be Old School. Or, everything published within (about) 10 years of the dawn of the hobby (OD&D). From the earliest edition, to its revision (various versions of BD&D up to AD&D), the public fadishness of the game through the early 80s, until the eventual decline as the 80s wore on.

I think a time-range from OD&D is an important point of measurement as "Old School". It's easy for someone's frame-of-reference to be shaped by their age, and when they were first introduced to the hobby. If you were 12 when 3.x was released, you might be inclined to call that "Old School". But I think that view is a little fallacious when you weigh it against the decades of RPG history that has come before you. Would someone like that consider 1E to be old, old school, and OD&D as super-fucking-old-old-school?

Quote from: Libertad;618795What time frame encompasses Old School to you?

Pre-Dragonlance.

Dragonlance was a watershed for a number of reasons, but to me it really marks the end of the era in which the wargamers dominated the hobby.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;618959Pre-Dragonlance.

This.

Pre-Dragonlance works for me. Conveniently it also puts us at the exact same place as "anything published within about 10 years of the dawn of the hobby" since OD&D was released in January 1974 and the first Dragonlance products were released in August 1984. A more personally-oriented definition (which I don't expect anyone else to accept, but it works pretty well for me) would also be "anything released before I started playing," which still puts us in the same place (March 1984) - even as a kid I always had the distinct impression that the Golden Age was ending and the new stuff being released wasn't the same (and wasn't as good) as what had come before. But luckily in those days you could still get ahold of old stuff (not the REALLY old stuff from the 70s, but the oldish stuff from the early 80s) pretty easily.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;618959Pre-Dragonlance.

Dragonlance was a watershed for a number of reasons, but to me it really marks the end of the era in which the wargamers dominated the hobby.

Quote from: Benoist;618962This.

Yes.  Although they might have been using the same rules set for a while after this, that rules set wasn't singing anymore.  It was a square peg being pushed through a round hole.

Pre Dragonlance?

So HERO is old school but GURPS isn't?

Anyhow, I've been calling Dark Passages a neo-clone or just a clone since I finished the current version.  The original was more of a Holmes Basic / Gamma World 1e clone while the current version is a little more 3e and 4e though it's still got some strong roots in AD&D.

I haven't done much of anything in the way of support.  There's a glut of OSR stuff anyhow.  I'm going to be running it for some kids at the store so I might get some work done on it.  Generally D&D isn't my thing

I originally envisioned The Crucible and The Cauldron as a setting for Dark Passages but it doesn't really fit.  It's got more in common with "among the beautiful creatures" in terms of themes and style of play.  Besides, it's a deliberately offensive setting I mainly wrote to see if I could come up with something you couldn't possibly discuss on rpgnet without getting banned.  Maybe I'll write up some mechanics for it using poptarts and a box of steel wool for resolution.

Quote from: David Johansen;618982Pre Dragonlance?

So HERO is old school but GURPS isn't?

My impression is that Champions and The Fantasy Trip (both pre-DL) get a lot more love among self-identified old-schoolers than either the stand-alone HERO System or GURPS (both post-DL)

Quote from: David Johansen;618982Pre Dragonlance?

So HERO is old school but GURPS isn't?

I could buy that.  In some ways GURPS is struggling towards the same sort of emerging themes as Dragonlance (by giving build points for quirks, for example, to mechanically link role-playing and character power).  Not that this approach is necessarily bad -- there is a reason new school was very popular.

Quote from: David Johansen;618982Pre Dragonlance?

So HERO is old school but GURPS isn't?

'Not old-school' != 'storygame.'

I think GURPS is an example of what emerged in gaming as the wargamers diminished in numbers and influence.

Yeah. GURPS ain't old school to me, and I don't know HERO enough to have an opinion on the matter.

Quote from: EOTB;618981Yes.  Although they might have been using the same rules set for a while after this, that rules set wasn't singing anymore.  It was a square peg being pushed through a round hole.

I'm with you guys.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;618579Maybe there are two different interpretations of the term "old school".

For some "old school" means everything that is modeled after stuff that was published from 74-88, for others the idea of entering a dungeon is "old school style play", regardless of actual rules. (And this explains why Dungeon World was nominated for this list as well.)

There are two interpretations of "old school"; but the second one you offer is not either of them.

Your first definition (strictly modeled after rpgs published prior to a certain date) is correct; the other definition would be "rules and play that match the attitude of gameplay from that era".  By neither definition could you play "My Life With Master", enter a dungeon, and call it "old-school roleplaying" in spite of it not being either old-school nor roleplaying.

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Quote from: Libertad;618776I really don't have my own definition of "old school" play beyond what I hear on AD&D sites and blogs, as I never got the chance to play pre-3rd Edition versions of the game; I'm pretty much going by examples listed on other websites (one of which listed Dungeon Squad as "Other").

When I first started some time ago, I was really excited by the idea of Old School games after checking out free samples of Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, etc, and searched the Internet for others.  I decided to make a list of them as a useful resource.

I ran into several complications on this front, as said earlier in this thread "the retroclone definition is in danger of death by a thousand cuts."  For example, Pathfinder is a 3rd Edition retroclone, but it's not necessarily what people think of "old school D&D."  And then there are RPGs which try to go for the "feel" of old school play but uses a different ruleset (not necessarily a retroclone).  Warrior, Rogue, & Mage goes by its own rules instead of aping a specific Edition or Set.

Instead of adhering to a specific interpretation, I'm trying to be inclusive, whether it's trying to mimic specific rules, a general "feel," or both.  Hopefully, I can make the list as useful as possible for interested viewers instead of going for a more restrictive route.

In that sense, this is less of a "Retroclone list" and more of a "D&D Emulator" list.

But again, something like "dungeon world" is in no sense of the world a "retroclone".

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