AD&D 2e was extremely simple but could be more complicated than WotC versions depending how many knobs you tweaked.  But it was easy enough that 9-10 year old me was able to pick it up with little guidance and DM it.  Older versions certainly didn't hand hold as much as newer versions but not having as many rules to govern everything led to more making stuff up and learning to house rule.

Mileage may vary depending on how you learn and how you handle improvisation.

What do you consider new school?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1036934The rulebook is certainly shorter, or usually shorter (there's a few 500-page OSR rulesets, after all).  But does that mean the mechanics are actually easier?

What do you consider new school? Path Finder and beyond?

Quote from: vgunn;1037144What do you consider new school?

Me?  WotC editions.

"Easier" in which dimension?  It's certainly easier when a player tries some random action for the GM to say "sure, roll under [stat]" than to stop and look up the particular rule.  It's easier to read a stat block, and faster to write up a new one.  So far so good.

I would say old school is harder to run well, and easier to fuck up than new school.  Old school you need to know when to say "sure, that works, no roll" or "there's a chance, roll some dice" when a player comes up with a crazy plan.  It's very tempting, and I've seen it done, for old school DMs to shoot things down because they're making something "too easy", or bypassing a challenge entirely.  New school tries to get around that by providing DCs for everything, so the GM isn't saying "no", he's saying "let's look it up".  (I think in the grand scheme of things that was a profound strategic error, but I can understand how we got here.)

Too, I've run bad or boring old school sessions.  Dungeon delves where nothing much happens, one player maps, they somehow miss all the treasure, all the Saturday night specials, and most of the traps and monsters, and I hope anybody shows up the next week.  (That can still pay off in the long run, when the same group finally breaks through to a good treasure or cool moment and really feel they've earned it - but it is a delayed payoff and a down session at the time.)  A new school quest may be on rails, but at least you're guaranteed a set-piece combat, a few neat monsters and some level-appropriate treasure.

So on a couple of levels you could say old school runs light (although AD&D doesn't fit neatly in that scheme), but it runs without training wheels.  There's more space to crash and burn, which isn't my definition of "easy".

Quote from: Dave R;1037176So on a couple of levels you could say old school runs light (although AD&D doesn't fit neatly in that scheme), but it runs without training wheels.  There's more space to crash and burn, which isn't my definition of "easy".

Yeah, old school is very much "low floor, high ceiling" in the hands of some random GM.

Taking chances has the chance to fail, but also to succeed brilliantly.

New School is Olive Garden.  Old School is the little clam shack in a small seaside town.

Old School is easier for me because Holmes/AD&D are the editions I grew up on, played the most, and am the most familiar with. I know all the rules I like to use, and can run a game easily with them.

That doesn't mean that "New School" (WOTC) editions are really more complicated, it's just that when I played and ran them (and I've run two campaigns and numerous one shots of 3.x, Played a campaign of Pathfinder, and a couple dozen sessions of 4.0), I found myself constantly looking up stuff, and wondering why I was going to all that trouble when I could pretend to be an elf just fine with the games I was familiar with.

Lots of people play later editions and that's what they're used to, and they're perfectly happy with them. And to them, probably if you showed them a 1e AD&D DMG, they'd think you were nuts for wanting to use that book.

Different people like different things.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1037179Yeah, old school is very much "low floor, high ceiling" in the hands of some random GM.

I'm suddenly imagining a room with both a Trapper, and a Lurker Above in it...

I cannot fathom how AD&D would be easier than 5e. B/X, on the other hand...

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1037193I cannot fathom how AD&D would be easier than 5e. B/X, on the other hand...

AD&D is easier than 5e if you ignore all the bullshit that everyone ignored when they actually played it.

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics;1037194AD&D is easier than 5e if you ignore all the bullshit that everyone ignored when they actually played it.

Like?  Honest question, I've played run several years of AD&D 2e, and I changed what rules I used from campaign to campaign.

By far the easiest for me is to run a new school game in old school mode.  But that's because of all the time I've spent running both types of games.  I'm finding this easier to teach, too, now that I've got some new players interested in the GM chair.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1036934The rulebook is certainly shorter, or usually shorter (there's a few 500-page OSR rulesets, after all).  But does that mean the mechanics are actually easier?

I dunno. One of my players who I have played with since '86 was absolutely thrilled when I ran a 5e sequel to our 1e campaign, and found out that he could roll a d20 for just about everything, excluding weapon and spell damage. He also liked that Advantage and Disadvantage saved him from having to look up tables. That's pretty damned easy.

Keep in mind that the term "Old School" is a construct, which is just a fancy way of saying the rules that existed before current rules. The Rules Cyclopdedia, AD&D 1e, and even 2e are good games. All of them. They all have their flavors that make them appealing. The RC (as opposed to BECMI and older because it's a damned good book, yes I'm drinking) pretty much has everything you need to run a campaign. For the most part your combat rolls are d20 roll over, and skill rolls are roll under. I'm not a big fan of d20 roll under because it's not aesthetically pleasing. In 1e we used d% rolls for a lot of stuff which for some reason felt more satisfying as a roll under mechanic, probably because of thieves. The Red Box was a great starting point, and I know for a fact that kids 13 and under can totally grok it, otherwise I would not have been playing. As a player, the mechanics are pretty straightforward. Back in the day, everyone just wanted to hit things so it was good.

I started playing 1e literally one week after I learned on the Red Box. This was great because once my DM got the 1e stuff, he just gave me the Red Box. I got the books pretty soon after, using money I got delivering papers. Sentry Box was still a hole in the wall shop in the Marda Loop strip mall next to Smiling Buddha before Smiling Buddha moved to the stand alone building on the same property. The guy behind the counter kind of looked like Dworkin from the Chronicles of Amber. Amusingly the first D&D book I bought for myself was Oriental Adventures because Ninjas. AD&D certainly had it's complexities. such as weapons vs armor types that everyone only used once. These days I use the Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop even for Face to Face games because it accepts manual die input (meaning players can roll their own dice) and it's a right good campaign manager. If I could enter in something like weapon type vs armor... I would really have to be having a good day to learn to code that, though I have coded custom modules so it's not exactly impossible. Anyway, yeah. AD&D 1e. It has it's complexities. Hah hah! Psionics. Which I loved and have used in editions from 1-3.x, as I'm still undecided about the 5e take.

Now 2e, that was an interesting beast. If you include the Player's/GM option stuff, it could get quite complex. I really really liked Combat and Tactics and when I ran with miniatures, I liked how initiative and round segments meshed, and was able to put together a combat system which calculated action by segments rather than rounds. It sounds complex, but I just used a piece of graph paper to plot out all the relevant actions and how they sequenced then called out players to roll when their turn came around. It was a good amount of work, but combat was very satisfying for everyone.

Rambling aside, I don't think you can really make clear distinctions about one thing being easier than another. Mechanics change, but how easy or complex they are, are not edition specific. The mathematical mechanics underlying them, as well as how that math is presented, are both factors in ease of use. In 5e, from the player side it might be pretty damned easy. May it's more work for the DM, but hey, we got apps on our phones and tablets and laptops now. If I want to build an encounter on the fly, all I need is the DM's Guide, and my phone using Donjon. If I want to make something special, I have Hero Lab. I can do it quick. I can customize a monster/NPC and the software will tell me the CR of my creation. The rest is math.

I like 5e. I like it a lot. I can pull out my OD&D/AD&D 1e/2e stuff and just eyeball conversions if I need to. I can just use the Basic Rules and SRD stuff for free, free, and run a game which really doesn't feel much different from RC/1e. No backgrounds. No feats. Hell, you could even ignore ability score increases if you wanted. The main difference between old school and new school is that new school at least makes some sort of token attempt at doing most things under a unified mechanic. Sort of. Things scale similarly in newer editions, which wasn't as much of an issue in older editions.

There is one more glaring problem with making a distinction between Old School/OSR games and something like 5e. That is the fact that mechanically, 5e IS very much an OSR. A lot of old school players took to it because a lot of the content was instantly familiar. Who cares about whether AC is ascending or descending? You still roll that d20 and aim to roll high. Moreover, the players matter. A group of new players running 5e are not going to run the same style of game as a group of Grognards. The Grogs are going to hold on to the old ways, though they may bring in newer rules which work. If I run a game, and the group wants to Murderhobo, I am going to let them Murderhobo. Sure, there might be consequences, but that's part of the fun, as they can show me just how good they can Murderhobo. If they want something more nuanced, or combat light with more roleplay, sure we can do that. It's always been that way.

Really though, easier or not... It's math. I can and have on this forum distilled the Mentzer Monster Reaction Table into something simpler which retains the exact same probabilities as the original table with redundant recursion. Though I like the recursion and think it could be used for something more interesting, which would negate the redundancy. Or if you wanted to keep it simple, it can be mapped to a d20 while still retaining a similar outcome. When I mapped it to d20, it changed the probabilities a little bit, but odds are it wouldn't even be noticed much in play if at all. Mind you, that was mostly an academic exercise, as I find rolling 2d6 to be more visually pleasing with regard to the Menzter Table than a d20. The d20 table is because one day I might need it for a 5e game.

The thing is, Pundit, whatever information that you are trying to mine here, there is not going to be a right answer. Use the mechanics that you like. If you want your ability score bonuses to scale like they do in the RC, then do that. If for some reason, you think Bend Bar/Lift Gates percentage rolls are a good idea, then use it. In my old group, BB/LG was a catch all for feats of strength, which added to the usefulness of fighter types. Nowadays, you roll Strength versus a DC, but the idea is the same, which translates to a similar mechanic.

I think something you may want to consider, Pundit, is aesthetic. What I am saying here is that there are old mechanics, like the Mentzer Table, which just look neat on paper. They are visually appealing, and easy to read. I mean, come on, if you can get kids to understand a table with two levels of recursion, then you probably made a pretty good table. Think about the stuff you like, and particularly the layout, and try and think what it is that is appealing. As I mentioned earlier, presentation matters. If it is visually appealing, you can sneak in more complexity and it will still get grokked.

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics;1037194AD&D is easier than 5e if you ignore all the bullshit that everyone ignored when they actually played it.

Sure, if you ignore all the bullshit, I guess I agree... it appears not even Gygax played AD&D RAW IIRC.