Okay, so I will indeed start a new thread about this topic...

In reply to John Kim's post here.

But isn't the crux of the old-school/new-school divide the focus of story (and all its gory definitions thereof) within RPG's?

Quote from: PeteBut isn't the crux of the old-school/new-school divide the focus of story (and all its gory definitions thereof) within RPG's?

Well, I'm arguing that there isn't a clear split into two.  

The splits into schools are more about how story is handled rather than whether there is story at all.  Games like Call of Cthulhu, Champions, and James Bond 007 put story on the map for RPGs.  For much of the early location-based adventures (i.e. dungeons crawls and similar structures), it doesn't really make sense to talk about the "plot" of an adventure.  However, Call of Cthulhu adventures do have a plot in the sense of a villain with a plan who gets defeated -- so there is some centrality, pacing, and closure.  

There was a slow shift through the later 80s and 90s to have more linear plots.  This trend started in Star Wars (1987) and peaked in the nineties with Torg (1990), the Masterbook games, Deadlands, and Feng Shui -- where adventures for the latter systems were written out as an explicit sequence of scenes.  With the resurgence of D&D3, that style has gone out of favor (thankfully so, in my opinion).  Note that while I'm not fond of White Wolf designs in general, they were not the originator or the peak of the trend.  They did do a lot to popularize it, though.

There's a whole lot of "splits." The "realism" split, the "comprehensiveness" split (12 stats plus 6 derived, 100+ skills), the universal task resolution split, the universal game system split... and that's just the early through mid-80s.

If "story" implies a narrative powered by a "How far will you go?" premise; a definition of PCs as having a rich inner life that's riven with conflict; and a game as above all revolving around decisions based on that--then "story" came to the table very, very late. Maybe not even with Vampire?

I knew people using relationship maps and bangs to create player-driven story back in the early eighties, though there weren't formalized names for these techniques back then. (Although one finds odd things now and then in the DW adventure by design columns and some odd Dragon articles.)

Also, stories where moral choices drive play go back pretty much to the beginning. As soon as you have prisoner's dilemmas in play, which you do even in proto-D&D, you have the option to take them in a Narrativist direction (e.g. by playing for the dilemma and experiencing that test of your character's character as the goal and reward of play).

Which is not to say that there haven't been all kinds of new things accomplished in design in the last few years.

I guess this is to say that if Pierce is referring to designing systems explicitly to bring these things to the fore, then fine, that's recent all right, but if it's this stuff as a goal of play, I can say pretty certainly that it was there in the seventies and that I myself was playing in some games like this by 1981 at the latest.

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Oh yeah, and on to Pete's original question, old school/new school has exactly jack shit to do with issues about 'story'. In fact, you could get the ultimate post-Forge art-house wannabe wanker in the same room as a crusty cat-piss-man 40 year old 400 pound '70's exile D&D grognard, people who would never actually game with each other in a million years and who had nothing in common socially, and you know the one thing they would agree on?

That Dragonlance and Vampire were the worst steaming piles of RPG crap ever created.

Quote from: jhkimWell, I'm arguing that there isn't a clear split into two.  

The splits into schools are more about how story is handled rather than whether there is story at all.  Games like Call of Cthulhu, Champions, and James Bond 007 put story on the map for RPGs.  For much of the early location-based adventures (i.e. dungeons crawls and similar structures), it doesn't really make sense to talk about the "plot" of an adventure.  However, Call of Cthulhu adventures do have a plot in the sense of a villain with a plan who gets defeated -- so there is some centrality, pacing, and closure.  

Pretty well all of the early D&D modules had plots.


RPGPundit

Why I am now starting to really hate "GNS".

 Calithena's post had some of the terms from it.

 Is it possible to talk about RPGs without all those damn terms seeping into the conversation like bad mold?

- Ed C.

I myself would argue that the main divide isn't in terms of "story", but is a duality of both type of origin and coherence of system.   Please note that these are my personal observations, and Old Geezer, please correct me if I'm wrong!

"Old school" games tend not to be very focused in terms of systems, and O/AD&D is exemplary of this. Fighters and thieves and mages and clerics all have different systems that work for them.  Fighters work differently than Thieves, and Thieves work differently than Mages.  Coming straight out of wargames (where each different unit has different special case rules, which may or may not work differently than your "standard unit")  Gygax, Arneson, and company probably saw this as the optimal solution at hand- why have  your wizard use the same mechanics as your fighter when different mechanics would work better?    Same thing for skills in Traveller. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

The "New School," however,  didn't come out of wargaming. Your average New School gamer had never heard of Chainmail or Warhammer or any of the Avalon Hill stuff.  they came in and saw that fighters played like this, thieves played like that, wizards played another way, and bards?  F that noise!  Why not make things simpler? That's when you start seeing things like unified system mechanics and such.

In short, I place the dividing line as being whether you came into RPGs from other types of games, or just sort of came into RPGs.

I see Star Frontiers as something of a missing link- You've got your unified mechanic (percentile dice, roll low), but you've got lots of special case rules in the skill groupings where things work differently seemingly for the sake of working differently.

Story kinda comes into it, but only abstractly- Story is important to both... After all, the D&D characters have to resque the princess from the dragon somehow, right? The difference is that with "Old School" the story is molded around the mechanics, where the "New School" is more concerned with the systems molding to the story.

Or at least that's how I see it. :shrug:

I don't think "Old School" can be defined so easily.

Once you hit a previous edition of a current game/system, that's Old School. Once your game is out of print, that's Old School. If your D&D 3.5 campaign is a continuation of your 2nd edition campaign, thats old school!

1st Edition Exalted is Old School. Hell D&D 3.0 is Old School.


What it comes down to is this, anything that isn't the "new hotness" is Old School.

That's it.

Quote from: ScoundrelI myself would argue that the main divide isn't in terms of "story", but is a duality of both type of origin and coherence of system.   Please note that these are my personal observations, and Old Geezer, please correct me if I'm wrong!

"Old school" games tend not to be very focused in terms of systems, and O/AD&D is exemplary of this. Fighters and thieves and mages and clerics all have different systems that work for them.  Fighters work differently than Thieves, and Thieves work differently than Mages.  Coming straight out of wargames (where each different unit has different special case rules, which may or may not work differently than your "standard unit")  Gygax, Arneson, and company probably saw this as the optimal solution at hand- why have  your wizard use the same mechanics as your fighter when different mechanics would work better?    Same thing for skills in Traveller. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

Sounds about right.

Quote from: ScoundrelIn short, I place the dividing line as being whether you came into RPGs from other types of games, or just sort of came into RPGs.

That's as good a definition as any, and better than most.  Also it matches my observations; RPGers who were/are wargamers have vastly different expectations from those who were/are not.

Quote from: KrakaJak1st Edition Exalted is Old School. Hell D&D 3.0 is Old School.

Yep. One day 4E will be the preserve of crusty old grognards who'll have no truck with all that new-fangled nanonically implanted shared-reality bollocks.

So it goes.

An aspect that is different in some New Skool gaming over old skool gaming is the notion of script immunity - mooks are there to simply make my character look good and I should only ever be set back and not killed. Death should only arise for a character if I've been consulted and I agree that my character dies in a meaningful, heroic way. Its called de-protagonization and it is a term often used over at rpgnet (I like to call it James Bond Gaming). In old skool gaming you had resurrection spells and fate points to keep your character around a bit longer but you couldn't just opt out of being killed and the possibility enhances the game.

Edit. BTW I am not a proponent of script immunity, I enjoy risk.

I think there is a growing desire for Neo-Old School.  These are games that are about playing over navel gazing and focus and being able to get playing quickly, recognizing that one shots and mini campaigns are almost the norm for many groups.  
 
They're old school in sentiment, focusing on action.  But the rules are fairly modern, with a unified mechanic, the absence of long tangents on obscure parts of the game, and just generally cleaner.
 
I think many people want to kill orcs and find treasure without having to go back to AD&D.  But that may be more of an online trend than a real one.

Quote from: Cold Blooded GamesAn aspect that is different in some New Skool gaming over old skool gaming is the notion of script immunity - mooks are there to simply make my character look good and I should only ever be set back and not killed. Death should only arise for a character if I've been consulted and I agree that my character dies in a meaningful, heroic way. Its called de-protagonization and it is a term often used over at rpgnet

Yes, deprotagonization is often used at RPGnet.  Not to mean that, however.

Deprotagonization is when the PCs are no longer the focus of the game.  The archetype would be if Elminster shows up and kills the dragon instead of the PCs.  You've just been deprotagonized.

It refers to being turned from the "protagonist" to the "audience".

Thank you for putting in the proper meaning with a clear example.
You are right in what you say about the main meaning but I have read the view that lack of control over character death itself is de-protagonizing. My fault I was taliking about this extended view without explaining the accepted meaning first.

I responded to this discussion over here.

http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8029