Quote from: RPGPundit;847853I don't agree that this is essential.  My games tend to feature wilderness travel, roleplay/intrigue with NPCs or NPC-factions, and dungeon crawling (plus, in Albion, warfare and its consequences) in about equal measure.

it may not be essential, but it's certainly a quality of old school play afaic...the dungeon is pretty fundamental.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;847864it may not be essential, but it's certainly a quality of old school play afaic...the dungeon is pretty fundamental.

Hhrrrm? I almost don't use Dungeons at all.

The majority of game play in my Fantasy games is wilderness survival adventures, followed closely by urban intrigue adventures... Next most popular adventure type is nautical adventures. Dungeoneering comes in a distant sixth in popularity, as exploring ancient ruins occurs more frequently and most of the ancient ruins don't have a dungeon. Dungeoneering is even less common than exploring natural caves and caverns IMC.

Dungeons are one of the most expensive things in the game for NPCs or Players to build and maintain.

Quote from: RPGPundit;847836Generally yes to all of these.  However, with 3 I think there could be room for games where the PCs get to 'superhero' level. Never at the beginning, though.  Even so, there can be settings where the rest of the world is generally low-powered, so that even name-level dudes seem amazing when they get there (Albion is a lot like that).  Or settings where by the time PCs get to higher levels they will be quite epic and the setting is meant to reflect it (Arrows of Indra is like that).



I'd generally agree too, however, I think the more important thing is that what you are at the start is not your choice.  It's not about buying the right feats or spending points on background perks.  If you have something special or are something special it's because you were lucky on random rolls.

For example, both in Albion and Arrows, a PC could theoretically get to start out at lv.1 as an impoverished peasant, or start out as a really well-connected noble with comparatively stupid amounts of resources.  But it should be about the luck of the dice.



Yes and DEFINITELY yes.

The best thing about this characteristics, for me, is that most of theses things combine into a whole "your character is what you do at the table", or "the story is what happens at the table" mindset, instead of the character creation mini-game that might become more important than what you choose as a character.

Which is why I agree with you that randomness works better for character creation in OS.

I also agree you can become a superhero, eventually, but you have to work hard and survive to get there. Even if you start out as a rich noble, that isn't necessarily so special: it doesn't allow you to be the best possible knight or anything like that. Sure, you have a big fief, but many lords ruled this fief before you and most were forgotten. There are hundreds of lords around that are never ever mentioned in the game, and so on.

Maybe it boils down to "you start the game as an extra, and its up to you to become the protagonist".

Games such as DW and 13th age (to mention two games I enjoy) are opposite to old school because of that: your character is special from the start, and making him special is a part of character creation. So you must have some safeguards to avoid dying by accident, such as lots of HP.

Quote from: GameDaddy;847867Hhrrrm? I almost don't use Dungeons at all.

"Old school" is a big tent. Nothing in this thread should be take as prescriptive.

Dungeons are old school. Very old school. Very close to heart and core and origin of the term. But lacking them? That doesn't mean you're cast out. There's no one single defining characteristic anyone can point to and say "if you don't have this, you're not old school".

Quote from: GameDaddy;847867Hhrrrm? I almost don't use Dungeons at all.

The majority of game play in my Fantasy games is wilderness survival adventures, followed closely by urban intrigue adventures... Next most popular adventure type is nautical adventures. Dungeoneering comes in a distant sixth in popularity, as exploring ancient ruins occurs more frequently and most of the ancient ruins don't have a dungeon. Dungeoneering is even less common than exploring natural caves and caverns IMC.

Dungeons are one of the most expensive things in the game for NPCs or Players to build and maintain.

Well, I'm sure you will agree that dungeons are a big part of the history of original D&D won't you?  I mean it's great that your campaign doesn't have them much, but what percentage of campaigns would you say do feature them?  I'd wager something above 90%?  Pretty much all of the published adventures from the time had them...we're not likely to find a definition that is 100% applicable.

And even when we move above ground to wilderness areas, they are often handles pretty similarly to dungeons.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;846493People talk about "old school" D&D (and other games), but there are many different visions of it floating around. Matt Finch's primer is a good start, but maybe not enough for all versions

My view is that old school is subjective and there has been an old school renaissance reviving interest in tabletop RPGs from all eras especially the 70s and early 80s. That this revolution is enabled by the internet and technology like PDFs and print on demand.

In conjunction with this there is a Old School Renaissance focused on playing, promoting, and publishing for classic edition of D&D along with whatever thing that happens to interest people involved.

The osr (all small letters) is not the same as the OSR (all caps). The OSR is a subset, the largest subset mind you, of the osr.

The term OSR is first and foremost is an organic marketing terms. Somebody that people who were playing, publishing, and publicizing older edition. I was one of the people who started using it when it gained traction. I used because my readers understood what it meant and it was easier to type than having to say "all those playing, promoting, and publishing for classic D&D." all the time.

What it never meant that the individuals thought that other older games weren't old school. From the get it go and periodically the title Old School Renaissance generated controversy. For my part, I just like it to describe what I do. Also I knew that due to the widespread use of the OGL that it was going to go in all kinds of direction. And as it turned out I was right.

The answer what old school doesn't and does matter. Everything niche is experiencing a renaissance thanks to the internet. Where it does matter is people get nostalgic so that always a factor. It rarely the only reason that a niche endures but it is a factor.

If I have a criticism is of those who criticize others with narrow interests. If there a group of people who like only 1st edition AD&D great! With the internet and technology rules of gatekeeping have been smashed all to bits and we are in new territory. It just that easy for small groups to split off and do their own thing.

What has happened is an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of alliances, partnerships, and relationship to get projects done. I believe the Pundit has worked with three publishers on three projects. Zack is working with James Raggi today, and tommorow the two could working with completely different people to get stuff done.

In the part of the OSR I am involved people are always trading art for cartography, layout for editing and so on.  It is an utopia for some and hellish for others. Some people need structure to be creative while others thrive. But as time goes on the OSR developed established publishers and promoters as well as guys still going at it alone.

Quote from: RPGPundit;847853I don't agree that this is essential.  My games tend to feature wilderness travel, roleplay/intrigue with NPCs or NPC-factions, and dungeon crawling (plus, in Albion, warfare and its consequences) in about equal measure.

Maybe your game isn't 100% old school? To me it seems there are a lot of old school influences, but also provides a depth that reminds me more of games like Harnmaster, Pendragon or Ars Magica. Those wouldn't qualify as old school games in my book.

Don't see this as criticism btw. I mean it as a compliment. It seems like you take the best of both worlds.

Btw I see old school games as focused in design, broad in scale, but also a bit shallow in experience. For example with a dungeon crawler it is crystal clear what you are supposed to do (kick in door, kill monsters, loot the room), it is broad in scale (large maps, big hexcrawls), but it can be a bit shallow (more of the same).

New school games are usually very thematic, more in depth, but unfocused in design. Usually providing a good read, having neat ideas, but it can be a little unclear about what you are actually supposed to do in the game.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;847863To me, the acceptance of these two elements without kvetching over realism is a fundamental element of "old school" rpging.  As soon as you try to explain or rationalize "dungeon ecology" you start moving away from old school style of play.   As well, efforts to replicate any particular literary narrative in the game also moves away from OS play...

I tend to think that wrt rpgs, people generally use "old school" to reference a time as much as a style - the mid 70s to early 80s.  I don't think very many people refer to the early 90s or 2000s when they talk of old school rpgs...

My Point it I was playing this way in 1980 so what does Old School mean if it doesn't apply to the Old games I used to play when I was at School.....

Changes to AD&D that eventually led to the increased focus on role playing over gaming by 2e were already in place in the hobby from before the DMG was published.
The increasing importance of the roleplay bit was what undermines the dungeon and teams of hirelings and makes me want to play a game that feels like a Conan adventure or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser or Jack of Shadows or Dying Earth. Surely that desire goes back to the very origins of the hobby in the first place otherwise why personalise your army units and take on individual roles, just stick with wargaming and Chainmail.

Quote from: RandallS;846503I pretty much agree with the points in the first post. Four additional very important "old school" points for me are:

A) Combat is fast and fairly abstract. While combat happens a lot in most old school games, it is not time-consuming nor is it intended to be the most interesting part of the session. Minis/pieces and battlemats can be used if the GM wants but they are never required.

B) System mastery is not required. Players do not need to know the rules to play (and play well). They can simply describe what their character is doing in plain language (not gamespeak) and the GM will tell them the results of their action or what they need to roll.

C) The rules are merely guidelines for the GM. The rules are not intended or designed to protect players from a "bad" GM. Players can and should, of course, not play with a GM they consider bad.

D) The system mechanics are not purposely designed to be interesting for players to manipulate but to get out of the way so the stuff going on in the campaign is the center of attention. It's not about what mechanical features a character gets as the campaign progresses but about what the character does in the campaign.

Correct in every particular.

Quote from: jibbajibba;847990My Point it I was playing this way in 1980 so what does Old School mean if it doesn't apply to the Old games I used to play when I was at School.....

...perhaps it means the way you played isn't the way the majority of people were playing back then and isn't what people generally mean by "old school."  :idunno:  It's actually not even a requirement that the term relates to how "most" people played.  It could refer specifically to the way the designers ran their campaigns and maybe hardly anyone else played that way.  

Again, terms like this very rarely are 100% applicable.  

There seems to be a resentment at times from some folks when it comes to the term "old school."  It's like the term refers to a special club and they don't like feeling like they aren't in the club so they try to expand the definition enough to include them.

Hmm, well in my TFT campaign that started in 1980, I had some "dungeons" (Labyrinths in TFT), but at least by 1982 I was interested in where they had come from, why they were there, and what anyone/anything was doing living in them, and was thinking up reasons or retcons for the ones I'd just put there, which started to seem more and more problematic if the reasons didn't make sense. They could be mysterious and bizarre, as long as there was a reason somehow. By 1985, the reasons were actually starting to get pretty interesting.

There aren't many published dungeons for TFT, but I think pretty much all of the published dungeons have some sort of at least semi-sensible actual reasons for existing. The most elaborate one and about the only one Metagaming actually published as a GM adventure module, Tollenkar's Lair, is actually quite consistent and interestingly detailed in ways that make sense. There's a reason for pretty much everything being where it is, notes about what will happen if/when players disrupt it and how the various groups will respond to intrusion, and about how the magic and stuff is actually there to be used by the residents, not just there to be hauled away.

Oh, and I guess I didn't think much about original point , that old school games aren't oriented around stories in advance, which yeah, our GMs might have some ideas about what would tend to happen for a session or in future or what was going on in the world, but definitely the game was about having free agents in that world and seeing what happened and whether they'd die (more like, who would die) or lose stuff or profit. I am still of the mind that I'm not very interested in playing in games where I'm just an actor in a scripted plot thought up in advance by the GM. The most fun I've seen in RPGs is when players do cool unexpected things and what happens during play determines what happens. If I want to listen to someone's pre-made story, I'd rather just hear them tell it to me, or watch a play or read a book or something.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;848035...perhaps it means the way you played isn't the way the majority of people were playing back then and isn't what people generally mean by "old school."  :idunno:

It's a term meant to evoke a certain play style, the may or may not have existed, relying on terminology and common misconceptions of how games were played 'back in the day'.  None of which actually did exist, outside of specific instances of small groups in which before the advent of the internet, in which they believed was the way everyone played.

In fact, I'd posit that most of the 'Old School' play style only happened to a small, if not, miniscule group of localized gamers.

However, this does not mean that these play styles are bad.  In fact, some are inspired, and have inspired a lot of 'modern' gaming styles. Others are just 'different' enough to be enjoyable in their own right.

But none of them should be considered indicative of 'how the game was played' because frankly, there was no unified way.  Outside of not being able to 'think outside the box'.

I think there is something to be said for the "GM" as a Referee. His main responsibility, after creating (or buying) a scenario, setting, adventure, etc, is to be FAIR. Not to fight against the players, or saving their characters when they do something stupid.

It is a very different mindset than the one who puts PCs as protagonists with lots of plot armor, and forces the GM to be responsible for their well-being.

And IMO no old-school Referee is a "storyteller" of any kind.

This is why I think improvisation when creating places, monsters, etc, is not too faithful to OS play. The Referee should create the dungeon (or random encounters table, etc) before the game, and improvise only when dealing with rulings, crazy stunts done by the PCs, etc, but not "ok, this fight is too easy, a few more goblins appear...", etc.

Once I created an impressive "honor guard" NPC and a PC destroyed him with a single good roll. Last sessions, two henchmen almost killed one of the PCs. This unpredictability is great for me.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;848154I think there is something to be said for the "GM" as a Referee. His main responsibility, after creating (or buying) a scenario, setting, adventure, etc, is to be FAIR. Not to fight against the players, or saving their characters when they do something stupid.

No different than how a lot of people play now.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;848154And IMO no old-school Referee is a "storyteller" of any kind.

Even those that did want to tell a story back in say, '82?  Or is that too New School for you?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;848156Even those that did want to tell a story back in say, '82?  Or is that too New School for you?

One thing I had to get over was this idea that what people mean by old school or OSR must include all things from the early days of the hobby.  I thought it was ridiculous that some ideas present in games published in the 70s would be excluded.

Now I see that it's actually about today.  When people talk about OSR or old school in relation to RPGs they don't mean "stuff present in the first decade of the hobby."  Instead they mean a very specific approach to play that actually excludes elements that show up very early in the history of RPGs.

It's not a historical categorization where examples to the contrary prove it wrong, it's about an identifiable approach and games and ideas produced now that align with that approach.

--

For anyone who insists that a definition of old school that excludes ideas present in the 1970s is useless (as I used to) then I'll simply say this:  you've got the wrong 70s.

If you talk to the people who were there with the people involved in the original campaigns, they'll point back to an even older tradition of referee moderated war gaming.  An approach that goes back to Free Kriegspiel in 1876.

So it's okay that Old School in terms of RPGs excludes my favorite game published in the 1970s because it departs from the notions of referee moderation established a full century earlier.

But that's just for people who need "old school" to be about the past and not about today.  Who don't accept that it's about current activity related to a particular approach to gaming present in the 70s rather than being a historical classification including all approaches present in the 70s.