Sunday, January 6, 2013

Old School - style or rules?

Beedo brought up the idea that "old school" is a play style. Well, that the OSR is a play style, to overly simplify his statement.

I occasionally wonder about this as well, since I play a game that many would consider "new school," as if rules heavy = new school.* Hah, I say. Hah. Hah. But I play with a deliberate tip of the hat to old school games, and the stuff I enjoyed playing since I was a kid.

I think there are two ways to be "old school." One is style, one is literally playing the old stuff.

Old School Style is simply that - you play a game much like it was played back in the old days. For whatever reason - nostalgia, enjoying a different style of play, change of pace, belief in its inherent superiority. Rule sets help - it's easier to play old school if you use an old school game. But it's about style and sensibility. It's that early, fairness means I don't re-roll, cheerfully lethal, no save or undo, go do what you want and I'll rule how it works in play kind of deal. Easier with some game systems but not impossible with most.

Literally Playing Old Games is another part of it. If I dig out my AD&D books and run Dragonlance, am I not playing an old-school game? I'd say yes, even if I'm railroading my players and given them PCs with pages of background and pre-determined actions at certain points in play. That may not be fun (or it might), but it's playing like it's the early 1980s all over again. Those modules came out before at least one of my players was born, and closer to the birth date of D&D than to now. So that's still old school, even if it represents a newer style of play within that old school. AD&D is pretty clearly old-school gaming, but it's not like you couldn't use it for something entirely non-old school in style. And you can use old school rules in a totally non-impartial fashion. Killer DM, anyone? That's pretty damn old school, although rarely fun in my experience.

So I it helps to think of it that way - do I want old school style, yes or no? Do I want actual old school rules, yes or no? You can answer either way, and end up in different places:

yes, yes: OD&D, AD&D, etc.
yes, no: GURPS, Pathfinder, later editions of D&D, etc.
no, yes: Dragonlance, some of the Planescape adventures, etc.
no, no: (Various games)

For me, I think my games are old school in style, even if I cheerfully mix rules ideas from any generation of gaming. I use disadvantages and character background yet I randomly roll treasure in a megadungeon setting and roll damage dice in front of everyone so they can watch their PCs die horribly in the process. I went with yes, no as my options. Whee!


* I've always wonder where folks stick GURPS - is it old school (its central mechanics date to the mid-80s), because of its age, or new school because, uhm, it's still in print? To me, it's still old school at its heart, but the optional and core rules have gotten more and more refined to make it play faster and better. The point values of characters from 4th edition GURPS are different than those in Man-to-Man or 1st edition GURPS, but the numbers mean the same things, and you could use them with only a tiny bit of conversion.

10 comments:

  1. Thought-provoking post. Thanks!

    Where would you place the rule that only the DM rolls dice? I feel like that's become controversial beyond the old school, smacking of over-controlling DMs, so that it's rarely mentioned as part of old-school play.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've heard of Gary Gygax playing that way, but somehow it seems less fun. It preserves some secrecy and mystery, but man, you lose the fun of getting to roll and pray the dice are nice to you.

      Delete
  2. I think the term "Old School" is usually being used by D&D players that are reacting against D&D 3.5 and especially D&D 4e. (It may be that such people play a wider variety of games than just ones derived from D&D... but D&D's lingua franca status among rpgs manages to warp the conversation anyway.)

    Many of the OSR's criticisms of 4e D&D apply equally to Car Wars: linear adventure design, munchkin min maxing of the vehicle builds before play, not a lot of room for role playing, etc. Of course, the bulk of the Car Wars gamers that picked it up after the Space Gamer days were long over generally failed to recognize that the game was in fact an rpg in the same mold as The Fantasy Trip's microgames. So nothing about any of this conversation makes sense!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Heh. Yeah, linear play, min-maxing, rules complexity, benefits to planning your guy from one end to the other, etc. go all the way back to the old school games. Maybe only the really early versions of D&D avoided all of that; but then, the first thing Gary Gygax added was a book of rules complexity (Greyhawk).

      If you define "old school" mainly in terms of D&D, a lot of the discussion makes sense. I approach it as a GURPS player and former D&Der, so I keep asking "Okay, but what about not-D&D?"

      Delete
  3. I thought old school meant limited rules so that meant the DM had to be creative and descriptive with encounters. Gygax used to make hi evil temples overflowing with atmosphere and description. He used all sorts of different types of stone for encounters like malachite, hematite, hornblend etc. His magic items were librams, tomes, thuribles, philters etc. He painted a picture in which to game. The Tomb of Horrors and the Vault of the Drow have wonderful descriptions and bring fantasy to life. The newer stuff seems more about blasting power than dreamy fantasy. For me, I liked Gygax's style while the rules are less important. GURPS allows creation of unique characters and powers and allows mixing of genres so that is why I like GURPS. But I also love Ars Magica for their excelent descriptions so maybe I am new school? Just old school for Gygax adventures, I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a strong "minimalist descriptions" theme in the OSR, like here:

      Playing with Adventure Construction

      . . . but Gygax's published modules are pretty description heavy, and I don't think it's the soul of old school. It's very old school, but you could take it out without making it new school.

      Delete
  4. Did anyone reading this ever actually use the convention of a caller, such that only the caller got to address the DM directly? I seem to remember this being advised in D&D/AD&D, but I didn't meet anyone who actually used it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've seen it done in con games. It has the good effects of a) taming a large group of strangers, b) making it easier for the GM to sort out noise from communication, and c) making the GM speak up, if he chooses as caller the player sitting furthest away from him.

      Delete
    2. I never used a caller. I like the idea of "person further from the GM" though, that makes for a better table dynamic I think.

      Delete
  5. I hope that this does not appear as spam - I'm going to be tackling this exact issue at Grognard Games http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75g4AuhhWQI

    Please do chip in to debate and join in with us. We're the only channel of our kind on Youtube and if we can compliment the blogsphere with OD&D and OSR we certainly will :)

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...