What does old school mean to you?

[morganm]

 

More role playing and less rules lawyering.

 

 

I must assume that you are too young to have actually been an old-school roleplayer.

 

I can assure you (from far too much experience) that OD&D had at least as many rules arguments and as much munchkinism as even the most rules heavy system later created. And role-playing (of the sort that amateur thespians seem to prefer in RPGs) was far more a second-generation-game phenomenon than first generation.

 

Still, at this point, 2nd gen is probably ancient to all you whippersnappers.

 

Oh, and "Get off of my lawn!"

 

I don't have to explain what assuming does =P

 

Couldn't be more wrong; I actually cut my RPG teeth on 2nd edition. Really didn't stop playing AD&D until 2007. Sorry I'm not old enough, or cool enough, to have played 1st edition. I guess we gamed differently; we didn't really debate over rules or argue with the DMs interpretation of the rules. Sure we'd have some rules lawyering but it was very rare. With 3.5 we would literally spend hours of game time looking up crap and debating about it. As DM I had to spend stupid amounts of time preparing for each game. Now with Md20 it feels way more like gaming of decades past; maybe not for everyone but it does for me.

[wyrmgear]

... or cool enough, to have played 1st edition...

 

I think having played 1st edition is actually diametrically opposed to being cool

[rgtriplec]

... or cool enough, to have played 1st edition...

 

I think having played 1st edition is actually diametrically opposed to being cool

 

I think all I ever played was 1st edition. So, am I cool or diametrically not cool

[ReaperWolf]

Enjoying the chatter. <<BUMP!>>

 

As for myself, old-school means mystery and excitement where behind every dungeon door lurked unknown adventure.

 

I remember cutting my teeth on Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. A friend of the family was the GM and I was the only player. Originally I was familiar with D&D but the GM introduced me to the AD&D Hardcovers. Wowza! Anywho, we crafted a total of 8 characters to take into the long-abandoned house overlooking the nearby town of Saltmarsh and I was instantly hooked.

 

It wasn't the loot!

It wasn't the character advancement!

It wasn't some misguided need to prove myself to some faceless online community.

 

For me it was all about exploring the unknown reaches of a fictional fantasy setting and pretending to be someone I was't. While exploring the haunted house in Saltmarsh, I was Crow, High Elf Fighter-Magic User level 1/1.

 

Fond memories.

 

My games now are all about instilling that feeling of wonder, excitement, and fun associated with the long-gone sepia-toned halcyon days of let's pretend.

 

Nowadays, I'm running D&D 3.x Mystara and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e. When the mood strikes, I also run Hollow Earth Expedition and Starblazer Adventures. I promote heroic roleplay, cooperation, drama over the accumulation of in-game assets, fair-play, and excitement at the possibilities offered by the interactive narrative dynamic between GM and players.

 

Call me a grognard but old-school doesn't need to be just about the fat l00ts and XPs, it's about the feel and mood cultivated around the table.

 

Some groups believe this means playing game systems derived from the golden and silver ages of roleplaying such as OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, and Swords & Wizardry but from my perspective the rules didn't deliver the gaming experience, it was the players and GM. IMO, there's no reason to eschew tabletop engine innovation for clunky rules to achieve a satisfying game session. If that's your bag, cool!

 

Castles & Crusades and Hackmaster are both examples of more modern takes on old-school gaming. C&C unfortunately rehashed some mistakes of old such as level/XP based upon character class and how Prime Attributes (Yuck!!) work in game but otherwise it's a darn fine system and very stylish in its own right. As for Hackmaster Basic, it's a little clunky but it looks like it delivers on the old-school flavor even though it incorporates relatively new-school takes on game flow. I'm actually looking forward to what Hackmaster Advanced has to offer, whenever K&K releases the thing!!

 

<<stepping up on the soapbox>> One of the things I really miss is the boundary between GM and player information. A trend started back in 3.0 was the DMG and MM became player resources. What the heck!?! Now players had the ability to shop around for their summoners and polymorph effects, and with it much of the mystery of those tomes died. Compounding this was the CR and XP system WotC vomited up. Using the system as presented, players were never challenged and most encounters were over in 3 rounds. So much for the sweeping epic battles of Lord of the Rings! According to the "rules" players were supposed to always outnumber their foes by a factor of 4:1. So a group of four 3rd level characters squaring off with a single Ogre was considered a "reasonable" challenge. Hrm?!? That's 12 levels vs. the Ogre's. I actually had a player ask me for an accounts balance of my NPC and monsters used in a game session. He then quoted me the mechanics presented in the 3.5 DMG claiming if the math didn't work out in their favor, they deserved more XP and treasure. In his eyes, this was a rule chiseled in stone and inviolable.

 

Much of the issue lies in how the information was presented in the 3.0 books, some of this was fixed in the 3.5 printings. The PHB presented rigid sets of mechanics to which EVERYBODY including the DM was bound. The information within the DMG was presented as guidelines, to be changed to suit the GM's and player's tastes and expectations. So right off the back there's a player-GM disconnect. Compounding this is the fact that modern gamers tend to be more aggressive, competitive and tend to function as individuals as opposed to members of a team with a particular role to fill. All too often, I've run into younger rpgers who play to win and don't give two figs about the other people sitting at the table.

 

<<off the soapbox>>

 

For me, old-school means a return to fun when players didn't expect vorpal swords +5 after fighting goblins, when armor actually looked like something you'd find in a museum, weapons weren't over-sized and incorporated keen, acidic burst, and lawbane effects. Back in the day, when you found a ring of swimming or a dagger +1, you were grateful for the find and every adventure was epic.

 

>>JC Wolf

[Lars Porsenna]

Compounding this was the CR and XP system WotC vomited up. Using the system as presented, players were never challenged and most encounters were over in 3 rounds. So much for the sweeping epic battles of Lord of the Rings! According to the "rules" players were supposed to always outnumber their foes by a factor of 4:1. So a group of four 3rd level characters squaring off with a single Ogre was considered a "reasonable" challenge. Hrm?!? That's 12 levels vs. the Ogre's. I actually had a player ask me for an accounts balance of my NPC and monsters used in a game session. He then quoted me the mechanics presented in the 3.5 DMG claiming if the math didn't work out in their favor, they deserved more XP and treasure. In his eyes, this was a rule chiseled in stone and inviolable.

 

Dunno about that. This is very much a DM thing, and we had plenty -- PLENTY -- of encounters in 3xe where we looked at the DM and asked "going for the TPK tonite?" And I dunno about the party outnumbering the monsters 4 to 1 thing either, since the CR mechanic can be scaled down for multiples of a lower CR (this if your CR10 party of 4 needs a challenge, but you don't want to have them fight one monster, throwing hordes of CR5 critters at them does the trick).

 

Damon.

 

 

 

 

 

[Doug Sundseth]

More role playing and less rules lawyering.

 

 

I must assume that you are too young to have actually been an old-school roleplayer.

 

I can assure you (from far too much experience) that OD&D had at least as many rules arguments and as much munchkinism as even the most rules heavy system later created. And role-playing (of the sort that amateur thespians seem to prefer in RPGs) was far more a second-generation-game phenomenon than first generation.

 

Still, at this point, 2nd gen is probably ancient to all you whippersnappers.

 

Oh, and "Get off of my lawn!"

 

I don't have to explain what assuming does =P

 

Couldn't be more wrong; I actually cut my RPG teeth on 2nd edition.

 

You inadvertantly prove my point. By the time 2nd ed. came out, the first of the 2nd gen RPGs were at least 10 years old and I had been playing D&D for 13 years. AD&D 2nd was very much more invested in role playing and rules than was OD&D.

 

Really didn't stop playing AD&D until 2007. Sorry I'm not old enough, or cool enough, to have played 1st edition.

 

By the time that all the 1st ed. books were out, I had largely drifted away from D&D, though I still followed it a bit and played the occasional game. Traveller, C&S, Runequest, Champions ... all were much more interesting to me by then.

 

I guess we gamed differently; we didn't really debate over rules or argue with the DMs interpretation of the rules. Sure we'd have some rules lawyering but it was very rare. With 3.5 we would literally spend hours of game time looking up crap and debating about it. As DM I had to spend stupid amounts of time preparing for each game. Now with Md20 it feels way more like gaming of decades past; maybe not for everyone but it does for me.

 

We argued constantly (an artifact of horrifically written rules in part, but not in whole). We worked out cunning wheezes of the sort that are common on WotC's charop board now, though certainly less complex than some of them. We rolled dozens of characters for each character played (3d6 in order, remember). We took the same characters from one GM to another, and some of those GMs were the worst sort of Monty Haul examples (80th level MU, anybody?).

 

When you say "old school", realize that there might be schools older than yours. (FWIW, I never played from the beige box, and never really used 2d6 for D&D combat; my school isn't the oldest either.)

 

ps. If you think that "elf was a class" means "old school", you're wrong. If you think that an old school bard was some other class first, that's wrong too.

[kristof65]

It took me several hours to think of how to reply to this - on one hand, I could have said more roleplaying, less rules lawyering; or more monty haul, less game balance; players only owning the PHB and not the MM/DMG; but the truth is, all of those things (and their opposites) have existed in one form or another since I first started playing, if not longer. Even the use of computers doesn't define it - we were using Teletypes at school to generate monsters, characters, even random dungeons and playing via messaging even before we got our Commodore 64s.

 

I had to really think about the differences in my roleplaying now versus way back then. And mostly, I think it comes down to time and scheduling.

 

Back then, a game would happen at the drop of a hat. The GM (usually me) would simply say to the guys, hey, we're going to play the campaign tonight, and everyone would show up. We'd play from after school till it was time to go home on weeknights, til dawn on weekends, etc. We'd game at lunch, before school/work - anytime we had an hour or more and the group was together. You always carried your books and characters with you, because you needed to be ready for a game. And it seemed like there were always 2-3 campaigns going among my friends, run by different GMs, and if the game system was the same - say D&D - then characters would freely move between campaigns. If all the members of one campaign weren't there, there was likely to be everyone in another campaign

 

These days, though, for me gaming is a carefully scheduled thing - every other tuesday, one saturday a month, every thursday, etc. Rarely do I participate in a game at the drop of a hat. Every character has it's own campaign, my books are neatly stacked on my shelf unless I need them for a game, or to work on my character. Gaming is something I enjoy when my friends and I's schedules manage to allow us to get together, not something that spontaneously happens because we are together.

 

So if I really had to define it, I'd say Old School gaming is where the sessions and get togethers are more spontaneous, informal and frequent. The type of stuff you can afford to do in high school, college, the military barracks and even before you have kids.

 

Regardless of actual play styles, I'd bet that for most long time RPGers - whether or not they got started on OD&D, AD&D 2e, or even 3e - that those freewheeling days of High School and College (or earlier) are really what Old School is about.

[ReaperWolf]

Compounding this was the CR and XP system WotC vomited up. Using the system as presented, players were never challenged and most encounters were over in 3 rounds. So much for the sweeping epic battles of Lord of the Rings! According to the "rules" players were supposed to always outnumber their foes by a factor of 4:1. So a group of four 3rd level characters squaring off with a single Ogre was considered a "reasonable" challenge. Hrm?!? That's 12 levels vs. the Ogre's. I actually had a player ask me for an accounts balance of my NPC and monsters used in a game session. He then quoted me the mechanics presented in the 3.5 DMG claiming if the math didn't work out in their favor, they deserved more XP and treasure. In his eyes, this was a rule chiseled in stone and inviolable.

 

Dunno about that. This is very much a DM thing, and we had plenty -- PLENTY -- of encounters in 3xe where we looked at the DM and asked "going for the TPK tonite?" And I dunno about the party outnumbering the monsters 4 to 1 thing either, since the CR mechanic can be scaled down for multiples of a lower CR (this if your CR10 party of 4 needs a challenge, but you don't want to have them fight one monster, throwing hordes of CR5 critters at them does the trick).

 

One of the problems is not all party ECLs are created equal but the CR system doesn't take that into account.

 

For example:

A party of four 1st level characters, all with ability scores of 18+. What's their ECL? 1

A party of four 1st level characters, all with ability scores of 12. What's their ECL? 1

A party of four 1st level characters, all with ability scores of 8-. What's their ECL? 1

 

Also, by increasing the monster numbers by 1 you increase CR by 2 so if I wanted to throw two ogres at a party they'd have to be 5th level which would whomp on the ogres without so much as breaking a sweat.

 

CR is an arbitrary numerical assignment which simply doesn't work. I hate to admit it but Hackmaster had a more workable system.

 

Of course, this is all just my opinion. As in all things, YMMV.

 

Old-school, new school, middle school, pre school. So long as you're gaming I'm happy. Some of the best times of my life have been spent around the table torturing entertaining a group of players.

 

Hey Kit! Reaper Ron! Reaper Bryan! Pipe up guys! Let's hear from the Reaper Peeps!

 

>>ReaperWolf

[morganm]

More role playing and less rules lawyering.

 

 

I must assume that you are too young to have actually been an old-school roleplayer.

 

I can assure you (from far too much experience) that OD&D had at least as many rules arguments and as much munchkinism as even the most rules heavy system later created. And role-playing (of the sort that amateur thespians seem to prefer in RPGs) was far more a second-generation-game phenomenon than first generation.

 

Still, at this point, 2nd gen is probably ancient to all you whippersnappers.

 

Oh, and "Get off of my lawn!"

 

I don't have to explain what assuming does =P

 

Couldn't be more wrong; I actually cut my RPG teeth on 2nd edition.

 

You inadvertantly prove my point. By the time 2nd ed. came out, the first of the 2nd gen RPGs were at least 10 years old and I had been playing D&D for 13 years. AD&D 2nd was very much more invested in role playing and rules than was OD&D.

 

Really didn't stop playing AD&D until 2007. Sorry I'm not old enough, or cool enough, to have played 1st edition.

 

By the time that all the 1st ed. books were out, I had largely drifted away from D&D, though I still followed it a bit and played the occasional game. Traveller, C&S, Runequest, Champions ... all were much more interesting to me by then.

 

I guess we gamed differently; we didn't really debate over rules or argue with the DMs interpretation of the rules. Sure we'd have some rules lawyering but it was very rare. With 3.5 we would literally spend hours of game time looking up crap and debating about it. As DM I had to spend stupid amounts of time preparing for each game. Now with Md20 it feels way more like gaming of decades past; maybe not for everyone but it does for me.

 

We argued constantly (an artifact of horrifically written rules in part, but not in whole). We worked out cunning wheezes of the sort that are common on WotC's charop board now, though certainly less complex than some of them. We rolled dozens of characters for each character played (3d6 in order, remember). We took the same characters from one GM to another, and some of those GMs were the worst sort of Monty Haul examples (80th level MU, anybody?).

 

When you say "old school", realize that there might be schools older than yours. (FWIW, I never played from the beige box, and never really used 2d6 for D&D combat; my school isn't the oldest either.)

 

ps. If you think that "elf was a class" means "old school", you're wrong. If you think that an old school bard was some other class first, that's wrong too.

 

 

I never said, and I don't see how I even insinuated, how what I thought was 'old school' was the only school of old. The original poster asked what I thought old school was and I gave my opinion; then you quote me and went on some tangent about how I don't know what old school is.

 

I think by saying things like "if you think elf was a class means old school, you're wrong" insinuates that your point of view on old school is the only genuine one...

[Catman Jim]

I'm old school, and cool enough not to care one rodent's backside what anyone may think of me. I'll be 50 this summer, I'm an original 1E player from my college days, and have played on & off for over 30 years. My favorites: the classic AD&D module series - A, B, I, UK, U, and others, and the settings - Ravenloft, Mystara, Planescape, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and The Realms.

[Amalor Myrnnyx]

Old school? Oh, you're missing the good stuff ...

 

Soda made with sugar instead of corn syrup.

KFC actually cooked in lard. (as were McDonald's cherry pies)

GenCon in Milwaukee (where it belongs!)

$2 Miniatures made of lead, and were always one piece.

$5 scenario packs, and $12 boxed sets.

Double D10s, with crayons.

Creating characters with thought and reading, instead of a design program.

[wyrmgear]

Meh, someone will always be older than you and they will always say their ways were better.

 

I like new stuff- I don't like all of it, but you can't please all the people all of the time. You can keep your bulky, poor resolution CRTs, cell phones the size of a cinder block, and your 8 tracks.

 

Game-wise I have to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with modern games; it's all in how you play them. I am not lazy, but between a 55 hour a week job, four days at the gym, working on my second Masters, attending martial arts training a couple of days a week, and still having a social life I find downloading a free PDF adventure online pretty dang convenient.

 

I am running a game of Dark heresy with some great friends and we have a blast. We roll dice when needed, act out the parts that are fun to act out, and always keep humor in the forefront (what is a Psykers greatest bane? A tent pole, duh. - Group inside joke...). When we don't feel like investing the time in RPing, we bust out a board game (Small Worlds, Kill Doctor Lucky, Red Dragon Inn, etc). And we have fun because of the way we play (Red Dragon Inn is a blast when you overact the names of the cards).

 

Now, to be completely fair, a game with poor mechanics would require more work to play (I like rules that make sense- makes for fewer arguments or interrupted game play).

 

Sorry, got completely off the OT there

 

To me, old school gaming is sitting around a table playing a horror game by candle light and whispering because you don't want to alert the monsters that you're in the house- and your don't even realize you're whispering. Jumping up from the table and grabbing a broom stick because you have to demonstrate the sword thrust you want to kill that goblin with. Holding an imaginary gun and reloading it before the next encounter because the adrenaline of the last fight dictates you must! Grabbing the nearest napkin to keep from spewing coke through your nose due to the delivery of the last bad pun (Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Druid "Take my hand if you want a leaf!"). Still talking about the clever plan to replace a young acolyte with a chicken to convince the town's people he was abducted by demons, a week after the game.

 

But maybe that's just me

[Ishil]

There must have been a sale on of rose-tinted glasses. I won't go into it, but my memories of that time are far less favourable, and books that actually gave guidance on how to run a game well were highly necessary.

 

Ishil

[Lars Porsenna]

There must have been a sale on of rose-tinted glasses.

 

That's sort of what nostalgia is...

 

Damon.

[joshuaslater]

Wanna go old school now? Just play Savage Worlds. Satisfies the kids today with their baggy clothes, hippety-hop, and ipods, as well as the older crowd that played the rose tinted days of AD&D.