1E/2E/OD&D Do you consider 2nd edition AD&D "old-school"

[Chainsaw]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

That sounds very, very boring.

Guess that depends on whether he's going through the same 60 second description every 5 feet of a dungeon or actually roleplaying through an important setpiece - fountain, strange door, etc, eh?

I've been in games lately where people were irritated/confused that I'd actually ask for description of different pieces of a room rather than just roll a perception check. Different strokes, I guess.

[Chainsaw]

Originally Posted by AllisterH

So what about 2nd edition though? Doesn't 2nd edition have its own type of feel?

I think I agree with the poster who said it was sort of proto-NS... Old schoolish rules, new schoolish approach.

Having said that, I learned on 2E and we had (in the beginning) PLENTY of one-shot dungeon romps that were not really connected (other than using same characters).

Funny thing though: while we eventually began playing more campaign style games, my players always criticized that aspect as being too video-gamey! Haha, so funny given all of today's arguments.

[Shemeska]

Only in the sense that it was around before I started playing in the game in 3e.

But I see it as very distinct in feel from 1e. I absolutely adore the flavor and feel of 2e, especially mid to late 2e setting material (Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc) but let's just say I don't particularly have any similar feelings for the 1e.

[Ariosto]

Yes, Doug, that is the dichotomy: whichever one is fun, the other is somewhat likely to be tedious!

It doesn't thrill me to read 90 pages or so and then spend half an hour trying to build "character" out of Attack X vs Y, +1, shift one square, etc., ... only to spend most of the next six hours waiting for my turn to engage in repetition of such trivia and roll some dice. But that's what rocks some people's boats. Roll scores for six abilities, pick a race and class, roll hit points and gold, and go? What are they supposed to come up with, personality traits or something?!

It wasn't "boring" to me to say, "As I go, I'm prodding the floor ahead with the butt of my spear." It's a thing we used to call role-playing. What would be boring to me would be having to stop in each square and say, "I'm rolling a perception check."

As boring would be having to look in the rulebook to find out in the first place what the game-mechanical abstraction was (maybe wasting time reading the "dungeoneering" entry first). If there even was such a thing, it used to be the DM's concern. (There's a shift in 2E: making the PHB the big book of rules!) But, again, some people thrive on looking up rules and rolling dice and doing arithmetic for every darned thing.

Anyhow, it worked. I found the pit trap and leaped across. It would have been really "boring" if I had had a chance to make fast the line that would let others cross safely ... before a less agile fool ended up in the pit. Instead, we got the "excitement" of wasting time fighting a swarm of stupid bugs I would simply have incinerated if not for my comrade being stuck among them.

I would have preferred to get on to the actually decisive fight with the villain, without weakening our party beforehand -- and maybe finish sometime before midnight in real time.

Yeah, taking 30 minutes of real time to resolve a fight that supposedly takes 30 seconds of game time is another "love it or hate it" thing. Ten minutes for a fight scene, maybe 15, I can handle; after that, I want to get on with the "story" -- even if what's next is another (but dramatically different) fight. It's about moving from one significant decision point to another, and just finding out how many dice rolls it takes to kill some bugs is not that.

Playing WotC-D&D keeps turning into something I can't wait to escape. I've seen people attain that release by falling asleep while waiting for their turns. By contrast, when we play old D&D (such as 2E the other night), the hours fly. I leave feeling not enervated but refreshed. No doubt some people have the opposite set of responses.

[Orius]

I'd consider nearly all of it old-school, with the exception of PO which was it's own school, really. Even after PO was released, most of the stuff after it ignored it anyway, so it's not like PO was a clean break in 2e that established a "before" and "after".

In any case, 2e was old school, more or less, as the rules were just a reorganized and updated version of 1e, with some stuff cut as a way of whitewashing the system. Some of the optional stuff in the splats weren't really old-school at all, but then the splats did all sorts of different stuff anyway. In any case, it was the DM's call as to just how much the splats applied. I always found it kind of a pain to try to reconcile a lot of the different and sometimes incompatible stuff in the optional material, which is why I liked 3e's early direction, it did a lot of that work fairly well.

[Coplen]

Originally Posted by vagabundo

3e is old school to me now.

Either you're kidding or our definition of old school is worlds apart.

[Melan]

2e was one of the editions whose designers seemed to have been uncomfortable with D&Disms, and tried to fix them by applying contemporarily fashionable design concepts. The end result, although more digestible than its precursors, felt sanitised and somehow inadequate. I wouldn't consider it old-school by today's standards.

[Raven Crowking]

Originally Posted by Umbran

Small correction - accurate categorization can be a useful tool.

Agreed.

As I feel the old/new thing is a false dichotomy to start with, I find the categories to be inaccurate.

So you have said, although I am not aware of any rational argument you have made to explain why you feel this way.

The idea of "old school" and "new school" games, at its core, contains the claim that not every game system is going to be what every gamer is looking for. IMHO and IME, most of those who make this claim do so, consciously or not, to refute this very idea.

IOW, refuting the idea of OS and NS games is a means to refute the idea of OS and NS gamers, and therefore to remove the obvious conclusion that folks who do not like one's preferred game system might well have a valid reason for it (even if that reason doesn't apply to you).

Of course, you might not be meaning to imply this, but it is a slippery slope you are on, my friend........And I think that Gary put spikes at the bottom of the pit!


RC

[Mallus]

Mark me down as someone who doesn't quite get the utility of the whole old-school/new school divide as a discussion-framing tool.

To me, 2e was just... D&D. Which is to say it was a tool for creating our own fantasy adventure stories. My long-running 2e campaign turned into a epic quest set in a consistent and detailed world, but that had very little to do with the any of the material published for 2e. This was simply what we wanted to use D&D for.

My high school friends and I started gaming playing poorly strung-together AD&D modules, and evnetually wanted something different. So we played our version of 'campaign play', which didn't bear much resemblance to logistics focused swords and sorcery treasure hunt which defined the Gygaxian 'campaign' model. Neither was it a railroad. The two major goals of the quest where player-defined.

We used a mix of 'challenge the player' and 'challenge the character' obstacles (just like I did in 3e, BTW). Over the years we gradually moved away for certain kinds of 'challenge the player' situations. But this had nothing to do with a change in gaming philosophy. It was a time issue. Creating challenging puzzles for smart and creative players on a consistent basis is tough (and time-consuming)!

Ultimately, I think the 'old-school' and 'new-school' labels describe play style preferences that go back to the beginning of hobby and aren't neccessarily associated with specific periods of time. Some people want to play a strategic treasure-hunting wargame, other people want to star in a dinner-theater version of the Lord of the Rings. Most probably want something in between.

[Raven Crowking]

Originally Posted by Mallus

Mark me down as someone who doesn't quite get the utility of the whole old-school/new school divide as a discussion-framing tool.

Which is another way of saying that you do get the utility to some degree, correct?

I wouldn't be too hung up on the labels, either. They could be A and B and be just as useful. You can always play with a game whose rules are not intended to strongly support your playstyle, but the more you recongize the effects of rules on playstyles, the easier it is to choose a game that supports you well, or to modify a game so that it supports you better.

There is nothing objectively good or bad about OS or NS rulesets (A or B rulesets, if you prefer). They are only good or bad in terms of how they interact with a group's or individual's play preferences.

Recognizing differences in what game rules support well isn't limiting. Refusing to do the same is.....if for no other reason than it hinders in modification and/or selection of a ruleset that supports your playstyle.


RC

[kitsune9]

Originally Posted by AllisterH

In many of these discussions on this board, we talk about how things were done old-school/back in the day.

However, I've noticed that when people say this, they refer either to OD&D or 1st edition AD&D. Conversely, both 3e and 4e are considered "modern/new school". For example, the thread talking about game lethality seems to a discussion between how stuff was done in 1e/Od&D vs 3e vs 4e.

So what about 2nd edition though? Doesn't 2nd edition have its own type of feel?

I consider 2nd edition "ye olde skool". I know that there are many gamers who would consider 1st ed or OD&D as old school and that's it, and I can their point, but I feel 2nd ed qualifies as the change from 1st to 2nd had some, but nothing really earthshaking like 2nd to 3rd.

[Raven Crowking]

Re: OS & NS

A wise man once wrote: "Every game is strongly flavored by the underlying mechanics. If the new design truly is revolutionary, it probably does not support the flavor of D&D as we have known it up to this point." (http://www.enworld.org/forum/4848129-post16.html)

It seems unlikely that the same person would deny that the underlying mechanics of older TSR games and newer WotC games flavour the game strongly (i.e., that OS & NS are not a false dichotomy), but there it is.

Perhaps there is a rational explaination for this apparent paradox?


RC

[Matthew L. Martin]

Originally Posted by Raven Crowking

Re: OS & NS

A wise man once wrote: "Every game is strongly flavored by the underlying mechanics. If the new design truly is revolutionary, it probably does not support the flavor of D&D as we have known it up to this point." (http://www.enworld.org/forum/4848129-post16.html)

It seems unlikely that the same person would deny that the underlying mechanics of older TSR games and newer WotC games flavour the game strongly (i.e., that OS & NS are not a false dichotomy), but there it is.

Perhaps there is a rational explaination for this apparent paradox?


RC

Perhaps the possibility that you're talking past each other? I don't think Umbran is denying the possibility of distinctions, only that "old school" vs. "new school" may not be the right distinction.

I admit, I consider it an oversimplification myself. Trying to lump white-box D&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and BECMI into one category and 3E, 4E, and all their offspring into another seems to break down when you look closely--and any attempt to maintain an 'old school'/'new school' dichotomy collapses completely if one dares to look beyond the *D&D family.

[rogueattorney]

Originally Posted by Matthew L. Martin

Perhaps the possibility that you're talking past each other? I don't think Umbran is denying the possibility of distinctions, only that "old school" vs. "new school" may not be the right distinction.

I admit, I consider it an oversimplification myself. Trying to lump white-box D&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and BECMI into one category and 3E, 4E, and all their offspring into another seems to break down when you look closely--and any attempt to maintain an 'old school'/'new school' dichotomy collapses completely if one dares to look beyond the *D&D family.

You see this, for example, in how "dungeon-centric" (for lack of a better word) the various editions have been. OD&D and Basic D&D were almost entirely dungeon-centric. Advanced D&D and ECMI didn't have as much dungeon material in it, largely due to the fact that the authors thought that the issue was something that was already covered in OD&D/BD&D, but sometimes leaving the impression that dungeoneering was something you grew out of. The 2e core rules were almost devoid of dungeon-centric content, and the supplementary rules often gave the impression that dungeon-delving was at best passe, at worst juvenile.

3e was then "Back to the dungeon!" And the 4e rules seem to me to be even more dungeon-centric than 3e was.

So, is dungeon based gaming old school or new school? Or are dungeon-based adventures c. 1977 even the same animal as dungeon-based adventures c. 2008? Wandering monsters, pixel bitching, and the mapper versus encounters per day, "taking 20," and counting squares on the battle board.

[Raven Crowking]

double post

[Raven Crowking]

Originally Posted by Matthew L. Martin

I don't think Umbran is denying the possibility of distinctions, only that "old school" vs. "new school" may not be the right distinction.

Mechanically, there is a certain unifying element to pre-3e games, just as there are mechanical unifying elements to post 2e games. One can take a random page of mechanics from any TSR or WotC book, and I would hazard that over 90% of readers would know which era the rule comes from.

If every game truly is strongly flavoured by its underlying mechanics, then this is a meaningful distinction because the mechanics are meaningfully distinct.

I admit, I consider it an oversimplification myself. Trying to lump white-box D&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and BECMI into one category and 3E, 4E, and all their offspring into another seems to break down when you look closely--and any attempt to maintain an 'old school'/'new school' dichotomy collapses completely if one dares to look beyond the *D&D family.

Any system of categorization, no matter how nominally useful, breaks down when you look closely. Witness the recent (2008-2009) articles published re: species and classification of living beings via kingdoms. Indeed, even the classification of "living" vs. "non-living" breaks down when examined closely.

That doesn't mean that categorization is useless.....merely that it is not absolute.

IOW, the perils of categorization are no different, and no greater, than those of using language itself. The refusal to categorize is the refusal to define, and leaves language meaningless.

Now, Umbran could be imagining that the statement "Some games are old school, and some games are new school" presupposes no possibility that some games are both, or occupy a liminal space between these categories, or exist outside of these categories. Rather as though the statement "Some animals are birds, and some animals are fish" precluded some animals from being mammals, reptiles, or amphibians.....or precluded the existence of plants, fungi, etc.

If one imagines that all games must be OS or NS, that these are sharply divided categories, and that there is no grey space between them, then one has, indeed, created a false dichotomy. But the false dichotomy doesn't exist because one recognizes the usefulness of the OS/NS labels. It exists because one imagines those categories to be (or to be meant to be taken as) absolutes.

They are not.

(Note also that the poll heading this thread demonstrates that they are understood to not be absolutes by at least a third of the EN Worlders who responded, as well as by the OP.)



RC

[Ariosto]

It is very much D&D-centric, but people who like old D&D have found other games with similar design philosophy; besides other TSR games, Tunnels & Trolls and Traveller are prominent examples.

Trying to lump white-box D&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and BECMI into one category and 3E, 4E, and all their offspring into another seems to break down when you look closely.

Well, look at this:

A sloth-like, bat-faced beast hangs from a branch, stillness in waiting and the concealment offered by foliage giving it a 50% chance of surprising passers-by below when it drops on them to attack with great claws.

Slubbering slogger: AC 7; MV 6"; HD 3+1; hp 15; #AT 2; D 1-6/1-6
Due to its clumsiness on the ground, it always strikes last.

Only the move rate would identify this as to edition, for it would be 60' (20') if written with Moldvay or Mentzer in mind (and the stat block would probably include a morale rating). Everything else is usable as-is with any TSR edition.

[Nifft]

I consider 2e to be Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, because that's the only 2e game I ever played.

My life went kinda like: OD&D blue & red boxes -> 1e -> puberty -> girls -> college -> job -> video games -> 3e.

Cheers, -- N

[Odhanan]

While we certainly could engage in laundry lists of what would qualify as "old" or "new school", we will ultimately arrive to the conclusion that these terms' definitions are not set in stone and fluctuate constantly from debate to debate, and debator to debator. Which is true.

I guess I just wanted to cut through all that potentially wasted internet space and get right to my personal conclusion: though details may vary between individuals and their perceptions of what these overall nebulous, fluctuant ideas entail, there are noticeable tendencies towards concepts one could choose to brand "old" and "new school".

And you know what? I know them when I see them.
People are free to disagree. That won't automatically change my mind.
That's about it, really.

[Matthew L. Martin]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

Slubbering slogger: AC 7; MV 6"; HD 3+1; hp 15; #AT 2; D 1-6/1-6
Due to its clumsiness on the ground, it always strikes last.

Only the move rate would identify this as to edition, for it would be 60' (20') if written with Moldvay or Mentzer in mind (and the stat block would probably include a morale rating). Everything else is usable as-is with any TSR edition.

Granted. There are two problems with trying to apply 'old school' and 'new school' to D&D editions without qualification or nuance, IMO:

1) There's the question of whether the speaker is using them primarily mechanically or philosophically. The two elements, though not independent, are distinct. BECMI, 1E and 2E all have strongly similar mechanics, but differ in key ways in the style of game they encourage through their writing and culture.

2) I think 'new school' is too broad a term, even if limited to "WotC D&D." 3E and 4E differ from each other in key ways, almost as much as either differs from any other edition of the game. I still think 3E is the endpoint of certain design trends in AD&D, while 4E is virtually a new derivative from OD&D, but unless 'new school' simply means 'not old school' or 'doubleplusungood,' it's not really that useful a term.