New Realms = Old School

[rogueattorney]

oldschool FR

<me being pedantic>Contradiction in terms</me being pedantic>

Sorry, I know it blows some of the 20-something minds on this board, but I just can't call any D&D product that came out in 1987, "old school."

<me being pedantic>That's paradigmatic proto-2e mid-school D&D if there ever was such a thing.</me being pedantic>

 

[ancientvaults]

The map is very nice.
Oldschool? No.
I am not an edition wars person at all, if people like 4E, that is absolutely great, you are doing nothing wrong.
However, the beauty of the oldschool is having a simple ruleset that you build upon. not having this or that rule to cover every possible situation. I have run 4E and really, it is just too time consuming for my group and myself. We like to grab our gaming gear and dive into a game, without all of the preparation time. My players aren't heroes, they are scroungers and survivors.

 

[The Ubbergeek2]

Yet, old school. It was the 80s, no? So-called high times of D&D?

<me being pedantic>Contradiction in terms</me being pedantic>

Sorry, I know it blows some of the 20-something minds on this board, but I just can't call any D&D product that came out in 1987, "old school."

<me being pedantic>That's paradigmatic proto-2e mid-school D&D if there ever was such a thing.</me being pedantic>

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

It was the 80s, no? So-called high times of D&D?

Everyone and their mother has a personal interpretation of "old school," and I've lost pretty much all interest in discussing what it is or is not. However, I do agree with rogueattorney about products from the late 80s. They don't ring my "old school D&D" bell at all. I prefer the products from the 70s and early 80s.

 

[S'mon]

1e Grey Box FR was what the great sage Malizewski calls a "Silver Age" product. There's not much old school about it I can recall - it didn't even have random encounter tables! And those hex overlays were weird. That doesn't at all prevent a GM taking an Old School approach to the Realms, though.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

It's part-and-parcel with the One True Wayism of the 4th Edition design team. They picked one "sweet spot" that matched either their preferences or their marketing plan and that's the only way of playing that 4th Edition is designed to support.

D&D has gone from catering to a wide audience of many different tastes to catering to a very specific and narrow audience. Given it's status as the gateway product for the industry, this is unfortunate. I suspect it will contribute substantially to the continued decline of the RPG market, just as TSR's decision to stop producing an introductory version of the game that wasn't a pay-to-preview product in the early '90s has contributed to the decline of the RPG market.

We like to grab our gaming gear and dive into a game, without all of the preparation time. My players aren't heroes, they are scroungers and survivors.

Believe it or not, that is the way people play and DM 4e. Forex, me.

Everyone and their mother has a personal interpretation of "old school," and I've lost pretty much all interest in discussing what it is or is not. However, I do agree with rogueattorney about products from the late 80s. They don't ring my "old school D&D" bell at all. I prefer the products from the 70s and early 80s.

I think what the OP said was related to FR´s development as a setting. The Grey Box was a sandbox-friendly sketch of an interesting campaign world which encouraged the DM to fill in his own details. But Greenwood was a prolific author and the TSR guys stuffed all kinds of detail into the world, so FR lost that feeling and made it much harder to play in certain ways.

The new FR is mostly concerned about giving you tight little sketches of areas where your campaign can take place, and leave the rest to you. So, from the viewpoint of someone who looks at his Grey Box with a waxen, happy smile in his eyes, this IS old-school. Not temple-of-the-frog-oldschool, true. More Pool-of-Radiance oldschool.

Or let´s say it this way: On the first couple of pages of the 3e FRCS, there was Elminster, taking up nearly a whole page. On the first couple of pages in the 4e FRCS, there is an introductory adventure in an area near Loudwater, which really needs heroes and exploration. That´s a change which i wholly endorse.

 

[jdrakeh]

Everyone and their mother has a personal interpretation of "old school," and I've lost pretty much all interest in discussing what it is or is not.

"Old school" is one of those terms that even its most adamant champions can't seem to define in terms of what it is — rather they always talk about what it isn't.

 

[Windjammer]

I don't think it's the map itself he's saying melds the two, it's the idea that like oldschool FR the book is filled with little adventure ideas and rumors in various locations in the FR all sandbox like.

Yes indeed. Thread title aside, I think the first chapter in the FRCG is (to iterate myself) "closer to the spirit of an OSR setting than the proponents or detractors of that movement might care to admit".

On-topic, I really like what the OP has done with the map. I tried to do something similar with a hex mapping problem I found online but my map-fu is sadly lacking. If you use the regional map from Sceptre Tower of Spellgard there are some additional sites that would be perfect for expanding the area further into an old school sandbox.

My copy of that module arrived an hour ago in the mail. I've updated my OP with suggestions where to place these adventure sites. They really are suggestions - as pointed out above, some of the terrain adjustments on my map from forest to mountains and vice versa, call for the creative "placement" of some sites. - For those not caring to click back onto page 1 of the thread, here are the updates:

UPDATE, January 16 2010: Adventure locations described in
Scepter Tower of Spellgard, page 12. (Rumors about this sites are related ibd., p.3).


1. General Areas

T28-33,
U29-32_____The Fallen Lands: covers generally all the lands behind the Greypeak
Mountains, but especially some uncharted territory shown in pale brown on the map.
V30-32,
W31-33_____Deep Maw: presumably a chasm that opens into the Underdark (cf. FRCG p. 232).
(I recommend painting these hexes in pitch black.)
R30-32,
S32-33_____Weathercote Forest [not described in module].

2. Adventure Sites

N21_____Owlbar: small village of frontier settlers [presumably - not described in module]
P27_____The Smear: peaceful village of lizardfolk. [re-located from original site]
Q27_____Valley of the Dogs: two hobgoblin tribes engaged in a territorial war.
R28, S29-
S30_____Harkwood Forest: haunted by fey.
R29_____Tarensent's Grave: dwarven site of ritual burial.
S31_____Monastery of the Precipice (FR1 module, pp.12-13), Ruins of Spellgard (ibid., pp.14).
T30_____Stormkeep
T31_____Reversed Obelisks
U31_____Jortay's Folly

 

[Derulbaskul]

Very cool, Windjammer.

I would love to brainstorm some ideas for all of those locations at some point but it is really difficult on all the boards I frequent to collaborate on anything to do with FR4E because it inevitably provokes an edition war.

Hmmm... maybe over at loremaster.org?

 

[delericho]

"Old school" is one of those terms that even its most adamant champions can't seem to define in terms of what it is — rather they always talk about what it isn't.

I think it may be a relative term. That is, old school is "the products that came out just before I started playing".