Old school/new school definitions -- meaningless?

[Odhanan]

For me, the "Old School" tag has much more to do with the presentation of the adventures and the kind of details that are emphasized within the module than its actual events or locations.

An old school module can have some plot, no plot at all, that's not what actually makes it "old school" for me. It has to do with short, to-the-point descriptions of locations and NPCs. It leaves a lot for the DM to adjudicate, to describe on his own. It provides a frame for adventuring, not the adventure itself. It doesn't present a "story", but paths/locations/rooms in which the actual adventure can happen. It's also more focussing on action (as opposed to events and things occuring out of camera). It sometimes has to do with threats that are real threats to the PCs, with confrontations against some impossible odds at times (demon lords, truly deadly traps, and so on).

It's more about the way the adventure is thought out, then written by the author and finally how the reader/DM perceives it.

 

[Odhanan]

What makes a module old or new school?

OLD: The adventure assumes a party of 8-10. NEW: The adventure assumes a party of 4.

OLD: Your PC can die at any moment. NEW: Safeguards are in place so your PC will only die if you-as-player are incredibly stupid.

OLD: You can get incredibly rich if you bother to look for the loot; you can also come out broke if you fail to look...or fail to find. NEW: No matter how much you look, you'll not do much better than what the guidelines suggest for your level, but it's all sitting there in relatively plain view.

OLD: It's a dungeon...a connected series of underground rooms, caverns, etc....with limited connection to the campaign setting; in other words, it can be dropped in almost anywhere. NEW: It's anything *but* a dungeon, and is usefully playable only in its original setting unless the DM does a near-complete rewrite.

OLD: Whoever designed the place was on crack. How else to explain the overly twisty hallways, lack of toilets, traps that would do nothing but inconvenience the occupants, etc.? NEW: All such interesting aspects are gone.

OLD: The maps are in 10' squares indoors, hex outdoors. NEW: The maps are in 5' squares indoors, miles-to-the-inch outdoors.

OLD: Monsters couldn't fit out the exit of their lair (see Sword of Hope), had no visible means of support, yet were in prime condition when encountered. NEW: The ecology notes are longer than the adventure notes.

OLD: Whatever monster or opposition you meet, you gotta deal with it whether you're in theory capable of such or not...or run. NEW: The opposition is designed to be exactly x-amount of challenge to y-level party z-number of times per day.

OLD: The main adventure map was on a detached cardboard cover. NEW: There is no main adventure map, and all the little individual maps are in with the printed text and never on the same page as the room description you're using.

OLD: The module expects you to die. NEW: The module expects you to live.

How's that?

Heh! Pretty good, indeed!

 

[Mycanid]

Good take there Odhanan .... Looks like you and I agree on a few things!

Rarely do people agree with me on much of anything these days it seems.

 

[Scarbonac]

Lanefan wins the thread!

 

[jdrakeh]

I think that, for a lot of people, the term "old-school" once meant "reminescient of how we played way back when" -- but today the terms seem to be used largely by people who have an intense desire to be viewed as better and/or different than their contemporaries (be those contemporaries other products, actual designers, or players). This usage has, of course, been exaggerated to extremes by thousands of screwball fans.

You don't hear too many self-prclaimed desciples of the old school say nice things about newer products and, similarly, you don't hear a lot of new school devotees clamoring to praise older games. Such fanatics praise one school or the other as the One True Way and, often, takes back-handed swipes at those who they perceive as adhering to the other school -- I know, for example, that at least one online community charmingly refers to anybody who plays the current edition of D&D as a "3etard"

The problem with using these words as a penile enchancment where RPG fandom is concerned, of course, lies in the lack of meanignful definition (as you astutely notice). D&D 3x, for example, has many of the same mechanical elements as AD&D 1e (from classes and levels, to spell lists and experiecne points, hit points, etc, etc, etc). There are even "save or die" rolls in certain modules, as well as "no saving throw aloud" deus-ex bits. All of these are things that die-hard haters of the new claim are hallmarks of "old-school" -- yet there they are, in products for a game published in 2000 AD.

So... in fan circles I think that the labels in question are almost always (but not exclusively) used as a plaintext representation of a given individual's johnson. In marketing, I think that they're used almost the same way (which, really, is a very good indicator that publishers know their fanbase). There do still seem to be people who use the terms to mean "how we used to play way back when" or "how most people play today", but I think the vast majority of gamers bandy about the terms for purposes of ego inflation.

Too many gamers are terminally hip.

 

[jdrakeh]

Good point - in the end it should be all about the fun. Maybe we should throw away "old" and "new" as descriptors (which was the initial question of the OP) and just talk about what each of us finds enjoyable - from whatever era or system. I'll continue to sing the praises of C&C because it's what I like, but I will hold no grudges against those who like the WOTC flavors and complexities - as I said above, it's all a matter of taste and none of us is "right" or "true..." I like Tolkein, others don't - all cool by me... I prefer as few stats and as little crunch as possible so I can make my own way, others want the details - again, all good by me.

Many gamers can learn much from you. It should be all about the fun, but for all too many gamers it's about ruining the fun of others by ridiculing it as being 'less than'. These labels have grown from something useful into the latest evolution of "Your favorite game sucks! My favorite game rocks!"