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?
Lanefan