For me, the difference between Old School and anything else is not in the rules, but in attitude. Is failure, even losing, possible, or is it not? Is it a game, or is it a storytelling session?
Inevitably, 40-some installments into this column, “Old School” would come up.
This will be in three (oversized) parts, because understanding of this topic is fundamental to discourse about what some of us (at least) call RPGs, and there’s too much for one or two columns (I tried). I think of a Quora question that asked what a GM can do when a player’s character does something insane or ludicrously inappropriate during a game. The answers varied widely depending on the goals of the answerer. The Old School answer is, “let the character suffer the consequences of the action”; but for those on the New School side, it was a much more complex problem, as the character’s actions would make it hard if not impossible for the GM to tell the story he had devised for the adventure.
Likely everyone reading this has seen and perhaps discussed the term “Old School” in connection with RPGs. When I started to reconnect with RPG fandom a few years ago, I wasn’t sure what “Old School” meant. There seem to be many definitions, but I now see the fundamental divide as not about rules. Rather, it’s about the attitude of the GM, and of the players, toward losing and failure. That’s at the root of Jeffro’s rant, though he puts it in terms of plot and story, which are closely related.
As I said, this is in three parts. The second will talk about rules, GMing, and pacing, and about non-RPGs reflecting the two schools. The third part will talk about differences in actual gameplay.
I’m not going to be “one true way” the way Jeffro is (“thieves must have d4 hit dice” is one of his rants). I write about RPGs as games, not as story-telling aids or playgrounds, but I am describing, not prescribing even as I obviously prefer the Old School. Let’s proceed.
If it’s a game (Old School (OS)), there’s a significant chance you can lose, you can fail. If it’s a story session, with no chance you can lose, it’s something else. This is like a co-operative board game that you cannot lose: why bother to play?
In terms of story, in OS the players write their own story, with the benefit of the GM’s assistance. The GM sets up a situation and lets the players get on with it. (This is sometimes called [FONT=&][FONT=&]"[/FONT][/FONT]sandbox[FONT=&][FONT=&]"[/FONT][/FONT] in video games, though video games tend to impose an overall story as a limitation of using computer programming instead of a human GM.) The other extreme is when the GM tells the players a story through the game. (In video games this is called a linear game, where the story always ends up the same way.)
If a GM is Old School and runs the same adventure for several different groups, the results will probably vary wildly. If the GM is at the other extreme, the overall shape of the adventure will be the same each time, with variance only in the details.
Old School adventures are usually highly co-operative, because the characters will DIE if they don’t cooperate. New School doesn’t require cooperation, you’re going to survive anyway.
Not surprisingly, as the hobby has grown, the proportion of wargamers (now a small hobby) has decreased drastically. Many players are not even hobby gamers, that is, they’re not quite “gamers” in the old sense because the only game they play is their RPG(s). Many people want their games to be stories, so the shift from Old School to something else is not surprising.
D&D 5e bears the marks of the newer playing methods, as there’s lots of healing as well as the ridiculous cleric spell revivify for mere fifth level clerics.
There are all kinds of shades of the two extremes, obviously. And all kinds of ways of running RPGs. Next time, I’ll talk about more differences between Old School and newer ways of playing such as Rules and Pacing, and compare with non-RPGs.
This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. You can follow Lew on his web site and his Udemy course landing page. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!
Notice it’s “storytelling”, not storymaking. Every RPG involves a story, the question is, who creates the story, the GM or the players?
Inevitably, 40-some installments into this column, “Old School” would come up.
“ . . . role-playing games do not have plots. They have situations at the campaign, adventure, and encounter level which the players are free to interact with however they wish– as long as they accept the consequences!” - Jeffro Johnson (author of the book Appendix N)
This will be in three (oversized) parts, because understanding of this topic is fundamental to discourse about what some of us (at least) call RPGs, and there’s too much for one or two columns (I tried). I think of a Quora question that asked what a GM can do when a player’s character does something insane or ludicrously inappropriate during a game. The answers varied widely depending on the goals of the answerer. The Old School answer is, “let the character suffer the consequences of the action”; but for those on the New School side, it was a much more complex problem, as the character’s actions would make it hard if not impossible for the GM to tell the story he had devised for the adventure.
Likely everyone reading this has seen and perhaps discussed the term “Old School” in connection with RPGs. When I started to reconnect with RPG fandom a few years ago, I wasn’t sure what “Old School” meant. There seem to be many definitions, but I now see the fundamental divide as not about rules. Rather, it’s about the attitude of the GM, and of the players, toward losing and failure. That’s at the root of Jeffro’s rant, though he puts it in terms of plot and story, which are closely related.
As I said, this is in three parts. The second will talk about rules, GMing, and pacing, and about non-RPGs reflecting the two schools. The third part will talk about differences in actual gameplay.
I’m not going to be “one true way” the way Jeffro is (“thieves must have d4 hit dice” is one of his rants). I write about RPGs as games, not as story-telling aids or playgrounds, but I am describing, not prescribing even as I obviously prefer the Old School. Let’s proceed.
If it’s a game (Old School (OS)), there’s a significant chance you can lose, you can fail. If it’s a story session, with no chance you can lose, it’s something else. This is like a co-operative board game that you cannot lose: why bother to play?
In terms of story, in OS the players write their own story, with the benefit of the GM’s assistance. The GM sets up a situation and lets the players get on with it. (This is sometimes called [FONT=&][FONT=&]"[/FONT][/FONT]sandbox[FONT=&][FONT=&]"[/FONT][/FONT] in video games, though video games tend to impose an overall story as a limitation of using computer programming instead of a human GM.) The other extreme is when the GM tells the players a story through the game. (In video games this is called a linear game, where the story always ends up the same way.)
If a GM is Old School and runs the same adventure for several different groups, the results will probably vary wildly. If the GM is at the other extreme, the overall shape of the adventure will be the same each time, with variance only in the details.
Old School adventures are usually highly co-operative, because the characters will DIE if they don’t cooperate. New School doesn’t require cooperation, you’re going to survive anyway.
Not surprisingly, as the hobby has grown, the proportion of wargamers (now a small hobby) has decreased drastically. Many players are not even hobby gamers, that is, they’re not quite “gamers” in the old sense because the only game they play is their RPG(s). Many people want their games to be stories, so the shift from Old School to something else is not surprising.
D&D 5e bears the marks of the newer playing methods, as there’s lots of healing as well as the ridiculous cleric spell revivify for mere fifth level clerics.
There are all kinds of shades of the two extremes, obviously. And all kinds of ways of running RPGs. Next time, I’ll talk about more differences between Old School and newer ways of playing such as Rules and Pacing, and compare with non-RPGs.
This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. You can follow Lew on his web site and his Udemy course landing page. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!
but also because the RPG systems most of them use don't lend themselves to coin-flip level outcomes. In the wave of new gamers, as WotC has said before (via Mike Mearls, in some roundtables) we're approaching a mark where the total fan base is almost 50%/50% gamers from pre-2014, and gamers from post-2014. That's a culture shift of seismic proportions in what gamers might want out of a game, compared to the minis-wargame culture that spawned and molded it from 1974 to the 2000s:
