I Love Old School Games

[Reynard]

I just bought Gamma World 1E on a whim -- I am prepping to run Modiphius' Fallout 2d20 RPG so I have post-apocalyptic on the brain -- and man I love the Old School vibe of game design. It is concise and thematic and esoteric and Gm facing and complete in 60-odd pages. As much as there are things about modern RPGs, both in design and aesthetic, that I like, they feel bloated and unwieldy and overwrought at times. Even OSR games fail at this, turning games like B/X (100 pages combined) into 2 or 3 times that length for no real benefit.

So, yeah -- old school games are really great.

 

[Umbran]

It is concise and thematic and esoteric and Gm facing and complete in 60-odd pages. As much as there are things about modern RPGs, both in design and aesthetic, that I like, they feel bloated and unwieldy and overwrought at times.

Fate Condensed, 40 pages. Another 14 pages of optional rules.

 

[Morrus]

Huh. In my head it's the reverse -- a lot of older games feel bloated, while more modern games feel more streamlined. I guess it depends on which games you look at! aD&D, Rolemaster, Traveller... lots of big (in both sense of the word) RPGs from the 70s and 80s.

 

[TerraDave]

We do seem to have like 20 of these threads right now, where old school is used as a synonym for rules light, or content light.

AD&D: three volumes, plus supplements, still probably one of the most expansive sets of core rules ever, only exceeded by other versions of D&D. Gamma World isn't like that, but still has more going on then a lot of later games.

Of course, it is still totally awesome.

 

[Bluenose]

Old School includes AD&D 1e, with 400 pages of rules over the three main rulebooks (and supplements add more). It sometimes includes any game from that era (ill-defined as it is, somewhere from the 1970s to c.1999), which makes Chivalry and Sorcery which was a hefty book on its own. And newer RPGs include things like Lasers and Feelings, one page only. I think there's almost literally no correlation at all between the length of the rules and the era it was published in although games from the 1980s tended to be pretty hefty beasts in my experience, and the really ultra-light ones are a modern phenomenon,

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm a big fan of the original Gamma World. I particularly like the random mutant powers, the strange monsters, and the fact that the world is largely unknown to the PCs. Post-apocalyptic settings provide a good justification for the default D&D-style rpg activity -- exploring ancient ruins in search of lost treasures.

 

[Reynard]

Old School includes AD&D 1e, with 400 pages of rules over the three main rulebooks (and supplements add more). It sometimes includes any game from that era (ill-defined as it is, somewhere from the 1970s to c.1999), which makes Chivalry and Sorcery which was a hefty book on its own. And newer RPGs include things like Lasers and Feelings, one page only. I think there's almost literally no correlation at all between the length of the rules and the era it was published in although games from the 1980s tended to be pretty hefty beasts in my experience, and the really ultra-light ones are a modern phenomenon,

Any definition of "old school" that includes games from 1999 is pretty useless.

Also, the "What About AD&D!" line of argument in this thread is perplexing, since I didn't mention AD&D, and OD&D and B/X D&D -- both concise, if not clear -- are much more often pointed to as "old school D&D."

 

[TwoSix]

Any definition of "old school" that includes games from 1999 is pretty useless.

Also, the "What About AD&D!" line of argument in this thread is perplexing, since I didn't mention AD&D, and OD&D and B/X D&D -- both concise, if not clear -- are much more often pointed to as "old school D&D."

I think the point is using "old-school" as a synonym for "like B/X" doesn't really clarify much. There are old games that are concise, and there are old games that are "bloated" and rules-heavy. Likewise, there are brand new games that are concise, and there are new games that are bloated and rules-heavy.

 

[Umbran]

Any definition of "old school" that includes games from 1999 is pretty useless.

Except perhaps to make us think on whether the concept of "school" has real meaning.

 

[Reynard]

I think the point is using "old-school" as a synonym for "like B/X" doesn't really clarify much. There are old games that are concise, and there are old games that are "bloated" and rules-heavy. Likewise, there are brand new games that are concise, and there are new games that are bloated and rules-heavy.

I don't know what the point of this argument is in the context of this thread. Is it just to defend new games? Or to disparage old games? I mean, if I said, "I love ice cream, it's so cool and flavorful and rich!" and you made sure to point out that sherbet is also cool and flavorful and rich, and moreover some ice cream is gross, I'd wonder what you were on about.