OSR A Historical Look at the OSR

[GreyLord]

I never heard of the 90s idea where Old School is anything pre-1990, but I could buy that idea.

The easiest and most obvious line is when WotC printed 3e though. That's what really gave the entire OSR movement it's impetus in the first place.

 

[Jer]

If we're going to draw a single line in the sand of Old School vs New School, I think the 3e release (or WotC purchase) has to be it.

I'm sorry, but the idea that 2nd edition can be considered "old school" still blows my mind. That the Planescape and Ravenloft games I played in during the 90s could be characterized as "old school" is just plain weird given how radically different they felt from the D&D I had been playing in the 80s.

As I said in the other thread, I actually think that the term "old school" is very subjective and has to do as much with when the individual first came into the RPG hobby as anything else. But I think if you're drawing a dividing line that isn't somewhere around when Dragon magazine started publishing and the hobby moved from "everyone trying to figure the game out on their own" and into "TSR employees trying to produce content on a monthly basis" I think it's got to be sometime prior to the publication of 2e personally.

Some milestones I'd consider separating old and new school beyond the Dragon magazine publication date would probably be the publication of Unearthed Arcana or Oriental Adventures (1985), the publication of the Dragonlance books and modules (1984), or possibly the publication of the Dungeoneer's/Wilderness Survival Guides (1985/1986) as where things pivot away from old school styles of play being assumed by the books being produced. UA and OA assumed something that wasn't dungeon crawling in their setting material and new subsystems, Dragonlance assumed a narrative form of play as the default rather than a one-off (which is why I don't peg it with Ravenloft or the Desert of Desolation series - which were less influential on everything that followed), and the Survival Guides introduced the idea of having some kind of "skill system" into the game which I personally find to be one of the big breaking points from old school D&D rules to newer rules styles. (EDIT - just remembered that OA introduced the proficiency system, so another mark in its favor I suppose).

But of course part of that is because I am old and lived through these changes in published content and expected play style, and watched how these publications influenced what was published after. Also I don't think that "old school" is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing - it's just a thing. I'd really like it to be a descriptor of a tangible point in history and not a marketing term because that makes it somewhat objective and useful to me. (But really, it's a marketing term - so I know I'm tilting at windmills with that).

 

[GM Lent]

I tend to land on the "old school is pre-WotC" bandwagon, but I think decreeing 3.x "not Old School" also gets fuzzy when we bring stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics into the mix. For those unaware, DCC is essentially 1974 style gaming with 3.x style mechanics.

I know people who do not consider DCC part of the OSR, but in my book the attitude and approach to characters and games is far more important than the mechanics in use.

 

[Malmuria]

The article series points out that the OSR had different motivations/agendas when starting out. One was simply to republish older rule sets under the ogl. But there was also a decentralized effort to try to codify what about those rule sets was interesting, eventually settling on a preferred playstyle. I don't think the adventures put out for 2e, say for Planescape, which were narrative-heavy railroads, would fit well within that playstyle, even if the ruleset was basically compatible with all the early modules. The author seems critical of the direction the latter impulse took, especially in looking at "new school revolution" rule sets like Into The Odd, Maze Rats, Mork Borg, etc.

 

[John Quixote]

thats a bizarre definition, there was plenty of protagnists, epic adventure and "story" in temple of elemental evil or temple of doom.

Well, yeah, Temple of Elemental Evil (1985!) is definitely either very late old-school and proto-trad, or it's fully post-old-school and therefore early trad. (I'm inclined to think the latter, because of the assumption that the PCs are heroes out to defeat Evil rather than just tomb-robbers who want to loot the Temple by happenstance.)

But… what do you mean by "temple of doom"?

 

[kenada]

“Old school” is bit of an overloaded term. I don’t think it makes sense to use it as a broad category of games. That doesn’t mean other games can’t be “old school”, but you have to evaluate them in their own contexts and relative to their modern incarnations. Just being published at the same time as “old school D&D” doesn’t strike me as enough to qualify. I think this is particularly true considering the evolution D&D itself went through and the way people played changed even when the system stayed the same.

I like the way the article broke things down, though it feels like everything is still defined in terms of ‘OSR = D&D’, but with less of a negative connotation. I don’t think I could get my group to try a classic OSR game again, but going OSR-adjacent (with my OSE/WWN hybrid) has resulted in some of the best sessions we’ve had.

 

[RealAlHazred]

See, the thing that always throws me, is people mention games as being "Old School" this and "Old School" that, but the mechanics of D&D 3.0 were basically a streamlined version of the Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) mechanics, which were a streamlined version of RoleMaster, which arguably had its heyday from 1980-1994, before the RoleMaster Standard System retooled a large part of the system. Mutants & Masterminds is not usually considered Old School, but combines elements of 3.0 (which, see above), and Champions, which is definitely an Old School game as the system that came out in 1981 didn't undergo meaningful change until the 4th edition came out in 1994. Yes, for players steeped in AD&D 1E and 2E it seemed radical and (perhaps) alien, but for people who played other systems in the interim it was just the good material, repackaged and glammed up.

I understand it more if we talk about adventures, as the older scenarios definitely have different design goals from the stuff that came out once Dragonlance hit it big.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think using the term for the very earliest "raid dungeons and get rich" style is at least coherent, but maaaan does that set the time frame far back and selective, since that was already eroding even within the D&D sphere before even AD&D2e came out. I'm not entirely sure how reliably it even fit some of the BD&D and related offshoots.

 

[bennet]

Well, yeah, Temple of Elemental Evil (1985!) is definitely either very late old-school and proto-trad, or it's fully post-old-school and therefore early trad. (I'm inclined to think the latter, because of the assumption that the PCs are heroes out to defeat Evil rather than just tomb-robbers who want to loot the Temple by happenstance.)

But… what do you mean by "temple of doom"?

I mean to say tomb of horrors

 

[bennet]

Maybe you need to start deciding on the traits of a OSR game before deciding on when it ended. Simpler combat, high chance of death?
2e core books were fundamentally the same as 1e core books and I used 1e modules with the 2e ruleset.

Probably a better exercise for the bigger youtubers who are leading the OSR movement and have thought about it more.