D&D General What Constitutes "Old School" D&D

[overgeeked]

This is the equivalent of someone saying they don't like D&D because they played with people who didn't use the rules and didn't like the idea of level-based progression and also weren't so into fantasy, but sometimes they rolled a d20 to resolve things.

Not at all.

What you described is play that would be been unsatisfying no matter what the game.

What specifically are you talking about?

which it sounds like you still haven't really played...

I have played a lot of story-focused games and storygames.

 

[overgeeked]

In my experience, that's exactly what it is. It's also interesting and useful -- I love OSR-style play -- but it's "revisionist."

Not revisionist, but a deliberate attempt at alternative history.

I think we agree. I used the word "revisionist" in the sense of "challenging the orthodoxy by taking a new look/reinterpreting something old." I think the OSR looks at how classic D&D was designed (regardless of how it was actually played at the time) and explores the implications of that.

Huh. I'll have to tell my AD&D group that we're all liars and that we haven't actually been playing that way since 1978. They'll all be shocked. They started with AD&D before me. I joined their group in 1984.

 

[overgeeked]

Like I said, OSR obviously bases its reinterpreted rules on a something that did exist in 70s and 80s. But as @Greg Benage put it, it takes what may have been unexplored assumptions about a certain playstyle in the 70s and 80s and creates a robust play ideology. That ideology itself is new.

The name for the ideology is new. The style of play isn't. It's been around since the start.

 

[Ondath]

Huh. I'll have to tell my AD&D group that we're all liars and that we haven't actually been playing that way since 1978. They'll all be shocked. They started with AD&D before me. I joined their group in 1984.

Dude, you're misrepresenting what we're all saying. We're not saying you didn't play in this way, but that what is called Old School (as in the OSR) was not codified into a tradition until the 2000s. Here's the specific quote from the Dragonsfoot thread @Egon Spengler posted:

3. "I played D&D back in 197x just the way I play it today which was nothing like what these guys are describing."

A: Honestly, if this is really the case then you're probably part of the problem, what we're reacting against. The seeds of what we don't like about the present game/hobby grew out of the 70s and were present then in embryonic form -- that's how they were able to grow and eventually overtake the game/hobby in the 80s and 90s. To criticize or dismiss us on those grounds is to miss our point completely -- we're not about looking backwards or accurately recreating the gaming scene of 197x, we're about taking the elements that we like about how some people were playing back then, that have generally been drowned out and lost amid other approaches and styles [i.e. the way you play] in the intervening years, and bringing them forward into the present, because we know for a fact that it's still possible to have fun playing that way today just like it was then, and we'd rather play that way than the way you were playing then (and now).

But note that just because we are drawing a line in the sand and rejecting later evolution of the Official Game does not mean we are "preserving in amber" our edition of choice and claiming it to be perfect and infallible. We continue to think about and tinker with our edition of choice, modifying and expanding it as we please to fit our individual needs, we just don't use the later Official editions as our guide. It's that alternate history thing again -- what if OD&D hadn't developed into AD&D but had instead grown in some different direction? What if TSR hadn't rejected UA after Gary's ouster and the game had continued developing in that direction rather than what eventually became 2E AD&D? We are not dogmatic and inflexible, we just reject the Official Line of history and prefer to explore our own alternatives.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This has come up a couple times recently, so I am just curious what the EN World community at large consider "old school" in context of D&D. In the poll, answer when the LATEST part of the Old School is (so if you pick Mid1980s, it assumes everything before that is also Old School.)

in my mind old school is 2e and before...
I have been told 2e is 'too new' to be old school...
relisticly 10+ years out 4e is most likely old school by now

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Like when my students say " back in the day" and they mean 2018!!

look.... 1990 was 'like 10 years ago' now stopp making me feel old

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Unfortunately, most gamers are atrocious at story and drama.

I don't think that's true. A lot of actors and writers are drawn D&D specifically because they are good at story and drama. Clearly some D&D players are bad at that stuff, but some are very good. Most are in between.

 

[payn]

in my mind old school is 2e and before...
I have been told 2e is 'too new' to be old school...
relisticly 10+ years out 4e is most likely old school by now

Old school and nu skool is not the best way to describe the paradigm changes of something like D&D. It might have been back around the Hickman revolution, but we have had several of these events by now. You likely need more like 3-5 different schools to explain the changes since inception on a granular level. Though, for a rough shot answer you can usually pick a few points that make sense to most people.

 

[Jer]

in my mind old school is 2e and before...
I have been told 2e is 'too new' to be old school...
relisticly 10+ years out 4e is most likely old school by now

I think there's a difference between "Old School" and "old". Where RPGs are concerned Old School with a capital O and S are a brand that is tied to a certain style of play not an actual measure of the age of the game (or how "dated" it feels - which is what "old school" originally kind of meant - that someone was dated in their opinions and attitudes and needed to get with the times).

Although there is an argument to be made that 4e is a particular kind of "old school" (note the lower case) in that it's a culmination of a particular kind of crunch heavy design philosophy that was big in the late 90s through the early 00's and has fallen out of favor with the wider market. The nostalgia cycle may be ready to swing around on that kind of play here in the next 5 years or so come to think of it...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think there's a difference between "Old School" and "old". Where RPGs are concerned Old School with a capital O and S are a brand that is tied to a certain style of play not an actual measure of the age of the game (or how "dated" it feels - which is what "old school" originally kind of meant - that someone was dated in their opinions and attitudes and needed to get with the times).

except even that... is that style 1e only, or 1e and 2e? what about early 3e?
EVERY EDITION has a play style and as I pointed out in my "maybe I was always playing 4e" thread the style of play also is something that went table by table...

Although there is an argument to be made that 4e is a particular kind of "old school" (note the lower case) in that it's a culmination of a particular kind of crunch heavy design philosophy that was big in the late 90s through the early 00's and has fallen out of favor with the wider market. The nostalgia cycle may be ready to swing around on that kind of play here in the next 5 years or so come to think of it...