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

[Jack Daniel]

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.

Okay, fair enough.

 

[bloodtide]

2000 or 3E is my line. The game before 2000/3E was a radically different game, both by rules and by mindset and play style. Old School is:

The “rules” are little more then Suggestions- This is a big one.
No Balance-
It’s Unfair
Endless Mini Games-'
Randomness-
Player Focus-
Let the Dice Roll Where They May-
Lethally-
Long Lasting Debilitating Effects-
Dangerous Costly Magic-
A Dark, Cold, Cruel World-
Hard Luck Life-
Hazards, Obstacles, Challenges, Puzzles and Problems-
Weird, Bizarre, Strange, the Unknown and the Unknowable-

 

[overgeeked]

Dangerous Costly Magic

That’s an OSR innovation. D&D magic has never really been dangerous or costly.

 

[tetrasodium]

Lethally-

Adding to the last correction, this is both accurate & not really the case. Yes 3.x & earlier editions could be very lethal, but the dcc funnel type OSR trope takes that to an almost comedic drinking game level. The reason that d&d has such an incredible number of magic items & expectation of those items being common enough to find them regularly is because those magic items were what was used by prepared & seasoned adventurers to mitigate the lethality. In the AD&D DMG it even suggests that healing potions be readily available at a suggested fairly trivial price as one example.

Players needed to balance the consumption of consumable resources against the potential gain of more permanent magic items that would be required in order to have a chance of success. Not enough consumable use & gold burns up through things like living expenses raise dead or paying hirelings. Too much consumables used & you either use even more of them trying to keep up with ineffective gear*. In modern d&d the lethality is mitigated to almost nothing even before factoring in the "it's not d&d without magic items" supercharging PCs that are tuned to dominate even without them.


* ineffective varied from edition to edition where some like 2e you just needed a certain type of thing to damage a given monster at all. In 3.x you needed to keep upgrading your gear to have enough tohit/ac/etc just to keep up

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Not at all.

What specifically are you talking about?

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

Just total non-answers here from you. Not gonna do it.

 

[CleverNickName]

For me, any out-of-print edition of D&D is "old school" enough to be called Old School D&D. I don't want to dig any deeper than that, lest I start sounding like even more of a grognard (or elitist) than I am.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

I once heard it said from a grognard that the term “Old School” should be replaced with “Traditional” and if we wanna talk about the early editions and their impact, we should be talking about the common traditions of the older editions; the things that made D&D stand apart from boring ole Monopoly and even it’s war gaming roots.

 

[GuyBoy]

Any D&D played after classes in a school building that was built before WWII.

The school I played D&D in during the late 1970s was founded in 1549. At 200+ years older than the USA, it’s certainly old school!

 

[Lanefan]

That’s an OSR innovation. D&D magic has never really been dangerous or costly.

It was in 1e, with certain spells anyway.

Dangerous:

Bad luck on a teleport could kill you outright. Polymorph other was NOT something you'd ever want to cast on your friends. Lightning bolts bounced in sometimes-unexpected ways. Fireballs expanded to fill their full volume meaning that if you cast one into a too-small area you-the-caster would eat it on the blowback. Etc.

Costly:

Various big-time spells (Permanence, Wish, etc.) knocked a point of Constitution out of the caster, forever. Identify cost 100 g.p. (via the pearl) and knocked your Con back by 8 points for 8 hours. Numerous other spells either had expensive components or required expensive sacrifices, revival spells and restoration being the most significant. Haste aged the target a year on the spot (and aging had its own drawbacks). Etc.

 

[overgeeked]

It was in 1e, with certain spells anyway.

Dangerous:

Bad luck on a teleport could kill you outright. Polymorph other was NOT something you'd ever want to cast on your friends. Lightning bolts bounced in sometimes-unexpected ways. Fireballs expanded to fill their full volume meaning that if you cast one into a too-small area you-the-caster would eat it on the blowback. Etc.

Costly:

Various big-time spells (Permanence, Wish, etc.) knocked a point of Constitution out of the caster, forever. Identify cost 100 g.p. (via the pearl) and knocked your Con back by 8 points for 8 hours. Numerous other spells either had expensive components or required expensive sacrifices, revival spells and restoration being the most significant. Haste aged the target a year on the spot (and aging had its own drawbacks). Etc.

Right. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule. It’s not like every spell requires a roll and if you fumble you’re permanently mutated or die instantly. As long as you have the slots and the components, you‘re free to cast without worry the vast majority of the time.