Because I’ve heard it a few times in contrast to OSR - In a NS game, the GM is a fan of the player characters.
D&D General Defining "New School" Play (+)
- Thread starter Remathilis
- Start date
In my experience, people have always focused on and spend time on things they find interesting and fun. Some people like the puzzle aspects of traps, others are simply "my PC knows how to disable traps, not me". I've always fallen into the latter category (even if there are multiple steps and decisions). If my character is a thief ... err ... rogue ... then they have training and expertise I simply don't have. Expecting me as a player to know exactly how to disable a trap is like expecting the person playing a fighter to know what fighting stance they're taking and how to specifically counter enemies attacks.
Again, some styles may be more or less prominent now than they were at one time but it's always been up to individual groups how they play the game.
Personally I’ve never been a fan of these kinds of labels because even as someone who likes OSR games, there are still things uttered by YouTubers about “what OSR is” that I disagree with philosophically but in no way impedes my enjoyment of the game.Based on your definition, I guess I've been doing NSP for a few decades without even realizing it.
Or maybe, just maybe, there has never been one monolithic school of thought when it comes to playing the game and different people started going in different directions since the inception of the game.
My suggestion as to establishing a possible set difference between old school and new school would not be on how a particular game could be played... but whether the rules are written to push the game to be played that way.
Sure... any particular player could have played AD&D under any of the auspices @Remathilis posted... but that would have happened due to that player making up their own rules or ignoring other written rules in order to do so. AD&D was not written to push the game in the directions for "new school" as suggested... but that's not to say any player couldn't have turned their AD&D game into a "new school"-like experience if they made their own adjustments.
Most games we might classify as "old school" wouldn't have character personality traits that have game mechanics tied to them, for example. 'Aspects' or 'BIFTs' are more of a new school kind of thing where you get a benny to play your character's personality (for good or for bad). But there's no reason to think some random table didn't invent a similar thing for their AD&D game back in '82... the AD&D game just didn't have those rules written down themselves.
Sure... any particular player could have played AD&D under any of the auspices @Remathilis posted... but that would have happened due to that player making up their own rules or ignoring other written rules in order to do so. AD&D was not written to push the game in the directions for "new school" as suggested... but that's not to say any player couldn't have turned their AD&D game into a "new school"-like experience if they made their own adjustments.
Most games we might classify as "old school" wouldn't have character personality traits that have game mechanics tied to them, for example. 'Aspects' or 'BIFTs' are more of a new school kind of thing where you get a benny to play your character's personality (for good or for bad). But there's no reason to think some random table didn't invent a similar thing for their AD&D game back in '82... the AD&D game just didn't have those rules written down themselves.
The way people describe how "everyone" played back in the day bear little resemblance to the games I've played. I've only been in a handful of high lethality games. In one, the DM ran exactly one game and we never had him DM again. Another was a con game specifically described as a problem solving high lethality game.
When we first started playing we did dungeons because that's all we knew* and it was easy. But after a while we branched out and our games became more character driven. As far as how to interact with traps the style of every trap takes 15 minutes of interaction carefully describing approach and if you describe something wrong you're dead is something I've never enjoyed.
So I don't really think old school and new school is the right term. On the other hand I don't even think Narrative Driven Play is quite the right description either, the games I usually play are still fairly rules bound for what the PCs can do. Some campaigns are linear Story Driven in that there are beginning, middle and end goals. In my case I have more of a character driven game, kind-of-sort-of sandbox where I have various actors as both enemy and ally with their own motivations and goals while character motivation and goals are more collaboratively decided. I guess I just have no idea what to call that.
It's interesting to discuss different approaches, I'm not sure that I see labels necessarily meaning a whole lot.
*Complete sideline, but even back in AD&D days we had arguments about who were better, fighters or wizards. We even set up a mock battle to the death. My fighter won which to me proved to me that fighters worked just fine.
Mod Note:
Hey. "Degenerate?"
Maybe it isn't your cup of tea, but you don't have to be insulting about it.
Really, you don't. So, don't. Thanks.
Two things. First, could you actually play AD&D or earlier versions without filling in a whole lot of gaps? Second, does anybody really lean into BIFTs? Because we tried initially and it just never stuck.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Yeah. A good analogy.
I don't have time anymore to make it as hard for the players as possible. I like to see them succeed, so I don't have to invent new plot again and again. That does not mean I make ot easy for them. But I really took the "yes, and", "yes, but", "no, but" approach to heart.
So rolled bad? Not the end of the story. Not immediate death. But a chance to do it differently or roleplay.
Players forgot something important? Allow their characters to remember.
We play for only 2 hours each week at best. Should we waste or time to search in our notes? Who can expect players to remember things exactly what was yesterday in the game, but weeks ago in real time...
The reward for such a game is that the story progresses and sometimes players creative shortcuts so the story progresses faster. I as a DM am a big fan of that. I cheer them for finding that solution.
In an old school game that was outwitting the DM who then put all theor effort into outwitting the players so that the story progresses at the pace the DM planned.
Same for us. We had a DM in our group during college that had really bought into some of the ideas of what a DM “must” do, courtesy of Gary Gygax and some other writers in Dragon Magazine articles, and became the total adversarial DM, killing half the party in a poorly designed adventure with a bunch of save or die encounters. He was told to GTFO.
To me, the only real use for labels is to give completely new potential players a few signposts to look at / follow when trying to figure out which direction they wish to take their gaming. Big signs that tell them that X type of game usually gives a Y experience can help get that player to the starting line of the game more likely to suit their needs and get started.
But for the rest of us? Or even those players above once they've taken their on-ramp into gaming and can now drive the road ahead? We all figure out pretty easily that those signposts are barely useful for serious action. It'd be like needing to find a particular house on a particular street in a particular town in a particular county in a particular state, but the signpost / label we get is "You are now entering the United States of America".
Yeah... that signpost is technically true... but it sure as heck not gonna do a whole lot for us, LOL.
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