D&D General Defining "New School" Play (+)

[Hriston]

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned in this thread, but I think the Six Cultures of Play article could help this discussion. As presented in the article, there are at least five play cultures that have emerged besides the Classic (and proto-) play culture which I would identify with the "Old School" moniker, and, perhaps confusingly, the OSR is among those five as play cultures that are distinct from Classic. So I don't think "New School" really exists as a unified successor to "Old School" (although Trad is the most obvious candidate for what the OP describes) but rather that play style cultures have diversified as the hobby has grown and matured.

 

[FrozenNorth]

1 and 2ed. Be smart or die!
3.5 and 4ed. Be tactical to beat the game.
5ed. Be yourself and have fun.

I think 5e could be more accurately described as:

5ed: Be someone else and have fun.

 

[Reynard]

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned in this thread, but I think the Six Cultures of Play article could help this discussion. As presented in the article, there are at least five play cultures that have emerged besides the Classic (and proto-) play culture which I would identify with the "Old School" moniker, and, perhaps confusingly, the OSR is among those five as play cultures that are distinct from Classic. So I don't think "New School" really exists as a unified successor to "Old School" (although Trad is the most obvious candidate for what the OP describes) but rather that play style cultures have diversified as the hobby has grown and matured.

That essay has all kinds of problems of its own.

 

[TwoSix]

These are some great thoughts on the divide, but I want to clarify my point some.

I think there are two tensions going on for the majority of D&D's lifespan: For argument's sake, we'll call them rules and adventures but that a bit of an oversimplification: Rules refer to the actual rules of the game, while adventures how actual play was thought to go (both in terms of purchased modules and design principles). Lets grossly simplify them thusly:

OS rules: random generation, high lethality, DM fiat, zero to hero progression
OS adventures: exploration-focused, player challenging, combat as war
NS rules: concept focused generation, recoverable losses, more concrete systems, PCs start out heroic
NS adventures: story-focused, character challenging, combat as sport

When OS rules meet OS adventures, you get the proverbial Keep on the Borderlands/Tomb of Horrors style play. When NS rules meets NS adventures: you get Paizo adventure paths. When NS rules meets OS adventures, you get Dungeon Crawl Classics (the modules, not the RPG) and when OS rules meets NS adventures, you get the bulk of 2nd edition.

Which is why I say NS begins far earlier than 3e; AD&D started out OSR/OSA, but after Hickman began to move towards OSR/NSA, with the rules slowly dragging their feet towards NSR inch by inch. Neither happened overnight, and it isn't until 3e that we really get NSR/NSA styles aligned. (and even then, Goodman proudly produced OSA for NSR, it was their tagline).

Yea, I think my only real issue is that in the "old-school" games of the '70s and the early '80s, most stuff was being created as experimentation, not based on principles. So even within that rules text, you see the seeds of the rules being created from the "new-school" thought.

Once "new-school" design (story and setting focused, detailed character creation) became overwhelming predominant in the '90s, that was when you saw "old-school" becoming its own fork of game design with a principled agenda, birthed primarily from forums and blogs in the mid '00s. Along with several other forks, like indie/story games in the early '00s and tactical-focused play in the late '00s.

 

[FrozenNorth]

They do and they don't. People in the OSR, for example, would tell you that these three games collectively share a lot in common: e.g., standardized mechanics (e.g., roll high) and advancement, combat as sport, character builds and play options matter, character abilities vs. player skill, feats and skills assumed, adventure path-oriented, etc.

Why would we let people in OSR define what a New School game is?

3e and 5e are far too different to make up the same “school”.

 

[Reynard]

People think a lot of things happened a lot later than they actually did.

 

[payn]

People think a lot of things happened a lot later than they actually did.

..and others think that early introduction of ideas means they are not new school of thought.

 

[Aldarc]

Why would we let people in OSR define what a New School game is?

Probably because you are not offering a better one at the moment.

3e and 5e are far too different to make up the same “school”.

Your opinion obviously varies; however, I'm not sure that they are. I would not be quick to dismiss the common threads that exist between these games as part of a shared lineage under WotC.

 

[Minigiant]

Finger of Death

Old School
Fail: Death and can't be revived or resurrected
Save: a tiny bit of Damage
Other: Caster can spend a lot of money to make a dead target a zombie

3e/Silver Age
Fail: Death
Save: Nice chunk of Damage

4e/Bronze Age
Fail: A lot of necrotic damage
Save: Half damage
Other: Drop target to 0 if they go under 20HP

5e/New School
Fail: A moderate amount of necrotic damage
Save: Half damage
Other: Humaniod target who dies from spell raises as zombie

 

[Oofta]

These are some great thoughts on the divide, but I want to clarify my point some.

I think there are two tensions going on for the majority of D&D's lifespan: For argument's sake, we'll call them rules and adventures but that a bit of an oversimplification: Rules refer to the actual rules of the game, while adventures how actual play was thought to go (both in terms of purchased modules and design principles). Lets grossly simplify them thusly:

OS rules: random generation, high lethality, DM fiat, zero to hero progression
OS adventures: exploration-focused, player challenging, combat as war
NS rules: concept focused generation, recoverable losses, more concrete systems, PCs start out heroic
NS adventures: story-focused, character challenging, combat as sport

When OS rules meet OS adventures, you get the proverbial Keep on the Borderlands/Tomb of Horrors style play. When NS rules meets NS adventures: you get Paizo adventure paths. When NS rules meets OS adventures, you get Dungeon Crawl Classics (the modules, not the RPG) and when OS rules meets NS adventures, you get the bulk of 2nd edition.

Which is why I say NS begins far earlier than 3e; AD&D started out OSR/OSA, but after Hickman began to move towards OSR/NSA, with the rules slowly dragging their feet towards NSR inch by inch. Neither happened overnight, and it isn't until 3e that we really get NSR/NSA styles aligned. (and even then, Goodman proudly produced OSA for NSR, it was their tagline).

I would say NS has pretty much always been with us. Games I've played have almost always emphasized the character over the combat, investing in who I'm playing over investing in more henchmen. Even back in the days of OD&D, I wanted to play a character who imbodied a protagonist from one of my favorite books, not a tactical unit likely to die. We just fudged things a bit and made raise dead readily available in order to make it happen. PCs still died now and then (including my elf back in they day when they couldn't get raised because they didn't have souls*), but it wasn't the meatgrinder that some people had. Even in the days of AD&D, it was the common way to play for most people that I knew.

So that's the reason I have an issue with the label old vs new, but I'm not sure what the labels should be.

*I don't remember if elves not having souls was an official rule or one we made up to justify the fact that raise dead didn't work on them.