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

[payn]

I feel like, if we're going to divide playstyles into ages, I think the Old School/New School divide does really say anything about a singular style. Instead, I think it's more helpful and more realistic to drop the binary (because it's not binary) and adopt something more nuanced. Hell, robbing from comics, you could have Golden Age refer to what's people here call "old school D&D", Silver Age could work for the 80's, with its emphasis on story and characters, Bronze Age for more narrative games like Fate, etc.

I think you are hung up on years and dates, when most folks look at it as philosophies. For example, still a lot of folks that like/prefer old school. Its a valid and current playstyle not an age that has come and gone.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I feel like, if we're going to divide playstyles into ages, I think the Old School/New School divide does really say anything about a singular style. Instead, I think it's more helpful and more realistic to drop the binary (because it's not binary) and adopt something more nuanced. Hell, robbing from comics, you could have Golden Age refer to what's people here call "old school D&D", Silver Age could work for the 80's, with its emphasis on story and characters, Bronze Age for more narrative games like Fate, etc.

In terms of playstyles, Old School playstyle seems to be a broad community-accepted concept; we might not agree on the definition but we generally know what someone means when they say "I like to run an old-school game using 5e rules."

"New School" is just... anything else. OP defined it they way I'd broadly define Trad/Neotrad, but that's not the common understanding of the term - if anything, there is no common understanding of "new school" within the hobby.

"Old School rules" is another, different but not unconnected concept. But again, "new school rules" is just anything else.

 

[mamba]

Learning how to take a set of tools and make them sing, how to leverage my way out of a bad spot with them, how to turn a plan gone haywire into a successful finish, when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, how to pick my battles and how to work as a team rather than as five random people who just coincidentally happen to adventure in the same places at.the same time. That's learning to play the game, for me.

agreed, I could not care less about ever more elaborate descriptions of how I poke every floor tile with a 10 foot pole and search for traps in a corridor, that is just wasting my time

That's how it feels to be told "you can just play a new character." It really is like being told "you can just learn to play a new game."

how are these two even remotely the same, the new character still follows all the same rules the old one did.

Are you essentially playing your character like a method actor and now have to learn the new ‘role’ with all its idiosyncrasies all over again?

 

[Thomas Shey]

In terms of playstyles, Old School playstyle seems to be a broad community-accepted concept; we might not agree on the definition but we generally know what someone means when they say "I like to run an old-school game using 5e rules."

"New School" is just... anything else. OP defined it they way I'd broadly define Trad/Neotrad, but that's not the common understanding of the term - if anything, there is no common understanding of "new school" within the hobby.

"Old School rules" is another, different but not unconnected concept. But again, "new school rules" is just anything else.

That's because "old school" is (by the people heavily using it to describe a playstyle rather than a design period) a relatively narrow conceptual set, which means its cutting out, say, 5% of the pie of RPG design concepts (I suspect if you don't put a heavy thumb on it mostly being from early D&D even less than that) and leaving everything else. Because of that, "New Style" doesn't really mean anything but "not-Old Style".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

how are these two even remotely the same, the new character still follows all the same rules the old one did.

Are you essentially playing your character like a method actor and now have to learn the new ‘role’ with all its idiosyncrasies all over again?

Yes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

agreed, I could not care less about ever more elaborate descriptions of how I poke every floor tile with a 10 foot pole and search for traps in a corridor, that is just wasting my time


how are these two even remotely the same, the new character still follows all the same rules the old one did.

Do they? Are they the same class? With the exact same choices as they advance? With the same gear? If not, they're using a different subset of the rules than the prior character, even if some overlap (and how many can vary considerably).

 

[Azzy]

I think you are hung up on years and dates, when most folks look at it as philosophies. For example, still a lot of folks that like/prefer old school. Its a valid and current playstyle not an age that has come and gone.

I think "new" in "new school" should at least mean something approaching the title—not simply a dividing line between one's Grognardia and the Other's Non-Grognardia. For instance, just because there are bands that cop a late 70s/early 80s vibe—but we don't call these new bands "new wave"—instead they are known as "synthwave" (there's also "darkwave", but that's more goth-adjacent). And we don't pretend that there only the "new wave" and "synthwave" genres, when there is a whole host of differing playstyles and games.

 

[Azzy]

That's because "old school" is (by the people heavily using it to describe a playstyle rather than a design period) a relatively narrow conceptual set, which means its cutting out, say, 5% of the pie of RPG design concepts (I suspect if you don't put a heavy thumb on it mostly being from early D&D even less than that) and leaving everything else. Because of that, "New Style" doesn't really mean anything but "not-Old Style".

Grognardia and Non-Grognardia!

 

[Xenolith234]

New school is this apparently this kind of art (top) vs bottom:

 

[Thomas Shey]

Grognardia and Non-Grognardia!

Of course the problem is that even among people who like older games, not everyone is onboard the whole "Rulings, not Rules" and "skilled play" (in the sense they use it) paradigm. The two games I probably spent the most time playing from about 1980 on were Champions and RuneQuest. If I were to run versions of them these days I'd probably prefer more modern versions, but I wouldn't be hard to sell on playing, say, Hero 4e or RQ3 which are both still pretty elderly by modern standards, and neither goes by those paradigms.

So its not even Grognardia as such; its a focus on a very specific time/system and the experience it gave.