I have never heard of a DM empowering a spell because the player gave a fancy description.
Not a fancy description...a detailed one. It is fairly common.
And actually, most of the people who advocate for old school play have told me, in no uncertain terms, that a vague action is NOT acceptable. They need to know EXACTLY what I am doing, in case I trigger a trap.
True, vague actions are not acceptable in most OSG.
As for the type of wood... I know you keep caling it Hard Fun, but where is the challenge there? I either know that Birch wood burns longer and hotter than Hickory wood which is smokier or I don't. And if the DM demands I name the wood type while setting up camp... well, then I can just google the information and write down a few stock answers. The Hard Fun of googling random trivia and writing it down because I got punished for not knowing it? I don't see the appeal.
It is a different type of fun. This is the fun of using your real world knowledge in the game, and quite often getting an advantage or effect.
And I would note that googling information is a skill. A real life person player skill. It's not like you can type a couple words in google and get the perfect answer every time. Worse, google sticks to (paid) sites. And the more obscure the information, the harder it is to find. And a lot of information does not make it to the top of search results. So...it's not a magic oracle.
Of course they aren't, but a wizard with a 20 Intelligence IS a hyper-intelligent character. So, no one is allowed to play a 20 INT wizard unless they have a PhD? But they can play a fighter who is stronger, tougher and faster than them... because the lines are drawn haphazardly.
You can play any character you want. If you want to play a hyper intelligent wizard, and can role play that, no one will stop you.
They are not as haphazard as they seem. A real fighter knows things about fighting, combat and related things. The average player does not. The average player just has their fighter "attack!".
Every character class, background, specialization, and on has a ton of "real life common sense" that the character would know.....but the average player does not know.
A New School player with a 'criminal' character just uses the ability on their character sheet that "gives them advantage when contacting people in the criminal underworld". And then they just play the character in whatever way they want.
The Old School player with a criminal character will be deeply immersed in fictional criminal lore and culture and play their character accordingly.
But we role-play to be someone else. Not to just copy our own abilities onto the character sheet. Hence, why I keep saying that the goals of play are different.
Role playing and abilities are separate. It's near real life simulation vs only playing a game.
Which is what I keep trying to point out. Old School play wants to train the Real Life PLayers in Real Life Skills that they get better at each time they die.
Again, an Old School DM is not some sort of wise mystical teacher trying to make players better and more skilled.
It does depend on the players a lot. There is a group of people that play the game that possess an at least average level of common sense, wisdom, skill, intelligence, knowledge, and drive. This type of person does not need to be taught by a DM on such things.
Now, there is a group of people that play the game.......that have none of the above. So yes this type of person does need to be taught somethings...
In the new school, a player might say "Hey, my fighter was the commander of a squad of soldiers in the war, he might know a better way to engage with these enemies." and then roll, and the DM would give information. Like, "Well, you know that similar troops often kept mounts near the walls, so you might be able to spook them to cause a distraction" Because that is the sort of thing a veteran of many battles in a long war could reasonably know, but Timmy is a high school graduate whose only exposure to war is the occasional high level documentary,
This is the Major Flaw with this New School approach: You have the DM tell you what to do and then "feel" like your playing your character.
In the old school method, Timmy just can't play a veteran warrior until he had played enough DnD games to learn enough tricks, to start knowing these sort of tactics.
Not exactly. Just by playing a warrior character you don't just learn things about being a warrior. Though, yes you will learn a lot of common sense things you should already know, like a warrior is never far from their weapon. Though this is mostly for the that one group of people.
Do you not see how you are insulting people with this?
No. But I'm looking at it from the neutral perspective.
There are a million ways to have fun. No way of having fun is "better" then any other. Rock climbing is hard and floating in a pool is easy: but they are both valid ways to have fun.
I've caused players to cry from the emotional moments in my games. I've gotten everyone panicked and scrambling, looking for any advantage in a fight, because they saw death on the table. I've had players struggle for weeks to unravel a mystery. I've had them screaming for joy when they finally outmaneuvered their foes. My games are not soft and delicate things, light social gatherings that no one really cares about.
Well, we are talking about in general, not any one persons specific game.
Though I would wonder if your game is fully New School? Were your players really panicked that character death might happen...when that is uncommon in NS games? How did your players 'outmaneuver" their foes? It does not sound like they did it the NS way of "The DM tells the player what the character knows about how to out maneuver foes".
