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

[Remathilis]

But again, that just drives home my conclusion that 1) "old school" is a modern rejection of certain playstyles and doesn't actually represent any genuine "oldness"; that's more an attempt to imply some kind of moral superiority through seniority than anything else, and 2) while the OSR playstyle is relatively well defined and bounded, the opposite, to which it is a reaction, is nothing more than an incoherent grab bag of stuff that OSR preferring players don't like and don't represent a single coherent playstyle at all and never did. 3) There are lots of playstyles, most of them are as old, or nearly so, as the hobby overall, and the only superiority any of them can claim is their ability to match the preferences of a given gamer or group, and finally 4) while "new school" was always an incoherent adjective that meant "anything from a wide variety of playstyles that aren't specifically OSR" in reality, old school as an adjective has been greatly diluted and has become itself somewhat incoherent by the over casual usage of it to describe anything that's vaguely D&D-like, rules light, indy or vaguely "old-like". Or, even more incoherently, new school and old school become value judgements for people who identify with old school in particular, and come to mean little more than "what I like" vs "what I don't like."

With absolutely no hint of irony or ulterior motives, this is what I was looking for. If Old School is a reaction to modern gaming (New School) then what IS it reacting to? What tenants and stylistic choices are being rejected? I didn't want this to be a referendum on either play style, but I did want to know if OSR is a reaction, it was to more than just the most modern D&D rules at the given time. Because I see OS used as a shield by some to Reject Modernity and Embrace Tradition, but increasingly it's used both to reject modern rules innovation (the only correct AC is downward) as well as any change in tone, art, design or narrative. It's like classic cars; some people want to celebrate the old style of design and craftsmanship, and others just use it to complain about taking the lead out of gasoline.

 

[Clint_L]

This isn't so much about the DM telling the player what to do, as it is about NS players using the numbers on the sheet instead of doing it themselves. The PCs discover the magical rune puzzle. The player says their INT 20 wizard inspects it to find the solution (perhaps with elaborate details, but often not), the DM calls for an Intelligence (Arcana or Investigation?) check and the player rolls. If the check succeeds, the PC solves the puzzle.

I have never seen that in my life. Maybe I am sheltered, but this seems like a caricature of "new school play," rather than something that is actually happening.

What I do see is some DMs offering hints based on an appropriate ability or skill check, but that has always happened in some form or another. As a forever DM, nothing sucks worse than when the party is stymied because you realize that you made a trap or puzzle too hard, and now all the rest of your work is going to go to waste because they give up.

But in general, TTRPG players love collaborating to figure out puzzles. That has never changed. A good puzzle is always appreciated by my players. Our last game of my D&D Club campaign for the term started with a word puzzle trap the players had to solve, and they were all over it.

In OSG, the DM presents the players with a physical, written puzzle, which the players try to figure out for themselves.

See above.

In a similar light, Friday's game I told the player his PC took 11 damage. The PC has Heavy Armor Master, so should record only 8 damage, but the player didn't. I told the player, "This is the last time I am going to remind you, how much damage did you take?" And he realized what I was talking about and adjusted the damage himself. It isn't my job to do it, it is his feature. I told him, "if I fail to tell you the damage type, such as fire, then you can reduce the damage".

This just sounds like a player learning the ropes, or maybe a player with ADD (I have a fair few of those). D&D has a lot of stuff to track, and while I can sometimes feel a bit frustrated at reminding players, it's always been part of the process.

Most DMs are people for whom D&D immediately "clicked," because of the way our brains work. Probably we got it very quickly, and we were likely immediately smitten by the game and wanted to know everything about it. Most humans aren't like that. In my home game, everyone is experienced but no one comes close to my knowledge of the game or intuitive grasp of it. My spouse is fairly hopeless about rules. But they are an amazing role-player and one of the best players I've met.

Edit: In this context I define "best" on a "fun to play with" scale.

As older players, I think we have to be careful about conflating "old school" and "new school" trends in gameplay and design with judgments about older and younger players. Typically, the latter mostly amounts to projecting our own biases and, in the case of older players, forgetting what we were actually like when we were teenagers.

Edit: One thing I have to remind myself is that I am still in high school. The differences between teenagers then and now probably seem less stark to me because I am constantly surrounded by them. My own biases are certainly an issue, as much as for anyone else.

 

[DarkCrisis]

As someone who has recently played both old and new school semi-recently, there is no difference aside from the system you are using. You can tell good stories with any RPG system. The only difference is the level of player power (which adds its own flavor).

 

[Desdichado]

That's because there are at least some stylistic differences between a lot of older games and their usual modern equivalents, and a term for those is useful, and frankly, the fact that some of the OS D&D types want to keep it for themselves does not seem to be a good reason to let them.

Not really. Some older games hadn't yet figured out mechanical solutions to needs that their players had and therefore via a combination of inertia and lack of innovation may have resembled D&D more than an equivalent game today would. But there's a lot less of that than people assert, and that period was shorter lives than people think too. The real constraint back in the day was that without the internet mechanical innovations spread much slower than they do now. But the playstyle preferences were there all along, and we wrestled (and to a great degree, designers too) to get our games to do what we wanted them to do with fewer tools then e take for granted now.

There seems a lot less inpetus to house rule games to death now because it's much easier to find a game that does 95% of what you want as written. I never played a game in the 80s, 90s and frankly even we'll into the 00s that wasn't heavily houseruled. Why? Because in spite of what the game presented (or didn't present) to you, I never played in a game that followed an "old school" playstyle paradigm. This was, however, ESPECIALLY true for D&D vs other games or other genres.

One major change and significant difference between most of what the OSR does vs actual old style gaming is the reduced emphasis on so called Gygaxian naturalism and the idea that the world needed rules to stimulate what was happening when the PCs weren't interacting with it. For instance.

But that's just one example. The idea that old games as disparate as B/X and Runequest and James Bond and Boot Hill and even Tunnels & Trolls are old school just because they're old means that old school can't possibly have a coherent meaning.

 

[CreamCloud0]

That's bizarre! And the sort of thing that would make me look for a different game.

as the person most likely being quoted there i'd like to add a little additional context here.

Spoiler: spoilering as i don't want to restart that topic here, just clarify

the specific example being discussed was the criminal background's 'guild contact' feature and the ambiguity of the phrasing of "you know the local contacts", with my stance being that without reasonable prior established evidence such as in the character backstory or events from play said contact feature wouldn't be available in locations such as other continents or planes of existence that you had never visited where nobody would know who you are or of your guild, as no-one would be willing/able to pass a message over such distance for someone they didn't know.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

If Old School is a reaction to modern gaming (New School) then what IS it reacting to?

D&D 3rd edition, specifically. Furthermore - ad&d and classic d&d becoming unavailable and supplanted by it in distribution.

What tenants and stylistic choices are being rejected

General focus on "character building", pushing of combat focus and encounter balance, and weakening of DM authority in favor of "the rules" and unified mechanics.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well I don't know about requiring. And I'm not really familiar with what you even have in mind here. What's an "old school" example of a GM requiring a player to make up setting backstory about (say) the practices of the regiment their fighter PC used to belong to, or of the cult that their cleric PC belongs to? This isn't something I've ever heard of.

If a player character declared something, like that the symbol the GM just showed them was the symbol of Asmodeus, and the DM demanded to know how their character would know that because otherwise they are metagaming, and the player in question needing to come up with a "reasonable" reason why they would know that fact. Which yes, is something I have seen happen.

 

[Oofta]

If a player character declared something, like that the symbol the GM just showed them was the symbol of Asmodeus, and the DM demanded to know how their character would know that because otherwise they are metagaming, and the player in question needing to come up with a "reasonable" reason why they would know that fact. Which yes, is something I have seen happen.

If my PC saw a symbol of Asmodeus, what justification would I need, or want, other than "I saw it in a book while studying comparative religions"? Which would, of course be pretty much my answer to every question of how I know anything related to a knowledge based skill. I mean I'm sure I know all sorts of useless trivia such as English commoners were once required to practice with a longbow and archery was a popular sport. In fact, many longbows had an estimated pull weight of 150 pounds and skeletons from that era are literally deformed by the practice. But where I learned that? Something I read at some point is all I could tell you.

It's one thing is someone wants to throw in some explanation for flavor, asking how is either going to result in a stock answer or rely on a person's ability to spontaneously improvise.

 

[mamba]

How does a funnel adventure work?

Every player starts with 4 or so characters and they all go into the deadly, trap-filled dungeon or whatever, and whichever char comes out alive on the other side, that then is your character

 

[Chaosmancer]

If my PC saw a symbol of Asmodeus, what justification would I need, or want, other than "I saw it in a book while studying comparative religions"? Which would, of course be pretty much my answer to every question of how I know anything related to a knowledge based skill. I mean I'm sure I know all sorts of useless trivia such as English commoners were once required to practice with a longbow and archery was a popular sport. In fact, many longbows had an estimated pull weight of 150 pounds and skeletons from that era are literally deformed by the practice. But where I learned that? Something I read at some point is all I could tell you.

It's one thing is someone wants to throw in some explanation for flavor, asking how is either going to result in a stock answer or rely on a person's ability to spontaneously improvise.

Right, and this is why I am kind of focusing on the "required" aspect of it.

I constantly add details like this when people roll a check to see if their character knows something. Which falls into this supposed "New School" idea of the DM telling the players instead of the players declaring it themselves. If a player wants to add that detail? I'm fine with it, no skin off my nose. If they roll and I add that nugget based on their backstory and established traits? Cool. I might also be vague sometimes, because it doesn't really matter and I might not be able to come up with something on the fly.

I see it as more "old school" following on the legs of things like "exactly how do you attempt to listen at the door" to require that information from the player. It is the constant seeking of precise details.