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

[Vaalingrade]

And we have AI too. So you can find the answer to a question fast.

And that answer will be right almost half the time!

 

[Remathilis]

But in New School they are at best optional and lots of game choose not to use them.

This is actually very different from my own perceptions. IMHO older D&D was far more likely to not use minis, while modern (3e/4e/PF) required their use. While I owned minis in 2e, they were ornamental more than play pieces but in 3e, I had to lug battle mats, wet erase markers and bins of minis to play. 5e supporting TotM was a blessed relief.

 

[Gorck]

And that answer will be right almost half the time!

Especially if the question is, "How many fingers are on a human hand?"

 

[Chaosmancer]

Details. For just one example: If your under cover and shooting at targets 100 feet away....how do you recover arrows?

Well, I would imagine after the fight they would stand up, walk a hundred feet, and recover their arrows. Just like real-life archers do. You realize that with a 30 ft movement speed it takes less than 30 seconds to move 100 ft, right? Why would they be incapable of doing this?

But in New School they are at best optional and lots of game choose not to use them.

No? Not in the fact that New School is any different than Old School in this respect. Miniatures have always been optional, and lots of tables have always chosen not to use them, because they are expensive.

Yes.

And I find the very idea of dismissing a player's question because they didn't study the material enough abhorrent. I barely find the practice acceptable as a teacher in a classroom, and only in the most obvious of cases (like tests). And that is me, acting as an educator, whose job is to teach people reams of information. In a game I'm playing with other people for fun? No. Completely unacceptable behavior.

Agreed. But good trap designs that lead to desirable results should be used often.

Which include things like foreshadowing the trap, highlighting clues to the trap's existence, ect.

You can say Destiny, Fate, Wyrd, Cosmic Chance or anything else.

None of those apply either.

Depending on the D&D edition, the old max levels were high. And it could take a long time to level in Old School games.

An Old School game is a lot more like Episodic TV. The same characters will endless go on adventures week after week. Often for years. Often until the game breaks up from a real world event.

Which is fine, but do notice that even episodic shows tend to have larger sub-plots that take a season to resolve. It is only when you get to sitcoms where everything resets at the end of the episode that you lost semblances of plot. And, notably, DnD even in old school doesn't work like that, because you gain levels, gear, and other things over the course of your adventure.

And if you look at old adventure modules, this pans out. There were series of modules that interconnected into a larger plot. And a New School campaign can still have multiple arcs, look at the first season of Critical Role, which had a series of plots that barely were strung together, each arc being its own thing with its own purpose. Or Dimension 20 where the same thing happens, their school campaign has a different arc each season, that are barely connected. So, the single over-arching plot from session 1 to session 200 is not purely New School and doesn't have no precedence in Old School. And the largely episodic plot structure can be a very New School thing too.

 

[MerricB]

One of the troubles with "Old School campaigns lasted a long time" is that, for the vast majority, they didn't.

A very few continued. Most ended - and didn't even last a year.

The more modern design of faster levelling (which is now 24 years old - yikes!) was in large part due to that observation: that groups didn't play that long together. But even so, you look at BECMI D&D where the Companion Rules gives advice on the DM setting levelling rates, suggesting 3-5 sessions to gain a level if playing weekly, or 6-8 sessions to gain a level if playing more than once/week. (And these are for adventures past level 9). (Companion DM book, page 2)

That weekly rate? Not all that dissimilar to the 3E progression rate. 5E is a bit quicker, but I think it varies greatly in practice.

Contrast with Gygax's advice for rate of levelling in OD&D (from an early The Strategic Review) - 40-60 sessions in a year to reach level 9, then 1-3 levels gained per year of play thereafter.

And then you see old school folks saying "We spent ten sessions at level 1" or similar, and you begin the realise the divergence in play styles.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[MerricB]

I don't know about "fidelity" in that sentence. I've seen games claimed to be in the OSR that have clearly swung pretty far afield from any of the older D&D versions; in fact using those as a baseline but cleaning them up (which doesn't seem to describe "fidelity" to me) in way the author thinks is helpful seem to be the point in many cases.

Mork Borg is the most prominent example to me of feeling very Old School whilst not being D&D.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is actually very different from my own perceptions. IMHO older D&D was far more likely to not use minis, while modern (3e/4e/PF) required their use. While I owned minis in 2e, they were ornamental more than play pieces but in 3e, I had to lug battle mats, wet erase markers and bins of minis to play. 5e supporting TotM was a blessed relief.

Its one of those things that's hard to demonstrate solidly. I've seen people using miniatures (or simple tokens) as markers for 45 years. I've also seen people just fake it (including in game systems where I know for a fact I'd never have been able to even vaguely keep track of what was going on), so it doesn't surprise me that people can have very much opposite experiences here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No? Not in the fact that New School is any different than Old School in this respect. Miniatures have always been optional, and lots of tables have always chosen not to use them, because they are expensive.

I do have to note you can be overly literal when it comes to this; I didn't use miniatures proper for probably a decade or more--but numbered counters were neither expensive nor hard to come by.

 

[ezo]

One of the troubles with "Old School campaigns lasted a long time" is that, for the vast majority, they didn't.

A very few continued. Most ended - and didn't even last a year.

Although you didn't preface this, I assume you are speaking only of your own experiences and anecdotal evidence?

Because, frankly speaking, my OSG/campaigns ran 2-5 years typically. When I was younger, I can easily break it down by school, etc.:

middle school 2-3 years
high school 4 years + community college 2 years, say 5 years
undergraduate 2 years
graduate 5 years
post-graduate 5 years

Sure, we'd take occasional breaks for other D&D games or other RPGs, but 75% of the time or so it was always the current campaign. Within all those we did have short-term OSG as well that ended, TPKed, or whatever as well. So, it isn't always "long time" certainly, but my experience does not coincide with your statement.

To be clear, I am not saying you didn't have your own experiences or have heard such things from others, but I don't think it is fair to to make any claim about "the vast majority", that's all.

Contrast with Gygax's advice for rate of levelling in OD&D (from an early The Strategic Review) - 40-60 sessions in a year to reach level 9, then 1-3 levels gained per year of play thereafter.

IME playing weekly in AD&D we often reached 8-9th level in a year, but usually at least 6th at a bare minimum. 2-3 levels per year sounds about right, too.

And then you see old school folks saying "We spent ten sessions at level 1" or similar, and you begin the realise the divergence in play styles.

This was pretty rare, I agree. Even 6-8 sessions for the early levels was a stretch IMO, but I know groups did (and still do) vary a lot, so depending on how leveling was handled, etc. the number of sessions can range quite a bit.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Mork Borg is the most prominent example to me of feeling very Old School whilst not being D&D.

Cheers,
Merric

There's another one I've seen claimed in the same space--I want to say something like "Neon Veldt" but I'm not finding anything under that name so it can't be right.