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Only now, the main thrust of that "story orientation" is called (in GNS jargon) simulationism. Notice that Pulsipher opposes it to "those who like a silly, totally unbelievable game." Do not take the segment of "those who prefer to be told a story by the referee, in effect, with themselves as...

What do you mean, "We," kemo sabe? I am West Coast and I was playing "West Coast style" before the AD&D New Wave came in. It's an older school chronologically, a manifestation of the Original D&D ethos. It's not really coastal, either. It goes right back to Dave Arneson's seminal Blackmoor...

K&KA is pretty explicitly focused on "Gygaxian D&D", and Gygax and TSR parted ways at the end of 1985. I am not sure, though, how many (if any) take "old school" to mean "TSR operations at some point in time". Those are certainly "old" a quarter-century later, but hardly seemed "a school" at...

Much appreciated, pawsplay! "Must spread some experience points..." People with a "new school" mind set often -- whether from genuine ignorance or in rhetorical posturing -- treat statements from an older frame of reference as if the words have "new school" meanings. In some cases here (e.g...

That's not anything peculiar to RPGs. It's old-fashioned game design. A trivially "solved" game is boring. RPGs came from D&D, and D&D came from wargames. Old time wargamers should be well acquainted with the concept of a game situation with so many possible and strategically viable histories...

It appears that you are claiming either that "the more strident OSR folks" claim that "the One True Way To Play D&D As Intended by Gygax Himself" includes - very rules-minimal storytelling - world-building - individual, familial, and dynastic drama - ways of including characters' ability to...

Let me see: I don't see how this distinguishes any "new school". It might be characteristic of a school with some sort of program related to the history of places, but even if I knew of one I can tell you that it is hardly exclusive to that school. One presumes that a Dungeon Master prepares...

There are multiple "new schools" and multiple "old schools". Personally, the only "new schools" I recall back in 1979 were the "OFFICIAL®" school (typified by a new, AD&D-centric generation with such pressing concerns as whether female dwarves had beards) and the "slick system" school...

Just how does 3e especially make it that "the play of the game could be resolved like a story or novel", as opposed to 1st ed. AD&D or Vampire: the Masquerade? How is the subject matter of a raid on the Tomb -- for that is not only what Umbran pointed to but what you are identifying here --...

Chaosium's "big gold book" of Basic Role Playing seems a likely candidate. The original RuneQuest had hit locations, so broken limbs were easy to address directly. Elric! substituted variable armor protection and a Major Wound Table, probably less satisfactory. However, it included the...

How come Displacer Beasts are running around in a pseudo-medieval world instead of space ships? It's the same reason that all sorts of other things are thrown together. It's a common spirit found on Heinlein's Glory Road and in Farmer's World of Tiers that inspired D&D, not slavish adherence to...

1) I simply do not agree with your assessment. "So little resemblance" is definitely not what comes to my mind. If there is a game that would better put me in the shoes of an adventurer in a fantastic universe -- not in one particular fictional setting, mind you -- then I have yet to find it. (I...

Yes, it would be unskilled reasoning and poor rhetoric if one were to claim as something else what is evidently chance (or might as well be). However, skill can enter a game involving chance when opportunities to gamble are not just isolated events but instead interact with a larger context. Is...

"Old school" D&D was and is a game, enjoyed by many people who are wise and know that a game is a series of risks, a series of choices involving weighing of potential gains and losses with uncertainty as to the actual outcomes. That characteristic of unpredictability is a feature that they...

It depends on what you really mean. "Dungeon modules" in general were different from the usual foci of campaign play. Acerak's tomb was for one thing a very small edifice next to the sprawling dungeons of the Gygax-Kuntz Castle Greyhawk that were the model of "a good dungeon" in the original...

Young and Lawford, in their 1967 classic Charge! or How to Play War Games, include an extract from Midway - the battle that doomed Japan by Mitsuo Fuchida and Masataka Okumiya. For example, at one point the dice indicated that the carriers Akagi and Kaga had both been sunk. Young and Lawford...

That is misleading. The Japanese military, like many others, played variations (if you will) on the Prussian Kriegsspiel of 1824 and 1862 and the naval rules of John F.T. Jane and Fletcher Pratt. Mr. Wells developed a game that replaced the intricacies of statistical modeling with tests of...

Long before D&D and "roleplaying games" arose from the wargames hobby, wargamers were accustomed to perennial accusations of being warmongers. Those were actually anticipated and answered before the hobby itself was a going concern, in the pages of the seminal work Little Wars by H.G. Wells...

Legislation, bureaucracy and judiciary are necessary when the nature of people is in conflict with the order desired. Where all are in harmony without coercion, as in religious fantasies about the Kingdom of Heaven or a Buddha-Land, there is no need for structures meant to direct people where...

If you've got such things as a "2nd level commoner", then you are in a very different game context than old D&D. In this new context, I guess a "1st-level" anything must be pretty ordinary. In a world of commoners who are commonly "0 level", a 1st-level fighting man is already a cut above. He...