OSR A Historical Look at the OSR

[RuinousPowers]

Simpler combat, high chance of death?
2e core books were fundamentally the same as 1e core books and I used 1e modules with the 2e ruleset.

2e was where "death at -10" started, right? That was a massive jump in survivability, effectively giving every first level wizard the HP of a 5th level 1e magic user.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I mean to say tomb of horrors

Ah, that makes sense. I don't think anybody would dispute that a killer dungeon from 1975 is old-school.

I did wonder, though, whether you were talking about the TSR Indiana Jones game, which had a "Temple of Doom" adventure published for it in '84. Thing is, I've never played that system, so I have no idea how "old-school D&D" is or not. (But I have played the WEG MasterBook and d6 Indiana Jones games, and those are very, very, very trad.)

 

[Jack Daniel]

2e was where "death at -10" started, right? That was a massive jump in survivability, effectively giving every first level wizard the HP of a 5th level 1e magic user.

No, that rule is only optional in 2e, and it comes from a similar but much more convoluted rule in 1e where a hit that brings a character down to as low as −3 might be survivable with some maiming/scarring and −10 is identified as absolutely dead no matter what.

2e "isn't old-school" for the reasons well-articulated by the author of the posted article: even though the mechanics didn't really change all that much to actually support and facilitate protagonist- and narrative-driven play, all the surrounding play-culture and textual advice constantly harped on how that's what the AD&D game was "supposed" to be (and what "everyone was already doing anyway" in spite of the old, maladapted rules).

 

[TerraDave]

The Golden Age (aka old school) obviously ended when EGG left TSR.

 

[bennet]

even though the mechanics didn't really change all that much to actually support and facilitate protagonist- and narrative-driven play, all the surrounding play-culture and textual advice constantly harped on how that's what the AD&D game was "supposed" to be (and what "everyone was already doing anyway" in spite of the old, maladapted rules).

tbh I have no idea what you are talking about. what was there in the DMG or PHB 2e that wasn't in the 1e which supports and facilitates protagonist/narration drastically more than 1e.

all I see is that there were 2e modules that did that like dragonlance, but what does that have to do with the ruleset, certainly dragon lance had no effect on my campaigns or how I ran them.

 

[Malmuria]

Related: a look back at 2e

Heretical Thoughts

 

[LoganRan]

...

As a finer-grained distinction, there is also (going back to the early parts of the OSR movement, starting around 2005 or so) the debate over when the D&D Old School ended. Some folks include 2nd ed AD&D due to its large degree of compatibility with 1st ed, but I'm generally in the camp that considers the old school to have largely ended once the Hickman Revolution launched in TSR with products like original Ravenloft and especially Dragonlance. Dragonlance was more or less the beginning of the Adventure Path concept, and essentially the point at which old school exploration and treasure hunting-centered play really left the spotlight, and heroic adventure questing/fantasy novel emulation became the more central focus of D&D design and play. In this interpretation, the Old School of D&D was basically the first ten years, around '74 to '84

I agree with this sentiment 100%.

I'm sure Tracy Hickman is a wonderful fellow but, for my money, he did more to "ruin" the game of D&D for me than any other individual. He started the beginning of the end and the Unearthed Arcana rules supplement put the final nail in the coffin on the mechanical side.

 

[LoganRan]

Though the OSR is a little clearer, you can still run into issues where some people will at least defend it applying to retroclones of games of the same era (Cepheus Engine to pick a particularly stark example since unlike some of the others its not based on a one-time TSR product), but it gets particularly gritty when the people who expect "Old School" in general to only apply to D&D, with others using it, as you note, for things like RQ, Traveler, and Villains and Vigilantes.

(For particular fun, in a group about that, ask them if Champions (originally published in 1981) is Old School in the earlier versions (and make no doubt, there's a distinct sort of cultural break between people who never liked a version later than 4e (or sometime 3e) and people happy playing 5e or 6e); you can sometimes get resounding silence).

It's funny but I was thinking about whether or not Champions (aka the HERO system) would qualify as 'Old School' while reading the OP. I LOVE Champions but in all honesty I'm not sure it would meet my criteria of 'Old School' as it violates what I consider to be a central tenant of Old School play: character creation/advancement must be very simple. Champions most definitely does not meet that criteria.

 

[LoganRan]

The Golden Age (aka old school) obviously ended when EGG left TSR.

I was going to upvote this comment and then, sadly, I remembered that EGG was responsible for most of the junk in Unearthed Arcana which, as I stated in an earlier post, was the death knell for 'Old School' gaming.

I just died a little inside.

 

[MNblockhead]

For me only 1e or earlier feels "old school" when talking about D&D. But that has more to do with my subjective, personal history with the game.

It feels "old school" to me when you have that awkward but magical combination of wargame chocolate mixed into your collaborative story-telling peanut butter. The dice are not ONLY just randomizers to facilitate improvised story telling, they also serve to inject chance into math-informed tactics.

I like some "old school" elements like deadlier play, XP for GP, somewhat crunch--but greatly abstracted--tactics, looser exploration and social pillars, etc., but I can play that just fine--easier in fact, with 5e.

When I think back to how D&D was played by most people I had exposure to playing with back in the 80s, I think video games made a lot that outdated. Detailed and complex charts to resolve combat are better handled by computers.

Of course, that just opens up a different can of worms, because a lot of that complexity was brought into the game with 1e. So 1e really isn't representative of how the game was originally played. But if you take the small-group/individual-level war game crunch out of it, its not the same candy.