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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5736196" data-attributes="member: 2205">I'd say, rather, that FATE's been on an evolutionary path that has little to no reference to D&D other than that D&D started the hobby and crystalized the conventions of roleplaying games in the first place.  Trying to fit FATE, for example, into some kind of old or new skool that references design direction of D&D probably isn't going to get very far.  Much of the non-D&D RPG world has existed parrallel to D&D and has had little to no impact on it, or vice versa.  I think c. 2000 was a big exception to that in that the d20 system, via the OGL, permeated much of the hobby, and the implications of that are still working themselves out, and conversely, 3e consciously took a number of design cues from other games out there and incorporated them into D&D (although I don't know if that's true for 4e, which seems to be unlike any other game in the market in many respects.)  Other than that, though... talking about old skool and new skool with your points of reference doesn't make much sense to me except as it relates to D&D only.And I'm a little iffy on whether or not 2000 and the releaes of 3e really makes a hard dividing line between old skool and new skool too... as I said, a lot of so-called "new skool" trends had been fairly ubiquitous in the hobby, even within D&D, long before that time.I think in many ways, old skool couldn't exist until it could place itself in contrast to whatever was going on currently.  It seemed to manifest almost from nowhere, like Athena springing forth fully formed out of Zeus's head, with the release of 3e.  We already had Hackmaster right then, we had Necomancer Games with their motto; "First Edition feel, Third edition rules" (or was it the other way around?) and even WotC tapped into that with their "Back to the Dungeon" slogan on the lead-up to 3e's launch.Even then, old skool didn't really take on a real vital life of its own until games like Castles & Crusades came out, and everybody saw that OSRIC wasn't going to be legally challenged by WotC, and then retroclones and the OSR blogosphere sprang up again almost overnight.I personally think old skool as a label can only imperfectly be applied to any specific game or product (yes, even the retroclones!), and is better suited as a more nebulous label about how the game is played at the table and the sentiments of the gamers themselves.  And given that right at the birth of the 3e era, a lot of folks, including WotC were trying to claim some old skool territory, I think what old skool is in contrast to has to be something that happened before the release of 3e... in fact, I'd say old skool grew up as a reaction against 2e and a lot of what was going on in D&D throughout the 90s especially moreso than a reaction against 3e and the OGL.Not saying it didn't pick up a lot of steam by scooping up disaffected 3e players or folks who were disheartened by the design direction of 4e, because clearly it did.  But it was already there long before that.</blockquote>

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