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

[Minigiant]

But Old School had plenty of mechanics designed to reinforce narrative. Race as class and level limits to make it human centric. Gold for XP to encourage players to be greedy sword and sorcery types. A progression to ruling kingdoms at high level to reflect Conan's story.

They were just largely ignored by the player base...

Most of those are not on the character sheet. Some are completely on the DM side in the DMG.

That's one big difference. New School and "Silver Era" put more narrative mechanics on the player's sheet and the player's handbook. The Players fully know most of the mechanics they will commonly use in almost the entire scope.

 

[Umbran]

But Old School had plenty of mechanics designed to reinforce narrative.

And no, you didn't just "pretend you could fly". Flying is powerful. Heck, in the puzzle-dungeons of yore, just being able to levitate was a notable enough ability.

 

[Umbran]

I think alignment in 5e is decidedly more RL in that it no longer uses a broad brush to paint an entire species with a specific alignment stereotype.

I think alignment in 5e is decidedly more RL in that it no longer has significant mechanical impact to make it relevant to play.

 

[TiQuinn]

My New School adds that have not been mentioned:

1.New School is about shared game power and control. Each person in the game is a player, even the DM. The DM has no power to effect the character in any major way, without the player approval and consent. Players can claim everything about their character, including things such as their background destiny.

To reuse the example, in an Old School game a curse might turns a character into a duck. As DM I did not mention this to the player or in any way ask them if they wanted this event to happen. It just does. In a New School game the DM must ask the player if they want that to happen, and if the player says no, the DM must drop it. And if the player agrees they can negotiate for special effects they want in order to agree, and most often add a time limit.

2.New School is about shared creation. Everyone is free to add whatever they want to the game, without direct DM approval. And most NS DMs welcome anything the players say. You see this a lot where a group walks into a town and the DM will turn to a player and say "tell me about the local town tavern". Then the player is 100% free to make up a tavern and have it added to the game world.

3.In a New School game, the Rules are Supreme. Everyone must follow the rules at all times. If a DM wants to change or ignore a rule, it must be done with player approval. And quite often for many NS games, if page 11 in the rules says something, everyone will accept and follow it willing. There is a group feeling that very few rules should ever be changed from the "core" game rules.

And, just for the Old School side.....well, we can utterly care less what suggestions are scribbled in a book....we do whatever we want.

These seem very specific to maybe a certain type of player or maybe one particular game than it is New School games as a whole. I would say that in the curse example, in a NS game, there is an expectation that the player has a way to undo the curse that is attainable and defined, versus old school which may not be attainable (at least easily) and may not be clearly defined - it’s left to the DM to decide if the curse is liftable under normal circumstances.

Similarly, the shared creation is style of certain games and usually within limits. I’ve only seen one free form creation game like you’ve described and that’s The Quiet Year and even that follows a writing prompt that creates a constraint. I’ve never seen a full “yes and…” game where the GM didn’t have veto power over something that didn’t fit, for instance.

 

[Minigiant]

Well, your millage may vary here. Any good DM would say they are running a game to give players a good time. A lot of players, if they encounter the slightest block or hardship in game play will immediately say the DM is giving them a hard time. It is really about style though: some players want to be challenged by the DM by making things hard....and some players want a more cinematic way that is not so hard. Though NS sure is all about cooperation.

I think the difference in OS and NS is because the players who more about their PCs ahead of time in the NS, when they fail they know they screwed up.

The DM can screw or hose the players in New School games but it is harder to keep it secret. So they don't try to hide danger. There's no point. DMs telegraph danger more and more.

DMs don't TPK parties. Parties TPK themselves.

 

[Yaarel]

But Old School had plenty of mechanics designed to reinforce narrative. Race as class and level limits to make it human centric. Gold for XP to encourage players to be greedy sword and sorcery types. A progression to ruling kingdoms at high level to reflect Conan's story.

They were just largely ignored by the player base...

Class level limit is more about degree of power, and less about kinds of flavor, but I agree its purpose was to enforce a humanocentric setting, where at least a handful of elites of the highest level humans controlled the setting. It is a setting decision, rather than a character concept decision.

I view "gp for xp" as a "videogamey" points score accumulation, and its narrative implications accidental. It has little to say about character concepts, per se, but does encourage the old school D&D mechanics overall to be more "gamey", a combat game. Hence, old school has a psychological schism between combat gameyness versus narrative immersion, where tables can play one game without the other, or alternate between them as different kinds of games for a same character.

At mid-tier old school did have a "build a fortress" segue into a different kind of game, that was more like Risk (and compares to the Game of Thrones tv series). This may or may not have happened at a particular table, but there were mechanical distinctions between classes, that implied character concepts, such as Wizards building a "tower" for their kind of fortress, and Clerics building a defacto church for theirs. Players often never reached these levels, as the game itself started breaking down due to wild mechanical imbalances, and were minimal anyway with only a sentence or two, while the DM was entirely responsible for how to make the suggestions workable in game.

The old school mechanical enforcements of a character concept were minimal, subject to DM fiat, and even then nonsystematic, ad hoc and entering the design randomly. Any attempt to generalize and balance the mechanical elaboration of character concepts ends up new school, with more sophisticated and diverse mechanical options to specify each narrative character concept.

 

[Yaarel]

Most of those are not on the character sheet. Some are completely on the DM side in the DMG.

That's one big difference. New School and "Silver Era" put more narrative mechanics on the player's sheet and the player's handbook. The Players fully know most of the mechanics they will commonly use in almost the entire scope.

That is a great a distinction.

In new school, the narratives of the character concept are written down on the character sheet, via bespoke mechanics.

In old school, there was moreso a vague thematic suggestion while each DM adjudicated the game into entirely different experiences − outside of the character sheet.

 

[Yaarel]

Consider too, in old school, there was only one "Magic User" class. Plus, one mechanical, gish, healer, christianesque Cleric.

Any distinctions between "wizard", "sorcerer", "warlock", "mystic", "shaman", "witchdoctor", etcetera was subjective pretense, devoid of narrative mechanics on the character sheet.

Whether or not a DM leaned into the distinctions of flavor was DM fiat.

 

[bloodtide]

These seem very specific to maybe a certain type of player or maybe one particular game than it is New School games as a whole. I would say that in the curse example, in a NS game, there is an expectation that the player has a way to undo the curse that is attainable and defined, versus old school which may not be attainable (at least easily) and may not be clearly defined - it’s left to the DM to decide if the curse is liftable under normal circumstances.

This does show the gap between New and Old School.

A NS curse, or any effect is generally lite and does not effect the character much over all. NS has a long list of things that should not be done to a character. And like you say, things like curse must be easy to undo. And done so quickly. This also crosses over into be "be a fan" part as a NS DM will just tell the player what they need to do to undo the curse, or at worst make it a simple role to find that information.

In an OS game, a curse or other effect might be stuck on your character for years...real life years. And to remove it might be too hard for the character, or they simply don't want to do it for role playing reasons. Or they are just slowly working towards the goal.

Similarly, the shared creation is style of certain games and usually within limits. I’ve only seen one free form creation game like you’ve described and that’s The Quiet Year and even that follows a writing prompt that creates a constraint. I’ve never seen a full “yes and…” game where the GM didn’t have veto power over something that didn’t fit, for instance.

Most, if not all NS games have the players creating things for the game. The idea here is players will be more invested in a world that they helped create and have a 'stake' in. Yes, you can point out each group has their own houserules about when and how a player can add things to the game....but the point is that they can. I guess most NS DMs would say they have the veto power....but they simply choose not to use it. Though too, many players will ask the DM for guidance and say something like "oh can I make a tavern run by a dragon?" and the NS DM will just nod and smile and say "yes you can" and approve it.


New School Add: Everyone agrees on nearly everything game related. All the gamers of New School are cut from the same basic cloth. This always for NS games to be safe from disruptions. When everyone is on the same page, there will be no disruptions.

The NS DM knows the NS player won't even try to ruin the game. And more so, if given a chance to do something, the NS player will 9 out of 10 times generally do what the DM wants/was thinking/agrees with.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The players can learn a lot from a characters death, but there is no advantage in having a character with "plot armor" survive anything. The death of a character is not the end of the game. You can keep playing.

But you can't keep playing that character.

Also, note how you immediately assume "plot armor" and that the character is totally invulnerable just because they don't get killed by a random die roll every other combat. Don't be insulting.