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

[Thomas Shey]

"D&D does D&D well."

Having lived through 3rd ed era and every company trying to cram things into the D20 system (oh wait thats still happening), yeah stuff like Cthulhu D20 and World of Darkness D20, yeah does NOT work.

There are other reasons, but the biggest reason why D&D is such a bad basis for a survival game is that various magic breaks all kinds of survival challenges, and does it early. That was even true in the OD&D days and its become more and more true over time.

(I think there's also some issues with the whole way the game handles damage and healing for that purpose, but that's secondary).

 

[payn]

Since this is supposed to be a more positive thread, I think I should take a step back and do my part on attempting to define the two broad strokes styles in as neutral a manner as I can.

Precise Detail vs Broad Strokes
This is, I think, one of the key differences between Old School styles and New School styles. Beyond just tracking ammo, food, encumbrance, ect, OS style games are the ones where I would expect the DM to open a description with "The room is 30 ft wide by 60 ft long..." where as a NS style DM will often just say "You enter a long room...". The Old School seems to like the precise, technical details, while the New School eschews them for a bit more purple prose.

Now, this isn't to say that information is unavailable. If the player asks "how far to the back of the room" the DM usually has an answer for them. But it isn't the information presented front and center to the players. We want to give the feel of the situation, not the tactical loadout, if that makes sense. It might even be more fair to simply say that we reverse the process, because I imagine after the precise details of the room, the OS DM often gives that description like we do. But it feels like there is a difference in focus there.

Agreed. OS skill play is a lot about GMs hiding needles in heystacks and players finding out better and better ways of finding the needles. That is the game. Missing a detail doesn't mean missing out on treasure, it means missing out on a key detail that is likely to end the adventure prematurely and/or get a PC killed. A five room dungeon is likely to take an entire session. The fail state struggle is real.

NS uses a lot of abstractions to speed up play. This is where searching a desk is a perception roll to do or do not. No need to take the entire desk apart looking for the hidden needle. Why the PCs are even there in the first place is more important than actually going through the five room dungeon inch by inch. For a NS game, this should take an hour of a 3-4 hour session. The fail state is in the overall results. Also, a real struggle (that is often dismissed by OSers).

 

[payn]

There are other reasons, but the biggest reason why D&D is such a bad basis for a survival game is that various magic breaks all kinds of survival challenges, and does it early. That was even true in the OD&D days and its become more and more true over time.

(I think there's also some issues with the whole way the game handles damage and healing for that purpose, but that's secondary).

Thats part of the be more clever than the GM of skill play. In ye older editions it wasnt easy to have piles of wands and scrolls at your disposal. Spell selection was very important to the adventuring day that had no short rests. It might obviate a dangerous situation, but the day is full of disparately dangerous situations. Plan well!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Thats part of the be more clever than the GM of skill play. In ye older editions it wasnt easy to have piles of wands and scrolls at your disposal. Spell selection was very important to the adventuring day that had no short rests. It might obviate a dangerous situation, but the day is full of disparately dangerous situations. Plan well!

Eh. Again, the problem was that most of the survival-breaker things were either things that were so low level that pretty quickly it was painless to carry them if they were at all likely to be helpful, or were so generally useful in the situation it was unlikely that any one other spell was going to be better. If you were having to travel cross-country away from settlements, no one was going to regret the cleric carrying one casting of Create Food and Water, even if it meant one less healing spell, and if you were travelling long distances, no one was going to regret that use of Teleport or Wind Walk.

 

[payn]

Eh. Again, the problem was that most of the survival-breaker things were either things that were so low level that pretty quickly it was painless to carry them if they were at all likely to be helpful, or were so generally useful in the situation it was unlikely that any one other spell was going to be better. If you were having to travel cross-country away from settlements, no one was going to regret the cleric carrying one casting of Create Food and Water, even if it meant one less healing spell, and if you were travelling long distances, no one was going to regret that use of Teleport or Wind Walk.

Well, thats just a couple of examples of the myriad of possible situations. When they compound, it becomes a bigger deal. Im not trying to convince you, I dont really care for it, but im experienced in games/players who do.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well, I'm talking about the styles in general. A New School DM will add such things to any game they play to make it NS. Though too, many NS DM will just pick a game with NS style rules too.

This is a DnD thread. Let's stick to talking about DnD and not people homebrewing other systems.

Yes, but even in average play "somewhere".....would you say the archer can "just somehow" get back 50% of their arrows?

Would there be a reason they can't?

Guess it depends what game your talking about?

Opening rulebooks and reading rules is common enough. Maybe your group never does it?

This is only true for the mechanical game play. In the deep role play simulation you can just try anything possible. This is a big difference.

We are talking about Dungeons and Dragons. And while we do reference rules, we do not read them at each other in the manner you described. You have also now added a term "deep role play simulation" that honestly sounds like you are continuing to make things up.

What?

Well, in my game your free to play whatever you want from the rules. I have a ton of Old School houserules that you won't like though...

And if a player chooses not to role play, that is fine. They can just sit back while everyone else role plays.


You can think a character is cool and play it mechanically by the rules. You can even do the easy lite role playing by the mechanical rules.

But to "really" deep role play...acting..as if you are the character...that takes willpower, drive, effort, skill and many other things beyond the mechanical rules.

Sure, if I want to be Tom Hanks or the next Broadway star, that would make sense. I'm goofing off with my friends after a long work day, not shooting for the Golden Globes. I am not a professional actor, neither is anyone at my table, and treating them like they should be is completely unfair.

It also doesn't make any sense as a difference, because often the NS focus on story and character, on role-playing, is held up as an opposition to the OS style of game where the players act more like they are moving pieces on a game board.

Ok, so the above is the New School way for you to play a character: you ask the DM for knowledge during game play. It is what you typed.

Ok....so a lot of Old School games don't do the "just ask the DM to know anything you think your character would/should know". So assuming the player was open to it, the DM would have given the player a book/handout/web page about orcs before the game. Then it would be up to the player to read, remember and use it in the game.

As the DM, why would I give out a handout before the game, for something that we didn't know was going to happen?

Yes, any way the DM pleases. Most often brilliant design that leads to excellent results.

Right, well, many of those designs we have discussed are terrible designs that lead to horrible results. We have people who have worked in professional game design, who have looked at some of these standard old school practices, and pointed out their flaws and how they impact player psychology.

I guess this is hard to grasp as you have never done it in a game. You don't really grasp the survival aspect of game play. In many places water is not everywhere, and characters can only carry so much. Characters can't just 'find water".

I can grasp it just fine, you just aren't listening.

Sorry as soon as you say you don't do it...that proves it is the big deal. You can't say it's not a big deal and say you don't do it as it is a big deal. That disruption part is the big deal.

And note, as per NS, you don't want to effect the story/plot/narrative in ways you see as "too" negative.

Well doing PC death in a game is easy, though it can be hard for many people to do on a personal social level.


The joy from your NS type game, yes.

Still not listening, just dismissing anything that disagrees with you.

No, I see the reading of three books are harder. But the bigger point is following a DMs houserule whatever it is.

Well, again, you can take notes.

I guess as part of the bigger picture is most Old School games have no problem kicking a player out. It falls under harsh.

Yeah, "harsh" is one way to phrase it when a DM kicks someone for not reading their manifesto as part of the game.

 

[mamba]

This is only true for the mechanical game play. In the deep role play simulation you can just try anything possible. This is a big difference.

and then the DM assigns a probability and I as a player have no idea what that will be and what goes into it (did I use the proper greeting, did I mention what type of wood I am collecting for the fire, …), and just hope for the best?

In theory that works in NS as well, arguably better because the process is not a complete black box to the player

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, thats just a couple of examples of the myriad of possible situations. When they compound, it becomes a bigger deal. Im not trying to convince you, I dont really care for it, but im experienced in games/players who do.

I'm just noting I ran back in the days when that was pretty much the standard case, and it never slowed people down; those were just too attractive.

(And note, it wasn't like if they realized while out there they could use something else they couldn't usually take a day off and rotate spells unless it was immediate. To avoid the problem you had to have a situation where consistently you wanted something else in those slots. And of course since a lot of these were cleric spells, it wasn't like they weren't going to know one of them).

 

[Desdichado]

Frankly, I don't see much daylight between "old school" and "legacy shackle," but that's probably because old school emphatically doesn't appeal to me.

I always say that I'm not old school, but I am old fashioned. My tastes were formed mostly in the early to mid 80s, and I'm sympathetic to a lot of traditional ways of doing things in RPGs. That said, I never had any interest in a lot of things that the OSR claims as core to their philosophy. Then again, neither do I remember that many of those things were used in any group I was a part of in the early 80s.

There's a lot of cool people with OSR-like tastes, but I also find it a pattern that if there's smug, elitist behavior about how to play that it often comes from that quarter.

 

[MichaelSomething]

We can post until the end of time, but that's not gonna change anyone's minds. Are any Old Schoolers here willing to run some old school games to show people how it's done???