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

[Corinnguard]

So, you’re saying D&D is just “school.” Great, now I don’t want to play it anymore.

Welcome to D&D 101....

 

[payn]

So, you’re saying D&D is just “school.” Great, now I don’t want to play it anymore.

As funny as it may seem, thats a position many tend to take.

 

[Gorck]

As funny as it may seem, thats a position many tend to take.

My daughter and her friends always complain that there’s too much math involved.

 

[Umbran]

So, you’re saying D&D is just “school.” Great, now I don’t want to play it anymore.

You're too cool for school, is that it?

 

[Corinnguard]

You're too cool for school, is that it?

It depends on which school of magic you're majoring in. I want to major in elementalism.

 

[Mark Hope]

Another new school element would have to be playing as a member of a species that originally was considered an enemy race to the races in the core PHB in earlier editions. Species like goblins and orcs were originally painted with a very broad brush, every member of those species was depicted as being evil. By 3e, these two species were depicted as mostly evil, but now there were exceptions who for one reason or another broke away from the rest of their species. The exceptions being goblin and orc player characters. Nowadays, goblins and orcs are like the other player character species in 5e, a societal mix of individuals on the alignment spectrum. There is a more inclusive approach to who you want to play as in 5e.

It's worth mentioning that orcs, goblins etc stopped being always evil with AD&D 2e, if not sooner. Orc and goblin PCs (not to mention a ton of other humanoid races) could be of any alignment. We had them in our games from pretty early on

 

[Corinnguard]

It's worth mentioning that orcs, goblins etc stopped being always evil with AD&D 2e, if not sooner. Orc and goblin PCs (not to mention a ton of other humanoid races) could be of any alignment. We had them in our games from pretty early on

I was thinking about when 3.5e used the words Always, Usually or Often in addition to the alignments in the Monster Manual. In the 3.5e MM, Goblins were Usually Neutral Evil while Orcs were Often Chaotic Evil. Usually meant that the majority (more than 50%) of a given species had the given alignment. Often otoh meant that a plurality (40%-50%) of individuals within the given species had the given alignment.

This was before the debut of the Eberron setting (and eventually 4e) where alignment became even more fuzzier in that you could have evil metallic dragons and good vampires moving about.

 

[Aldarc]

Maybe we should just fully reformat all the labels we use to go after one another.

After all, Old School Play is still being played today, so it can't actually be old right?

Really, Old School and New School was initially more about what some people saw as differences, however superficial, between TSR D&Ds vs. WotC D&Ds. I would say that for the most part New School or Old School have nearly nothing to do with non-D&D games. Regardless of whether we call it "old" or "new" or even whether people are still playing a game or not, we are still looking at how people perceive these differences between game eras of D&D.

For example, we can talk about old MMOs vs. new MMOs. It doesn't matter if people are still playing the old ones or if they are getting updates still. We can ask how these games did things differently than more contemporaneous or newer ones of the same genre. People do this all the time with Classic WoW vs. Retail WoW.

 

[Mark Hope]

I was thinking about when 3.5e used the words Always, Usually or Often in addition to the alignments in the Monster Manual. In the 3.5e MM, Goblins were Usually Neutral Evil while Orcs were Often Chaotic Evil. Usually meant that the majority (more than 50%) of a given species had the given alignment. Often otoh meant that a plurality (40%-50%) of individuals within the given species had the given alignment.

This was before the debut of the Eberron setting (and eventually 4e) where alignment became even more fuzzier in that you could have evil metallic dragons and good vampires moving about.

Gotcha. 2e was pretty vague on that front in the Monstrous Manual - it just said alignment was "general behavior" for the "average monster" but that there were exceptions. Complete Book of Humanoids went further and just said monsters would "tend" towards one alignment or another but PCs could be any alignment. I sometimes feel like 3e initially tightened things up a bit on that front before they loosened again further down the line.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Really, Old School and New School was initially more about what some people saw as differences, however superficial, between TSR D&Ds vs. WotC D&Ds. I would say that for the most part New School or Old School have nearly nothing to do with non-D&D games

I fully agree with this. New School games are specifically D&D 3.0+3.5, and those games directly descended from and/or inspired by them: 4e, 5e, pathfinder, PF2E, 13th Age. Additionally, other games directly derived from the d20 system that aren't necessarily d&d: d20 modern, mutants and masterminds, Wotc star wars, Numenera,

Similarly, old school games are specifically TSR era D&D and AD&D, and those games directly descended from and/or inspired by them: all Retroclones, DCC, Blackhack, Into the Odd, etc etc.

Games not influenced by D&D don't fit into this categorization. PBTA, FitD, Fate, FFG Star Wars, BRP, Gurps, etc etc etc - none of these are relevant to the categorization.