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

[Yaarel]

New-School Column ...
Characters can do what's listed on their character sheet

Generally a good synopsis.

On this item above, that might be true for many 5e players. But my games prioritize skill checks and narrative adjudication of them. I describe the scene, and the players tell me how they interact with it. I decide yes, no, or do a d20 check. Thus much of the play outside of combat, and for stunts during combat, is spontaneous and "emergent" storytelling.

It might be fair to describe this narrative adjudication approach as an "old school style" even within the context of 5e. But to be fair, this is something 5e intentionally designs for.

I consider narrative adjudication essential to achieve "narrative immersion", in the cognitive sense of vividly sometimes visually experiencing the story in first person point of view.

 

[Minigiant]

Generally a good synopsis.

On this item above, that might be true for many 5e players. But my games prioritize skill checks and narrative adjudication of them. I describe the scene, and the players tell me how they interact with it. I decide yes, no, or do a d20 check. Thus much of the play outside of combat, and for stunts during combat, is spontaneous and "emergent" storytelling.

It might be fair to describe this narrative adjudication approach as an "old school style" even within the context of 5e. But to be fair, this is something 5e intentionally designs for.

I consider narrative adjudication essential to achieve "narrative immersion", in the cognitive sense of vividly sometimes visually experiencing the story in first person point of view.

The point is that the NS adjudication is built around the skills and ability scores...on the character sheet.

Rather than OS play which can be a raw 1d6 dice roll, a coin flip a level check, a skill check, or a narrative ruling at any given time. You can declare an action and have NO IDEA what the DM will choose nor have an idea how good you are at it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In the focus of the game though, you are supposed to remove the trap or bust in the door. Your characters are made to excel at that.

Sure “blow their minds” is flourish but they still never thought to do it instead of just relaying on a roll to do it for them.

You are missing the point though.

I've had brand new players who listened at doors, that's fine. I also know an old school player who would insist on listening at doors using an earhorn, so that they couldn't be stabbed through the door, or infested with an earseeker. Which, to put up the article

Ear seeker

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the ear seeker is a parasitic organism. They resemble tiny worms with wings. The creatures are so named because although they nest in wood, they need warm places to lay eggs, and their favorite of such warm places are the ears of other, larger...

dungeonsdragons.fandom.com

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the ear seeker is a parasitic organism. They resemble tiny worms with wings. The creatures are so named because although they nest in wood, they need warm places to lay eggs, and their favorite of such warm places are the ears of other, larger creatures, most commonly humans. When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow into the brain of the host, which is fatal in 90% of cases. The creatures then emerge from the ear as fully grown adults, and go off to lay eggs of their own to start the process once more.

Ear seekers are unintelligent and cannot speak. They are regarded as neutral in alignment, despite having what might be regarded as evil habits.

The game's creator, Gary Gygax, suggested in the Dungeon Master's Guide that the creatures were created simply to discourage too frequent listening at dungeon doors and thereby slowing down gameplay.

So, that player did learn to listen at doors, and did it at every door, then was attacked by a monster designed to prevent people from listening at doors, so developed a strategy to counter that monster... and used it for every single character who they ever played.

Meanwhile, you listen at a door in most of the games I'm in? Roll perception to see if you hear anything. Because just because you are listening doesn't mean you hear anything. Using a mirror to look around a corner? Perception or stealth, because there isn't really any difference between that and looking around a corner with your eyes.

But you don't need to clarify that you are using an occluded mirror that you scratched with sand to prevent it from catching the light and revealing your position. Or that you are using an iron ear horn that is six inches long and curved, allowing you to be farther away from the door if something stabs through so you can dodge. Or that you specifically used your thieves tools that have wooden grips, so an electrical current from a trap can't paralyze you.

All of which are things that could have happened, and would be further indicators of "skilled play" where you make sure to remove any and all risk of any action being used against you by advanced tactics learned through dying a lot by not using those tactics.

 

[Yaarel]

The point is that the NS adjudication is built around the skills and ability scores...on the character sheet.

True, but the skill list is mostly narrative theme, rather than specific mechanics. (There can be example of specifics, like jump distance, but mostly it is DM opinion and depends entirely on the context of a specific circumstance.)

Rather than OS play which can be a raw 1d6 dice roll, a coin flip a level check, a skill check, or a narrative ruling at any given time. You can declare an action and have NO IDEA what the DM will choose nor have an idea how good you are at it.

True that. The ad hoc characteristic of design is something new school tries to streamline.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The "domestication" of the Evil Human is the "bad boy", "bad kid". Consider the "evil is sexy" trope.

It is a thing.

But evil is also still... evil. Even if it is sexy.

The thing I've often seen about the people expousing a "domestication" viewpoint is that we then move on to a new "evil monster" that then gets redeemed and made not evil, so we create a new evil monster.

Sure, you get the bad boy gangster who really only needs the love of the pure-hearted female lead to be a good guy... but you also still have gangsters who murder their right-hand and his entire family to send a message. And we never consider the idea that it is somehow weird that both concepts exist, or that since we have redeemable gangsters we need a new type of criminal villain to take their place.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My only caveat here is what I said upthread to someone else:

It is not that "new school" has discarded gameplay in total. It's that it has said, "okay. If we're going to have a skirmish combat game, it better be the best dang skirmish combat game." Because I do enjoy getting better at playing—but I'm absolutely a new school player. "Getting better at playing", to me, means "learning how to make better choices." Learning how to give a better lengthy list of hyper-detailed descriptions is not an interesting skill to me. I can give hyper-detailed descriptions all the live-long day; I've been doing so for going on three decades, it was a required skill throughout primary and secondary school. Learning how to take a set of tools and make them sing, how to leverage my way out of a bad spot with them, how to turn a plan gone haywire into a successful finish, when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, how to pick my battles and how to work as a team rather than as five random people who just coincidentally happen to adventure in the same places at.the same time. That's learning to play the game, for me. And none of that is meaningfully enhanced by making random, permanent, irrevocable death a common occurrence. It is, in fact, pretty quickly disrupted by it.

Imagine if you were playing an OSR game, except every time a character died, a quarter of all monsters, items, spells, and rulings got randomized. By which I mean, vorpal swords now do something completely different from what they did before, knock is a healing spell, beholders are benevolent celestials with no magic powers beyond levitation, etc., etc. "Skillful play"—in the narrow definition used by old school fans—would become largely impossible very quickly, because you literally couldn't acquire player knowledge. By the time three or four characters had died, almost anything you'd learned beforehand would be erased. The best you could do would be really basic combat tactics, but with so many fundamental changes, you'd be stuck constantly relearning basically everything.

That's how it feels to be told "you can just play a new character." It really is like being told "you can just learn to play a new game."

Right, exactly.

But also, sometimes I want my character to be terrible at getting out of a bad spot. I want a character whose character flaw is low self-esteem to take on a task that they can barely handle, because that makes the story better. Because then the character can GROW as a character.

I don't need the character to be a reflection of my skills (and frankly, whenever combat hits, I have a HARD time keeping this in mind) I need them to make sense for the story we are telling. And sometimes that story involves running past an enemy and getting hit so that you can save your best friend.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Which is why we have vampires that glow in the sun instead of bursting into flames. Oh, and being a werewolf is a power-up instead of a curse.

Yep, that is why the newest vampire movie in 2024 is totally the exact same as Twilight, (a book series written by a woman who self-confessed in knowing NOTHING about vampires before she started writing). I even have a picture

 

[Yaarel]

But evil is also still... evil. Even if it is sexy.

The thing I've often seen about the people expousing a "domestication" viewpoint is that we then move on to a new "evil monster" that then gets redeemed and made not evil, so we create a new evil monster.

Sure, you get the bad boy gangster who really only needs the love of the pure-hearted female lead to be a good guy... but you also still have gangsters who murder their right-hand and his entire family to send a message. And we never consider the idea that it is somehow weird that both concepts exist, or that since we have redeemable gangsters we need a new type of criminal villain to take their place.

The "bad kid" trope is redeemable, via loyalty to the group, and the Evil changing to Neutral or even Good as harsh but justifiable methods: the antihero.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Old School: You are stuck in a dungeon full of monsters.

New School: Monsters are stuck in a dungeon with you.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Grognardia and Non-Grognardia!

Grognardia has always been at war with Non-Grognardia.