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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9377577" data-attributes="member: 6790260">My only caveat here is what I said upthread to someone else:It is not that &quot;new school&quot; has discarded gameplay in total. It's that it has said, &quot;okay. If we're going to have a skirmish combat game, it better be the best dang skirmish combat game.&quot; Because I do enjoy getting better at playing—but I'm absolutely a new school player. &quot;Getting better at playing&quot;, to me, means &quot;learning how to make better choices.&quot; 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. &quot;Skillful play&quot;—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 &quot;you can just play a new character.&quot; It really is like being told &quot;you can just learn to play a new game.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9377577, member: 6790260"] My only caveat here is what I said upthread to someone else: It is not that "new school" has [I]discarded[/I] 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 [I]do[/I] enjoy getting better at playing—but I'm absolutely a new school player. "Getting better at playing", [I]to me,[/I] 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 [I]team[/I] rather than as five random people who just coincidentally happen to adventure in the same places at.the same time. [I]That's[/I] learning to play the game, [I]for me[/I]. And none of that is meaningfully enhanced by making random, permanent, irrevocable death a common occurrence. It is, in fact, pretty quickly [I]disrupted[/I] by it. Imagine if you were playing an OSR game, except every time a character died, a quarter of all monsters, items, spells, and [I]rulings[/I] got randomized. By which I mean, vorpal swords now do something completely different from what they did before, [I]knock[/I] 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 [I]couldn't[/I] 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 [I]so many[/I] 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 [I]really is[/I] like being told "you can just learn to play a new game." [/QUOTE]

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