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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DragonLancer" data-source="post: 9384007" data-attributes="member: 11868">This might go slightly off book here but the following comes to mind. It's something that has come up in discussions with fellow role-players in person and online over the last 10-15 years. There is, as many have pointed out in this discussion, little real difference between the two schools, so let's forget the concept of old and new schools of RPGs. I think the differences can be put down to the differences in the gaming generations (and no, this isn't a rant at Gen X or whoever).In the 80s and early 90's, the only people we had to talk to about D&D/RPGs were the people we gamed with and maybe other gamers at our local FLGS, if we had one. We gamed with people who shared the same sort of gaming mindset and any rules issues or what have you, we discussed among ourselves to get a resolution. Then came the 90's where everyone was jumping on the newfangled internet. Every gaming publisher jumped on that electronic bandwagon and soon you were able to talk on their forums with fellow players and even the authors/developers. This opened up a whole new world of possibility and discussion, but it also brought conflict of a sort, when individuals with different gaming mindsets clashed. But suddenly, it wasn't just your gaming buddies with concepts and suggestions about rules issues, table problems...etc. It had been opened up to the world.Then we got 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons launched, and it rejuvenated the RPG hobby. 3rd edition brought in a heck of a lot of new blood to the game, which was great, but I noticed cracks quite early on. My personal opinion on this is that many of those new players came from the MMO scene at the time, and 3rd edition with it's feat trees and optimization - something 1st and 2nd edition really didn't have to this level - saw the game go from one of exploration, role-play and, dare I say it, storytelling to one of power gaming. The 2000s really saw the newer community jumping on the optimization route. I even ended up leaving ENWorld for about a many years because of the attitude of newer power gamers and their cry of "your experience is not relevant" whenever us older players tried to put forward help and responses. This led the way to Pathfinder which took the D20 system even more mechanical and to the release of 4th edition where D&D was redesigned to be the gateway game for people getting into the hobby. I personally put a lot of that down to people coming from the MMO scene where optimizing your character to be the best is the only real way to play.These days with 4th and 5th editions being more back to basics, simplified, it has brought in players who value player agency and freedom over the classic DM authority, optimization, and route of more "rail-roaded" games. Instead of looking at as New School reacting to Old School and vice versa, perhaps the way to look at this, is to see how each successive generation of role-players views what came before and how they see the game to be played? Maybe that is the best way to view what everyone is reacting to?</blockquote>

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