Defining "old school" by vote

[Bullgrit]

And yet another uses it simply as a descriptor.

It seems the majority of people think of this term as simply a descriptor. I fall into this camp.

But the fact that there are some out there misusing terms doesn't mean I or anyone else has to just drop said terms from our vocabularies.

Misusing a term means there is an agreed proper use for the term, and this discussion suggests that there isn't an agreed proper use for it.

When two opposing aspects get nearly identical votes for the term, it's really difficult to understand someone when they use the term.

When someone uses term "X" and one person thinks "10" and another person thinks "-10" and other people think anything from -9 to 9, well, X isn't a really useful term.

Bullgrit

 

[billd91]

It seems the majority of people think of this term as simply a descriptor. I fall into this camp.

Misusing a term means there is an agreed proper use for the term, and this discussion suggests that there isn't an agreed proper use for it.

When two opposing aspects get nearly identical votes for the term, it's really difficult to understand someone when they use the term.

When someone uses term "X" and one person thinks "10" and another person thinks "-10" and other people think anything from -9 to 9, well, X isn't a really useful term.

Bullgrit

How about terms like conservative or liberal? There's not a lot of common ground in some of the definitions of the terms, reactions to them tend to lurch from wildly positive to wildly negative, yet a lot of people still find them useful.

You can't let people's reactions to descriptive terms, particularly emotional ones that skew toward the extremes, dictate the utility of the terms.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Well that poll pretty much proves no one can agree on what "old school" means. A couple points though.

Referee vs. Storyteller. I think the antagonistic poll option that stands out most clearly as "correct" though is "DM as referee vs. DM as story teller." The story-teller option is clearly losing, as it should. The oldest modules had no stories; they were just locations, monsters and NPCs. Story didn't really come to the fore until the Dragonlance modules. Nowadays it's pretty much assumed that pre-written adventures have a pre-written plot the PCs are to follow.

Byzantine vs. Lite Rules. I'm not surprised these are both doing well, even if Byzantine is in the lead. They're both correct. New school is infatuated with having the d20 universal mechanic. Old school uses whatever mechanic makes sense for adjudicating success and failure of a particular course of action, but these rules are often individually very simple and there are fewer of them then in New School.


There are also a couple things I think are critical to understanding the old school that the poll doesn't cover very well.

Creation vs. Generation. Old school generates. Characters, encounters, adventures, treasures, etc. etc. Both the DM and players cede narrative control to the dice and a table somewhere in the rulebooks. New school creates. It's all about customization. Characters are created with the standard array and power choice. The DM creates his encounters and treasure parcels.

Strategy vs. Tactics. 3E and 4E is obsessed with how you fight the bandits. To Cleave or Not to Cleave, that is the question. Old school does not have all these choices. "Roll to hit." The focus of old school is whether to fight the bandits, or maybe to avoid them, or to bribe them. It's a higher-level more strategic point of view.

DM Discretion. Old school relies on the DM to do his job well much more so than the new school which precisely nails down in-game effects. Old school spells and items often only have "fluff" (in the modern parlance), and it is left to the DM to determine what actual in game effect this has. "Cool, I'm invisible. What does that get me in this particular scenario?" New school favors precisely defined (and play-tested for balance) in game effects divorced from the fluff, and screw common sense. "Your sword is glowing bright purple. No, that doesn't penalize your Stealth check." A kid new to DMing will not be asked to make decisions he isn't equipped to make, but a guy with 10 years behind the screen is discouraged from making decisions that he is much better equipped to make than the WotC writer far removed from the actual events at the gaming table.

 

[Bullgrit]

The oldest modules had no stories; they were just locations, monsters and NPCs.

Didn't Steading of the Hill Giant Chief have a story? It had background information about the overall situation, it gave some personal info on some of the steading inhabitants, and had information on the current situation in the steading -- a party going on upstairs, and a rebellion going on in the dungeon.

Byzantine vs. Lite Rules. I'm not surprised these are both doing well, even if Byzantine is in the lead. They're both correct. New school is infatuated with having the d20 universal mechanic. Old school uses whatever mechanic makes sense for adjudicating success and failure of a particular course of action, but these rules are often individually very simple and there are fewer of them then in New School.

First, I could argue with you about the part I bolded. There are many "old school" rules that do not make sense even in their context.

But, what I think might be shown by the near tie in the poll is that some are thinking BD&D and others are thinking AD&D1.

Bullgrit

 

[Ariosto]

It depends on who you're asking! People with an anti-scientific agenda put in a lot of effort to represent scientific terms as meaning things quite other than what scientists mean. Ditto both sides of political-party divides in trying to define each other's ideological labels. "I say you mean/believe/are X, therefore it is so!" It's a rhetorical, propagandistic trick.

Does democracy mean two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner?

 

[Marius Delphus]

AFAICT, "old school" seems to most reliably mean "reminiscent of the game (or the same game) I was playing when I was younger." Sometimes it seems to mean "reminiscent of a game (or the game itself) that isn't being published anymore."

For my money, anything (originally) published before I graduated college in the early 90s is old school. I don't expect or need anyone to agree. Personally, I don't intend on using the term as a shorthand for some set of precepts about which I may or may not have an opinion, which I may or may not feel I've outgrown, or for which I may or may not be nostalgic.

I'm amused that it's changed from a pejorative ("Pshaw, that's so old school!") to a compliment ("We're going to game old school!") and that folks are using the term to denote some kind of ineffable greatness: that despite the "flaws" of "old school" gaming, it's still something to be treasured, emulated, or otherwise recalled.

I should point out that I don't dispute there are fond recollections to be had; I have plenty myself. "Old school" to me means a time when I had fewer responsibilities and (consequently) more free time to play D&D with people who were (some of whom still are) good friends. If somehow D&D 4E had been published in 1980, and AD&D 1E was being published now, D&D 4E would be "old school" to me.

I also don't dispute that games getting the "old school" label by dint of their age or precepts are fun games. I played OD&D in the late 70s and early 80s and had fun. I played AD&D 1E and 2E in the 80s and 90s and had fun. As it happens, 1E and 2E were when I did most of my "creative" work, tinkering, and so forth, and when my most memorable campaigns and characters were born.

What I do dispute is that a poll like this will have a major effect on the debate over what "old school" actually means (if it can be said to mean any one thing at all).

 

[Ariosto]

The people who consider themselves part of an "old school renaissance" don't need a vote by a bunch of other people to dictate their use of the term!

It's like addressing the self-defined "punk rock" scene as an outsider and telling folks that they're wrong about what "punk rock" means, or that it's meaningless.

So, you try to co-opt the term as a marketing ploy for Britney Spears, but the punk and disorderly crowd spits back, "B.S. stinks!" Do you really think that opinion is going to change if you go around spouting off about how she's just as punk as the Sex Pistols, or that any term applicable to the Ramones, Patti Smith Group, Clash, X, Dead Kennedys and Black Flag is so amorphous that it is illegitimate for people to form such a community in the first place?

 

[Leatherhead]

I find it hilarious that the wiki definition of old-school gaming is simply collecting and playing old games.

 

[Nellisir]

I think "old school" works best as a descriptor of games from a actual time period - 1984 and earlier, for instance. Everything else is either game style or game mechanics, and no time period has a lock on either one. There are rules-lite "new school" games, and complex over-ruled "old games", and vice versa. The purportedly "old school" "disposable character" with no outstanding characteristics, wholly generic capabilities, and a name like Bob XIV is far more "roll" than "role" playing to me, and far more like a computer game character, than a "new school" character with an actual personality, unique traits, and value to the player, despite the allegations that new games are all MMORPG-rip-offs.

I've run essentially the same game in 3 different iterations of D&D, and expect to do so again with at least one or two more iterations, and foresee no significant change in play style.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well that poll pretty much proves no one can agree on what "old school" means. A couple points though.

Referee vs. Storyteller. I think the antagonistic poll option that stands out most clearly as "correct" though is "DM as referee vs. DM as story teller." The story-teller option is clearly losing, as it should. The oldest modules had no stories; they were just locations, monsters and NPCs. Story didn't really come to the fore until the Dragonlance modules. Nowadays it's pretty much assumed that pre-written adventures have a pre-written plot the PCs are to follow.

Byzantine vs. Lite Rules. I'm not surprised these are both doing well, even if Byzantine is in the lead. They're both correct. New school is infatuated with having the d20 universal mechanic. Old school uses whatever mechanic makes sense for adjudicating success and failure of a particular course of action, but these rules are often individually very simple and there are fewer of them then in New School.


There are also a couple things I think are critical to understanding the old school that the poll doesn't cover very well.

Creation vs. Generation. Old school generates. Characters, encounters, adventures, treasures, etc. etc. Both the DM and players cede narrative control to the dice and a table somewhere in the rulebooks. New school creates. It's all about customization. Characters are created with the standard array and power choice. The DM creates his encounters and treasure parcels.

Strategy vs. Tactics. 3E and 4E is obsessed with how you fight the bandits. To Cleave or Not to Cleave, that is the question. Old school does not have all these choices. "Roll to hit." The focus of old school is whether to fight the bandits, or maybe to avoid them, or to bribe them. It's a higher-level more strategic point of view.

DM Discretion. Old school relies on the DM to do his job well much more so than the new school which precisely nails down in-game effects. Old school spells and items often only have "fluff" (in the modern parlance), and it is left to the DM to determine what actual in game effect this has. "Cool, I'm invisible. What does that get me in this particular scenario?" New school favors precisely defined (and play-tested for balance) in game effects divorced from the fluff, and screw common sense. "Your sword is glowing bright purple. No, that doesn't penalize your Stealth check." A kid new to DMing will not be asked to make decisions he isn't equipped to make, but a guy with 10 years behind the screen is discouraged from making decisions that he is much better equipped to make than the WotC writer far removed from the actual events at the gaming table.

I think that makes a lot of sense to me.

Didn't Steading of the Hill Giant Chief have a story? It had background information about the overall situation, it gave some personal info on some of the steading inhabitants, and had information on the current situation in the steading -- a party going on upstairs, and a rebellion going on in the dungeon.

That's still pretty much just a description of the location. It doesn't assume that the players will want to sneak into the party to find their contact, or that they will ally with the rebels, or some such. That would be more typical for a "new school" adventure path. Of course, even an adventure path won't force this outcome, but finding a way to the next part of the path might require exactly this behavior or something very close. If you don't make a deal with the rebels, you won't get your next "quest". If you don't find the contact, he won't get you the McGuffin.

First, I could argue with you about the part I bolded. There are many "old school" rules that do not make sense even in their context.

I am not sure that "make sense in context" is so important to the definition. The more important is that there is no problem with special rules, different dice mechanics and so on. Sneaking around is not the same as jumping, so the rules don't need to be based on a d20 and modifiers, for example.