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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5836972" data-attributes="member: 2205"><p>Heh.</p><p></p><p>Well, except that I'm not. Maliszewski's (or however you spell it) post is interesting, but specious. He's got an unfortunate habit of writing very dogmatically, of finding evidence that supports the conclusions he already has rather than forming conclusions based on all the available evidence. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what he concludes has me scratching my head wondering where in the world that came from. The post you linked being one notable example of that.</p><p></p><p>No, actually it holds up better for fantasy overall than it does for RPGs, ironically. But maybe you're not very familiar with trends in fantasy publishing of the last few years.</p><p></p><p>Yes, I know that quite well. The reason I didn't mention it is because it was irrelevent to my post, not because I didn't know it, being that D&D wasn't written in the 20s or the 30s. By the time D&D was written, that kind of fantasy had been long on the wane (Ace reprints of Conan and Elric novels notwithstanding) in favor of a more heroic, high fantasy paradigm. Gygax himself may have preferred a more picaresque type fantasy, but from the very beginning, he reached out to high fantasy fans in <em>very</em> overt terms (the inclusion of a vast array of overtly Tolkienian and Arthurian elements in D&D, for example). In my anecdotal experience (and I don't know of any actual market data to suggest either for or against it) the early player base came at fantasy gaming with that high fantasy paradigm already quite prevalent, and the game's been evolving to better support it from its very inception. I believe your "new school" to actually be the original Old School, and the only thing James got right in his post was that designers over time have been forcing D&D to better model it that paradigm than it already did.</p><p></p><p>Therefore, calling that "new school" seems bizarrely malapropros, and in fact either disingenious or at least completely wrong. In order for your supposed "old school" to be actually old school, there has to actually be a period where that's the default mode of D&D among the majority of the player base, or at least a very significant chunk of it, that predates the supposed "new school." I don't believe that to be the case. I think your "new school" is just as old as your "old school" and was arguably always just as prevalent if not moreso since the very beginning of the game.</p><p></p><p>Whereas, ironically, in fantasy literature overall--which is spilling back into gaming again in more and more overt forms--the idea of a more cynical, dark fantasy, or fantasy noir, or antiheroic fantasy, has been a growing movement for years now, very slowly gaining traction since the publication of The Black Company, and becoming much more mainstream with the publication of the first Song of Ice and Fire book, and arguably, edging out heroic high fantasy (at least in terms of sheer numbers of books produced) just in the last little bit.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 5836972, member: 2205"] Heh. Well, except that I'm not. Maliszewski's (or however you spell it) post is interesting, but specious. He's got an unfortunate habit of writing very dogmatically, of finding evidence that supports the conclusions he already has rather than forming conclusions based on all the available evidence. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what he concludes has me scratching my head wondering where in the world that came from. The post you linked being one notable example of that. No, actually it holds up better for fantasy overall than it does for RPGs, ironically. But maybe you're not very familiar with trends in fantasy publishing of the last few years. Yes, I know that quite well. The reason I didn't mention it is because it was irrelevent to my post, not because I didn't know it, being that D&D wasn't written in the 20s or the 30s. By the time D&D was written, that kind of fantasy had been long on the wane (Ace reprints of Conan and Elric novels notwithstanding) in favor of a more heroic, high fantasy paradigm. Gygax himself may have preferred a more picaresque type fantasy, but from the very beginning, he reached out to high fantasy fans in [I]very[/I] overt terms (the inclusion of a vast array of overtly Tolkienian and Arthurian elements in D&D, for example). In my anecdotal experience (and I don't know of any actual market data to suggest either for or against it) the early player base came at fantasy gaming with that high fantasy paradigm already quite prevalent, and the game's been evolving to better support it from its very inception. I believe your "new school" to actually be the original Old School, and the only thing James got right in his post was that designers over time have been forcing D&D to better model it that paradigm than it already did. Therefore, calling that "new school" seems bizarrely malapropros, and in fact either disingenious or at least completely wrong. In order for your supposed "old school" to be actually old school, there has to actually be a period where that's the default mode of D&D among the majority of the player base, or at least a very significant chunk of it, that predates the supposed "new school." I don't believe that to be the case. I think your "new school" is just as old as your "old school" and was arguably always just as prevalent if not moreso since the very beginning of the game. Whereas, ironically, in fantasy literature overall--which is spilling back into gaming again in more and more overt forms--the idea of a more cynical, dark fantasy, or fantasy noir, or antiheroic fantasy, has been a growing movement for years now, very slowly gaining traction since the publication of The Black Company, and becoming much more mainstream with the publication of the first Song of Ice and Fire book, and arguably, edging out heroic high fantasy (at least in terms of sheer numbers of books produced) just in the last little bit. [/QUOTE]
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