Do "old school" RPGers have an advantage?

[IronWolf]

Interesting question. My guess is that experience will generally help, but I'm not sure that having an "old school style" is a strict positive or negative. It's probably a positive for some groups and a negative for others.

I think this is likely the most accurate. Experience playing RPGs helps. I suspect more than the "old school style" helps. It just happens to be that a lot of people with a lot of experience can say they played the "old school" games because their experience goes back that far.

 

[howandwhy99]

Do experienced Chess players have an advantage? Old school play is more of a manner in which one engages with a game. Having experience is different from being old school. Young and/or inexperienced players can excel too. Plus the game and games change as time passes. I guess it depends on what advantages are attributed to whom.

 

[Crothian]

Like anything experience and doing something for a long time is helpful. Playing and running different types of games and genres (not just old school) I have also found to be helpful.

But as an old school grognard I would have to say that playing and running 1e does make us better then the young whippersnappers of today.

 

[The Shaman]

Do "old school" RPGers have an advantage?

Yes. It's the intoxicating scent of patchouli and the 1e AD&D Player's Handbook.

 

[Incenjucar]

"Old school" no. "Experienced" very often yes. Having exposure to the "old school" and the "new school" and the "private school" or whatever will certainly add to your flexibility, but there's no "school" that is inherently superior given a general level of complexity, because players may not care for the feel of the stuff you learn from any particular school.

Having exposure to multiple editions can be a huge boon simply because a lot of fluff never gets reprinted. Anyone who made a dent in the 2E catalog has more lore in their heads than they'll ever be able to use, but you can expose a "new school" gamer to that same information, without the rules, and they'll still be able to use it.

If there is any real advantage to any one style of play, it's going to be group-specific. As a form of entertainment, gaming is good or bad largely based on its ability to engage its audience, and audiences can have a variety of tastes and tolerances, and any one audience is going to be too small for statistics of what people like to play a part.

 

[Morrus]

Experience in GMing will likely assist you in GMing, sure.

 

[1Mac]

We need to bracket being an "old-schooler" from being "experienced." Old-schoolers will tautologically be experienced gamers in most cases, at least in regards to time. But if your RPG experience is limited to early versions of DnD, then in another sense you aren't experienced at all! It's like claiming you are an experienced traveller because you've been going to Wisconsin Dells every summer for 30 years.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with having only played a small subset of RPGs (nor is this something unique to old-schoolers or universal among old schoolers). It just means your RPG experience isn't very broad. Someone who's been gaming for 30 years but has only ever played legacy DnD editions is in this sense less experience than an omnivorous gamer of 10 years who's played DnD, WoD, Savage Worlds, Burning Wheel, Fate, or what have you.

 

[jaerdaph]

The more you do something, the easier it becomes and the better you get.

But just because you are experienced and really good at something doesn't automatically mean you will be any good *teaching* it. Teaching and Doing are often two different things.

 

[DnD_Dad]

I've been DM/GMing since around 1997 with 2nd edition Shadowrun. I played AD&D once or twice with a buddy DMing back in the early 90s, and he was so bad at it that I really didn't play any form of D&D until 2000ish when 3rd came out. Even then the DM was so bad that it wasn't fun at all to me. I've played with the old school DM's, new school DM's and DM'a that were just doing one-shots. For me it all boils down to if they prepared for the session or not. I want random encounters, dungeons, treasure, NPCs with life to them, etc. all if that takes a lot of preparation to make happen. A good DM makes it happen, period.

 

[havard]

Being experienced is an advantage, but there's an additional advantage to being experienced with multiple editions and systems.

Younger gamers bring alot of energy and new ideas though and they have a less hard time to find people to play with.

-Havard