Do you consider 2nd edition AD&D "old-school"

[rogueattorney]

I honestly think the "new school" vs "old school" thing is a false dichotomy that does more to limit how people consider games than it does help them understand games.

Yes. Trying to put 35 years and hundreds (thousands?) of products into 2 classes simply isn't meaningful in any productive way. The phases that D&D has gone trough is a lot more nuanced than the "old school v. new school" debate would lead anyone to believe.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I honestly think the "new school" vs "old school" thing is a false dichotomy that does more to limit how people consider games than it does help them understand games.

Any system of categorization runs the risk of having its users mistake general principles for absolutes. However, if you are able to avoid thinking in terms of absolutes, categorization is a useful tool.

For example, one may consider a tomato to be a fruit or a vegetable, depending upon the system of categories being used (scientific, supermarket), or as occupying some liminal space between. That shades of grey exist, however, isn't generally a real limitation when formulating a balanced diet!

Likewise, any rpg can be played in an "old school" or a "new school" way. Recognizing that some rulesets and presentations encourage a particular type of play, however, isn't limiting (esp. when one can then modify the ruleset or presentation to match what one desires). Failure to realize the same, OTOH, may be limiting in the extreme.


RC

 

[Sammael]

The rules of AD&D 2nd edition (up to Skills & Powers) are marginally cleaned up (sterilized, dare I say?) old-school rules. Lots of quirky little subsystems, no unified mechanics, tables a plenty, DM is the ultimate arbiter.

However, the (fantastic) flavor of AD&D 2nd edition was far more in line with "new school" RPGs of the time, such as White Wolf's World of Darkness (story-heavy, metaplot-heavy, world-shattering events).

Basically, 2nd edition tried to be a storytelling system based on a dungeon crawl rules system. This didn't work very well, so each setting had to come up with its own rules exceptions and subsystems.

Skills and Powers tried to codify everything and turn it into a point-buy system and failed (although I still enjoyed Skills and Powers - as a player - far more than vanilla 2nd edition, due to the far greater ability to customize your character).

In conclusion, 2nd edition is basically its own "school" and very much a transitive system. It did produce some of the greatest settings of all times - Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Al-Quadim, and Spelljammer - and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms books are still the definitive works on the setting to date (the fact that some DMs don't know how to tailor the setting to their own games and try to enforce the much-maligned canon is a problem with those DMs, not the setting itself, IMO).

 

[Umbran]

Any system of categorization runs the risk of having its users mistake general principles for absolutes. However, if you are able to avoid thinking in terms of absolutes, categorization is a useful tool.

Small correction - accurate categorization can be a useful tool. You can have bad categories, and even if your categories are good, doesn't mean you'll get something useful out of them.

As I feel the old/new thing is a false dichotomy to start with, I find the categories to be inaccurate. I know a bunch of folks hold by them, but I don't.

Note, I feel this is different from the vegetable/fruit issue for tomatoes. In that case, the issue is imprecise categories (or alternatively, categories that mean different things in different contexts).

 

[Invisible Stalker]

I do think of it as "Old School." The old part of the school that got burned to the ground to make way for better things in 3e and 4e.

 

[Remathilis]

I honestly think the "new school" vs "old school" thing is a false dichotomy that does more to limit how people consider games than it does help them understand games.

Sigged!

 

[M.L. Martin]

[Warning: This post contains tongue-in-cheek exaggerations.]

2E can't be old school--it doesn't encourage players and DMs trying to outwit one another, the emphasis on player cunning over character traits, and the assumption that the world is a nasty, brutal, amoral place where power is the summum bonum and PCs go forth to kill, loot, plunder, pillage, ravage, ravish, trick, trap, deceive, and trade the souls of their enemies to fiends for a 20% profit margin.

Likewise, 2E can't be new school--it doesn't encourage mini-centered combat, the DM as an interface for the players to interact with the RAW Hivemind, an emphasis on system mastery, and the assumption that the world is an amoral place where power is the summum bonum and PCs go forth to kill things and take their stuff to become ever more effective at killing things and taking their stuff through acquisition of fabulous new combinations of powers.

While in rules, 2E is a cleaned-up 1E, in assumptions, 2E is probably an attempt at D&D for people who want to play Heroic High Fantasy, where the emphasis is on wonder, story, and doing the right thing, as opposed to Pulp Swords & Sorcery/Weird Fantasy, where the emphasis is on strangeness, exploration, and doing the profitable thing.

Given my sympathies with 2E's philosophy and style (although I find the rules clunky), I guess I'm not really a D&D fan.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Nope, it surely isn't.

 

[Ariosto]

I see a very meaningful distinction in the different methods of play. This was brought home the first time I played 4E, and described in-character how I was investigating a section of floor. My friend translated, "That's his old-school way of saying he wants to make a Perception check."

As the 2E line progressed, TSR pushed ever more the idea that players needed stacks of rule-books. Wizards took up where that left off. The results are pretty easy to see.

 

[Doug McCrae]

described in-character how I was investigating a section of floor

That sounds very, very boring.