Is "Old School" Overrated?

[weem]

For me, old school (with regards to gaming) is associated to that period when I was 12-18 years old playing those early editions. Old school will mean different things here to different people, but I'm just looking at the term as a general reference to "back in the day" gaming.

I've seen people refer to old school gaming as overrated, or that those times weren't as good as people actually remember, etc. Others still think of those times as the best of times.

So I'm asking the question is Old School overrated as it has come up in the "Dealing with an "oldschool" DM" thread (here)

I don't know the answer, even for myself, primarily because my memory is completely shot. I do recall having a LOT of fun back then - maybe even more fun than I have now - but I'm not sure if it was actually a better experience, or if it is burned into my memory as so much fun because it was new and I glazed over the problem areas.

So yea I don't know myself, but I'm curious if you think things were better in general "back then" or if things are better now - and in what way(s) perhaps?

 

[amysrevenge]

I do recall having a LOT of fun back then - maybe even more fun than I have now - but I'm not sure if it was actually a better experience, or if it is burned into my memory as so much fun because it was new and I glazed over the problem areas.

I kmow that for me, I'm having more fun with the actual game now (playing 4E) than I ever did back in the early 90s when I started playing. That, of course, isn't true old school to a lot of peeps, but it is to me.

I probably had more fun playing D&D then, but the fun was more related to finally finding people like myself that it was to the actual gaming experience (which was actually often frustrating and filled with constant arguments and clique-ish drama that only teenagers can come up with). I was a small town kid who got bussed into a bigger small town for high school, and was the only person I knew who even read for pleasure in junior high and earlier (suffice it to say that D&D wasn't even on my radar, let alone an option to try out).

Finding some D&D players in high school was an epiphany that I'm thankful for to this day, but I don't think I could go back to that town and play with those guys now, 20 years later, and actually enjoy the experience.

 

[kitsune9]

For me, old school (with regards to gaming) is associated to that period when I was 12-18 years old playing those early editions. Old school will mean different things here to different people, but I'm just looking at the term as a general reference to "back in the day" gaming.

I've seen people refer to old school gaming as overrated, or that those times weren't as good as people actually remember, etc. Others still think of those times as the best of times.

So I'm asking the question is Old School overrated as it has come up in the "Dealing with an "oldschool" DM" thread (here)

I don't know the answer, even for myself, primarily because my memory is completely shot. I do recall having a LOT of fun back then - maybe even more fun than I have now - but I'm not sure if it was actually a better experience, or if it is burned into my memory as so much fun because it was new and I glazed over the problem areas.

So yea I don't know myself, but I'm curious if you think things were better in general "back then" or if things are better now - and in what way(s) perhaps?

Well, I know that many posters feel very strongly about being ye olde skool and others want to move on and put it as a relic of the past. For me, playing BECMI and AD&D is old school, but I've moved on. 2nd ed came and played that, 3.0, 3.5, and now Pathfinder is my poison of choice.

Do I look down upon systems that embrace old school? Nah. For some players, it's their way to keep that nostalgia we all grew up on. For others, it's economic. And for others, a whole host of reasons.

For me personally, I like to move on, keep experimenting and moving away from the traditional tropes to see where my game goes next. New rules, new races, new classes, and so on is the way for me.

Happy Gaming!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Overrated? I don't think, considering that some people seem to like it.
Not my style? Definitely.

Ill-defined sometimes? Possibly. It seems the definition of what makes "old school" old school can be different. But it's not as if "old school" is unique in that regard...

 

[jgbrowning]

Old school is a design question, not a temporal one, IMO. I design adventures for 1e, 3e, and 4e. In each case I design differently.

1e I use old school design, 3e I use new school with a dash of old school, 4e is entirely new school.

YMMV

joe b.

 

[scruffygrognard]

A successful, enjoyable Old-School game is largely dependant on having a flexible and fair DM. The need to make rulings on-the-fly requires a DM who can think on his/her toes, making decisions that provide for a fast-paced game that rewards players' inventiveness and ingenuity.

 

[Ariosto]

I'm curious if you think things were better in general "back then" or if things are better now ...

That might follow from the assumption that "old school" is a mere memory of a long-bygone time in the first place! If the "new school" is not better (in terms of one's own preference), then why the switch?

Likewise, if one played "old school" just last night, and has been doing so for a while, then whether one considers it better or not, one probably does not consider it worse.

The concept of under- or over-rating assumes some independent standard. Where do you see that, and just what does it measure?

 

[Cadfan]

I'm not sure that "old school" has been rated at all, which would be necessary for it to be overrated.

My general take is that people who don't like the current D&D edition have a tendency to try to appropriate the term "old school" to cover whatever it is they do instead. There seems to be little commonality between the lot of them.

 

[Storm Raven]

Old school gaming was what it was. No more and no less. The problem I have with the trumpeting of the alleged enormous virtues of old school gaming compared with current gaming, usually involving one (or more) of the following (non-exhaustive) list of claims:

1. Old school gaming and old school players were tougher than those namby-pamby kids playing now;
2. Old school DMs were more inventive, because they made up a lot of rules;
3. Old school players role-played a lot more, or simply role-played better; and
4. Old school players weren't interested in obtaining in-game power, they were in it for the fun of the game

And so on. The problem is, that most of these don't seem to hold up very well. Looking back on the adventures published in the old days, or accounts from old school gamers made at the time (or close to it), and the adventures, characters, and notes that I have from my youth, the adventures are hackneyed, the characters shallow (how deep is a character named "Melf the Elf" really?), the players obsessed with accumulating treasure, experience, and followers, and so on and so forth.

Extolling the virtues of that time frame (in my case, the late 1970s and early 1980s), and putting them on a pedestal as somehow being a great era of role-playing excellence is simply not putting them in their proper context. By way of analogy, in the same time frame, I loved Gil Gerard's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and remember how much fun it was to watch it then. I don't, however, try to argue that it was better written and better produced than say, Babylon 5. I also look back fondly on the old Battlestar Galactica, but to try to argue that it was better made and had more in-depth character development than the new version would (rightly) be considered silly.

 

[avin]

Old School NES games > today games