Is "Old School" Overrated?
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Doug McCrae
Legend
I agree with what you're saying but the interview doesn't actually tell us how Skip ran his games back in the day. It tells us why he thinks the Sage Advice articles in Dragon were useful and some of the thinking behind 3e.
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There is one factor about play during the actual "old-school" period of the early eighties that is seldom mentioned in these kinds of discussions. There were many more players than there are now, but a much larger percentage of the players bought few or no role playing books or materials at all. I would say that probably there were 3 to 4 times as many people who played D&D in the early eighties compared to now, but in my experience only DMs actually bought anything past a Player's Handbook or perhaps a Monster Manual. Most players were casual, not thinking much about the game outside of actual play. Most players did not go to 'cons, and were not members of the RPGA. Most of those players no longer play. So, any reports about what play was like "back in the day" really only reflects the experiences of the small percentage of players who regarded the game as a regular hobby, and kept with it.
The newer editions seem to have the opposite situation. There are far fewer people who play D&D now, but almost all of them are actual customers, buying books, minis and accessories. D&D players are a much more insular, and hence dedicated, sub-culture than before.
AD&D was never an elegant, rules-light game. But, it was modular, and most players did not need to know the rules to play. A player with a fighter or thief character especially had no real need to even own the PHB. Everything they needed to know could be written on their character sheet. The entire combat system, for instance, was in the DMG. Players weren't even expected to know how to use it. Past 3rd Edition, a player needed to own all the books in order to contribute meaningfully to play. All those "options" necessitated actually purchasing and understanding the rules. New School rules may be simpler, but the actual experience of play is infinitely more complicated.
From my experience, the difference between Old School and New School play comes down to whether the game is structured in a way that only one person at the table really even needs to know the rules, or whether it is structured so that everybody needs to know them. The Old School way results in more players, but perhaps fewer actual customers for a game company. The New School way results in fewer players, but perhaps more actual books and accessories sold.
The newer editions seem to have the opposite situation. There are far fewer people who play D&D now, but almost all of them are actual customers, buying books, minis and accessories. D&D players are a much more insular, and hence dedicated, sub-culture than before.
AD&D was never an elegant, rules-light game. But, it was modular, and most players did not need to know the rules to play. A player with a fighter or thief character especially had no real need to even own the PHB. Everything they needed to know could be written on their character sheet. The entire combat system, for instance, was in the DMG. Players weren't even expected to know how to use it. Past 3rd Edition, a player needed to own all the books in order to contribute meaningfully to play. All those "options" necessitated actually purchasing and understanding the rules. New School rules may be simpler, but the actual experience of play is infinitely more complicated.
From my experience, the difference between Old School and New School play comes down to whether the game is structured in a way that only one person at the table really even needs to know the rules, or whether it is structured so that everybody needs to know them. The Old School way results in more players, but perhaps fewer actual customers for a game company. The New School way results in fewer players, but perhaps more actual books and accessories sold.
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Storm Raven
First Post
The only problem with this is that it is entirely speculative. We don't know how many gamers there were then, since nobody bothered to count them, or even try. We don't even know how many PHBs, DMGs, and MMs were sold back then, since TSR never told anyone, and WotC (who probably has the records) has never released them.
We don't know how many gamers there are now, since nobody has even tried to count them since the surveys done during thr 3e development process. And, once again, we don't know how many PHBs, DMGs, and MMs have been sold for 3e, 3.5e, or 4e, since WotC hasn't told us (although I remember Dancy, I think, saying that the 3e PHB sold more units in its first year than the 1e did in its best, but I may be misremembering).
We can speculate, and guess, but that doesn't actually demonstrate anything other than the anecdotal experience of the guesser.
Storm Raven
First Post
THis is the sort of thing I was talking about concerning the revisionism about the "old school". Looking back, for example, and reading the accounts Gygax has posted about his experiences with his original group, there was precious little role-playing going on back then. Instead, a constant dungeon delve with numerous fights and hunts for treasure and riches seems to have been the order of the day.
Is there lots of role-playing now? That's hard to say. Was there more role-playing then? There just isn't any real evidence that there was. I suspect, since gamers are the constant factor, that gamers don't role-play more or less now than they did then.
Doug McCrae
Legend
Six million D&Ders at present. Twenty million total throughout the history of D&D. Those figures are from WotC's recent court case against pdf pirates.
Storm Raven
First Post
Would that be twenty million cumulative or twenty million at all times? We also don't know if those numbers have any sort of actual research behind them, or are just from their behind estimates.
Melan
Explorer
Since I just remembered I wrote a looong post about the common memes that come up in old-school discussions in an epic TheRPGSite thread, I might as well copy it here:
Looks like this debate has been popping up a lot lately - on TheRPGHaven, on Malcolm Sheppard's blog, on Jonathan Tweet's blog and so on. It also looks like there are four major threads in the criticism that inevitably crops up:
1) the nostalgia argument (usually proposed by trotting out a technological analogy, most often the Ford Model T)
I propose this has been so thoroughly debunked that it needs no further discussion; people should find different analogies if they wish to capture the essence of old-school vis-á-vis simply being insulting. I will note that I know, and have played with old-school fans who were not born when 2e was released, and also that while people may be nostalgic about their early gaming experiences, they may also have other (and more relevant) reasons to play the games they do.
2) the argument that old-school is needlessly fetishistic about "holy texts", and has built an uncompromising orthodoxy that a) drives away people who don't swear by the complete old-school "canon", b) is actually constructing false memories that are at odds with the practice of the actual 70s/80s
With regards to a), I see some fetishism about "old-school" rules elements, but I suggest that adherence to them is driven more by comfort - sure, ascending AC and addition are marginally more intuitive than descending AC and substraction (or consulting a matrix), but this is counterbalanced by several years of practice. Also, it is my impression that most people play their old-school games today in a relatively rules-light fashion: in this case, a few suboptimal task resolution systems are not as much of an issue as in something like supplement-heavy 3.x or Hackmaster.
With regards to b), it is my opinion that old-school is by and large (although not universally) revisionistic, since it has emerged in contrast to new-school (whatever it means), and is built on the idea that old-school designers were actually doing the right thing most of the time: therefore, people who rejected the Vancian magic system or classes or hit points "back then" will find that old-school does not include their viewpoints. To this, my response is that there is no obligation to be wholly representative of an older scene or pass a "legitimacy test"; what matters is using any combination of old and new concepts for an enjoyable game experience, and that can be accomplished in multiple ways. The "herding cats" phrase I used in a previous post might be a good one - there is a meow in there, and a predilection to seek out mice, milk and rooftops, but otherwise, it is a lot of different people with different individual motives doing what they wish to do.
3) the argument that people modify their old-school games to an extent that the term they apply to themselves has become meaningless
This argument directly contradicts 2), although it describes some segments of the old-school scene: just like there are groups that prefer to (re?)construct a textually pure game experience, there are others that seek to mold the game to their own specific preferences. There is a good point here - if the scene loses its cohesion, it might disintegrate to the extent d20 has disintegrated, with insular sub-groups that have nothing to say to each other.
There are, however, also counter-influences: first, most of the D&D/OGL-derivative old-school systems are cross-compatible enough and rules-light enough to make adaptation from one system to another a snap (myself, I write OSRIC-compatible articles for Fight On!, S&W-compatible articles for Knockspell and use my own system for Hungarian releases). Second, there are unifying trends and fashions within the old-school scene - sandbox campaigns and "weird fantasy" have become more popular than they used to be, and there are also entirely new concepts like the "one-page dungeon" or "E6" [6-level D&D; this originated in the 3e community, but is entirely old-school in my opinion]. All in all, I see this sort of thing as healthy.
4) the argument that old-school has focussed almost exclusively on producing rulesets and rules variants with minute differences, neglecting the actual playable content underneath
Theoretically, I agree with this criticism, and have previously argued that OSRIC et al were superfluous since most editions (except perhaps OD&D) are available cheaply on the secondary market, and the OGL is easy to understand to the extent required by self-publishing. In practice, however, the ease of availability, community-building and networking facilitiated by these systems have proven me wrong, and motivated people to produce stuff beyond previous levels. It may be nine parts psychology and one part actual utility, but if it works, it works - and as stated previously by others, the rulesets are seeing some table use.
I still think there is a bit too much focus on reinventing the wheel - the brouhaha about thieves has outlived its shelf-life long ago - but even if we are taking a purely play-oriented perspective, there is a good selection out there: Fight On!, Knockspell, XRP's Advanced Adventures, Dragonsfoot modules, JimLotFP's recent books, Mythmere Games, myself, the Scanning Project, CNCPlayer.net and many others (recently, I got a lot of mileage out of Tomb of the Bull King, a Mazes&Minotaurs module). The lack of adventures might have been a problem in 2005 or 2006, but it is much less of a problem today (although, of course, quality is uneven and preferences differ, etc. etc.).
5) the argument that old-school is too focussed on A/D&D instead of applying its principles to other systems.
Well, yeah, D&D-derivatives are as dominant in old-school as they are in the new... but let's not forget there are productive and active communities for Encounter Critical, Traveller, Mutant Future/GW, Empire of the Petal Throne, Mazes&Minotaurs, probably Space Siege (although I have little experience with it), ZEFRS and others (I would classify Zenobia as a hybrid of old and new school, and don't know how many people actually play it). It is just that they have dedicated groups and are somewhat more insular from our perspective.
Finally, on the lack of new old-school based systems: anything is possible if people are willing to invest time and passion into it. There is no way around that. There is nothing to prevent people from using the lessons they learned from old-school in new ways, but if they want something to happen, they need to get off their behinds, do it and promote it. Conversely, nobody is obliged to be "progressive": if someone is happy playing D&D or a variant, more power to them, they are doing it as right as anybody.
Looks like this debate has been popping up a lot lately - on TheRPGHaven, on Malcolm Sheppard's blog, on Jonathan Tweet's blog and so on. It also looks like there are four major threads in the criticism that inevitably crops up:
1) the nostalgia argument (usually proposed by trotting out a technological analogy, most often the Ford Model T)
I propose this has been so thoroughly debunked that it needs no further discussion; people should find different analogies if they wish to capture the essence of old-school vis-á-vis simply being insulting. I will note that I know, and have played with old-school fans who were not born when 2e was released, and also that while people may be nostalgic about their early gaming experiences, they may also have other (and more relevant) reasons to play the games they do.
2) the argument that old-school is needlessly fetishistic about "holy texts", and has built an uncompromising orthodoxy that a) drives away people who don't swear by the complete old-school "canon", b) is actually constructing false memories that are at odds with the practice of the actual 70s/80s
With regards to a), I see some fetishism about "old-school" rules elements, but I suggest that adherence to them is driven more by comfort - sure, ascending AC and addition are marginally more intuitive than descending AC and substraction (or consulting a matrix), but this is counterbalanced by several years of practice. Also, it is my impression that most people play their old-school games today in a relatively rules-light fashion: in this case, a few suboptimal task resolution systems are not as much of an issue as in something like supplement-heavy 3.x or Hackmaster.
With regards to b), it is my opinion that old-school is by and large (although not universally) revisionistic, since it has emerged in contrast to new-school (whatever it means), and is built on the idea that old-school designers were actually doing the right thing most of the time: therefore, people who rejected the Vancian magic system or classes or hit points "back then" will find that old-school does not include their viewpoints. To this, my response is that there is no obligation to be wholly representative of an older scene or pass a "legitimacy test"; what matters is using any combination of old and new concepts for an enjoyable game experience, and that can be accomplished in multiple ways. The "herding cats" phrase I used in a previous post might be a good one - there is a meow in there, and a predilection to seek out mice, milk and rooftops, but otherwise, it is a lot of different people with different individual motives doing what they wish to do.
3) the argument that people modify their old-school games to an extent that the term they apply to themselves has become meaningless
This argument directly contradicts 2), although it describes some segments of the old-school scene: just like there are groups that prefer to (re?)construct a textually pure game experience, there are others that seek to mold the game to their own specific preferences. There is a good point here - if the scene loses its cohesion, it might disintegrate to the extent d20 has disintegrated, with insular sub-groups that have nothing to say to each other.
There are, however, also counter-influences: first, most of the D&D/OGL-derivative old-school systems are cross-compatible enough and rules-light enough to make adaptation from one system to another a snap (myself, I write OSRIC-compatible articles for Fight On!, S&W-compatible articles for Knockspell and use my own system for Hungarian releases). Second, there are unifying trends and fashions within the old-school scene - sandbox campaigns and "weird fantasy" have become more popular than they used to be, and there are also entirely new concepts like the "one-page dungeon" or "E6" [6-level D&D; this originated in the 3e community, but is entirely old-school in my opinion]. All in all, I see this sort of thing as healthy.
4) the argument that old-school has focussed almost exclusively on producing rulesets and rules variants with minute differences, neglecting the actual playable content underneath
Theoretically, I agree with this criticism, and have previously argued that OSRIC et al were superfluous since most editions (except perhaps OD&D) are available cheaply on the secondary market, and the OGL is easy to understand to the extent required by self-publishing. In practice, however, the ease of availability, community-building and networking facilitiated by these systems have proven me wrong, and motivated people to produce stuff beyond previous levels. It may be nine parts psychology and one part actual utility, but if it works, it works - and as stated previously by others, the rulesets are seeing some table use.
I still think there is a bit too much focus on reinventing the wheel - the brouhaha about thieves has outlived its shelf-life long ago - but even if we are taking a purely play-oriented perspective, there is a good selection out there: Fight On!, Knockspell, XRP's Advanced Adventures, Dragonsfoot modules, JimLotFP's recent books, Mythmere Games, myself, the Scanning Project, CNCPlayer.net and many others (recently, I got a lot of mileage out of Tomb of the Bull King, a Mazes&Minotaurs module). The lack of adventures might have been a problem in 2005 or 2006, but it is much less of a problem today (although, of course, quality is uneven and preferences differ, etc. etc.).
5) the argument that old-school is too focussed on A/D&D instead of applying its principles to other systems.
Well, yeah, D&D-derivatives are as dominant in old-school as they are in the new... but let's not forget there are productive and active communities for Encounter Critical, Traveller, Mutant Future/GW, Empire of the Petal Throne, Mazes&Minotaurs, probably Space Siege (although I have little experience with it), ZEFRS and others (I would classify Zenobia as a hybrid of old and new school, and don't know how many people actually play it). It is just that they have dedicated groups and are somewhat more insular from our perspective.
Finally, on the lack of new old-school based systems: anything is possible if people are willing to invest time and passion into it. There is no way around that. There is nothing to prevent people from using the lessons they learned from old-school in new ways, but if they want something to happen, they need to get off their behinds, do it and promote it. Conversely, nobody is obliged to be "progressive": if someone is happy playing D&D or a variant, more power to them, they are doing it as right as anybody.
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Melan
Explorer
Furthermore, a post on sub-styles:
I don't consider old-school a movement either. If anything, it is a cluster of preferences with both positive and negative identifiers (i.e. "old-school is this and that" / "old school is not that"). From the outsider POV, it may seem homogeneous; from the inside, it is more varied - just for a start, we could speak of
- people looking for the accurate (re)creation of a Gygaxian playstyle (as seen on the Knights&Knaves Alehouse),
- Gygaxian naturalists (as advocated by James Maliszewski),
- Bledsawian surrealists (my term; usually combining sandbox games with swords&sorcery/weird fantasy aesthetics),
- retro stupid (as identified by Jeff Rients; it has roots in the irreverence of Tunnels&Trolls and the free genre-mixing of Arduin),
- people who play AD&D as they have always played AD&D (probably the most straightforward direct evolution of 1st edition; commonly found on Dragonsfoot, with John Turncotte and perhaps Stuart Marshall as its most accomplished representatives),
- Tekumel fans (specifically, those who use it to play D&D-style games)
- etc.
The list is neither exclusive nor should the listed types be interpreted as mutually exclusive - there is a lot of collusion among them, and a sort of movement within the entire scene in an ongoing process of differentiation.
I don't consider old-school a movement either. If anything, it is a cluster of preferences with both positive and negative identifiers (i.e. "old-school is this and that" / "old school is not that"). From the outsider POV, it may seem homogeneous; from the inside, it is more varied - just for a start, we could speak of
- people looking for the accurate (re)creation of a Gygaxian playstyle (as seen on the Knights&Knaves Alehouse),
- Gygaxian naturalists (as advocated by James Maliszewski),
- Bledsawian surrealists (my term; usually combining sandbox games with swords&sorcery/weird fantasy aesthetics),
- retro stupid (as identified by Jeff Rients; it has roots in the irreverence of Tunnels&Trolls and the free genre-mixing of Arduin),
- people who play AD&D as they have always played AD&D (probably the most straightforward direct evolution of 1st edition; commonly found on Dragonsfoot, with John Turncotte and perhaps Stuart Marshall as its most accomplished representatives),
- Tekumel fans (specifically, those who use it to play D&D-style games)
- etc.
The list is neither exclusive nor should the listed types be interpreted as mutually exclusive - there is a lot of collusion among them, and a sort of movement within the entire scene in an ongoing process of differentiation.
Aus_Snow
First Post
It seems, if anything, sadly underrated around these parts. Lately, anyhow.
It actually has a lot going for it. So do other modes of play, other kinds of ruleset, and so on. But there are some unique advantages, most or all of which I assume have already been covered in this thread.
Anyway, mark me down for a 'no'.
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