My Response to the Grognardia Essay "More Than a Feeling"

[Ariosto]

So the defining quality of Old School Gaming/Old School Renaissance is that it's NOT 3e/4e.

That's so only in the same way that the "defining quality" of a tiger is that it's not a lion. First, people noticed a distinction; then they came up with a name for it. Detailed taxonomy came along later.

 

[ggroy]

Ggroy, I think that was pretty much the intent of the optional skills in the D&D Gazetteer series, late 1E AD&D and 2E AD&D. It's quite different from the very systematic approach in 3E and 4E.

In what years did these optional skills from the D&D Gazetteer start showing up?

When I was playing my first several "real games" of 1E AD&D, it was a few years before Unearthed Arcana was released. Among the players and DM, we only had the three core books and Deities & Demigods. None of us bought anything else, nor did we have any issues of Dragon Magazine.

I have no idea where this particular DM got his "strange" houserules from. The only semi-plausible scenario I can think of offhand, would be he learned them from another DM he played with previously.

 

[Ariosto]

Your DM could have arrived at that approach independently, as I think many people did.

 

[ggroy]

I see RQ as being pretty similar to 3e. Both systems are strongly simulationist. RQ is to d100 what 3e is to d20. Unified system - combat, skills and everything else use the same mechanic. All characters, including monsters, built the same way. I loved that feature when I first saw it. Like 3e, RQ is a bit too complex, I always felt Call of Cthulhu was a better expression of the Chaosium system.

Unlike D&D, it lacks classes and levels so that's a big difference.

Maybe 5E D&D will eliminate classes and skills altogether as we know them, and implement everything as "talent trees"?

Looking at how 4E D&D is structured, the class powers do look a bit like restricted heavily constrained "talent trees".

Maybe they'll even go one step further and eliminate XP and "leveling up" altogether as we know it, and implement a new level system where the DM decides when the players should level up by DM discretion. (ie. The True20 style of "leveling").

 

[Ariosto]

"Leveling up" by DM discretion (at least by varying XP awards) is mentioned in the 4E DMG. In that game, XP seem almost superfluous or even potentially contrary to the designers' view that "the game works better in a lot of ways if you just assume that the characters all gain experience and advance levels at the same rate, even if their players miss a session."

I gather that early in Arneson's seminal Blackmoor campaign, characters graduated from "flunky" to "hero" status when he judged their accomplishments significant enough. It was on an individual basis, though, there being no concept of "the party" as an entity keeping its composition from adventure to adventure. The idea of a consistent "party level" does not figure in early RPGs; different outcomes for different players is part of the "game" aspect.

 

[Intense_Interest]

What's been made clear to me today, in a number of boards, by a number of people, is that many of the people who feel compelled to trumpet the virtue of imagination over rules cannot actually imagine having fun except under their particular rules.

So who has a poorer imagination - you, who feel trapped, constrained, and bound by The Rules, or me, who has happily run the same setting under 5 different rulesets without blinking and without changing the tone of the setting?

Now back to your regularly scheduled stupid edition war.

I just have to disagree with your aspersion. I hate the 3rd level Fly spell and all the game conceits that come with it, having to deal with it by level 5+ as a DM and normally as a player. Do I "lack imagination" because I don't want to design a flat-faced "no flying" encounter once every day so that the wizard doesn't completely squash it? That I have to tell a player that the character choice he had, his role-playing IMO, is bad and has to be punished/altered simply so that everyone else can participate?

I do hope you will respond, seeing as you've given yourself ample excuse to "drive by" instead of show an actual basis of your statement.

 

[Intense_Interest]

That's so only in the same way that the "defining quality" of a tiger is that it's not a lion. First, people noticed a distinction; then they came up with a name for it. Detailed taxonomy came along later.

A book is not a lion, and a genre is not a specie*. The definitions and conclusions of the former are so fluid as to be arbitrary- not only is the Author dead, his library has burned down. Your analogy would be more apt if tigers were able to change their stripes and lions could turn into bears over time.

*it should be noted that specie actually means coinage, not flora/fauna, but the poetry demanded it.

 

[Ariosto]

Intense_Interest, I cannot make head or tail of that except perhaps that you don't believe in biological evolution. Who is or are "the former", who is the author, what is the library? It seems but gibberish to me, and certainly does nothing to indicate why you don't like the analogy.

Just as most non-lions are not tigers, so most RPGs that are not 3E/4E D&D are not "old school". Certain games were recognized as being popular in a demographic that also shared a dissatisfaction with certain others. The two sets were given names for convenience in discussion. Critical inquiry into the characteristics to which people were responding followed. The characteristics and responses are pre-existent; examination merely aids explanation.

 

[Piratecat]

Yeah, we're done here.